27. A Citizen of Massachusetts, Remarks on Dr. Channing’s Slavery (Boston: Russell, Shattuck & Co., 1835). (48 p.)


Critique of a book championing the abolition of slavery. While asserting that slavery is a “dreadful evil,” the author of the pamphlet believes that the consequences of enforcing the abolition of slavery in Southern states (e.g., disunion, strife, and warfare) are worse than the moral consequence inherent to maintaining the institution. “To keep them [slaves] in Slavery is an evil, but not the unmitigated evil which is represented by the overstrained sensibility of enthusiasts. Heaven in its mercy permits such unalloyed evil to exist. The slaves as a class are better fed, better clad, less worked, and have less care and anxiety about their condition, than a great proportion of the hard working day-laborers in freedom. As they are deemed property there is no inducement to treat them inhumanly. If the work they perform is to be performed by anybody, it is not probable that it could be done with less physical suffering than it is by the slaves. Our humanity need not be pained on this account.” (The collection has another copy of this pamphlet in volume 97 [no. 29] and criticism of this pamphlet in this volume [no. 25].)