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that they are going to stay only till after the election. If they return before, they say, they will not get their pay. I saw a company of 6 South Carolina men, with one family, the other day. I had quite a conversation with them. I found out incidentally that four of them had been overseers or slave drivers one a slave trader (a kind of a Haley of a fellow.) In the course of the conversation, one said the slaves never were ill treated. I did not dispute him very strongly as my object was to get information. But it was not two minutes before another one told of giving a refractory slave 400 lashes. "You ought to go to New Orleans," said he, "and see 5 or 6 hold down a great strong nigger while two put it on to him as hard as they could." "They are better off than I," said another. "No care, all they have to do is to work, eat and sleep." "Why don't you black up your face and go offer yourself as a slave?" said I. "You could have no trouble in finding a master." One asked me if black men in N.Y. had an equal right with whites to a trial at law? "Yes." "And they mix all up? too don't they?" "Very rarely indeed, not half so common as at the South, but there of course it is outside of mar- riage." "Yes there is enough of that," said the slave trader "I myself have slept with a hundred of them!" Pah! Such are the men who make a fuss about amalgamation, as if that were the magic word that should forever scare freedom from the Southern Slaves. Well said Senator Wilson to Douglass (I think) "Those make most ado about amalgamation who have the odor of ? strongest about them." One of them said he did come to fight but to work This was the slave trader. Every sentence he spoke nearly, was garnished with an oath. "I did not bring any weapon," said he "except a Bible some one gave me, and I call that a pretty good weapon by G-."

     We are well.  With love to page torn and Jane-kind remembrances to all friends
           John