Moral condition of the free colored people in
United States--What have they gained by refusing
to accept Colonization?--Abolition testimony on
the subject--Gerrit Smith--New York Tribune--Their
moral condition as indicated by proportions in
Penitentiaries--Census Reports--Native whites,
foreign born, and free colored, in
Penitentiaries--But little improvement in
Massachusetts in seventy years--Contrasts of Ohio
with New England--Antagonism of Abolitionism to
free negroes.
In turning to the condition of our own free colored people, who rejected
homes in Liberia, we approach a most important subject. They have been
under the guardianship of their abolition friends, ever since that
period, and have cherished feelings of determined hostility to
colonization. What have they gained by this hostility? What has been
accomplished for them by their abolition friends, or what have they done
for themselves? Those who took refuge in Liberia have built up a
Republic of their own; and with the view of encouraging them to laudable
effort, have been recognized as an independent nation, by five of the
great governments of the earth. But what has been the progress of those
who remained behind, in the vain hope of rising to an equality with the
whites, and of assisting in abolishing American slavery?
We offer no opinion, here, of our own, as to the present social and
moral condition of the free colored people in the North. What it was at
the time of the founding of Liberia, has already been shown. On this
subject we might quote largely from the proceedings of the Conventions
of the colored people, and the writings of their editors, so as to
produce a dark picture indeed; but this would be cruel, as their voices
are but the wailings of sensitive and benevolent hearts, while weeping
over the moral desolations that, for ages, have overwhelmed their
people. Nor shall we multiply testimony on the subject; but in this, as
in the case of Canada and the West Indies, allow the abolitionists to
speak of their own schemes. The Hon. Gerrit Smith, in his letter to
Governor Hunt, of New York, in 1852, while speaking of his ineffectual
efforts, for fifteen years past, to prevail upon the free colored people
to betake themselves to mechanical and agricultural pursuits, says:
"Suppose, moreover, that during all these fifteen years, they had been
quitting the cities, _where the mass of them rot, both physically and
morally_, and had gone into the country to become farmers and
mechanics--suppose, I say, all this--and who would have the hardihood to
affirm that the Colonization Society lives upon the malignity of the
whites--but it is true that it lives upon _the voluntary degradation of
the blacks_. I do not say that the colored people are more debased than
the white people would be if persecuted, oppressed and outraged as are
the colored people. But I do say that they are debased, deeply debased;
and that to recover themselves they must become heroes, self-denying
heroes, capable of achieving a great moral victory--a two-fold
victory--a victory over themselves and a victory over their enemies."
The _New York Tribune_, September 22, 1855, in noticing the movements of
the colored people of New York, to secure to themselves equal suffrage,
thus gives utterance to its views of their moral condition:
"Most earnestly desiring the enfranchisement of the Afric-American race,
we would gladly wean them, at the cost of some additional ill-will, from
the sterile path of political agitation. They can help win their rights
if they will, but not by jawing for them. One negro on a farm which he
has cleared or bought patiently hewing out a modest, toilsome
independence, is worth more to the cause of equal suffrage than three in
an Ethiopian (or any other) convention, clamoring against white
oppression with all the fire of a Spartacus. It is not logical
conviction of the justice of their claims that is needed, but a
prevalent belief that they would form a wholesome and desirable element
of the body politic. Their color exposes them to much unjust and
damaging prejudice; but if their degradation were but skin-deep, they
might easily overcome it. . . . . Of course, we understand that the evil
we contemplate is complex and retroactive--that the political degradation
of the blacks is a cause as well as a consequence of their moral
debasement. Had they never been enslaved, they would not now be so
abject in soul; had they not been so abject, they could not have been
enslaved. Our aborigines might have been crushed into slavery by
overwhelming force; but they could never have been made to live in it.
The black man who feels insulted in that he is called a 'nigger,'
therein attests the degradation of his race more forcibly than does the
blackguard at whom he takes offense; for negro is no further a term of
opprobrium than the character of the blacks has made it so. . . . . If
the blacks of to-day were all or mainly such men as Samuel R. Ward or
Frederick Douglass, nobody would consider 'negro' an invidious or
reproachful designation.
"The blacks of our State ought to enjoy the common rights of man; but
they stand greatly in need of the spirit in which those rights have been
won by other races. They will never win them as white men's barbers,
waiters, ostlers and boot blacks; that is to say, the tardy and
ungracious concession of the right of suffrage, which they may
ultimately wrench from a reluctant community, will leave them still the
political as well as social inferiors of the whites--excluded from all
honorable office, and admitted to white men's tables only as waiters and
plate-washers--unless they shall meantime have wrought out, through
toil, privation and suffering, an intellectual and essential
enfranchisement. At present, white men dread to be known as friendly to
the black, because of the never-ending, still-beginning importunities to
help this or that negro object of charity or philanthrophy to which such
a reputation inevitably subjects them. Nine-tenths of the free blacks
have no idea of setting themselves to work except as the hirelings and
servitors of white men; no idea of building a church, or accomplishing
any other serious enterprise, except through beggary of the whites. As a
class, the blacks are indolent, improvident, servile and licentious; and
their inveterate habit of appealing to white benevolence or compassion
whenever they realize a want or encounter a difficulty, is eminently
baneful and enervating. If they could never more obtain a dollar until
they shall have earned it, many of them would suffer, and some perhaps
starve; but, on the whole, they would do better and improve faster than
may now be reasonably expected."
In tracing the causes which led to the organization of the American
Colonization Society, the statistics of the penitentiaries down to 1827,
were given, as affording an index to the moral condition of the free
colored people at that period. The facts of a similar kind, for 1850,
are added here, to indicate their present moral condition. The
statistics are compiled from the Compendium of the Census of the United
States, for 1850, and published in 1854.
_Tabular Statement of the number of the native and foreign white
population, the colored population, the number of each class in the
Penitentiaries, the proportion of the convicts to the whole number of
each class, the proportion of colored convicts over the foreign and also
over the native whites, in the four States named, for the year 1850:_
_Classes, etc._ _Mass._ _N. York._ _Penn._ _Ohio._
NATIVE WHITES, 819,044 2,388,830 1,953,276 1,732,698
In the Penitentiary, 264 835 205 291
Being 1 out of 3,102 2,860 9,528 5,954
FOREIGN WHITES, 163,598 655,224 303,105 218,099
In the Penitentiary, 125 545 123 71
Being 1 out of 1,308 1,202 2,464 3,077
COLORED POPULATION, 9,064 49,069 53,626 25,279
In the Penitentiary, 47 257 109 44
Being 1 out of 192 190 492 574
Colored convicts over
foreign, 6.8 times 6.3 times 5 times 5.3 times
Colored convicts over
native whites, 16.1 times 15 times 19.3 times 10.3 times
It appears from these figures, that the amount of crime among the
colored people of Massachusetts, in 1850, was 6 8/10 times greater than
the amount among the foreign born population of that State, and that
the amount, in the four States named, among the free colored people,
averages _five-and-three-quarters_ times more, in proportion to their
numbers, than it does among the foreign population, and over _fifteen_
times more than it does among the native whites. It will be instructive,
also, to note the _moral condition_ of the free colored people in
Massachusetts, the great center of abolitionism, where they have enjoyed
equal rights ever since 1780. Strange to say, there is nearly three
times as much among them, in that State, as exists among those of Ohio!
More than this will be useful to note, as it regards the direction of
the _emigration_ of the free colored people. Massachusetts, in 1850, had
but 2,687 colored persons born out of the State, while Ohio had 12,662
born out of her limits. Take another fact: the increase, _per cent._, of
the colored population, in the whole New England States, was, during the
ten years, from 1840 to 1850, but 1 71/100, while in Ohio, it was,
during that time, 45 76/100.
There is another point worthy of notice. Though the New England
abolition States have offered equal political rights to the colored man,
it has afforded him little temptation to emigrate into their bounds. On
the contrary, several of these States have been diminishing their free
colored population, for many years past, and none of them can have had
accessions of colored immigrants; as is abundantly proved by the fact,
that their additions, of this class of persons, have not exceeded the
natural increase of the resident colored population.[71] Another fact is
equally as instructive. It will be noted, that, in Ohio, the largest
increase of the free colored population, is in the anti-abolition
counties--the abolition counties, often, having increased very little,
indeed, between 1840 and 1850. But the most curious fact is, that the
largest majorities for the abolition candidate for governor, in 1855,
were in the counties having the fewest colored people, while the largest
majorities against him, were in those having the largest numbers of free
negroes and mullatoes.[72] From these facts, both in regard to New
England and Ohio, one of two conclusions may be logically deduced:
Either the colored people find so little sympathy from the
abolitionists, that they will not live among them; or else their
presence, in any community, in large numbers, tends to cure the whites
of all tendencies toward practical abolitionism!
FOOTNOTES:
[71] See Table IV, Appendix.
[72] See Table V, Appendix.