"He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha!" (Job xxxix. 25.) It is very odd that the horsemen of Morocco, when they gallop to the charge, always cry "Ha, ha!" So the Arabian poet of The Book of Job puts the wild cry of the rider into the mouth of the horse whom he rides. This I frequently witnessed on the parade of Mogador. The wild cavalry of Morocco is the boldest idea transmitted to us of the ancient Numidian horse. In Morocco the horse is both the sacred animal and the bulwark of the empire; for this reason it is the Emperor prohibits the exportation of horses. Even the barley, on which the horses are generally fed, is not allowed to be exported for the same reasons.
ויאמר ארור כנען עבד עבדים לאחיו
"And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren," (Gen. ix. 25.) This portion of Scripture will occur naturally enough to the mind of a biblical reader, who takes up his residence for some weeks at a slave-mart, and is seeing slaves bought and sold every day. It is the famous and much abused text of the slave dealers of the last three centuries, and is now continually quoted in the pulpits of the United States parsons, who, like the devil himself, quote Scripture to support the wickedness of themselves and their slave-holding and man-selling countrymen. The most approved commentators properly apply the text to the Canaanites, whom Providence afterwards dispossessed of their territories in Palestine, and gave them to the children of Shem, and so the Canaanites became the slaves of the Shemites for a limited period. But to prove that it does not refer to the Negroes of North and Central Africa, I may be allowed to produce the following reasons:—
1st. Of all the children of Ham, Canaan only is mentioned.
2nd. The prophecy was fulfilled in the descendants of Canaan, and there is no occasion to extend it beyond the early history of the Jews, when they took possession of the land of Canaan, and reduced its people to servitude.
3rd. The descendants of Canaan were all white people, and the Negroes I need not say are black. But if it be a question of colour, there are red Indians and black Indians, who have been from unknown ages the sons of freedom, and who, when discovered, would not and could not be reduced to slavery. I guess the Yankees have not reduced the Indians to slavery, (although, after robbing them of their hunting-grounds, they have in the most Christian spirit exterminated many,) on the contrary, they are equally free men with the Yankees, and have the same privilege of reducing free men to slavery with their Republican neighbours. The Black Indians, following the precept and example of the White Republicans, have now an immense number of slaves; and in this case, it is not the more civilized who holds his fellow man in bondage, but the less civilized, indeed, savages. So the world is improving and progressing in the Western Hemisphere! The Southern Ocean is peopled with many tribes as black as Negroes. But to return to the Canaanites, they at length mixed with the Israelites and became one people, and the relations of master and slave were lost in equality.
4th. Many of the descendants also of Cush were white people, for he was the father of Nimrod, who founded Babylon, and became the father of all the Babylonians. Were the Babylonians Negroes?
5th. None of the children of Ham, but Canaan, became servants or rather slaves to the rest of the human race in any remarkable degree, during the early period of the Mosaic world. For,
Cush was the alleged father of the Babylonians and the Ethiopians, (the people of Upper Egypt,) but neither of these nations were slaves to conquerors more than any other people of that period of the world; whilst, on the other hand, the Babylonians were great conquerors in their day, and the Ethiopians had princes of their own even down to the days of Solomon. If now the Abyssinians are to be considered the descendants of the Ethiopians, we all know they are not slaves, but like the Yankee States themselves, slave-dealers and slave-holders. The Abyssinians, moreover, enjoyed advantages of civilization when a great portion of Europe was overwhelmed with barbarism. So much for the Cushites and Ethiopians, the lineal descendants of the accursed Ham!
Mizraim was the father of the Egyptians. These ancient and celebrated people, whose country was the cradle of civilization, cannot surely be branded as the slaves of the human race! This was also the lineal descendant of the accursed Ham!
