The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United StatesDelany, Martin Robison
History
The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States
Delany, Martin Robison
African Americans
However foreign to the designs of the writer of ever making that country
or any other out of America, his home; had this been done, and honorably
maintained, the Republic of Liberia would have met with words of
encouragement, not only from himself, an humble individual, but we dare
assert, from the leading spirits among, if not from the whole colored
population of the United States. Because they would have been willing to
overlook the circumstances under which they went there, so that in the
end, they were willing to take their stand as men, and thereby throw off
the degradation of slaves, still under the control of American
slave-holders, and American slave-ships. But in this, we were
disappointed--grievously disappointed, and proceed to show in short, our
objections to Liberia.
_Its geographical position_, in the first place, is objectionable,
being located in the _sixth degree_ of latitude North of the equator, in
a district signally unhealthy, rendering it objectionable as a place of
destination for the colored people of the United States. We shall say
nothing about other parts of the African coast, and the reasons for its
location where it is: it is enough for us to know the facts as they are,
to justify an unqualified objection to Liberia.
In the second place, it originated in a deep laid scheme of the
slaveholders of the country, to _exterminate_ the free colored of the
American continent; the origin being sufficient to justify us in
impugning the motives.
Thirdly and lastly--Liberia is not an Independent Republic: in fact, _it
is not_ an independent nation at all; but a poor _miserable mockery_--a
_burlesque_ on a government--a pitiful dependency on the American
Colonizationists, the Colonization Board at Washington city, in the
District of Columbia, being the Executive and Government, and the
principal man, called President, in Liberia, being the echo--a mere
parrot of Rev. Robert R. Gurley, Elliot Cresson, Esq., Governor Pinney,
and other leaders of the Colonization scheme--to do as they bid, and say
what they tell him. This we see in all of his doings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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