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20
’TIS SIXTY YEARS SINCE

tional census, is deceptive,—that in point of fact, the Ethiop in America is incurring the doom which has ever befallen those of an inferior and less advanced race when brought in direct and immediate contact, necessarily and inevitably competitive, with the more advanced, the more masterful, and intellectually the more gifted. In other words, those of the less advanced race have a fatal aptitude for contracting the vices, both moral and physical, of the superior race, in the end leading to destruction; while the capacity for assimilating the elevating qualities and attributes which constitute a saving grace is denied them. Elimination, therefore, became in Haskell's belief a question of time only,—the law of the survival of the fittest would assert itself. The tune required may be long,—numbered by centuries; but, however remotely, it nevertheless would come. God's mill grinds slowly, but it grinds uncommon small; and, I will add, its grinding is apt to be merciless.

The solution thus most pronouncedly laid down by Colonel Haskell may or may not prove in this case correct and final. It certainly is not for me, coming from the North, to undertake dogmatically to pass upon it. I recur to it here as a plausible suggestion only, in connection with my theme. As such, it unquestionably merits consideration. I am by no means prepared to go the length of an English authority in recently saying that "emancipation on two continents sacrificed the real welfare of the slave and his intrinsic worth as a person, to