other lands, was the first government, from barbaric ages down, in which, by a solemn Constitution, slavery was encircled with, and maintained by, all the power of the state. You are perhaps unacquainted with the historical events preceding the Rebellion. Their dark shadow can be traced as far back as the invention of the cotton-gin. Time and opportunity will not permit me to dilate at length upon the statesmanlike policy which the leaders of the Republican party adopted in favor of the abolition of slavery, nor to recount to you in sufficiently glowing terms how that party rose with the battle-cry of freedom almost to imperial power. Hereafter I will direct your attention to the history of the Republican party as it has been faithfully recorded by one of her noblest sons."
The Chief Justice paused, and the student made a passing inquiry as to the immediate authors of the civil war. Considering a moment, and towering, as was his wont, far above the mere prejudices of the political rabble which infest the party plains below, he exclaimed:
"Goaded nigh to madness by the irrepressible-conflict doctrines of the high-priests of the Republican party respecting the equality of man, North, South, East, and West sent up the cry, 'To arms! To arms!' Then, as if from infernal caverns, sprang civil war. In the midst of its bloody throes the Emancipation Proclamation was sent forth , and before the on-looking populations of the globe, which watched with breathless interest the unnatural strife, that crime against human nature, doomed slavery, met its fate,—
'Was, with its chains and human yoke,
Blown hellwards by the cannon's mouth,
While Freedom cheered behind the smoke.'
"But you are not to understand from this confession, sir, that slavery in the nineteenth century was an exclusively American crime," said the Chief Justice. "For, as a student of history, you must know that during the first ten years of this century, in the face of the civilized world, three hundred thousand Africans were conveyed in English bottoms across the Atlantic, fully one-half of whom perished from atrocious treatment during
