A History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension Or Restriction in the United States

captivity and sale as prisoners of war, and HUMAN Slavery, as it existed in the pa- who, as a race, might be said to be inured to gan world, and especially in the infancy, vig- the hardships and degradations of Slavery or, and decline of Greek and Roman civiliza- by an immemorial experience. The suggestion, gradually died out in the advancing tion was unhappily approved, and the woes light of Christianity. When Columbus open- and miseries of the few remaining Aborigines ed the New World to European enterprise of the islands known to us as “ West Indies,' and settlement, the serfdom of Russia and were inconsiderably prolonged by exposing Hungary, and the mild bondage of Turkey the whole continent for unnumbered genera---each rather an Asiatic or Scythian than a tions to the evils and horrors of African slaveEuropean power-were the last remaining ry. The author lived to perceive and deplore vestiges of a system which had pervaded, and the consequences of his expedient. mastered, and ruined, the vast empires of Al- The sanction of the Pope having been obexander and the Cæsars. The few ignorant tained for the African slave-trade by repreand feeble dependents elsewhere held in vir- sentations which invested it with a look of tual bondage by force rather of custom than philanthropy, Spanish and Portuguese merof positive law, serve rather to establish than cantile avarice was readily enlisted in its disprove this general statement.

prosecution, and the whole continent, north Lust of gold and power was the main im- and south of the tropics, became a slave-mart pulse of Spanish migration to the marvelous before the close of the sixteenth century. regions beyond the Atlantic. And the soft Holland, a comparatively new and Proand timid Aborigines of tropical America, testant state, unable to shelter itself from the especially of its islands, were first compelled reproaches of conscience and humanity beto surrender whatever they possessed of the hind a Papal bull, entered upon the new trafprecious metals to the imperious and grasp- fic more tardily ; but its profits soon overbore ing strangers ; next forced to disclose to those all scruples, and British merchants were not strangers the sources whence they were most proof against the glittering evidences of their readily obtained ; and finally driven to toil success. But the first slave-ship that ever and delve for more, wherever power and greed entered a North American port for the sale supposed they might most readily be obtained. of its human merchandise, was a Dutch tradFrom this point, the transition to general en- ing-vessel which landed twenty negro bondslavement was ready and rapid. The gentle men at Jamestown, the nucleus of Virginia, and indolent natives, unaccustomed to rug- almost simultaneously with the landing of the ged, persistent toil, and revolting at the harsh Pilgrims of the Mayflower on Plymouth rock, and brutal severity of their Christian mas- Dec. 22d, 1620. ters, had but one unfailing resource-death. The Dutch slaver had chosen his market Through privation, hardship, exposure, with sagacity. Virginia was settled by CAfatigue and despair, they drooped and died, VALIERS-gentlemen-adventurers aspiring to until millions were reduced to a few miser- live by their own wits and other men's labor able thousands within the first century of —with the necessary complement of followSpanish rule in America.

ers and servitors. Few of her pioneers cherA humane and observant priest (Las Casas,) ished any earnest liking for downright, perwitnessing these cruelties and sufferings, was sistent, muscular exertion; yet some exmoved by pity to devise a plan for their ter- ertion was urgently required to clear away mination. He suggested and urged the poli- the heavy forest which all but covered the cy of substituting for these feeble and perish soil of the infant colony, and grow the Toing“ Indians” the hardier natives of Western | bacco which easily became its staple export,

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A History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension Or Restriction in the United ...