“Your father literally obeyed the Saviour’s injunction. He gave up all he had, to follow where truth led. Convinced that slavery was a wrong, he ruined his fortunes in the attempt to substitute free labor for that of slaves. Through the hostility of the slave interest the experiment failed.” “I think,” said Onslow, “my father acted unwisely in sacrificing his fortunes to an abstraction.” “An abstraction! The man who tries to undo a wrong is an abstractionist, is he? What a world this would be if all men would be guilty of similar abstractions. To such a one I would say, ‘Master, lead on, and I will follow thee, to the last gasp, with truth and loyalty!’ Strange! unaccountably strange, that his own son should have deserted him for the filthy flesh-pots of slavery!” “May not good men differ as to slavery?” asked Onslow. “Put that question,” replied Kenrick, “to nine tenths of the slaveholders,—men in favor of lynching, torturing, murdering, those opposed to the institution. Put it to Mr. Carson, who, the other day, in his own house, shot down an unarmed and unsuspecting visitor, because he had freely expressed views opposed to slavery. Abolitionists don’t hang men for not believing with them,—do they? But the whole code and temper of the South reply to you, that men may _not_ differ, and _shall_ not differ, on the subject of slavery. Onslow, give me but one thing,—and that a thing guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, though never tolerated in the Slave States,—give me _liberty of the press_ in those States, and I, as a friend of the Union, would say to the government at Washington, ‘Put by the sword. Wait! I will put down this rebellion. I have the pen and the press! Therefore is slavery doomed, and its days are numbered.’” “Why is it,” asked Onslow, “if slavery is wrong, that you find all the intelligence, all the culture, at the South, and even in the Border States, on its side?” “Ah! there,” replied Kenrick, “there’s the sunken rock on which you and many other young men have made wreck of your very souls. Your æsthetic has superseded your moral natures. To work is in such shocking bad taste, when one can make others work for one!” “Nine tenths of the men at the South of any social position,” said Onslow, “are in favor of secession.” “I know it,” returned Kenrick, “and the sadder for human nature that it should be so! In Missouri, in Kentucky, in Virginia, in Baltimore, all the young men who would be considered fashionable, all who thoughtlessly or heartlessly prize more their social _status_ than they do justice and right, follow the lead of the pro-slavery aristocracy. I know from experience how hard it is to break loose from those social and family ties. But I thank God I’ve succeeded. ’T was like emerging from mephitic vapors into the sweet oxygen of a clear, sun-bright atmosphere, that hour I resolved to take my lot with freedom and the right against slavery and the wrong!”