The Fall of the Confederacy. 609 
cipation of the West India negroes. Was America, where 
men of the English race had set up the banner of; liberty 
when they had gone forth from home and country rather 
than live under the yoke of oppression, to be uninfluenced 
by these events ? Was America, whose political constitution 
was declared in the preamble to be founded on the equal 
and inalienable rights of man to be unaffected by the pro- 
gress of freedom and civilization, that had in other lands 
freed the sons of Africa from pre-historic and unbroken 
bondage? In America the task was so tremendous that at 
the outset only a chosen few thought it accomplishable. Yet 
the men who set up the banner of emancipation in America 
have lived to behold their cause triumph. How could the 
Confederate administration so ignore the signs of the times ? 
Had they not heard of “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and how the 
author of that book received an ovation in Europe that an 
imperial victor might have envied? Did they not notice 
the development of the abolition party in the North, and 
how that party had become the right hand and the soul of 
the dominant party ? No doubt the Confederate adminis- 
tration knew these things, though they did not appreciate 
their significance. They did not comprehend that to effec- 
tually resist the abolition of negro slavery would be to 
triumph over Christianity itself; for the religion that makes 
all men equal before God is the uncompromising foe of the 
enslavement of man by man. Yet the Confederate ad- 
ministration did unconsciously pay homage to the spirit 
of the age. The Confederate constitution prohibited the 
slave trade. This wasa blow at negro slavery. It wasa 
condemnation and a brand analogous in principle to that of 
the Northern abolitionists, who insisted that the area of 
negro slavery should be limited to the then existing boun- 
daries, and should not be extended into the territories of 
the Union. The Southern slaveholders felt the sting of 
this prohibition. Verily it was a dire insult to and assault 
on the institution. If it was wrong to hold negroes in 
slavery in the territories, it must have been wrong to keep 
negroes enslaved in the States. But it was not perceived 
except by a few ultra advocates of negro slavery that to 
forbid the slave trade was not less a dire insult to and an 
assault on the institution. If it was wrong to enslave 
negroes it could not be right to keep negroes enslaved. 
There were a few persons in the South who believed in 
the abstract right of negro slavery, and they were incensed 
with the anti-slave-trade clauses of the Confederate Con- 
