Abolitionist in Asylum; Lehman’s Letters

Gerrett Smith, the abolitionist, is insane. He is confined in the asylum in New York, and in his ravings, frequently speaks of Harper’s Ferry, and imagines himself under arrest. Pity but that all of his comrades in abolitionism would get like himself, and he allowed to go to the edge of some awful precipice. We think the result would be quite satisfactory and just.

ABOLITION CHARITY. — The proverb says that charity begins at home.– Abolitionism reverses it. One of the murderers who met deserved death at Harper’s Ferry was Henry Lehman. On his person was found a letter from his sister, disclosing a state of affairs in his father’s household compared with which the condition of the lowest negro is enviable. She tells him that during the whole winter she has not made, and therefor[t]o has not had, unless it was given, so much as 50 cents. She speaks of a member of the family who has what she calls a “very good place,” in which she earns 75 cents a week. Another letter from his aged and invalid mother tells him that if she had money to buy medicine she could get well, but that she “couldn’t raise a dollar to save her life.“

Having these real troubles, Henry Lehman comes to Virginia to alleviate the imaginary sufferings of a race freer from suffering than any other in the world. And this he would do against their wishes and at the expense of crimes the most horrible, and bloodshed almost endless. If it were possible, the stupidity of such charity exceeds its criminality. —Richmond Whig.