The great proposition of Mrs. Stowe and of the root-and-branch abolitionists was that slavery in the south was such a flagrant and atrocious wrong to the negro, that every human being was commanded by conscience to do everything possible to help him if he should try to escape from his master. Combating this proposition, without any concession whatever, I think it well that we try at the outset to ascertain how southern slavery affected the negro, whether cruelly or beneficially. To do this, his condition in his native land, his condition while a slave in America, and, lastly, his condition after his emancipation, must be compared. I beg my reader to follow me attentively as I now review and contrast these three conditions. First, as to his condition in Africa. Here is what Toombs said of him to a Boston audience, January 24, 1856: "The monuments of the ancient Egyptians carry him back to the morning of time--older than the pyramids; they furnish the evidence both of his national identity and his social degradation before history began. We first behold him a slave in foreign lands; we then find the great body of his race slaves in their native land; and after thirty centuries, illuminated by both ancient and modern civilization, have passed over him, we still find him a slave of savage masters, as incapable as himself of even attempting a single step in civilization--we find him there still, without government or laws of protection, without letters or arts of industry, without religion, or even the aspirations which would raise him to the rank of an idolater; and in his lowest type, his almost only mark of humanity is, that he walks erect in the image of the Creator. Annihilate his race to-day, and you will find no trace of his existence within half a score of years; and he would not leave behind him a single discovery, invention, or thought worthy of remembrance by the human family."[85] If my reader deems Toombs's picture overdrawn let him consult those parts of the recent work of a most diligent and conscientious investigator describing the negroes of West Africa, and note what is there told of heathen practices still surviving,--slavery of women to their polygamic husbands, pitiless destruction of useless members of the family, robbery, murder, cannibalism, the utter want of chastity.[86] We quote this as to slavery, which is especially important here: