The only tribunal at which to try human actions, is the tribunal of
justice. That which is right can stand the test of this tribunal; that
which is wrong will shrink in terror from it. At this tribunal
American Negro slavery has nothing to fear, because it is founded in
moral right. Its advocacy is the advocacy of right, and right alone;
unless, forsooth, we are to confound right with wrong, and declare
barbarism equal with civilization. Of course, our argument is based
upon the hypothesis that civilization is one thing, and barbarism
another. To the mind which is so mentally and morally obtuse as not to
discover the difference between these two conditions, this appeal must
be in vain. But to the right-minded man, who is open to conviction of
truth, who has the mental freedom to act and think independent of his
prepossessions and prejudices, who is guided by his intellect, and
reason, and not by passion nor prejudice, this solution of the slavery
question, though new, must and will be satisfactory, because it is the
logical result of a trial of the question at the tribunal of justice
and of rights, because slavery rescues the African from wrong, and
subjects him to the rule of right; because it rescues him from the
wrongs and miseries of barbarism, and raises him to the _primary_
elevation of a progressive and ennobling civilization.