The Early Negro Convention Movement Part 2

With greater emphasis than at prior meetings, this convention set the seal of its opposition against any hope for permanent relief to the conditions under which the colored freeman labored by any comprehensive scheme of emigration. Because of this, it directed its energies to affirmative constructive action.

In the enunciation of a philosophy able, far-sighted and statesmanlike, contained in the address to the American people, we behold the wisdom of a master mind--one then at the prime of his intellectual and physical powers, Frederick Dougla.s.s, the chairman of the Business Committee.

Among the important things done by the convention might be enumerated. It says:

"We can not announce the discovery of any new principle adopted to ameliorate the condition of mankind. The great truths of moral and political science upon which we rely, and which press upon your consideration, have been evolved and enunciated by you. We point to your principles, your wisdom and your great example as the full justification of our course this day. That all men are created equal; that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the right of all; that taxation and representation should go together; that the Const.i.tution of the United States was formed to establish justice, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to all the people of the country; that resistance to tyranny is obedience to G.o.d--are American principles and maxims, and together they form and const.i.tute the constructive elements of the American government."

1. The plan for an industrial college on the manual labor plan, was approved, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was about to make a visit to England at the instance of friends in that country, was authorized to receive funds in the name of the colored people of the country for that purpose. The successful establishment and conduct of such an inst.i.tution of learning, would train youth to be self-reliant and skilled workmen, fitted to hold their own in the struggle of life on the conditions prevailing here.

2. A registry of colored mechanics, artisans and business men throughout the Union, was provided for, also, of all the persons willing to employ colored men in business, to teach colored boys mechanic trades, liberal and scientific professions and farming, also a registry of colored men and youth seeking employment or instruction.

3. A committee on publication "to collect all facts, statistics and statements. All laws and historical records and biographies of the colored people and all books by colored authors." This committee was further authorized "to publish replies to any a.s.saults worthy of note, made upon the character or condition of the colored people." This was in keeping with what had actually been done by the colored people of the State of New York the year previous, after its Governor, Ward Hunt, had substantially recommended the pa.s.sage of black laws which would have forbidden the settlement of any blacks or mulattoes within its borders and placed further restrictions on those at that time citizens. The charge of unthrift against the Negro was utterly disproven by a comparative statement showing that in those places in which the conditions were the worst, New York, Brooklyn and Williamsburg, the Negro had increased 25 per cent in population in twenty years and 100 per cent in real estate holdings.

In thirteen counties the amount owned by colored persons was ascertained to be $1,000,000.

CAPITAL IN BUSINESS. REAL ESTATE EXCLUSIVE OF INc.u.mBRANCE.

New York $755,000 $733,000 Brooklyn 79,200 276,000 Williamsburg 4,900 151,000 ------- ------- $839,100 $1,160,000

The North Star--Vol.

The convention crowned its work by a more comprehensive plan of organization than those of twenty years before.

A national council was provided for to be "composed of two members from each state by elections to be held at a poll at which each colored inhabitant may vote who pays ten cents as a poll tax, and each state shall elect at such election delegates to state conventions twenty in number from each State at large."

The detail of this plan shows that the methods of the Afro-American Council of 1895, is an almost exact copy of the National Council of 1853.

The chairman of the committee which formulated this plan was Wm. Howard Day and other members were Charles H. Langston, George B. Vashon, William J. Wilson, William Whipper and Charles B. Ray, all of them men of more than ordinary intelligence, information and ability.

But those who saw only in emigration the solution of the evils with which they were beset, immediately called another convention to consider and decide upon the subject of emigration from the United States. According to the call, no one was to be admitted to the convention who would introduce the subject of emigration to any part of the Eastern Hemisphere, and opponents of emigration were also to be excluded. Among the signers to the call in and from the States of Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, Indiana, Canada and California were: Rev. Wm. Webb, Martin R. Delaney, Pittsburg, Pa., Dr. J. J. Gould Bias of Philadelphia, Franklin Turner of the same city, Rev. Augustus R. Green of Allegheny, Pa., James M. Whitfield, New York, William Lambert of Michigan, Henry Bibb, James Theodore Holly of Canada and Henry M. Collins of California.

Dougla.s.s in his paper "The North Star," characterized the call as uncalled for, unwise and unfortunate and premature. As far too narrow and illiberal to meet with acceptance among the intelligent. "A convention to consider the subject of emigration when every delegate must declare himself in favor of it before hand as a condition of taking his seat, is like the handle of a jug, all on one side. We hope no colored man, will omit during the coming twelve months an opportunity which may offer to buy a piece of property, a house lot, a farm or anything else in the United States which looks to permanent residence here."

James M. Whitfield of Buffalo, N. Y., the Negro poet of America, and one of the signers of the call, responded to the attacks in the same journal.

Dougla.s.s made a reply and Whitfield responded again, and so on until several articles on each side were produced by these and other disputants.

The articles were collected and published in pamphlet form by Rev. and Bishop James Theodore Holly of Port au Prince, Haiti, making a valuable contribution to literature, for I doubt if there is anywhere throughout the range of controversial literature anything to surpa.s.s it.

I am indebted to Bishop Holly for further information respecting this convention. In a private letter he says:

"The convention was accordingly held. The Rev. William Munroe was President, the Rt. Rev. [William] Paul Quinn, Vice President, Dr. Delaney, Chairman of the Business Committee and I was the Secretary." * * *

"There were three parties in that Emigration Convention, ranged according to the foreign fields they preferred to emigrate too. Dr. Delaney headed the party that desired to go to the Niger Valley in Africa, Whitfield the party which preferred to go to Central America, and Holly the party which preferred to go to Hayti."

"All these parties were recognized and embraced by the Convention. Dr.

Delaney was given a commission to go to Africa, in the Niger Valley, Whitfield to go to Central America, and Holly to Hayti, to enter into negotiations with the authorities of these various countries for Negro emigrants and to report to future conventions. Holly was the first to execute his mission, going down to Hayti in 1855, when he entered into relations with the Minister of the Interior, the father of the late President Hyppolite, and by him was presented to Emperor Faustin I. The next Emigration Convention was held at Chatham, Canada West, in 1856, when the report on Haiti was made. Dr. Delaney went off on his mission to the Niger Valley, Africa, via England in 1858. There he concluded a treaty signed by himself and eight kings, offering inducements for Negro emigrants to their territories. Whitfield went to California, intending to go later from thence to Central America, but died in San Francis...o...b..fore he could do so. Meanwhile [James] Redpath went to Haiti as a John Brownist after the Harper's Ferry raid, and reaped the first fruits of Holly's mission by being appointed Haitian Commissioner of Emigration in the United States by the Haitian Government, but with the express injunction that Rev. Holly should be called to co-operate with him. On Redpath's arrival in the United States, he tendered Rev. Holly a Commission from the Haitian Government at $1,000 per annum and traveling-expenses to engage emigrants to go to Haiti. The first ship load of emigrants were from Philadelphia in 1861.

"Not more than one-third of the 2000 emigrants to Haiti received through this movement, permanently abided there. They proved to be neither intellectually, industrially, nor financially prepared to undertake to wring from the soil the riches that it is ready to yield up to such as shall be thus prepared; nor are the government and influential individuals sufficiently instructed in social, industrial and financial problems which now govern the world, to turn to profitable use willing workers among the laboring cla.s.s."

"The Civil War put a stop to the African Emigration project by Dr. Delaney taking the commission of Major from President Lincoln, and the Central American project died out with Whitfield, leaving the Haitian Emigration as the only remaining practical outcome of the Emigration Convention of 1854."

The Civil War destroyed many landmarks and the National Colored Convention, confined to the free colored people of the North and the border States, was a thing of the past.

Just after one of the darkest periods of that strife, when the dawn was apparent, there a.s.sembled in the city of Syracuse, the last National Colored Convention in which the men who began the movement in 1830, their successors and their sons had the control. The sphere of influence even in that had somewhat increased, for Southeastern Virginia, Louisiana and Tennessee had some representation. Slavery was dead; the colonizationists to Canada, the West Indies and Africa had abandoned the field of openly aiming to commit the policy of the race to what was considered expatriation.

Reconstruction even in 1864 was seen in the South peering above the horizon. The Equal Rights League came forth displacing the National Council of 1854, yet with the same object of the Legal Rights a.s.sociation organized by Hezekiah Grice in Baltimore in 1832. John Mercer Langston stepped in the arena at the head of the new organization, but under more favorable auspices than was begun in the movement of 1830. A study of its rise, progress and decline, belongs to another period of the evolution of the Free Negro.

This survey of the early Negro Convention Movement has been rapid, the treatment broad, the sketch is but an outline; lights and shadows will be supplied by more detailed study, but the perspective will reveal clear and distinct these four facts:

1. The Convention Movement begun in 1830, demonstrates the ability of the Negro to construct a platform broad enough for a race to stand upon and to outline a policy alike far-sighted and statesmanlike, that has not been surpa.s.sed in the seventy years that have elapsed.

2. The earnestness, the enthusiasm and the efficiency with which the work aimed at was done, the singleness of purpose, the public spirit and the intrepidity manifested, encouraged and inspired such men as Benjamin Lundy, William Lloyd Garrison, Gerrit Smith, S. S. Jocelyn, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, William Goodell and Beriah Green to greater efforts and persistence in behalf of the disfranchised American, accomplishing at last the tremendous work of revolutionizing the public sentiment of the country and making the inst.i.tution of radical reforms possible.

3. The preparatory training which the convention work gave, fitted its leaders for the broader arena of abolitionism, and it can not be regarded as a mere coincidence that the only colored men who were among the organizers of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1853, Robert Purvis and James G. Barbadoes, were both promoters and leaders in the Convention Movement.

4. The importance of industrial education in the growth and development of the Negro-American is no new doctrine in the creed of the representative colored people of the country. Before Hampton and Tuskegee reared their walls--aye, before Booker T. Washington was born, Frederick Dougla.s.s and the Colored Convention of 1853, had commissioned Mrs. Stowe to obtain funds to establish an Agriculture and Industrial College. Long before Frederick Dougla.s.s had left Maryland by the Under Ground Railroad, but for the opposition of the white people of Connecticut, and within the echo of Yale College, would have stood the first inst.i.tution dedicated to our enlightenment and social regeneration.

JOHN W. CROMWELL.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

1 "Twenty-two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman".--AUSTIN STEWARD.

2 "Life and Times".--FREDERICK DOUGLa.s.s.

3 Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro.--SAM'L. R. WARD.

4 The Life of Arthur Tappan.--LEWIS TAPPAN.

5 History of the Negro in America.--GEORGE W. WILLIAMS.

6 William Lloyd Garrison.--HIS SONS.

7 Anglo-African Magazine 1859.

8 The Liberator--Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

9 The North Star--Vol. 1, Vol. 3.