In practice, we are where we were then; in spirit, there are proofs that we have gone backward.

There are now on the surface of the globe two conspicuous places,--places which are attracting the gaze of the whole civilized world,--whither men and women are brought from great distances to be sold, and whence they are carried to great…

One of these places is the coast of Africa, which is among the most pagan and benighted regions of the earth; the other is the District of Columbia, the capital and seat of government of the United States.

By authority of Congress, the city of Washington is the Congo of America.

The very slaves upon whom we have trodden have risen above us, and their moral superiority makes our conduct ignominious.

Not Europeans only, not only Arabians and Turks, are emerging from the inhumanity and the enormities of the slave traffic; but even our own slaves, transplanted to the land of their fathers, are raising barriers against the spread of this…

On the shores of Africa, a republic is springing up, whose inhabitants were transplanted from this Egypt of bondage.

And now, look at the government which these slaves and descendants of slaves have established, and contrast it with our own.

They discard the institution of slavery, while we cherish it.

A far greater proportion of their children than of the white children of the slave states of this Union are at school.

In the metropolis of their nation, their flag does not protect the slave traffic, nor wave over the slave mart.

Would to God that the very opposite of this were not true of our own!

Their laws punish the merchandise of human beings; our laws sanction and encourage it.

We open market-places here, at the centre of the nation, where, from seven hundred miles of coast, the sellers may come to sell, and where buyers may come to buy, and whence slaves are carried almost as far from their birthplace as Africa…

Virginia and Maryland are to the slave trade what the interior of Africa once was.

The Potomac and the Chesapeake are the American Niger and Bight of Benin; while this District is the great government barracoon, whence coffles are driven across the country to Alabama or Texas, as slave ships once bore their dreadful…

Let us look, first, at the philosophy of this notion, and then at its morality.

Now, the slightest reflection shows that this assumption has no basis of truth.

Not one of them all would now have been in existence, if their ancestors had not been brought to this country.

And how infinitely absurd and ridiculous is the plea that the slaves are better off here “than THEY would have been in Africa”!

Take them all,--mulatto, mestizo, zambo, and all “the vast variety of man,” so far as color is concerned,--and if they had not their existence here, they would have had it in Africa!

No, not one of these three millions of men, women, and children, would have been in existence in Africa.

They have been added unnecessarily and remorselessly to the amount of human guilt and suffering for which the white race must answer in the day of account.

The idea, then, of sending the slaves back to their country is an egregious fallacy.

So far from facilitating the increase of individual or national wealth, slavery retards both.