Your letter of February 18th was forwarded to me from New York and reached me sometime since while I was traveling on the continent. Will you pardon me for having, while still traveling, postponed for so long a time to reply to it.

I thank you very much for taking the trouble to express to me the good opinion you have been able to form of my book on the Seaboard Slave States.

You encourage me to publish further on the subject. The business which detains me in Europe at present engrosses my whole time. My brother, however, is arranging my notes on Texas & the Mexican frontier and they will be published I hope in October. I may be able to prepare a third volume for publication next spring.

I expect to be laughed at for picking at this vein so long, but there is such a general ignorance of the real condition of the different classes of the South and the sources of trustworthy information are so few that I think I am warranted in giving the fullest details of my personal observations.

I am sorry that I can not agree with you with regard to the character of the Southerners. I have met very few who were open to argument in any direction by which any measure looking to the gradual extinction of Slavery would be demanded. Until some new economical element acting on the case arises, I am utterly hopeless of the South’s moving for its own relief, in any other direction than emigration or importation. I have no doubt there are broad schemes for both these purposes, which only wait the election of M r. Buchanan to be distinctly avowed & vigorously urged by the representative minds of the South.