ARISPE, BUREAU CO., ILLINOIS, December 29, 1851

To the Editor of the National Era:

  Anti-Slavery sentiments are gaining ground rapidly among all classes in this vicinity; and your paper is also growing into favor among intelligent persons who are as yet not political Abolitionists.

  The story of Mrs. Stowe, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," is read with interest by persons heretofore violently opposed to everything of an Anti-Slavery nature, and is more or less enlisting their sympathies and removing their prejudices, more especially among the young. I hope your paper will continue its glorious onward course, and firmly and fearlessly advocate the cause of truth and the oppressed; and I hope the faithful few in Congress who dare to stand by the right will not give over their efforts, but nobly sustain to the extent of their ability the cause that their conscience and their God approves. Their acts do not pass unnoticed. I am a laborer, cultivating my own farm; thousands, like myself, are looking from our humble sphere with scorn upon the impudent assumption of the cotton interest, and despise their fulsome flattery and shallow intrigues to captivate "the masses," or frighten them into subjection. I know that there are thousands who would die by inches, who would give their lives rather than their support to the infamous law for the recapture of fugitive slaves. They never yet have spoken; their will is not yet regarded or known; but they will have a will, and a resolution to back it, only wanting an emergency to make itself known and felt. God grant that that emergency may never come, so that we may be left in our obscurity, with a consciousness that no duty impels us to emerge from it. S.E.M.