The Past and the Present Condition, and the Destiny, of the Colored Race:: A Discourse Delivered at the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Female Benevolent Society of Troy, N. Y., Feb. 14, 1848Garnet, Henry Highland
History
The Past and the Present Condition, and the Destiny, of the Colored Race:: A Discourse Delivered at the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Female Benevolent Society of Troy, N. Y., Feb. 14, 1848
Garnet, Henry Highland
African Americans; United States -- Race relations
The Red men of North America are retreating from the approach of the
white man. They have fallen like trees on the ground in which they
first took root, and on the soil which their foliage once shaded. But
the Colored race, although they have been transplanted in a foreign
land, have clung to and grown with their oppressors, as the wild ivy
entwines around the trees of the forest, nor can they be torn thence.
At this moment when so much feigned hatred is manifested toward us, our
blood is mixed with every tribe from Cape Horn to the Frozen Ocean.
Skillful men have set themselves to work at analyzation, and yet in
many cases they are perplexed in deciding where to draw the line
between the Negro and the Anglo-Saxon. Whatever our colorless brethren
say of themselves, so far do they proclaim our future position. Do they
say in proud exultation,
“No pent up Utica contracts our powers,
The whole boundless continent is ours,”
in this they bespeak our destiny.
There are those who, either from good or evil motives, plead for the
utopian plan of the Colonization of a whole race to the shores of
Africa. We are now colonized. We are planted here, and we cannot as a
whole people, be re-colonized back to our father-land. It is too late
to make a successful attempt to separate the black and white people in
the New World. They love one another too much to endure a separation.
Where one is, there will the other be also. Ruth, of the Old Testament,
puts the resolve of our destiny in our mouths, which we will repeat
to those who would expatriate us: “Entreat me not to leave thee nor
return from following after thee, for whither thou goest I will go, and
where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy
God shall be my God. Where thou diest there will I die, and there will
I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more, if aught but death part
thee and me.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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