You will please acknowledge, therefore, my dear madam, that in giving you credit for kind feelings toward a poor slave and its mother, we are disposed to be just; yet I beg of you not to think that I abate one jot or tittle of my belief that, in theory, slavery is "the sum of all villanies," "an enormous wrong," "a stupendous injustice." I have just been reading your letter once more, and the foolish tears pester me so that I can scarce see out of my eyes.

I find, dear madam, that you have known a bitter sorrow which so many parents are carrying with them to the grave.

Your words make me think so of little graves elsewhere, that I forget for the time that you are a slave-holder.

Nor can I hardly believe that your touching words are suggested by the death of a slave's babe, when you speak of "the heavy earth piled on the tender little breast." O my dear lady! has a slave's babe "a tender little breast"?
Then you really think so! And you a slave-holder! "Border Ruffianism," perhaps, has not yet reached your heart; and yet I suppose--forgive me if I do you wrong--that slave-holders' hearts generally need only to be removed to the "borders," to manifest all their native "ruffianism." Can you tell me whether there are any mothers in Missouri (near Kansas) who feel toward their slaves who are mothers, as you do?
There are so many people from the North in Kansas (near Missouri) who have gone thither to prevent you and your brethren and sisters from owning a fellow-creature there, that I trust their influence will in time extend through all Missouri, and that white mothers in that State will everywhere have such humane feelings toward the blacks as we and you possess.
All that I ask of you now, is, that you give Kate her liberty at once.
Oh, do not say, as I fancy you will, There is not a happier being than Kate in all the land of freedom.

"Fiat justitia," dear madam, "ruat coelum." I cannot conceive how being "owned" is anything but a curse.
Really, we forget the miseries of the Five Points, and of the dens in New York, Boston, Buffalo, and other places at the North, the hordes in the city and State institutions in New York Harbor, Deer Island, Boston, and all such things, in our extreme pity for poor slave-mothers, like Kate, whose children, when they get to be about nine or ten years old, are liable to be sold.