History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2: Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as CitizensWilliams, George Washington
History
History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2: Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens
Williams, George Washington
African Americans -- History; Liberia; Sierra Leone
"A more favorable opportunity to arrive at truth seldom has been
witnessed, but while we admire the distinguished piety and
Christian feelings with which he so solemnly portrayed the
doctrines of that institution, we do now _assert_, that the
result of the same has tended more deeply to rivet our solid
conviction, that the doctrines of said Society are at enmity with
the principles and precepts of religion, humanity, and justice,
and should be regarded by every man of color in these United
States as an evil, for magnitude, unexcelled, and whose doctrines
aim at the entire extinction of the free colored population and
the riveting of slavery.
"We might here repeat our protest against that institution, but
it is unnecessary; your views and sentiments have long since gone
to the world; the wings of the wind have borne your
disapprobation to that institution. Time itself cannot erase it.
You have dated your opposition from its beginning, and your views
are strengthened by time and circumstances, and they hold the
uppermost seat in your affections. We have not been unmindful of
the compulsory laws which caused our brethren in Ohio to seek new
homes in a distant land, there to share and suffer all the
inconveniences of exiles in an uncultivated region; which has led
us to admire the benevolent feelings of a rival government in its
liberal protection to strangers; which has induced us to
recommend to you, to exercise your best endeavors, to collect
monies to secure the purchase of lands in the Canadas, for those
who may by oppressive legislative enactments be obliged to move
thither.
"In contributing to our brethren that aid which will secure them
a refuge in a storm, we would not wish to be understood as
possessing any inclination to remove, nor in the least to
impoverish, that noble sentiment which we rejoice in exclaiming--
"This is _our_ own,
Our native land.
"All that we have done, humanity dictated it; neither inclination
nor alienated feelings to our country prescribed it, but that
power which is above all other considerations, viz.: the law of
necessity.
"We yet anticipate in the moral strength of this nation, a final
redemption from those evils that have been illegitimately
entailed on us as a people. We yet expect, by due exertions on
our part, together with the aid of the benevolent philanthropists
of our country, to acquire a moral and intellectual strength that
will unshaft the calumnious darts of our adversaries, and present
to the world a general character that they will feel bound to
respect and admire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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