AFRICAN COLONIZATION 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 American Colonization Society, 
 
 
 Rt. Rev. M. A. DeWolfe Howe, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 Bishop of Central Pennsylvania. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 
 
 WASHINGTON, CITY : 
 
 Colonization Building, 450 Pennsylvania Avenue. 
 1879 . 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/africancolonizat00howe_2 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 No thoughtful American can withhold the acknowledgment that 
 there is due to people of African descent, in this country, the best that 
 can be done for their welfare and happiness. Their ancestors did not, 
 like those of European stock, come here as colonists of their own ac- 
 cord to find new homes, and achieve a higher destiny. They were the 
 victims of a policy then common to the civilized world. France, Spain 
 and England drew from the shores of Africa unwilling servants to toil 
 for them in their colonial possessions. And so, all along our Atlantic 
 border, the children of Ham, were, before we became a nation, “hew- 
 ers of wood and drawers of water,” — menials in house and field to 
 other families of the human race. 
 
 In the progress of human events, their descendants, now numbered 
 by millions, are here no longer in involuntary servitude. All legal im- 
 pediments to their advancement are removed. They are now free to 
 aspire after any social or civil position to which their intelligence, edu- 
 cation, and moral worth may entitle them. They may amass wealth, 
 wield influence, hold office, like any other citizens. And individuals of 
 their race have achieved such distinction among us. I think there are 
 very few who are offended by these examples of men who have strug- 
 gled up from the general abasement of their people, disarmed prejudice, 
 and fairly secured positions of prominence and respect. Enthusiasts, 
 who once espoused their cause when all this was impossible, and who 
 have visions of the future of the race which, I apprehend, can never be 
 realized on this continent, say, — why not let them remain where they 
 are, on their native soil, and work out the problem of life, under the ad- 
 vantages which now are accorded to them by the amended Constitution? 
 
4 
 
 Doubtless, the great mass of them ■will continue ; and get, and hold 
 possession of all the titular rights which belong to American citizens. 
 The removal of 5,000,000 of people across the ocean is too vast an en- 
 terprise to be seriously considered ; most of them will abide where 
 Providence, favoring or adverse, has fixed their lot. Yet it will be a 
 new chapter in human history if with all the inherent difficulties of 
 their position — difficulties which no change in the laws of the land can 
 possibly annul — they can attain to the same level of social, commercial, 
 and civil progression to which a dominant race of overshadowing num- 
 bers has long ago risen. And this perpetual inferiority will not be in 
 any great degree attributable to the prejudice which persists in looking 
 down upon a people who have once been in bondage. It is equally 
 true that the Indian, — civilize him as much as you will, — and the Mongo- 
 lian, — in whatever swarms he may come to our shores — can never com- 
 pete on the same arena with the race that for a thousand years has been 
 in the van of human progress, and has the advantage of prepossession of 
 education, property and power. And so, the African, impeded by his 
 condition and history in this country, and crowded off from the track 
 of progress by competitors of traditional precedence and overwhelming 
 numbers, will, save in a few exceptional cases, earn a precarious liveli- 
 hood by the sweat of his brow, hated and spurned by the laborers of 
 another race who dig and delve at his side. 
 
 The more intelligent and aspiring of African stock have a far more 
 inviting field of enterprise open before them on their ancestral shores. 
 A free Colony, which has now risen to the dignity of an independent 
 Republic, and which has been planted long enough to demonstrate that 
 it has in it the elements of permanency and progression, offers them an 
 unstinted share in its noble mission, and in its exalted destiny. There 
 is an unencumbered field in which they may seek advancement in all 
 that man esteems honorable without encountering invidious rivalry or 
 universal and indomitable prejudice. Here, at a disadvantage, because 
 their civilization is inferior to that which surrounds and overshadows 
 them, — thither they can carry a degree of moral and mental enlighten- 
 ment which shall entitle them at once to social respect, and incite them 
 to strive for the prizes of fortune and the honors of office. 
 
 For, most of the colonists who have already found a home in Liberia 
 imigrated under far less favorable circumstances than theirs who now, 
 
5 
 
 and hereafter, may embark on the same great life enterprise. They 
 went in comparative ignorance, just released from the tutelage of servi- 
 tude, and invested with the terrible responsibilities of liberty in a strange 
 land. These have been for half a generation in the hard school of self- 
 dependence — introduced by philanthropists to the rudiments of book- 
 learning, and through freedom have regained the consciousness, and are 
 fired with the ambitions of manhood. They can contribute to the com- 
 mon stock of society there more of the ingredients which constitute 
 national strength, prosperty, and honor, than their predecessors could 
 afford. 
 
 The pioneers have broken up the waste and made it ready, and have 
 beaten back the savages that would drive them from the strand ; — now 
 is the time ; and here are the men qualified by a special Providence to 
 go in with the winnowed grain of a higher civilization, to “possess the 
 land which the Lord sware unto their fathers.” 
 
 The time for colonization has not passed by: — “the fulness” of it 
 has just come. The tokens of this fact are found both here and in Af- 
 rica. The experiment of political equality, now tried among us for 
 nearly a score of years has not shown that all distinctions of race are or 
 will be forgotten. Centuries cannot efface even the factitious lines 
 of demark ation between the races, which a century of untoward re- 
 lations has produced, and deeply scored. Nature forbids them to 
 blend; and history pronounces that they cannot stand side by side on 
 the same plane of elevation. 
 
 On the other hand, Africa was never so attractive as now. The 
 American Colony, to which this Society has sent out more than 15,000 
 settlers is more prosperous than ever. It is recognized in the family of 
 Nations. Its productions and exports are increasing year by year. Its 
 intercourse with the more intelligent tribes of the interior is constant- 
 ly widening and becoming more profitable. Its schools and other 
 institutions for the advancement of the people; its laws and admin- 
 istration of government, are growing more efficient and better adapted 
 to their needs. It has had no inconsiderable share in the suppression 
 of the slave trade, which is now denounced by all civilized nations, 
 and by the vigilance of their navies is almost banished from the seas. 
 Just considered as a home for the colored race, where there are none 
 to jostle them out of the way of progress — no impediment of law or 
 
6 
 
 prejudice, or preoccupation on the arena of manly effort, where suc- 
 ceeding generations may reasonably hope to surpass their fathers in all 
 that ennobles man and makes his life a joy to himself and a blessing 
 to others, Liberia is, I believe, the most inviting spot on the habita- 
 ble earth! 
 
 But, regarding the Colony on the Coast of Africa, planted, enlarged, 
 cultivated, and defended by colored emigrants from the United States, 
 as a theatre on which men of the same race can most hopefully ex- 
 ercise and develop the manhood that is in them, we do not half ap- 
 preciate its advantages, if we think of it as a mere isolated commu- 
 nity, bounded by the geographical limits, defined in the treaties with 
 the barbarous tribes that compass it about ; it is the gate of entrance 
 to interior Africa. And, what interior Africa is we are only begin- 
 ning to know. The researches of Barth and Livingstone, and our own 
 Stanley, reveal to us that it is swarming with intelligent people, far su- 
 perior to the tribes which on the sea coast have been debased by in- 
 cessant wars, waged for the capture of prisoners to be sold to the 
 slave-traders ; that the population of the Continent is estimated at two 
 hundred millions ; that it is rich in arable lands and precious minerals ; 
 that navigable lakes and rivers traverse the interior, and that only 
 civilization and enterprise(which are familiar to us, so that the products 
 of them seem to us natural elements like fire and water), are required to 
 introduce steamboats and railroads, and telegraphs. Then those vast 
 resources which have been “hidden from ages and generations” shall 
 be brought out and mingled with the commerce of the world, and the 
 millions that now “sit in darkness” shall learn to live like men, and to 
 die in hope of immortality ! 
 
 Among the first colonies of historic times were those planted by the 
 Phenicians on the Northern shores of Africa, where France, nominally 
 Christian, and thoroughly tolerant, has now her Colony of Algeria. 
 England has unfurled her Red-cross banner at Sierra Leone on the West, 
 at Cape Colony and Natal on the South, and Zanzibar on the East ; and 
 America has her watch-tower also in the cordon of Christian civilization 
 which almost girts the Continent. The circumvallation about the 
 stronghold of ignorance and degradation is well-nigh complete. Why 
 do not these allied hosts interchange the signal of onset, and rise up, 
 and go in, and possess the land for humanity, and for God ? Nay, why 
 
have not the civilization and enterprise of Europe, and America long 
 since penetrated “the dark Continent, ” and brought its people, and its 
 products into contact with the commerce of mankind ? I answer; — first, 
 because the reports of proceedings on the Coasts have made the tribes of 
 the interior afraid to deal with the pale-faced and ruthless invaders from 
 beyond the sea ; second, because the climatic influences of the region 
 have been regarded as fatal to the white race ; and finally, because hith- 
 erto there have been no representatives of their own branch of the human 
 family who in sufficient numbers have been uplifted by the civilization 
 which they have rather seen than shared in other lands, and made will- 
 ing to return to Africa, and there to do or to suffer for the, regeneration 
 of their “brethren after the flesh.” When the Colonies of America and 
 Great Britain, shall have trained or drawn to themselves from lands 
 where they were once in bondage, and always in subserviency, Negro 
 men of lofty hopes, and generous impulses, and practical education, and 
 daring enterprise — then Central Africa will be reached by missionaries 
 of civilization and religion ; its resources will be developed, and circu- 
 lated ; its people will thrill with the sense of a new and higher life ; and 
 the story of its estrangement from the great family of nations will pass 
 away. I pity the man of the swarthy skin, who, entrusted with the 
 clues of liberty and education, has no ambition to follow them when 
 they lead out of darkness and doubt to such a destiny, — to possibilities 
 of good for himself and his progeny, nowhere else to be enjoyed ! 
 
 In the distribution of the human race, the sons of Ham were as- 
 signed to Africa; to its peculiarities of food and climate their constitu- 
 tions are accommodated. A century of life in other climes has not ob- 
 literated this natural adaptation. Experiment has proved that colored 
 emigrants from America survive and flourish where men of another race 
 lose vigor, sicken and die. They are the elected redeemers of their 
 Father Land. It waits their coming: — it sent them forth with tears; it 
 will receive them again with joy ! 
 
 This Society, which once was impugned as an agent of domestic agi- 
 tation, and again traduced as the enemy of the blacks, has in all time 
 numbered among its supporters many of the distinguished divines, pat- 
 riots and statesmen of our country. Its beneficent errand and work is, to 
 aid worthy colored persons of either sex, and in any vigorous stage of 
 life, who may desire to seek a home on the shores of that fruitful and 
 
8 
 
 pleasant Continent from which their fathers were torn away ; to help 
 them in their outfit, and to secure them a freehold on their arrival. 
 
 It is a noble, and far-reaching charity, conferring a blessing not only 
 on its immediate recipients, but on their children and children’s children, 
 “ even to the years of many generations;” — not only on these, but by 
 them replenishing that well-spring of life and hope, in the desert, the 
 overflow of whose waters will refresh, and gladden the waste places that 
 lie beyond. And again, the civilization which through this medium 
 shall reach at length to the waiting myriads in Central Africa will give 
 back a reflected light to the source of its emanation, and the entire 
 world will be brighter and happier when there shall no longer be a dark 
 and dreary spot on all its habitable compass. 
 
 I stood lately in Westminster Abbey, that Mausoleum of the mighty 
 dead, at the spot where rest the weary feet of the great English Explorer, 
 by whose adventurous journeys the world has learned so much of the 
 “secret places” of the earth; and on Livingstone’s monument which 
 overhangs the place of his repose, I read the record of his prayer of- 
 fered in loneliness in the wilds of Central Africa; and here I repeat it as 
 my own in this place of concourse, “May Heaven’s richest blessing come 
 down on every one, American, English or Turk, who helps to heal the 
 open sore of the world, Amen.” 
 
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