In brief, it seems that the Brazilian institution of slavery was
softer, far less brutal than the United States system. On the other
hand, the United States slave system was probably more efficient, for
the inefficiency of the management of the plantations of sugar in
Brazil allowed the West Indies in the eighteenth century to take the
lead in the sugar, rum, and molasses exports. The United States, under
the slave system, secured pre-eminence in the production of the
world's greatest textile staple, cotton.
It is to be regretted, of course, that slavery has persisted so long,
and still thrives in certain Mohammedan lands. It stands today
outlawed in the new world, but it will always be a source of regret to
progressive citizens of the United States that their country clung to
the institution up to within the memory of many yet living, and that
she did not relax her tight grasp upon the slave until forced to
immediate action in the stress of a fratricidal war. To humane
thinkers of Brazil, it will ever be a source of sorrow that their
nation has only been slave ridden within the present generation, and
even then, egged on to emancipation by the reproaches of an at last
awakened world.
Slavery must have differed in details in one country from that in
another, but after all, it was shameful in Brazil, shameful in the
United States, just as it is shameful at any other spot underneath the
blue sky.