ABSTRACT
In 1835 the actress and diarist Frances Kemble, member of the famous British theatrical family, wrote to her friend Mrs George Combe on the evils of slavery, saying that
the demoralisation and degradation which exists wherever they [slaves] exist…extends from the souls of men downward to their intellect, their body, and the very soil they cultivate. The white population of the slave states are, I should think, the most depraved of their species.
