Page:The Barbarism of Slavery.djvu/38

 occupy nearly the same extent of longitude; embrace nearly the same number of square miles; enjoy kindred advantages of climate, being equally removed from the cold of the North and the burning heat of the tropics; and also enjoy kindred boundaries of land and water, with kindred advantages of ocean and sea, with this difference, that the boundaries of the two regions are precisely reversed, so that where is land in one case is water in the other, while in both cases there is the same extent of ocean and the same extent of sea. Nor is this all. Algiers, for a long time the most obnoxious place in the Barbary States of Africa, once branded by an indignant chronicler as “the wall of the barbarian world," is situated near the parallel of 86° 80' north latitude, being the line of the Missouri compromise, which once marked the “wall" of Slavery in our country west of the Mississippi, while Morocco, the chief present seat of Slavery in the African Barbary, is on the parallel of Charleston. There are no two spaces on the surface of the globe, equal in extent, (and an examination of the map will verify what I am about to state,) which present so many distinctive features of resemblance; whether we consider the common parallels of latitude on which they lie, the common nature of their boundaries, their common productions, their common climate, or the common Barbarism which sought shelter in both. Ido not stop to inquire why Slavery — banished at last from Europe, banished also from that part of this hemisphere which corresponds in latitude to Europe — should have intrenched itself in both hemispheres between the same parallels of latitude, so that Virginia, Carolina, Mississippi, and Missouri, should be the American complement to Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis. But there is one important point in the parallel which remains to be fulfilled. The barbarous Emperor of Morocco, in the words of a Treaty, has expressed his desire that Slavery might pass from the memory of men, while Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, after cherishing Slavery with a tenacity equaled only by the tenacity of SouthCarolina, have successively renounced it and delivered it over to the indignation of mankind. In following this example the parallel will be complete, and our Barbary will become the complement in Freedom to the African Barbary, as it has already been its complement in Slavery, and is unquestionably its complement in geographical character.