Now, Sir, I propose, perhaps at the expense of some detail and
consequent detention of the Senate, to review historically this
question, which, partly in consequence of its own importance, and
partly, perhaps mostly, in consequence of the manner in which it has
been discussed in different portions of the country, has been a source
of so much alienation and unkind feeling between them.
We all know, Sir, that slavery has existed in the world from time
immemorial. There was slavery, in the earliest periods of history, among
the Oriental nations. There was slavery among the Jews; the theocratic
government of that people issued no injunction against it. There was
slavery among the Greeks; and the ingenious philosophy of the Greeks
found, or sought to find, a justification for it exactly upon the
grounds which have been assumed for such a justification in this
country; that is, a natural and original difference among the races of
mankind, and the inferiority of the black or colored race to the white.
The Greeks justified their system of slavery upon that idea, precisely.
They held the African and some of the Asiatic tribes to be inferior to
the white race; but they did not show, I think, by any close process of
logic, that, if this were true, the more intelligent and the stronger
had therefore a right to subjugate the weaker.
The more manly philosophy and jurisprudence of the Romans placed the
justification of slavery on entirely different grounds.
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