Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1861-02-21

For the Yorkvllle Enquirer.

For the Yorkvlle Enquirer.
ARGUMENTS FOR SLAVERY.
THE SLAVE TRADE-UNIvERsALLY PREV
ALENT-AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE, BY
WHOM PRACTICED UPON THE AMERICAN
sHoREs-NoT IN ALL ITS ORIGINAL
FEATURES TO BE DENOUNCED AND CON
DEMNED-THE PRESENT SHAREHOLDERS
NOT IMPLICATED IN THE CRIMINALITY
CONNECTED WITH THE ORIGIN OF SLAVE
RY HERE.
III. Amother general ground apon Uhach
slavery, as an institution, maybe defended,
is furnished by the consideration of certain
facts connected soith the introduction and
existence and relative position Of african
slavery in this country.
l. And here in the outset, we remark
that the introduction of Africans into this
country, and under bondage, was in har-
mony with the uniform practice of the world
for untold ages past Without making any
more than passing allusion to the servi'
tude practised by patriarchs and the Jewish
people through all its history, We may say
that for four thousand years, slavery, in
some form, has been identified with every
respectable nation. 1t can be traced in
Egypt, both in her earliest history and in
her pyramids, the monuments of slave labor;
in the empires Of the east, hoary with age
and famous in exploits, e. g. Assyrian, Sy-
rian, Persian, Phenician, Parthian, Baby
lonian, in each of which vestiges of slavery,
varying from the mildest vassalage to the
most abject bondage, can be clearly tracked.
So, too, in the immense countries Of Judea,
Hindostan, China and Japan, and even in
Africa, slavery has been from remotest ages
extensively prevalent. We need not again
mention Greece and Rome, for every stu
dent of history knows that the Greeks and
Trojans at the siege of Troy, had slaves,
and that Athens and Sparta and Thebes,
and indeed the whole Grecian and Roman
worlds, had more slaves than freemen.-
Says the distinguished historian, Hallam Z:
"In every age and country, until times
comparatively recent, personal servitudeap-
pears to have been the lot of large, per-
haps the greater portion of mankind" Not
being confined to the countries alluded to,
it was certainly universal during the mid,
die ages, upon the continent of Europe.
In France, the German States and Poland,
Sicily, Italy and Venice, until modern years,
the slave in name and in reality was met at
every point. And who does not know that
the serfs of Hungary and Transylvania and
Russia rise but little, if any, above state
of slavery. And as to Turkey and Brazil,
all know that nominal and real slavery is
universally prevalent, and has been for ages:
And as to other European provinces and
adjacent States, and among them Spain and
Portugal, none can doubt their part connec-
ton with slavery and as for Great Britain,
her possession of slaves from the times of
Julius Caesar down to the present century,
when she abolished the African slaVe.trade,
is too notorious to be mentioned. And
thus we see that to eugraft slavery upon
this American continent, was only to put
her in rank with the world-give her what
every civilized nation has been accustomed
to have, and what every tropical country
now has. Hence African slavery in its
rise in this country, had the prestige and
example of the world before it.
2. Again. 1t is lawful to assume that
the agency by which the traffic in slaves
began, and for years continued to pour
Africans into America, as we'll as the oppo-
sition at first made to it by many of those
States now most identified with slavery, tend
to relieve the slave States of responsibility
for the trade, as long conducted, and even
causes the accusation of criminality to re-
bound upon the heads of those who are now
the bitterest assailants of US and slavery !!
From 1920, the time the first cargo. of
slaves was landed in the American colonies
and that at Jamestown, Virginia-to the
prohibition of the African slave trade by
law in 1908, the agency has been, to a
great degree, foreign, and to greater ex-
tent Northern, and thus indicating that the
completely of the Southern States, in the
origin and conducting of the slave trade,
was very limited. Space would fail US to
speak of the participation in this trade by
the Dutch and Spaniards and Portuguese,
and hence, we only refer to England as a
foreign participant in it-and just in point,
is the language Of Bancroft: "Before
America legislated for herself the interdict
of the slave trade was impossible. Eng
land was inexorable in maintaining the
system, which gained new and stronger sup
porters by its excess. English Continental
Colonies, in the aggregate, were always op-
posed to the African slave trade.
Maryland, Virginia and Carolina, each
showed an anxious preference for the in-
production of white men and laws, de-
signed to restrict the importation of slaves,
are scattered copiously all along the records
of Colonial legislation. The New England
and other Northern States, took part in the
traffic, as we'll as approved it by law, at an
early date. In 164l Massachusetts recog-
nized, among her "fundamental'' laws, ne
gro slavery and the African slave trade, and
she with Georgia and South Carolina urged
its continuance until 1903. Connecticut,
in 1850, ordered the troublesome 'sIndiaDs
to be seized, AMI either to be made serve,
or be shipped out and exchanged for ne
groes, as the case will justly bear" Rhode
Island surpassed all New England in the
proportional number of her slaves, and she
had 81 vessels engaged in the slave trade
in 1907. New York had an interest in