But the descendants of the cavaliers in Virginia were placed face to face with _facts_ that utterly exploded those factitious sentiments that had their origin in a certain condition of society, and not in nature or in the natural relations of men. They were in juxtaposition with negroes, with different and subordinate beings, human, it is true, like themselves, but different human beings, just as pigeons, while birds equally with robins, are different _birds_, or as hounds, though _dogs_, were different dogs from spaniels or bull-dogs. This was a great, starting, fixed _fact_, that no amount or extent of sentiment, theory, or mental habit could explain away or modify, or avoid in any respect. They saw this fact daily staring them in the face; they were compelled to recognize it, to legislate for it, or for these people, to adapt their social customs to it, in short, to conform to it, and therefore were forced to cast aside their preconceived notions, the traditions and mental habits of their ancestors, all their ideas of loyalty to a creature like themselves and of their own class-superiority which they had brought from the Old World. What was their fancied superiority over their own humbler brethren, when contrasted with this _natural_ inferiority of the negro? What was the accident of education, of wealth, of refinement of manners, or any other factitious, temporary, or accidental thing worth, which separated them from their less fortunate neighbors, when compared with the handiwork of nature, with the fixed and impassable barriers that separated them both from negroes? What, in short, were the petty distinctions of human pride, vanity, and accident, in comparison with the ordinances of the Eternal?