Letters of Lydia Maria Child, with a biographical introduction by John G. Whittier and an appendix by Wendell Phillips.

LETTERS. 107
doubt its virtue from the effect on his conduct. But
it is not of this I should speak. When you arrive at
Charlestown, if you go there, it will be for the court
and its officers, the Commonwealth's attorney, sheriff
and jailer, to say whether you may see and wait on
the prisoner. But, whether you are thus permitted
or not (and you will be, if my advice can prevail),
you may rest assured that he will be humanely, lawfully, and mercifully dealt by in prison and on trial.
Respectfully, HFINRY A. WISE.
MRS. CHILD TO GOVERNOR WISE.
In your civil but very diplomatic reply to my letter, you inform me that I have a eonstitutional right
to visit Virginia, for peaceful purposes, in common
with every citizen of the United States. I was perfectly well aware that such was the theory of constitutional obligation in the slave States; but I was
also aware of what you omit to mention, viz.: that
the Constitution has, in reality, been completely and
systematically nullified, whenever it suited the convenience or the policy of the slave power. Your constitutional obligation, for which you profess so much
respect, has never proved any protection to citizens
of the free States who happened to have a black,
brown, or yellow complexion; nor to any white citizen whom you even suspected of entertaining opinions opposite to your own, on a question of vast importance to the temporal welfare and moral example
of our common country. This total disregard of
Xonstitutional obligation has been manifested not
amerely by the lynch law of mobs in the slave
States, but by the deliberate action of magistrates
and legislators. What regard was paid to constitu