Antislavery movements -- United States; Slavery -- United States
Every rich Abolitionist, who is ashamed of being caught by
distinguished visiters while digging in his garden or plowing in the
field, and wishes them to understand that he so works, not for
occupation, but for pastime; and
Every Abolition lecturer who would send a hireling two miles after a
horse, whereon to ride three miles to fulfil his next appointment
respectably; Though meaning no such thing, and perhaps shocked when
it is suggested, is a practical and powerful upholder of the continued
enslavement of our fellow-men.
In the faith of the "good time coming,"
I remain yours,
HORACE GREELEY.
NEW YORK, Nov. 7, 1853.
The Evils of Colonization
I speak the words of soberness and truth when I say, that the most
inveterate, the most formidable, the deadliest enemy of the peace,
prosperity, and happiness of the colored population of the United
States, is that system of African colonization which originated in and
is perpetuated by a worldly, Pharoah-like policy beneath the dignity
of a magnanimous and Christian people;--a system which receives much
of its vitality from _ad captandum_ appeals to popular prejudices, and
to the unholy, grovelling passions of the canaille;--a system that
interposes every possible obstacle in the way of the improvement and
elevation of the colored man in the land of his birth;--that
instigates the enactment of laws whose design and tendency are
obviously to annoy him, to make him feel, while at home, that he is a
stranger and a pilgrim--nay more,--to make him "wretched, and
miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked;"--to make him "a hissing
and a by-word," "a fugitive and a vagabond" throughout the American
Union;--a system that is so irreconcilably opposed to the purpose of
God in making "of _one_ blood all nations for to dwell on _all_ the
face of the earth," that when the dying slaveholder, under the lashes
of a guilty conscience, would give to his slaves unqualified freedom,
it wickedly interposes, and persuades him that "to do justly and love
mercy" would be to inflict an irreparable injury upon the community,
and that to do his duty to God and his fellow-creatures, under the
circumstances, he should bequeath to his surviving slaves the cruel
alternative of _either expatriation to a far-off, pestilential clime,
with the prospect of a premature death, or perpetual slavery, with its
untold horrors, in his native land_. Against this most iniquitous
system of persecution and proscription of an inoffensive people, for
no other reason than that we wear the physical exterior given us in
infinite wisdom and benevolence, I would record, nay _engrave_ with
the pen of a diamond, my most emphatic and solemn protest; more
especially would I do so, as the system, under animadversion, is most
inconsistently fostered, and shamelessly lauded, by ministers of the
gospel in the nineteenth century, as a scheme of Christian
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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