Mr. B. tells about a minister who was driven, he says, from Groton,
Mass., by the storm of abolitionism, and who seems to have fled to
Baltimore, doubtless, seeking a congenial climate. See page 40. But
Mr. B. forgot to mention the many cases in which the _slave_ spirit,
'like a storm of fire and brimstone from hell,' has driven faithful
pastors from their charges, just for the crime of praying and
preaching now and then for the enslaved.
Mr. B. says of a document from which his opponent quoted certain
Maryland laws that placed the 'benevolent colonization scheme' in any
thing but a favorable light, that it was said in America, and he
believed truly, to contain not the laws, but only schemes of laws
which never passed the Assembly. See page 47. On this the Emancipator
remarks, 'This was never alleged against the pamphlet. The pamphlet
contains the laws precisely as they stand in the statute book of
Maryland, as Mr. B. would have seen had he ever taken the trouble to
compare them. And for him to make such assertions, without having done
so, is only another instance of "unpardonable ignorance, or a purpose
to mislead."'
In the third evening's discussion, Mr. B. asserted, page 50, that Mr.
Garrison was among the first who opposed the Colonization Society, 'on
the ground that its operations were injurious to the colored race in
America.' To this the Emancipator says, 'This is partly true and
partly not. The Society was decidedly opposed, at the outset, both by
the colored people and by those who, up to that time, had been most
active in promoting the cause of emancipation. As early as August,
1817, the subject came before the "American Convention for Promoting
the Abolition of Slavery," &c., at its session in Philadelphia. This
body, representing for the most part Friends, and made up of delegates
from abolition and manumission societies in different parts of the
country, after a full discussion, appointed a committee on the
subject. That committee reported, that "they must express their
unqualified wish, that no plan of colonization shall be permitted to
go into effect without an _immutable pledge_ from the slaveholding
states of a just and wise system of gradual emancipation;" and they
conclude their report, which was approved and adopted by the
Convention with the following resolution:--
"Resolved, As a sense of this Convention, that the gradual
and total emancipation of all persons of color, and their
literary and moral education, should precede their
colonization."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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