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." — John Shaqi
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
History
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."
I was much gratified in reading, a short time ago, a speech delivered in
1846, at Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, by Hilary Teage, a Coloured
senator of the infant Republic. Independent of its embracing a beautiful
exposition of the history, trials, exertions, and aspirations of the
Coloured colonists, it is a continued flow of eloquence, whilst it
breathes throughout a truly Christian spirit. When I read it, I
concluded the speaker must be a "classical scholar," probably a
"graduate in some eastern college." To my surprise, I afterwards
ascertained, he had never even _seen_ a college, his father having been
a Slave in Virginia, which place Hilary Teage left when very young, and
went to Liberia, where he received his education. Here he made rapid
advances in learning, soon overcoming the difficulties of several
languages, both ancient and modern.
The following are extracts from the Inaugural Address of President
Roberts, delivered at the first Meeting of the Legislature of the
Republic, January 3rd, 1848, followed by the speech of Hilary Teage;
which afford striking evidence of the capacity and attainments of
Negroes, whose education and life from early boyhood are thoroughly
African:--
"It is with great pleasure I avail myself of the occasion, now
presented, to express the profound impressions made on me by the
call of my fellow-citizens to the station, and the duties, to which
I am now about to pledge myself. So distinguished a mark of
confidence, proceeding from the deliberate suffrage of my
fellow-citizens, would, under any circumstances, have commanded my
gratitude, as well as filled me with an awful sense of the trust to
be assumed. But I feel particularly gratified at this evidence of
the confidence of my fellow-citizens, inasmuch as it strengthens
the impression on me, that my endeavours to discharge faithfully
the duties which devolved on me as chief Executive officer of the
Commonwealth, during the last six years of our political connection
with the American Colonization Society, have been favourably
estimated. I, nevertheless, meet the responsibilities of this day
with feelings of the deepest solicitude. I feel that the present is
a momentous period in the history of Liberia; and I assure you,
under the various circumstances which give peculiar solemnity to
the crisis, I am sensible that both the honour and the
responsibility allotted to me, are inexpressibly enhanced.
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