In another column we present a Circular Address to the free colored
people of Maryland, calling a Convention to assemble in Baltimore the
25th of July, to take into consideration their present condition and
future prosperity, and compare them with the inducements held out to
them to emigrate to Liberia. This movement may be considered indicative
of the change that is going on in the minds of the colored people
respecting emigration. It is well known that heretofore they have been
almost entirely insensible to the advantages which they must necessarily
enjoy in a land peculiarly their own. They have not been entirely free
from the control of bad counsellors.--Now they seem resolved to take the
matter into their own hands, and to look at their present condition and
future prospects in this country as a matter in which they are
personally interested. When they do this in earnest, the result can be
easily foreseen. They will desire to escape from their present anomalous
condition, will yearn to be free and disenthralled, to have a land of
their own, to have rights unquestioned by any superiors, where
character, enterprise, education, and all that is lovely and noble in
life shall combine to elevate and improve them and their children after
them to the latest generation.
--_African Repository_, XXVIII, 195-196.