Alexander, the mighty Macedonian (fourth century B.C.), sold captives taken at Tyre and Gaza, the most accomplished people of that time, into slavery.( 3) Rome had her slaves; and her slave-marts were open at her principal ports for traffic in men and women of all nationalities, especially Christians and captives taken in war. The German nations of the shores of the Baltic carried on the desolating traffic. Russia recognized slavery and carried on a slave trade through her merchantmen. The Turks forbade the enslaving of Mussulmans, but sold Christian and other captives into slavery. Christian and Moor, for seven hundred years in the doubtful struggle in Western Europe, respectively, doomed their captives to slavery. Contemporary with the discovery of America, the Moors were driven from Granada, their last stronghold in Spain, to the north of Africa; there they became corsairs, privateers, and holders of Christian slaves. Their freebooter life and cruelty furnished the pretext, not only to enslave the people of the Moorish dominion, but of all Africa. The oldest accounts of Africa bear testimony to the existence of domestic slavery--of negro enslaving negro, and of caravans of dealers in negro slaves. Columbus, whose glory as the discoverer of this continent we proclaim, on a return voyage (1494) carried five hundred native Americans to Spain, a present to Queen Isabella, and American Indians were sold into foreign bondage, as "spoils of war," for two centuries. The Saxon carried slavery in its most odious form into England, where, at one time, not half the inhabitants were absolutely free, and where the price of a man was but four times the price of an ox. He sold his own kindred into slavery. English slaves were held in Ireland till the reign of Henry II. In time, however, the spirit of Christianity, pleading the cause of humanity, stayed slavery's progress, and checked the slave traffic by appeals to conscience. Alexander III, Pope of Rome in the twelfth century, proclaimed against it, by writing: "_Nature having made no slaves, all men have an equal right to liberty_." Efficacious as the Christian religion has been to destroy or mitigate evil, it has failed to render the so-called Christian slaveholder better than the pagan, or to improve the condition of the bondsmen.