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SLAVERY,

AS IT RELATES TO THE

NEGRO, OR AFRICAN RACE,

EXAMINED IN THE LIGHT OF CIRCUMSTANCES, HISTORY AND THE

HOLY SCRIPTURES;

WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE

ORIGIN OF THE BLACK MAN'S COLOR,

CAUSES OF HIS STATE OF SERVITUDE AND
TRACES OF HIS CHARACTER AS WELL IN ANCIENT AS IN
MODERN TIMES:

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[Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1843, by JOSIAH PRIEST, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Northern District of New-York.]

PREFACE.

THAN a knowledge of the races and nations of men, who have peopled the globe since it was created, there can be no subject more interesting. With a view to an elucidation of this description, we present the work before us, in which an attempt is made to give, in some measure, a his tory of the origin, character, and fortunes of the negro portion of mankind.

In pursuit of this object we hope there needs no apology, because we have found it necessary to resort to the Holy Scriptures for much im portant information which relates to our design, as it is well known that those parts of that book which were written by Moses are the eldest writings of the human race now extant, and relate to the very first operations of the human race after the flood. As corroboratory of the developments of that miraculous book, we have also resorted to ancient and modern history, to travels, narratives, &c., which go to aid us in the research.

As to the origin of the negro man, we have, in our cogitations, recollected several curious opinions relative to the subject, which we have thought proper to present, on account of their wild and extravagant character, as follows:

Some have queried, whether the mother of the first negro man might not have been frightened by some hideous black monster of the antediluvian woods, as in the first ages of the world there were many terrible beasts of the wilderness roaming about, whose races are now extinct. There is one creature which existed then, and is not yet extinct, whose appearance, in its native haunts, is very frightful to behold; and this is the black ourang-outang, of which animal there are individuals known to have attamed the enormous height of seven feet, covered entirely with shining black hair. The strange effects of fright on the offspring of mothers, is a well known phenomenon in the phisiological history of man. Thus, as some have supposed, the negro race was produced, forming an entire new class of human beings, and distinguished from the nature, color, and character of the parents by a fright of the mother.

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