It is not to be concealed, however, that some of the sages who framed
this Republic, in their zeal for freedom, overlooked the fact of
African barbarism, or failed to be explicit in their unpremeditated
enunciations of human freedom. Perhaps, however, they had more
astuteness than has been supposed by some. Perchance they considered
barbarity not humanity, but its opposite, and would have deemed it a
work of supererogation to explain that which natural history, the
history of the African ram for four thousand years, and common sense,
and common observation, had established as a self-evident
proposition; to wit, that equality was a _political_, and not a
social, nor moral, nor even physical condition; and that, especially,
neither equality nor freedom were to be construed to be the
prerogatives nor the right of barbarism. And the Constitution of the
United States, the work of their own hands, sanctions this
supposition, by recognizing the existence, and providing for the right
of Negro slavery, and rescues the Fathers of the Republic from the
absurd and opprobrious imputation of advocating Negro equality.
Whatever opinions they may have expressed under the varying aspects of
our Revolutionary epoch, the Constitution of these United States was
the finality of their arduous toils, heroic achievements, and sublime
wisdom; and that Constitution, the very sublimation and quintessence
of a hundred civilizations, exhibiting the onward progress of the
human race, recognizes the Right of Slavery, founded upon the
immutable principles of justice.