The abolition of domestic slavery is one of the greatest wants of the continent. In no part of pagan Africa is this inhuman system upheld by such barbarous practices as in many large portions under the sway of Islamism. In pagan Africa the captives of war are made slaves, but the adult males are not mangled and slain. Throughout a great extent of Mohammedan Africa the system of slavery is upheld by nameless atrocities in gratification of the terrible cruelty and scarcely less terrible lust of the most cruel and lustful people. The legend of Legree in Mrs. Stowe’s celebrated novel of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a pleasant fable in comparison of many acts pertaining to African domestic slavery of which truthful accounts might be given. It might appear that time is necessary to prepare a people so cruel for the reception of Christian civilization. The Boers of South Africa are exceedingly hard task-masters with their slaves, compelling them to do a great deal of hard labor and drudgery, but they have not been charged with blood-thirstiness.
This wide-spread system of domestic slavery is, of course, an important ally of the foreign slave trade but the slave trade is in some respects a wrong and unutterable woe of itself. There is a certain intronational slave trade, if we may so speak, in Africa, carried on between tribes which are independent of each other. The importance of a chief is often estimated by the number of his slaves and wives. Now that the recent explorations of white men have made intercourse between tribes of more frequent occurrence than formerly, a rude diplomacy has sprung up, which is chiefly exercised in matters pertaining to slaves and the purchase of wives. A chief strengthens himself at home by marrying as many of the daughters of his “head men” as he can, and among other tribes by the same course among them. A large number of slaves adds to the consideration in which he is held at home and abroad. Thus polygamy, domestic slavery, and the foreign slave trade are the great obstacles which stand in the way of civilizing the continent of the black man. And of these the greatest obstacle is the foreign slave trade. This, not only because of its own cruelty, fearful wrongfulness, and hideous practices, but because it gives the black man a fairly unanswerable practical argument against civilization. Dr. Livingstone expressly tells us, in letters which we have quoted, that the practices of the slave-traders are more horrible and cruel than even those of the man-eating Manyema. Is it to be expected that the natives of Africa will adopt a system which, so far as they see, is more cruel than the most horrible customs of their most degraded tribes? Those Africans only who have to any considerable extent adopted Christian civilization live at the greatest distance from the scenes of the foreign slave trade.