Nothing, perhaps, is so repugnant to the northern mind as the notion that marriage does not exist among the “slaves” of the South, and the Abolition lecturers have given this subject the most prominent place in their terrible bill of indictment against their southern brethren. The spectacle, or the seeming spectacle, of four millions of human beings living without marriage, without family, without children, with nothing but offspring, shut out, like the brutes that perish, from all the household charities, and doomed to live in universal concubinage, as it has been termed, was, to the northern and European mind, such a stupendous outrage on “humanity,” that we need not wonder at their fierce indignation, or at the wild and unsparing denunciation heaped upon the authors of such boundless and unparalleled iniquity. Especially were northern women shocked and indignant, and above all others, the women of New England were excited at times to a “Divine fury” when contemplating this mighty “wickedness.” Our fair countrywomen are believed to be equally virtuous and lovely, but the _domestic_ education of those of New England, in some respects, is more admirable than that of others or any other country. They are taught to labor, to be their own housekeepers, to regard life, and the duties of life, as a solemn mission to be faithfully and conscientiously fulfilled, and though it imparts a certain materialism bordering on hardness, perhaps, to the New England woman, it is associated with such simple and transparent love of truth, and such an earnest and abiding sense of duty, that the harsher features of the character are lost in these gentler and more exalted qualities. Hence they are taught to regard a violation of the family relation as the one most heinous and unpardonable sin. To women thus educated, with the utmost abhorrence of any violation of marital obligations, the seeming universal disregard of this relation, and the duties embraced in it, among the “slaves” of the South, was probably the most transcendent wrong that the mind could conceive of, and the “anti-slavery” delusion of the North has doubtless been increased to a considerable extent by this strictness or severity of female education. And if the facts were what they suppose, then indeed would their indignation and abhorrence be just enough, but strange that they should never have doubted or mistrusted these facts. Many of the most intelligent have known their sisters of the South, known them to be as virtuous, refined and womanly as themselves, and yet living every day of their lives in the shadow of this mighty wrong, and in the midst of this supposititious iniquity. Could that be possible? Could woman retain her purity, her womanly delicacy, or expand into the full stature of a true womanhood with such surroundings, in an atmosphere thus corrupt and corrupting, in a social condition where four millions of people were