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 69 in itself right, and does not depend on difference of complexion.'''

1

And

a leading writer among Slave-masters, George Fitzhugh, of Virginia, in his Sociology for the South, declares " Slavery,

black or white, is right

weak

in

mind

or

body

Nature has made the And in the same vein, a

and necessary. for slaves."

Democratic paper of South-Carolina has said " Slavery is the natural and normal condition of the laboring man, white or black." These more extravagant pretensions reveal still further the feebleness of the pretension put forth by the Senator while in:



stances,

accumulating constantly,

inating between the two races. us, that "

slaves



"

attest the difficulty of discrim-

Mr. Paxton, of Virginia,

tells

the best blood in Virginia flows in the veins of the

and fugitive slaves have been

latterly advertised as

possessing "a round face," "blue eyes," "flaxen hair," and as " escaping under the pretense of being a white man."

This

is

not the time to enter upon the great question of race,

in the various lights of religion, history,

am

that they

who

understand

it best,

and

science.

Sure I

will be least disposed to

the pretension, which, on the assumed ground of inferiority, would condemn one race to be the property of another. If the

African race be inferior, as is alleged, then is it the unquestionable duty of a Christian Civilization to lift it from its degradation, not by the bludgeon and the chain, not by this barbarous pretension of ownership, but by a generous charity, which shall be measured precisely by the extent of its inferiority.

The second argument put forward for this pretension, and twice repeated by the Senator from Mississippi, is, that the Africans are the posterity of Ham, the son of Noah, through Canaan, who was cursed by Noah, to be the "servant" that is the word employed of his brethren, and that this malediction has fallen upon all his descendants, who are accordingly devoted by God to perpetual bondage, not only in the third and fourth Surely, when generations, but throughout all succeeding time.

—

—

the Senator quoted Scripture to enforce the claim of Slave-masAnd yet it is hard to suppose ters, he did not intend a jest. him in earnest. The Senator is Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, in which he

may, perhaps,

set a

considered very

The Senator

is

doubtless experienced.

little

He

but he has evidently the text of Scripture on which he relies.

squadron in the

assumes, that

it

field,

has fixed the

doom

of the colored