blacks; but we do assert that they are as moral, peaceable, and
industrious as that class of the whites who are, like them, in indigent
circumstances--and far less intemperate than the great body of foreign
immigrants who infest and corrupt our shores." This idea of the natural
equality of the races he presented in the _Genius_ a few weeks before
with Darwinian breadth in the following admirable sentences: "I deny the
postulate that God has made, by an irreversible decree, or any inherent
qualities, one portion of the human race superior to another. No matter
how many breeds are amalgamated--no matter how many shades of color
intervene between tribes or nations give them the same chances to
improve, and a fair start at the same time, and the result will be
equally brilliant, equally productive, equally grand."

At the same time that he was making active, personal acquaintance with
the free colored people, he was making actual personal acquaintance with
the barbarism of slavery also. "The distinct application of a whip, and
the shrieks of anguish" of the slave, his residence in Baltimore had
taught him was "nothing uncommon" in that city. Such an instance had
come to him while in the street where the office of the _Genius_ was
located. It was what was occurring at almost all hours of the day and in
almost all parts of the town. He had not been in Baltimore a month when
he saw a specimen of the brutality of slavery on the person of a negro,
who had been mercilessly flogged. On his back were thirty-seven gashes
made with a cowskin, while on his head were many bruises besides. It was
a Sunday morning, fresh from his terrible punishment, that the poor
fellow had found the editors of the _Genius_, who, with the compassion
of brothers, took him in, dressed his wounds, and cared for him for two
days. Such an experience was no new horror to Lundy, but it was
doubtless Garrison's first lesson in that line, and it sank many fathoms
deep into his heart.