Mr. Clay's attitude with respect to the institution of slavery will
appear from his oft-quoted declaration:
"Those who would repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate
emancipation must do more than put down the benevolent efforts of
the Colonization Society, they must go back to the era of our
liberty and independence, and muzzle the cannon that thunders its
annual joyous return—they must blot out the moral lights around
us—they must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate the light of
reason and the love of liberty."[100]
His sentiments, however, with respect to the wisdom and necessity for
colonizing the manumitted slaves were equally decided. In an address
before the Colonization Society of Kentucky at Frankfort, December 17,
1829, Mr. Clay presented at length his reasons for supporting the
movement to colonize all ex-slaves in the Republic of Liberia. In the
course of this address he said:
"If the question were submitted, whether there should be either
immediate or gradual emancipation of all the slaves in the United
States, without their removal or colonization, painful as it is to
express the opinion, I have no doubt that it would be unwise to
emancipate them. For I believe, that the aggregate of the evils
which would be engendered in society upon the supposition of such
general emancipation, and of the liberated slaves remaining
promiscuously among us, would be greater than all the evils of
slavery."[101]
Continuing, he said:
"Is there no remedy I again ask for the evils of which I have
sketched a faint and imperfect picture? Is our posterity doomed to
endure forever 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? Whatever may be the character of the remedy
proposed, we may confidently pronounce it inadequate, unless it
provides efficaciously for the total and absolute separation, by an
extensive space of water or of land, at least of the white portion
of our population from that which is free of the colored."[102]
In conclusion he said:
"If we were to invoke the greatest blessing on earth, which Heaven,
in its mercy, could now bestow on this nation, it would be the
separation of the two most numerous races of its population and
their comfortable establishment in distinct and different
countries."[103]