I will not even seem to undervalue the good sense and quick perception of the candid and intelligent reader, by any farther endeavors to illustrate the sacrifice of principle and inhumanity of purpose which are contained in the extracts under the present section. With so strong an array of evidence before him, no one, who is not mentally blind or governed by prejudice, can fail to rise from its perusal with amazement and abhorrence, and a determination to assist in overthrowing a combination which is based upon the rotten foundation of expediency and violence.

The Colonization Society expressly denies the right of the slaves to enjoy freedom and happiness in this country; and this denial incontestibly tends to rivet their fetters more firmly, or make them the victims of a relentless persecution.

FOOTNOTES:

[R] What right have we to an homestead in the red man's country? Let us return to the land of our fathers, and leave this soil untarnished by the footprint of him who hath a white skin! What right have the hosts of foreign emigrants, who are flocking to our shores, to an homestead among ourselves?



SECTION VIII.

THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY IS THE DISPARAGER OF THE FREE BLACKS.

The leaders in the African colonization crusade seem to dwell with a malignant satisfaction upon the poverty and degradation of the free people of color, and are careful never to let an opportunity pass without heaping their abuse and contempt upon them. It is a common device of theirs to contrast the condition of the slaves with that of this class, and invariably to strike the balance heavily in favor of the former! In this manner, thousands are led to look upon slavery as a benevolent system, and to deprecate the manumission of its victims. Nothing but a love of falsehood, or an utter disregard of facts, could embolden these calumniators to deal so extensively in fiction. What! the slaves more happy, more moral, more industrious, more orderly, more comfortable, more exalted, than the free blacks! A more enormous exaggeration, a more heinous libel, a wider departure from truth, was never fabricated, or uttered, or known. The slaves, as a body, are in the lowest state of degradation; they possess no property; they cannot read; they are as ignorant, as their masters are reckless, of moral obligation; they have no motive for exertion; they are thieves from necessity and usage; their bodies are cruelly lacerated by the cart-whip; and they are disposable property. And yet these poor miserable, perishing, mutilated creatures are placed above our free colored population in dignity, in enjoyment, in privilege, in usefulness, in respectability!!

'There is a class, however, more numerous than all these, introduced amongst us by violence, notoriously ignorant, degraded and miserable, mentally diseased, broken-spirited, acted upon by no motives to honorable exertions, SCARCELY REACHED IN THEIR DEBASEMENT BY THE HEAVENLY LIGHT; yet where is the sympathy and effort which a view of their condition ought to excite? They wander unsettled and unbefriended through our land, or sit indolent, abject and sorrowful, by the "streams which witness their captivity." Their freedom is licentiousness, and to many RESTRAINT WOULD PROVE A BLESSING. To this remark there are exceptions; exceptions proving that to change their state would be to elevate their character; that virtue and enterprise are absent, only, because absent are the causes which create the one, and the motives which produce the other.'—[African Repository, vol. i. p. 68.]

'Free blacks are a greater nuisance than even slaves themselves.' * * * 'They knew that where slavery had been abolished it had operated to the advantage of the masters, not of the slaves: they saw this fact most strikingly illustrated in the case of the free negroes of Boston. If, on the anniversary celebrated by the free people of color, of the day on which slavery was abolished, they looked abroad, what did they see? Not freemen, in the enjoyment of every attribute of freedom, with the stamp of liberty upon their brows! No, Sir; they saw a ragged set, crying out liberty! for whom liberty had nothing to bestow, and whose enjoyment of it was but in name. He spoke of the great body of the blacks; there were some few honorable exceptions, he knew, which only proved what might be done for all.'—[African Repository, vol. ii. p. 328.]

'Although there are individual exceptions distinguished by high moral and intellectual worth, yet the free blacks in our country are, as a body, more vicious and degraded than any other which our population embraces.' * * * 'If, then, they are a useless and dangerous species of population, we would ask, is it generous in our southern friends to burthen us with them? Knowing themselves the evils of slavery, can they wish to impose upon us an evil scarcely less tolerable? We think it a mistaken philanthropy, which would liberate the slave, unfitted by education and habit for freedom, and cast him upon a merciless and despising world, where his only fortune must be poverty, his only distinction degradation, and his only comfort insensibility.' * * * 'I will look no farther when I seek for the most degraded, the most abandoned race on the earth, but rest my eyes on this people. What but sorrow can we feel at the misguided piety which has set free so many of them by death-bed devise or sudden conviction of injustice? Better, far better, for us, had they been kept in bondage, where the opportunity, the inducements, the necessity of vice would not have been so great. Deplorable necessity, indeed, to one borne down with the consciousness of the violence we have done. Yet I am clear that, whether we consider it with reference to the welfare of the State, or the happiness of the blacks, it were better to have left them in chains, than to have liberated them to receive such freedom as they enjoy, and greater freedom we cannot, must not allow them.' * * 'There is not a State in the Union not at this moment groaning under the evil of this class of persons, a curse and a contagion whereever they reside.' * * 'The increase of a free black population among us has been regarded as a greater evil than the increase of slaves.'—[African Repository, vol. iii. pp. 24, 25, 197, 203, 374.]

'Mr. Mercer adverted to the situation of his native State, and the condition of the free black population existing there, whom he described as a horde of miserable people—the objects of universal suspicion; subsisting by plunder.'—[Idem, vol. iv. p. 363.]

'They leave a country in which though born and reared, they are strangers and aliens; where severe necessity places them in a class of degraded beings; where they are free without the blessings and privileges of liberty; where in ceasing to be slaves of one, they have become subservient to many; where, neither freemen nor slaves, but placed in an anomalous grade which they do not understand and others disregard; where no kind instructer, no hope of preferment, no honorable emulation prompts them to virtue or deters from vice; their industry waste, not accumulation; their regular vocation, any thing or nothing as it may happen; their greater security, sufferance; their highest reward, forgiveness; vicious themselves and the cause of vice in others; discontented and exciting discontent; scorned by one class and foolishly envied by another; thus, and WORSE CIRCUMSTANCED, they, cannot but choose to move.'—[Idem, vol. v. p. 238.]

'Of all the descriptions of our population, and of either portion of the African race, the free people of color are, by far, as a class, the MOST CORRUPT, DEPRAVED, AND ABANDONED. The laws, it is true, proclaim them free; but prejudices, more powerful than any laws, deny them the privileges of freemen. They occupy a middle station between the free white population and the slaves of the United States, and the tendency of their habits is to corrupt both.' * * * 'That the free colored population of our country is a great and constantly increasing evil must be readily acknowledged. Averse to labor, with no incentives to industry or motives to self-respect, they maintain a precarious existence by petty thefts and plunder, themselves, or by inciting our domestics, not free, to rob their owners to supply their wants.' * * * 'If there is in the whole world, a more wretched class of human beings than the free people of color in this country, I do not know where they are to be found. They have no home, no country, no kindred, no friends. They are lazy and indolent, because they have no motives to prompt them to be industrious. They are in general destitute of principle, because they have nothing to stimulate them to honorable and praise-worthy conduct. Let them be maltreated ever so much, the law gives them no redress unless some white person happens to be present, to be a witness in the case. If they acquire property, they hold it by the courtesy of every vagabond in the country; and sooner or later, are sure to have it filched from them.'—[Idem, vol. vi. pp. 12, 135, 228.]

'The existence, within the very bosom of our country, of an anomalous race of beings, THE MOST DEBASED UPON EARTH, who neither enjoy the blessings of freedom, nor are yet in the bonds of slavery, is a great national evil, which every friend of his country most deeply deplores.... Tax your utmost powers of imagination, and you cannot conceive one motive to honorable effort, which can animate the bosom, or give impulse to the conduct of a free black in this country. Let him toil from youth to age in the honorable pursuit of wisdom—let him store his mind with the most valuable researches of science and literature—and let him add to a highly gifted and cultivated intellect, a piety pure, undefiled, and "unspotted from the world"—it is all nothing: he would not be received into the very lowest walks of society. If we were constrained to admire so uncommon a being, our very admiration would mingle with disgust, because, in the physical organization of his frame, we meet an insurmountable barrier, even to an approach to social intercourse, and in the Egyptian color, which nature has stamped upon his features, a principle of repulsion so strong as to forbid the idea of a communion either of interest or of feeling, as utterly abhorrent. Whether these feelings are founded in reason or not, we will not now inquire—perhaps they are not. But education and habit, and prejudice have so firmly riveted them upon us, that they have become as strong as nature itself—and to expect their removal, or even their slightest modification, would be as idle and preposterous as to expect that we could reach forth our hands, and remove the mountains from their foundations into the vallies, which are beneath them.'—[African Repository, vol. vii. pp. 230, 331.]

'We have been charged with wishing only to remove our free blacks, that we may the more effectually rivet the chains of the slave. But the class we first seek to remove, are neither freemen nor slaves; but between both, AND MORE MISERABLE THAN EITHER.' * * * 'Who is there, that does not know something of the condition of the blacks in the northern and middle States? They may be seen in our cities and larger towns, wandering like foreigners and outcasts, in the land which gave them birth. They may be seen in our penitentiaries, and jails, and poor-houses. They may be found inhabiting the abodes of poverty, and the haunts of vice. But if we look for them in the society of the honest and respectable—if we visit the schools in which it is our boast that the meanest citizen can enjoy the benefits of instruction—we might also add, if we visit the sanctuaries which are open for all to worship,[S] and to hear the word of God; we shall not find them there.' * * 'Leaving slavery and its subjects for the moment entirely out of view, there are in the United States 238,000 blacks denominated free, but whose freedom confers on them, we might say, no privilege but the privilege of being more vicious and miserable than slaves can be.'—[Seventh Annual Report, pp. 12, 87, 99.]

'Placed midway between freedom and slavery, they know neither the incentives of the one, nor the restraints of the other; but are alike injurious by their conduct and example, to all other classes of society.'—[Eight Annual Report.]

'Of all classes of our population, the most vicious is that of the free colored. It is the inevitable result of their moral, political, and civil degradation. Contaminated themselves, they extend their vices to all around them, to the slaves and to the whites.'—[Tenth Annual Report.]

'The question arises, where shall these outcasts go? Ohio, and the free States of the West, which formerly invited them into their bosom, no longer offer them a welcome home. Disgusted with their laziness and vice, the inevitable concomitants of the anomalous relation in which they stand to society, the authorities of those States are seeking to get rid of what they find, too late, to be a curse to any settlement of whites—a thriftless race of vagabonds, whose footsteps are the sure precursors of indigence and crime. One of the most intelligent gentlemen of Ohio, (Mr Charles Hammond,) in a recent notice of this subject, says, "This dangerous class of population has increased considerably within a few years past, and the slaves States cannot too soon adopt efficient measures to get rid of it. Emigrations to Liberia ought to be provided for, and insisted upon, and the legislatures should pass laws to prevent emancipation, without adequate provision for the transportation of the manumitted."'—[Lynchburg Virginian.]

'As it is now, they are for the most part in a debased and wretched condition. They have the vices of our community without its virtues. And what is worse, I speak of the majority, they have no desire to rise from their state of abject depression—no wish to gain a respectable elevation of character. Consequently it is difficult, if not impossible, to present them motives Which shall incite them to enter on a course of industry and virtue.' * * * 'Bound by no political ties to the community in which they dwell, and excluded for the most part from exercising the rights and privileges of freemen, on the ground of their alleged inferiority and worthlessness, they have no inducements to abandon lives of indolence, sensuality and recklessness, or to support the laws and institutions of the government placed over them. Nothing but the fear of suffering the penalty of violated law, can prevent them from preying on those among whom they live.'—[Middletown (Ct.) Gazette.]

'They have taken the free black that, as a class, dwells among us a living nuisance, nominally free, but bowed to the ground by public opinion—IN ONE PART OF THE COUNTRY DULL AS A BRUTISH BEAST, IN ANOTHER THE WILD STIRRER UP OF SEDITION AND INSURRECTION—they have shewn him to be capable of quiet and judicious self-government.— ... We cannot shut our eyes any longer upon the disadvantages of our black population, whether in slavery or freedom. It is a sword perpetually suspended over our heads by a single hair; it is the fountain of bitter waters that poisons all our enjoyments.'—[Speeches of J. R. Townsend, Esq. and W. W. Campbell, Esq. New-York city.]

'The fact was most glaring, without an inquiry, that the same shackles which bound them, fastened them also to the resources of the soil, and the interests of the community; and when these were broken, and the incentives of authority removed, the weight of ignorance, the want of better incentives, and the fatal and untried power of grateful but ruinous idleness, sunk them to a state, which, however elevated in theory, was in fact more degraded and more miserable than that of bondage. In addition to all this, pauperism, with the numerous evils of corrupt and corrupting indolence, threatened to impose its sluggish weight upon a groaning community. Hence, the progress of emancipation was, for the time, most righteously arrested.'—[Address of the Board of Managers of the African Education Society.]

'Who are the free people of color in the United States? In what circumstances does philanthropy find them! There are indeed individuals and families, who are sober, industrious, pious. But what are the remainder, the mass? Every one knows that their condition is deep and wretched degradation; but, only a few have ever formed any accurate conception of the reality. The fact is, that as a class they are branded. They have no home, no country, no such personal interest in the welfare of the community, as gives a certain degree of manliness to almost every white man.... Three hundred thousand freemen in this country, are freemen only in name, forming only little else than a mass of pauperism and crime.... Here the black man is paralysed and crushed by the constant sense of inferiority. He has no effectual incentives to manly enterprise. He stands in a degraded class of society; and out of that class he never dreams of rising.'—[Christian Spectator.]

'This is the true condition of the free colored population of our land. They are placed mid way between freedom and slavery; they feel neither the moral stimulants of the one, nor the restraints of the other, and are alike injurious to every other class of the community.'—[Southern Religious Telegraph.]

I repel these charges against the free people of color, as unmerited, wanton and untrue. It would be absurd to pretend, that, as a class, they maintain a high character: it would be equally foolish to deny, that intemperance, indolence and crime prevail among them to a mournful extent. But I do not hesitate to assert, from an intimate acquaintance with their condition, that they are more temperate and more industrious than that class of whites who are in as indigent circumstances, but who have certainly far greater incentives to labor and excel; that they are superior in their habits to the hosts of foreign emigrants who are crowding to our shores, and poisoning our moral atmosphere; and that their advancement in intelligence, in wealth, and in morality, considering the numberless and almost insurmountable difficulties under which they have labored, has been remarkable. I am informed that twenty-five or thirty years ago, the colored inhabitants of Philadelphia scarcely owned a dollar's worth of real estate, whereas they now own enough to amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. This fact speaks volumes in praise of their industry and economy; for, be it remembered, they have had to accumulate this property in small sums, by shaving the beards, cleaning the boots and clothes, and being the servants of their white contemners, and in other menial employments. In Baltimore, Philadelphia, New-York, and other places, there are several colored persons whose individual property is worth from ten thousand to one hundred thousand dollars;[T] and in all those cities, there are primary and high schools for the education of the colored population—flourishing churches of various denominations—and numerous societies for mutual assistance and improvement, &c. In Philadelphia alone, I believe, there are nearly fifty colored associations for benevolent, literary, scientific and moral purposes.[U] Yet these are the people of whom it is said, 'they are acted upon by no motives to honorable exertions;' that they are 'scarcely reached in their debasement by the heavenly light' (almost a denial of the power of the Holy Ghost); that 'their freedom is licentiousness;' that 'they are a greater nuisance than even the slaves themselves;' that they are 'the most degraded, the most abandoned race on the earth;' that they are 'worse circumstanced than the slave population;' that they have 'no privilege but the privilege of being more vicious and miserable than slaves can be;' and that they are 'a thriftless race of vagabonds, whose footsteps are the sure precursors of indigence and crime.' And these false and infamous charges are brought against them by a Society which professes to cherish for them the highest regard, and to be anxious to give them respectability in the eyes of the world!

The truth is, the traducers of the free blacks have no adequate conception of the amount of good sense, sterling piety, moral honesty, virtuous pride of character, and domestic enjoyment, which exists among this class. The spirited remarks of the colored citizens of New-York, in their address to the public, (vide PART II. p. 16,) in reference to their calumniators, are exceedingly apposite: 'Their patrician principles prevent an intercourse with men in the middle walks of life, among whom a large portion of our people may be classed. We ask them to visit the dwellings of the respectable part of our people, and we are satisfied that they will discover more civilization and refinement, than will be found among the same number of white families of an equal standing.' A personal examination enables me to say that this challenge is neither presumptuous nor boastful. I confess, I have been most agreeably, nay, wonderfully disappointed, in my intercourse with them, which is daily elevating them in my estimation. Many of their number I proudly rank among my most familiar friends and correspondents.

With regard to the 'ragged set in Boston, crying out liberty!' every candid resident will testify that this is a libellous representation; that our free blacks are a quiet, orderly, well-dressed, and (as far as they can obtain employment) industrious class of citizens; and that their improvement is rapid and constant. Every curious observer who visits their houses of worship, will be surprised at the general neatness of attire and propriety of manners of the worshippers. 'A ragged set,' forsooth! The slander may be uttered in the city of Washington, at an anniversary of the American Colonization Society; but no man, who regards his character for veracity and intelligence, dare publish it in Boston.

The effects of this reiterated abuse are eminently mischievous. It serves to kindle the fires of persecution, to strengthen prejudice, to drive its victims to despair, and to increase the desire for their banishment. 'Tax your utmost powers of imagination,' says one of the colonization advocates, 'and you cannot conceive one motive to honorable effort, which can animate the bosom, or give impulse to the conduct of the free black in this country'! Is this language calculated to allay animosity, or beget confidence, or suppress contempt, or heal division, or excite sympathy? Far otherwise. Are there not thousands of living witnesses to prove the falsity of this assertion; thousands who adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour, and whose 'motives to honorable effort' are higher than heaven and vast as eternity; thousands, who, though their enemies spare no efforts to crush them in the dust, and in despite of mountains of difficulties, rise up with a giant's strength to respectability and usefulness? 'No motive to honorable effort'! Perish the calumny!

Again, they are stigmatized as the 'wild stirrers up of sedition and insurrection.' This charge is even more malignant than the other, and utterly groundless. Its propagation, however, tends directly to excite a persecution which may drive the accused to sedition, in self-defence. There is no evidence that any free man of color was enlisted in the late bloody struggle in Virginia, or in any manner accessary thereto. On the contrary, it was deprecated by our colored citizens generally, not only on account of its sanguinary acts, but because they knew it would operate to their own disadvantage by being placed to their account. The following honorable expression of feeling was made at a public meeting of the people of color in Wilmington, Delaware, about that period:

'The subscribers, having a knowledge of the alarm which prevails in the minds of some of the citizens of this place, on account of various reports which some mischievous person or persons have circulated, in regard to the colored population, beg leave to represent, on behalf of themselves and brethren, that having made inquiry into the subject, they have found said reports to be without the least foundation; and they owe it to themselves further to declare, that, so far from any disposition on the part of the colored people to disturb the peace and good order of the community, they are, on the contrary, fully aware that it consists not less with their interests than their duty to refrain from every art that would excite commotion or disorder, in which the colored people would have every thing to lose and nothing to gain. We have been treated by the citizens of Wilmington and its vicinity with kindness, for which we ought to be grateful, and it is our solemn purpose to pursue such a course of conduct as may merit a continuance of their favor and confidence. Should any among us be found so wicked and blinded as to enter into plots and contrivances, inimical to the present harmony, we thus solemnly pledge ourselves to our white friends and neighbors, that we will be among the first to sound the alarm, and unite in effecting their apprehension and suppression.'

The free colored citizens of Baltimore, Maryland, also came out unitedly in the following pacific and truly exemplary spirit:

'Whereas, there has prevailed in this city, during the past week, a very unpleasant excitement, originating from suspicions and reports totally without foundation, and highly derogatory to our good sense; and whereas this excitement, though unnecessarily created, may, in its ultimate tendency, prove prejudicial to the interests of the free colored population of this State. Therefore,

'Resolved, That we challenge the most rigid investigation as to the truth of those evil reports, which have recently been so industriously propagated in this city by the credulous, and those who are totally unacquainted with the character of colored Baltimoreans.

'Resolved, That we are not so reckless of our true interest, so blind to utter helplessness—not to say so devoid of humanity, as to entertain the hostile designs, or to cherish the fiendish passions, which it seems have been, by the unthinking, so unjustly attributed to us.

'Resolved, That we have been too long in the land of bibles, and temples, and ministers, to look upon blood and carnage with complacency—that we have been too long in this enlightened metropolis, to think of the amelioration of our condition, in any other way than that sanctioned by the Gospel of Peace.

'Resolved, That we rely upon a peaceable and upright conduct, for a continuance of that favor and protection which we have hitherto enjoyed, and which, the liberal, the wise, and the good, are ever ready to accord.'

How impolitic, then, as well as unjust, to brand this meek and magnanimous class as 'the wild stirrers up of sedition and insurrection'!

This treatment, I repeat, is impolitic—nay, suicidal. To abuse, proscribe and exasperate them, to trample them under our feet, to goad them on the right hand and on the left, is not the way to secure their loyalty, but rather to make them revengeful, desperate and seditious. Our true policy is, to meliorate their condition, invigorate their hopes, instruct their ignorant minds, admit them to an equality of privileges with ourselves, nourish and patronise their genius, and, by giving them mechanical trades and mercantile advantages, open to them the avenue to competence and wealth. We shall thus make them contented and happy, and place them in a situation which will lead them still more heartily to deprecate any insurrectionary movements among our slave population. The following is the conciliatory and generous language of a man, who has been denounced as a blood-hound and a monster. It will be well for us if we profit by it.

'Americans! notwithstanding you have and do continue to treat us more cruel than any heathen nation ever did a people it had subjected to the same condition that you have us, let us reason. Had you not better take our body, while you have it in your power, and while we are yet ignorant and wretched, not knowing but little, give us education, and teach us the pure religion of our Lord and Master, which is calculated to make the lion lie down in peace with the lamb, and which millions of you have beaten us nearly to death for trying to obtain since we have been among you, and thus at once gain our affection while we are ignorant? Throw away your fears and prejudices then, and enlighten us and treat us like men, and we will like you more than we do now hate you. And tell us now no more about colonization; for America is as much our country as it is yours. Treat us like men, and there is no danger but we will all live in peace and happiness together; for we are not, like you, hard-hearted, unmerciful, and unforgiving. What a happy country this will be, if the whites will listen! What nation under heaven, will be able to do any thing with us, unless God gives us up into its hand? But, Americans, I declare to you, while you keep us and our children in bondage, and treat us like brutes, to make us support you and your families, we cannot be your friends. You do not look for it, do you? Treat us then like men, and we will be your friends. And there is not a doubt in my mind, but that the whole of the past will be sunk into oblivion, and we yet, under God, will become a united and happy people.'[V]

FOOTNOTES:

[S] A cruel taunt. The wonder is not that colored persons do not more generally visit our sanctuaries, but that they ever should attend. If they go, they are thrust into obscure, remote and unseemly pens or boxes, as if they were not embraced in the offers of redeeming love, and were indeed a part of the brute creation. It is an awful commentary upon the pride of human nature. I never can look up to these scandalous retreats for my colored brethren, without having my soul overwhelmed with emotions of shame, indignation and sorrow. No black man, however virtuous, respectable or pious he may be, can own or occupy a pew in a central part of any of our houses of worship. And yet it is reproachfully alleged—by a clergyman, too!—that 'if we visit the sanctuaries which are open to all (!) to worship, and to hear the word of God, we shall not find them there'! No—I hope they will respect themselves and the religion of Jesus more, than to occupy the places alluded to.

[T] Francis Devany, the colored sheriff of Liberia, is reputed by colonizationists to be worth property to the value of twenty-five thousand dollars; and they have trumpeted the fact all over the country, and so repeatedly as almost to lead one to imagine that he is the greatest and wealthiest man in all the world! James Forten, the reputable colored sail-maker of Philadelphia,—a gentleman of highly polished manners and superior intelligence,—with whom Devany worked as a journeyman, can buy him out three or four times over. Joseph Cassey, another estimable and intelligent man of color, or the widow of Bishop Allen, both of Philadelphia, can purchase him. I mention their names, not to extol them, but simply to show, that what begets fame in Liberia is unproductive here.

[U] The following statement, recently published in the Philadelphia 'Friend and Advocate of Truth,' is very creditable to the colored inhabitants of that city:

'Many erroneous opinions have prevailed, with regard to the true character and condition of the free colored people of Pennsylvania. They have been represented as an idle and worthless class, furnishing inmates for our poor-houses and penitentiaries. A few plain facts are sufficient to refute these gratuitous allegations. In the city and suburbs of Philadelphia, by the census of 1830, they constituted about eleven per cent., or one ninth of the whole population. From the account of the guardians of the poor, printed by order of the board, it appears that of the out-door poor receiving regular weekly supplies, in the first month, 1830, the time of the greatest need, the people of color were about one to twenty-three whites; or not quite four per cent., a disproportion of whites to colored, of more than two to one in favor of the latter. When it is considered that they perform the lowest offices in the community—that the avenues to what are esteemed the most honorable and profitable professions in society, are in a great measure, if not wholly closed against them, these facts are the more creditable to them. One cause of this disproportion, which we presume is but little known, but which is worthy of special notice, will be found in the numerous societies among themselves for mutual aid. These societies expended, in one year, about six thousand dollars for the relief of the sick and the indigent of their own color, from funds raised among themselves. Besides, the taxes paid by the colored people of Philadelphia, exceed in amount the sums expended out of the funds of the city for the relief of their poor.'

It is also a fact that the proportion of whites in the alms-house in New-York is greater than that of the blacks. I am aware that other evidence, of a different kind, may be adduced in other places; but it is in the highest degree unfair to measure the whole body of blacks by the whole body of whites—for the privileges and advantages of the whites are as ten thousand to one: they monopolise almost every branch of business and every pursuit of life—they have all the means necessary to make men virtuous, intelligent, active, and opulent. Far different is the situation of the free blacks. How slender are their means! how mean and limited their occupations! how inferior their advantages! Almost every avenue to wealth, preferment and usefulness, is closed against them. How are they persecuted! how avoided in the streets! how excluded from the benefits of society! To point at them the finger of scorn, to taunt them for their inferiority or helplessness, is like putting out the eyes and clipping the wings of the eagle, and then reproaching him because he can neither see nor fly. To boast of our superior refinement, intelligence and virtue, is the extreme of vainglory, and adding insult to injury. Shame! shame!



SECTION IX.

THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY DENIES THE POSSIBILITY OF ELEVATING THE BLACKS IN THIS COUNTRY.

The detestation of feeling, the fire of moral indignation, and the agony of soul which I have felt kindling and swelling within me, in the progress of this review, under this section reach the acme of intensity. It is impossible for the mind to conceive, or the tongue to utter, or the pen to record, sentiments more derogatory to the character of a republican and Christian people than the following:

'Introduced as this class has been, in a way which cannot be justified, injurious in its influence to the community, degraded in character and miserable in condition, forever excluded, by public sentiment, by law and by a physical distinction, from the most powerful motives to exertion,' &c. * * 'In addition to all the causes which tend to pollute, to degrade and render them miserable, there are principles of repulsion between them and us, which can never be overcome.' * * 'Their bodies are free, their minds enslaved. They can neither bless their brethren in servitude, nor rise from their own obscurity, nor add to the purity of our morals, nor to our wealth, nor to our political strength.' * * 'Let us recollect that our fathers have placed them here; and that our prejudices, prejudices too deep to be eradicated while they remain among us, have produced the standard of their morals.' * * 'Nor will it be questioned that their establishment on the African coast ... will confer on them invaluable blessings which in this country they can never enjoy.' * * 'They must be hewers of wood and drawers of water. Do what they will, there is but this one prospect before them.'—[African Repository, vol. 1, pp. 34, 144, 162, 176, 226, 317.]

'Shut out from the privileges of citizens, separated from us by the insurmountable barrier of color, they can never amalgamate with us, but must remain for ever a distinct and inferior race, repugnant to our republican feelings, and dangerous to our republican institutions.' * * * 'It is not that there are some, but that there are so many among us of a different physical, if not moral, constitution, who never can amalgamate with the great body of our population.'—[African Repository, vol. ii. pp. 188, 189, 338.]

'In consequence of his own inveterate habits, and the no less inveterate prejudices of the whites, it is a sadly demonstrated truth, that the negro cannot, in this country, become an enlightened and useful citizen. Driven to the lowest stratum of society, and enthralled there for melancholy ages, his mind becomes proportionably grovelling, and to gratify his animal desires is his most exalted aspiration.' * * 'The negro, while in this country, will be treated as an inferior being.' * * 'Our slavery is such, as that no device of our philanthropy for elevating the wretched subjects of its debasement to the ordinary privileges of men, can descry one cheering glimpse of hope that our object can ever be accomplished. The very commencing act of freedom to the slave, is to place him in a condition still worse, if possible, both for his moral habits, his outward provision, and for the community that embosoms him, than even that, deplorable as it was, from which he has been removed. He is now a freeman; but his complexion, his features, every peculiarity of his person, pronounce to him another doom,—that every wish he may conceive, every effort he can make, shall be little better than vain. Even to every talent and virtuous impulse which he may feel working in his bosom, obstacles stand in impracticable array; not from a defect of essential title to success, but from a positive external law, unreasoning and irreversible.' * * 'The elevation of a degraded class of beings to the privileges of freemen, which, though free, they can never enjoy, and to the prospects of a happy immortality.' * * 'They again most solemnly repeat to the free colored people of Virginia their belief, that in Africa alone can they enjoy that complete emancipation from a degrading inequality, which in a greater or less degree pervades the United States, if not in the laws, in the whole frame and structure of society, and which in its effects on their moral and social state is scarcely less degrading than slavery itself.'—[African Repository, vol. iii. pp. 25, 26, 66, 68, 345.]

'But there is one large class among the inhabitants of this country—degraded and miserable—whom none of the efforts in which you are accustomed to engage, can materially benefit. Among the twelve millions who make up our census, two millions are Africans—separated from the possessors of the soil by birth, by the brand of indelible ignominy, by prejudices, mutual, deep, incurable, by an irreconcileable diversity of interests. They are aliens and outcasts;—they are, as a body, degraded beneath the influence of nearly all the motives which prompt other men to enterprise, and almost below the sphere of virtuous affections. Whatever may be attempted for the general improvement of society, their wants are untouched.—Whatever may be effected for elevating the mass of the nation in the scale of happiness or of intellectual and moral character, their degradation is the same—dark, and deep, and hopeless. Benevolence seems to overlook them, or struggles for their benefit in vain. Patriotism forgets them, or remembers them only with shame for what has been, and with dire forebodings, of what is yet to come.' * * 'It is taken for granted that in present circumstances, any effort to produce a general and thorough amelioration in the character and condition of the free people of color must be to a great extent fruitless. In every part of the United States there is a broad and impassible line of demarcation between every man who has one drop of African blood in his veins and every other class in the community. The habits, the feelings, all the prejudices of society—prejudices which neither refinement, nor argument, nor education, nor religion itself can subdue—mark the people of color, whether bond or free, as the subjects of a degradation inevitable and incurable. The African in this country belongs by birth to the very lowest station in society; and from that station he can never rise, BE HIS TALENTS, HIS ENTERPRISE, HIS VIRTUES WHAT THEY MAY.... They constitute a class by themselves—a class out of which no individual can be elevated, and below which, none can be depressed. And this is the difficulty, the invariable and insuperable difficulty in the way of every scheme for their benefit. Much can be done for them—much has been done; but still they are, and, in this country, ALWAYS MUST BE a depressed and abject race.'—[African Repository, vol. iv. pp. 117, 118, 119.]

'The distinctive complexion by which it is marked, necessarily debars it from all familiar intercourse with the more favored society that surrounds it, and of course denies to it all hope of either social or political elevation, by means of individual merit, however great, or individual exertions, however unremitted.' * * 'It is deemed unnecessary to repeat what has already been said, of the character of the population in question, of its hopeless degradation, and its baneful influence, in the situation in which it is now placed.' * * * 'The colored population of this country can never rise to respectability and happiness here.' * * 'It was at an early period seen and acknowledged, that neither the objects of benevolence nor the interests of the nation could be materially benefitted by any plan or measures that permitted them to remain within the United States.' * * 'They leave a country in which though born and reared, they are strangers and aliens; where severe necessity places them in a class of degraded beings.' * * 'With us they have been degraded by slavery, and STILL FURTHER DEGRADED by the mockery of nominal freedom. We have endeavored, but endeavored in vain, to restore them either to self-respect, or to the respect of others. It is not our fault that we have failed; it is not theirs. It has resulted from a cause over which neither they, nor we, can ever have control. Here, therefore, they must be for ever debased: more than this, they must be for ever useless; more even than this, they must be FOR EVER A NUISANCE, from which it were a blessing for society to be rid. And yet they, and they only, are qualified for colonizing Africa.' * * * 'Whether bond or free, their presence will be for ever a calamity. Why then, in the name of God, should we hesitate to encourage their departure? The existence of this race among us; a race that can neither share our blessings nor incorporate in our Society, is already felt to be a curse.'—[African Repository, vol. v. pp. 51, 53, 179, 234, 238, 276, 278.]

'Is our posterity doomed to endure for ever not only all the ills flowing from the state of slavery, but all which arise from incongruous elements of population, separated from each other by invincible prejudices, and by natural causes?' * * 'Here invincible prejudices exclude them from the enjoyment of the society of the whites, and deny them all the advantages of freemen. The bar, the pulpit, and our legislative halls are shut to them by the irresistible force of public sentiment. No talents however great, no piety however pure and devoted, no patriotism however ardent, can secure their admission. They constantly hear the accents, and behold the triumphs, of a liberty which here they can never enjoy.' * * 'It is against this increase of colored persons, who take but a nominal freedom here, and cannot rise from their degraded condition, that this Society attempts to provide.' * * 'They may be emancipated; but emancipation cannot elevate their condition or augment their capacity for self-preservation.—Want and suffering will gradually diminish their numbers, and they will disappear, as the inferior has always disappeared, before the superior race.' * * 'Our great and good men purposed it primarily as a system of relief for two millions of fellow men in our own county—a population dangerous to ourselves and necessarily degraded here.' * * 'The free blacks, by the moral necessity of their civil disabilities, are and must for ever be a nuisance—equally, and more to the owner of slaves, than to other members of the community.'—[African Repository, vol. vi. pp. 12, 17, 82, 168, 295, 368.]

'Incorporated into our country as freemen, yet separated from it by odious and degrading distinctions, they feel themselves condemned to a hopeless and debasing inferiority. They know that their very complexion will for ever exclude them from the rank, the privileges, the honors, of freemen. No matter how great their industry, or how abundant their wealth—no matter what their attainments in literature, science or the arts—no matter how correct their deportment or what respect their characters may inspire, they can never, NO, NEVER be raised to a footing of equality, not even to a familiar intercourse with the surrounding society.' * * 'To us it seems evident that the man of color may as soon change his complexion, as rise above all sense of past inferiority and debasement in a community, from the social intercourse of which, he must expect to be in a great measure excluded, not only until prejudice shall have no existence therein, but until the freedom of man in regulating his social relations is proved to be abridged by some law of morality or the gospel.... Is it not wise, then, for the free people of color and their friends to admit, what cannot reasonably be doubted, that the people of color must, in this country, remain for ages, probably for ever, a separate and inferior caste, weighed down by causes, powerful, universal, inevitable; which neither legislation nor christianity can remove?'

'Let the free black in this country toil from youth to age in the honorable pursuit of wisdom—let him store his mind with the most valuable researches of science and literature—and let him add to a highly gifted and cultivated intellect, a piety pure, undefiled, and "unspotted from the world"—it is all nothing: he would not be received into the very lowest walks of society. If we were constrained to admire so uncommon a being, our very admiration would mingle with disgust, because, in the physical organization of his frame, we meet an insurmountable barrier, even to an approach to social intercourse, and in the Egyptian color, which nature has stamped upon his features, a principle of repulsion so strong as to forbid the idea of a communion either of interest or of feeling, as utterly abhorrent. Whether these feelings are founded in reason or not, we will not now inquire—perhaps they are not. But education and habit and prejudice have so firmly riveted them upon us, that they have become as strong as nature itself—and to expect their removal, or even their slightest modification, would be as idle and preposterous as to expect that we could reach forth our hands, and remove the mountains from their foundations into the vallies, which are beneath them.'—[African Repository, vol. vii. pp. 100, 195, 196, 231.]

'And can we not find some spot on this large globe which will receive them kindly, and where they may escape those prejudices which, in this country, must ever keep them inferior and degraded members of society?'—[Third Annual Report.]

'A population which, even if it were not literally enslaved, must for ever remain in a state of degradation no better than bondage.' * * 'Here the thing is impossible; a slave cannot be really emancipated. You may call him free, you may enact a statute book of laws to make him free, but you cannot bleach him into the enjoyment of freedom.' * * 'The Soodra is not farther separated from the Brahmin in regard to all his privileges, civil, intellectual, and moral, than the negro is from the white man by the prejudices which result from the difference made between them by the God of nature. A barrier more difficult to be surmounted than the institution of the caste, cuts off, and while the present state of society continues must always cut off, the negro from all that is valuable in citizenship.'—[Seventh Annual Report.]

'Let the arm of our government be stretched out for the defence of our African colony, and this objection will no longer exist. There, and there alone, the colored man can enjoy the motives for honorable exertion.'—[Ninth Annual Report.]

'In the distinctive and indelible marks of their color, and the prejudices of the people, an insuperable obstacle has been placed to the execution of any plan for elevating their character, and placing them on a footing with their brethren of the same common family.'—[Tenth Annual Report.]

'Far from shuddering at the thought of leaving the comfortable fireside among us, for a distant and unknown shore yet covered by the wilderness, they have preferred real liberty there, to a mockery of freedom here, and have turned their eyes to Africa, as the only resting place and refuge of the colored man, in the deluge of oppression that surrounds him.'—[Eleventh Annual Report.]

'The race in question were known, as a class, to be destitute, depraved—the victims of all forms of social misery. The peculiarity of their fate was, that this was not their condition by accident or transiently, but inevitably and immutably, whilst they remained in their present place, by a law as infallible in its operation, as any of physical nature.' * * 'Their residence amongst us is attended by evil consequences to society—causes beyond the control of the human will must prevent their ever rising to equality with the whites.' * * 'The Managers consider it clear that causes exist, and are operating to prevent their improvement and elevation to any considerable extent as a class, in this country, which are fixed, not only beyond the control of the friends of humanity, BUT OF ANY HUMAN POWER. Christianity cannot do for them here, what it will do for them in Africa. This is not the fault of the colored man, nor of the white man, nor of Christianity; but an ordination of Providence, and no more to be changed than the laws of nature. Yet, were it otherwise, did no cause exist but prejudice, to prevent the elevation, in this country, of our free colored population, still, were this prejudice so strong (which is indeed the fact) as to forbid the hope of any great favorable change in their condition, what folly for them to reject blessings in another land, because it is prejudice which debars them from such blessings in this! But in truth no legislation, no humanity, no benevolence can make them insensible to their past condition, can unfetter their minds, can relieve them from the disadvantages resulting from inferior means and attainments, can abridge the right of freemen to regulate their social intercourse and relations, which will leave them for ever a separate and depressed class in the community; in fine, nothing can in any way do much here to raise them from their miseries to respectability, honor and usefulness.'—[Fifteenth Annual Report.]

'That no adequate means of attaining this great end existed, short of the segregation of the black population from the white—that an IMPASSIBLE BARRIER existed in the state of society in this country, between these classes—that whatever might be the liberal sentiments of some good men among us, the blacks were marked with an indelible note of inferiority—they saw placed high before them a station which here they could never reach, and by a natural reaction they fell back into a position where self-respect lent them no stimulus, and virtuous principles and actions lost more than half their motive—that in fact they were a branded and degraded caste—the Pariahs of the United States, and destined as long as they remained with us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water—that the increase of this population in a greater ratio than the whites, was calculated to excite just apprehension—that no one could say that when a few more millions should be added to their numbers, the example of Hayti might not rouse them to an effort to break their chains; and he would ask what man could contemplate, without shuddering, all the complicated atrocity and bloody revenge of such a revolt?' * * 'Those persons of color who have been emancipated, are only nominally free, and the whole race, so long as they remain among us, and whether they be slaves or free, must necessarily be kept in a condition full of wretchedness to them and full of danger to the whites.'—[Second Annual Report of New-York State Colonization Society.]

'Many of those citizens who ardently wish for the removal of such of the free colored population, as are willing to go, to any place where they could enjoy, what they can never enjoy here, that is, all the advantages of society,' &c. * * 'That the free colored population in this country labor under the most oppressive disadvantages, which their freedom can by no means counterbalance, is too obvious to admit of doubt. I waive all inquiry whether this is right or wrong. I speak of things as they are—not as they might, or as they ought to be. They are cut off from the most remote chance of amalgamation with the white population, by feelings or prejudices, call them what you will, that are ineradicable. Their situation is more unfavorable than that of many slaves. "With all the burdens, cares and responsibilities of freedom, they have few or none of its substantial benefits. Their associations are, and must be, chiefly with slaves. Their right of suffrage gives them little, if any, political influence, and they are practically, if not theoretically excluded from representation and weight in our public councils." No merit, no services, no talents can elevate them to a level with the whites. Occasionally, an exception may arise. A colored individual, of great talents, merits, and wealth, may emerge from the crowd. Cases of this kind are to the last degree rare. The colored people are subject to legal disabilities, more or less galling and severe, in almost every state of the Union. Who has not deeply regretted their late harsh expulsion from the State of Ohio, and their being forced to abandon the country of their birth, which had profited by their labors, and to take refuge in a foreign land? Severe regulations have been recently passed in Louisiana, to prevent the introduction of free people of color into the State. Whenever they appear, they are to be banished in sixty days. The strong opposition to a negro college in New-Haven, speaks in a language not to be mistaken, the jealousy with which they are regarded. And there is no reason to expect, that the lapse of centuries will make any change in this respect. THEY WILL ALWAYS UNHAPPILY BE REGARDED AS AN INFERIOR RACE.'—[Mathew Carey's 'Reflections.']

'Instances of emancipation have not essentially benefitted the African, and probably never will, while he remains among us. In this country, public opinion does, and will, consign him to an inferiority, above which he can never rise. Emancipation can NEVER make the African, while he remains in this country, a real free man. Degradation MUST and WILL press him to the earth; no cheering, stimulating influence will he here feel, in any of the walks of life.'—[Circular of the Massachusetts Colonization Society for 1832.]

'With us color is the bar. Nature has raised up barriers between the races, which no man with a proper sense of the dignity of his species desires to see surmounted.' * * 'What effects does emancipation produce without removal? A discontented and useless population; having no sympathies with the rest of the community, doomed by immoveable barriers to eternal degradation. I know that there are among us, those of warm and generous hearts, who believe that we may retain the black man here, and raise him up to the full and perfect stature of human nature. That degree of improvement can never take place except the races be amalgamated; and amalgamation is a day-dream. It may seem strong, but it is true that "a skin not colored like our own" will separate them from us, as long as our feelings continue a part of our nature.'—[Speeches delivered at the formation of the Young Men's Auxiliary Colonization Society in New-York city.]

'These [subsistence, political and social considerations] they can never enjoy here.' * * 'You may manumit the slave, but you cannot make him a white man. He still remains a negro or a mulatto. The mark and the recollection of his origin and former state still adhere to him; the feelings produced by that condition, in his own mind and in the minds of the whites, still exist; he is associated by his color, and by these recollections and feelings, with the class of slaves; and a barrier is thus raised between him and the whites, that is between him and the free class, which he can never hope to transcend.' * * 'A vast majority of the free blacks, as we have seen, are and must be, an idle, worthless and thievish race.'—[First Annual Report.]

'Here they are condemned to a state of hopeless inferiority, and consequent degradation. As they cannot emerge from this state, they lose, by degrees, the hope, at last the desire of emerging.'—[Second Annual Report.]

'The existence in any community of a people forming a distinct and degraded caste, who are forever excluded by the fiat of society and the laws of the land, from all hopes of equality in social intercourse and political privileges, must, from the nature of things, be fraught with unmixed evil. Did this committee believe it possible, by any acts of legislation, to remove this blotch upon the body politic, by so elevating the social and moral condition of the blacks in Ohio, that they would be received into society on terms of equality, and would by common consent be admitted to a participation of political privileges—WERE SUCH A THING POSSIBLE, even after a lapse of time and by pecuniary sacrifice, most gladly would they recommend such measures as would subserve the cause of humanity, by producing such a result. For the purposes of legislation, it is sufficient to know, that the blacks in Ohio must always exist as a separate and degraded race, that when the leopard shall change his spots and the Ethiopian his skin, then, BUT NOT TILL THEN, may we expect that the descendants of Africans will be admitted into society, on terms of social and political equality.'—[Report of a Select Committee of the Legislature of Ohio.]

'No possible contingency can ever break down or weaken the impassable barrier which at present separates the whites from social communion with the blacks. Neither education, nor wealth, nor any other means of distinction known to our communities, can elevate blacks to a level with whites, in the United States.'—[American Spectator.]

'However unjust may be the prejudices which exist in the whites against the blacks, and which operate so injuriously to the latter—they are probably too deep to be obliterated; and true philanthropy would dictate the separation of two races of men, so different, WHOM NATURE HERSELF HAS FORBIDDEN TO MINGLE INTO ONE; but of whom, while they remain associated, one or the other must of necessity have the superiority. For the future welfare of both, we trust that the project of colonizing the Africans, as they shall gradually be emancipated, although a work of time, may not be altogether hopeless.'—[Brandon (Vt.) Telegraph.]

'The character and circumstances of this portion of the community fall under every man's notice, and the least observation shows that they cannot be useful or happy among us.'—[Oration by Gabriel P. Disosway, Esq.]

'It is of vast importance to these people, as a class, that their hopes and expectations of temporal prosperity should be turned to Africa, and that they should not regard our country as their permanent residence, or as that country in which they will ever, as a people, enjoy equal privileges and blessings with the whites.'—[Rev. Mr Gurley's Letter to the Rev. S. S. Jocelyn.]

'To attain solid happiness and permanent respectability, they should now remove to a more congenial clime.... To raise them to a level with the whites is AN IMPOSSIBILITY.'—[New-Haven Religious Intelligencer.]

'In Liberia—the land of their forefathers, they will be restored to real freedom, which they have never yet enjoyed, and which it is folly for them to expect they can ever enjoy among the whites.'—[Norfolk Herald.]

'My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me.' Are we pagans, are we savages, are we devils? Can pagans, or savages, or devils, exhibit a more implacable spirit, than is seen in the foregoing extracts? It is enough to cause the very stones to cry out, and the beasts of the field to rebuke us.

Of this I am sure: no man, who is truly willing to admit the people of color to an equality with himself, can see any insuperable difficulty in effecting their elevation. When, therefore, I hear an individual—especially a professor of Christianity—strenuously contending that there can be no fellowship with them, I cannot help suspecting the sincerity of his own republicanism or piety, or thinking that the beam is in his own eye. My bible assures me that the day is coming when even the 'wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the wolf and the young lion and the fatling together;' and, if this be possible, I see no cause why those of the same species—God's rational creatures—fellow countrymen, in truth, cannot dwell in harmony together.

How abominably hypocritical, how consummately despicable, how incorrigibly tyrannical must this whole nation appear in the eyes of the people of Europe!—professing to be the friends of the free blacks, actuated by the purest motives of benevolence toward them, desirous to make atonement for past wrongs, challenging the admiration of the world for their patriotism, philanthropy and piety—and yet (hear, O heaven! and be astonished, O earth!) shamelessly proclaiming, with a voice louder than thunder, and an aspect malignant as sin, that while their colored countrymen remain among them, they must be trampled beneath their feet, treated as inferior beings, deprived of all the invaluable privileges of freemen, separated by the brand of indelible ignominy, and debased to a level with the beasts that perish! Yea, that they may as soon change their complexion as rise from their degradation! that no device of philanthropy can benefit them here! that they constitute a class out of which no individual can be elevated, and below which, none can be depressed! that no talents however great, no piety however pure and devoted, no patriotism however ardent, no industry however great, no wealth however abundant, can raise them to a footing of equality with the whites! that 'let them toil from youth to old age in the honorable pursuit of wisdom—let them store their minds with the most valuable researches of science and literature—and let them add to a highly gifted and cultivated intellect, a piety pure, undefiled, and unspotted from the world, it is all nothing—they would not be received into the very lowest walks of society—admiration of such uncommon beings would mingle with disgust!' Yea, that 'there is a broad and impassible line of demarcation between every man who has one drop of African blood in his veins and every other class in the community'! Yea, that 'the habits, the feelings, all the prejudices of society—prejudices which neither refinement, nor argument, nor education, nor RELIGION itself can subdue—mark the people of color, whether bond or free, as the subjects of a degradation inevitable and incurable'! Yea, that 'Christianity cannot do for them here, what it will do for them in Africa'! Yea, that 'this is not the fault of the colored man, NOR OF THE WHITE MAN, nor of Christianity; but AN ORDINATION OF PROVIDENCE, and no more to be changed than the LAWS OF NATURE'!!!

Again I ask, are we pagans, are we savages, are we devils? Search the records of heathenism, and sentiments more hostile to the spirit of the gospel, or of a more black and blasphemous complexion than these, cannot be found. I believe that they are libels upon the character of my countrymen, which time will wipe off. I call upon the spirits of the just made perfect in heaven, upon all who have experienced the love of God in their souls here below, upon the christian converts in India and the islands of the sea, to sustain me in the assertion that there is power enough in the religion of Jesus Christ to melt down the most stubborn prejudices, to overthrow the highest walls of partition, to break the strongest caste, to improve and elevate the most degraded, to unite in fellowship the most hostile, and to equalize and bless all its recipients. Make me sure that there is not, and I will give it up, now and for ever. 'In Christ Jesus, all are one: there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female.'

These sentiments were not uttered by infidels, nor by worthless wretches, but in many instances by professors of religion and ministers of the gospel! and in almost every instance by reputedly the most enlightened, patriotic and benevolent men in the land! Tell it not abroad! publish it not in the streets of Calcutta! Even the eminent President of Union College, (Rev. Dr. Nott,) could so far depart, unguardedly I hope, from christian love and integrity, as to utter this language in an address in behalf of the Colonization Society:—'With us they [the free people of color] have been degraded by slavery, and still further degraded by the mockery of nominal freedom.' Were this true, it would imply that we of the free States are more barbarous and neglectful than even the traffickers in souls and men-stealers at the south. We have not, it is certain, treated our colored brethren as the law of kindness and the ties of brotherhood demand; but have we outdone slaveholders in cruelty? Were it true, to forge new fetters for the limbs of these degraded beings would be an act of benevolence. But their condition is as much superior to that of the slaves, as happiness is to misery. The second portion of this work, containing their proceedings in a collective capacity, shows whether they have made any progress in intelligence, in virtue, in piety, and in happiness, since their liberation. Again he says: 'We have endeavored, but endeavored in vain, to restore them either to self-respect, or to the respect of others.' It is painful to contradict so worthy an individual; but nothing is more certain than that this statement is altogether erroneous. We have derided, we have shunned, we have neglected them, in every possible manner. They have had to rise not only under the mountainous weight of their own ignorance and vice, but with the additional and constant pressure of our contempt and injustice. In despite of us, they have done well. Again: 'It is not our fault that we have failed; it is not theirs.' We are wholly and exclusively in fault. What have we done to raise them up from the earth? What have we not done to keep them down? Once more: 'It has resulted from a cause over which neither they, nor we, can ever have control.' In other words, they have been made with skins not colored like our own,' and therefore we cannot recognise them as fellow-countrymen, or treat them like rational beings! One sixth of our whole population must, FOR EVER, in this land, remain a wretched, ignorant and degraded race,—and yet nobody be culpable—none but the Creator who has made us incapable of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us! Horrible—horrible! If this be not an impeachment of Infinite Goodness,—I do not say intentionally but really,—I cannot define it. The same sentiment is reiterated by a writer in the Southern Religious Telegraph, who says—'The exclusion of the free black from the civil and literary privileges of our country, depends on another circumstance than that of character—a circumstance, which, as it was entirely beyond his control, so it is unchangeable, and will for ever operate. This circumstance is—he is a black man'!! And the Board of Managers of the Parent Society, in their Fifteenth Annual Report, declare that 'an ordination of Providence' prevents the general improvement of the people of color in this land! How are God and our country dishonored, and the requirements of the gospel contemned, by this ungodly plea! Having satisfied himself that the Creator is alone blameable for the past and present degradation of the free blacks, Dr. Nott draws the natural and unavoidable inference that 'here, therefore, they must be for ever debased, for ever useless, for ever a nuisance, for ever a calamity,' and then gravely declares (mark the climax!) 'and yet THEY, [these ignorant, helpless, miserable creatures!] AND THEY ONLY, are qualified for colonizing Africa'!! 'Why then,' he asks, 'in the name of God,'—(the abrupt appeal, in this connexion, seems almost profane,)—'should we hesitate to encourage their departure?'

Nature, we are positively assured, has raised up impassable barriers between the races. I understand by this expression, that the blacks are of a different species from ourselves, so that all attempts to generate offspring between us and them must prove as abortive, as between a man and a beast. It is a law of Nature that the lion shall not beget the lamb, or the leopard the bear. Now the planters at the south have clearly demonstrated, that an amalgamation with their slaves is not only possible, but a matter of course, and eminently productive. It neither ends in abortion nor produces monsters. In truth, it is often so difficult in the slave States to distinguish between the fruits of this intercourse and the children of white parents, that witnesses are summoned at court to solve the problem! Talk of the barriers of Nature, when the land swarms with living refutations of the statement! Happy indeed would it be for many a female slave, if such a barrier could exist during the period of her servitude to protect her from the lust of her master!

In France,[W] England,[X] Spain, and other countries, persons of color maintain as high a rank and are treated as honorably as any other class of the inhabitants, in despite of the 'impassable barriers of Nature.' Yet it is proclaimed to the world by the Colonization Society, that the American people can never be as republican in their feelings and practices as Frenchmen, Spaniards or Englishmen! Nay, that religion itself cannot subdue their malignant prejudices, or induce them to treat their dark-skinned brethren in accordance with their professions of republicanism! My countrymen! is it so? Are you willing thus to be held up as tyrants and hypocrites for ever? as less magnanimous and just than the populace of Europe? No—no! I cannot give you up as incorrigibly wicked, nor my country as sealed over to destruction. My confidence remains, like the oak—like the Alps—unshaken, storm-proof. I am not discouraged—I am not distrustful. I still place an unwavering reliance upon the omnipotence of truth. I still believe that the demands of justice will be satisfied; that the voice of bleeding humanity will melt the most obdurate hearts; and that the land will be redeemed and regenerated by an enlightened and energetic public opinion. As long as there remains among us a single copy of the Declaration of Independence, or of the New Testament, I will not despair of the social and political elevation of my sable countrymen. Already a rallying-cry is heard from the East and the West, from the North and the South; towns and cities and states are in commotion; volunteers are trooping to the field; the spirit of freedom and the fiend of oppression are in mortal conflict, and all neutrality is at an end. Already the line of division is drawn: on one side are the friends of truth and liberty, with their banner floating high in the air, on which are inscribed in letters of light, 'IMMEDIATE ABOLITION'—'NO COMPROMISE WITH OPPRESSORS'—'EQUAL RIGHTS'—'NO EXPATRIATION'—'DUTY, AND NOT CONSEQUENCES'—'LET JUSTICE BE DONE, THOUGH THE HEAVENS SHOULD FALL!'—On the opposite side stand the supporters and apologists of slavery in mighty array, with a black flag on which are seen in bloody characters, 'AFRICAN COLONIZATION'—'GRADUAL ABOLITION'—'RIGHTS OF PROPERTY'—'POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY'—'NO EQUALITY'—'NO REPENTANCE'—'EXPULSION OF THE BLACKS'—'PROTECTION TO TYRANTS!'—Who can doubt the issue of this controversy, or which side has the approbation of the Lord of Hosts?

In the African Repository for September, 1831, there is an elaborate defence of the Colonization Society, in which occurs the following passage:—'It has been said that the Society is unfriendly to the improvement of the free people of color while they remain in the United States. The charge is not true.' I reiterate the charge; and the evidence of its correctness is before the reader. The Society prevents the education of this class in the most insidious and effectual manner, by constantly asserting that they must always be a degraded people in this country, and that the cultivation of their minds will avail them nothing. Who does not readily perceive that the prevalence of this opinion must at once paralyze every effort for their improvement? For it would be a waste of time and means, and unpardonable folly, for us to attempt the accomplishment of an impossible work—of that which we know will result in disappointment. Every discriminating and candid mind must see and acknowledge, that, to perpetuate their ignorance, it is only necessary to make the belief prevalent that they 'must be for ever debased, for ever useless, for ever an inferior race,' and their thraldom is sure.

I am aware that a school has been established for the education of colored youth, under the auspices of the Society; but it is sufficient to state that none but those who consent to emigrate to Liberia are embraced in its provisions.

In the Appendix to the Seventh Annual Report, p. 94, the position is assumed that 'it is a well established point, that the public safety forbids either the emancipation or general instruction of the slaves.' The recent enactment of laws in some of the slave States, prohibiting the instruction of free colored persons as well as slaves, has received something more than a tacit approval from the organ of the Society. A prominent advocate of the Society, (G. P. Disosway, Esq.,) in an oration on the fourth of July, 1831, alluding to these laws, says,—'The public safety of our brethren at the South requires them [the slaves] to be kept ignorant and uninstructed.' The Editor of the Southern Religious Telegraph, who is a clergyman and a warm friend of the colonization scheme, remarking upon the instruction of the colored population of Virginia, says:

'Teaching a servant to read, is not teaching him the religion of Christ. The great majority of the white people of our country are taught to read; but probably not one in five, of those who have the Bible, is a christian, in the legitimate sense of the term. If black people are as depraved and as averse to true religion as the white people are—and we know of no difference between them in this respect—teaching them to read the Bible will make christians of very few of them. [What a plea!] ... If christian masters were to teach their servants to read, we apprehend that they would not feel the obligation as they ought to feel it, of giving them oral instruction, and often impressing divine truth on their minds. [!!] ... If the free colored people were generally taught to read, it might be an inducement to them to remain in this country. WE WOULD OFFER THEM NO SUCH INDUCEMENT. [!!] ... A knowledge of letters and of all the arts and sciences, cannot counteract the influences under which the character of the negro must be formed in this country.... It appears to us that a greater benefit may be conferred on the free colored people, by planting good schools for them in Africa, and encouraging them to remove there, than by giving them the knowledge of letters to make them contented in their present condition.'—[Telegraph of Feb. 19, 1831.]

Jesuitism was never more subtle—Papal domination never more exclusive. The gospel of peace and mercy preached by him who holds that ignorance is the mother of devotion! who would sequestrate the bible from the eyes of his fellow men! who contends that knowledge is the enemy of religion! who denies the efficacy of education in elevating a degraded population! who would make men brutes in order to make them better christians! who desires to make the clergy infallible guides to heaven! Now what folly and impiety is all this! Besides, is it not mockery to preach repentance, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, to the benighted blacks, and at the same time deny them the right and ability to 'search the scriptures' for themselves?

The proposition which was made last year to erect a College for the education of colored youth in New-Haven, it is well known, created an extraordinary and most disgraceful tumult in that place, (the hot-bed of African colonization,) and was generally scouted by the friends of the Society in other places. The American Spectator at Washington, (next to the African Repository, the mouth-piece of the Society,) used the following language, in relation to the violent proceedings of the citizens of New-Haven: 'We not only approve the course, which they have pursued, but we admire the moral courage, which induced them, for the love of right, (!) to incur the censure of both sections of the country.'

As a farther illustration of the complacency with which colonizationists regard the laws prohibiting the instruction of the blacks, I extract the following paragraph from the 'Proceedings of the New-York State Colonization Society, on its second anniversary:'

'It is the business of the free—their safety requires it—to keep the slaves in ignorance. Their education is utterly prohibited. Educate them, and they break their fetters. Suppose the slaves of the south to have the knowledge of freemen, they would be free, or be exterminated by the whites. This renders it necessary to prevent their instruction—to keep them from Sunday Schools, and other means of gaining knowledge. But a few days ago, a proposition was made in the legislature of Georgia, to allow them so much instruction as to enable them to read the bible; which was promptly rejected by a large majority. I do not mention this for the purpose of condemning the policy of the slaveholding States, but to lament its necessity.'

Elias B. Caldwell, one of the founders, and the first Secretary of the Parent Society, in a speech delivered at its formation, advanced the following monstrous sentiments:

'The more you improve the condition of these people, the more you cultivate their minds, the more miserable you make them in their present state. You give them a higher relish for those privileges which they can never attain, and turn what you intend for a blessing into a curse. No, if they must remain in their present situation, keep them in the lowest state of ignorance and degradation. The nearer you bring them to the condition of brutes, the better chance do you give them of possessing their apathy.'

So, then, the American Colonization Society advocates, and to a great extent perpetuates the ignorance and degradation of the colored population of the United States!

In a critical examination of the pages of the African Repository, and of the reports and addresses of the Parent Society and its auxiliaries, I cannot find in a single instance any impeachment of the conduct and feelings of society toward the people of color, or any hint that the prejudice which is so prevalent against them is unmanly and sinful, or any evidence of contrition for past injustice, or any remonstrance or entreaty with a view to a change of public sentiment, or any symptoms of moral indignation at such unchristian and anti-republican treatment. On the contrary, I find the doctrine every where inculcated that this hatred and contempt, this abuse and proscription, are not only excusable, but the natural, inevitable and incurable effects of constitutional dissimilitude, growing out of an ordination of Providence, for which there is no remedy but a separation between the two races. If the free blacks, then, have been 'still further degraded by the mockery of nominal freedom,' if they 'must always be a separate and degraded race,' if 'degradation must and will press them to the earth,' if from their present station 'they can never rise, be their talents, their enterprise, their virtues what they may,' if 'in Africa alone, they can enjoy the motives for honorable ambition,' the American Colonization Society is responsible for their debasement and misery; for as it numbers among its supporters the most influential men in our country, and boasts of having the approbation of an overwhelming majority of the wise and good whose examples are laws, it is able, were it willing, to effect a radical change in public sentiment—nay, it is at the present time public sentiment itself. But though it has done much, and may do more, (all that it can it will do,) to depress, impoverish and dispirit the free people of color, and to strengthen and influence mutual antipathies, it is the purpose of God, I am fully persuaded, to humble the pride of the American people by rendering the expulsion of our colored countrymen utterly impracticable, and the necessity for their admission to equal rights imperative. As neither mountains of prejudice, nor the massy shackles of law and of public opinion, have been able to keep them down to a level with slaves, I confidently anticipate their exaltation among ourselves. Through the vista of time,—a short distance only,—I see them here, not in Africa, not bowed to the earth, or derided and persecuted as at present, not with a downcast air or an irresolute step, but standing erect as men destined heavenward, unembarrassed, untrammelled, with none to molest or make them afraid.

FOOTNOTES:

[V] Walker's Appeal.

[W] Why is it that the free people of color are now, in almost every part of our country, threatened with banishment from State to State, and with hunting from city to city, until there shall be no place for the soles of their feet in this their native land? Is it because they are in reality, as slaveholders tell us, an inferior race of beings? No, my friends: their consistent conduct, their polished manners, and their great respectability, wherever they have enjoyed the advantages of equality of education and equality of motives, proclaim the contrary. The true cause of this almost universal prescription is to be found in the melancholy fact that we have been guilty of the most atrocious injustice to their forefathers and to themselves. We would therefore now banish the evidence of our guilt from before our eyes: for whom a man has injured, he is almost sure to hate. Some of the finest men I met with, during a residence of three years in London and Paris, were the offspring of African mothers. There no distinction is made in any grade of society, on account of color. I have repeatedly seen black gentlemen sitting on the sofas, conversing with the ladies, at the hospitable mansion of that universal philanthropist, LAFAYETTE; and there were no persons present who appeared more respectable, or who were more respected.—[Address of Arnold Buffum, President of the New-England Anti-Slavery Society, delivered in Boston, Feb. 16, 1832.]

[X] In England, it is common to see respectable and genteel people open their pews when a black stranger enters the church; and at hotels, nobody thinks it a degradation to have a colored traveller sit at the same table. We have heard a well authenticated anecdote, which illustrates the different state of feeling in the two countries on this subject. A wealthy American citizen was residing at London for a season, which time the famous Mr Prince Saunders was there. The London breakfast hour is very late; and Prince Saunders happened to call upon the American while his family were taking their morning repast. Politeness and native good feelings prompted the lady to ask her guest to take a cup of coffee—but then the prejudices of society—how could she overcome them? True, he was a gentleman in character, manners and dress; but he had a black skin; and how could white skins sit at the same table with him? If his character had been as black as perdition, the difficulty might have been overcome, however reluctantly; but his skin being black, it was altogether out of the question. So the lady sipped her coffee, and Prince Saunders sat at the window, occasionally speaking in reply to conversation addressed to him. At last all retired from the breakfast table—and then the lady, with an air of sudden recollection, said, 'I forgot to ask if you had breakfasted, Mr Saunders! Won't you let me give you a cup of coffee?' 'I thank you, madam,' he replied, with a dignified bow, 'I am engaged to breakfast with the PRINCE REGENT this morning!'

We laugh at the narrow bigotry of the Mahometan, who feels contaminated if a Christian shares his dinner, and who will not give his vile carcass burial, for fear of pollution. Is our prejudice against persons of color more rational or more just? The plain fact is, our prejudice has the same foundation as that of the Mahometan—both are grounded in pride and selfishness. A law has lately passed in Turkey, imposing a fine upon whoever shall call a Christian a dog. Let us try to keep pace with the Turks in candor and benevolence.—[Massachusetts Journal and Tribune.]



SECTION X.

THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY DECEIVES AND MISLEADS THE NATION.

It is now about fifteen years since the American Colonization Society sprang into existence—a space of time amply sufficient to test its ability. In its behalf the pulpit and the press (two formidable engines) have been exerted to an extraordinary degree; statesmen, and orators, and judges, and lawyers, and philanthropists, have eloquently advocated its claims to public patronage. During this protracted period, and with such powerful auxiliaries, a careless observer might naturally suppose that much must have been accomplished towards abolishing slavery. But what is the fact? Less than one hundred and fifty souls have been removed annually to Africa—in all, about two thousand souls in fifteen years!!—a drop from the Atlantic ocean—a grain of earth from the American continent! In the mean time, the increase of the slaves has amounted to upwards of half a million! and every week more than one thousand new-born victims are added to their number. Before a vessel, with one hundred and fifty passengers, can go to and return from Africa, more than ten thousand slave infants will have been added to our population: while she is preparing to depart, or waiting for a fair wind, the increase will freight her many times.

The following eloquent and comprehensive Circular (published last year in London by Capt. Charles Stuart, in consequence of the visit of Elliott Cresson, an agent who was sent out to dupe the philanthropists of England) exhibits the inefficiency and criminality of the Society in a striking light:

'AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY. LIBERIA.—This Society was formed in the United States, in 1817.

Its Thirteenth Annual Report has just reached this country.

Its object, as expressed by itself, (see the Thirteenth Report, page 41, app. 9, art. 2,) "Is to promote and execute a plan for colonizing the free people of color, residing in 'the United States' in Africa, or such other place as Congress shall deem most expedient."

The facts of the case are these:

1. That the United States have about 2,000,000 enslaved blacks. 2. That they have about 500,000 free blacks. 3. That both these classes are rapidly increasing. 4. That both are exceedingly depressed and degraded.

The duty of the United States to them, is the same exactly as we owe to our colored fellow-subjects in our slave colonies, viz. to obey God, by letting them go free, by placing them beneath wise and equitable laws, and by loving them all, and treating them like brethren; that is to say, the unquestionable duty of the people of the United States is to emancipate their 2,000,000 slaves, and to raise the 500,000 free colored people to that estimation in their native country which is due to them.

But the American Colonization Society deliberately rejects both of these first great duties, and confines itself to the colonization in Africa of the free colored people. They say, in page 5, of their Thirteenth Report, "To abolition she could not look—and need not look." It "could do nothing in the slave States for the cause of humanity;" and in page 8, "Emancipation, with the liberty to remain on this side of the Atlantic, is but an act of dreamy madness."

Now in thus deliberately letting the great crime of negro slavery alone; and in thus substituting a little restricted act of very dubious benevolence to a few, for the great and sacred duty of right which they owe to all,—they hurt the great cause of everlasting truth and love, in the following particulars:

1. By offering to the nation a hope, at which many of their best men seem eagerly grasping, of getting rid of the colored people abroad—they conduce more and more, as this hope prevails, to keep out of mind the superior, unalterable, and immediate duty of righting them at home.

2. By removing whatever number it be, from their native country, the number which remains must be diminished,—and the more the number which remains is diminished, the more helpless will they become—the less will be the hope of their ever recovering their own liberty—and the more and longer will they be trampled upon.