Page:The Barbarism of Slavery.djvu/24

 were not derived from any of those countries which recognized the Roman law, while this law, even before the discovery of this continent, had lost all living efficacy. It is not derived from the Mohammedan law; for under the mild injunctions of the Koran, a benignant servitude, unlike yours, has prevailed — where the lash is not allowed to lacerate the back of a female; where no knife or branding-iron is employed upon any human being, to mark him as the property of his fellow-man; where the master is expressly enjoined to listen to the desires of his slave for emancipation; and where the blood of the master, mingling with his bond-woman, takes from her the transferable character of a chattel, and confers complete freedom upon their offspring. It is not derived from the Spanish law, for this law contains humane elements unknown to your system, borrowed, perhaps, from the Mohammedan Moors who so long occupied Spain; and besides, our Thirteen Colonies had no umbilical connection with Spain. Nor is it derived from English statutes or American statutes; for we have the positive and repeated averment of the Senator from Virginia, [Mr. Mason,] and also of other Senators, that in not a single State of the Union can any such statutes establishing Slavery be found. From none of these does it come.

No, sir; not from any land of civilization is this Barbarism derived. It comes from Africa, ancient nurse of monsters; from Guinea, Dahomey, and Congo. There is its origin and fountain. This benighted region, we are told by Chief-Justice Marshall in a memorable judgment, (The Antelope, 10 Wheaton R. 66,) still asserts a right, discarded by Christendom, to enslave captives taken in war; and this African Barbarism is the beginning of American Slavery. And the Supreme Court of Georgia, a Slave State, has not shrunk from this conclusion. "Licensed to hold slave property," says the Court, “the Georgia planter held the slave as a chattel; either directly from the slave-trader, or from those who held under him, and he from the slave-captor in Africa. The property of the planter in the slave became, thus, the property of the original captor." (Neal v. Farmer, 9 Georgia Reports, p.555.) It is natural that a right, thus derived in defiance of Christendom, and openly founded on the most vulgar Paganism, should be exercised without any mitigating influence from Christianity; that the master's