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[275] their most primitive stages-each in a phase not. seen at Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans.

Before the war broke out, all Negroes living on the Indian soil were slaves. They were the property of Creek and Choctaw, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Cherokee — the five nations which are said to be “reclaimed from their savage state.” Their lot was hard, their suffering sharp; no harder lot, no sharper suffering, known on earth. In other places servitude is softened by some tie of race, of language, or of creed. At Pekin the slaves and their masters are of one colour; at Cairo they speak the same language; at Rio they worship a common God; but in these Indian wastes, a Negro had neither the same features, the same phrases, nor the same covenants with his savage lord; no common interest in the present world, no common hope in that which is to come.

Can mind of man conceive a lot in life more wretched than that of being a Red man's slave?

To be a White man's thrall was bad enough; but on the worst plantation in Georgia and Alabama there were elements of tenderness and justice never to be found in the best of Cherokee and Seminole

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