The Negro has been a slave from time immemorial. This is shown from
the earliest Egyptian monuments, paintings, and traditions. Herodotus,
the father of Grecian History, tells us of negro slavery in Ancient
Greece. It existed in Rome also. During the tenth century of the
Christian era, the Moors, from Barbary, established an extensive
traffic in the cities of Nigritia, where they bought large numbers of
slaves; and the merchants of Seville brought slaves from the western
coast of Africa, and established slavery in that city, and in
Andalusia, long before the time of Columbus.[1] It is also a curious
fact in history, that Hanno, the great Carthagenian commander and
discoverer, having explored Africa from the Straits of Gibraltar to
the bounds of Arabia, brought back to Carthage a cargo of
ourang-outangs, which he supposed to be Negro men and women; _showing
more historically his estimate of African character, than his
familiarity with Natural History_. The Negro has ever been a slave;[2]
and it is to be considered whether his quick and sudden transition
from slavery to freedom, by emancipation, is probable or possible, or
is sanctioned by the history of human development and progress.