In presenting the circular, which will be found in another column, of
which a committee of colored persons have undertaken the distribution,
(and which was written by one of themselves,) it gives us pleasure to
commend it as the evidence of a new and generally unexpected change of
sentiment on the part of the colored population, or, at least, some
portion of it. It is well known that for twenty-five years the
Colonization Societies in this country have labored to present before
that portion of our population, the advantages which must accrue to
them, from emigration to a land where they might enjoy, undisturbed,
those social and material privileges which it was impossible ever to
expect they could obtain by a residence of centuries in this country,
and that these appeals have met with comparatively little attention,
and, in deed have been received with very bad grace by the great mass of
those whom it was intended to benefit. The cause of this opposition was
to be found in the steady and violent animosity of those white fanatics,
who, setting themselves up as the peculiar friends of the blacks,
represented that the prejudice against their color was merely an
arbitrary sentiment, which time would weaken or entirely dissipate; and
that they might still look forward to enjoying, in this country, an
equality in social and political rights with the whites.
This assumption of peculiar friendliness on the part of the
Abolitionists, and the plausible reasonings with which they approached
their "colored friends," have acquired the confidence of the latter, who
are now, however, beginning to awake to a just idea of their condition
and future prospects in this country. They have discovered that the
loud-mouthed protestations of the Abolitionists, are the mere
effervescence of an intermeddling and dangerous faction, against whose
principles the whole Union--whose destruction they have meditated--has
pronounced in tones of thunder; a faction whose baleful alliance is
shunned most religiously, by both of the great parties of the country.
They have discovered that underground railroads are a device to inveigle
the slaves from a condition of comparative comfort, into the _freedom of
starvation_, with a poor display of political privileges, which are
mockery in view of their exercise by an ignorant and despised minority;
that the expectations fostered in behalf of the free blacks are proved
to be entirely futile by the continued attitude of opposition held
towards them, when there is a question of lessening the social and
political gulf which divides the races. They discover that the rapid
immigration of whites from every quarter, is encroaching upon their
employments, and lessening their chance of gaining a thrifty livelihood,
even in those menial pursuits to which they are chiefly limited.
With the spread of education, and the expansion of republican ideas,
they become more sensible of their own anomalous and degraded condition,
and the result is a yearning to be free like those around them, to have
a land all their own, to have rights unquestioned by any superior color,
to go wherever such privileges may be obtained. They see in the growing
republics on the West coast of Africa, a living refutation of the
calumnies of the Abolitionists against the colonizationists, a land
where, from simple citizenship up to the highest post in the government,
all is free and open to them, and where character, enterprise, education
and honorable ambition, have all their appropriate rewards in the order
of the State. What is better, no white man can hope to cast his lot
there with the prospect of permanent settlement, or transmitting a
healthy posterity. They see there such men as the late Gov. Russwurm or
the present Gov. Roberts, sustaining their rule surrounded by their own
race, with a distinction and dignity which would do honor to any white
man. They see there pioneers of their own color, who in the arts of
peace or of war, are striking examples of what the emancipation of the
MIND can effect.
This is a crisis full of important results to the race in this country,
and it behooves them now to cast aside all false issues, to take into
serious consideration (in the words of the circular) their present
condition and future prospects in this country, and contrast them with
the inducements and prospects opened to them in Liberia, or any other
country.
We have little doubt as to the quarter to which their preferences will
be given, although that is as yet left an open question. Trinidad is a
failure, Jamaica is a half-ruined British dependency, and in both the
white man the sole source of authority. Liberia excepted, Haiti is the
only point left, and here reigns a perpetual jealousy between the black
and mulatto. Moreover, the imperial rule set up there is repugnant to
their feelings and inclinations, for strange to say, in the midst of
depression, this race in America has become imbued with a sentiment of
republicanism and a love for its system, which will make them in Africa
the sedulous imitators of ourselves, in all but in the misfortune of
introducing another race to be perpetually subservient to themselves. In
this career we are happy to believe they will run rejoicing, long after
the privations of their forefathers in this country shall have been
forgotten.
--_African Repository_, XXVIII, 196-197.