Thoughts on African ColonizationGarrison, William Lloyd
Philosophy
Thoughts on African Colonization
Garrison, William Lloyd
African Americans -- Colonization -- Africa; American Colonization Society; Slavery -- United States
'With a writer in the Southern Review we say, "the situation of
the people of these States was not of their own choosing. When
they came to the inheritance, it was subject to this mighty
incumbrance, and it would be criminal in them to ruin or waste
the estate, to get rid of the burden at once." With this writer
we add also, in the language of Capt. Hall, that the
"slaveholders ought not (immediately) to disentangle themselves
from the obligations which have devolved upon them, as the
masters of slaves." We believe that a master _may_ sustain his
relation to the slave, with as little criminality as the slave
sustains his relation to the master. But we feel little sympathy
for those who, in the language of Mr Harrison of Virginia,
"still look upon their slaves in the light in which most men
regarded them when the slave trade was legitimate. Of those,
wherever they are, who hold their slaves with that same
sentiment which impelled the kidnapper when he forcibly bore
them off, I know not how morality can distinguish them from the
original wrong-doers, pirates by nature, and pirates by
civilized law." That the system of slavery must exist
temporarily in this country, we as firmly believe, as that for
its existence a single moment, there can be offered justly no
plea but necessity. Were the very spirit of angelic charity to
pervade and fill the hearts of all the slaveholders in our land,
it would by no means require that all the slaves should be
instantaneously liberated.'--[Af. Rep. vol. v. p. 329.]
'The long established habits of the South, the attachments which
are frequently found subsisting between the proprietor and his
servants, together with the difficulty of substituting at once
white for slave labor, and the derangement which would ensue in
the domestic concerns of life, would not merely make general
emancipation at once inexpedient, but the attempt would denote
the extremity of madness and folly, and convulse this government
to its centre.'--[Idem, vol. vi. p. 291.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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