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Vi. My object.
- A Review of the present state of the anti-slavery battle -- some Recommendations, and a closing question,
the reader must have noticed that I took particular pains to ascertain the secret sentiments of the Southern slaves. He must have seen, also, that I never stepped aside to collate or investigate any cases of unusual cruelty, or to portray the neglect of masters in the different States, to provide their bondmen with the comforts of a home or the decencies of life. That I had material enough, my summary will show. I did not go South to collect the materials for a distant war of words against it. Far more earnest was my aim. I saw or believed that one cycle of anti-slavery warfare was about to close — the cycle whose correspondences in history are the eras of John Ball, the herald of the brave Jack Cade; of the Humble Remonstrants who preceded Oliver Cromwell, and the Iconoclastic Puritans; and of the Encyclopaedists of the age of Louis the Sixteenth, whose writings prepared the way for the French Revolution. I believed that the cycle of action was at hand. I considered it, therefore, of importance to know the feelings and aspirations of the slaves. I cared little, comparatively with this object, to ascertain their
