her slaves before tradition blended into history, though,
four centuries before Christ, Alcidamas proclaimed: "_God has sent
forth all men free: Nature has made no man slave_."

Alexander, the mighty Macedonian (fourth century B.C.), sold captives
taken at Tyre and Gaza, the most accomplished people of that time,
into slavery.( 3)

Rome had her slaves; and her slave-marts were open at her principal
ports for traffic in men and women of all nationalities, especially
Christians and captives taken in war.

The German nations of the shores of the Baltic carried on the
desolating traffic. Russia recognized slavery and carried on a
slave trade through her merchantmen.

The Turks forbade the enslaving of Mussulmans, but sold Christian
and other captives into slavery. Christian and Moor, for seven
hundred years in the doubtful struggle in Western Europe, respectively,
doomed their captives to slavery.

Contemporary with the discovery of America, the Moors were driven
from Granada, their last stronghold in Spain, to the north of
Africa; there they became corsairs, privateers, and holders of
Christian slaves. Their freebooter life and cruelty furnished the
pretext, not only to enslave the people of the Moorish dominion,
but of all Africa. The oldest accounts of Africa bear testimony
to the existence of domestic slavery--of negro enslaving negro,
and of caravans of dealers in negro slaves.

Columbus, whose glory as the discoverer of this continent we
proclaim, on a return voyage (1494) carried five hundred native
Americans to Spain, a present to Queen Isabella, and American
Indians were sold into foreign bondage, as "spoils of war," for
two centuries.

The Saxon carried slavery in its most odious form into England,
where, at one time, not half the inhabitants were absolutely free,
and where the price of a man was but four times the price of an ox.

He sold his own kindred into slavery. English slaves were held in
Ireland till the reign of Henry II.

In time, however, the spirit of Christianity, pleading the cause
of humanity, stayed slavery's progress, and checked the slave
traffic by appeals to conscience.

Alexander III, Pope of Rome in the twelfth century, proclaimed
against it, by writing: "_Nature having made no slaves, all men
have an equal right to liberty_."

Efficacious as the Christian religion has been to destroy or mitigate
evil, it has failed to render the so-called Christian slaveholder
better