CHAPTER I.

THE UNITY OF MANKIND.

THE BIBLICAL ARGUMENT.--ONE RACE AND ONE LANGUAGE.--ONE
BLOOD.--THE CURSE OF CANAAN.


During the last half-century, many writers on ethnology, anthropology,
and slavery have strenuously striven to place the Negro outside of the
human family; and the disciples of these teachers have endeavored to
justify their views by the most dehumanizing treatment of the Negro.
But, fortunately for the Negro and for humanity at large, we live now
in an epoch when race malice and sectional hate are disappearing
beneath the horizon of a brighter and better future. The Negro in
America is free. He is now an acknowledged factor in the affairs of
the continent; and no community, state, or government, in this period
of the world's history, can afford to be indifferent to his moral,
social, intellectual, or political well-being.

It is proposed, in the first place, to call the attention to the
absurd charge that the Negro does not belong to the human family.
Happily, there are few left upon the face of the earth who still
maintain this belief.

In the first chapter of the Book of Genesis it is clearly stated that
"God created man," "male and female created he them;"[1] that "the
Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his