Of course had there never been any negro slavery in America we should have escaped the brothers' war, its spilling of blood, its waste of wealth, and the long sickness of the section unto death which has ensued. And to-day in solid prosperity, institutions, government, and progressiveness in everything good, the section would be abreast of the other. Nay, her better climate, her agricultural products--especially her cotton, which she would have learned to make with white labor--these and other resources would, I fully believe, have by this time pushed her far into the lead. As it actually is, she is far, far behind. She has been sorely scourged, not for any moral guilt.
"Some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt."
It was because she did that which the wisest and best had done--the Greeks who gave the world culture and democracy, the Jews who gave it religion, the Romans who gave it law and civil institutions. She really did far better than they did. She did not enslave the free. She merely took some of the only inveterate slaves upon earth out of lawless slavery, in which they would have otherwise remained indefinitely without recognition of the dearest human rights, and placed them in a far other slavery which was for them an unparalleled rise in liberty and well-being; which was, as becomes more and more probable with time, the only opportunity by which any considerable portion of the negro race can ever evolve upward into the capability of enlightened self-government. In doing this she unconsciously antagonized the purposes of the iron-hearted powers guarding the American union, and when the critical moment of that union came, they dashed her to pieces.
It will be many a year before the pathos of southern history can be fully told. I must satisfy myself here by saying only that the curse of African slavery to her has been of magnitude and weight incredible, and that one cannot yet be sure when it will end.