The Free Negroes and their Abolitionist Friends

THE FREE NEGROES AND THEIR ABOLITIONIST FRIENDS.- If the opponents of the fugitive slave law in the nonslaveholding States are as they profess to be, the true friends of the blacks, we greatly wonder that they do not see that the course they are pursuing must of necessity result to the disadvantage of the free people of color. That unfortunate class are already subjected to hardships enough. The wretched antipathies of race and the prejudices of color operate on them most cruelly, and they who profess friendship for them ought to be especially careful lest their conduct injure those whom they desire to befriend.

We cannot conceive of any course more injurious to the blacks that adopted by the opponents of the fugitive slave law. Every case of resistance to the execution of that law makes thousands of enemies to the blacks. This is certainly wrong, but it is also certainly true. The blacks suffer from the misguided zeal of their professed friends at all times, but, when that zeal leads to a violent resistance of the laws, they suffer greatly. No one conversant with this subject has any doubt that every excitement which leads to unhappy consequences with which the blacks are in any wise concerned reacts with the terrible effect on the blacks. 

The mobs at Christiana and at Syracuse have caused thousands of reflecting men to adopt the opinion that it is impossible for whites and blacks to exist in the same community without frequent outrages on law and order.  A few more mobs and violations of law, and the people in the free States will certainly resort to such means of protection as the exigencies of the case may seem them to require. Two courses will be before them to select from. One course will be the forcible expulsion of the blacks, and the other the adoption of the policy that has been adopted in Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, by which people of color are excluded from those States. 

The Indiana policy has already been seriously urged in some influential papers in the Northern States from mobs and violiations of law. There is scarcely a nonslaveholding State in the Union in which, if the Indiana policy were proposed to the people, it would not be adopted. The people in those States are growing tired of the constant antislavery agitation, and would readily sanction any policy which would keep fugitive slaves and free negroes from coming amongst them.  If there is more mob resistance to the fugitive slave law, the question of the exclusion of the blacks will seriously be discussed in several of the nonslaveholding States. Now do the opponents of the fugitive slave law desire any such result? They may fancy that the people will not sustain a negro-exclusion law, but they will find that, wherever the people vote on such a question, a large majority against the negroes will be polled. In Indiana, notwithstanding the large number of antislavery men in the State, the sections of the new constitution excluding the negroes were adopted by not only an overwhelming majority, but the minority was comparatively utterly insignificant. And whenever the same policy is submitted to the people of other nonslaveholding States, a similar result will be inevitable. It therefore behooves those men who are opposed to the adoption of any such policy to be cautious, and to refrain on from any conduct that will incite the people to resort to negro-exclusion as a means of protection against a vicious population and a spirit of insubordination to law. 

To our minds, it is very clear that a separation of the black and white races is portended by many signs which the sagacious can discover. We are not in the habit of making any professions of extraordinary regard for the free blacks, but we have far too much regard for them to pursue any course which threatens injury to them. There are a very large number of the true friends of the blacks, whose minds have of late years adopted the conclusion that the welfare of the colored people can only be properly consulted by their removal beyond the reach of the cruel antipathies and prejudices of the whites. This sentiment is rapidly expanding, and the day is not distant when African colonization will become the most popular of all causes   The conviction that it will be greatly to the interest of the blacks to colonize them in Africa, cooperating with the conviction that they cannot live in this country in a state of freedom without the frequent occurrence of mobs and often violations of law, will become very general, and the period desired by Mr. Webster and other great statesmen when colonization shall be carried under the auspices of the Federal Government, will then be at hand. Meanwhile, however, the poor blacks must be subjected to many indignities and much scorn and obloquy on account of wrongheadedness of those who profess to be their most devoted friends. The Union of these States is a subject of such commanding importance that people will suffer no consideration to come into conflict with it. Mobs like those at Christiana and Syracuse excite a spirit hostile to the Union. This fact will become obvious to the people who will, for the sake of the Union and the sake of tranquility, resort to the policy of exclusion against the blacks.