How far the effluvia of the
slave-ship will be wafted, into what strange latitudes of temperance
and sturdy independence, even to the privacy of solemn and high-minded
thought! A nation can pass through epochs of the black-death, and
recover and improve its average health; but does a people ever
completely rally from this blackest death of all?
[Footnote E: _Latter-Day Pamphlets_, No. I. pp. 32, 34; No. II. pp. 23,
25, 47; No. III. p. 3. "And you, Quashee, my pumpkin, idle Quashee,
I say you must get the Devil sent away from your elbow, my poor dark
friend!" We say amen to that, with the reserved privilege of designating
the Devil. "Ware that Colonial Sand-bank! Starboard now, the Nigger
Question!" Starboard it is!]
The Guinea trader brought to San Domingo in the course of eighty years
representatives of almost every tribe upon the west coast of Africa and
of its interior for hundreds of miles. Many who were thus brought were
known only by the names of their obscure neighborhoods; they mingled
their shade of color and of savage custom with the blood of a new Creole
nation of slaves. With these unwilling emigrants the vast areas of
Africa ran together into the narrow plains at the end of a small island;
affinity and difference were alike obedient to the whip of the overseer,
whose law was profit, and whose method cruelty, in making this strange
people grow.
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