OBJECT AND PLAN OF THIS BOOK.

THE chief design of this publication is to furnish, in one volume, an abstract, for convenient reference, of a great mass of historical information concerning slavery and the struggle against it (in this country and Great Britain), that is now to be found only by looking over several volumes, numerous pamphlets, and the newspapers and scattered documents of the last twenty years. This abstract, at the same time, was intended to have a bearing on the now-pending slave question in the United States, and to be so selected and arranged, as to facilitate a presentation of that question towards the close of the volume. It was designed to be as documentary in its character as the nature of an abstract would permit. Hence, it consists much in extracts, quotations, and abbreviated paragraphs, preserving as much as possible the significant portions, without giving the documents entire, which would have required volumes.

The writer was aware that the attempt to cover so much ground, in one volume, was a hazardous one. It could not be a small volume; and most readers, as well as some critics, will instantly pronounce a work "too diffuse" that exceeds three or four hundred pages, without stopping to consider whether or no it presents the substance of several such volumes on distinct points of history. They would find no fault with one book of that size that should only tell the story of the abolition of the African slave trade, nor with another that should only relate the measures that led to the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, and the results of those labors; nor with another that should contain the story of Texas and the Mexican war. But if a writer should present the substance of all three of these histories, and five or six more in addition, of equal magnitude and importance, in a volume of six hundred pages, they would think him unpardonably diffuse; and the farther this condensing process was carried, in one volume, the more would he fall under censure for diffuseness. The

difficulty would not end here. The same readers, or others, on referring to the parts of the history that most interested them, would fail of obtaining all the minute information they expected, or would wonder at the omission of many things that they considered important. Whether, on the whole, the work will be found too much or too little condensed, is uncertain. If the latter, we may hereafter furnish a cheaper abridgment of it if the former, the present edition may hereafter take the name of an abridgment to the more copious work that may be written, and for which there are ample materials at hand.

The writer has not wholly excluded from this volume all notice of the principles that underlie history, nor of the workings of moral cause and effect. Nor has he suppressed his own sentiments, through fear of giving offense. He hopes he has not been uncandid or discourteous to others.

No reasonable pains have been spared to secure accuracy in dates and facts; and yet it is quite impossible to be certain of freedom from errors. In some cases, the best authorities disagree. Apparent or real discrepancies and mistakes are incident to all histories. Biblical critics are not always agreed in respect to the true solution of apparent discrepancies in the inspired writers of history. In preparing this book, several instances have occurred in which good authorities have seemed to make irreconcilable statements, but which have, nevertheless, with much labor, been reconciled. Few of the books or pamphlets used by us have been free from real or apparent mistakes that have perplexed us. We hope we shall not be accounted careless of our facts, if some of them should be found inaccurate, or should be, by somebody, considered so. We trust the book is as free from mistakes as most other works of the kind. We are certain of having laboriously collected and carefully examined the statements presented, but, like others who compile histories, we cannot be held responsible for the mistakes of the best authorities extant.

SLAVERY AND FREEDOM.

CHAPTER I.

MAGNITUDE AND NECESSITY OF THE STRUGGLE.

A World's Question-The Problem of the Present Age.

THE slave question in America is only one phase of the more comprehensive question of human freedom that now begins to agitate the civilized world, and that presents the grand problem of the present age.

Such a question must be met, must be discussed, must be decided, and decided correctly, before the nations of the earth can be enfranchised, and before this anomalous republic can either secure her own liberties, or find permanent repose.

In a nation whose declaration of self-evident and inalienable human rights has been hailed as the watchword for an universal struggle against despotic governments;-a nation whose support of human chattelhood has armed the world's despots with their most plausible pleas against republican institutions, it is in vain to expect that the discussion of such incongruities. can be smothered, or the adjustment of them much longer postponed. In any age of the world, such expectations would be disappointed-in the present age, the indulgence of them can be little short of insanity-must be consummate folly. The question whether such a nation, at such a period of the world's progress, shall continue to tolerate human chattelhood, becomes, of necessity, a world's question. Universal human nature is knocking vehemently at our doors, and cannot be silenced. As well might we attempt to hush the thun

ders of our own Niagara, or annul the laws by which the elements are governed.

Is this the language of enthusiasm? Ask counsel of exist ing facts. When a few voices were raised on this subject not many years since, the whole community, with few exceptions, north and south, demanded that the agitation should cease. But has it ceased? Or can it be made to cease? Most forward and even clamorous in the discussion, are those who, even now, have scarcely ceased to proscribe discussion! Our halls of legislation, that were to have been sealed against the discussion, nevertheless ring with it, to the exclusion of the most favorite topics! And those who were determined that the public mails should not transmit the agitating debate, are now gorging those mails to the full with their own eager debates! Not an important public measure can be proposed that is not found to involve, in some way, the much dreaded but ever present question. Can we not see the hand of an all-controlling Providence in all this? Can we not hear in it the voice of Nature and of Nature's God, demanding and ordaining a discussion of the slave question?

The history of Christian civilization is marked with successive eras of advancement, each one of which is distinguished by some particular phase or feature of human progress, and commonly involves the agitation of some great practical problem, the solution of which occupies the minds of thinking men until it is definitely settled. This is seldom effected without long and earnest discussions, sometimes protracted during one or two entire generations, and not completed until more enlarged views have displaced the prejudices and corrected the errors that preceded them. The responsibilities, as well as the dangers and the privileges of living in such an age of the world-stormy, perhaps, yet progressive—are not commonly appreciated as they should be. Not to have understood, correctly, the wants, and especially the grand problem of such an age, of the age one lives in, not to have taken the position, and to have exerted the influence demanded by the crisis, were equivalent to having wasted, or worse than wasted,

one's probationary existence, so far as its bearing on general human progress is concerned; and this, too, at a time when one life is to be reckoned of more weight and significance than, perhaps, many lives, dreamed away in any of those dead calms in this world's history, in which little or nothing is done or devised for the elevation of the species.

Such an age of agitation and of corresponding responsibility is the present. The grand problem of the age is that of a more extended and better defined freedom, especially for the very lowest and most degraded portion of the species. Ours is an advanced period in the struggle for human freedom. It is not to the contest of the barons against an unlimited autocrat that we are summoned-nor to the struggle of the middle classes against the barons; nor to the question of taxation without representation; nor to the question of religious liberty, for those who are regarded as human beings. The demands of liberty strike deeper, now, and reach the ground tier of humanity, hid under the rubbish of centuries of degradation-classes who have scarcely been thought of, as human, and to whom no Magna Charta of Runny Meade, no organization of a House of Commons, no Declaration of Independence, have brought even a tithe or a foretaste of their promised blessings. The houseless, the landless, the homeless-the operatives of Manchester and Birmingham, the tenantry of Ireland, the Russian serfs,above all, the North American Slaves-what have Christian civilization and democratic liberty and equality in reserve for these? And what are the responsibilities of Christians, of philanthropists, of statesmen, and of republican citizens, in respect to them? These questions to be properly decided, must be studied, must be understood.

We single out, for present inquiry, the North American slave. Who is he? What is his condition? How came he there? Who is responsible for his continuance in his present condition? What has been done, and what remains to be done in respect to him?