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 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY, 
 
 JAN UA R Y 16, 1877, 
 
 y 
 
 Hon. JOHN H. B. LATROBE. 
 
 •PUBLISHED Sr "REQUEST. 
 
 WASHINGTON CITY: 
 
 Colonization Building, 450 Pennsylvania Avenue. 
 
 1877 . 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/christianciviliz00latr_2 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 Members of the American Colonization Society, 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 In the year 1853, Mr. Everett, addressing the Anniversary Meeting 
 of that year, said: 
 
 “ Sir : I believe that Africa will be civilized, and civilized by the 
 descendants of those torn from the land. I believe it, because I will ’ 
 not think that this great fertile continent is to be forever left waste ; 
 
 I believe it, because I see no other agency competent to the task ; I 
 believe it, because 1 see in this agency a wonderful adaptation.” 
 
 It was no new thought that Mr. Everett uttered on this occasion ; 
 but, falling from his lips, these words had the weight due to his char- 
 acter as an acute observer, a profound thinker, an experienced states- 
 man, and an accomplished orator. 
 
 It was a long, dim vista through which, with prophetic eye, he 
 gazed when he uttered them. Since then, day to day, the prospect 
 has been brightening, until, now, even the most incredulous may see 
 the end that he foretold. 
 
 The standpoint which Mr. Everett occupied, however, commanded 
 a far wider view than that which the earlier colonizationists enjoyed 
 thirty-seven years before, in 1816. A thick darkness then rested upon 
 their way, which it needed the eye of a strong and abiding faith to 
 penetrate. Such was the faith of Finley, and Bushrod Washington, 
 and Harper, and Randolph, and Clay, and Key, and Mercer, and 
 many another, whose names have now become historical in connection 
 with our cause. 
 
 The address of Mr. Everett in 1853 was made at the time when a 
 new interest seemed about to be taken in Africa and things African. 
 At that date, almost all that was known about the continent beyond 
 its mere edges had been learned from Bruce and Park, Denham and 
 Clapperton, Caille, the Landers, and Barth. Bruce had sought the 
 fountains of the Nile, which he fancied he had found in Abyssinia. 
 Park had crossed the mountains from the head waters of the Gambia 
 to the Niger ; had visited Timbuctoo, and was murdered at Boussa 
 
4 
 
 when descending the river in the hope of unveiling the mystery of its 
 mouth. Caille had made a detour from the Rio Nunez, struck and 
 crossed the Niger high up, and reached the ocean again in Morocco. 
 Denham and Clapperton had made their way from Tripoli across the 
 desert, discovered the lake Tchad, and aroused attention by the pub- 
 lication of their travels in 1824. Lander, going north from Badagry, 
 on the way to the lake, was taken prisoner when he reached the 
 Niger, and, being carried by his captors down the river to the sea, 
 became in this way the discoverer of its mouth, or many mouths, in 
 the delta between the great Bights of Benin and Biafra. Barth, with 
 Richardson and Overweg, crossed the desert to Timbuctoo, and trav- 
 eling widely through the Niger countries, published, in 1853, by 
 far the most elaborate and satisfactory, if not the most entertaining 
 account that had yet appeared of Central Africa. 
 
 Since 1853 the exploration of the continent has been far more active 
 than it ever was before, and the public interest in Africa seems to have 
 grown in proportion. 
 
 In the last century there were but four attempts at exploration, 
 excluding Park, whose second and most fruitful journey was in 1805. 
 In the first quarter of the nineteenth century there were but three, 
 including even Caille, whose travels did not end until 1828. In the 
 second quarter we have but five ; while for the third quarter and down 
 to this time there have been more than twenty, counting those only 
 whose names are well known as contributors to our knowledge of the 
 interior of Africa. 
 
 With Mr. Everett’s address, or, at all events, cotemporaneous with 
 it, may be said to have revived the spirit of African exploration. 
 
 During the period here referred to Liberia had been founded, and 
 was growing slowly but surely, increasing, as she is still increasing, in 
 strength, so as to become fitted some day for the destiny foretold for 
 her — to vindicate her competency for the agency that Mr. Everett 
 assigned to her — to prove, to use his words, “her wonderful adapta- 
 tion to the work” of civilizing Africa; to do for Africa what the set- 
 tlements of Plymouth and Jamestown, weaker far in their early history 
 than Liberia has ever been, have in the end done for America; with 
 this mighty difference, that here in America the white race has sub- 
 jugated, trampled upon, and will, sooner or later, extirpate the red 
 race that it found here, leaving it a tradition only; while the black 
 race of Africa, “civilized,” to use again the words of Mr. Everett, 
 “by the descendants of those torn from the land,” will have only 
 
5 
 
 reason to rejoice in the numbers that leave America to find in Africa 
 their home. 
 
 So great a result as the orator foretold is never brought about upon 
 the instant. Long preparation precedes it always. Circumstances 
 often apparently antagonistic are in the end found to have been, in 
 some unexpected way, combined to produce it. In this case, a popu- 
 lation, estimated by late writers at 199,000,000, of whom, says the 
 same authority, scarcely one per cent, can be set down as civilized 
 men, and little more than ten per cent, as semi-civilized even, was to 
 be wrought upon. The mere statement of the proportion is appall- 
 ing. Measure the chances of success by all past experience. Look 
 at the fields where the labors of white missionaries have been the most 
 encouraging. Count the number of their converts and subtract it 
 from 199,000,000. Ask the zealous and devoted men and women 
 who, for forty years and more, have labored on the paboon, on the 
 Cavalla, and elsewhere on the continent, to enumerate their communi- 
 cants, and then let us judge for ourselves what impression they are at 
 all likely to make upon this enormous mass. And yet we all agree 
 that this work, mighty as it is, has to be done. As philanthropists 
 merely we would wish to believe that it will be done. As Christians, 
 blessed with prophecy and revelation, it is our duty to believe it will 
 be done. Then comes the constantly-recurring question, but how is 
 it to be done ? And the answer is to be made in the language which 
 has been used as the text of this address: It is to be done by “the 
 descendants of those torn from the land ; ” not by one or two, or one or 
 two hundred white missionaries scattered here and there over Africa, 
 like the “ rari nantes in gurgite vasto ” of Virgil, but by a missionary- 
 nation from across the sea, absorbing into itself, as the ages, if you 
 please, roll on, those whom it came to teach. Towards such a result 
 circumstances apparently antagonistic seem to have been tending. 
 
 Who could have imagined that, when Henry de Vasco of Portugal 
 began to creep with his timid expeditions along the Western Coast of 
 Africa, they would ever bear upon subjects like the present? Who 
 could have foreseen that the slave trade, which then originated in the 
 greed of the Portuguese adventurers, was to have an influence upon 
 the civilization of Africa and the spread of the Gospel? Who could 
 have predicted that even the horrors of the middle passage would tend 
 in the same direction by arousing the feeling that put an end to the 
 inhuman traffic, only, however, after there had been placed in Amer- 
 ica hundreds of thousands of Africans, whose descendants, by long 
 
6 
 
 ontact and association with the white race, would become so imbued 
 with its i h jracteristics as to be able to do for Africa what that race 
 had done fjr them; a result which the daily intercourse of generations 
 on generations alone seems competent to effect. 
 
 We see all this now; and looking back from the standpoint of to- 
 dav, we can follow the sequence of events and see the combination of 
 circumstances as distinctly as we can trace the course of a river and the 
 tributaries from manv quarters that go to swell its volume upon the map. 
 
 Nor, in connection with the agency which Liberia is to have in the 
 civilization of Africa, must we overlook a peculiarity of the people 
 upon whom it is to operate and which makes it of so much import- 
 ance, It is not to be forgotten that while Europe has developed, from 
 w ithin, the highest culture of which man here below seems to be sus- 
 ceptible; while Chinese civilization has existed from remote times; 
 while India under its native princes, long ages before the day of Clive 
 ar.d Hastings, had its science and its art, and exhibited in its architect- 
 ure such beauty as is illustrated in the Taj Mahal at Agra; while 
 Mexico and Peru had made the advances that Cortes and Pizarro 
 found there ; while the same may be said of Japan that has been said 
 of China — yet the native African is, to-day, what the paintings on 
 Egyptian tombs represent him to have been when he figured in the 
 processions that swelled t he triumphs of the kings in whose reigns 
 were built the pyramids, the temples, and the palaces whose ruins 
 crowd the borders of the Nile. 
 
 Certainly, then, it is only a fair inference that, with but an inferior 
 faculty of self- development, the civilization of Africa must coine from 
 without, and not from within, her borders. And where is it to come 
 from, save from America — from the nation of missionaries here pre- 
 pared for the purpose, “ the descendants of those torn from the land ?” 
 This is the agency by which the work is to be done. And never were 
 truer words spoken than when Mr. Everett said, “ I see no other 
 agency competent to the task; I see in this agency a wonderful adapt- 
 ation.” 
 
 Looking forward to the remoteness of the end, it is as far off to-day 
 as it was when Mr. Everett spoke. The twenty-four years that have 
 elapsed may be counted as an hour only of the time that must inter- 
 vene before all men shall admit that the great result has been accom- 
 plished. But the happening of it is not the less sure ; and all that 
 has yet taken place in this connection but strengthens, or ought to 
 strengthen, our faith in it. 
 
I 
 
 It is very true that when, in 1 8 1 6 , the American Colonization 
 Society was formed, the vast majority of the descendants of these “ torn 
 from the land ” in the United States were slaves, and that now there 
 is not a single slave in all our wide domain ; and there may be those 
 who will argue that with all avocations, in all the walks of life, open to 
 all ; with the highest political distinction within the reach of all ; there 
 is far less motive for emigration than when color was a disqualifying 
 badge in a thousand offensive ways. And the same persons may point 
 to the high positions honorably filled bv men who, twenty years ago, 
 were either slaves or the descendants, more or less remotelv, of slaves, 
 as creating an inducement to remain in America more potent than any 
 that formerly existed. 
 
 The argument on these grounds is a weak one. The closer the 
 assimilation which contact and association for generations on genera- 
 tions have brought about between the two races in those characteristics 
 which fit men to influence men in the interests of civilization, the 
 more capable is the Africo-American of taking upon himself the work 
 that is yet to be performed in Africa — the wider the field opened to 
 his ambition in a land where, free from the overshadowing competi- 
 tion of a different race, he may do the work which he and his are 
 alone competent to perform. That he will perform it, all things 
 seem to indicate in the preparations that have so long been going for- 
 ward Among these not the least important and significant are the 
 
 explorations that have been extending our knowledge of the continent 
 and its people. They have shown that in no part of the globe are 
 the treasures of the mine, the soil, and the forest more abundant; while 
 nowhere else has nature been more prodigal of beauty ; and the 
 journeyings of Speke, and Burton, and Grant, and Livingstone, and 
 Schvveinfurth, and Cameron, and Stanley have created an interest in 
 Africa before unfelt: and, to-day, the return of Stanley is anticipated 
 by thousands as letting on still more the light of day, so to speak, 
 upon what has been tbe dark interior of this quarter of the globe. 
 
 It is only within a few months that one of the most intelligent and 
 enlightened monarchs of Europe convened in Brussels a Congress of 
 geographers, men of science, distinguished African travelers, and others, 
 with a view to the concentration of effort in this direction, so that 
 exploration might be carried on, not sporadically, but upon a system 
 having especial regard to this great matter of civilization. It was with 
 profound regret that the speaker found himself unable to accept the 
 invitation that his office of President of the American Colonization 
 
8 
 
 Society, no doubt, procured for him, to be present at the meeting at 
 Brussels on the i ith September last, as the guest of King Leopold, if 
 for no other reason than because he lost the opportunity of expressing, 
 and elaborating, and justifying, as he has endeavored to do this even- 
 ing, the views that have been made the subject of this address. 
 
 Should it be said that the scant numbers that of late years the Soci- 
 ety has sent to Liberia is not encouraging in this connection; the an- 
 swer is, that there has been no want of applicants to go there. The 
 Society could have sent six thousand who are on its list, had it pos- 
 sessed the means to send them. And if it is then said, that this very 
 want of means is indicative of an indifference on the part of the public 
 which is inconsistent with that increase of interest in Africa which 
 has now been dwelt upon, it may be answered that African coloniza- 
 tion must, as a matter of course, be independent, as regards its great 
 ultimate results, of the means to be furnished by a philanthropic asso- 
 ciation, no matter how ample its endowment. African colonization 
 differs in nowise from any other colonization — eastern from China to 
 America, or western from Europe to our shores. It depends, as do 
 all others, upon the attractions of the new home, the repulsions of the 
 old one, or upon both combined ; and when it does take place it must, 
 like that which now takes place from Europe to America, be volun- 
 tary and self-paying, crossing the ocean over the bridge that commerce 
 makes for it. The function of the American Colonization Society 
 has been to build up in Africa a nation possessing such attractions, 
 capable of self support, of self-government, civilized and Christian, 
 recognized as a member of the great family of nations through honor- 
 able treaties, and having the sympathy of the whole civilized world, 
 as well on account of its origin as for its purpose and its destiny. This 
 the Society believes that it has accomplished ; until now, as the fruit 
 of 160 voyages, upon which no vessel has been injured by wind or 
 wave, not one lost by shipwreck, it has received in Liberia 20,820 of 
 the descendants of those torn from the land; an English-speaking 
 people, whose Government is modeled after our own, and whose suc- 
 cess has vindicated beyond all question the ability of the Africo- 
 American to maintain in Africa an honorable nationality, capable of 
 the amplest development in all the best qualities of civilization. 
 
 That this will have the attraction that will in the end make Libe- 
 ria the mother of a great missionary nation, all things seem to 
 promise; and the end can no more be stayed by the condition of the 
 Society’s treasury, this year or the next, than can the succession of 
 
9 
 
 the years themselves be affected by the sunlights or the shadows of their 
 seasons as they roll. 
 
 There is a time for all things; a fullness of time, when all things 
 become fit for the event that is to take place. It may be hastened or 
 retarded, but its coming cannot be prevented. All history has shown 
 this, and illustrations from history might be multiplied indefinitely; 
 and were gold to be found now, as explorations already made in Li- 
 beria indicate that before long it will be, within as easy reach of 
 Monrovia as the mines of California were within reach of the western 
 States of the Union, or as those of Australia were within reach of the 
 inhabitants of Melbourne, there would be no need of resorting to the 
 treasury of the Society to meet the expenses of emigration. 
 
 Nor is Liberia to depend upon the sacra fames auri alone for its 
 growth and prosperity. There are causes at work of a very different 
 description, and which will continue to operate until the intercourse 
 between Africa and America shall become as active as that between 
 Europe and America, affording facilities for an emigration eastward as 
 great as any that ever came westward to our shores. 
 
 Ingenuity has gone even beyond the demands of an increasing and 
 ever-exacting civilization. The looms and the forges and the work- 
 shops of Europe and America produce more than the consumers of 
 Europe and America and the other known markets of the world can 
 pay for. All markets are glutted with their products. New mar- 
 kets must be found, or the whirl of the spindle, the blast of the fur- 
 nace, and the ring of the anvil must cease, and those dependent upon 
 them must suffer. When starvation marches close behind the com- 
 petition that produces cheapness, starvation will catch up as soon as 
 cheapness ceases to tempt consumption. In a word, to leave the 
 figurative for the fact, new markets are rapidly becoming a necessity. 
 England feels this, and with the wise forecast of her statesmanship 
 has for years been laboring to provide for it. Comparatively speak- 
 ing, the only virgin market of the world, to-day, is Africa. America, 
 too, has been sensible of it; and the emigrants of the Society are taken 
 to Liberia now by the merchant-traders from New York; and the 
 readiest means of communicating with Monrovia or Cape Palmas is 
 by way of England by two lines of steamers which sail from Liver- 
 pool continuing their voyages along the Coast as far east as the Bight 
 of Benin. 
 
 When the territory, now Liberia, was purchased from the native 
 kings by Commodore Stockton and Dr. Eli Ayres in 1821, nothing 
 
10 
 
 of all this was anticipated. There had been, as we have seen, no 
 exploration of Africa, no spirit of exploration, no King of Belgium to 
 concentrate and systematize such a spirit. The most profitable article 
 of African produce was man. The most active trader along the Coast 
 of Liberia was the slave ship. The mills of England had ample 
 markets to which to send their manufactures. The mills of America 
 had scarcely an existence. A steam-engine had not long ceased to 
 be a curiosity. But look around to-day. How vast, how wondrous, 
 how unexampled the change. Its details it were idle to particularize. 
 Our subject is Africa; and it is in connection with Africa only that 
 these things are referred to. Whatever their influence in other direc- 
 tions, their tendency unquestionably is to bring about the day when 
 America shall in some sort pay the debt she owes to Africa in the 
 fitness which “the descendants of those torn from the land” have 
 acquired during their long and weary servitude — to spread over this 
 vast continent as a thrice-blessed garment, civilization and the gospel, 
 fulfilling wisely and beneficently all the duties of the agency which, 
 to recur again to the words of Mr. Everett, is alone “ competent to 
 the task.” 
 
 Not single heralds now go forth 
 To earn Thy smiles’ reward — 
 
 To preach Thy law, proclaim Thy word, 
 
 Redeemer, Saviour, Lord ; 
 
 But, bursting through the thrall of years 
 Their fathers’ home to gain, 
 
 A nation, now, exultant bears 
 Thy truth beyond the main. 
 

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