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Harte, Bret, 1836-1902

"Condensed Novels"

I was seized and overpowered. My pen falters as I
reach the climax. English readers will not give credit to this
sickening story,--the civilized world will avert its head,--but I,
Mary McGillup, was publicly SPANKED!

* NOTE, BY G. A. S.--In the Southwest, any stone larger than a pea
is termed "a rock."

CHAPTER III.

But the chaotic vortex of civil war approached, and fell
destruction, often procrastinated, brooded in storm.* As the
English people may like to know what was really the origin of the
rebellion, I have no hesitation in giving them the true and only
cause. Slavery had nothing to do with it, although the violation
of the Declaration of Independence, in the disregard by the North
of the Fugitive Slave Law,** might have provoked a less fiery
people than the Southrons. At the inception of the struggle a
large amount of Southern indebtedness was held by the people of the
North. To force payment from the generous but insolvent debtor--to
obtain liquidation from the Southern planter--was really the
soulless and mercenary object of the craven Northerners. Let the
common people of England look to this. Let the improvident
literary hack; the starved impecunious Grub Street debtor; the
newspaper frequenter of sponging-houses, remember this in their
criticisms of the vile and slavish Yankee.


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