Page:The landmark of freedom.djvu/15

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effeminate India, slavery has been condemned. In Constantinople, the queenly seat of the most powerful Mohammedan empire, where barbarism still mingles with civilization, the Ottoman Sultan has fastened upon it the stigma of disapprobation. The Barbary States of Africa, occupying the same parallels of latitude with the Slave States of our Union, and resembling them in the nature of their boundaries, their productions, their climate, and the "peculiar institution," which sought shelter in both, have been changed into Abolitionists. Algiers, seated on the line of 36° 30', has been dedicated to freedom. Morocco, by its untutored ruler, has expressed its desire, stamped in the formal terms of a treaty, that the very name of slavery may perish from the minds of men; and only recently, from the Dey of Tunis has proceeded that noble act, by which, "In honor of God, and to distinguish man from the brute creation"—I quote his own words—he decreed its total abolition throughout his dominions. Let Christian America be willing to be taught by these examples. God forbid that our Republic—"heir of all the ages, foremost in the files of time"—should adopt anew the barbarism which they have renounced.

As the effort now making is extraordinary in character, so no assumption seems too extraordinary to be wielded in its support. The primal truth of the Equality of Men, as proclaimed in our Declara-