_In the press, by the same Author, complete in One Volume_, AN ENGLISH TRAGEDY: A PLAY, IN FIVE ACTS. MARY STUART. TRANSLATED FROM SCHILLER. A PLAY, IN FIVE ACTS. MLLE. DE BELLISLE. TRANSLATED FROM DUMAS. A PLAY, IN FIVE ACTS. JOURNAL OF A RESIDENCE ON A GEORGIAN PLANTATION 1838-1839. By FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE. * * * * * SLAVERY THE CHIEF CORNER STONE. 'This stone (Slavery), which was rejected by the first builders, is become the chief stone of the corner in our new edifice.'--_Speech of_ ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS _Vice-president of the Confederate States; delivered March 21, 1861._ * * * * * 1863 TO ELIZABETH DWIGHT SEDGWICK THIS JOURNAL, ORIGINALLY KEPT FOR HER, IS MOST AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. PREFACE. The following diary was kept in the winter and spring of 1838-9, on an estate consisting of rice and cotton plantations, in the islands at the entrance of the Altamaha, on the coast of Georgia. The slaves in whom I then had an unfortunate interest were sold some years ago. The islands themselves are at present in the power of the Northern troops. The record contained in the following pages is a picture of conditions of human existence which I hope and believe have passed away. LONDON: _January 16, 1863._ JOURNAL. Philadelphia: December 1838. My Dear E----. I return you Mr. ----'s letter. I do not think it answers any of the questions debated in our last conversation at all satisfactorily: the _right_ one man has to enslave another, he has not the hardihood to assert; but in the reasons he adduces to defend that act of injustice, the contradictory statements he makes appear to me to refute each other. He says, that to the continental European protesting against the abstract iniquity of slavery, his answer would be, 'the slaves are infinitely better off than half the continental peasantry.' To the Englishman, 'they are happy compared with the miserable Irish.' But supposing that this answered the question of original injustice, which it does not, it is not a true reply. Though the negroes are fed, clothed, and housed, and though the Irish peasant is starved, naked, and roofless, the bare name of freeman--the lordship over his own person, the power to choose and will--are blessings beyond food, raiment, or shelter; possessing which, the want of every comfort of life is yet more tolerable than their fullest enjoyment without them. Ask the thousands of ragged destitutes who yearly land upon these shores to seek the means of existence--ask the friendless, penniless foreign emigrant, if he will give up his present misery, his future uncertainty, his doubtful and difficult struggle for life, at once, for the secure, and as it is called, fortunate dependance of the slave: the indignation with which he would spurn the offer will prove that he possesses one good beyond all others, and that