n like manner, to condemn Dr. Channing out of his own
mouth. He has repeatedly asserted that slavery among us degrades its
subjects into brutes. Now hear him on the other side of this question.

"The European race," says he, "have manifested more courage, enterprise,
invention; but in the dispositions which Christianity particularly
honors, how inferior are they to the African? When I cast my eyes over
our Southern region,--the land of bowie-knives, lynch-law, and duels, of
'chivalry,' 'honor,' and revenge; and when I consider that Christianity
is declared to be a spirit of charity, 'which seeketh not its own, is
not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and endureth all things,' and is
also declared to be 'the wisdom from above,' which is 'first pure, then
peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good
fruits;' can I hesitate in deciding to which of the races in that land
Christianity is most adapted, and in which its noblest disciples are
most likely to be reared?"[208]

It was by casting his eyes over "our Southern region" that Dr. Channing
concluded "that we are holding in bondage one of the best races of the
human family." If he had cast them over the appallingly dark region of
Africa, he would have been compelled, in spite of the wonder-working
power of his imagination, to pronounce it one of the very worst and most
degraded races upon earth. If, as he imagines, this race among us is now
nearer to the kingdom of heaven than we ourselves are, how dare he
assert--as he so often has done--that our slavery has "degraded them
into brutes?" If, indeed, they had not been elevated--both physically
and morally--by their servitude in America, it would have been beyond
the power of even Dr. Channing to pronounce such a eulogy upon them. We
say, then, that he knew better when he asserted that we have degraded
them into brutes. He spoke, not from his better knowledge and his
conscience, but from blind, unreflecting passion. For he knew--if he
knew any thing--that the blacks have been elevated and improved by their
contact with the whites of this enlightened portion of the globe.

The truth is, the abolitionist can make the slave a brute or a saint,
just as it may happen to suit the exigency of his argument. If slavery
degrades its subjects into brutes, then one would suppose that slaves
are brutes. But the moment you speak of selling a slave, he is no longer
a brute,--he is a civilized man, with all the most ten