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Calumny Refuted by Facts From Liberia: With Extracts From the Inaugural Address of the Coloured President Roberts; an Eloquent Speech of Hilary Teage, a Coloured Senator; and Extracts From a Discourse by H. H. Garnett, a Fugitive Slave, on the Past and Present Condition, and Destiny of the Coloured Race. Presented to the Boston Anti-slavery Bazaar, U.S., By the Author of "A Tribute for the Negro."Armistead, Wilson

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Calumny Refuted by Facts From Liberia: With Extracts From the Inaugural Address of the Coloured President Roberts; an Eloquent Speech of Hilary Teage, a Coloured Senator; and Extracts From a Discourse by H. H. Garnett, a Fugitive Slave, on the Past and Present Condition, and Destiny of the Coloured Race. Presented to the Boston Anti-slavery Bazaar, U.S., By the Author of "A Tribute for the Negro."

Name: Calumny Refuted by Facts From Liberia: With Extracts From the Inaugural Address of the Coloured President Roberts; an Eloquent Speech of Hilary Teage, a Coloured Senator; and Extracts From a Discourse by H. H. Garnett, a Fugitive Slave, on the Past and Present Condition, and Destiny of the Coloured Race. Presented to the Boston Anti-slavery Bazaar, U.S., By the Author of "A Tribute for the Negro."
Author: Armistead, Wilson

Armistead, Wilson

African Americans -- Colonization -- Africa; Liberia

awaken the patriotism, elevate and purify the sentiment, and expand
     the mind, of the generous and aspiring youth. Humble as many of
     those offices of which I have spoken are esteemed to be,--obscure
     and concealed from vulgar gaze and destitute of the trappings of
     office and the glitter of fame as most of them actually are, it is,
     nevertheless, fellow-citizens, not within the reach of our judgment
     to determine which one of them exerts the greatest influence on the
     destinies of our race. True dignity, and, I may add, true
     usefulness, depend not so much upon the circumstance of office as
     upon the faithful discharge of appropriate duties.


         'Honour and fame from no condition rise;
         Act well your part--there all true honour lies.'

       'He who does the best his circumstances allow,
       Does well, acts nobly: Angels could do no more.'


     "It is the false notion of honour which has unhappily possessed the
     minds of men, placing all dignity in the pageantry of state and the
     tinsel of office, which produces those collisions, jostlings, and
     acrimony of contending factions which sometimes shake the fabric of
     society to its very foundations: it is by the maddening influence
     of this false notion that men, whose claim to respectful notoriety
     is inversely as their desire to be conspicuous, are sometimes urged
     to abandon their obscure but appropriate position in the line, and
     to rush into the foremost ranks. When men shall have learned
     wherein true honour lies--when men shall have formed correct ideas
     of true and sober dignity, then we shall see all the ranks of
     society united as by a golden chain--then Ephraim shall not envy
     Judah, nor Judah vex Ephraim;--then the occupant of the palace and
     of the cottage--then the man in lawn and the man in rags will, like
     the parts of a well-adjusted machine, act in perfect unison.
     Considering, then, the influence which in every community a few
     men are found to possess--considering, also, that each one of these
     influential men is sure to be followed by a party, we can hardly
     appreciate the obligation which rests upon them, to abandon all
     jealousies and suspicions--to merge every private and personal
     consideration in thoughts for the public good--and to bring a mind
     untrammelled, and free from every party predilection, to a solemn
     deliberation on the great objects of public utility.

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