WASHINGTON, July 4, 1873.
MR. PRESIDENT,--I cannot, at this late day, acknowledge the letter
with which you have honored me, without explaining the reason of my
delay.
Owing to absence in Europe, where I had gone for my health, I did not
receive your valuable communication until some time in the winter,
when it was put into my hands by your excellent Minister. Continuing
feeble in health, I reluctantly postponed this acknowledgment. I now
take advantage of convalescence to do, thus tardily, what my feelings
prompted at an earlier day.
Please, Sir, accept my thanks for your generous appreciation of what
I have done, and your kindness in letting me know it under your own
hand. But I beg you to understand that I do not deserve the praise
with which you honor me. In advocating the cause of an oppressed
people I have only acted according to my conscience. I could not have
done otherwise; and now my only regret is that I have done so little.
I wish I had done more.
In the history of mankind the crime against the African race will
stand forth in terrible eminence,--always observed, and never
forgotten. Just in proportion as civilization prevails will this
enormous wrong be apparent in its true character; and men will read
with astonishment how human beings, guilty only of being black,
were sold into slavery, and then (such was the continuing injustice
towards this unhappy people) how, when slavery ceased, they were
still treated with indignity by persons whose lordly pretensions were
founded on the skin only. As these things are seen in increasing
light, they will be condemned in no uncertain words; nor will the
denial of equal rights, on account of color, escape the judgment
awarded to slavery itself. Human conduct on this question is a
measure of character. Where the African race is enslaved or degraded,
where it is exposed to any indignity or shut out from that equality
which is a primal right to humanity, there civilization is still
feeble.
To the certain triumph of civilization I look with constant hope. It
is sure to come; and one sign of its arrival will be that prevailing
sentiment which recognizes the perpetual obligations of equal justice
to all, and the duty to repair past wrongs by compensations in the
future.
In the great debt of the whites to the blacks there is a bank from
which, for generations to come, the latter can draw.
Accept, Mr. President, the expression of my ardent hope for the
peace, prosperity, and happiness of the Republic of Hayti, and allow
me to subscribe myself with true regard,
Your faithful friend,