the subject of American
Slavery.

THE NEGRO EVER A SLAVE.

The Negro has been a slave from time immemorial. This is shown from
the earliest Egyptian monuments, paintings, and traditions. Herodotus,
the father of Grecian History, tells us of negro slavery in Ancient
Greece. It existed in Rome also. During the tenth century of the
Christian era, the Moors, from Barbary, established an extensive
traffic in the cities of Nigritia, where they bought large numbers of
slaves; and the merchants of Seville brought slaves from the western
coast of Africa, and established slavery in that city, and in
Andalusia, long before the time of Columbus.[1] It is also a curious
fact in history, that Hanno, the great Carthagenian commander and
discoverer, having explored Africa from the Straits of Gibraltar to
the bounds of Arabia, brought back to Carthage a cargo of
ourang-outangs, which he supposed to be Negro men and women; _showing
more historically his estimate of African character, than his
familiarity with Natural History_. The Negro has ever been a slave;[2]
and it is to be considered whether his quick and sudden transition
from slavery to freedom, by emancipation, is probable or possible, or
is sanctioned by the history of human development and progress.

TWO PHASES OF SLAVERY.

Slavery has two phases; the moral, which involves the RIGHT, and the
prudential, which is the expedient. But strictly, the moral is the
principal and controlling view of the subject, and that which has made
and will continually constitute the criterion of action from which the
expediency is deduced, and the anomaly of slavery in our Republic
understood, the paradox of a slaveholding democracy explained, and the
institution of slavery justified with human equality, by justly
discriminating between barbarism and humanity, civilization and
savagism, justice and injustice, right and wrong.

THE RIGHT OF SLAVERY.

I assert the right and justice of slavery, and found my arguments on
the subject in right alone. If it can be shown to be right, then it is
expedient; if wrong, then it cannot be shown to be expedient, and, if
possible, it ought to be abolished. It is the _idea_ of the _wrong_ of
slavery which has misled, and is continuing to mislead, the American
mind.

By what process of reasoning, then, can slavery be shown to be just? I
answer, because RIGHT holds a just and hereditary control over
_wrong_. I answer, that it is right that barbarism