When

was pushed forward by hand, from the woods we had. just carried, and the contents of six cannons were hurled into the flank of Lee's brigade, and for a moment the duel was veiled from us by the smoke. it cleared up again, both lines had disappeared. The enemy had at last been forced to retire, and the handful remaining of the Union band were withdrawn from their advanced position. Both armies rested on their arms during the next day-the 18th-and, leaving his dead and severely wounded in our hands, Lee retreated beyond the Potomac that night. I had an opportunity for examining the ground upon which the two brigades just mentioned fought their battle, when we moved forward on the morning of the 19th. Their lines were easily distinguished, for the "grey" and "blue," in parallels, within short musket range of each other, were calm and cold in death.

The best blood in America discoloured the banks of Antietam Creek. Mothers and widows would weep, and children would cry for bread through the cruel work done on the cornfields of Maryland during these September days of '62. But the cause of all this shall be removed. A well-steeled axe, in the mighty grasp of Lincoln, is already levelled at the Upas tree that for ages has cursed Columbia.

CHAPTER IX.

SLAVERY.-EMANCIPATION.

"The greatest nation is that which does most for humanity.'

"For what avail

The plough and sail,

Or land or life,

If freedom fail?"

CHARLES SUMNER.

EMERSON.

H

UMAN slavery is as old as Noah: and its advocates in America were wont to furnish passages from the Bible to prove that it was recognised in the word of God, and was, therefore, a sacred thing, entitled to receive the sanction and protection of law and civilised society. The wandering Arabs of the African desert have perpetuated slavery from the time of Ismael. Africa has been the hot-bed of this human disgrace from the earliest history-a never-failing market whence Europe and America were supplied with black slaves.

There can be little doubt but what slavery is the result of war and conquest. Savage chiefs found it more profitable to sell their captives into bondage than to put them to death. Nor was the system confined to savages. It was practised by Plutarch's men. Philip of Macedonia, and his great son, Alexander, sold their prisoners of war. Fabius reduced 30,000 of the citizens of Tarentum into servitude. The accomplished Camillus paid the Roman ladies for the jewels they presented to Apollo with the proceeds of the sale of his Etrurian captives. And Cæsar sold into slavery upwards of 50,000 men captured in warfare.

Slaves and quadrupeds were accounted equals, by the ancients, in contemplation of law. Neither were the people of America, in the nineteenth century of Christian light and love, much in advance of the citizens of ancient Greece and Rome, else ChiefJustice Taney had never delivered the "Dred Scott decision;" a judicial utterance which denied to the negro a right to be heard in the Supreme Court, when his liberty was at stake; and which reproduced, with commendation, the barbarous creed of more barbarous ages-viz., that the negro "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." The Chief-Justice pronounced this opinion as "fixed and universal; an axiom in morals as well as in politics."

Spaniards and Portuguese introduced slavery into Europe long before Columbus discovered America:

and we find traces of the institution in the land, "where freedom broadens slowly down," as early as the reign of Alfred the Great. A statute of that period provided that "the purchase of a man, a horse, or an ox, without a voucher to warrant the sale, was strictly prohibited." Queen Elizabeth swept away the remaining traces of this atrocity from English soil in 1574; and towards this Island of the Sea the friends of freedom, all over the world, for ages have turned their faces for sympathy and support: nor turned they here in vain. The chorus of Liberty was swelled by the voices of Clarkson, and Wilberforce, and Fox; and under the Premiership of Earl Grey complete emancipation by compensation was effected in the British Colonies. Americans were acquainted with this brilliant page of history. Sumner, and Whittier, and Phillips turned to England, never doubting for the moral support of her men of influence, when the Slave Power in the United States sought to establish a Slaveholders' Government upon the ruins of the American Union. What did they witness? Leaders in English politics-men professing Liberal principles, forsooth-stepping down from the pedestals of statesmen to become the pettifoggers and special pleaders of the Government established upon slavery as its corner-stone. But Bright, and Cobden, and Cowen, supported by the people, "kept the bridge," and saved the English name from disgrace.

The "Mayflower," with her precious cargo of

Puritans-men and women of learning, piety, and heroism-reached the shores of New England during the winter of 1620. In the month of August of the same year, a Dutch ship entered the James River, having on board twenty African slaves. They were purchased by the Virginia colonists; and they and their offspring were held in perpetual bondage. The twenty Africans landed upon the shores of Chesapeake Bay formed the germ of negro slavery in America, which, under the fostering care and royal protection of Queen Anne and her successors, rapidly grew until its poisonous branches. cast a dark, defiant shadow all over the land. Trade in rice, cotton, and tobacco on the one side, and in the luxuries of life on the other, between the Southern Colonies and the Mother Country, grew rapidly into an important profitable commerce. Slave labour brought riches and ease in its train. The stamp of aristocracy followed the possession of droves of negroes, as in Europe that distinction is accorded to the owners of broad acres: and slavery became fashionable. The foremost men in the Colonies were, however, decidedly opposed to the institution. Jefferson, in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, arraigned the English King for forcing an "execrable commerce," traffic in men from Africa, upon his American Colonies. But the clause was "struck out," says the illustrious author, "in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had