SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, August 27, 1860.
Dear Sir: Your second note, inclosing the supposed speech of Mr. Dallas to Lord Brougham, is received. I have read the speech quite through, together with the real author’s introductory and closing remarks. I have also looked through the long preface of the book to-day. Both seem to be well written, and contain many things with which I could agree, and some with which I could not. A specimen of the latter is the declaration, in the closing remarks upon the “speech,” that the institution is a “necessity” imposed on us by the negro race. That the going many thousand miles, seizing a set of savages, bringing them here, and making slaves of them is a necessity imposed on us by them involves a species of logic to which my mind will scarcely assent.
(Apparently unfinished.)