[Footnote: _3 Do_.,
March 7, 1786.] There was already a strong feeling in the western
settlements against negro slavery, [Footnote: See Journals of Rev. James
Smith.] because of its moral evil, and of its inconsistency with all
true standards of humanity and Christianity, a feeling which continued
to exist and which later led to resolute efforts to forbid or abolish
slave-holding. But the consciences of the majority were too dull, and,
from the standpoint of the white race, they were too shortsighted to
take action in the right direction. The selfishness and mental obliquity
which imperil the future of a race for the sake of the lazy pleasure of
two or three generations prevailed; and in consequence the white people
of the middle west, and therefore eventually of the southwest, clutched
the one burden under which they ever staggered, the one evil which has
ever warped their development, the one danger which has ever seriously
threatened their very existence. Slavery must of necessity exercise the
most baleful influence upon any slave-holding people, and especially
upon those members of the dominant caste who do not themselves own
slaves. Moreover, the negro, unlike so many of the inferior races, does
not dwindle away in the presence of the white man. He holds his own;
indeed, under the conditions of American slavery he increased faster
than the white, threatening to supplant him. He actually has supplanted
him in certain of the West Indian islands, where the sin of the white in
enslaving the black has been visited upon the head of the wrongdoer by
his victim with a dramatically terrible completeness of revenge. What
has occurred in Hayti is what would eventually have occurred in our own
semi-tropical States if the slave-trade and slavery had continued to
flourish as their shortsighted advocates wished. Slavery is ethically
abhorrent to all right-minded men; and it is to be condemned without
stint on this ground alone. From the standpoint of the master caste it
is to condemned even more strongly because it invariably in the end
threatens the very existence of that master caste. From this point of
view the presence of the negro is the real problem; slavery is merely
the worst possible method of solving the problem. In their earlier
stages the problem and its solution, in America, were one. There may be
differences of opinion as to how to solve the problem; but there can be
none whatever as to the evil wrought by those who b