I trust that my friends and fellow-citizens of the South will read this book--nay, proud as any Southerner though I am, I entreat, I beg of them to do so. And as the work, considered with reference to its author's nativity, is a novelty--the South being my birth-place and my home, and my ancestry having resided there for more than a century--so I indulge the hope that its reception by my fellow-Southrons will also be novel; that is to say, that they will receive it, as it is offered, in a reasonable and friendly spirit, and that they will read it and reflect upon it as an honest and faithful endeavor to treat a subject of enormous import, without rancor or prejudice, by one who naturally comes within the pale of their own sympathies. An irrepressibly active desire to do something to elevate the South to an honorable and powerful position among the enlightened quarters of the globe, has been the great leading principle that has actuated me in the preparation of the present volume; and so well convinced am I that the plan which I have proposed is the only really practical one for achieving the desired end, that I earnestly hope to see it prosecuted with energy and zeal, until the Flag of Freedom shall wave triumphantly alike over the valleys of Virginia and the mounds of Mississippi. H. R. H. JUNE, 1857. CONTENTS. PAGE. CHAPTER I. COMPARISON BETWEEN THE FREE AND THE SLAVE STATES 11 Progress and Prosperity of the North--Inertness and Imbecility of the South--The True Cause and the Remedy--Quantity and Value of the Agricultural Products of the two Sections-- Important Statistics--Wealth, Revenue, and Expenditure of the several States--Sterling Extracts and General Remarks on Free and Slave Labor--The Immediate Abolition of Slavery the True Policy of the South. CHAPTER II. HOW SLAVERY CAN BE ABOLISHED 123 Value of Lands in the Free and in the Slave States--A few Plain Words addressed to Slaveholders--The Old Homestead--Area and Population of the several States, of the Territories, and of the District of Columbia--Number of Slaveholders in the United States--Abstract of the Author's Plan for the Abolition of Slavery--Official Power and Despotism of the Oligarchy-- Mal-treatment of the Non-slaveholding Whites--Liberal Slaveholders, and what may be expected of them--Slave-driving Democrats--Classification of Votes Polled at the Five Points Precinct in 1856--Parts played by the Republicans, Whigs, Democrats, and Know-Nothings during the last Presidential Campaign--How and why Slavery should be Abolished without direct Compensation to the Masters--The American Colonization Society--Emigration to Liberia--Ultimatum of the Non-slaveholding Whites. CHAPTER III. SOUTHERN TESTIMONY AGAINST SLAVERY 188