But the question of emancipation is started and agitated on the ground
of human _equality_. It is the supposed equality of the African with
the white race, that is the pretext for emancipation, and the
foundation of the assumed right and expediency of emancipation. It has
been supposed by some, that the enunciation of human equality in the
American Declaration of Independence was intended for all the races
of men in the world. Such a supposition is totally unfounded, and
unwarrantable in the very nature of things. In the first place, it is
not true; and in the next place, the writer of that Declaration meant
no such thing, for he held slaves, and knew their inferiority. What a
monstrous act of hypocrisy and folly it would have been in the author
of that instrument, and his cotemporaries, to declare that all men are
created _free_ when they knew millions are born slaves, or when they
knew no _equality_ existed, even of right, between the barbarian and
the man whose sense of justice and perception of RIGHT secured to him
the approbation of Heaven and his own conscience, by a recognition of
and obedience to the laws of morality, and conformity to the just
rules of civilization. They wrote that Declaration for white
men,--meaning white men,--because it did not and could not apply to
the barbarous and savage nations. They saw the world in chains, and
knew the bondage of mankind to be the result of their violation of
moral right, and their incapacity for self-government. They estimated
rightly when they announced freedom to the white race in these
colonies; for, up to this time, the fact of self-government by our
people has verified their prophetic annunciation; but the sages who
founded this Republic, excluded, by legislation, the African and the
Indian from this boon of freedom, and they and their descendants have
held the African in the condition of servitude.