George Bancroft, History of the Colonization of the United States, Vol. 1, 17th edition.

[164] captive infidel was treated in Christendom with corre-

Chap. V.}

sponding intolerance. In the days of the crusaders, and in the camp of the leader whose pious arms redeemed the sepulchre of Christ from the mixed nations of Asia and Lybia, the price of a war-horse was three slaves. The Turks, whose law forbids the enslaving of a Mahometan, still continue to sell Christian captives; and we have seen, that the father of Virginia had himself tasted the bitterness of Turkish bondage.

All this might have had no influence on the destinies of America, but for the long and doubtful struggles between Christians and Moors in the west of Europe; where, for more than seven centuries, and in more than three thousand battles, the two religions were arrayed against each other; and bondage was the reciprocal doom of the captive. Bigotry inflamed revenge, and animated the spirit of merciless and exterminating warfare. France and Italy were filled with Saracen slaves; the number of them sold into Christian bondage exceeded the number of all the Christians ever sold by the pirates of Barbary. The clergy, who had pleaded successfully for the Christian, felt no sympathy for the unbeliever. The final victory of the Spaniards over the Moors of Granada—an event contemporary with the discovery of America—was signalized by a great emigration of the Moors to the coasts of Northern Africa, where each mercantile city became a nest of pirates, and every Christian the wonted booty of the successful corsair Servitude was thus the doom of the Christian in Northern Africa: the hatred of the Moorish dominion extending to all Africa, an indiscriminate and retaliating bigotry felt no remorse at dooming the sons of Africa to bondage. All Africans were esteemed as Moors.