A fatal stain of slavery

[This is Part 1 of my letter to my granddaughter Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge, August 27, 1825, stating how much I missed her, and agreeing with her that Massachusetts with its “prosperity and improvement” was more congenial with her mind, e.g., Massachusetts had outlawed “the canker” of slavery in 1783, a blotch — nay, a stain — against Virginia.]

Your affectionate letter, my dear Ellen, of the 1st inst. came to hand in due time. The assurances of your love, so feelingly expressed, were truly soothing to my soul, and none were ever met with warmer sympathies. We did not know, until you left us, what a void it would make in our family. Imagination had illy sketched it’s full measure to us: and, at this moment, every thing around serves but to remind us of our past happiness, only consoled by the addition it has made to yours.

Of this we are abundantly assured by the most excellent and amiable character to which we have committed your future well-being, and by the kindness with which you have been received by the worthy family into which you are now engrafted. We have no fear but that their affections will grow with their growing knowledge of you, and the assiduous cultivation of these becomes the first object in importance to you. I have no doubt you will find also the state of society there more congenial with your mind, than the rustic scenes you have left: altho these do not want their points of endearment. Nay, one single circumstance changed [slavery in Massachusetts outlawed in 1783], and their scale would hardly be the lightest. One fatal stain [slavery] deforms what nature had bestowed on us of her fairest gifts.