ly to their being
superiors and inferiors, and that this will be, as it is now where love
and kindness reign, the source of the greatest happiness to all
concerned.

This being so, none of us will venture to say that no one of the
existing races of men will, to the end of time, be of such gentle,
dependent natures as to find their highest happiness and welfare in
being, generally, in the capacity of servants. Some of all races, we do
not object, may be servants to the end of time. No one will say to his
Maker that it will be unjust for Him to put a whole race of men forever
in that serving condition, making them, according to their capacity,
most happy in being so. For "Who hath been His counsellor?" That the
Africans are under a cloud of God's mysterious providence, no one
denies. I will not dictate to my Maker when He shall remove that cloud,
while I still endeavor to mitigate the effects of it upon my
fellow-creatures, the blacks. I do not know that he may not perpetuate,
to the end of time, a relationship of dependency to other races in this
African race. I know nothing about it. But I always feel impelled to say
these things, when I hear good men confidently predicting that ownership
in man will soon and forever come to an end. I reply, It may be in the
highest measure necessary to the happiness of the human family, at its
best estate, that one race, or that races, should be in the relation of
inferiors, finding their very best advantage in the relative place which
a sovereign God has assigned them in the scale of intelligence, by
holding that relation to the end of time. Of course it would cease to be
a curse; it would become one of those subordinate parts in the great
orchestral music of life which subdue and soften it for the highest
effect. If any one gets angry at such an idea, I leave him to his
folly; for he is angry without a cause at me, who have, in this idea,
expressed no wish that it may be true; and he is angry that his Maker
should do a thing which contradicts his pet notions about "freedom." But
the singular fact of slavery in this land, continued and defended under
all political changes, and now having the prospect of being more firmly
established than ever by means of our great national commotion on this
subject, is enough to make a serious mind reflect whether it be wholly
the work of Satan, or whether the providence of God be not concerned in
this great and difficult problem.

It is certainly r