ach other; that the curse of Noah, even if directed
against Ham, and which it is not, that it is _impossible_ that that
curse could, in any way, make him the father or progenitor of the
present negroes--as no curse denounced by God himself, by patriarch or
by prophet, had ever done so before or since, and there is nothing in
the language used by Noah that covers that idea; that, on the contrary,
the _exact word_ used by Noah, had been before used by God and by
patriarchs, without the slightest suspicion being excited that such was
its effect on the person so cursed; that it was not found in Ham's name,
and that the effort to connect the color of the negro with the meaning
of Ham's name in Hebrew, is a mere _fancy_, not of the strength even of
a cobweb. Now, reader, are these things true? Look into your Bible--look
into contemporaneous and concurrent history--look at existing facts
outside of the Bible, and running from the flood down to the present
day, and hear the prophet of God defiantly ask, Can the Ethiopian change
his skin, or the leopard his spots?--both beasts; and when you have so
looked, you will say, _true_, every word, _indubitably_ true! Then,
what? One word more, before we proceed further. The embalming of Ham's
dead and the Jewish genealogical tables _ceased_ at about the same time,
and by God's interposing power. Each were permitted by God to continue
as _national records_--the one to show the genealogy of Jesus of
Nazareth to be the Messiah, the other to show that Ham was _white_, and
_not_ the progenitor of the negro; and each having accomplished the end
designed, God permitted them to cease, and both ceased about the same
time. Is not this embalming, then, in effect, the direct testimony of
God himself, that Ham and his children were of the white race, and that
there is an _importance in being of the white race_, and which we will
see by and by, and beyond any appreciation ever given to it heretofore?
And is it not equally God's testimony, _ipso facto_, that the negro race
have always existed as we have it now, and as have those of the three
brothers equally always existed, and as we have _them_ now?

But, reader, suppose we admit, for the sake of the argument, that Ham
was black, and that he was made so by the curse of his father Noah--we
say, suppose we were to admit this, then what follows? Ham would have
been just _such a negro_ as we now find on earth--admitted; but then he
would have been the _on