too: the abolitionists of that day were so sure that the negroes needed only to be made free to be fitted for freedom! At this late day, we who are the children of the ardent abolitionists of that earlier period can only sigh when we read such a glorious pæan as Emerson's address, Aug. 1, 1844, at the first anniversary of the emancipation of the negroes of the British West Indies. He joyfully took it for granted that the blacks of Jamaica and Barbados had already successfully taken up the burden of civilization with perfect industry and perfect quietness, and that "all disqualifications and distinctions of color had ceased"; and, in following the notion of Swedenborg as to the spiritual superiority of the African, he said: "I esteem the occasion of this jubilee to be the proud discovery that the black race can contend with the white; that, in the great anthem which we call history, a piece of many parts
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