before the meeting a very interesting fact, which would at once show
the feeling of the colored people when the plan was first submitted to
them. It would show, that in a meeting of three thousand, convened in
the city of Philadelphia, to decide whether the society should, or
should not, receive their countenance, they decided _against_ it
without a dissentient voice. He would lay before them a letter written
by a highly respectable, enlightened, and wealthy gentleman of color
in Philadelphia, Mr. James Forten. The letter was written to the
editor of the New England Spectator, in consequence of a remark made
by Mr. Gurley, during the debate in Boston.
PHILADELPHIA, June 10th, 1835.
REV. W. S. PORTER,--Dear Sir,--I cheerfully comply with the
request contained in your note of the 3d inst., to give you a
brief statement of a meeting held in 1817, by the people of
color in this city, to express their opinion on the Liberia
project. It was the largest meeting of colored persons ever
convened in Philadelphia,--I will say 3000, though I might
safely add 500 more. To show you the deep interest evinced,
this large assemblage remained in almost breathless and fixed
attention during the reading of the resolutions and the other
business of the meeting; and when the question was put in the
affirmative you might have heard a pin drop, so profound was
the silence. But when in the negative, one long, loud, ay,
tremendous NO, from this vast audience, seemed as if it would
bring down the walls of the building. Never did there appear
a more unanimous opinion. Every heart seemed to feel that it
was a life and death question. Yes, even then, at the very
onset, when the monster came in a guise to deceive some of
our firmest friends, who hailed it as the dawning of a
brighter day for our oppressed race,--even then we penetrated
through its thickly-laid covering, and beheld it
prospectively as the scourge which in after years was to
grind us to the earth, and, by a series of unrelenting
persecution, force us into involuntary exile.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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