[Footnote D:  Law of La.  Martin’s Digest, 610.]

[Footnote E:  Law of La.  Act of July 7, 1806.  Martin’s Digest, 610-12.]

We now proceed to examine various objections which will doubtless be set in array against all the foregoing conclusions.

OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.

The advocates of slavery find themselves at their wits end in pressing the Bible into their service.  Every movement shows them hard-pushed.  Their ever-varying shifts, their forced constructions, and blind guesswork, proclaim both their cause desperate, and themselves.  The Bible defences thrown around slavery by professed ministers of the Gospel, do so torture common sense, Scripture, and historical facts it were hard to tell whether absurdity, fatuity, ignorance, or blasphemy, predominates in the compound; each strives so lustily for the mastery it may be set down a drawn battle.  How often has it been bruited that the color of the negro is the Cain-mark, propagated downward.  Cain’s posterity started an opposition to the ark, forsooth, and rode out the flood with flying streamers!  Why should not a miracle be wrought to point such an argument, and fill out for slaveholders a Divine title-deed, vindicating the ways of God to man?

OBJECTION 1.  “Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.”  Gen. ix. 25.

This prophecy of Noah is the vade mecum of slaveholders, and they never venture abroad without it; it is a pocket-piece for sudden occasion, a keepsake to dote over, a charm to spell-bind opposition, and a magnet to draw around their standard “whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie.”  But “cursed be Canaan” is a poor drug to ease a throbbing conscience—­a mocking lullaby, to unquiet tossings, and vainly crying “Peace be still,” where God wakes war, and breaks his thunders.  Those who justify negro slavery by the curse of Canaan, assume all the points in debate. (1.) That slavery was prophesied rather than mere service to others, and individual bondage rather than national subjection and tribute. (2.) That the prediction of crime justifies it; at least absolving those whose crimes fulfill it, if not transforming the crimes into virtues.  How piously the Pharoahs might have quoted the prophecy "Thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and they shall afflict there four hundred years." And then, what saints were those that crucified the Lord of glory! (3.) That the Africans are descended from Canaan.  Whereas Africa was peopled from Egypt and Ethiopia, and they were settled by Mizraim and Cush.  For the location and boundaries of Canaan’s posterity, see Gen. x. 15-19.  So a prophecy of evil to one people, is quoted to justify its infliction upon another.  Perhaps it may be argued that Canaan includes all Ham’s posterity.  If so, the prophecy is yet unfulfilled.