the utmost contempt. You will pardon me, sir, for in this plain speaking I put it more mild than the case will warrant. Mr. Hamilton is a man of the world, a slaveholder, and while he regrets the existence of slavery, he says no way has yet been devised by which we can be rid of it, and I doubt not he likes to hear Northern men talk as you do sometimes, for thereby he knows that, politically, the South gets the advantage of the North.
“‘As to the capacity of the negroes, I will relate what I heard Mr. Hamilton say, in conversation with a neighbor on the subject of repealing the laws that prohibit their education. The man pretended to believe as you have said, that they are too ignorant and stupid to learn if they had a chance. My husband said in answer? 4 They are ignorant of course; our laws have made them so, and keep the most of them in that condition; but if they are too stupid to avail themselves of a chance for improvement, what is the use of making laws to prevent them from getting an education? No sir; I tell you they have intellects naturally as bright as the white race. Indeed, the whole mass of slaves in Kentucky, with all their disabilities as to education, the degradation and oppression necessarily attending their condition, are, in point of intellect, ahead of the poor whites that are scattered all over the slave States, a disgrace to our civilization; yet each white man holds a vote of equal power with the proudest aristocrat in the nation. If the slaves were set free, and I wish to God they were, and placed on an equal footing with the class I spoke of, the blacks would start with a bound on the race of improvement, outstripping the poor whites in the race. I will give you a practical illustration:
“‘The State of Kentucky passed a school law and created a fund for this class of white children, but they never availed themselves of it. Not a common school-
