SLAVERY.

I HAVE endeavored thus far to show you some of the results produced by

enslaving the human mind. I now call your attention to another terrible

phase of this subject; the enslavement of the body. Slavery is a very

ancient institution, yes, about as ancient as robbery, theft and murder,

and is based upon them all.

Springing from the same fountain, that a man is not the owner of his

soul, is the doctrine that he is not the owner of his body. The two are

always found together, supported by precisely the same arguments, and

attended by the same infamous acts of cruelty. From the earliest

time, slavery has existed in all countries, and among all people until

recently. Pufendorf said that slavery was originally established by

contract. Voltaire replied, "Show me the original contract, and if it is

signed by the party that was to be a slave I will believe you." You

will bear in mind that the slavery of which I am now speaking is white

slavery.

Greeks enslaved one another as well as those captured in war. Coriolanus

scrupled not to make slaves of his own countrymen captured in civil war.

Julius Caesar sold to the highest bidder at onetime fifty-three thousand

prisoners of war all of whom were white. Hannibal exposed to sale thirty

thousand captives at one time, all of whom were Roman citizens. In Rome,

men were sold into bondage in order to pay their debts. In Germany, men

often hazarded their freedom on the throwing of dice. The Barbary States

held white Christians in slavery in this, the 19th century. There were

white slaves in England as late as 1574. There were white slaves in

Scotland until the end of the 18th century.

These Scotch slaves were colliers and salters. They were treated as real

estate and passed with a deed to the mines in which they worked.

It was also the law that no collier could work in any mine except the

one to which he belonged. It was also the law that their children could

follow no other occupation than that of their fathers. This slavery

absolutely existed in Scotland until the beginning of the glorious 19th

century.

Some of the Roman nobles were the owners of as many as twenty thousand

slaves.

The common people of France were in slavery for fourteen hundred years.

They were transferred with land, and women were often seen assisting

cattle to pull the plough, and yet people have the impudence to say that

black slavery is right, because the blacks have always been slaves in

their own country. I answer, so have the whites until very recently. In

the good old days when might was right and when kings and popes stood

by the people, and protected the people, and talked about "holy oil and

divine right," the world was filled with slaves. The traveler standing

amid the ruins of ancient cities and empires, seeing on every side the

fallen pillar and the prostrate wall, asks why did these cities fall,

why did these empires crumble? And the Ghost of the Past, the wisdom of

ages, answers: These temples, these palaces, these cities, the ruins of

which you stand upon were built by tyranny and injustice. The hands that

built them were unpaid. The backs that bore the burdens also bore the

marks of the lash. They were built by slaves to satisfy the vanity and

ambition of thieves and robbers. For these reasons they are dust.

Their civilization was a lie. Their laws merely regulated robbery and

established theft. They bought and sold the bodies and souls of men, and

the mournful winds of desolation, sighing amid their crumbling ruins,

is a voice of prophetic warning to those who would repeat the infamous

experiment. From the ruins of Babylon, of Carthage, of Athens, of

Palmyra, of Thebes, of Rome, and across the great desert, over that sad

and solemn sea of sand, from the land of the pyramids, over the fallen

Sphinx and from the lips of Memnon the same voice, the same warning and

uttering the great truth, that no nation founded upon slavery, either of

body or mind, can stand.

And yet, to-day, there are thousands upon thousands endeavoring to build

the temples and cities and to administer our Government upon the old

plan. They are makers of brick without straw. They are bowing themselves

beneath hods of untempered mortar. They are the babbling builders of

another Babel, a Babel of mud upon a foundation of sand.

Nothwithstanding the experience of antiquity as to the terrible effects

of slavery, bondage was the rule, and liberty the exception, during the

Middle Ages not only, but for ages afterward.

The same causes that led to the liberation of mind also liberated the

body. Free the mind, allow men to write and publish and read, and one by

one the shackles will drop, broken, in the dust. This truth was always

known, and for that reason slaves have never been allowed to read. It

has always been a crime to teach a slave. The intelligent prefer death

to slavery. Education is the most radical abolitionist in the world. To

teach the alphabet is to inaugurate revolution. To build a schoolhouse

is to construct a fort. Every library is an arsenal, and every truth is

a monitor, iron-clad and steel-plated.

Do not think that white slavery was abolished without a struggle. The

men who opposed white slavery were ridiculed, were persecuted, driven

from their homes, mobbed, hanged, tortured and burned. They were

denounced as having only one idea, by men who had none. They were called

fanatics by men who were so insane as to suppose that the laws of a

petty prince were greater than those of the Universe. Crime made faces

at virtue, and honesty was an outcast beggar. In short, I cannot better

describe to you the manner in which the friends of slavery acted at that

time, than by saying that they acted precisely as they used to do in

the United States. White slavery, established by kidnapping and piracy,

sustained by torture and infinite cruelty, was defended to the very

last.

Let me now call your attention to one of the most immediate causes of

the abolition of white slavery in Europe. There were during the Middle

Ages three great classes of people: the common people, the clergy and

the nobility. All these people could, however, be divided into two

classes, namely, the robbed and the robbers. The feudal lords were

jealous of the king, the king afraid of the lords, the clergy always

siding with the stronger party. The common people had only to do the

work, the fighting, and to pay the taxes, as by the law the property of

the nobles was exempt from taxation. The consequence was, in every war

between the nobles and the king, each party endeavored by conciliation

to get the peasants upon their side. When the clergy were on the side

of the king they created dissension between the people and the nobles by

telling them that the nobles were tyrants. When they were on the side of

the nobles they told the people that the king was a tyrant. At last the

people believed both, and the old adage was verified, that when thieves

fall out honest men get their dues.

By virtue of the civil and religious wars of Europe, slavery was

abolished, and the French Revolution, one of the grandest pages in all

history, was, so to speak, the exterminator of white slavery. In that

terrible period the people who had borne the yoke for fourteen hundred

years, rising from the dust, casting their shackles from them, fiercely

avenged their wrongs. A mob of twenty millions driven to desperation,

in the sublimity of despair, in the sacred name of Liberty cried for

vengeance. They reddened the earth with the blood of their masters.

They trampled beneath their feet the great army of human vermin that had

lived upon their labor. They filled the air with the ruins of temples

and thrones, and with bloody hands tore in pieces the altar upon which

their rights had been offered by an impious church. They scorned the

superstitions of the past not only, but they scorned the past; for

the past to them was only wrong, imposition and outrage. The French

Revolution was the inauguration of a new era. The lava of freedom long

buried beneath a mountain of wrong and injustice at last burst forth,

overwhelming the Pompeii and Herculaneum of priestcraft and tyranny. As

soon as white slavery began to decay in Europe, and while the condition

of the white slaves was improving about the middle of the 16th century

in 1541, Alonzo Gonzales, of Portugal, pointed out to his countrymen a

new field of operations, a new market for human flesh, and in a short

time the African slave-trade with all its unspeakable horrors was

inaugurated.

This trade has been the great crime of modern times. It is almost

impossible to conceive that nations who professed to be Christian,

or even in any degree civilized, should have engaged in this infamous

traffic. Yet nearly all of the nations of Europe engaged in the

slave-trade, legalized it, protected it, fostered the practice, and vied

with each other in acts, the bare recital of which is enough to make the

heart stand still.

It has been calculated that for years, at least 400,000 Africans were

either killed or enslaved annually. They crammed their ships so full

of these unfortunate wretches, that, as a general thing, about ten per

cent, died of suffocation on the voyage. They were treated like wild

beasts. In times of danger they were thrown into the sea. Remember that

this horrible traffic commenced in the middle of the 16th century, was

carried on by nations pretending to Christian civilization, and when

do you think it was abolished by some of the principal countries? In

England, Wilberforce and Clarkson dedicated their lives to the abolition

of the slave-trade. They were hated and despised. They persevered for

twenty years, and it was not until the 25th of March, 1808, that

England pronounced the infamous traffic in human flesh illegal, and the

rejoicing in England was redoubled on receiving the news that the United

States had done the same thing. After a time, those engaged in the

slave-trade were declared pirates.

On the 28th day of August, 1833, England abolished slavery throughout

the British Colonies, thus giving liberty to nearly one million slaves.

The United States was then the greatest slave-holding power in the

civilized world.

We are all acquainted with the history of slavery in this country. We

know that it corrupted our people, that it has drenched our land in

fraternal blood, that it has clad our country in mourning for the loss

of 300,000 of her bravest sons; that it carried us back to the darkest

ages of the world, that it led us to the very brink of destruction,

forced us to the shattered gates of eternal ruin, death and

annihilation. But Liberty rising above party prejudice, Freedom lifting

itself above all other considerations,

"As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,--

Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,

Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

And on the 1st day of January, 1863, the grandest New Year that ever

dawned upon this continent, in accordance with the will of the heroic

North, by the sublime act of one whose name will be sacred through all

the coming years, the justice so long delayed was accomplished, and four

millions of slaves became chainless.