every three imported. Hence the claim that the American Negro is a new
race, built up on this soil, rests upon an ample supply of facts. The
American slave was born in our civilization, fed upon good American
food, housed and clothed on a civilized plan, taught the arts and
language of civilization, acquired necessarily ideas of law and
liberty, and by 1860 was well on the road toward fitness for freedom.
No lessons therefore drawn from the emancipation of British slaves in
the West Indies are of any direct value to us, inasmuch as British
slavery was not like American slavery, the British freedman was in no
sense the equal of the American freedman, and the circumstances
surrounding the emancipation of the British slave had nothing of the
inspiring and ennobling character with those connected with the
breaking of the American Negro's chains. Yet, superior as the American
Negro was as a slave, he was very far below the standard of American
citizenship as subsequent events conclusively proved. The best form of
slavery, even though it may lead toward fitness for freedom, can never
be regarded as a fit school in which to graduate citizens of so
magnificent an empire as the United States.

The slave of 1860 was perhaps, all things considered, the best slave
the world had ever seen, if we except those who served the Hebrews
under the Mosaic statutes. While there was no such thing among them as
legal marriage or legitimate childhood, yet slave "families" were
recognized even on the auction block, and after emancipation legal
family life was erected generally upon relationships which had been
formed in slavery. Bishop Gaines, himself born a slave of slave
parents, says: "The Negro had no civil rights under the codes of the
Southern States. It was often the case, it is true, that the marriage
ceremony was performed, and thousands of couples regarded it, and
observed it as of binding force, and were as true to each other as if