The date at which we write was directly after the election and inauguration of Taylor as President of the United States. The opposition to human slavery had steadily been gaining ground, regardless of taunts and sneers, and the ranks of the Abolitionists were hourly on the increase. Slavery was peculiarly a selfish institution. It is folly to say that only men born and reared in the South could be numbered among the upholders of this "peculiar institution," for many Northern men went South and purchased plantations and slaves, and in 1861 many of these enlisted on the Confederate side, and fought under the Confederate flag, not from principle, but from self-interest. Mr. Tompkins, who was Northern born, believed in slavery simply because he owned slaves, and not from any well defined principle. Even now the same conflict that later convulsed the Nation was raging in his heart--the conflict between self-interest and the right. Press and pulpit, the lecturer's rostrum and the novelist's pen, had almost wrought out the doom of slavery, when the politician took up the stormy dispute. The discussion in the Virginia inn was warm but friendly, the Carolinian declaring that God and Nature had ordained the negro for slavery; that his diet should be the ash-cake, his stimulant the whip, his reward for obedience a blanket and a hut, his punishment for rebellion chains and death. Doubtless his passion over-reached his judgment in the heat of argument, and his brain, perhaps, was not so cool since his visit to the bar-room. "My dear sir," Mr. Tompkins finally said, hoping to end the discussion, which was drawing to them the attention of all, "the policy you suggest will, I fear, plunge our whole country into trouble. Few men are born rulers, and history has never shown one successful who ruled by harsh measures only. Admitting that a negro is not a rational being, kindness with a beast can accomplish more than harshness. It is cruel masters who make runaway slaves. The parting of parent and child, husband and wife, torn ruthlessly asunder, never to see each other again, will make even a negro furious. I fear, sir, that slavery is a bad institution, but it is firmly established among us, and I see no way at present to get rid of it." The other guests at Jerry Lycan's inn had gathered in groups of two and three, and were listening silently to the differing views of these two upholders of slavery, for there were factions in those days among the slavery men. The landlord had entered the room, and, being a politician himself, drank in the discussion with deepest interest.