On the continent of America and adjacent Islands there are more than seven millions of slaves. Between three and four millions of these are enslaved by the most liberal, enlightened and prosperous nation on the Globe. The American Republic is a great slaveholding nation, and, viewed in its slaveholding character, might fitly be termed also, the American Despotism. The highest form of freedom is here enjoyed by about twenty millions of persons and the lowest type of slavery suffered by more than three millions. One seventh of all born under our Democratic Constitution and under our world-renowned stars and stripes, are hereditary slaves.

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—

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—

But it was not avarice in the crew of the slave ship alone which incited and drove this iniquitous business. The prime movers were the owners of the estates to be worked. Had those men been unwilling to grow rich upon unrewarded toil, the slaver never would have sailed to Africa and plundered its shores. But the piratical crew and the purchasers of the victims of their nefarious traffic were in a villainous co-partnership.

When the slaver had reached its destination and had anchored off the slave coast, the following methods were employed in securing a cargo. 1st. Declarations of friendship were made and many of the unsuspecting natives were induced, out of curiosity or for trade, to go aboard the vessel, and when there were suddenly confined and permitted no more to return. 2d. Parties of the crew were sent out to surprise and carry off innocent children and youth as they went to the fields or gathered in groups to play in the groves. Think of the anguish of those African mothers and of the distress of their affrighted children! 3d. Villages were fired in the night, and as many of the defenseless inhabitants as could be captured by force of arms were carried off. 4th. The chiefs of different tribes were hired to act as the agents of the slaver in procuring slaves. Rum, of which all savages are extremely fond, was the principal incentive. Inflamed by this demon, the native chiefs made war upon each other, and sold the prisoners captured to the traders for a fresh supply of rum.

The African slave trade was commenced on a small scale a few years before the discovery of America. We learn from the Encyclopedia Americana “that, in 1434, a Portuguese captain name Alonzo Gonzales, landed in Guinea, and carried away some colored lads, whom he sold advantageously to Moorish families settled in the South of Spain. Six years after, he committed a similar robbery, and many merchants imitated the practice, and built a fort to protect the traffic.”

After a discovery of the Gold Mines of America, quite a number of negroes were imported, first by the Portuguese then by the Spaniards, to labor in those mines. In 1511 Ferdinand, King of Spain, authorized the importation of a large number. About this period it is said, and generally believed that Bartolomeo las Cas, a Catholic Priest, influenced by a feeling of pity toward the Indians, whom the Spaniards were enslaving, proposed to Ximenes the regular importation of negroes. Whether this be true or not, Charles the V. in 1517, granted the privilege to Lebresa, of importing 4000 slaves to America annually. Lebresa sold his right to import to Genoese merchants, for about $25,000. These merchants now commenced the slave trade in earnest.

Sir John Hawkins has the honor of being the first English captain who engaged in the business of stealing negroes. In 1556 he made an unsuccessful effort at negro catching near Cape Verd. He made another effort at a different point; and after burning the towns, was so bravely resisted by the inhabitants, that he lost seven men, and only captured ten. He continued his depredations until his ship was loaded with human beings, which he sold in America.[1] The trade was now vigorously prosecuted by the christian nations of Europe. It is said that Charles the V., Louis XIII. and Queen Elizabeth had some trouble with their consciences about this horrible trade, but they were quieted by the argument that it brought the African into a good situation to be converted! Pope Leo X. declared that “not only the christian religion but nature itself cried out against a State of slavery.”

These feeble expressions of disapprobation were scarcely heard and the trade went on vigorously—cupidity triumphing over conscience and silencing almost, for many years, the voice of humanity and religion.

An extract from a sermon preached on the slave trade by President Edwards, in the year 1791 will now be quoted. At the time this good man lifted his voice against this traffic, it will be remembered that it was authorized by the Constitution of the United States, and was a source of great profit to those engaged in it.

“The slave trade is wicked and abominable on account of the cruel manner in which it is carried on. Beside the stealing or kidnapping of men, women and children, in the first instance, and the instigation of others to this abominable practice, the inhuman manner in which they are transported to America, and in which they are treated on the passage and in their subsequent slavery, is such as ought forever to deter every man from acting any part in this business, who has any regard to justice or humanity. They are crowded so closely into the holds and between the decks of vessels, that they have room scarcely to lie down, and some times not room to sit up in an erect posture, the men at the same time fastened together with irons, by two and two: and all this in the most sultry climate. The consequence of the whole is, that the most dangerous and fatal diseases are soon bred among them, whereby vast numbers of those exported from Africa perish in the voyage; others in dread of that slavery which is before them, and in distress and despair from the loss of their parents, their children, their husbands, their wives, all their dear connections, and their dear native country itself, starve themselves to death, or plunge themselves into the ocean. Those who attempt in the former of those ways to escape from their persecutors, are tortured by live coals placed to their mouths. Those who attempt an escape in the latter and fail, are equally tortured by the most cruel beating. If any of them make an attempt as they sometimes do, to recover their liberty, some, and as the circumstance may be, many, are put to immediate death, others, beaten, bruised, cut and mangled in a most inhuman and shocking manner, are in this situation, exhibited to the rest, to terrify them from the like attempt in future: and some are delivered up to every species of torment, whether by the application of the whip, or of any other instrument, even of fire itself, as the ingenuity of the ship master, or of his crew is able to suggest, or their situation will admit; and these torments are purposely continued for several days before death is permitted to afford relief to these objects of vengeance.

“By these means, according to the common computation, twenty-five thousand, which is a fourth part of those who are exported from Africa, and by the concession of all, twenty thousand, annually perish, before they arrive at the places of their destination in America.”

The same writer computed that of the one hundred thousand slaves annually exported, 60,000 were captives taken in war, and that ten persons were killed in the capture of one. Sixty thousand then in the time of Jonathan Edwards were slain in battle, 40,000 destroyed on the voyage and in the seasoning, making an annual destruction of 100,000 men, woman and children, in order to procure 60,000 slaves! This computation may be relied upon, as Jonathan Edwards was a careful writer, and no enthusiast.

For three hundred years this horrible traffic had been prosecuted before Mr. Edwards delivered the sermon from which we have quoted, and at that period the annual slaughter was 100,000, and the annual enslavement 60,000! How many perished during those three hundred years God only knows. Rum had excited wars among the natives, and the whole coast, and far into the interior was turned into a battle field. No one was safe. The poor African could not lie down securely at night, for men-stealers were ransacking the country watching for their prey like hungry tigers; villages were burned, property destroyed, and the wretched inhabitants, either captured, killed, or caused to fly from their homes, and perish perhaps with famine.

In a report made to the British House of Commons, it was estimated that from 1807 to 1847, including a period of only forty years, ten millions of persons had been made the victims of this traffic! Ten millions; one-half of whom were murdered in Africa; one fourth during the “middle passage;” and the remaining fourth reduced to property and doomed, with their posterity, to a life of degradation, suffering and toil! And all this gigantic robbery and murder perpetrated in the favored nineteenth century!

Permit me to direct your attention to a single slave ship which sailed only a few years ago. This ship was examined by the officers of a British man-of-war. The following is from the pen of Mr. Walsh, an eye witness of what he relates.

“The ship had taken in, on the coast of Africa, 336 males and 226 females, making in all 562, and had been out 17 days, during which she had thrown overboard fifty five!

“The slaves were all enclosed under grated hatchways between decks. The space was so low, that they sat between each other’s legs, and they were stowed so close together, that there was no possibility of their lying down, or at all changing their position by night or day. As they belonged to, and were shipped on account of different individuals, they were all branded like sheep, with the owner’s marks of different forms. These were impressed under their breasts or on their arms, and as the mate informed me, with perfect indifference, quiemados pelo ferro quento—burnt with the red hot iron. Over the hatchway stood a ferocious looking fellow with a scourge of many twisted thongs in his hand, who was the slave driver of the ship; and whenever he heard the slightest noise below, he shook it over them, and seemed eager to exercise it. As soon as the poor creatures saw us looking down at them their dark and melancholy visages brightened up. They perceived something of sympathy and kindness in our looks which they had not been accustomed to, and feeling instinctively, that we were friends, they immediately began to shout and clap their hands. One or two had picked up a few Portuguese words, and cried out Viva! viva! The women were particularly excited. They all held up their arms; and when we bent down and shook hands with them, they could not contain their delight, they endeavored to scramble upon their knees, stretching up to kiss our hands; and we understood that they knew we had come to liberate them. Some, however, hung down their heads, in apparently hopeless dejection, some were greatly emaciated, and some, particularly children, seemed dying. But the circumstance which struck us most forcibly, was, how it was possible for such a number of human beings to exist, packed up and wedged together as tight as they could cram, in low cells, three feet high, the greater part of which, except that immediately under the hatchways, was shut out from light or air, and this when the thermometer, exposed to the open sky, was stand-in the shade, on our deck at 89°. The space between the decks was divided into two compartments, three feet, three inches high; the size of one was 16 feet by 18 feet, and of the other 40 feet by 21 feet; into the first there were crammed the women and girls, into the second the men and boys; 226 fellow beings were thus thrust into one space 288 feet square, and 336 into another 800 feet square, giving to the whole an average of 23 inches, and to each of the women, not more than thirteen. The heat of these horrid places was so great and the odor so offensive, that it was quite impossible to enter them even had there been room. They were measured as above when the slaves had left them. The officers insisted that the poor suffering creatures should be admitted on deck to get air and water. This was opposed by the mate of the slaver, who, from a feeling that they deserved it, declared they would murder them all. The officers (of the Eng. ship,) however, persisted, and the poor beings were all turned up together. It is impossible to conceive the effect of this eruption; 507 fellow creatures of all ages and sizes, some children, some adults, old men and women, all in a state of total nudity, scrambling out together to taste a little pure air and water. They came swarming up like bees from the aperture of a hive, till the whole deck was crowded to suffocation, from stem to stern; so that it was impossible to imagine where they could all have come from, or how they could all have been stowed away. On looking into the places where they had been crammed, there were found some children next the sides of the ship, in the places most remote from light and air; they were lying in nearly a torpid state, after the rest had turned out. The little creatures seemed indifferent as to life or death; and when they were carried on deck, many of them could not stand. After enjoying, for a short time, the unusual luxury of air, some water was brought; it was then that the extent of their sufferings was exposed in a fearful manner. They all rushed like maniacs toward it. No entreaties, or threats, or blows could restrain them; they shrieked, and struggled, and fought with one another, for a drop of this precious liquid, as if they grew rabid at the sight of it. When the poor creatures were ordered down again, several of them came, and pressed their heads against our knees, with looks of the greatest anguish, at the prospect of returning to the horrid place of suffering below.”[2]

But the English ship was obliged to release the slaver and abandon to despair those defenseless victims, as it was found upon examination that it had not violated a vile privilege then allowed Brazilian ships to obtain slaves south of a certain line.

It is a humiliating fact that for a period of three centuries the whole christian world was engaged in plundering a heathen shore of its inhabitants, speculating in their bodies and souls and spreading amongst them intemperance, war and all unutterable woes. The history of this wickedness will never be fully known until the general judgment. Then will the ocean have a tale to tell of the thousands who were smothered in the slave prisons which floated upon her bosom, and of the multiplied thousands who were famished and buried in her deeps. The sea will send up her witnesses, and Africa, wet with tears and blood, will bear a testimony before God in that day which will make the ears of all that hear it to tingle!

But let us glance at a more hopeful view of the subject. In 1783 a petition was addressed to the house of Parliament, Great Britain, for the abolition of this trade. Thomas Clarkson was the mover, and the great champion of the cause. In 1788 Mr. Pitt presented a petition against the trade and introduced the subject of its abolition into the house of Commons. The opposition to this measure was united, powerful and violent. At length in 1792 the house of Commons passed a bill for the abolition of the slave trade to take place in 1795. This bill was rejected in the House of Lords. About this time the National Assembly in France, declared all the slaves in the French colonies free. Mr. Wilberforce brought into the British Parliament another bill in 1796, which provided that this trade should be abolished forever after 1797—but this bill was lost also. The efforts of the friends of humanity were redoubled, and in “1806 Fox moved that the House of Commons should declare the slave trade inconsistent with justice, humanity and sound policy, and immediately take effective measures for its abolition.” This measure passed by a large majority—and Jan. 1808 was fixed as the time for its abolition. In 1824 a law was passed declaring the trade to be piracy. Portugal provided for the total abolition of this trade in 1823. France in 1815—Spain in 1820—Netherlands in 1818—Sweden in 1813—Brazil in 1830—Denmark in 1804. The United States prohibited it by Constitution in 1809—and in 1814 engaged by the treaty of Ghent to do all in her power for its entire suppression.

But, notwithstanding these praiseworthy efforts, the trade continued, and with increased barbarity, and is even yet carried on to some extent in defiance of all the navies of the world.

We have now seen that avarice was at the bottom of the slave trade; that it was an unprovoked and unparalleled outrage upon the Africans; that it was prosecuted without the slightest regard to the comfort or lives of the captured; that the whole civilized world, after an experience of centuries, became horrified at its terrible iniquity; that now the trade is declared to be PIRACY; that the slave-ship can be protected by no flag under heaven; and that all who engage in the trade may be captured and hanged up by the neck as the most execrable wretches.

Thus a traffic which received the sanction of the Pope of Rome, and was prosecuted under the immediate auspices of Christian kings and governments for three centuries, was attacked by Clarkson, Wilberforce and other agitators, and, though powerfully defended by avarice and interest; though hoary with age; though protected by statesmen, by the commercial and planting interests, that attack was vigorously followed up until reason, religion and humanity felt outraged by it, and demanded in a voice which rulers dared not refuse to hear, that it be at once and forever abolished. So much for agitation! Thank God for this progress!