תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

to them as a race, is the expectation of social equality and active respectability for some remote generation of their children's children!

It was precisely in this drooping state of their hopes and motives, that New-England colonization found the free blacks when she first put forth a hand to attempt their effectual revival and invigoration. The plan was, to remove at once so many of this race, as should concur in the removal, from under the blighting and mildew of a state of things which it was vain to deny did in fact exist, and of which hope itself could not distinctly see the termination. It was, to take those who were deemed, and who deemed themselves, inferiors among the whites, and put them where they would be deemed and would be equals among themselves, and superiors among the surrounding tribes; and thus, in relation to society, to make them become, by the mere passage of an ocean in space, what otherwise their race could not become, except by the passage of more than an ocean of time. The idea was plain, one may almost say, to the mind of childhood itself; and it charmed the benevolent then, as it charms the body of them still, by the magic of its greatness and its simplicity. The only question was, whether a suitable spot could be found, on which to carry the idea into execution. It was not, however, as distinctly kept in mind as perhaps it ought to have been, that "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth;" so that when the site which was pitched upon for the infant colony was observed to be wonderfully fertile in soil, rich in products that might form the staples of national wealth and importance, and furnished with ports easy of access to navigators; such a current of excited and warm expectations set in the hearts of all the favorers of the plan, as swept away, at first, the salutary fear of those impending calamities and disasters which experience has taught God's people, almost universally, to expect in the outset of every enterprise, having "good will to men" for its motto.

Our business is not, however, just now, with the mistakes that attended the execution of the plan at the outset, or the heresies into which it may sometimes have been seduced at an after period; but with the great plan itself, and the purposes of benevolence of which it was meant to be the instrument. It was expected that the infant settlement planted by colonization on the African coast, would be the seed of a future extended nation; and this expectation was sustained by the analogy of all similar migrations, from the departure of the Israelites for the promised land, the landing of the Egyptians on the Grecian shores,-of the Greeks in Italy, -of the Romans in more northern Europe,-of the Europeans in the New World,-down to the last and comparatively recent but memorable disembarkation upon Plymouth rock. But, not as in the case of the Egyptian, Grecian and Italian emigrants, who carried civilization and the arts combined with paganism and all hea

thenish superstitions, it was expected that this should introduce on the shores of West-Africa, agriculture, the arts, commerce, education and civilized life, in connection with the true religion; forming a state of society like that of New-England, with its churches, its school-houses, its industrious population, and busy marts of trade. It was not at that time known, as well as experience has since taught it, that if missionaries are sent to Africa, they will perish in long succession, until the malignant influence of the climate shall, in some way, have been met and overcome; but it was expected, that the colonies should not only be themselves bright spots upon a darkened coast, but form stations for widely extended missionary operations.

It was anticipated, that the existence of a free, enlightened and happy nation of Africans, would give an impulse to the mind and the enterprise of the colored race all over the globe,-that it would prove them unfit to be slaves, and make a continuance of their bondage impossible, by showing them to be as capable of intelligence, refinement and moral worth, as any race among the fairest in Europe or America.

It was said with truth, that when an agricultural nation should arise, and bring into our market cotton, sugar, and other tropical staples, as the products of free labor, and as such, dispose of them on our own wharves, at a less price than the similar product of our slave-labor, slavery would be cut up by the root, in consequence of its profitable character being taken away; and it was also reasonably argued, that the slave-trade would find an effective foe in a powerful christian nation, placed upon the very spot where its horrors were perpetrated.

Finally, it was said, (not to enter minutely into all the anticipated influences of the plan,) that this colony would give an impulse to emancipation, by opening a door to the humane, by which their slaves might be made free, without being cast upon society in a condition of hopelessness and misery, and by affording to all slaveowners a method of emancipation, free from the dangers to society, real or imaginary, which an unconditional emancipation on the soil was supposed to create and imply.

This is the original scheme of colonization; and many a man will open his eyes with astonishment, when he reads that this is the scheme which he hears constantly spoken against, in addresses and public prints, the very scheme which the Anti-Slavery Convention at Philadelphia declared, in the exposition of their elementary principles, to be "delusive, cruel and dangerous," and the destruction of which the managers of the American Anti-Slavery Society, at the last New-York anniversaries, gravely voted to be essential to the success of their holy cause. Since the first proposal of the scheme, light has greatly increased upon all the subjects

on which it was designed to have a bearing, and has considerably modified the views of its friends and supporters. On the subject of slavery, for our part, we are fully satisfied, that colonization will never have opportunity to exert much influence, other than that which it has exerted already, by promoting and extending, and by binding together in action, as well as in speculation, in a course of labor, of alms-giving and of prayer, that benevolent feeling towards the blacks, which, before its promulgation, existed in scattered parcels throughout the land; and by thus exciting an interest which must infallibly turn into the channel of any rational and effective scheme for abolishing slavery, that may at any time be proposed. Slavery, we doubt not, will be taken entirely out of the influence of colonization, considered as a direct remedy for slavery, by being abolished long before that influence can have opportunity to act; still the influences named above, so far as they go, are all auxiliary to the great work, and truly belong to the scheme, as they were at first supposed to do. The light which has come in, has also shown errors in the scheme, as actually conducted, and deviations from the original plan, which must be corrected; but still, the view which we have given, is a fair statement of New-England views of colonization: it is that simple and unexceptionable scheme which genuine New-England, as we have before remarked, has always sustained, and is now sustaining: and let him who will venture to speak words of causeless reproach against it, speak them; let him who hopes for happiness in heaven by abusing it, abuse it; whether it be the Hon. William Jay or Mr. Garrison.

It is time to give our readers who have not perused the works which we have placed at the head of this article, some idea of their contents, so far as they relate to colonization: for on the subject of slavery, we wish it to be understood, that, although we have not joined the American Anti-Slavery Society, we have, in the present article, no contest with Mr. Jay, or any of his fellow-abolitionists. We do not approve, it is true, in some important particulars, their principles or their spirit; but their end is noble; their aims are, on the whole, benevolent and patriotic; the basis of their constitution is essentially truth, and their success, unless they shall hinder it by holding dangerous error and unhallowed fire in union with their benevolence and truth, is certain. All that we are now contending against, is, their strangely and almost unaccountably turning aside from the purpose to which the constitution of their society limits them, to hinder the success of another cause, entirely distinct, although collateral, their persecuting it and vowing its entire overthrow. It is this unauthorized and unconstitutional enterprise of anti-colonization, which is the root of by far the greater part of the bitterness, misapprehension, disparagement of motives, and occasionally

something like malignity, in which a large part even of the most estimable anti-colonizationists do really appear to indulge; while they, at the same time, most unceasingly as well as justly complain of the exercise, toward themselves, of the same misapprehension and unhallowed feeling on the part of very many of their opponents.

But we have a complaint to make, in the outset, upon the other side of the question. We complain of the slighting terms which Dr. Reese has applied, in his preface, to the work of Mr. Jay; not so much because they are slighting, as because they are not founded, as we think, in truth, and are calculated, of course, to injure the cause of truth, instead of promoting it. A few passages will show our meaning, and the ground of our apprehensions:

Such were my impressions when I had finished its perusal; and a similar estimate of the utter impotency of the book, is, I have since learned, very generally entertained, by those of our fellow-citizens who are well informed in relation to the history and operations of the colonization enterprise. I therefore felt no disposition to attempt a reply. But, as many of our friends, who agree with me in my view of the harmlessness of the assault which Mr. Jay's book contains, express their apprehensions lest the magic of his name upon its title page may mislead the "unlearned and unwary," and that multitudes of such may be taught to infer from our silence, that we cannot or dare not meet this giant" in the field of discussion,' etc. etc. etc. Reese, p. v.

[ocr errors]

<

Again:

If the reader can excuse or explain such examples as those pointed out in the following Letters, in any milder and more christian language than that which imputes them to fanaticism, I shall rejoice, that it may hereafter be adopted. I confess for myself, that this is the only mantle to cover them, which it appears to me is furnished, even from the wardrobe of CHARITY itself.

On the one page we read, that the whole of the slaves in the United States are "kept in ignorance, and compelled to live without God, and to die without hope." And on another we are told, that "245,000" of these same slaves are "christians," and "possess a saving knowledge of the religion of Christ!"

Åt one time the Colonization Society is charged with "professing to be a remedy for slavery, and the only one ;" and at another it is declared, that its "professed constitutional object is exclusively that of colonizing the free blacks and manumitted slaves, and, that it has no more right to meddle with slavery or emancipation, than a bible society?" On one page, the Colonization Society is called a "powerful institution," and on another, it is called "utterly impotent," a "weak, broken-winded, good for nothing team!"

no

In the one place we are told, first, that "the Colonization Society is in its general influence decidedly ANTI-CHRISTIAN," and that it can in sense be termed a religious society ;" and on the same page it is said, that this Colonization Society contains "multitudes of religious men." And again: "The Colonization Society unquestionably comVOL. VII.

65

prises a vast number of as PURE AND DEVOTED CHRISTIANS, as can be found in this or any other country.

But if this be not unsophisticated fanaticism, let me ask the reader to affix a softer name to the attempt here made,' etc. etc. Reese, P vii.

It is not our intention to deny the force of the paragraphs of Dr. Reese's preface which immediately follow those just quoted; nor to vindicate those sentiments of Mr. Jay, that are impugned, in those which we have quoted in full; but to say, that the incon sistency which Dr. Reese intends thereby to make out, does not, in fact, exist; and therefore it was unfair to point to them, as exhibitions of fanaticism, in that respect. We ought not, certainly, to object to Dr. Reese calling men fanatics on proper grounds,that is to say, if they are so; for the application of this term becomes abusive only when unjustly made. As to inconsistency, we think there is much of it in Mr. Jay's work; but when Mr. Jay said, in the particular passage pointed to by Dr. Reese, that the millions of slaves are coinpelled to live without God, and die without hope, he evidently meant to speak of them as a body, and not, as Dr. Reese declares, of every individual among thein; so that it was not inconsistent in him, afterwards to suppose, that even a tenth part are true christians. The first assertion, although per haps too sweeping in its language, is certainly true in substance; and we trust that the truth of his after supposition may be made equally manifest in the final day.

So in the next place, as to the professions of the Colonization Society, although we have no sympathy with Mr. Jay in much of bis argument, yet the inconsistency of his language is all done away by merely observing, that he spoke in one place of its constitutional professions as a society; and in another, of its practical professions, in the conversations and speeches of its members. Now whether Mr. Jay has represented the matter truly or not, is one question; but we say, it was unfair to hold him up, upon these grounds, as being inconsistent, even to fanaticism; when in fact there is not, in these particular passages, any inconsistency at all.

So again, Mr. Jay in one place calls the Colonization Society a "powerful institution," and at another, "a weak, broken-winded, good for nothing team." Now this last remark of Mr. Jay's, as nearly as we can make out its true character, is indeed ill-tempered, but not inconsistent with his first; for in that first appellation, be called the institution powerful in its patronage, its resources, the multitude of its adherents, etc., while in the last, he meant to describe it as good for nothing in relation to certain benevolent objects, which it professes to have among its aims. We need follow Dr. Reese no farther, only to add, that Mr. Jay's apparent inconsistencies are made such, only by Dr. R. withholding the connections and bearings in which the passages are found; and as this is the very mode of representation under which colonization has suffered much

« הקודםהמשך »