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

[478] pages of prophecy before the events took place. God alone writes history before it happens. Both records are so clear that he who runs may read; and the wise and good man who reads either will run to rescue his country from the curse which God has chained to the chariot-wheels even of the mightiest empires which dare to make war on the eternal principles of justice which support his empire.

Go where we will, from the Pillars of Hercules to the gates of the Oriental morning,—

Rude fragments now
Lie scatter'd where the shapely column stood.
Their palaces are dust.

Journey through the home of the Saracens,—a race of scholars and warriors,—

Dead Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps:
     Her stones of emptiness remain;
Around her sculptured mystery sweeps
     The lonely waste of Edom's plain.

Unchanged the awful lithograph
     Of power and glory undertrod,—
Of nations scatter'd like the chaff
     Blown from the threshing-floor of God.

Let us calculate the debt which America owes to Africa. We can reach something like an approximation to the number of Africans or Africano-Americans who have lived and died on our soil. We do not propose to enumerate any considerable portion of the wrongs we have inflicted on that people,—how many we stole from their homes,—how many perished in the passage,—how many cruelties and indignities they and their descendants have suffered, and are suffering to this hour. That were a work for which any created being would find himself unequal. It will be found to occupy no inconsiderable space in the records of the last tribunal before which the human race will be cited to appear.

We will therefore determine, as accurately as we can, how many lives Africa has offered up for this nation. But first let us glance at the origin of slavery in the United States. We borrow a striking passage from the classic and powerful pen of Senator Sumner, who has probably investigated the whole African question, in all its relations, more profoundly than any other man living,--certainly more so than any other American. In one of his orations he draws the following picturesque and starting contrast;—