very movement shows that they are
hard-pushed. Their odd conceits and ever varying shifts, their forced
constructions, lacking even plausibility, their bold assumptions, and
blind guesswork, not only proclaim their _cause_ desperate, but
themselves. Some of the Bible defences thrown around slavery by
ministers of the Gospel, do so torture common sense, Scripture, and
historical fact, that it were hard to tell whether absurdity, fatuity,
ignorance, or blasphemy, predominates, in compound. Each strives so
lustily for the mastery, it may be set down a drawn battle.

How often has it been set up in type, that the color of the negro is the
_Cain-mark_, propagated downward. Doubtless Cain's posterity started an
opposition to the ark, and rode out the flood with flying streamers! Why
should not a miracle be wrought to point such an argument, and fill out
for slaveholders a Divine title-deed, vindicating the ways of God to
men?

OBJECTION 1. "_Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto
his brethren_." Gen. i. 25.

This prophecy of Noah is the _vade mecum_ of slaveholders, and they
never venture abroad without it. It is a pocket-piece for sudden
occasion--a keepsake to dote over--a charm to spell-bind opposition, and
a magnet to attract "whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie."
But closely as they cling to it, "cursed be Canaan" is a poor drug to
stupify a throbbing conscience--a mocking lullaby, vainly wooing slumber
to unquiet tossings, and crying "Peace, be still," where God wakes war,
and breaks his thunders.

Those who plead the curse on Canaan to justify negro slavery, _assume_
all the points in debate.

1. That the condition prophesied was _slavery_, rather than the mere
_rendering of service_ to others, and that it was the bondage of
_individuals_ rather than the condition of a _nation tributary_ to
another, and in _that_ sense its _servant_.

2. That the _prediction_ of crime _justifies_ it; that it grants
absolution to those whose crimes fulfil it, if it does not transform the
crimes into _virtues_. How piously the Pharaohs might have quoted God's
prophecy to Abraham, "_Thy seed shall be in bondage, and they shall
afflict them for four hundred years_." And then, what _saints_ were
those that crucified the Lord of glory!

3. That the Africans are descended from Canaan. Whereas Africa was
peopled from Egypt and Ethiopia, and Mizraim settled Egypt, and Cush,
Ethiopia. See Gen. x. 15-19,