Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/16

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS of America, nor did our merchants reap the profits of that ''accursed traffic." But, sir, we will pass over all this. If sla- very, as it now exists in this country, be an evil, "we of the present day found it ready made to our hands. Finding our lot cast among a peo- ple whom God had manifestly committed to our care, we did not sit down to speculate on ab- stract questions of theoretical liberty. We met it as a practical question of obligation and duty. We resolved to make the best of the situ- ation in which providence had placed us, and to fulfil the high trusts which had devolved upon us as the owners of slaves, in the only way in which such a trust could be fulfilled without spreading misery and ruin throughout the land. We found that we had to deal with a people whose physical, moral and intellectual habits and character totally disqualified them from the enjoyment of the blessings of freedom. We could not send them back to the shores from whence their fathers had been taken ; their num- bers forbade the thought, even if we did not know that their condition here is ftifinitely pref- erable to what it possibly could be among the barren sands and savage tribes of Africa; and it was wholly irreconcilable with all our no- tions of humanity to tear assunder the tender ties which they had formed among us, to grati- fy the feelings of a false philanthropy. What a commentary on the wisdom, justice, and humanity of the Southern slave-owner is pre- '6