CAPE OF GOOD HOPE

"One of the biggest pretensions set up in favor of the enslavement of the African race is its inferiority. If the Britons, Caledonians, Hibernians, and others of the Celtic as well as the Teuton and pure Caucasian races had never been enslaved ; if Caractacus, the king and proudest prince the British ever had up to that period, had not been led in chains and sold by order of Julius Caesar , with many other British slaves, in the public market of Rome; if the British nobles long ago , had not written of their own peasantry, that they were incapable of elevation ; if they had not recorded and passed enactments against the Scotch and the Irish, that they were innately inferior, and totally insusceptible of instruction and civilization, calling them 'heathen dogs, only fit for slaves of the lowest order;' if a general system of serfdom, known as the Feudal System, had not existed generally among the white races of Europe for ages, through all Europe , before a black slave was ever known among the whites; if the whites had not been held in slavery many centuries longer than were the blacks; and finally, if Russia had not, just within the last three years (1864), emancipated her forty-two millions of slaves--ten times more than the African slaves in the United States, allowing four millions to the South,--then there would be some semblance of honesty and sincerity in the continued plea of justice for ages of wrong and crime against an unoffending, helpless people. "Through all times white slavery has existed among the nations of Europe, and as civilization advanced, and lower classes became more elevated , the difficulty became more apparent in perpetuating the system. What to do and how to remedy the evil was the question of importance... Legislative and royal decrees could not reach it; the march of man, and the light of intellect, kept in advance of legal injunctions. "In 624--twelve hundred and forty-three years ago and twelve and thirty-nine before the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln --the Saracens or Arabs gained access to Africa, controlling the commerce for seven hundred fifty-eight years , being the only foreigners accessible to, and holding friendly intercourse, the people. "In the year 1487, Bartholomew Diaz of Portugal discovered the Cape of Good Hope, calling it 'Cabo del Tormentoso,' --the 'Cape of Storms'. On reporting to his sovereign , the discovery with all of its prospects, the king cried out "No! ... let us call it 'Cabo del Speremza'!--the Cape of Good Hope. [And it was a good hope to Portugal, because it must be remembered that access to Africa, by communication with the western coast, was then to Europeans unknown; the only intercourse being from the north through the Barbary States, and through the interior by caravans, all of which purported to reach the eastern part of the continent by this way.] "The year 1482 was an eventful period for the African race, and I here record, for the first time probably in which it has been presented to the world, (except the authority herein quoted) , the startling facts that the enslavement of the African race was the result of a determination on the part of at least four, and probably more, of the strongest, and most polished nations of the time, to make the African nations supplant , by substituting it for European slavery . These nations were Spain, England , France and Portugal.... "During the memorable events that thrilled with emotion the communities of every country in 1862, in the midst of our national struggle, the Rev. Felix, Archbishop of Orleans, France, in a pastoral sent forth to exhort the people of France, and the French Catholics of the United States, to support the position taken by President Lincoln's , to support his malediction against the cause of the South , said, 'It is the teaching of experience that the slavery of the day, the slavery of the blacks, has an origin and consequence equally detestable. Its origin was the TREATY, the ignoble and cruel bargain, condemned by Pius II. in 1482, by Paul III. in 1557, by Urban VIII. in 1539, by Benedict XIV. in 1741, by Gregory XVI. in 1839. ' His revelation should startle Christendom... "With the entire white world against her, is it not clear why Africa, in the last twelve centuries, has not kept pace with the civilization of the age?... "The present Berbers of Egypt are none other than mixed bloods of the ancient Egyptians who once inhabited it--who were pure blacks--and Saracens who had conquered the country by conquest [641 AD], and without any prestige, except that inherited from the Ishmaelitish or Arab side of their ancestry--avarice and treachery." P. 229-233, "The International Policy of the World towards the African Race, Appendix " LIFE AND PUBLIC WORKS OF MARTIN R. DELANY (1883) by Frank A. Rollin