Thoughts on African Colonization Part 14

p. 363.]

'They leave a country in which though born and reared, they are strangers and aliens; where _severe necessity_ places them in a cla.s.s 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 acc.u.mulation; 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 cla.s.s and _foolishly envied by another_; thus, and WORSE CIRc.u.mSTANCED, 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 cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.s 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 dest.i.tute 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 cla.s.s 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 G.o.d; 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 cla.s.ses of society.'--[Eight Annual Report.]

'Of all cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.s laws to prevent emanc.i.p.ation, 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 inst.i.tutions 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 cla.s.s, 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 circ.u.mstances does philanthropy find them! There are indeed individuals and families, who are sober, industrious, pious. But what are the remainder, the ma.s.s? 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 cla.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 cla.s.s of society; and out of that cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s, 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 a.s.sert, from an intimate acquaintance with their condition, that they are more temperate and more industrious than that cla.s.s of whites who are in as indigent circ.u.mstances, 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 sh.o.r.es, 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 acc.u.mulate 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 a.s.sistance and improvement, &c. In Philadelphia alone, I believe, there are nearly fifty colored a.s.sociations 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 debas.e.m.e.nt 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 circ.u.mstanced 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 cla.s.s. 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 cla.s.sed. 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sertion; thousands who adorn the doctrine of G.o.d 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 pa.s.sions, 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 cla.s.s 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 Ca.s.sey, 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 cla.s.s, 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 const.i.tuted 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: