Thoughts on African Colonization

'Shut out from the privileges of citizens, separated from us by the insurmountable barrier of color, they can never amalgamate with us, but must remain for ever a distinct and inferior race, repugnant to our republican feelings, and dangerous to our republican institutions.' * * * 'It is not that there are some, but that there are so many among us of a different physical, if not moral, constitution, who never can amalgamate with the great body of our population.' – [African Repository, vol. ii. pp. 188, 189, 338.]

'In consequence of his own inveterate habits, and the no less inveterate prejudices of the whites, it is a sadly demonstrated truth, that the negro cannot, in this country, become an enlightened and useful citizen. Driven to the lowest stratum of society, and enthralled there for melancholy ages, his mind becomes proportionably grovelling, and to gratify his animal desires is his most exalted aspiration.' * * 'The negro, while in this country, will be treated as an inferior being.' * * 'Our slavery is such, as that no device of our philanthropy for elevating the wretched subjects of its debasement to the ordinary privileges of men, can descry one cheering glimpse of hope that our object can ever be accomplished. The very commencing act of freedom to the slave, is to place him in a condition still worse, if possible, both for his moral habits, his outward provision, and for the community that embosoms him, than even that, deplorable as it was, from which he has been removed. He is now a freeman; but his complexion, his features, every peculiarity of his person, pronounce to him another doom, – that every wish he may conceive, every effort he can make, shall be little better than vain. Even to every talent and virtuous impulse which he may feel working in his bosom, obstacles stand in impracticable array; not from a defect of essential title to success, but from a positive external law, unreasoning and irreversible.' * * 'The elevation of a degraded class of beings to the privileges of freemen, which, though free, they can never enjoy, and to the prospects of a happy immortality.' * * 'They again most solemnly repeat to the free colored people of Virginia their belief, that in Africa alone can they enjoy that complete emancipation from a degrading inequality, which in a greater or less degree pervades the United States, if not in the laws, in the whole frame and structure of society, and which in its effects on their moral and social state is scarcely less degrading than slavery itself.' – [African Repository, vol. iii. pp. 25, 26, 66, 68, 345.]

'But there is one large class among the inhabitants of this country – degraded and miserable – whom none of the efforts in which you are accustomed to engage, can materially benefit. Among the twelve millions who make up our census, two millions are Africans – separated from the possessors of the soil by birth, by the brand of indelible ignominy, by prejudices, mutual, deep, incurable, by an irreconcileable diversity of interests. They are aliens and outcasts; – they are, as a body, degraded beneath the influence of nearly all the motives which prompt other men to enterprise, and almost below the sphere of virtuous affections. Whatever may be attempted for the general improvement of society, their wants are untouched. – Whatever may be effected for elevating the mass of the nation in the scale of happiness or of intellectual and moral character, their degradation is the same – dark, and deep, and hopeless. Benevolence seems to overlook them, or struggles for their benefit in vain. Patriotism forgets them, or remembers them only with shame for what has been, and with dire forebodings, of what is yet to come.' * * 'It is taken for granted that in present circumstances, any effort to produce a general and thorough amelioration in the character and condition of the free people of color must be to a great extent fruitless. In every part of the United States there is a broad and impassible line of demarcation between every man who has one drop of African blood in his veins and every other class in the community. The habits, the feelings, all the prejudices of society – prejudices which neither refinement, nor argument, nor education, nor religion itself can subdue – mark the people of color, whether bond or free, as the subjects of a degradation inevitable and incurable. The African in this country belongs by birth to the very lowest station in society; and from that station he can never rise, BE HIS TALENTS, HIS ENTERPRISE, HIS VIRTUES WHAT THEY MAY… They constitute a class by themselves – a class out of which no individual can be elevated, and below which, none can be depressed. And this is the difficulty, the invariable and insuperable difficulty in the way of every scheme for their benefit. Much can be done for them – much has been done; but still they are, and, in this country, ALWAYS MUST BE a depressed and abject race.' – [African Repository, vol. iv. pp. 117, 118, 119.]

'The distinctive complexion by which it is marked, necessarily debars it from all familiar intercourse with the more favored society that surrounds it, and of course denies to it all hope of either social or political elevation, by means of individual merit, however great, or individual exertions, however unremitted.' * * 'It is deemed unnecessary to repeat what has already been said, of the character of the population in question, of its hopeless degradation, and its baneful influence, in the situation in which it is now placed.' * * * 'The colored population of this country can never rise to respectability and happiness here.' * * 'It was at an early period seen and acknowledged, that neither the objects of benevolence nor the interests of the nation could be materially benefitted by any plan or measures that permitted them to remain within the United States.' * * 'They leave a country in which though born and reared, they are strangers and aliens; where severe necessity places them in a class of degraded beings.' * * 'With us they have been degraded by slavery, and STILL FURTHER DEGRADED by the mockery of nominal freedom. We have endeavored, but endeavored in vain, to restore them either to self-respect, or to the respect of others. It is not our fault that we have failed; it is not theirs. It has resulted from a cause over which neither they, nor we, can ever have control. Here, therefore, they must be for ever debased: more than this, they must be for ever useless; more even than this, they must be FOR EVER A NUISANCE, from which it were a blessing for society to be rid. And yet they, and they only, are qualified for colonizing Africa.' * * * 'Whether bond or free, their presence will be for ever a calamity. Why then, in the name of God, should we hesitate to encourage their departure? The existence of this race among us; a race that can neither share our blessings nor incorporate in our Society, is already felt to be a curse.' – [African Repository, vol. v. pp. 51, 53, 179, 234, 238, 276, 278.]

'Is our posterity doomed to endure for ever not only all the ills flowing from the state of slavery, but all which arise from incongruous elements of population, separated from each other by invincible prejudices, and by natural causes?' * * 'Here invincible prejudices exclude them from the enjoyment of the society of the whites, and deny them all the advantages of freemen. The bar, the pulpit, and our legislative halls are shut to them by the irresistible force of public sentiment. No talents however great, no piety however pure and devoted, no patriotism however ardent, can secure their admission. They constantly hear the accents, and behold the triumphs, of a liberty which here they can never enjoy.' * * 'It is against this increase of colored persons, who take but a nominal freedom here, and cannot rise from their degraded condition, that this Society attempts to provide.' * * 'They may be emancipated; but emancipation cannot elevate their condition or augment their capacity for self-preservation. – Want and suffering will gradually diminish their numbers, and they will disappear, as the inferior has always disappeared, before the superior race.' * * 'Our great and good men purposed it primarily as a system of relief for two millions of fellow men in our own county – a population dangerous to ourselves and necessarily degraded here.' * * 'The free blacks, by the moral necessity of their civil disabilities, are and must for ever be a nuisance– equally, and more to the owner of slaves, than to other members of the community.' – [African Repository, vol. vi. pp. 12, 17, 82, 168, 295, 368.]

'Incorporated into our country as freemen, yet separated from it by odious and degrading distinctions, they feel themselves condemned to a hopeless and debasing inferiority. They know that their very complexion will for ever exclude them from the rank, the privileges, the honors, of freemen. No matter how great their industry, or how abundant their wealth – no matter what their attainments in literature, science or the arts – no matter how correct their deportment or what respect their characters may inspire, they can never, NO, NEVER be raised to a footing of equality, not even to a familiar intercourse with the surrounding society.' * * 'To us it seems evident that the man of color may as soon change his complexion, as rise above all sense of past inferiority and debasement in a community, from the social intercourse of which, he must expect to be in a great measure excluded, not only until prejudice shall have no existence therein, but until the freedom of man in regulating his social relations is proved to be abridged by some law of morality or the gospel… Is it not wise, then, for the free people of color and their friends to admit, what cannot reasonably be doubted, that the people of color must, in this country, remain for ages, probably for ever, a separate and inferior caste, weighed down by causes, powerful, universal, inevitable; which neither legislation nor christianity can remove?'

'Let the free black in this country toil from youth to age in the honorable pursuit of wisdom – let him store his mind with the most valuable researches of science and literature – and let him add to a highly gifted and cultivated intellect, a piety pure, undefiled, and "unspotted from the world" – it is all nothing: he would not be received into the very lowest walks of society. If we were constrained to admire so uncommon a being, our very admiration would mingle with disgust, because, in the physical organization of his frame, we meet an insurmountable barrier, even to an approach to social intercourse, and in the Egyptian color, which nature has stamped upon his features, a principle of repulsion so strong as to forbid the idea of a communion either of interest or of feeling, as utterly abhorrent. Whether these feelings are founded in reason or not, we will not now inquire – perhaps they are not. But education and habit and prejudice have so firmly riveted them upon us, that they have become as strong as nature itself – and to expect their removal, or even their slightest modification, would be as idle and preposterous as to expect that we could reach forth our hands, and remove the mountains from their foundations into the vallies, which are beneath them.' – [African Repository, vol. vii. pp. 100, 195, 196, 231.]

'And can we not find some spot on this large globe which will receive them kindly, and where they may escape those prejudices which, in this country, must ever keep them inferior and degraded members of society?' – [Third Annual Report.]

'A population which, even if it were not literally enslaved, must for ever remain in a state of degradation no better than bondage.' * * 'Here the thing is impossible; a slave cannot be really emancipated. You may call him free, you may enact a statute book of laws to make him free, but you cannot bleach him into the enjoyment of freedom.' * * 'The Soodra is not farther separated from the Brahmin in regard to all his privileges, civil, intellectual, and moral, than the negro is from the white man by the prejudices which result from the difference made between them by the God of nature. A barrier more difficult to be surmounted than the institution of the caste, cuts off, and while the present state of society continues must always cut off, the negro from all that is valuable in citizenship.' – [Seventh Annual Report.]

'Let the arm of our government be stretched out for the defence of our African colony, and this objection will no longer exist. There, and there alone, the colored man can enjoy the motives for honorable exertion.' – [Ninth Annual Report.]

'In the distinctive and indelible marks of their color, and the prejudices of the people, an insuperable obstacle has been placed to the execution of any plan for elevating their character, and placing them on a footing with their brethren of the same common family.' – [Tenth Annual Report.]

'Far from shuddering at the thought of leaving the comfortable fireside among us, for a distant and unknown shore yet covered by the wilderness, they have preferred real liberty there, to a mockery of freedom here, and have turned their eyes to Africa, as the only resting place and refuge of the colored man, in the deluge of oppression that surrounds him.' – [Eleventh Annual Report.]

'The race in question were known, as a class, to be destitute, depraved – the victims of all forms of social misery. The peculiarity of their fate was, that this was not their condition by accident or transiently, but inevitably and immutably, whilst they remained in their present place, by a law as infallible in its operation, as any of physical nature.' * * 'Their residence amongst us is attended by evil consequences to society – causes beyond the control of the human will must prevent their ever rising to equality with the whites.' * * 'The Managers consider it clear that causes exist, and are operating to prevent their improvement and elevation to any considerable extent as a class, in this country, which are fixed, not only beyond the control of the friends of humanity, BUT OF ANY HUMAN POWER. Christianity cannot do for them here, what it will do for them in Africa. This is not the fault of the colored man, nor of the white man, nor of Christianity; but an ordination of Providence, and no more to be changed than the laws of nature. Yet, were it otherwise, did no cause exist but prejudice, to prevent the elevation, in this country, of our free colored population, still, were this prejudice so strong (which is indeed the fact) as to forbid the hope of any great favorable change in their condition, what folly for them to reject blessings in another land, because it is prejudice which debars them from such blessings in this! But in truth no legislation, no humanity, no benevolence can make them insensible to their past condition, can unfetter their minds, can relieve them from the disadvantages resulting from inferior means and attainments, can abridge the right of freemen to regulate their social intercourse and relations, which will leave them for ever a separate and depressed class in the community; in fine, nothing can in any way do much here to raise them from their miseries to respectability, honor and usefulness.' – [Fifteenth Annual Report.]

'That no adequate means of attaining this great end existed, short of the segregation of the black population from the white – that an IMPASSIBLE BARRIER existed in the state of society in this country, between these classes – that whatever might be the liberal sentiments of some good men among us, the blacks were marked with an indelible note of inferiority– they saw placed high before them a station which here they could never reach, and by a natural reaction they fell back into a position where self-respect lent them no stimulus, and virtuous principles and actions lost more than half their motive – that in fact they were a branded and degraded caste – the Pariahs of the United States, and destined as long as they remained with us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water – that the increase of this population in a greater ratio than the whites, was calculated to excite just apprehension – that no one could say that when a few more millions should be added to their numbers, the example of Hayti might not rouse them to an effort to break their chains; and he would ask what man could contemplate, without shuddering, all the complicated atrocity and bloody revenge of such a revolt?' * * 'Those persons of color who have been emancipated, are only nominally free, and the whole race, so long as they remain among us, and whether they be slaves or free, must necessarily be kept in a condition full of wretchedness to them and full of danger to the whites.' – [Second Annual Report of New-York State Colonization Society.]

'Many of those citizens who ardently wish for the removal of such of the free colored population, as are willing to go, to any place where they could enjoy, what they can never enjoy here, that is, all the advantages of society,' &c. * * 'That the free colored population in this country labor under the most oppressive disadvantages, which their freedom can by no means counterbalance, is too obvious to admit of doubt. I waive all inquiry whether this is right or wrong. I speak of things as they are – not as they might, or as they ought to be. They are cut off from the most remote chance of amalgamation with the white population, by feelings or prejudices, call them what you will, that are ineradicable. Their situation is more unfavorable than that of many slaves. "With all the burdens, cares and responsibilities of freedom, they have few or none of its substantial benefits. Their associations are, and must be, chiefly with slaves. Their right of suffrage gives them little, if any, political influence, and they are practically, if not theoretically excluded from representation and weight in our public councils." No merit, no services, no talents can elevate them to a level with the whites. Occasionally, an exception may arise. A colored individual, of great talents, merits, and wealth, may emerge from the crowd. Cases of this kind are to the last degree rare. The colored people are subject to legal disabilities, more or less galling and severe, in almost every state of the Union. Who has not deeply regretted their late harsh expulsion from the State of Ohio, and their being forced to abandon the country of their birth, which had profited by their labors, and to take refuge in a foreign land? Severe regulations have been recently passed in Louisiana, to prevent the introduction of free people of color into the State. Whenever they appear, they are to be banished in sixty days. The strong opposition to a negro college in New-Haven, speaks in a language not to be mistaken, the jealousy with which they are regarded. And there is no reason to expect, that the lapse of centuries will make any change in this respect. They will always unhappily be regarded as an inferior race.' – [Mathew Carey's 'Reflections.']

'Instances of emancipation have not essentially benefitted the African, and probably never will, while he remains among us. In this country, public opinion does, and will, consign him to an inferiority, above which he can never rise. Emancipation can NEVER make the African, while he remains in this country, a real free man. Degradation MUST and WILL press him to the earth; no cheering, stimulating influence will he here feel, in any of the walks of life.' – [Circular of the Massachusetts Colonization Society for 1832.]

'With us color is the bar. Nature has raised up barriers between the races, which no man with a proper sense of the dignity of his species desires to see surmounted.' * * 'What effects does emancipation produce without removal? A discontented and useless population; having no sympathies with the rest of the community, doomed by immoveable barriers to eternal degradation. I know that there are among us, those of warm and generous hearts, who believe that we may retain the black man here, and raise him up to the full and perfect stature of human nature. That degree of improvement can never take place except the races be amalgamated; and amalgamation is a day-dream. It may seem strong, but it is true that "a skin not colored like our own" will separate them from us, as long as our feelings continue a part of our nature.' – [Speeches delivered at the formation of the Young Men's Auxiliary Colonization Society in New-York city.]

'These [subsistence, political and social considerations] they can never enjoy here.' * * 'You may manumit the slave, but you cannot make him a white man. He still remains a negro or a mulatto. The mark and the recollection of his origin and former state still adhere to him; the feelings produced by that condition, in his own mind and in the minds of the whites, still exist; he is associated by his color, and by these recollections and feelings, with the class of slaves; and a barrier is thus raised between him and the whites, that is between him and the free class, which he can never hope to transcend.' * * 'A vast majority of the free blacks, as we have seen, are and must be, an idle, worthless and thievish race.' – [First Annual Report.]

'Here they are condemned to a state of hopeless inferiority, and consequent degradation. As they cannot emerge from this state, they lose, by degrees, the hope, at last the desire of emerging.' – [Second Annual Report.]

'The existence in any community of a people forming a distinct and degraded caste, who are forever excluded by the fiat of society and the laws of the land, from all hopes of equality in social intercourse and political privileges, must, from the nature of things, be fraught with unmixed evil. Did this committee believe it possible, by any acts of legislation, to remove this blotch upon the body politic, by so elevating the social and moral condition of the blacks in Ohio, that they would be received into society on terms of equality, and would by common consent be admitted to a participation of political privileges – WERE SUCH A THING POSSIBLE, even after a lapse of time and by pecuniary sacrifice, most gladly would they recommend such measures as would subserve the cause of humanity, by producing such a result. For the purposes of legislation, it is sufficient to know, that the blacks in Ohio must always exist as a separate and degraded race, that when the leopard shall change his spots and the Ethiopian his skin, then, BUT NOT TILL THEN, may we expect that the descendants of Africans will be admitted into society, on terms of social and political equality.' – [Report of a Select Committee of the Legislature of Ohio.]

'No possible contingency can ever break down or weaken the impassable barrier which at present separates the whites from social communion with the blacks. Neither education, nor wealth, nor any other means of distinction known to our communities, can elevate blacks to a level with whites, in the United States.' – [American Spectator.]

'However unjust may be the prejudices which exist in the whites against the blacks, and which operate so injuriously to the latter —they are probably too deep to be obliterated; and true philanthropy would dictate the separation of two races of men, so different, WHOM NATURE HERSELF HAS FORBIDDEN TO MINGLE INTO ONE; but of whom, while they remain associated, one or the other must of necessity have the superiority. For the future welfare of both, we trust that the project of colonizing the Africans, as they shall gradually be emancipated, although a work of time, may not be altogether hopeless.' – [Brandon (Vt.) Telegraph.]

'The character and circumstances of this portion of the community fall under every man's notice, and the least observation shows that they cannot be useful or happy among us.' – [Oration by Gabriel P. Disosway, Esq.]

'It is of vast importance to these people, as a class, that their hopes and expectations of temporal prosperity should be turned to Africa, and that they should not regard our country as their permanent residence, or as that country in which they will ever, as a people, enjoy equal privileges and blessings with the whites.' – [Rev. Mr Gurley's Letter to the Rev. S. S. Jocelyn.]