E441 Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by LEONARD BACON, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Connecticut. PREFACE. SEVERAL years before the commencement of the Anti-Slavery agitation on this side of the Atlantic, it so happened that I was led to consider, with some care, the condition and prospects of the enslaved class in the United States. From that time to the present, no subject, not immediately connected with my official duties or my professional studies, has occupied so much of my attention. When the British Anti-Slavery Societies began their labors, in 1823, I entered into their views as then exhibited; and I learned much from the reports of those Societies, and from the pamphlets published by Stephens, Clarkson, Wilberforce and others. When the Rev. Joshua Leavitt, now so eminent among American abolitionists, made his first appearance as a writer on slavery, in 1825, I agreed generally with his views, and was instructed by his arguments; for his views, at that time, were substantially the same with those which the British abolitionists were then urging upon Parliament. From him I learned M20320 |