d sent its dark death-roots into the fibre and
organism of the political, judicial, social, and religious life of the
people. It was crystallized now into a domestic institution. It
existed in contemplation of legislative enactment, and had high
judicial recognition through the solemn forms of law. The Church had
proclaimed it a "sacred institution," and the clergy had covered it
with the sanction of their ecclesiastical office. There it stood, an
organized system,--the dark problem of the uncertain future: more
terrible to the colonists in its awful, spectral silence during the
years of the Revolution than the victorious guns of the French and
Continental armies, which startled the English lion from his hurtful
hold at the throat of white men's liberties--black men had no country,
no liberty--in this new world in the West. But, like the dead body of
the Roman murderer's victim, slavery was a curse that pursued the
colonists evermore.

FOOTNOTES:

[119] News comes to us from Egypt that Arabi Pacha's best artillerists
are Negro soldiers.

[120] R. Beverley's History of Virginia, pp. 35, 36.

[121] See Campbell, p. 144; Burk, vol. i. p. 326.

[122] Smith, vol. ii pp. 38, 39.

[123] Smith's History of Virginia, vol. ii. p. 39.

[124] Virginia Company of London, p. 117, _sq._

[125] Campbell, p. 144.

[126] Burk, vol. I. p. 319.

[127] Neill, p. 120.

[128] Smith, vol. II. p. 37.

[129] There were two vessels, The Treasurer and the Dutch man-of-war;
but the latter, no doubt, put the first slaves ashore.

[130] Campbell, p. 144.

[131] Burk, Appendix, p. 316, Declaration of Virginia Company, 7th
May, 1623.

[132] See Burk, vol. i. p. 326.

[133] Stith, Book III. pp. 153, 154.

[134] Beverley, 235, _sq._

[135] Campbell, 147.

[136] Beverley, p. 248.

[137] Court and Times of James First, ii. p. 108; also, Neill p. 121.

[138] Bancroft, vol. i. p. 468.

[139] Neill, p. 121.

[140] Hist. Tracts, vol. ii. Tract viii.

[141] Beverley, p. 236.

[142] Campbell, p. 145.

[143] Hening, vol. i. p. 146; also p. 552.

[144] Hening, vol. i. p 226.

[145] Bancroft, vol. i. p. 178.

[146] Hening, vol. i. p. 540.

[147] Ibid., vol. ii. p. 84.

[148] Hening, vol. i. p. 396.

[149] Burk, vol. ii. Appendix, p. xxiii.

[150] Beverley, p. 235.

[151] Hening, vol. ii. p. 170; see, also, vol. iii. p. 140.

[152] Beverley, p. 195.

[153] Hening, vol. i. p. 396.

[154] Ibid., vol. ii. p. 283.