In the year [1]1620 two ships from foreign shores set sail for America. Both carried passengers destined to play an important part in the history of our country. One came from England and landed her precious burden on the northern shore of Cape Cod. The other sailed from the sunny shores of Africa, touched at Jamestown in Virginia, and left there twenty black men as slaves. Those from England were the forerunners of a people distinguished for thrift, enterprise and ingenuity. To these pilgrims and their descendants the American nation is very largely indebted for its greatness. But that score of black men, unwilling emigrants, torn by force from their native land, were the fathers of a people who produced no such salutary effect upon the civilization with which they came in contact. They proved to be a hindrance to it rather than an advantage. They and their descendants were slaves. The labor which they performed lost its dignity and became degrading in the eyes of the white man in the section where these bondmen lived and toiled. The development of this spirit has been the great misfortune—the bane of the southern states, for nothing is more essential to the prosperity of a community than industry in all its citizens. Footnote 1: Many writers say that slavery was introduced in the Colonies in 1619. The germ of slavery that fell upon the soil of Virginia in 1620 took root and grew with marvellous rapidity until it became an evil more destructive than a pestilence. No event in the history of our country has carried with it to its last analysis such terrible consequences. Nor did slavery confine itself to the colony of Virginia, but it spread in all directions and even reared its head among the sons of the Pilgrims and stalked shamelessly over the hills of New England. Two hundred years before proud, aristocratic, Cavalier Virginia had won for herself the distinguished honor of being called “The Mother of Presidents,” she became the Mother of Slavery. The northern white man and the southern white man alike became responsible for the pernicious system of serfdom introduced in America. Frederick Douglass said there was but one innocent party to the evil and that was the Negro himself. And as he was the innocent party to his slavery, so he has been since his emancipation the innocent and abused party in all controversies relating to his privileges as a freeman and to his rights as a citizen.