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
There have been black generals in the world before Napoleon was born, and
there may be again; and to-day, notwithstanding all the prejudice against
color, that everywhere exists in this guilty nation, there are men of
talent among us, inferior to none on the earth; nor are their numbers few,
though rapidly increasing.
Well may the South arouse herself, form societies, replenish its treasury
with a tax imposed on the free colored people, to defray the expense of
sending manumitted slaves to Liberia!
Listen a moment to the cant of the colonizationist. Hear him talk of the
duty he owes to Africa, and how happy, how intelligent, how prosperous
everything is in Liberia. But when that delightful country asks to be
taken into fellowship with the United States, and to have her independence
recognized--ah, then he lifts his hands in horror and begs to be excused
from so close a relation.
This is all cant, in my humble opinion; and when I see men so anxious to
send the negro out of their sight, I feel quite certain that they are
conscious of having deeply wronged him, and think to remove him, to atone
for their guilty consciences. Would they refuse to acknowledge the
independence of Liberia, if their interest in the colored people was
genuine, especially when several other nations had done so? Oh, no. But
that is not "_the rub_." How could one of our lordly nabobs of the South,
sit in Congress with perhaps one of his own manumitted slaves as a
representative from Liberia or Hayti! He would die of mortification. Very
well then; but let him talk no more of sending colored men to that country
to make them free men.
The colored people generally, I am happy to say, have a right conception
of the colonization plan, and will never be induced to go to Africa,
unless they go as missionaries to the heathen tribes, who certainly
should have the gospel preached to them. Some, from a sense of duty, may
go as teachers,--which is all well enough,--but certain it is, that no
amount of prejudice or abuse, will ever induce the colored race to leave
this country. Long have they been oppressed; but they are rising-coming
up to an elevated standard, and are fast gathering strength and courage,
for the great and coming conflict with their haughty oppressors.
That there must be ere long, a sharp contest between the friends of
Freedom and the Southern oligarchy, I can no longer doubt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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