Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman: Embracing a Correspondence of Several Years, While President of Wilberforce Colony, London, Canada WestSteward, Austin
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Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman: Embracing a Correspondence of Several Years, While President of Wilberforce Colony, London, Canada West
Is my reader about to throw the blame of our nation's wrong on England,
and accuse her of first tolerating Slavery? We admit it; but did she not
repent of the evil she had done, and speedily break every yoke, and let
the oppressed go free? Certainly; no slave now breathes in England's
atmosphere. But, say you, her white poor are slaves to the aristocracy,
from which sentiment I beg leave to differ. Oppressed they may be, and
doubtless are, as the poor are apt to be in any and every country; but
they are not sold in the market, to the highest bidder, like beasts of
burden, as are the American slaves. No Englishman, however poor,
destitute, or degraded he may be, but owns himself, his wife and children;
nor does he fear that they be sold and torn from his embrace, while he is
laboring for their support. Poverty, my friend, does not comprise the
bitterness of Slavery, no more than "one swallow makes a summer,"--nor
does it consist solely in ignorance and degradation. Its bitterness arises
from a consciousness of wrong; a sense of the violation of every right God
has given to man, and the uncertainty of his future, over which he has no
control.
If the American people flatter themselves with the idea of getting rid of
the hated negro race, by colonizing them on the sickly soil of Liberia,
or any other country, they will surely find themselves mistaken. They
are Americans; allied to this country by birth and by misfortune; and here
will they remain,--not always as now, oppressed and degraded,--for all who
have any interest in the matter, well know that the free colored people,
are rapidly advancing in intelligence, and improving their condition in
every respect. Men of learning and genius, are now found among those with
fleecy locks, and good mechanics with dusky complexion.
This marked improvement in the condition and rapid advancement in
intelligence among our people, seems to have alarmed the colonizationists,
and made them fearful that those very down-trodden slaves, who have for
years labored for nought; whose blood and tears have fertilized the
Southern soil, may, perchance, become their equals in intelligence, and
take vengeance on their oppressors for the wrongs done them; and lest
they should do so, they would gladly remove them to some far-off country.
Yet here, in North America, will the colored race remain, and ere long in
my opinion, become a great people, equal with the proud Anglo-Saxon in all
things. The African has once been a powerful nation, before Christian
Englishmen invaded her coasts with rum, and incited her chiefs to war, by
purchasing with gaudy, but worthless trinkets, her conquered captives; and
we have every reason to believe, that though her glory as a nation has
departed, that her sons will yet be acknowledged free men by the white
population of this country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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