White, Red, Black, Sketches of American Society in the United States, by F. and T. Pulszky Volume 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1853 Excerpt: ... APPENDIX. I. CHANCELLOR HARPER'S VINDICATION OF SLAVERY. The Southerners used to complain that not only the character of their peculiar institution is misrepresented abroad, but that even their views on the subject are utterly ignored in the free States and in Europe. As a friend of fair-play, I think it, therefore, my duty to give an extract of Chancellor Harper's Memoirs on Slavery, which I have curtailed only so far as its bulk exceeded the limits of the space I could allow it in a publication on America, and not exclusively on the South. Amongst the numerous defences of slavery, which I met with in the Union, I have found the following one of the most able: The institution of domestic slavery exists over far the greater portion of the inhabited earth. Until within a very few centuries, it may be said to have existed over the whole earth--at least in all those portions of it which had made any advances toward civilization. We might safely conclude, then, that it is deeply founded in the nature of man and the exigencies of human society. Yet in the few countries in which it has been abolished, claiming, perhaps justly, to be farthest advanced in civilization and intelligence, but which have had the smallest opportunity of observing its true character and effects, it is denounced as the most intolerable of social and political evils. Its existence, and every hour of its continuance, is regarded as the crime of the communities in which it is found. Even by those in the countries alluded to, who regard it with the most indulgence or the least abhorrence, who attribute no criminality Jo the present generation, who found it in existence, and have not yet been able to devise the means of abolishing it--it is pronounced a misfortune, and a curse injurious an...