The natives of Africa at this day are just such a people as were the slaves first brought to America; just such a people as all the slaves were who have come from Africa to this country. If none had been brought to our shores; if the progenitors of the negroes now here had remained in Africa, their descendants would have been of like pattern with themselves; they would have been in all respects similar to the native tribes now found in Africa, because they would have been a portion of them. But look at the contrast which is presented when you take one of our Maryland men of color and compare him with a native African. They hardly seem to belong to the same race. The colonist of Cape Palmas is very nearly, if not altogether, as much superior to the natives on the coast of Africa as the first settlers of America were to the aborigines. What has caused this difference? There is but one answer. Through the ordeal of servitude in the United States the negro has passed into the threshold of civilization, into the portals of Christianity. Every moment of his existence among enlightened people has been one of progress. Like a negative body brought into connection with one fully charged, he has been continually a recipient; imparting nothing he has acquired from every surrounding source. Let us reverently acknowledge the overruling power of Providence, by whose dispensation an unrighteous traffic has been made the means of benefit to a benighted race. Africa herself will hail, on her own shores, the return of her children who went forth in chains, and the still heavier bondage of ignorance and barbarism--but restored to her as freemen; the heralds of civilization; not as Israelites, bearing away the spoil of the Egyptians, but enriched in knowledge and virtue, and followed by the good will of their former masters. I have deemed it the more important to set forth these views, because of the style of language so much in vogue when the servitude of the negroes in this country is spoken of. How incessantly do we hear of the “wrongs of the African,” with abundance of that sort of phraseology which makes up so much of the cant of philanthropy. I here say nothing of the slave trade. Let those condemn it who will; it is not for me to utter a word in its defence. But viewing the negroes in the United States as already here, no matter by what means brought, there is no question at all but that, as a race, their condition here has been a fortunate state of existence for them; whether as compared with their condition in Africa, where they were slaves, or as taken in connection with their moral and intellectual state and their adaptation to service.