petuating a system which enables him to buy men and women as chattels,
and to obtain command of human bodies and minds at the prices current of
the market. Then, the Southern clergy think it a cause for gratitude to
God on behalf of the negroes "that He has brought them where missionaries
of the Cross might freely proclaim to them the word of salvation." Will it
not, therefore, be the duty of the Southern clergy to extend those
blessings to new millions of Africans, and thus carry out the "plans of
Divine Providence?" Is the whole tendency of this argument not to elevate
the horrible trade of the slave-catcher to the same high level with the
noble office of the missionary? Proclaiming as they do that the capture of
Africans and their removal into slavery in the Southern States is God's
own missionary plan, the Confederate clergy and people will consider it as
much their duty to equip slave-ships with cargoes of manacles and send
them forth accompanied by the prayers of the churches, as it is now our
duty to send forth missionary-ships laden with Bibles and preachers of the
gospel. Then the heathen world will know what missionary Christianity
really is. Thousand of Africans, caught on the west coast, will be torn
from their families and taken chained on board ship; should they survive
the horrors of the passage, they will be set to hard work under laws which
permit of almost any degree of corporeal punishment and which deprive them
of all the rights of men; and they will be told to thank GOD who has
brought them into the blessed light of the Gospel! Let not the man who
cannot reconcile his sympathies in the American struggle with his
convictions on the question of slavery pooh-pooh this as an extravagant
fancy picture of something that never can occur. It is exactly the
missionary scheme which the Confederate clergy call "the plan of Divine
Providence;" and supposing a powerful Southern Confederacy to be
established, what is to prevent its being accomplished? Not the religious
and philanthropic feelings of the Confederates; for the religious and
philanthropic feelings of the confederates are all for a revival of the
slave trade. Not treaties concluded with foreign nations; for a people
holding such sentiments could never make a treaty shutting themselves out
from the most promising field of missionary labour; or if forced by
circumstances to conclude it, their religious convictions would urge them
to break it at any moment.