he very circumstance upon which Americans have relied for the
justification of their form of slavery, namely, that it was confined to
one race, and that race widely separated from all other races by
the existence of peculiar characteristics, has been regarded as an
aggravation of their misconduct by all humane and disinterested persons.
The Greek system of slavery, which was based on the idea that Greeks
were noblemen of Heaven's own creating, and that they therefore were
justified in treating all other men as inferiors, and making the same
use of them as they made of horses; the Roman system, which was based on
the will of society, and therefore made no exceptions on the score of
color, but saw in all strangers only creatures of chase; the Mussulman
system, brought out so strongly by the action of the States of Barbary,
and which was colored by the character of the long quarrel between
Mahometans and Christians, and under which Northern Africa was filled
with myriads of slaves from Southern Europe, among whom were men of
the highest intellect,--Cervantes, for example;--all these systems
of servitude, and others that might be adduced, were respectable in
comparison with our system, which proceeded upon the blasphemous
assumption that God had created and set apart one race that should
forever dwell in the house of bondage. If, in some respects, our system
has been more humane than that of other peoples in other times, the fact
is owing to that general improvement which has taken place the earth
over during the present century. The world has gone forward, and even
American slaveholders have been compelled to go with it, whether they
would or not.

It was a distinctive feature of slavery, as here known, that it tended
to debauch the mind of Christendom. So long as all men were liable to be
enslaved, and even Shakspeare and Milton were in some danger of sharing
the fate of Cervantes,--and the Barbary corsairs did actually carry
off men from the British Islands in the times of Milton and
Shakspeare,--there could not fail to grow up a general hostility to
slavery, and the institution was booked for destruction. But when
slavery came to be considered as the appropriate condition of one race,
and the members of that race so highly qualified to engage in the
production of cotton and sugar, tobacco and rice, the danger was, not
only that slavery would once more come into favor, but that the African
slave-trade would be replaced i