Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1848-04-21
TIE African.
ErA'aet from II Speech q ALExANDzn II. Ey.
ERETr, IF .Na,s.

Extract from Il Speech q ALEXANDER II. Ey-
lRtTr, y .Na,s.
Sir, we are sometimes told that all these
efforts will be unavailing-lhat the African
ls a degraded member of the human family
that a man with a dark skin and cur, cd hair,
is necessarily, as such, incapable of improve
ment aud civilization, and condemned hy the
vice Of his physical conformation. to yere-
tate for ever in a state Of hopeless barLarism.
AR. President, | reject, with contempt and
Indignation, the miserable heresy. la reply
ing 10 it, the friends Of truth and humanity
have not hitherto done justice to the nrgu-
ment. In order to prove that the blacks were
capable OF intellectual %eiiorls, lhey have pain
fully collected a few imperfect specimens Of
what some of them have done in this way.
even in the degraded condition which they
occupy at present in Christcndom. Sir. this
is not the way to treat The subject. Go back
to an earlier period in the history of our race.
See what the blacks were and what thew did
three thousand years ago, in The period Of
thelr greatness and glory, wren they accupi.
ed The fore front in the march Of civilization
when they constituted in fact the whole
civilized world Of their time. Trdce this We
ry CIVILIZATION, Of which we are so proud, TO
us origin, and see where you will find it,
we received it from our European ancestors:
they had 1t from the Greeks and Romans.
and the Jews. But, Sir, where did the Greeks
and the Romans and the Jews get il They
derived it from Ethiopia and Egypt,-in one
word, from Africa. Moses, we are told.wa.
instructed in all the learning of the ETyp
tians. The founders of The principal Gre
clan cities, such as Athens, Thebes, and Del
phi, came from Egypt, aud for centuries af
forwards, their descendants returned to tina
country, MS the source and centre OF civilial
ton. There it was that the generous anl
stirring spirits Of the tine-Herodotus, Hn
mer, Plato, Pythagoras, and the rest, made
their noble voyages of intellectual and mora.
discovery, as ours now make them in Eng
land, France, Germany, and Italy. Sir, the
Egyptians were the masters of the Greeks
and the Jews, and consequently of all the
modern nations In civilization, and they had
carried it very nearly as farm some les
poets, perhaps, a good deal further than any
subsequent people. The ruins Of the Ecvp-
ilan temples laugh TO scorn The architectural
monuments Of any other part Of the world
They will be what they are now, The delight
and admiration Of travellers from all quarters,
when the grass is growing on the sites of ST.
Peters and ST. PduI's,--tho present pnde Ui
Rome and London.
Well, Sir, who were the Egyptians -
They were Africans ;-and of what race l.
1t is sometimes pretended, that though Afri-
cans, and OF Ethiopian extraction, they were
not black. But what says the father Of his
tory, who had travelled among them, and
knew their appearance, as well as we know
that Of our nelghbors in CanadA! Sir, He.
rodotus tells you that the Egyptians were
blacks, with curled hair. Some writers have
undertaken to dispute his authority, but
cannot bring myself TO believe that the faith
er Of history did not know black from white
1t seems. therefore, that for this very civil
zatlon Of which we are SO proud, and wbicl
Is the only ground Of our present claim Of su
periori,y. we are indebted to the ancestors 0
these very blacks, whom we are pleased L
consider as naturally incapable Of %ciyiliza
ton.