Additional information
by George Fitzhugh (Author)
We dedicate this little work to you, because it is a zealous and honest effort to promote your peculiar interests. Society has been so quiet and contented in the South - it has suffered so little from crime or extreme poverty, that its attention has not been awakened to the revolutionary tumults, uproar, mendicity and crime of free society. Few are aware of the blessings they enjoy, or of the evils from which they are exempt. From some peculiarity of taste, we have for many years been watching closely the perturbed workings of free society. Its crimes, its revolutions, its sufferings and its beggary, have led us to investigate its past history, as well as to speculate on its future destiny. This pamphlet has been hastily written, but is the result of long observation, some research and much reflection. Should it contain suggestions that will enlist abler pens to show that free society is a failure and its philosophy false, our highest ambition will be gratified. Believing our positions on these subjects to be true, we feel sanguine they are destined to final vindication and triumph. We should have written a larger work, had not our inexperience in authorship warned us that we had better await the reception of this. We may again appear in the character of writer before the public; but we shall not intrude, and would prefer that others should finish the work which we have begun. Treating subjects novel and difficult of comprehension, we have designedly indulged in iteration; for we preferred offending the ear and the taste of the readers to confounding or confusing him by insufficient elaboration. In truth, fine finish and rotundity are not easily attained in what is merely argumentative and controversial. On all subjects of social science, Southern men, from their position, possess peculiar advantages when they undertake discussion. History, past and cotemporaneous, informs them of all the phenomena of other forms of society, and they see every day around them the peculiarities and characteristics of slave society, of which little is to be learned from books. The ancients took it for granted that slavery was right, and never attempted to justify it. The moderns assume that it is wrong, and forthwith proceed to denounce it. The South can lose nothing, and may gain, by the discussion. She has, up to this time, been condemned without a hearing.
