y and the
slave trade, pronounced the latter as "_the execrable sum of all
villanies_," and he inveighed against the former as the wickedest
of human practices.

The Continental Congress of 1776 resolved, "that no slaves be
imported into any of the thirteen United Colonies."

There had then been imported by the cruel traffic above 300,000
blacks, bought or stolen from the African shore; and the blacks
then constituted twenty per cent. of the total population, a greater
per centum than at any time since.

During the century previous to 1776, English and colonial slavers
had carried into the West Indies and to English colonies nearly
3,000,000 negroes; and it is estimated that a quarter of a million
more died of cruel treatment on shipboard, and their bodies were
cast into the sea.

The words of the Declaration: "We hold these truths to be self-
evident: That _all men are created equal;_ that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these
are _life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,_" were not accepted
in fact as a charter of freedom for the enslaved African, but it
remained for a Chief-Justice of the United States (Taney) more than
eighty years later (March 5, 1857), in the Dred Scott decision,
that did so much (as we will hereafter show) to disrupt the Union,
to say:

"The language used in the Declaration of Independence shows that
neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor
their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then
acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included
in the general words used."

And the Chief-Justice said further:

"They [the negroes] had for more than a century before been regarded
as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate
with the white race, either in social or political relations; and
so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was
bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be
reduced to slavery for his benefit."

Quoting the Declaration, "_that all men are created equal_," he
continued:

"The general words above quoted would seem to embrace the whole
human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this
day would be so understood. But it is too clear for dispute that
the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and
formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this
Declaration."

Notwi