By William Sanders Scarborough, D.D., LL.D
William Sanders Scarborough, M. A., Ph. D., LL.D., President of Wilberforce University, Ohio. Author of "First Lessons in Greek," the first and only Greek book written by a Negro, largely used as text-book in both white and Negro schools. Author of a large number of classical interpretations, and philological pamphlets.
Slavery has been well called the "perfected curse of the ages." Every civilization, ancient and modern, has experienced its blighting, withering effect, and it has cost thrones to learn the lesson that
"The laws of changeless justice blind
Oppressor and oppressed";
that
"Close as sin and suffering joined,"
these two
"March to Fate—abreast."
Since the world began, freedom has been at war with all that savored of servitude. The sentiment of liberty is innate in every human breast. Freedom of speech and of action—the right of every man to be his own master—has ever been the inestimable privilege sought, the boon most craved. For this guerdon men have fought; for this they have even gladly died.
It was the unquenchable desire for liberty that brought the Pilgrim Fathers to Plymouth Rock. They knew that all that is highest and noblest in the human soul is fostered to its greatest development only under the blazing sunlight of freedom. And it was the same flame burning in the heart of the young nation planted on these Western shores that led to the ratification of the sentiment placed by the hand of Thomas Jefferson in the corner-stone of our American independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident—that all men are created free and equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Here was heralded to the nation prophetic freedom for all mankind and for all generations.