Every Englishman probably looks forward to the accomplishment of
abolition of slavery at some future day.
I feel as sure of it as I
do of the final judgment. When or how it shall come, I will not
attempt to foretell. The mode which seems to promise the surest
success and the least present or future inconvenience, would be an
edict enfranchising all female children born after a certain date,
and all their children. Under such an arrangement the negro
population would probably die out slowly - very slowly. What might
then be the fate of the cotton fields of the Gulf States, who shall
dare to say? It may be that coolies from India and from China will
then have taken the place of the negro there, as they probably will
have done also in Guiana and the West Indies.
CHAPTER IV.
WASHINGTON TO ST. LOUIS.
Though I had felt Washington to be disagreeable as a city, yet I was
almost sorry to leave it when the day of my departure came. I had
allowed myself a month for my sojourn in the capital, and I had
stayed a mouth to the day. Then came the trouble of packing up, the
necessity of calling on a long list of acquaintances one after
another, the feeling that, bad as Washington might be, I might be
going to places that were worse, a conviction that I should get
beyond the reach of my letters, and a sort of affection which I had
acquired for my rooms.
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