It was views like Allen’s, he charged, that lay at the root of the conflict. “You think our system an evil—a sin, and one that, therefore, cannot last,” Hammond wrote. “We think the same precisely of yours, but while we don’t trouble ourselves about yours, you make all sorts of war on us about ours in which we see no evil, no sin, and nothing but good. We think it far better than yours—at least for us—in all respects. “Can you not let us alone?”
A. B. Allen, the former editor and cofounder of the American Agriculturist lived in New York and opposed slavery. James Hammond, former editor of the pro-slavery pro-secession newspaper the Southern Times. Also a planter, slave owner, and SC U.S. Representative.
