Charles Sumner

Reason, courage, and hope are our allies, while the bountiful agencies of Civilization open the way.

Under such combined influences men will not only know and do, but they will feel also; so that knowledge in all its departments, and life in all its activities, will have the triumphant inspiration of Human Brotherhood.

The pioneer intelligence of Europe going to blend with the gentleness of Africa will be a blessed sight, but not more blessed than the gentleness of Africa returning to blend with that same intelligence at home.

But it may be according to the same Providence, that the gentler people, elevated in knowledge, will teach their teachers what knowledge alone cannot impart, and the African shall more than repay all that he receives.

It is easy to picture another age, when the virtues which ennoble the African will return to bless the people who now discredit him, and Christianity will receive a new development.

The African, more than the European, is formed by Nature for the Christian graces.

How often has he returned the harshness of his master with care and protection!

What modern slave-master has taught the Latin like Juan Latino at Seville, in Spain,--written it like Capitein at the Hague, or Williams at Jamaica,--gained academic honors like those accorded to Amo by the University of Wittenberg?

The apologist for Caste will be astonished to know, but it is none the less true, that the capacity of the African in scholarship and science is better attested than that of anybody claiming to be his master.

The man thus portrayed was an African, whose only school was Slavery.

When studied where he is chiefly seen,--not in the affairs of government, but in daily life,--the African awakens attachment and respect.

Toussaint l’Ouverture is the actual standard by which the African must be judged.

Call it high-water mark, if you will; but this is the true line for judgment, and not the low-water mark of Slavery, which is always adopted by the apologists for Caste.

The height that he reached is the measure of his people.

The name borne by this remarkable person as slave was Toussaint, but his success in forcing an opening everywhere secured for him the addition of “l’Ouverture,” making his name Toussaint l’Ouverture, Toussaint the Opening, by which he…

But it is in a slave of the West Indies, whose parents were stolen from Africa, that we find an example of genius and wisdom, courage and character, with all the elements of general and ruler.

The story of the African in our late war would be another chapter, awakening kindred emotion.

Their story, transferred to Greece or Rome, would be a much-admired chapter, from which youth would derive new passion for Liberty.

Nowhere in history was the heroical character more conspicuous than in our fugitive slaves.

But among those transported to this hemisphere heroes have not been wanting.

And yet his story is not without passages which quicken admiration and give assurance for the Future,--at times melting to tenderness, and at times inspiring to rage, that these children of God, with so much of His best gifts, should be so…

His life has been a Dead Sea, where apples of Sodom floated.

No kindly influences have surrounded his home; no voice of encouragement has cheered his path; no prospect of trust or honor has awakened his ambition.

Meanwhile left to savage life, he has been a perpetual victim, hunted down at home to feed the bloody maw of Slavery, and then transported to another hemisphere, always a slave.

The African has not stolen fire; no Cadmus has brought letters to him; no Roman civilization has been extended over his continent.