mong the white
races; for there it has operated invariably to bring certain
emancipation, whenever any nation has reached the proper position in the
scale of progress. The rule is universal; history presents no exception.
But it has been supposed that slavery of the African to the white man is
not subject to this great historical law, on account of the difference
of race, whether that difference be fundamental and ineradicable, or
whether it be only the consequence of material conditions operating
through successive centuries. Neither reason nor experience, however,
can be invoked to sustain this supposed exception to the general law.
Except in Spanish America, African slavery has disappeared from the
dependencies of European powers; and even there, every one knows, the
conditions of slavery are far more favorable to emancipation than in
the United States. Yet here, a majority of the original thirteen
colonies have wholly discarded slavery, and given themselves up to the
dominion of free white men; while others among those known as border
States, notwithstanding their apparent immobility, have long been
unconsciously preparing to follow in the same path of safety. Even
without the rebellion, it is demonstrable, we believe, that the border
States could not long have resisted the necessity for gradual, but
complete emancipation. The civil war makes it more speedy, not more
certain.

In order to establish the principle that slavery, in any part of the
United States, is destined to be an exception to that general law which
decrees universal emancipation as a certain result, it would be
necessary to show the negro to be incapable of improvement; for if he be
destined to progressive existence at all, it follows that, sooner or
later, he will reach a condition in which he no longer can or ought to
be held in subjection or subordination of any kind; and this, too,
without the supposition of any moral change or improvement on the part
of the slave owner. Indeed, the most usual and plausible, if not also
the most truly substantial of all excuses or justifications for
enslaving the African, in any form, has, from the beginning, been
predicated on the fact that his subordination to the superior
intelligence of the white man is calculated to improve him physically,
morally, and intellectually. The capacity of improvement thus admitted,
the logical result must be eventual liberation. This result is bound up
in the very nature of thi