E 448 :.L36 Copy 1 AFRICAN COLONIZATION-ITS PRINCIPLES AND AIMS. AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY JOHN H. B. LATEOBE, President of the American Colonization Society, JANUARY 18, 185i AFRICAN COLONIZATION-ITS PRINCIPLES AND AIMS. AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY JOHN H. B. |:.ATROBE, President of the American Colonization Society, j: > AT THE ANNIVERSARY MEETING OF THE AMERICAN COLONIZA- l TION SOCIETY HELD IN THE SMITHSONIAN I INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON CITY, . | JANUARY 18, 1859. The following Address was delivered at the Anniversary Meeting of the American Colonization Society, held at the Smithsonian Institute, in the City of Washington, on the Evening of the 18th of January, 1859. It has since, in pursuance of what appeared to be the wish of the Meeting, and at the invitation of the friends of Colonization in those Cities, been repeated in Richmond, Va. — Eliza- beth City, New Jersey, — New York, Albany, Harrisburg, Cincinnati and Philadelphia. It is now published in accordance with the res- olution of the Anniversary Meeting. Its principal object is to exhibit Colonization in what is believed to be its true aspect, — as a scheme, which, fitted to the circumstances of our country, must rely on the natural course of events for its full development, in a voluntary, cheerful, self-paying emigration of the free people of color to Africa, — the result of their own conviction that they will better their condition by removal, while they, at the same time, establish a separate and honorable nationality, pregnant with the happiest promise. COLONIZATION ITS PRINCIPLES AND AIMS, Forty-two years ago, the Rev. Robert Finley of New Jersey developed, in the City of Washing- ton, the idea of planting a colony in Africa, that might induce the free people of color "to go and settle there."* * It is not to be inferred from what is said in the text, which has reference to the organization of the American Colonization Society only, that Mr. Finley originated the idea of a Colony, such as was afterwards established, on the Coast of Africa. The idea belongs to others. It was Finley, however, who developed and made it avail- able, as stated above. Brissot, in 1788, travelling in the United States, met Dr. Thornton, who told him of "the efforts which he had made for the execution of a vast project conceived by him. Per- suaded that there never could exist a sincere union between th6 whites and blacks, even on admitting the latter to the rights of freemen, he proposed to send them back," says the traveller, "and establish them in Africa." "He, (Dr. Thornton) proposed," continues Brissot, "to be the conductor of the American negroes who should repair to Africa. He proposed to unite them to the new colony of Sierra AFRICAN COLONIZATION. He was moved, he said, by "their inoreasin. numbers and their increasing wretchedness " I Commended by some, ridiculed by others, but proclaiming to all that he knew the scheme was \ ttom God, ho persevered, until in December 1816 the American Colonization Society was organized.' aere, h,s existence seemed to culminate. He then went home and died. Before the exploring cxpe- d;t.on sailed, he was in his grave. We meet, to night, to report progress in his plan. We have been gradually advancing in the pros- ecution of it. If our steps have been unequal, they have been unfaltering. The colony has be- come a Republic. Recognized by many among the leading nations of the world, it is now known every whereas the independent government of Liberia It IS still feeble, but it stands alone. It possesses the elements of future strength. It has good laws I well administered, churches and schools, the mu- I tual aid societies of more advanced communities I agricultural exhibitions even, with their annual AFRICAN COLONIZATION. prizes, — a militia tried and not found wanting, a traffic with the interior, a foreign commerce. Light houses guide ships* into the ports to substi- tute for the slave trade something better in the sight of God and man. With a government modelled after our own, with rulers chosen, and well chosen too, thus far, by themselves, with a soil to which they are akin, capable of self-support, self-government and self- defence, the people of Liberia are slowly develop- ing a distinct nationality. No longer mere emi- grants from the United States experimenting doubtfully, they are Liberians, Americo-Liberians as their phrase is, looking forward to a future of their own. Fast losing our traditions^, they aim at becoming historical themselves. Meanwhile, with steady purpose, they pursue quietly and hon- orably the course of their destiny. The first condition of Colonization has thus been fulfilled. It remains to be seen whether the second will be accomplished: whether the free people of color will be induced, in Finley's words, to "go and settle" in the home that has been pre- pared for them, thus bringing about the avowed object of our organization, "their removal with their own consent to Africa." AFRICAN COLONIZATION. To prepare for, and facilitate this removal, we have been more than forty years at work. The census of 1820 gave a free colored popula- tion of 233,534. In 1850, it amounted to 434,495. It is now, probably, half a million. It has more than doubled since our Society was founded ; while the emigrants in Liberia and their descendants do not exceed twelve thousand souls. Not a twentieth part of the increase has been removed by us. Our toil, apparently, has resulted in less than "a drop in the bucket." How vain then, say our un- friends_, must be our efforts for the removal of the mass. We admit it frankly. We go further: we admit, that if such removal depended upon the American Colonization Society, even though Congress threw open to it the treasury of the nation, the work would never be accomplished, and the scheme would be the delusion it has so often been pro- claimed. This, however, is not the true view of Colo- nization. Money alone may suffice to plant a colony and facilitate the earlier emigration: but it is powerless to control the affections ; powerless to sever the ties that bind to hearth-stone and grave-stone, to give the weak strength,, the timid AFRICAN COLiONIZATION. confidence. And yet, all this must be effected in the transplantation of a people. The reliance of Colonization, in this regard, is neither upon strength of organization, nor bound- lessness of resource, but upon one of the com- monest of all the impulses of humanity— the desire TO BETTER ONE's CONDITION. It is this which brings the European to Ame- rica, — which takes the Englishman to Asia and Australia. Clive and Warren Hastings owed it their wealth and their renown. It has built up for us, in ten years, an empire, in resources and extent, on the Pacific. It will carry to Africa EVERY FREE PERSON OF COLOR IN AMERICA. \ They will go there, not because fascinated by | the eloquence of Colonization Agents ; not for want of love to the land they leave; but they will go ' ' to better their condition. ' ' | They will go, too, ultimately, when the exodus | of the mass takes place, at their own expense. ; Commerce will furnish the ships to carry them ; I thus acquitting itself, in part, of the debt con- | tracted to the race when it brought them origi- | nally to our shores. | All that Colonization has done, or aimed at | doing, has been in view of this voluntary, self- | AFRICAN COLONIZATION. paying, ultimate, emigration ; an emigration that finds its precedents in the history of every people, from the nomadic tribe, whose encampment shifts with failing springs or withering pasturages, to the community that, driven by religious persecu- tion from the old world, landed from the May- flower, or that which encountered the perils of Cape Horn attracted by the gold fields of Cali- fornia. In this, the true aspect of Colonization, it is independent of the shewings of the census. It is to be judged, rather, by what has been already effected in Africa, and by the probable future of the free people of color in America. Were Africa as attractive to the latter as America is to the European, and it is in the power of Colonization Societies, with their limited means even, to make it so, — or, were the repul- sions of this country to influence them, as do those, for example, of Great Britain, the Irish, the emi- gration to Liberia, for a single year, of the same numbers that commerce, in a single year, has brought from the old world to the new, would suffice for the removal of the free; and a like emigration, continued for some seven or eight years, for the removal of both slave and free, were AFRICAN COLONIZATION. both at liberty to depart. Doubling the time_, to allow ,for increase during the process, and the entire removal would fall within twenty years. But so speedy a removal is impossible. The case is put for illustration only. Years must elapse before the increase even can be approxi- mated. Time and circumstances, however, are competent to the work. Time, so powerful, so unheeded. Circumstances, beyond all control, and which time is rendering irresistible. We have, here, two distinct races, the white and the colored : the latter, originally slaves, consist- ing now of slaves and freemen. The slave — protected, provided with food, shel- ter and raiment, treated in the vast majority of cases kindly, affectionately often — is without care as regards his physical wants, and with constitu- tional good humor passes happily, in the main, through life. The free, on the other hand, without an especial protector, dependant upon himself alone, living, as the bills of mortality seem to shew, a shorter life than the slave,* and made to feel in a thousand * The increase of the colored population in what are called the free States and Territories, from 1840 to 1850, was 14.38 per cent., throughout the United States it was but 12 Al; the slave popula- ways his social and political inferiority, either frets away existence in aspirations, which, here, can never be realized, or, yielding hopelessly to circum- stances, falls witVi benumbed faculties into a con- dition that is little better than the slave's. Colonization concerns itself with the free alone. Their condition has long been appreciated. As early as 1788, "Brissot, hight de Warville, friend of the blacks," as Carlyle calls him, travelling In this country, says of them, that "deprived of the hope of rising to places of honor or trust, they seem condemned to drag out their days in a state of servility."* Finley dwelt on their "increasing tion having, within the same period, increased 28.82 per cent., and the white population 37.74 per cent. — See the Census Returns, 1850. From the 14.38 per cent, increase, here credited to the free colored population in the free States, &c., a considerable deduction must be made for emigration from slave-holding States, where emancipated slaves are not permitted to remain, and from which escapes are of i constant occurrence. It may be doubted if the increase by births j among the colored population of the North is one per cent per annum. ; Be this, however, as it may, the returns of the census, above quoted, \ authorise the statement of the text in this regard. ■•■■ The entire passage is as follows. Brissot is speaking of Dr. Thorn- ] ton. "This ardent friend of the blacks, says he, is persuaded, that j we cannot hope to see a sincere union between them and the whites, as long as they differ so much in color and in their rights as citizens. He attributes to no other cause the apathy perceivable in many blacks, even in Massachusetts where they are free. -Deprived of the hope of electing or being elected, or of rising to places of honor and 10 AFRICAN COLONIZATION. numbers and increasing wretchedness," in 1815.* The Society's first memorial to Congress, in 1817, signed by its great and good President, Judge Washington, refers to their condition as "low and hopeless." It was worse than it had been; for La Fayette, when here in 1824, is reported to have remarked upon its deterioration as compared with what it was at the Revolution. That it was uni- versally recognized as bad, and that the hope of trust, the negroes seemed condemned to drag out their days in a state of servility, or to languish in shops of retail. The whites re- proach them with a want of cleanliness, indolence and inattention. But how can they be industrious and active, while an insurmounta- ble barrier separates them from other citizens?" — Brissofs Travels, in Mayor's Compilatioti of Voyages and Travels, vol. 19, pp. 260, 261. * The following extract from a letter from Mr. Finley to Mr. John P. Mumford of New York, affords the earliest evidence we have of his views in regard to Colonization. Dear Sir, Basking Ridge, Feb. 14, 1815. The longer I live to see the wretchedness of man, the more I admire the nature of those, who desire, and with patience, labor to execute plans for the relief of the wretched. On this subject, the state of the free blacks has very much occupied my mind. Their number increases greatly and their wretchedness too, as appears to rae. Everything connected with their condition, including their color, is against them; nor is there much prospect that their state can ever greatly be meliorated while they remain among us. Could not the rich and benevolent devise means to form a colony on some part of the Coast of Africa, similar to the one at Sierra Leone, which might gradu- ally induce many free blacks to go and settle, devising for them the means of getting there, and of protection and support till they were established, ^c. — African Repository, vol. 1, p. 2. 11 AFRICAN COLONIZATION. improving it was a leading motive with the earlier Colonizationists, in 1816, is unquestionable. And yet, in 1816, and for years afterwards, the days were halcyon days, comparatively, for the free people of color. No strife with the whites for | employment then. There was work for all. No | feeling of antagonism between the races. The foreign immigration immaterial, to the colored S man's great relief. Certain kinds of labor his, by prescription. In competition with the whites, he most frequently the favored one. Societies to pro- tect him from imposition, every where. Affections born at the breasts of slave nurses, fostered when playing with slave children, still lingered around the race made free. But what is their condition now ? In individual cases, the free man of color is wondrously im- proved. Better educated is he; more refined; with appreciative tastes, an elevated ambition, comfortable means, wealth, often. It would seem, indeed, that while Liberia was being built up, the race that were to rule it had been vindicating, in anticipation, their capacity to conduct affairs with intelligence and success. And yet, the condition of the free colored population, as a class, is infe- rior, far, to what it was in li816. AFRICAN COLONIZATION. They have been the victims of riots in more than one Northern and Western City. Excluded from many an accustomed calling, practically if not legally, in New York ; no longer stevedores, caulkers or coal heavers in Baltimore, or fireman on the South Western waters, or levee laborers in New Orleans ; crowded out of employment in the great hotels ; disappearing as domestics in private families, they find, by sad experience, how irre- sistible is a white competition in a strife for bread. Legislation, too, has been invoked to straighten their condition. To prevent their increase, eman- cipations have been prohibited. Strenuous and continuous efforts, made under favorable circum- stances, to put them on a footing of social equality with the whites, have resulted only in increasing public prejudice.* Courts of justice have recog- \ nised the existence of this feeling, f and even in * A resolution, introduced in the Board of Education of Newark, N. J., to grant tlie colored population the same privileges and bene- fits in the public schools as the whites enjoy, was,-ftfter a warm dis- cussion, negatived by a vote of 12 to 5. — Colonization Herald, Phil- adelphia, March, 1859 t In the case of McCrea (colored) vs. Marsh, lessee of the Howard AtheniEum, Boston, the Supreme Court, on the 4th inst. sustained the verdict for the Defendant. The Plaintiff, in face of the regula- tion excluding colored people, purchased a ticket for the "dress cir- cle," and when he was refused admission at the entrance he attempted AFRICAN COLONIZATION. those States, which boast peculiar sympathies in their behalf, the distinction of caste pervades prac- tically, so far as they are concerned, the entire com- munity, both socially and politically And why should all this be? Why, at least, have the free colored people not been permitted to maintain the kindlier relations, indifferent as they were, of half a century ago? Personally, they have not deteriorated in the interval. They voted in Maryland up to 1809 ; and the popular almanac, at the beginning of the present century, in the States of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, was the work of Benjamin Banneker, an individual of unmixed African descent. Why then the change in question? There is but one cause to which it can be attri- buted, — the increase of our aggregate population. The two races are coming, day by day, into closer contact. Collisions, of old unknown, are begin- ning to occur between the masses of the respective populations. The old story of the Spaniard and the Moor is being re-enacted in our midst. We are but illustrating the law that invariably pre- to crowd in, aud was put out of the building, no more force having been used than was necessary to eject him from the premises. — Colon- ization Herald, March, 1859. 14 AFRICAN COLONIZATION. vails, where two races that cannot amalgamate by intermarriage occupy the same land. "This it is, and nothing more." In the State of Maryland, for example, there is already a redundant free colored population, amounting to thirteen per cent, of the aggregate ! In Pennsylvania, the proportion is but two and three-tenths per cent. In Massachusetts, less than one per cent. In Connecticut, less than two per cent. In Ohio, one and three-tenths per cent. In New York, one and six-tenths per cent. There are more free people of color in the slave State of Maryland than in the great free States of Ohio and New York put together.* To Maryland, there- fore^ rather than to any other State^ may we look for the consequences of that increase in the aggre- gate of population, to which we have attributed the change for the worse, which, in fifty years, » Extract from Table XII. of the Census of 1850.— Quarto Edition, page xxziii. White. Free Colored. Slaves. Total. Maryland, 41t,943 14,723 90,368 583,034 Pennsylvania, ...2,258,160 53,626 2,311,786 Massachusetts, 985,450 9,064 994,514 Connecticut, 363,099 7,693 370,792 AFRICAN COLONIZATION. has taken place in the condition of the free people of color. And what is the experience of Maryland? Of Maryland, whose kindness, practically, to the class in question, is to be inferred from the crowd that has collected within her borders. Of Maryland — which has expended more than a quarter of a mil- lion in promoting Colonization, and which, when unable for a season to pay tlie interest on her pub- lic debt, never withheld for an instant her annual subsidy of ten thousand dollars to the feeble colony, that had been founded under her auspices on the coast of Africa.* All her legislation looks to the necessity of separation. Laws, already stringent, are sought to be made still more so; and the reasons given by men of high character, assembled in Convention on the Eastern Shore of the State, all resolve themselves into the "exis- tence of the present immense number of free negroes." Nor is Maryland alone in these views. A winter rarely passes without the introduction into State Legislatures of measures prejudicial to the free * The Colony at Cape Palmas, commenced in 1834 by the Mary- laud State Colonization Society, long known as Maryland in Liberia, now incorporated with the Republic of Liberia. AFRICAN COLONIZATION. people of color? And even where there is no legislative action, there is an unwillingness to see their numbers multiply, which, year after year, is becoming more decided and demonstrative.* *The frequency of legislative enactmeats in regard to the free ■ > people of color, during the past winter, is startling in definiteness, J and in their very stringent features. Thus, Arkansas has passed a ' law to expel its free colored population. It is further provided that, \ if they do not leave during the present year, they are liable to be | seized and hired out, so as to procure the means of removing from the State. The lower House of the Legislature of Missouri has i likewise passed a bill, by a vote of eighty-eight yeas to twenty-nine nays, in which it is declared that all "free negroes" residing in the | State in 1860, shall become slaves. It also forbids emancipation within the limits of the State. Similar measures have been proposed in the Legislatures of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, North Caro- ( Una, Virginia, Maryland, and doubtless in other States. The Legis- lature of Arkansas passed an act which prohibits, under severe penalties, the employment of "free negroes" on water crafts navi- \ gating the rivers of that State. No slave, however worthy, can henceforth, in Louisiana and several other States, have freedom conferred upon him while in those > States; neither is he permitted to return after being emancipated. The Supreme Judicial Tribunal of Virginia have decided, "that ; slaves have no civil or social rights, and that the slave cannot choose J between freedom and slavery, if the offer be made him by his master ; \ and that, consequently, a slave left by his master with freedom, if \ he choose to take it, can have no legal right to choose freedom, and ; must, therefore, still be a slave." It will thus be seen that the free ; colored man is likely to be driven from the Southern States by new j legislative enactments; and that, where wills allowing the slave, at the death of the master, to elect freedom or continue in servitude, were once favored, now they are under the ban of law. The constitutions of the recently admitted free States show that 17 AFRICAN COLONIZATION. What then can be their anticipations? Appre- hensive, as the intelligent among them must be, of the colored man is not desired as an element of population. In the House of Representatives of Indiana a bill has been rejected, by a vote of sixty-five yeas to twenty nays, repealing the existing law, which makes "negroes and raulattoes" incompetent as witnesses. In the Legislature of Michigan, a proposed amendment to the consti- tution of that State, granting to "negroes" the right of suffrage on a property qualification, was defeated. Even in the generally re- ceived pro- African State of Ohio, a law has just passed its Legisla- ture, which declares that no person having any African blood in his veins shall be permitted to exercise the elective franchise within that commonwealth. Petitions from citizens of Bucks and Philadelphia Counties, for a legal enactment to prevent "negroes" of other States from settling in Pennsylvania, have been presented to our State Legislature. — Philadelphia Ledger, April 1, 1859. The Pittsburg Gazette says, that a company of colored People in that City desired to form a party to emigrate westward and settle upon and pre-empt public lands. Their counsel communicated with the Land Department at Washington, and received in reply a flat refusal : — it being the settled ruling of that office that colored per- sons are not citizens of the United States, as contemplated by the pre-emption law of the 4th September, 1841, and are, therefore, not legally entitled to pre-empt public lands. — Colonization Herald, March, 1859, Philadelphia. Free Negroes Presented. — It will be seen by the following pre- sentment of the Grand Jurors of this District, at the recent terra of the Court of Common Pleas, that the evil of the presence of free negroes in this State has attracted their attention, and that they have taken the only means in their power to bring the subject before the Legislature of the State. We are pleased at this act of the Grand Jury, and hope other Grand Juries will follow the example, and thus impress the matter upon our law-makers until they shall be forced to abate the nuisance. Presentment of the Grand Jury, at SpiUng Term, 1859. — We 18 AFRICAN COLONIZATION. the future, — hopeless, surely, of bettering their condition where they are, — whither can they look? They have already tried Hayti and found it want- ing. Alike in color, unlike in all other respects, they have neither affinities nor sympathies with its people. They have no desire to be hewers of wood and drawers of water in the British Colonies of Trinidad and Demerara. They fully appreciate the motives of those who invite them to the West Indies. With no spot on the Ame- rican Continent, not appropriated to the white man's use_, and his exclusively, whither can they go, to avoid the throng of multiplying thousands now competing with them in all the avenues of labor? Whither, when the West, which, now, by absorbing the foreign immigration, relieves them from the pressure on the seaboard that would otherwise crush them against the wall, — whither, when the West, too, shall have a redun- dant population, whither shall'they go? Whither, but to Africa, — to that Africa of the Tropics, where climate, genial and salubrious to the de- scendants of the soil, protects them, as with a further present the free negroes of the District as a nuisance, and recommend that the Legislature pass some law that will have the effect of relieving the community of this troublesome population. — Cherau{S. C.) Gazette. ■ AFRICAN COLONIZATION. wall of fire, against the encroachments of the white man, — guards the headland^, — sentinels the mine, — and stays, even on the very border of the sea, on the river, and in the forest, that march of Empire, which pestilence alone can check. There may be some who imagine we are false prophets of evil; some, who, in the sunshine of to-day, hope that the sky will never be obscured. Only a portion of our story has been told, how- ever. ''Beholding the little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand," pregnant with increasing evil to the free people of color, we would urge them to better their condition, by removal, "before the Heaven was dark with wind and rain." In doing so, we have dealt with the developments of to-day alone. Our calculations come up to the seventh census only. But what will be the shewing of the census of 1900. Judging from the past decades, our population will then exceed ninety-eight mil- l lion. Many of my hearers will live to verify the I estimate. In three score years and ten, the scrip- I tural limit of a man's life, the fifteenth census will bring our numbers near to two hundred and forty million. Children are living who will be counted among these millions in 1930.* *The above results are obtained as foHows. Table LXIII. of the AFRICAN COLONIZATION. If then we are correct in attributing the present condition of the free people of color to the addition ^ to While it is admitted that these figures afford approximations only, and that a wide margin must be allowed for possible contingencies, yet \ Quarto Edition of the 7th Census gives the "ratio of increase in the I United States of white, free colored, slaves and total population since j I 1790." Thus j > 1800. 1810. 1820. )830. 1840. 1850. \ \ Whites, 35.68 36.18 34.12 34.03 34.72 37.74 1 i Free Colored, 82.28 72. 25.25 33.86 20.87 12.47 | I Slaves, 28.1 33.4 29.10 30.62 23.31 28.82 I Aggregate,... 35.01 36.44 33.35 33.26 32.74 35.86 | l Averaging the decades, and we have for the decennial increase of '. l the whites 35.41; of the free colored, 41.62; of the slaves, 28.74; and of the aggregate of population, 34.44 per cent. < \ The above proportion of the increase of the aggregate is not given I in Table LXIIL, but has been calculated from its data. The calcu- I lations of the Table refer to the aggregate of the free and the aggre- \ \ gate of the colored only. | \ Table LX. gives the proportion of the white, free colored arid i slaves, for the above periods, as follows : I 1790. 1800. 1810. 1820. 1830. 1840. 1850. Whites, 80.73 81.13 80.97 81.57 81.90 83.17 84.31 Free Colored,.... 1.57 2.04 2.57 2.47 2.48 2.26 1.87 Slaves, 17.76 16.83 16.46 15.96 15.62 14.57 13.82 The foregoing tables shew sufficient uniformity in the past seven decades to authorize an average in estimating the population at future decades; and the average of the aggregate, or 34.44 per cent, has accordingly been assumed, with the following results: Estimated aggregate population of the United States at the next eight census periods respectively. 1860. 1870. 1880. 1890. 1900. 1910. 1920. 1930. AFRICAN COLONIZATION. of twenty-one million to the aggregate population of 1816, assuming the latter to have been nine million, and the total now to be thirty million, what will be their condition, when we number sixty-eight million more ; and what again, when we add two hundred and ten million to the population of to-day? We commend the question to every lover of his country. Earnestly, solemnly, as a friend, who for more than thirty years has labored in their behalf, we commend it to every free colored man in America. Had Ireland, in 1847, been inhabited by white and free colored men, in the Maryland proportions, influenced, too, by like feelings, which would have borne the brunt of the great famine? millions may be dropped from tlie estimate, and still leave an increase large enough to justify tlie anticipations of the text. It will matter little to the free colored man, in 1930, whether the pressure that crushes him proceeds from a population of 200,000,000 or 240,000,000. The actual numbers of the respective classes of the population at the several decades from 1790, as shewn by the same tables, are as follows : 1790. 1800. 1810. 1820. 1830. 1840. 1850. Whites, 3,172,464 4,304,489 5,862,004 7,861,937 10,537,378 14,195,695 19,553,068 F.Col'd, 59,456 108,395 186,446 233,524 319,599 386,303 434,495 Slaves, 697,897 893,041 1,191,364 1,538,038 2,009,043 2,487,455 3,204,313 Aggreg'e, 3,929,827 5,305,925 7,239,814 9,654,596 12,866,020 17,069.453 23,191,876 AFHIOAN COLONIZATION. The famine of 1847 is not the last that may occur in the history of the world. Those who anticipated its coming hy emigration to America, to better their condition, "before the Heaven was dark with wind and rain," manifested a wisdom that we do not venture to hope will be exhibited here, in a similar emigration to Africa, for years to come. The free colored people themselves, however, are unwittingly hastening such a result. They resolve for instance, in Ohio, that "a combi- nation of capital and labor, will, in every field of enterprise, be their true policy ; that combination stores of every kind, combination work shops, combination farms, will, if every where estab- lished, greatly increase their wealth and with it their power." And they publish these resolutions, too, as if to place themselves in direct antagonism to the whites, as a distinct race, with separate .interests, struggling for power!* They are pro- * Convention op Colored People for the State of Ohio.— A Con- vention of colored men for the State of Ohio, designed to institute measures and take action which shall gain for the colored citizens political and social rights equal to those of the white citizens, as- sembled in Cincinnati on Wednesday morning, at the Baker Street Church. Among the resolutions adopted were the following : Resolved, That we say to those who would induce us to emigrate to Africa or elsewhere, that the amount of labor and self-sacrifice required to establish a home in a foreign land, would, if exercised AFRICAN COLONIZATION. yoking a contest which the commonest prudence counsels them to postpone or to avoid. They are seeking a strife in which they cannot but be worsted. They are warring, not against Coloni- zationists, "who," to use their own words, "would induce them to emigrate to Africa or elsewhere," but against the inevitable future ; and their pros- pect of success is in exact proportion to their ; ability to diminish the increase of our population, \ or to paralize our wondrous and unprecedented I development. In all this_, they are but working i out their destiny ; but accelerating the approach I of that voluntary self-paying emigration, which \ will be the fruition of the Colonization scheme: a \ scheme to succeed fully^ perhaps, after generations \ only ; but thoroughly meeting all the exigencies of here, redeem our native land from the grasp of slavery ; therefore we are resolved to remain where we are, confident that "truth is mighty and will prevail." Resolved, That a combination of labor and capital will, in every field of enterprise, be our true policy. Combination stores of every kind, combination work shops, and combination farms will, if every- where established, greatly increase our wealth, and with it our power. Resolved, That the State Central Committee be instructed to pre- pare two petitions for general circulation, one to be signed by whites favorable to equal rights, and the other by the colored people, male and female, old and young, omitting none who are able to make their mark. — Baltimore Daily Exchange, 29 November, 1858. 24 AFRICAN COLONIZATION. the future; the work of friends, not unfriends; counselling, not compelling ; leaving it to the irresolute, the inert, the unfitted, the visionary, to linger out existence where they are; but pro- claiming to the ambitious, the energetic, the intel- ligent, and the brave, new fields of enterprise beyond the sea, where talent, capital and labor, instead of being confined to stores and workshops, may be devoted to the development of a nation's prosperity and renown. Nor are there wanting still higher motives to suggest to those for whom the Colony, proposed by Finley, has been founded, to induce them ''to go and settle there." As a missionary people, their' s will it be to influence and control the des- tinies, to a great extent, of the vast continent, to which they will bear the blessed truths of that Religion, whose temples, in the fulfilment of pro- phecy, must yet be reflected in the tranquil waters of the Tsad and the Ngami, assemble their thousands of worshippers in the broad valley of the Niger, and commemorate the exploit of Liv- ingstone, as they arise along his route on the banks of the Leeba and the Zambesi. But it may be said, that in the next forty or seventy years the free colored population will be AFRICAN COLONIZATION. lost sight ofj even should it remain here^ as a turbid confluent is lost in the clearer hue of the great river to whose volume it forms but an incon- siderable addition. It might be so, were the "wretchedness" referred to a matter of proportion. But, due as it is to the aggregate of population, the pressure will be regulated by the density of the mass. White striving with white, as well as white with colored, will feel it; with this diiFerencC;, that where there is not bread enough for both', those will be the greatest sufferers who are socially and politically the weakest. Regarding Liberia then, as the means of obvia- ting results which, were there no Liberia, would be among the gloomiest apprehensions of coming years,' we can hardly place too high an estimate upon what has been accomplished by. Coloniza- tion. As well might we disregard the feeble thread of water that trickles across the levee, when the Mississippi, at the season of its floods, threatens to "o'er bear its continents," as disregard Liberia in its relations to the United States: for as the one may prove the outlet through whose wasting bor- ders the swollen and unbridled stream, fertilizing even where it overwhelms, may sooner find the A'FRICAN- COLONIZATION. gulf of Mexico, so the other may hecome the means by which the increasing and redundant volume of our free colored population may diffuse over another land the civilization and religion it has accumulated during its abode in this. Not only may we not disregard Liberia, but we feel as though we did not dare to doubt its destiny. This is not the occasion to reiterate the oft told story of Plymouth and Jamestown. We all know how long it was before- success crowned the efforts of those who laid the foundations of New England, and how little it was that^ Smith, who strode, like a paladin of old, through the forests of the New world, was able to accomplish in the establishment of Virginia. The wisdom and the chivalry of Europe were represented in the contest with the wilderness of America; and king Philip at Mount Hope, and Powhatan on the James River, vindi- cated in many a bloody contest the valor and the prowess of the race, whose last lingering rem- nants now seek, in vain, towards the setting sun, a refuo-e from the overwhelming wave of a civilization which not even Christianity may moderate that they may be preserved. But, how different was it on the coast of Africa. A few emancipated slaves, a few free people of AFRICAN COLONIZATION. color, ignorant and inexperienced, foot sore and weary, landed at Monrovia, maintained themselves against the natives, who would have driven them into the sea, received, slowlj, year after year, accessions from America, and by degrees acquiring strength and making no step backward, finally proclaimed their independence, and are now the people we have described. What could have strengthened such weak hands save the blessing of Him from whom cometh every good and perfect gift. Nor can we doubt that the blessing will be continued unto the end ; and we look forward to the future of Liberia, as we do to the future of California and Oregon ; and we are not more certain that a teeming white population will line the Sacramento and the Columbia, than we are^ that the free colored people of the United States and their descendants will carry our language and our institutions up the Cavalla and the St. Paul's, and, crossing the dividing mountains,, make them familiar to the heart of Central Africa. For the accomplishment- of these results, we rely neither upon the spirit of adventure, such as ani- mates the young, and is fitful and capricious; upon the love of gold operating on all, but requir- ing a California or an Australia for its full devel- AFRICAN COLONIZATION. opment; upon religions excitement, which too often exhausts itself far short of the mark it aims at; upon political aspirations or patriotic impulses: but our reliance is upon the inevitable increase of our aggregate of population. Adventure may die out, gold may pall^, religion become apathetic^ politics inoperative, and patriotism a dream; but years after years will, nevertheless, add their hun- dreds of thousands to the numbers of our people, until the ninety-eight million of 1900 will be made up, and the two hundred and forty million of the fifteenth census will be completed. So noiseless is this mighty increase that we no more heed it than we do the flight of the hours that hastens the results that it involves. We note the progress of the tide as it creeps upwards on the sand — the shadows as they lengthen with the waning day, — for we walk the beach and watch the dial ; but the growth of the population of a country, vast as ours, is beyond the limit of daily individual observation, and exhibited only in statistics too dull to have an interest for the mass, neither teaches nor warns^ until both teaching and warn- ing may be too late. Just now, however, there is much restlessness among the free people of color in many parts of AFRICAN COLONIZATION. the Union. Sometimes, it exhibits itself in plans for obtaining information — sometimes_, in combina- tion resolutions — sometimes, in an emphatic deter- mination to remain where theyiire — as if Coloniza- tion, instead of offering them an asylum, sought to force them into exile. But, whatever form this restlessness assumes, it proceeds from a doubt, fast becoming general, whether America, after all, is more than a temporary abiding place ; a doubt sug- gested, not, as often asserted, by Colonizationists, but by circumstances, wholly beyond their control, and which, having foreseen, they have provided against in the establishment of Liberia. Great events in the world's history rarely come unheralded to those who watch the portents of the times. Washington, Napoleon, Cromwell, were the developments of long germinating principles, the maturities of years of preparation. When they appeared, every thing was in readiness, and their missions were accomplished. So, we humbly hope, has it been with Colonization. It exists, because the time for it has arrived. The opposition it has encountered, the vituperation with which it has been assailed, the slowness of its progress, have all had their uses in perfecting it. The day of its ordeal has not yet drawn to a close. But the AFRICAN COLONIZATION. cloud that retards, the sunshine that hastens ma- turity, are incidents only in the history of the golden fruit that blushes at its own beauty before Autumn's gaze. So with men and with nations. We may not prejudge their destiny from the isolated facts of thei.r existence ;. but, gatherini the whole into one category, find in the result the evidence of that overruling wisdom, that makes all discord harmony in the accomplishment of its designs. It is in this connection that the interest, which has of late years sprung up in regard to Africa, is not without its significance. Half a century and more ago, Park lost his life at Boussa, and no man was tempted to enterprise in the direction of his grave. Northern Africa was the corsairs. Egypt obeyed the Mamelukes. Belzoni had not pierced ■ the Pyramid. Few were the strangers who in- clined the ear at sunrise before the vocal Memnon. The Cape of Good Hope was little more than a water station on the voyage to India. On the borders of Africa, the barracoon was the evidence of civilization, and the maps represented the interior as a desert impassable by man. But presently, all this is changed. The corsair disappears. The Mamelukes are exterminated. AFRICAN COLONIZATION. The ascent and exploration of the pyramids, a can- ter across the plain of Thebes, become the pleasant incidents of a summer's tour. Civilization marches, drum and trumpet in the van, perhaps, north- ward from the Cape. The Christian Church rises not uufrequently on the ruins of the barracoon, Denham sees the Tsad. Clapperton finds his way to Sokatu. The Landers make their voyage down the Niger to the sea. Steam subsequently ascends the river. Caille becomes an explorer. Andersen is the hero of the Lake Ngami. Barth opens up another portion of the Continent. Livingstone crosses it from St. Paul de Loando to Quillimane, and gives to the Niagara of Africa, the name of the Queen of England. Missionaries multiply every where. New maps are made, and cities and towns, and great rivers and lesser streams, and mountain ranges and intervening vallies, and divisions into kingdoms, whose rulers bear now familiar names, fill the void on the maps of the deserts of the old geographers. Cotemporaneous with all this activ- ity, Colonization completes its experiment, and Liberia stands forth its illustration and its tri- umph. Commerce, too, the right arm of civilization, the agent we rely on for the scheme we have at heart, AFRICAN COLONIZATION. has been busy in the interval.* Palm oil has become a necessity. Hides, camwood, ivory, gold dust, gums and spices, take the place of human beings in the traffic of the country. Steam carries the mails of Great Britain along the windward and leeward coasts to the Islands at the bottom of the Bight of Biafra. At a recent meeting, in London, * No less than four Liberian vessels have arrived in the United States this year, with cargoes of Liberian produce. Of what descrip- tion and value those products are, may be judged from the cargo of the schooner Antelope, which arrived here on the 14th inst. She has 14,000 pounds of sugar, 17,000 gallons of syrup, palm oil, cam- wood and some coffee, and could have obtained double the quantity of sugar had she waited ten days longer, as the farmers were busy manufacturing it, and bringing it down the St. Paul's river to Mon- rovia to market where it found a ready sale. We are informed that a colored firm, Messrs. Johnson, Turpin & Dunbar, have established a commercial house in this city, in connec- tion with one at Monrovia, for the purpose of facilitating and pro- moting the Liberian trade, and have purchased the bark "Mendi," a vessel of 300 to 400 tons burthen, to run as a regular freight and passenger packet between this port and Monrovia, making three or four trips a year. They have also contracted for a small steamer, which they design to run coastwise between Cape Palmas and Mon- rovia, touching at all principal points to collect freight and passen- gers, and to connect with the above vessel on her regular sailing days; though the chief object of this enterprise will be to collect the mails along the coast, with a view to supply the deficiency in the mail service occasioned by the British steamers discontinuing to touch at Monrovia, as they have hitherto done. This will insure regularity in the mails, which, under the present arrangements, are very uncertain, and will be a great accommodation to merchants and others.— iVr. Y. Journal of Commerce, May, 1859. AFRICAN COLONIZATION. of the African Steamship Company, it was stated, that there were now "almost as frequent communi- cations with the interior of Africa, as ten or twelve years ago were had with Constantinople." Not the least interesting of the facts, reported on this occasion, was the use that the native Africans were themselves beginning to make of the facilities which steam affords. "The number of negro passen- gers," it was said, "paying from five to ten dollars a head, had increased from eight to twelve hun- dred, and it was expected would soon be doubled from Sierra Leone to Lagos, and from the Bonny ; and the Palm oil rivers to Cape Palmas and the ! Kroo country." Trade, in fact, is expanding itself I in all directions. Cottons, with the stamp of the mills of Massachusetts, are found far inland among \ the native tribes on the banks of the Zambesi. New markets of immense extent are being opened — I virgin markets almost — at a time too, when all 5 existing markets are glutted with the products of a manufacturing skill, whose faculty of supply, ex- ceeding every present demand, requires just such a continent of consumers as Africa affords, — a con- tinent whose wants are capable of doubling even the clatter of every loom, and the ring of every anvil in Europe and America. AFRICAN COLONIZATION. Can it be, that this newly awakened interest in Africa— these new relations that are being estab- lished with its people, are accidental merely, having no connection with the masses of free Christian and civilized descendants of Africans amongst us. Can it be nothing more than a curious coincidence, that, when the time has come for the unsealing of a continent, that revelation may be inscribed there— this people— the only people competent to the work, should be found qualified to embark in it ; a peo- ple, too, that must go somewhere. Is it not far more probable, that their existence here is but a part of that grand series of events, that are to co- operate until prophecy shall be fulfilled; not to-day or to-morrow, not in this generation or the next, but speedily, notwithstanding, looking to the scale of time by which are measured the epochs of society. We are confident that we do not over-estimate our cause, when we place it in the relations that are here suggested. The test proposed upwards of eighteen hundred years ago, on a far more solemn occasion, when it was said, ''refrain from these men and leave them alone, for if this counsel or this work be of man, it will come to nought," is one which the past history of Colonization and AFRICAN COLONIZATION. Liberia has fully demonstrated their capacity to stand. Forty-two years of labor have not been thrown away. Jefiferson, Madison, Munroe, Mar- shall, Mercer, Harper, Randolph, Clay, supported not a cause, which, in the hands of their successors, will fail to realize their expectations. Ashmun, Buchanan, Randall, sleep not in vain beneath the palm trees of Liberia. A new member has not been added to the family of nations without a mission to fulfil in the history of mankind. Ceas- ing to be ignored by the politicians of the day, philanthrophy shall yet be thanked by statesman- ship for its labors on the coasts of Africa. And the light which Park and Lander and Living- stone, the representatives of their periods of ex- ploration, have shed on this great continent, and the feeling now pervading the world in its regard, shall yet guide and cheer the march of thousands and tens of thousands of emigrants ; — a march as determined as that which brought forth Israel from beneath the shadow of the pyramids, — as triumph- ant as that celebrated by Miriam's song; — a march heralded by the gospel, and bearing back to Africa, in the blessings -of civilization and religion, trea- sures more precious far than the gold and silver vessels of which Egypt was despoiled, in those days AFRICAN COLONIZATION. of old, when, with timbrels and dances, the pro- phetess proclaimed — "the horse and his rider are thrown into the sea." Preceded by no plagues — pursued after by no oppressors — protected by "the Right Hand — glorious in power," such shall yet be the march of the free people of color of our country; and in the cities which they will build^ the institutions they will establish, the laws they will maintain and the knowledge they, will impart, will be recognized the vindication of the holy confidence, the persevering enthusiasm, that animated the founder of our society, when he pro- claimed that "he knew the scheme was from God." SAT 8, '.m.