2. That it fell upon Canaan, and was designed to fall upon him only.
3. That neither Ham, nor any of his three sons, was involved in this curse.
4. That the Negro race have not descended from Canaan; were never involved in the curse pronounced upon him; and their peculiar sufferings, during the last three centuries, are not the results or evidences of any specific curse upon them.
5. That the fact of slavery in the Negro race is not peculiar to them as a people; but a general evil existing in the whole human family; in which, in God's providence, the Negro family have latterly been called to suffer greatly, and doubtless for some high and important ends.
6. That the geographical designations of Scripture are to be taken in good faith; and that when the "land of Canaan" is mentioned in the Bible, it was not intended to include the Gold Coast, the Gaboon, Goree, or Congo.
This examination furnishes us with suggestions upon a few collateral subjects which have been more or less associated with, or deduced from, the false interpretation thus noticed:
1. We see that whatever may be the significance of Gen. ix. 25, it does not imply menial degradation and intellectual inaptitude. The curse of Noah did not rob Canaan and his descendants of their brains. The history of the Phoenicians gives evidence of as great creative faculty, and of as much mental force and energy, as that of any other people in the world.
