Original is in the Charles Hodge Papers, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. This electronic text version is from a photocopy in the Centre College Special Collections. Published with permission of the Princeton University Library
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Danville July 6th 1836
Dear Brother,
I received today yours of the 24th. Of course, you would naturally expect me to dissent, in some degree, from your views about the insertion of my remarks but I am not sufficiently self-willed to be vexed at your not pursuing the course which I prefer, nor am I sufficiently confident of the correctness of my opinions to feel certain that you may not be right in your decision. I would be far from wishing you to insert the article, if you deemed its publication inexpedient, from any personal considerations or even from any promise given before you had read it & judged of its tendency. Still I believe that your piece needs some remarks, & I will, at your suggestion, request its publication of the editors of the Observer. I will thank you, therefore, to have them placed in the hands of these editors to whom I will address a note on the subject. I presume from what you say in your letter you will not make any animadversions upon them, though you do not in all respects agree with the sentiments. If you animadverted upon them I would think it nothing more than fair that they should be fully inserted.
You say that it ought to be left to Southern men to discuss the mode &c while you should only urge the general duty of improvement. Well, that was my wish. By inserting my remarks in the Repertory you need not have approved them. It was only giving the most favorable vehicle for conveying to the South the views of a Southerner as to the mode &c. We have no medium of communication with Virginia &c &c but such a work as the Repertory. In all the other Southern States except Kentucky, the discussion is all on one side - I wished to show them, at least a partial view of the other. I fear the Observer will not publish or I would feel perfectly satisfied with it as a
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vehicle. I can have the remarks published in our papers here - but we are a small part of those interested in this matter. I felt sanguine as to your publishing from recollecting that you had inserted Prof. Stuart's pieces on the Agri Ed. Society, though opposed to your own views. And I believe that all sides were pleased that the two views were presented in the same work.
You mention that I had thought, when I wrote my first letter that there was a fallacy, which I could detect & expose - and this had not been done. In one sense this is correct - but in another very important one it is not. There is a great fallacy in the article (that is if my views in the remarks are correct) - a fallacy of omission. You know the legal phrase of "suppressio veri &c." I preferred the form of conciliation to that of controversy, & especially when I was perfectly certain that the fallacy was unintentional. There is also another cause of misconception in your article noticed slightly by me, but if you reflect upon it I think you will deem it important. You prove that a something called by you slaveholding is not necessarily sinful - the mass of mankind mean by slaveholding a different thing. You cannot unfix[sic] common ideas of a term by a definition; and all those who publish your article & exult in its conclusion, talk & feel, & act as if it was this slaveholding you had vindicated. This is a logomachy - but an important one. The way to destroy the practical effect of this (I can scarcely call it) fallacy, is not merely to exhibit it, but to show at some length that what you prove leaves the slaveholding practiced by our people under full condemnation.
I wish you had summed up what you thought the incorrect positions I have laid down. I had strong curiosity to know whether you agree with me as to the holding of men in bondage being as a general rule sinful. I felt afraid you did not, but from several expressions I thought I could deduce that in consistency you ought. There are two things you notice as wrong, on which I have a word to say. I fix compensation at the ordinary
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hire which could be procured for the slave. To this you object the expense of rearing &c. All this has been paid before the slave comes of age. The services of the minors not only compensate for the Masters present outlays, but would compensate for the expenses of a moderate education. As to the support of the slave when old, on my plan the [unclear word] theoretically will have long enough time after emancipation to provide for their own support & even if they are to be kept for life, (which you could not do if they received fair wages for they would buy themselves,) a very small deduction might be made from their wages as a fund just as is done in the British army to support the widows & orphans of soldiers. Again you object to my laying down merely the good of the slave as the object to be looked at. I do so from knowing that the real good of the slave is identical with the good of Society. I am certain this can be clearly shown, if it does not appear, as I think it probably will, at first sight. Sometimes in writing on this subject I say the good of the slave & the community, sometimes merely the good of the slave.
I felt half inclined to laugh & half to be provoked at your telling me of the comfort I had administered to your conscience. I wish I could prepare some plaster to apply to it which would irritate it to the proper degree of sensitiveness on this subject. I believe your article will act as I have sometimes seen a dose of calomel do, where it lies in the system inoperative, until it is followed by some quickening drastic, which will give efficacy to its good qualities & prevent its noxious ones from pervading & poisoning the system. If you had permitted me to administer the salts to our patient, your apprehensions of danger from your dose would have been justly relieved, & you might have felicitated yourself on having been the main instrument of his cure.
I thought of giving you my view of the probable termination of slavery among us - but it would require several sheets to do so. I will therefore refrain. It will not be effected simply by forces of truth & conscience, but still they will probably contribute to it in a very considerable degree. It will not take place, in my opinion, for many a day.
Give my respects to your colleagues, & tell them
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that, though I cannot see that I am wrong, I defer to their decision without murmuring.
Your friend & brother
John C. Young
I will necessarily assign in the N.Y. Observer the fact that my article was intended for the Repertory. Some of the remarks, if I remember, correctly suppose its insertion In the Rep:
P.S. Dr. Miller will tell you how unspeakably far the thorough Southerners are from right feelings, to say nothing of right notions on this subject.