I am much gratified by the kindness of your note: your article in the Atlantic had already attracted my attention and greatly interested me from the fact, partly, that a few days before receiving it I had, in a paper sent to Washington, stated my conviction and argued that the Cotton Monopoly was a source of poverty to the South. I intend going to Washington this week for the purpose of looking up the latest statistics, of which you speak so disrespectfully, bearing on the subject, at the Census Office; intending to argue that point somewhat carefully in a new edition of my book, which is to be published in London. So far as my knowledge goes, your information is trustworthy and I think your deductions are logical. The article is calculated to do much good. If a [331] few hundred thousand could be distributed now in a pamphlet form in the Slave States, it would be invaluable. It is one of their curses that this can not be.

Those now in power ought to be chiefly directed by the purpose to so arrange matters that when we are again beaten by the cotton power, we shall have advantages for checking, resisting and again overcoming it such as we have not had hitherto. I wish for this purpose we could appropriate some of the Confederates’ Constitution, and as a measure of directly contrary tendency I greatly regret the Morrill Tariff.

I feel less confidence than you do that the Cotton Monopoly is to be broken in our time by the competition of India, Africa or Central America (of which last I have most hope) but it [is] quite sure to be more seriously threatened than it has been hitherto, and the planters will realize this—the planters, merchants & money-lenders, and the politicians too—just about the time probably that their present feverish ardor to fortify slavery will have burned out. Then there will be a time, when, if we could be well organized and prepared for it, we might hope to penetrate the South and to sow the seeds of future thought, if not to at once establish a permanent conservative party there.

I was tempted to ask you, on reading your letter, after your article, ought we not to have some sort of preparatory organization for the purpose of collecting and digesting information, finding suitable agencies and agents and otherwise arranging to stimulate, aid and cooperate with an organized rebellion against the Cotton King, within the South itself? I could do but little, but I can see that if twenty men, each having no better means of obtaining information and distributing it than I have, could work systematically together for such a purpose, in two or three years a great deal could be accomplished.

I am much obliged to you for your invitation and shall be glad to avail myself of it whenever I visit Boston. If you should come to New York, I trust that you will give me the pleasure of seeing you on the park, where I live.