gratification of
his passions, and the indulgence of his indolence. He only feels the
oppression of slavery in being compelled to work, and none of the moral
degradation incident to servility in the higher or superior races. He
is, consequently, more happy, and better contented in this, than in any
other condition of life. His morals, his bodily comforts, and his
status as a man, attain to an elevation in this condition known to his
race in no other.

All the results of his condition react upon the superior race, holding
him in the condition designed for him by his Creator, producing results
to human progress all over the world, known to result in an equal ratio
from no other cause. The institution has passed away, and very soon all
its consequences will cease to be visible in the character of the
Southern people. The plantation will dwindle to the truck-patch, the
planter will sink into the grave, and his offspring will degenerate
into hucksters and petty traders, and become as mean and contemptible
as the Puritan Yankee.

In the two hundred years of African slavery the world's progress was
greater in the arts and sciences, and in all the appliances promotive
of intelligence and human happiness, than in any period of historical
time, of five centuries. Why? Because the labor was performed by the
man formed for labor and incapable of thinking, and releasing the man
formed to think, direct, and invent, from labor, other than labor of
thought. This influence was felt over the civilized world. The
productions of the tropics were demanded by the higher civilization.
Men forgot to clothe themselves in skins when they could do so in
cloth. As commerce extended her flight, bearing these rich creations of
labor, elaborated by intelligence, civilization went with her,
expanding the mind, enlarging the wants, and prompting progress in all
with whom she communicated. Its influence was first felt from the
Antilles, extending to the United States. In proportion to the increase
of these products was the increase of commerce, wealth, intelligence,
and power. Compare the statistics of production by slave-labor with the
increase of commerce, and they go hand in hand. As the slave came down
from the grain-growing region to the cotton and sugar region, the
amount of his labor's product entering into commerce increased
four-fold. The inventions of Whitney and Arkwright cheapened the fabric
of cotton so much as to bring it within the reac