a free State looks upon slavery as
unnatural and horrible, and in violation of every law of justice or
humanity! And it is not uncommon to hear bigots of this character, in
their churches at the North, imploring the Divine wrath to shower down
the consuming fires of heaven on that great Sodom and Gomorrah of the
New World, all that section of country south of Mason and Dixon's line,
where this unjust practice prevails.

When an unprejudiced and candid mind examines into the past condition of
our race, and learns the fact which history develops, as the inquirer
will, that a majority of mankind were _slaves_, he will be driven to the
melancholy reflection, that the world, when first peopled by God
himself, was not a world of freemen, but of _slaves_!

Slavery was really established and sanctioned by Divine authority among
even God's chosen people, the favored children of Israel. Abraham, the
founder of this interesting nation, and the chosen servant of the Most
High, was the owner of more slaves than any cotton-planter in South
Carolina or Mississippi. That magnificent shrine, the gorgeous temple of
Solomon, commenced and completed under the pious promptings of religion
and ancient Free-Masonry, was reared alone by the hands of slaves!
Egypt's venerable and enduring pyramids were reared by the hands of
slaves! Involuntary servitude, reduced to a science, existed in ancient
Assyria and Babylon. The ten tribes of Israel were carried off to
Assyria by Shalmanezer, and the two strong tribes of Judah were
subsequently carried in triumph by Nebuchadnezzar to end their days in
Babylon as slaves, and to labor to adorn the city. Ancient Phoenicia
and Carthage were literally overrun with slavery, because the slave
population outnumbered the free and the owners of slaves! The Greeks and
Trojans, at the siege of Troy, were attended with large numbers of their
slaves. Athens, and Sparta, and Thebes--indeed, the whole Grecian and
Roman worlds--had more slaves than freemen. And in those ages which
succeeded the extinction of the Roman empire in the West, slaves were
the most numerous class. Even in the days of civilization and Christian
light which revolutionized governments, laboring serfs and abject slaves
were distributed throughout Eastern Europe, and a portion of Western
Asia--conclusively showing that slavery existed over these boundless
regions. In China, the worst forms of slavery have existed since its
earliest history. And w