FOOTNOTES:
"Ye Christian Bondous who of feeling boast!"
Unable in the whole range of my vernacular, to find an epithet sufficiently expressive to enunciate the aggravated contempt which all feel for that pseudonymous class of philanthropists, who flauntingly parade a pompous sympathy with popular and distant distresses, but studiously cultivate a coarse ignorance of, and hauteur to, the Greeks, which "are at the door," I have had recource to the Metonymy, Bondou, as rendered mournfully significant through the melancholy fate of the illustrious Houghton.—Vide Report African Discovery Society.
"Contemn a Marius' or a Scylla's ire."
Napoleon in his protest to Lord Bathurst, provoked by the petty tyranny of Sir Hudson Lowe, said of the "Proscriptions," and (by negative inference) in extenuation of them, that they "were made with the blood yet fresh upon the sword." A sentence, which, falling from the lips of one of the most imperturbably cool and calculating of mankind, under circumstances superinducing peculiar reflection on every word uttered, cannot but come with the force of a whole volume of excoriative evidence against the demoralization of war, even upon the most abstracted and elevated natures.—Vide Letters of Montholon and Las Cases.
"Weep o'er an Agis' or Jugurtha's fate."
Agis, King of Lacedemon and colleague of Leonidas, was a youth of singular purity and promise. Aiming to correct the abuses which had crept into the Spartan polity, he introduced regenerative laws. Among others, one for the equalization of property, and as an example of disinterested liberality, shared his estate with the community. Unappreciated by the degenerated Senate however, he was deposed, and, with his whole family, strangled by order of the ingrate State.—Edin. Encyc.
It is said that when Jugurtha was led before the ear of the conquerer, he lost his senses. After the triumph he was thrown into prison, where, whilst they were in haste to strip him, some tore his robes off his back, and others, catching eagerly at his pendants, pulled off the tips of his ears with them. When he was thrust down naked into the dungeon, all wild and confused, he said, with a frantic smile, "Heavens! how cold is this bath of yours!" There struggling for six days with starvation, and to the last hour laboring for the preservation of his life, he came to his end.—Plut. Cai. Mar.
"Breathes the warm odor which the girgir bears,"
The girgir, or the geshe el aube, a species of flowering grass. Piercing, fragrant, and grateful in its odor, it operates not unlike a mild stimulant, when respired for any length of time, and is found chiefly near the borders of small streams and in the vicinage of the Tassada.—Lyn. Gui. and Soud.
"Where browse the fecho and the dun-gazelle."
Among the wild animals are prodigious numbers of the vari-colored species of the gazelle, the bohur sassa, fecho, and madoqua. They are extremely numerous in the provinces depopulated by war and slavery, enjoying the wild oats of the deserted hamlets without fear of molestation from a returning population.—Notes on Central Africa.
"And wiser than Athenas' wisest schools,
Nor led by zealots, nor scholastic rules,
Gazed at the stars which stud yon tender blue,
And hoped and deemed the cheat of death untrue."
Though Socrates and Plato, particularly the former, are generally admitted by writers of authority, among whom, indeed, are Polycarpe, Chrysotom, and Eusebius, to have in a manner suspected rather than believed, the immortality of the soul; yet we have no evidence of their ever having, by the finest process of ratiocination, so thoroughly convinced themselves as to introduce it generally as a tenable thesis on the portico. A beautiful thread of implicit belief and fervent hope, of after life, assimilating to the hunting-ground of our own American Indians, and though sensuous still, a step far in advance of the black void of ancient philosophy, has always run through the higher mythologies of the Negro. So notorious, indeed, was the fact among early Christians, that that ubiquitous riddle, "Prestor John," was, by believers, regarded as having a locale in Central Africa; while Henry of Portugal actually despatched two ambassadors, Corvilla and Payvan, to a rumored Christian court, south of the Sahara.—Edin. Encyc. Early Chris. His. Port.
"Yet supple sophist to a plastic mind,
Sees gods in woods, and spirits in the wind."
The imagination of the African, like his musical genius, which extracts surprising harmony from the rudest of sources, the clapping of hands, the clanking of chains, the resonance of lasso wood, and perforated shells, seems to invest everything with a resident spirit of peculiar power. Accordingly, his mythologies are most numerous and poetical—his entire catalogue of superior gods alone, embracing a more extended length than the Assyro-Babylon Alphabet, with its three hundred letters.
"The vengeful causes and the deed forgot."
All travellers agree in the facile ductility and inertia-like amiability of the native African character.—Brewster on Africa.
"The merry numbers of his crisp-haired crew."
The negro race is, perhaps, the most prolific of all the human species. Their infancy and youth are singularly happy. The parents are passionately fond of their children.—Goldbury's Travels.
"Strike me," said my attendant, "but do not curse my mother." The same sentiment I found universally to prevail.
Some of the first lessons in which the Mandings women instruct their children is the practice of truth. It was the only consolation for a negro mother, whose son had been murdered by the Moors, that "the boy had never told a lie."—Park's Travels.
"With all the father sees each form retire,
A ruthless heathen, but a loving sire."
"Or led the combat, bold without a plan,
An artless savage, but a fearless man."
Campbell.
"Till lured by wealth the hardy Portuguese,
Sought the green waters of his Eastern seas,
And venturous nations more excursive grown,
Pierced his glad coast from radiant zone to zone."
Vasquez de Gama, a Portuguese nobleman, was the first to discover a maritime passage to the Indies; unless, perhaps, we credit the improbable achievement of the Phœnicians, related by Herodotus as occurring, 604 b.c.
De Gama doubled the cape in 1498, explored the eastern shores as far as Melinda, in Zanguebar, and sailing thence arrived at Calcutta in May. This expedition, second to none in its results, save that of Columbus six years before, drew the attention of all Europe. Whole nations became actuated by the same enthusiasm, and private companies of merchants sent out whole fleets on voyages of discovery, scouring the entire coast from Cape Verd to Gaudfui, and discovering the Mascharenhas and most of the islands of the Ethiopean Archipelago.
"Cheats his own nature and now generous grown,
Dispenses realms and empires not his own."
Charles V. granted a patent to one of his Flemish favorites, containing an exclusive right to import four thousand negroes!—Hist. Slavery.
The crime of having first recommended the importation of African slaves into America, is due to the Flemish nobility, who obtained a monopoly of four thousand negroes, which they sold to some Genoese merchants for 25,000 ducats.—Life of Cardinal Ximenes.
They (the Genoese) were the first to bring into a regular form, that commerce for slaves, between Africa and America, which has since grown to such an amazing extent.—Robertson.
"Too warmly generous and dearly true,
The simple black," &c.
It will remain an indelible reproach on the name of Europeans, that for more than three centuries their intercourse with the Africans has only tended to destroy their happiness and debase their character.—Edin. Ency.
"Now laughs the stranger at their anguished throes."
The arts of the slave-merchant have inflamed the hostility of their various tribes, and heightened their ferocity by sedulously increasing their wars.—Ibid.
"By specious creeds and sophists darkly taught."
Hamlet's advice to his offending mother;—
"Assume a virtue, tho' you have it not."
Adding hypocrisy to avowed unworthiness, was the acknowledged injunction of the church, wherever and whenever she participated in secular affairs, with a view of emolument. For a peculiar illustration of this favorite doctrine, see Clement VI.'s edict, when, in virtue of the right arrogated by the holy see to dispose of all countries belonging to the heathen, he erected (1344) the Canaries into a kingdom, and disposed of them to Lewis de la Corda, a prince of Castile.
"Or bolder still on fancy's fiery wing."
That I do not exaggerate the belle lettres and classical accomplishments of at least two of the "chattels" of the "peculiar institution," in the lines following the above, see "Poems written by Rosa and Maria," property of South Carolina, and published in 1834.
"Hear Loxian murmurs in Rhodolphe's caves."
Loxian is a name frequently given to Apollo by Greek writers and is met with, more than once, in the "Chœphoræ of Eschylus."—Campbell.
Euripides mentions it three times, and Sophocles twice, its euphony recommends it more than any other name of the fair-haired god.
"And in the march of nations led the van."
Campbell
Henry Ward Beecher. (Engraved by J. C. Buttre)
Letter
Brooklyn, December 6th, 1853.
Dear Sir,—
Your note of November 29th, requesting a line from me for the Autographs for Freedom, is received.
I wish that I had something that would add to the literary value of your laudable enterprise. In so great a cause as that of human liberty, every great interest in society ought to have a voice and a decisive testimony. Art should be in sympathy with freedom and literature, and all human learning should speak with unmistakable accents for the elevation, evangelization, and liberation of the oppressed. In a future day, the historian cannot purge our political history from the shame of wanton and mercenary oppression. But there is not, I believe, a book in the literature of our country that will be alive and known a hundred years hence, in which can be found the taint of despotism. The literature of the world is on the side of liberty.
I am very truly yours,
(signature) Henry Ward Beecher
H. B. Stowe (Engraved by J. C. Buttre)
