Had the blacks of the United
States experienced the same treatment as did those of the British
colonies, 1860 would have found among us less than 150,000 colored
persons. In the United States were found ten colored persons for every
slave imported, while in the British colonies only one was found for
every three imported. Hence the claim that the American Negro is a new
race, built up on this soil, rests upon an ample supply of facts. The
American slave was born in our civilization, fed upon good American
food, housed and clothed on a civilized plan, taught the arts and
language of civilization, acquired necessarily ideas of law and
liberty, and by 1860 was well on the road toward fitness for freedom.
No lessons therefore drawn from the emancipation of British slaves in
the West Indies are of any direct value to us, inasmuch as British
slavery was not like American slavery, the British freedman was in no
sense the equal of the American freedman, and the circumstances
surrounding the emancipation of the British slave had nothing of the
inspiring and ennobling character with those connected with the
breaking of the American Negro's chains. Yet, superior as the American
Negro was as a slave, he was very far below the standard of American
citizenship as subsequent events conclusively proved.
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