Part 12 (1/2)
GARRICK.
So much excitement prevails with regard to these two societies at present, that it will be difficult to present a view of them which will be perfectly satisfactory to all. I shall say what appears to me to be candid and true, without any anxiety as to whom it may please, and whom it may displease. I need not say that I have a decided predilection, because it has been sufficiently betrayed in the preceding pages; and I allude to it for the sake of perfect sincerity, rather than from any idea that my opinion is important.
The American Colonization Society was organized a little more than sixteen years ago at the city of Was.h.i.+ngton, chosen as the most central place in the Union. Auxiliary inst.i.tutions have since been formed in almost every part of the country; and nearly all the distinguished men belong to it. The doing away of slavery in the United States, by gradually removing all the blacks to Africa, has been generally supposed to be its object. The project at first excited some jealousy in the Southern States; and the Society, in order to allay this, were anxious to make all possible concessions to slave-owners, in their Addresses, Reports, &c. In Mr. Clay's speech, printed in the first Annual Report of the Society, he said, ”It is far from the intention of this Society to affect, in _any manner_, the tenure by which a certain species of property is held. I am myself a slaveholder, and I consider that kind of property as inviolable as any other in the country. I would resist encroachment upon it as soon, and with as much firmness, as I would upon any other property that I hold. Nor am I prepared to go as far as the gentleman who has just spoken, (Mr. Mercer) in saying that I would emanc.i.p.ate my slaves, if the means were provided of sending them from the country.”
At the same meeting Mr. Randolph said, ”He thought it necessary, being himself a slaveholder, to show that so far from being in the _smallest degree_ connected with the abolition of slavery, the proposed Society _would prove one of the greatest securities to enable the master to keep in possession his own property_.”
In Mr. Clay's speech, in the second Annual Report, he declares: ”It is not proposed to deliberate upon, or consider at all, any question of emanc.i.p.ation, or any that is _connected_ with the abolition of slavery.
On this condition alone gentlemen from the South and West can be expected to co-operate. On this condition only, I have myself attended.”
In the seventh Annual Report it is said, ”An effort for the benefit of the blacks, in which all parts of the country can unite, of course must not have the abolition of slavery for its immediate object; _nor may it aim directly at the instruction of the blacks_.”
Mr. Archer, of Virginia, fifteenth Annual Report, says: ”The object of the Society, if I understand it aright, involves no intrusion on property, _nor even upon prejudice_.”
In the speech of James S. Green, Esq. he says: ”This Society have ever disavowed, and they do yet disavow that their object is the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves. They have no _wish_ if they _could_ to interfere in the smallest degree with what they deem the most interesting and fearful subject which can be pressed upon the American public. There is no people that treat their slaves with so much kindness and so little cruelty.”
In almost every address delivered before the Society, similar expressions occur. On the propriety of discussing the evils of slavery, without bitterness and without fear, good men may differ in opinion; though I think the time is fast coming, when they will all agree. But by a.s.suming the ground implied in the above remarks, the Colonization Society have fallen into the habit of glossing over the enormities of the slave system; at least, it so appears to me. In their const.i.tution they have pledged themselves not to speak, write, or do anything to offend the Southerners; and as there is no possible way of making the truth pleasant to those who do not love it, the Society must perforce keep the truth out of sight. In many of their publications, I have thought I discovered a lurking tendency to palliate slavery; or, at least to make the best of it. They often bring to my mind the words of Hamlet:
”Forgive me this my virtue; For in the fatness of these pursy times, Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg; Yea, curb and woo, for leave to do him good.”
Thus in an Address delivered March, 1833, we are told, ”It ought never to be forgotten that the slave-trade between Africa and America, had its origin in a compa.s.sionate endeavor to relieve, by the subst.i.tution of negro labor, the toils endured by native Indians. It was the _simulated form of mercy_ that piloted the first slave-s.h.i.+p across the Atlantic.”
I am aware that Las Cases used this argument; but it was less unbecoming in him than it is in a philanthropist of the present day. The speaker does indeed say that ”the 'infinite of agonies' and the infinite of crime, since suffered and committed, proves that mercy cannot exist in opposition to justice.” I can hardly realize what sort of a conscience it must be, that needed the demonstration.
The plain truth was, the Spaniards were in a hurry for gold; they overworked the native Indians, who were inconsiderate enough to die in very inconvenient numbers; but the gold must be had, and that quickly; and so the Africans were forced to come and die in company with the Indians. And in the nineteenth century, we are told it is our duty not to forget that this was a ”simulated form of mercy!” A _dis_simulated form would have been the better expression.
If we may believe slave-owners, the whole system, from beginning to end, is a matter of mercy. They have described the Middle Pa.s.sage, with its gags, fetters, and thumb-screws, as ”the happiest period of a negro's life;” they say they do the slaves a great charity in bringing them from barbarous Africa to a civilized and Christian country; and on the plantation, under the whip of the driver, the negroes are so happy, that a West India planter publicly declared he could not look upon them, without wis.h.i.+ng to be himself a slave.
In the speech above referred to, we are told, that as to any political interference, ”the slave States are _foreign_ States. We can alienate their feelings until they become foreign enemies; or, on the other hand, we can conciliate them until they become allies and auxiliaries in the sacred cause of emanc.i.p.ation.”
But so long as the South insist that slavery is _unavoidable_, and say they will not tolerate any schemes _tending_ to its abolition--and so long as the North take the _necessity_ of slavery for an unalterable truth, and put down any discussions, however mild and candid, which tend to show that it _may_ be done away with safety--so long as we thus strengthen each other's hands in evil, what remote hope is there of emanc.i.p.ation? If by political interference is meant _hostile_ interference, or even a desire to promote insurrection, I should at once p.r.o.nounce it to be most wicked; but if by political interference is meant the liberty to investigate this subject, as other subjects are investigated--to inquire into what has been done, and what may be done--I say it is our sacred duty to do it. To enlighten public opinion is the best way that has yet been discovered for the removal of national evils; and slavery is certainly a _national_ evil.
The Southern States, according to their own evidence, are impoverished by it; a great amount of wretchedness and crime inevitably follows in its train; the prosperity of the North is continually checked by it; it promotes feelings of rivalry between the States; it separates our interests; makes our councils discordant; threatens the destruction of our government; and disgraces us in the eyes of the world. I have often heard Americans who have been abroad, declare that nothing embarra.s.sed them so much as being questioned about our slaves; and that nothing was so mortifying as to have the pictures of runaway negroes pointed at in the newspapers of this republic. La Fayette, with all his admiration for our inst.i.tutions, can never speak of the subject without regret and shame.
Now a common evil certainly implies a common right to remedy; and where is the remedy to be found, if the South in all their speeches and writings repeat that slavery _must_ exist--if the Colonization Society re-echo, in all their Addresses and Reports, that there is no help for the evil, and it is very wicked to hint that there is--and if public opinion here brands every body as a fanatic and madman, who wishes to _inquire_ what can be done? The supineness of New-England on this subject, reminds me of the man who being asked to work at the pump, because the vessel was going down, answered, ”I am only a pa.s.senger.”
An error often and urgently repeated is apt to receive the sanction of truth; and so it is in this case. The public take it for granted that slavery is a ”lamentable _necessity_.” Nevertheless there _is_ a way to effect its cure, if we all join sincerely, earnestly, and kindly in the work; but if we expend our energies in palliating the evil, or mourning over its hopelessness, or quarrelling about who is the most to blame for it, the vessel,--crew, pa.s.sengers, and all,--will go down together.
I object to the Colonization Society, because it tends to put public opinion asleep, on a subject where it needs to be wide awake.
The address above alluded to, does indeed inform us of one thing which we are at liberty to do: ”We must _go_ to the master and _adjure_ him, by all the sacred rights of humanity, by all the laws of natural justice, by his dread responsibilities,--which, in the economy of Providence, are always co-extensive and commensurate with power,--to _raise the slave_ out of his abyss of degradation, to give him a partic.i.p.ation in the benefits of mortal existence, and to make him a member of the _intellectual_ and moral world, from which he, and his fathers, for so many generations, have been exiled.” The practical _utility_ of such a plan needs no comment. Slave-owners will smile when they read it.
I will for a moment glance at what many suppose is still the intention of the Colonization Society, viz., gradually to remove all the blacks in the United States. The Society has been in operation more than fifteen years, during which it has transported between two and three thousand _free_ people of color. There are in the United States two million of slaves and three hundred thousand free blacks; and their numbers are increasing at the rate of seventy thousand annually. While the Society have removed less than three thousand,--five hundred thousand have been born. While one hundred and fifty _free_ blacks have been sent to Africa in a _year_, two hundred _slaves_ have been born in a _day_. To keep the evil just where it is, seventy thousand a year must be transported. How many s.h.i.+ps, and how many millions of money, would it require to do this?
It would cost three million five hundred thousand dollars a year, to provide for the safety of our Southern brethren in this way! To use the language of Mr. Hayne, it would ”bankrupt the treasury of the world”
to execute the scheme. And if such a great number could be removed annually, how would the poor fellows subsist? Famines have already been produced even by the few that have been sent. What would be the result of landing several thousand dest.i.tute beings, even on the most fertile of our own cultivated sh.o.r.es?
And why _should_ they be removed? Labor is greatly needed, and we are glad to give good wages for it. We encourage emigration from all parts of the world; why is it not good policy, as well as good feeling, to improve the colored people, and pay them for the use of their faculties?
For centuries to come, the means of sustenance in this vast country must be much greater than the population; then why should we drive away people, whose services may be most useful? If the moral cultivation of negroes received the attention it ought, thousands and thousands would at the present moment be gladly taken up in families, factories, &c.