The Battle of Principles | Page 4

built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for the
kidnapping of African slaves, and the sale of these men to the sugar and
cotton planters of the West Indies and of America. Even the stories of
the gold and diamond fields of South Africa and Alaska have had less
power to inflame men's minds than the stories of the black men in the
forests of Africa, every one of whom was good for twenty guineas.
The London of 1700 experienced a boom in slave stocks as the London
of 1900 in rubber stocks. Merchants and captains, after a few years'
absence, returned to London to buy houses, carriages and gold plate,
and by their political largesses to win the title of baronet, and even
seats in the House of Lords. This illusion of gold finally fell upon the
throne itself, and King William and Queen Mary lent the traffic royal
patronage. At the very time when men in Boston, exultant over the
success of their experiment in democracy, were writing home to
London about this ideal republic of God that had been set up at
Plymouth, and the orb of liberty began to flame with light and hope for
New England, this other orb began to fling out its rays of sorrow,
disease and death across Africa and the southern sands.
At length, in 1713, Queen Anne, in the Treaty of Utrecht, after a long
and arduous series of diplomatic negotiations, secured for the English
throne a monopoly of the slave traffic, and the writers of the time spoke
of this treaty as an event that would make the queen's name to be
eulogized as long as time should last. But two hundred years have
reversed the judgment of the civilized world. History now recalls
Queen Anne's monopoly of the slave traffic as it recalls the Black
Death in England, the era of smallpox in Scotland,--for one such treaty
is probably equal to two bubonic plagues, or three epidemics of cholera
and yellow fever.

Finally, an informal agreement was entered upon between the English
slave dealers, the Spaniards and Portuguese,--an agreement that was
literally a "covenant with death and a compact with hell." The
Portuguese became the explorers of the interior, the advance agents of
the traffic, who reported what tribes had the tallest, strongest men, and
the most comely women. The Spaniards maintained the slave stations
on the coast, and took over from the Portuguese the gangs of slaves
who were chained together and driven down to the coast; the English
slave dealers owned the ships, bought the slaves at wholesale,
transported the wretches across the sea, and retailed the poor creatures
to the planters of the various colonies. Between 1620 and 1770 three
million slaves were driven in gangs down to the African seacoast, and
transported to the colonies. At this time some of the greatest houses in
London, Lisbon and Madrid were founded, and some of the greatest
family names were established during these one hundred and fifty years
when the slave traffic was most prosperous. De Bau thinks that another
250,000 slaves perished during the voyages across the sea. For the
eighteenth century was a century of cruelty as well as gold,--of crime
and art,--of murderous hate and increasing commerce. If the prophet
Daniel had been describing the Spain, Portugal and England of that
time, he would have portrayed them as an image of mud and gold,--but
chiefly mud. Little wonder that Thomas Jefferson, in his "Notes on
Virginia," treating of the influence and possible consequences of
slavery, wrote, "Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that
God is just." As England anchored war-ships in the harbour of
Shanghai, and forced the opium traffic upon China, so she forced the
slave traffic upon the American colonies by gun and cannon. The story
of the English kings who crowded slavery upon the South makes up
one of the blackest pages in the history of a country that has been like
unto a sower who went forth to sow with one hand the good seed of
liberty and justice, while with the other she sowed the tares of slavery
and oppression.
From the very beginning, the climate and the general atmosphere of the
North was unfriendly to slavery, just as the cotton, sugar and indigo, as
well as the warm climate of the South encouraged slave labour. At first,
neither Boston nor New York associated wrong with the custom of

buying and using slave labour. And when, after a short time, opposition
began to develop, this antagonism to slavery was based upon economic,
rather than upon moral considerations.
Jonathan Edwards was our great theologian, but at the very time that
Jonathan Edwards was writing his "Freedom of the Will" and preaching
his revival sermons on "Sinners in the