C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874.

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In the winter of 1620, the Mayflower landed its precious cargo at Plymouth rock. This small band, cheered by the valedictory prayers of the Puritan pastor, John Robinson, braved sea and wilderness for the sake of liberty. In this inspiration our Commonwealth began. That same year another cargo, of another character, was landed at Jamestown, in Virginia. It was nineteen slaves,—the first that ever touched and darkened our soil. Never in history was greater contrast. There was the Mayflower, filled with men,—intelligent, conscientious, prayerful,—all braced to hardy industry, who, before landing, united in a written compact by which they constituted themselves a “civil body politic,” bound “to frame just and equal laws.” And there was the slave-ship, with its fetters, its chains, its bludgeons, and its whips, with its wretched victims,—forerunners of the long agony of the slave-trade, —and with its wretched tyrants, rude, ignorant, and profane,

who had learn'd their only prayers
From curses,

and who carried in their hold the barbarous slavery whose single object is to compel labor without wages, which no just and equal laws can sanction.

‘Thus in the same year,’ says Charles Sumner, ‘began two mighty influences; and these two influences still prevail far and wide throughout the country. But they have met at last in final grapple; and you and I are partakers in this holy conflict. The question is simply between the Mayflower and the slave-ship.’

Beginning with the first importation of Africans in 1620 (nineteen), we find their increase till 1790, slave and free, amounting to 757,363. From 1790 (first census) to 1860 (eighth census), slave and free, 4,441,730. It is and will always remain impossible to determine the number of the African race whose ashes sleep in our soil; but, applying the ratio of increase from 1790 to 1860 to the period undetermined, it is easy to approximate the number. My most careful estimate renders it certain that the number of persons of African descent who have died in our country cannot fall short of eight millions and a half, or nearly twice as many as are now living.

Thus we roll up the figures to thirteen millions, living and (lead, each one of whom has felt the blighting curse of slavery,—more or less of the miseries and degradation which are its legitimate and inevitable consequences!

This is the immolation; and it is the most appalling and stupendous