American slavery has flourished three hundred years, being coeval with the Reformation, and running back over one twentieth part of the whole period of time since Adam. Nine generations of slaves, under a crushing weight of despotism, have toiled and suffered on through a wretched life, and have gone murmuring down to the grave.
We shall now inquire into the origin of this immense iniquity. American slavery originated directly in the African slave trade; a trade most dishonorable to human nature, bad as that nature is admitted to be, and most disgraceful to christian civilization. Its history, although not fully written, except by heaven’s recording angel, cannot be read by a humane person, even in its fragmentary form, without the deepest sorrow. It is a history of villainy, of relentless cruelty, of raging, hollow-hearted avarice and of unmitigated diabolism on the one side; and of wrongs, wretchedness and writhing anguish on the other.
Nothing had occurred to provoke a marauding attack upon the Africans. They were a peaceable and harmless people, and had no means of exciting either the jealousy or the displeasure of Europeans. They had not violated treaties, nor declared wars. The bloody wars among the African tribes, of which we hear so much from those who would palliate the atrocities of the slave trade, were excited by the traders themselves, and so far from palliating, only add blackness to the darkness of their crimes. The old Roman soldier, who enslaved a national enemy whom he valiantly met and conquered in what is called honorable warfare, might have claimed, with the semblance of plausibility, that the life he had spared legitimately belonged to him. But the African slave trader could not plead even this unmanly and unmerciful apology. The Africans were not national enemies, and were not in arms.
No, it was not revenge, ambition, or patriotism, but CUPIDITY which prompted the slave trade—
“The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless!
The last corruption of degenerate man.”
Avaricious men launched and manned the slave ship, unfurled the sails and stood at the helm. In their perilous voyage over the wide ocean, amid storms and tempests, not one noble impulse swelled their bosoms; not one philanthropic purpose strengthened their courage; not one humane pulsation throbbed in their hearts. The slaver went on its long voyage under the patronage of the Prince of darkness, for the one and only purpose of making gold out of the sale of the bodies and souls of men; of distilling wealth from blood and tears and agony. Montgomery said truly—
“Cruel as death, insatiate as the grave,
False as the winds that round his vessel blow;