The Free Blacks - Northern Philanthropy vs. Northern Legislation - The Colonization Question

The Free Blacks - Northern Philanthropy vs. Northern Legislation - The Colonization Question

 

The future destiny of the free colored population of the United States is one of the most perplexing, although one of the most important questions of this age. It is abundantly manifest that in this country their position must unchangeably be that of a distinct and inferior caste, with which it is impossible that the white race can ever amalgamate. It is equally evident that the amelioration of the degraded condition of the free blacks of the North within the limits of this Union, always impracticable, has at length become almost utterly hopeless. The pressure of our European immigration is fast filling up even the more menial employments heretofore the concealed prerogatives of the colored man. If there were nothing else arrayed against him than the overwhelming competition of the European laborer his prospects in the North would be bad enough; but this competition is only one of the incidental disadvantages of his marked and proscribed race.

 

The black man's first and unconquerable difficulty is the stamp of inferiority and servitude with which his Creator has marked him in his physical and mental organization. All the laws of society from which he suffers are but the inevitable contingencies of this first inflexible law of nature. From time immemorial he has been the slave of some higher type of human family or but a naked barbarian in a state of social and political independence. The very highest advances in the scale of intelligence which he has made have resulted from the Southern institution of slavery. The only promising attempt at self-government with which the black man stands credited in history is the repablic of Liberia, established and conducted by liberated slaves from our Southern states.  And it has been doubted whether Liberia would continue to prosper as an independent State beyond the present generation were all supplies of regeneration cut off from this country. If we are not mistaken, it was the opinion of Mr. Calhoun that the succes of Liberia was entirely artificial and delusive, for that the decease of the existing colonists from the South, and the failure to supply the vacuum for even a few years, would result in the rapid blending of the people of said republic with the wild African savages by whom they are surrounded. But, whether the experiment might result thus or otherwise, experience has satisfactorily proved the marked inferiority of the African race, and that the only advances above barbarism which they have ever achieved have been under the servitude or subjection of the white races.

 

Now, from this view of the subject, we would conclude that the most eligible, appropriate, and humane disposition of the black man which has yet been made, is that of "the peculiar institution of the South," under which he is the unconditional servant and dependent of his master. And herein, to some extent, the African has solved the problem of "manifest destiny" for himself. Contrast the comparatively enviable condition of the slaves even of the rice plantations of South Carolina with that of the free black barbarians of the black despot of Hayti, or even with that of her Britannic Majesty's lately emancipated free colored subjects of Jamaica, and the testimony of all history will be affirmed in the practical illustration of the decree of servitude which attaches to the children of Ham.

 

Our Northern philanthropists, however, have hit upon an expedient which must be successful in lifting the African to all the benefits of white society, or which can only fail in the bloody extermination of the African race from this continent. It is the immediate emancipation of all the slaves of the South, the immediate concession to them of equal rights and privileges with the whites, and the blending of whites and blacks together upon the platform of the French jacobins of "Liberty, equality and fraternity." To this end the agitation of the slavery question is to be revived; to this end the free-soilers are co-operating with the more virulent abolitionists in the reorganization of their forces for resisting any further extensions of the area of Southern slavery; and to this end the underground railroads to Canada, for the benefit of fugitive slaves, are kept open, with their connecting stations from Mason and Dixon's line to the St. Lawrence and Lake Erie. To this end, also, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Fred. Douglass, the Black Swan. the Duchess of Sutherland, the ladies of the Stafford House petition, and George Thompson and company, are zealously working in the common cause night and day. And when the occasion shall arrive for practical political action we may expect to find all these piebald elements of abolitionism banded together in yet another crusade against the infidels of the South. 

 

In the meantime, the condition of our free colored population is a more fitting subject for Northern philanthropy than Southern slavery; and before the aggregate of our free blacks is enlarged by the addition of three millions of slaves something should first be done in the way of philanthropy for that unfortunate class who, under the garb of freedom, are far worse off than Southern slaves. Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and other Northern States, have all their black laws, more or less stringent, for the expulsion of free negroes from their borders, or to shut out that species of immigration. We believe that all the Southern States have their retaliatory laws of this kind. In a word, the "free negro" lives only by sufferance in most of the States of this Union. If in philanthropic New York and New England he is not directly declared by law a vagrant, subject to expulsion, the schedule of his employments is so limited that he can find but little to do. Placed between two fires - between the South and the North - what is to be the destiny of free blacks of these United States?

 

Thurlow Weed suggests the establishment of a string of free colored colonies among the Caribbean islands; but whether he proposes to make Hayti or Jamaica the basis of their government and confederation he has not informed us. Fred. Douglass, George K. Downing, the oysterman, and others of the more intelligent free colored reformers, are dead against Liberia. This is their country, and here they intend to stay. And yet it is evident that the time will soon arrive for something more definite, in the way of legislation  upon free persons of color, than the retaliatory anti-free black laws among several States. Canada itself has ceased to be attractive to the free colored man, for the whites, even there, are beginning to rebel against any further increase of his brethren. We know of nothing better, for the present, than Liberia for the relief of the free colored exile of this country. Liberia is the place for him. There the caste of color is in his favor. There he may rise to the highest official positions, and there he may increase and multiply, and extend the area of freedom indefinitely.  The Caribbean islands are not the thing. They are appropriated. Liberia is the place. 

 

Cannot something be done - in the language of Mr. Clay, cannot something, and a great deal, be done to make Liberia attractive to the free colored man? Has Young American given him up and his cause? Why, now,  should that great commercial and philanthropic project of the Ebony line of steamers be abandoned? Is not Liberia, and the African coast northward, rich in palm oil, coffee, sugar, cotton, tobacco, spices, dyewoods, gold dust, ivory, and many other articles of trade? It is to be hoped, for the sake of the free colored people of this country, and for their relief, that the administration will recommend some plan to Congress. This is the age of progress. And there is plenty of money in the Treasury.