Climate adds its attractions to this region, which is removed from the cold of the north and the burning heats of the tropics, while it is enriched with oranges, citrons, olives, figs, pomegranates, and luxuriant flowers. Its position and character invite a singular and suggestive comparison. It is placed between the twenty-ninth and thirty-eighth degrees of north latitude, occupying nearly the same parallels with the Slave States of our Union. It extends over nearly the same number of degrees of longitude with our Slave States, which seem now, alas! to stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rio Grande. It is supposed to embrace about 700,000 square miles, which cannot be far from the space comprehended by what may be called the _Barbary States of America_.[3] Nor does the comparison end here. Algiers, for a long time the most obnoxious place in the Barbary States of Africa, the chief seat of Christian slavery, and once branded by an indignant chronicler as "the wall of the barbarian world," is situated near the parallel of 36° 30' north latitude, being the line of what is termed the Missouri Compromise, marking the "wall" of Christian slavery, in our country, west of the Mississippi. [Footnote 3: Jefferson, without recognizing the general parallel, alludes to Virginia as fast sinking to be "the _Barbary_ of the Union."--Writings, vol. iv. p. 333.] [Illustration] Other less important points of likeness between the two territories may be observed. They are each washed, to the same extent, by ocean and sea; with this difference, that the two regions are thus exposed on directly opposite coasts--the African Barbary being bounded in this way on the north and west, and our American Barbary on the south and east. But there are no two spaces, on the surface of the globe, of equal extent, (and an examination of the map will verify what I am about to state,) which present so many distinctive features of resemblance; whether we consider the parallels of latitude on which they lie, the nature of their boundaries, their productions, their climate, or the "peculiar domestic institution" which has sought shelter in both. I introduce these comparisons in order to bring home to your minds, as near as possible, the precise position and character of the territory which was the seat of the evil I am about to describe. It might be worthy of inquiry, why Christian slavery, banished at last from Europe, banished also from that part of this hemisphere which corresponds in latitude to Europe, should have intrenched itself, in both hemispheres, between the same parallels of latitude; so that Virginia, Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas should be the American complement to Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis. Perhaps the common peculiarities of climate, breeding indolence, lassitude, and selfishness, may account for the insensibility to the claims of justice and humanity which have characterized both regions.