all the distinctions which GOD himself has made, they arraign the
wisdom and goodness of Providence itself? It has been His divine
pleasure, to make the black man black, and the white man white, and
to distinguish them by other _repulsive_ constitutional
differences."--Speech in Senate of the United States, February 7,
1839, by HENRY CLAY, PRESIDENT OF THE AM. COL. SOC.]

In vain do we seek in nature, for the origin of this prejudice. Young
children never betray it, and on the continent of Europe it is
unknown. We are not speaking of matters of taste, or of opinions of
personal beauty, but of a prejudice against complexion, leading to
insult, degradation and oppression. In no country in Europe is any
man excluded from refined society, or deprived of literary, religious,
or political privileges on account of the tincture of his skin. If
this prejudice is the fiat of the Almighty, most wonderful is it,
that of all the kindreds of the earth, none have been found
submissive to the heavenly impulse, excepting the white inhabitants
of North America; and of these, it is no less strange than true,
that this divine principle of repulsion is most energetic in such
persons as, in other respects, are the least observant of their
Maker's will. This prejudice is sometimes erroneously regarded as
the _cause_ of slavery; and some zealous advocates of emancipation
have flattered themselves that, could the prejudice be destroyed,
negro slavery would fall with it. Such persons have very inadequate
ideas of the malignity of slavery. They forget that the slaves in
Greece and Rome were of the same hue as their masters; and that at
the South, the value of a slave, especially of a female, rises, as
the complexion recedes from the African standard.

Were we to inquire into the geography of this prejudice, we should
find that the localities in which it attains its rankest luxuriance,
are not the rice swamps of Georgia, nor the sugar fields of Louisiana,
but the hills and valleys of New England, and the prairies of Ohio!
It is a fact of acknowledged notoriety, that however severe may be
the laws against colored people at the South, the prejudice against
their _persons_ is far weaker than among ourselves.

It is not necessary for our present purpose, to enter into a
particular investigation of the condition of the free negroes in the
slave States. We all know that they suffer every form of oppression
which the laws can inflict upon perso