ADVERTISEMENT. In the year 1853, the author of this work made a journey through the Seaboard Slave States, and gave an account of his observations in the New York Daily Times, under the signature of "Yeoman." Those letters excited some attention, and their publication in a book was announced; but before preparing them for the press, the author had occasion to make a second and longer visit to the South. In the light of the experience then gathered, the letters have been revised, and, with much additional matter, are now presented to the public. PREFACE THE chief design of the author in writing this book has been, to describe what was most interesting, amusing, and instructive to himself, during the first three of fourteen months' travelling in our Slave States; using the later experience to correct the erroneous impressions of the earlier. He is aware that it has one fault-it is too fault-finding. He is sorry for it, but it cannot now be helped; so at the outset, let the reader understand that he is invited to travel in company with an honest growler. But growling is sometimes a duty; and the traveller might well be suspected of being a "dead head," or a sneak, who did not find frequent occasion for its performance, among the notoriously careless, makeshift, impersistent people of the South. For the rest, the author had, at the outset, of his journey, a determination to see things for himself, as far as possible, and to see them carefully and fairly, but cheerfully and kindly. It was his disposition, also, to search for the causes and extenuating circumstances, past and present, of those phenomena which are commonly reported to the prejudice of the slaveholding community; and especially of those features which are V |