The Journal of Negro History, Volume 1, January 1916Various
History
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 1, January 1916
Various
African Americans -- Periodicals
In presenting the circular, which will be found in another column, of
which a committee of colored persons have undertaken the distribution,
(and which was written by one of themselves,) it gives us pleasure to
commend it as the evidence of a new and generally unexpected change of
sentiment on the part of the colored population, or, at least, some
portion of it. It is well known that for twenty-five years the
Colonization Societies in this country have labored to present before
that portion of our population, the advantages which must accrue to
them, from emigration to a land where they might enjoy, undisturbed,
those social and material privileges which it was impossible ever to
expect they could obtain by a residence of centuries in this country,
and that these appeals have met with comparatively little attention,
and, in deed have been received with very bad grace by the great mass of
those whom it was intended to benefit. The cause of this opposition was
to be found in the steady and violent animosity of those white fanatics,
who, setting themselves up as the peculiar friends of the blacks,
represented that the prejudice against their color was merely an
arbitrary sentiment, which time would weaken or entirely dissipate; and
that they might still look forward to enjoying, in this country, an
equality in social and political rights with the whites.
This assumption of peculiar friendliness on the part of the
Abolitionists, and the plausible reasonings with which they approached
their "colored friends," have acquired the confidence of the latter, who
are now, however, beginning to awake to a just idea of their condition
and future prospects in this country. They have discovered that the
loud-mouthed protestations of the Abolitionists, are the mere
effervescence of an intermeddling and dangerous faction, against whose
principles the whole Union--whose destruction they have meditated--has
pronounced in tones of thunder; a faction whose baleful alliance is
shunned most religiously, by both of the great parties of the country.
They have discovered that underground railroads are a device to inveigle
the slaves from a condition of comparative comfort, into the _freedom of
starvation_, with a poor display of political privileges, which are
mockery in view of their exercise by an ignorant and despised minority;
that the expectations fostered in behalf of the free blacks are proved
to be entirely futile by the continued attitude of opposition held
towards them, when there is a question of lessening the social and
political gulf which divides the races. They discover that the rapid
immigration of whites from every quarter, is encroaching upon their
employments, and lessening their chance of gaining a thrifty livelihood,
even in those menial pursuits to which they are chiefly limited.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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