Anti-Abolitionists in Lowell
Document 43

Document 43: Letter to the Editor from “A Planter,” Lowell Patriot, August 28, 1835

This letter, from an unidentified “Planter,” or man who owned a plantation and enslaved people to work it, appeared in the August 28, 1835, edition of the Lowell Patriot. He articulates the racist beliefs of many Southern white people that enslaved Africans should stay in bondage and mischaracterizes the abolitionists’ actions as wanting to destroy the Constitution and take away white people’s rights.

Vocabulary

Jeopardize: to put into risk or harm

... I am deliberately of opinion, that a
greater evil will be the inevitable consequence
of an interference with the question of slavery,
than the existence of slavery. …
They [enslavers] have felt it unsafe to educate the slave, for the reason, that before he [enslaved person] could be prepared by that means for liberty, and the exercise of it, with safety to the lives of the whites, he [an enslaved man] would become aware of his own strength and then must follow scenes too horrible for description. …

They [abolitionists] would violate the constitution of
the Union – they would jeopardize the lives of
a large portion of their fellow citizens …
and dim the glory of a great, and now prosperous country, to give liberty to a class of beings, who probably for centuries would be incapable of the right enjoyment of its blessings, and might never be so happy as at the present moment. ...

Text-Depended Questions

The author says ending slavery would have terrible consequences. What consequences and for whom?

Discussion Questions

Contrast the “Southern planter’s” opinions about enslaved people with those of Whittier in Document 30. How do their perspectives differ? How are they similar?

Print document and transcript

Citation
Letter to the Editor from “A Planter,” Lowell Patriot, August 28, 1835. Pollard Memorial Library, Lowell.

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