Page:The negro's origin.djvu/7

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LETTER FROM BISHOP CAMPBELL

Rev. B. T. Tanner.

Dear Sir:—Allow me to say, that although I had not thought of writing an Introduction to your forthcoming Pamphlet, upon the "Negro's Origin," and "Is the Negro Cursed?" yet I had thought of writing an article which you might use with others of the same kind, and thus help forward the circulation of your little work. After seeing your notice in the Christian Recorder, I supposed that you were not waiting for me to accept the invitation you had given me to write the Introduction.

And now you must allow me to decline writing an Introduction. To write a proper Introduction to a work after the middle of the nineteenth century, a man ought to be well posted, not only as to the literary merits of the work itself, but also, as to the strength of the arguments produced against it by opposing theories.

As to the literary ability of your forthcoming Pamphlet, I am posted; but as to the strength of the arguments of many—very many opposing theories, I am not exactly posted. I must have time to compare your notes, with others who oppose, before I would be prepared to render a decision, which I would be willing to have go forth to the world in book form, to pass down to our posterity.

To say that I have read nothing, and thought nothing upon the subject, would be very far from the truth; but

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