Excerpt from The Black Man, or the Natural History of the Hametic Race It must be remembered, however, that there is a chap ter in the history of the race, at least in this country, which carries us through the dark period of human slavery that can never be read without much pain and many anxieties This fact is to be regretted, and yet the rise and marked progress and wonderful development of the race cannot be properly spoken of unless some thing is said about former slaves and their old masters. Turn where you will or may and history does not furnish a parallel to the case in hand. The destruction of the comer-stone of slavery in 1863 was the beginning of the marvelous temporal prosperity of this nation, that is, the American people. While slavery existed in the several States, the nation, like a partly starved giant, under an appalling cloud, manifested signs of paralysis, which left it in the awful throes of death, as it were. And smarting under the oft-repeated stings of a deep remorse of a relentless con science, it eked out an existence which reflected no glory, but unmeasured disgrace upon the deflected ethics of its government, until the emancipation of the slaves was consummated. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.