OUR FATHERS ON THE RIGHT OF SLAVERY.
It is not to be concealed, however, that some of the sages who framed this Republic, in their zeal for freedom, overlooked the fact of African barbarism, or failed to be explicit in their unpremeditated enunciations of human freedom. Perhaps, however, they had more astuteness than has been supposed by some. Perchance they considered barbarity not humanity, but its opposite, and would have deemed it a work of supererogation to explain that which natural history, the history of the African ram for four thousand years, and common sense, and common observation, had established as a self-evident proposition; to wit, that equality was a political, and not a social, nor moral, nor even physical condition; and that, especially, neither equality nor freedom were to be construed to be the prerogatives nor the right of barbarism. And the Constitution of the United States, the work of their own hands, sanctions this supposition, by recognizing the existence, and providing for the right of Negro slavery, and rescues the Fathers of the Republic from the absurd and opprobrious imputation of advocating Negro equality. Whatever opinions they may have expressed under the varying aspects of our Revolutionary epoch, the Constitution of these United States was the finality of their arduous toils, heroic achievements, and sublime wisdom; and that Constitution, the very sublimation and quintessence of a hundred civilizations, exhibiting the onward progress of the human race, recognizes the Right of Slavery, founded upon the immutable principles of justice.