to buy slaves in Virginia and carry them to New Orleans, why is it not right to buy them in Cuba, Brazil, or Africa, and carry them there?"

He

His question was, of course, unanswerable. might also have said that if it was right to own negroes it was right to buy them wherever they were on sale and take them to any place where they were needed. Although he did not know it, he was clearing the much-befogged road leading to the point of view from which might be seen the real evil principle at the bottom of slavery.

At Vicksburg, in 1859, a convention of commercial men resolved by a vote of forty to nineteen that "all laws, State or Federal, prohibiting the African slavetrade ought to be repealed;" also that "the convention raise a fund to be dispensed in premiums for the best sermons in favor of reopening the African Slavetrade!"

The reopening of the trade was also advocated on the floor of Congress. Omitting many quotations that might be made from the words of slave-holding Congressmen it will be sufficient to note what two who were representative of their class said. Alexander Stephens, in his farewell address to his constituents, according to reputable reports, used these words: "Slave-States cannot be made without Afri

cans.

[My object is] to bring clearly to your mind the great truth that without an increase of African slaves from abroad you may not expect or look for many more slave-States."

Jefferson Davis, while opposing an immediate reopening of the trade, denied "any coincidence of opinion with those who prate of the inhumanity and sinful

ness of the trade. The interest of Mississippi, not of the African, dictates my conclusion." He thought to open the trade immediately would flood Mississippi with negroes by bringing in more than could be profitably and safely handled, but "this conclusion, in relation to Mississippi, is based upon my view of her present condition, not upon any general theory. It is not supposed to be applicable to Texas, to New Mexico, or to any future acquisitions to be made south of the Rio Grande.”

But the rising tide of the power of those who believed in human slavery had reached its highest level. While slave-holders were holding conventions in which to advocate the reopening of the slave-trade, the abolitionists were in a thousand ways proclaiming the right of every human being to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A few were even proclaiming the strange doctrine that the superior race, instead of having, by virtue of its superiority, the right to oppress the weak, was, by the example and command of Almighty God, bound to uplift and carry the burden of the weak. A river of Jordan running bankful of blood lay before us, and we were about to bathe in it and be healed.

CHAPTER XX

WHEN THE END CAME

Buchanan's Administration and the Slave-trade-When the Sham Efforts to Suppress Came to an End-Story of Captain Gordon of the Erie, the First Slaver Pirate to be Executed in the United States.

As hitherto noted, the slave-trade differed from all other kinds of traffic known to the history of the world. In every other traffic there was (and there is) a steady amelioration of the condition of all persons engaged in it. The African slave-trade to the Americas began with the work of a good bishop who saw that it was more humane to enslave the hardy African than the effeminate red aborigines. From that the trade descended to a level where it was, for that day, an ordinary commercial enterprise, and then, because it was profitable and was becoming steadily more profitable, it reached out to overwhelm with its suffering, as well as its shame, not only everyone connected with it, whether directly or indirectly, but it drenched with its sorrows uncounted thousands who had never had any part in it, and still other thousands who had opposed it.

But even while Buchanan was striving to buy Cuba on the pretence that thus the slave-trade would be suppressed, the end of America's shame was at hand.

It was not in the blood of the race to perpetuate hypocrisy and injustice forever.

Those of us who are old enough recall with strange feelings the tumultuous controversies of the days of the Buchanan Administration. The pelting of words was incessant, but back of all that and growing steadily more ominous, was the tornado roar of one mighty question, Shall the Right prevail in the United States of America?

Granville Sharp, as the friend of one oppressed negro, had asked that question, standing alone, in other years. Now tens of thousands of the mightiest, most heroic souls of the earth were standing up to answer it, not by words alone but by freely giving their life blood.

Yet let no injustice be done now in recalling that controversy. As long as a people "holds its life in its hand, ready to give it for its honor (though a foolish honor); for its love (though a foolish love); for its business (though a foolish business), there is hope for it." The slave-owners, too, held their lives in their hands. No higher proof of their sincerity is known to man. Nathan Hale, whose statue stands in the City Hall Park of New York, reached out both hands (albeit with sorrow) when he welcomed to the further shore the spirits of those Americans who cheerfully went to their death in the David torpedo-boat, of Charleston harbor. We were to determine not only whether the right should prevail, but to see what was right, and our pool of Siloam was full to the brim of blood.

But when that is said-when the entire sincerity of the masses of those who sought to perpetuate slavery

It

is proclaimed-the fact remains (and we can all see it now) that our Declaration of Independence had been for three-quarters of a century a grinning mask. could not remain so longer. The spirit that had inspired the men who made that Declaration, not fully knowing what they did, was ready at last to turn the mask into the flushed face of the goddess of America. A time had come when a President who could understand the immortal words was to be elected, and he was elected. The laws against the slave-trade were now to be executed. The spirit of the Declaration of Independence was now not only to be enacted in statutes, but, within limits, to become the faith of the people.

Under Buchanan it was possible for the slave-bark Cora to be captured on the coast of Africa on the 18th day of May, carried to New York, let go after a form of condemnation, and then captured once more on the slave-coast, on December 10 of the same year.

With the advent of Abraham Lincoln the sham passed away. Here was a man who had the first characteristics of all heroes-sincerity and strength. He would, with charity for all and with malice toward none, and with such obstacles in his way as no American had ever faced before, and no American will ever face again-he would do his duty. Of all books that have been written here and may now be had for a price, there is none so well worth the study of an American reader, if he will but seek the heart of it, as a Life of Abraham Lincoln. But the American Carlyle has yet to come to place the heart of it plainly before us.

In a letter regarding the slave-trade written by Mr.