It stands in the midst of an unweeded field, whose dilapidated enclosure scarcely protects it from the lowing and hungry kine. This is not a fancy picture. It is a true copy of one of the features which make up the aspect of the State - and of every State where the moral leprosy of slavery covers the people with its noisome scales. A deadening lethargy benumbs the limbs of the body politic. A stupor settles on the arts of life.
Agriculture reluctantly drags the plough and harrow to the field, only when scourged by necessity.
Heaven knows we have no disposition to exaggerate the deleterious influences of slavery. We would rather pause far within the truth, than transgress it ever so little. There are evils which it invariably generates a thousand times more pernicious than those we have faintly touched. There are evils which affect the moral character, and poison the social relations, of those who breathe the atmosphere of slavery, more to be deplored than its paralyzing influence on their physical condition.