ootnote D: Law of La. Martin's Digest, 610.]

[Footnote E: Law of La. Act of July 7, 1806. Martin's Digest, 610-12.]

We now proceed to examine various objections which will doubtless be set
in array against all the foregoing conclusions.

OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.

The advocates of slavery find themselves at their wits end in pressing
the Bible into their service. Every movement shows them hard-pushed.
Their ever-varying shifts, their forced constructions, and blind
guesswork, proclaim both their _cause_ desperate, and themselves. The
Bible defences thrown around slavery by professed ministers of the
Gospel, do so torture common sense, Scripture, and historical facts it
were hard to tell whether absurdity, fatuity, ignorance, or blasphemy,
predominates in the compound; each strives so lustily for the mastery it
may be set down a drawn battle. How often has it been bruited that the
color of the negro is the _Cain-mark_, propagated downward. Cain's
posterity started an opposition to the ark, forsooth, and rode out the
flood with flying streamers! Why should not a miracle be wrought to
point such an argument, and fill out for slaveholders a Divine
title-deed, vindicating the ways of God to man?

OBJECTION 1. "Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto
his brethren." Gen. ix. 25.

This prophecy of Noah is the _vade mecum_ of slaveholders, and they
never venture abroad without it; it is a pocket-piece for sudden
occasion, a keepsake to dote over, a charm to spell-bind opposition, and
a magnet to draw around their standard "whatsoever worketh abomination
or maketh a lie." But "cursed be Canaan" is a poor drug to ease a
throbbing conscience--a mocking lullaby, to unquiet tossings, and vainly
crying "Peace be still," where God wakes war, and breaks his thunders.
Those who justify negro slavery by the curse of Canaan, _assume_ all the
points in debate. (1.) That _slavery_ was prophesied rather than mere
_service_ to others, and _individual_ bondage rather than _national_
subjection and tribute. (2.) That the _prediction_ of crime _justifies_
it; at least absolving those whose crimes fulfill it, if not
transforming the crimes into _virtues_. How piously the Pharoahs might
have quoted the prophecy _"Thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that
is not theirs, and they shall afflict there four hundred years."_ And
then, what _saints_ were those that crucified the Lord of glory! (3.)
That the Africans are des