We need not pause to consider the causes which reduced the free
negroes of the Northern States to the conditions here described. That
the free negroes of Virginia should have made little or no progress is
easily accounted for by the abnormal conditions amid which they lived.
There was confessedly scant chance for free negroes in communities
densely populated with negro slaves. Many of the friends of
emancipation, however, observing this same phenomenon in both slave
and free states, came to the conclusion that freedom under existing
conditions was hurtful rather than helpful. Others concluded that it
was not freedom, but the lack of freedom with all its normal
privileges, which had fettered the feet of these newly manumitted
slaves. Let the state pay the owners and emancipate the whole body of
slaves; let education and training for freedom go hand in hand with
opportunity for achieving, and then emancipation would be justified of
her children. For this immense outlay Virginia was confessedly not
ready, and so the earnest believer in emancipation looked to
colonization as the only door through which the slave might enter upon
liberty with a man's chance for progress and self-respecting
independence.
-----
Footnote 228:
_Writings of Jefferson_, Ford, Vol. X, p. 66.
Footnote 229:
_History of the United States_, McMaster, Vol. III, p. 558.
Footnote 230:
_The African Repository and Colonial Journal_, Vol. VI, No. 1, p.
12.
Footnote 231:
_Liberia Bulletin_, No. 15, p. 7.
Footnote 232:
_William Lloyd Garrison_, by his children, Vol. I, pp. 253-254.