“This, however, is unquestionably true:  as human nature is, we would not choose to give men unlimited power over their fellow-men who are slaves.  If, in the course of events, it is found by good men that the abuses flowing from such power are inevitable, that legislative enactments and public opinion cannot control the relation, their consciences will not be quiet till it is abolished.  I am willing to confide this to men as good as we, acting as they will on their responsibility to God.  It may be, that the system, stripped of everything which can be taken away, will be perpetuated, for the best good of the slave and his master.

“But,” said I, “while this perpetual relation of the black race to us is possible, and may be the design of a benevolent God for our happiness and that of the Africans, and while I love to use it in replying to those who, with short-sighted and somewhat passionate reasoning, as I think, contend that slavery must utterly be rooted out of the land, I confess that my own thoughts turn to the Continent of Africa as the great object for which an all-wise God has permitted slavery to exist on our shores.

“I love to look at American slavery in connection with the future history of that great African continent, containing one hundred and fifty millions of people.  History and discovered relics make the Ethiopian race to be older even than Egypt.  The once powerful nations of Northern Africa, Numidia, Mauratania, as well as the Egyptian builders of pyramids, have disappeared, or they exist only in a few Coptic tribes; and even they are of doubtful origin.  But the Ethiopian people, notwithstanding the slave-trade which has extended its degrading influence far and wide among them, and though civilization long since departed from their tribes, have continued to increase till now they are the most numerous of the human families except the Chinese.  The slave-holding nations which have pillaged them forages, have not been able to destroy them.  Ethiopia may well say, stretching out her hands to God, ’Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves.’  It is sublime to think what triumphs of redemption there are yet to be on that African continent.  But how little, apparently, from all that they ever say, do some of our abolitionist friends seem to think about Africa as a future jewel in Immanuel’s diadem!  Utterly foreign from all their thoughts appears to be the great plan of Providence which by means even of slavery in this land, has done so much to extend the work of human salvation among the African race.  And there are some ministers of the Gospel and professed Christians, I regret to observe, who reply to all that you say about the vast proportion, to white converts, of converts among the colored people, in a manner which would awaken great fears in the most charitable breast with regard to their own personal interest in the salvation by Christ, did we not all know how far we may be blinded by passion.  If you visit in the South, you will find that African missions take the deepest hold on the hearts of Southern Christians.  The time will come, God hasten it! when they and we will be united in plans and efforts for the good of the African race.