others were deeply engaged in it, but none of these countries more so than was America, and America's record in the slave-trade is quite as foul, shameless and abominable as that of any other nation on earth, during the time it lasted. In the present volume I shall have nothing to say of the subject of slavery in the far East, where in many places it still exists, as it does in many parts of Africa among the negroes, nor shall I refer, except ever so lightly, to the slave-trade of Great Britain and other European Countries which plied it. My main object in introducing it at all is to picture with the greatest possible clearness to the reader, the character of the negroes that were brought over to America as slaves; their mental, moral and physical natures; their sex; their numbers; the treatment they received in the way of fitting them or unfitting them for colonization; and how the slave-trade was conducted and how it was brought to an end. Of all these questions the far most important one is, what kind of people; what kind of stock were these negroes? This point has been almost entirely ignored by the so-called twentieth-century leaders among the negroes in the United States. And, naturally so. This is seen both in their published works as well as in their addresses and teachings. A few exceptions to this rule, however, occur, and these exceptions are met with in the writings of those with very little negro blood in them. Such works are by no means tasteful to the authors of deeper dye.
So far as we can ascertain from recorded history the first African slaves landed in the United States, were brought there by the Dutch in August 1619. John Rolfe, the husband of Pocahontas, was in Jamestown
