Thoughts on African Colonization Part 7

'I do not condemn the detention of the slaves in bondage under the circ.u.mstances which are yet existing,' says an advocate; by which consolatory avowal we are taught that the criminality of man-stealing depends upon _circ.u.mstances_, and not upon the fact that it is a daring violation of the rights of man and the laws of G.o.d.

'The planter sees that the condition of the great ma.s.s of emanc.i.p.ated Africans is one, in comparison with which the condition of his slaves is _enviable_,' a.s.sert the Board of Managers!--a concession which transforms robbery into generosity, cruelty into mercy, and leads the slaveholder to believe that, instead of deserving censure, his conduct is really meritorious!--a concession which is at war with common sense, and contrary to truth.

'I am not complaining of the owners of slaves--I do not doubt that the slaves are happier than they could be if set free in this country,'

declares an apologist, even in Ma.s.sachusetts! Stripes and servitude would doubtless soon alter his opinion. With him, to sell human beings at public auction, and to separate husbands and wives, and children and parents, is not a subject of complaint! and to be a slave, to be fed upon a peck of corn per week, unable to possess property, liable to be torn from the partner of his bosom and children at a moment's warning mal-treated worse than a brute, &c. &c. &c. is more desirable than to be a free man, able to acquire wealth, unrestricted in his movements, from whom none may wrest his wife or children, and who can find redress for any outrage upon his person or property!

'Policy, and even _humanity_,' cries another, 'forbid the progress of manumission'! Indeed! But is it right to hold our fellow creatures as chattels, and to perpetuate their ignorance and servitude? O no! this is _wrong_, but it would be a greater wrong to emanc.i.p.ate them! Is this folly or villany? To oppress our brother is wrong, but to cease from oppressing him would not be right!

'I would be a slaveholder to-day without scruple,' says another advocate.

'Many owners of slaves,' another declares, 'hold them in strict accordance with the principles of humanity and justice'!!! Yes, to deprive men of their inalienable rights is to do unto them as we would have them do unto us!

Finally, another boldly declares that the slaves are treated _too indulgently_!--The laws which regard them as beasts, but punish them for the commission of crime as severely as if they possessed the knowledge of angels, he must suppose are too lenient. Their allowance of corn is too liberal; they ought not to wear any raiment; to sleep in their wretched huts is calculated to make them effeminate--the open field is a more suitable place for cattle; no religious instruction should be granted even orally to them! The slaves, as a body, too kindly treated!

The Lord have compa.s.sion upon any of their number who shall come under the control of him who holds this opinion!

Sentiments, like these, act upon the consciences of slave owners like opiates upon the body, lulling them into a slumber as profound and fatal as death. It were almost as hopeless a task to attempt to arouse, alarm and animate them, so long as they repose under the stupefying effects of this poison, as to raise the dead. This must not be. Slaveholders are the enemies of G.o.d and man; their garments are red with the blood of souls; their guilt is aggravated beyond the power of language to describe; and they must be made to see and realise their awful condition. Truth must send its arrows into their consciences, and Terror rouse them to exertion, and Conviction bring them upon their knees, and Repentance propitiate the anger of Heaven, or they perish by the sword.

The slaves must be free; and He who is no respecter of person is now holding out to us this alternative--either to wait until they burst their chains and wade through a river of blood to freedom, or to liberate them willingly ourselves. Can we hesitate in our choice? Be this our only reply to those who apologise for the oppressors, and fix the standard of policy higher than that of duty: 'Wo unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Wo unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!'

SECTION III.

THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY RECOGNISES SLAVES AS PROPERTY.

The heresies of this combination are flagrant and numerous. A larger volume than this is needed to define and ill.u.s.trate them all. Much important evidence, and many pertinent reflections, I am compelled to suppress.

My next allegation against it is, _that it recognises slaves as property_. This recognition is not merely technical, or strictly confined to a statutable interpretation. I presume the advocates of the Society will attempt to evade this point, by saying that it never meant to concede the moral right of the masters to possess human beings; but the evidence against them is full and explicit. The Society, if language mean any thing, does unequivocally acknowledge property in slaves to be as legitimate and sacred as any other property, of which to deprive the owners either by force or by legislation, without making rest.i.tution, would be unjust and tyrannical. Here is the proof:

'It interferes in no wise with the _rights of property_.' * *

'It is utterly opposed to any measures which might infringe upon the _rights of property_.' * * 'We hold their slaves _as we hold their other property_, SACRED.'--[African Repository, vol. i.

pp. 39, 225, 283.]

'Does this Society wish to meddle with our slaves as our _rightful property_? I answer _no_, I think not.' * * 'The Society cannot be justly charged with aiming to disturb the _rights of property_ or the peace of society.' * * 'It seeks to affect no man's _property_.' * * 'To found in Africa, an empire of _christians and republicans_; to reconduct the blacks to their native land, without disturbing the order of society, the _laws of property_, or the rights of individuals,' &c.--[African Repository, vol. ii. pp. 13, 58, 334, 375.]

'They are also convinced, that the Society have conducted their operations with so much prudence, as to give no cause of alarm to the holders of slaves, for the security of _this property_.'--[African Repository, volume iii. p. 341.]

'The rights of masters are to remain sacred in the eyes of the Society.'--[African Repository, vol. iv. p. 274.]

'The Society has never interfered, and has no disposition to interfere with the rights of private property.' * * 'The alarm for the rights of property appears to have subsided, and the Society is no longer charged with any sinister or insidious design. It has constantly disclaimed any intention of disturbing the rights of others; and its conduct ent.i.tles its declaration to credit.' * * 'The American Colonization Society has, at all times, solemnly disavowed any purpose of interference with the inst.i.tutions or rights of our Southern communities.' * * 'Our friends, who are cursed with this greatest of human evils (slavery) deserve our kindest attention and consideration. Their _property_ and safety are both involved.'--[African Repository, vol. v. pp. 215, 241, 307, 334.]

'It has constantly disclaimed all intention whatever of interfering, in the smallest degree, with the rights of property.' * * 'The Society, from considerations like these, whilst it disclaims the remotest idea of ever disturbing the _right of property_ in slaves,' &c. * * 'It is not the object of this Society to liberate slaves, or touch the rights of _property_.' * * 'Honorable instances might be adduced of _disinterested benevolence_ on the part of the owners of slaves, and of their _sacrificing property_ to a large amount, in their enfranchis.e.m.e.nt and restoration to the land of their ancestors.'

* * 'The American Society has disclaimed from the first moment of its inst.i.tution, all intention of interfering with _rights of property_.' * * 'The federal government has no control over this subject: it concerns rights of property secured by the federal compact, upon which our civil liberties mainly depend; it is a part of the same collection of political rights; and _any invasion of it would impair the tenure by which every other is held_.' * * 'It is equally plain and undeniable, that the Society in the prosecution of this work, has never interfered or evinced even a disposition to interfere in any way with the _rights of proprietors of slaves_.' * * 'The slaveholder, so far from having just cause to complain of the Colonization Society, has reason to congratulate himself, that in this Inst.i.tution a channel is opened up, in which the public feeling and public action can flow on, without doing violence to his _rights_.'--[African Repository, vol. vi. pp. 13, 69, 81, 153, 165, 169, 205, 363.]

'It was proper again and again to repeat, that it was far from the intention of the Society to affect, in any manner, the tenure by which a _certain species of property_ is held. He was himself a slaveholder; _and he considered that kind of property as inviolable as any other in the country_.'--[Speech of Henry Clay.--First Annual Report.]

'Your committee would not thus favorably regard the prayer of the memorialists, if it sought to impair, _in the slightest degree, the rights of private property_.'--[Report of the committee of the House of Representatives of the United States, on the memorial of the President and Board of Managers of the Colonization Society.--Second Annual Report.]

'The Society has at all times recognised the const.i.tutional and LEGITIMATE existence of slavery.'--[Tenth Annual Report.]

'The Society protests that it has no designs on the rights of the master in the slave--or the property in his slave, which the laws guarantee to him.'--[Fourteenth Annual Report.]

'Something he must yet be allowed to say, as regarded the object the Society was set up to accomplish. This object, if he understood it aright, _involved no intrusion on property_, NOR EVEN UPON PREJUDICE.'--[Fifteenth Annual Report.]

'To the slaveholder, who had charged upon them the wicked design of interfering with the RIGHTS OF PROPERTY under the specious pretext of removing a vicious and dangerous free population, they address themselves in a tone of conciliation and sympathy.

We know your rights, say they, and _we respect them_.' * *

'Equally absurd and false is the objection, that this Society seeks indirectly to disturb the rights of property, and to interfere with the well established relation subsisting between master and slave.'--[African Repository, vol. vii. pp. 100, 228.]

'I repeat, that though not a slaveholder, yet I think that every man ought to be protected in his property, and as the laws of our country have decreed that negroes are property, every person that holds a slave, according to these laws, ought to be protected.'--['A new and interesting View of Slavery.' By Humanitas, a colonization advocate. Baltimore, 1820.]

'We are made to disregard this description of _property_, and to touch without reserve the _rights_ of our neighbors.'--[Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the New-Jersey Colonization Society.]

Thus the American Colonization Society shamelessly surrenders the claims of justice, and leaves the enemies of oppression weaponless! Hence it rejects the proposition, that _man cannot hold property in man_; and we are called upon to prove that which is self-evident. No accidental differences of condition or complexion--no vicissitudes of fortune--no reprisal or purchase or inheritance, can justly make one individual the slave of another. When G.o.d created man, he gave him dominion over the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field; but not over his fellow man. 'All men are born free and equal,' and are 'made of one blood.'

Shall we look to wealth as giving one a t.i.tle to the labor and freedom of another? Wealth is the creature of circ.u.mstances, and not an arbitrary law of nature. It takes to itself wings, and flies away; and he who is an opulent tyrant to-day, may on this principle be an impoverished slave to-morrow. Does physical strength make valid this claim? This, too, is evanescent: sickness and age would ultimately degrade the most muscular tyrants to servitude; and mankind would be composed of but two parties--the strong and the weak. Can high birth annul the rights of the lower cla.s.ses? There is no difference at their birth, between the children of the beggar and those of the king. 'We brought nothing into this world,' says an inspired apostle, 'and it is certain we can carry nothing out.'

Man is created a rational being; and therefore he is a subject of moral government, and accountable. Being rational and accountable, he is bound to improve his mind and intellect. With this design, his Creator has outstretched the heavens, and set the sun in his course, and hung out the burning jewels of the sky, and spread abroad the green earth, and poured out the seas, that he might steadily progress in knowledge.

The slaves are men; they were born, then, as free as their masters; they cannot be property; and he who denies them an opportunity to improve their faculties, comes into collision with Jehovah, and incurs a fearful responsibility. But we know that they are not treated like rational beings, and that oppression almost entirely obliterates their sense of moral obligation to G.o.d or man.

I fully coincide in opinion with the auth.o.r.ess of a work ent.i.tled, 'IMMEDIATE, NOT GRADUAL ABOLITION,' that the holder of a slave, whether he obtained him by purchase or by inheritance, is as guilty as the original thief.[K] The wretch who stole him could by no possible means acquire or transmit the right to make a slave of him, or to keep him in slavery. _He has a right to his liberty:_--through whatever number of transfers the usurpation of it may have pa.s.sed, the right is undiminished.

No man, says Algernon Sidney, can have a right over others, unless it be by them granted to him: That which is not just, is not law; and that which is not law, ought not to be in force: Whosoever grounds his pretensions of right upon usurpation and tyranny, declares himself to be an usurper and a tyrant--that is, an enemy to G.o.d and man--and to have no right at all: _That which was unjust in its beginning, can of itself never change its nature:_ HE WHO PERSISTS IN DOING INJUSTICE, AGGRAVATES IT, AND TAKES UPON HIMSELF ALL THE GUILT OF HIS PREDECESSORS: The right to be free is a truth planted in the hearts of men, and acknowledged so to be by all who have hearkened to the voice of nature, and disproved by none but such as through wickedness, stupidity, or baseness of spirit, seem to have degenerated into the worst of beasts, and to have retained nothing of men but the outward shape, or the ability of doing those mischiefs which they have learnt from their master the devil.

The following is the indignant, emphatic, eloquent language of HENRY BROUGHAM, on the subject of slave property:

'_Tell me not of rights--talk not of the property of the planter in his slaves._ I DENY THE RIGHT--I ACKNOWLEDGE NOT THE PROPERTY. The principles, the feelings of our common nature, rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it. In vain you tell me of the laws that sanction such a claim! There is a law above all the enactments of human codes--the same throughout the world, the same in all times--such as it was before the daring genius of Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened to one world the sources of power, wealth and knowledge; to another, all unutterable woes;--such it is at this day: it is the law written by the finger of G.o.d on the heart of man; and by that law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they shall reject with indignation the wild and guilty fantasy, that man can hold property in man! In vain you appeal to treaties, to covenants between nations. The covenants of the Almighty, whether the old or the new, denounce such unholy pretensions. To those laws did they of old refer, who maintained the African trade. Such treaties did they cite, and not untruly; for by one shameful compact, you bartered the glories of Blenheim for the traffic in blood. Yet, in despite of law and of treaties, that infernal traffic is now destroyed, and its votaries put to death like other pirates. How came this change to pa.s.s? Not a.s.suredly by parliament leading the way; but the country at length awoke; the indignation of the people was kindled; it descended in thunder, and smote the traffic, and scattered its guilty profits to the winds. Now, then, let the planters beware--let their a.s.semblies beware--let the government at home beware--let the parliament beware! the same country is once more awake,--awake to the condition of negro slavery; the same indignation kindles in the bosom of the same people; the same cloud is gathering that annihilated the slave trade; and, if it shall descend again, they, on whom its crash shall fall, will not be destroyed before I have warned them; but I pray that their destruction may turn away from us the more terrible judgments of G.o.d!'

Is this the language of fanaticism? Is Henry Brougham a madman?

The following extracts must close the evidence in support of my third allegation, that the Colonization Society disregards the fundamental principle of human liberty and equality, that man cannot hold _property_ in man:

'Let me ask, who can wish under existing circ.u.mstances that the const.i.tution should be altered, when it must bring with it a _violation of property_--and when that violation of private property must engender such hostility of feelings, and elicit such bitter vituperation? The whole Union would feel a concussion, and no one can count the costs of the contest.'

* * * 'By means of our colony, they may remove their slaves and restore them to freedom--and at the same time no way jeopardize the safety of themselves or their _property_.'--[Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the New-Jersey Colonization Society.]

'The establishment of our colony will afford facilities to proprietors for completing in Africa the exercise of the _right which can only be partially exercised in this country, of disposing of our property, in our own way, without injury to the community_.'--[Fourteenth Annual Report.]