Was there any one man or measure, either in or out of the whole Southern establishment, civil or military, approaching those of the North? Not one. I am fully aware that “comparisons are odious;” that these features of observations are “in bad taste,” and that it will be adjudged ungenerous to make such allusions to our fallen and subjugated fellow-countrymen. I fully appreciate the extent of the objection; but when it is remembered that many of this very class of Southerners,—the old leading politicians are straining their intellects to prove the inferiority and incapacity of my race to high social and intellectual attainments,—the objector will, at least, find an explanation, if not justification, in the strictures.
I admit there are many excellent gentlemen in the South, and many have, through the press of the country, acknowledged their approval of the great principles of equality before the law, liberty and justice, and the natural inalienable rights of all men by birth; but I must be permitted to place my record, if not measure my steel, against those who tauntingly dare challenge me. It was the Hon. Daniel Webster, who, long years ago, on the floor of the United States Senate, on the very subject of disparagement, told Senator Hayne, of South Carolina, in reply to his assertion, “The gentleman from Massachusetts has found more than his match” in debate with Senator Benton,—“Sir, where there are blows to be received, there must be blows given in return.”
The International Policy of the World towards the African Race.
One of the highest pretensions set up in favor of the enslavement of the African race is its inferiority. If the Britons, Caledonians, Hibernians, and others of the Celtic as well as Teuton and pure Caucasian races had never been enslaved; if Caractacus, the king and proudest prince the British ever had up to that period, had not been led in chains, and sold by order of Julius Cæsar, with many other British slaves, in the public market of Rome; if the British nobles, long years ago, had not written of their own peasantry, that they were incapable of elevation; if they had not recorded and passed enactments against the Scotch and Irish, that they were innately inferior, and totally insusceptible of instruction and civilization, calling them “heathen dogs, only fit for slaves of the lowest order;” if a general system of serfdom, known as the Feudal System, had not existed generally among the white races for ages through all Europe, before a black slave was ever known among the whites; if the whites had not been held in slavery many centuries longer than were the blacks; and finally, if Russia had not, just within the last three years (1864), emancipated her forty-two millions of slaves,—ten times more than the African slaves in the United States, allowing four millions to the South,—then there would be some semblance of honesty and sincerity in the continued plea of justice for ages of wrong and crime against an unoffending, helpless people.
Through all times white slavery had existed among the nations of Europe, and as civilization advanced, and the lower classes became more elevated, the difficulty became more apparent in perpetuating the system. What to do, and how to remedy the evil, was a question of paramount importance. To suppress the approach of civilization, and keep down the rising aspirations of the common people, could not be well determined. The genius of social and political economy were put to the test to divine the desired end to be attained. Legislative and royal decrees could not reach it; the march of man and the light of intellect kept in advance of legal injunctions.
In 624—twelve hundred and forty-three years ago, and twelve hundred and thirty-nine before the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln—the Saracens or Arabs gained access to Africa, controlling the commerce for seven hundred and fifty-eight years, being the only foreigners accessible to, and holding a friendly intercourse with, the people.
In the year 1487, Bartholomew Diaz, of Portugal, discovered the Cape of Good Hope, calling it Cabo del Tormentoso—“the Cape of Storms.” On reporting to his sovereign the discovery, with all of its prospects, the king cried out, “No, let us not call it ‘Cabo del Tormentoso,’ but rather let us call it Cabo del Buen Speremza!—the Cape of Good Hope!” And it was a good hope to Portugal, because it must be remembered that access to Africa, by communication with the western coast, was then to Europeans unknown; the only intercourse being from the north by the Barbary States, and through the interior by caravans, all of which purported to reach the eastern part of the continent by that way.
The year 1482 was an eventful period to the African race, and I here record, for the first time probably in which it has ever been given to the world (except the authority herein quoted), the startling facts that the enslavement of the African race was the result of a determination on the part of at least four, and probably more, of the strongest, the most enlightened and polished nations at the time, to make the African race supplant, by substituting it for European slavery. These nations were, Spain, England, France, and Portugal.