Memoir of John Howe Peyton / in sketches by his contemporaries, together with some of his public and private letters, etc., also a sketch of Ann M. Peyton

by Unknown

AFRICAN COLONIZATION.

He advocated the colonization of our African population in Liberia and was one of the managers of the Augusta County Colonization Society, founded in 1831-32 to promote this end.

The managers submitted to the Society their annual report on the 21st of April, 1832, the following extract from which will show the object and purposes of the Society:

Concerning the colony of Liberia, we have no information to communicate but such as the public prints have given from time to time, to all who wished to know what was going on at that interesting establishment. The sum of this information is, that the colony, gradually advancing in numbers, advances also in every branch of improvement and prosperity. We believe that in the whole history of colonization, there has never been an instance elsewhere of so cheering a degree of success from a similar amount of means and exertions. Divine Providence has evidently smiled upon the enterprise, and encouraged its friends to prosecute it with untiring perseverance.

Shall we close this paper here? A feeling which we assuredly know to be no other than a sincere regard for the honor and welfare of our country, prompts us to offer to the society some additional reflections.

It was never expected by any man of sense that the voluntary association of which we form an humble part, would be able to effect, by its own very limited energies, any sensible diminutive of the large and pernicious mass of our colored population. But we did hope to evince the practicability of acquiring an extensive and fertile territory in a suitable climate and of removing our negroes to it and setting them in it, with fair prospects of their becoming a respectable and happy nation; and thus to pioneer the way for delivering this otherwise favored land of ours from a burden, the sorest that ever afflicted any people under heaven. And this hope, thanks be to God, we are permitted to see realized. The colony exists and flourishes. It remains that the legislative authorities of these Southern States, invigorated by the attainable and powerful aid of the Federal Union, take this business under their efficient patronage. And surely the period is now emphatically come for putting into action on this momentous subject our utmost talents and our utmost resources. After ages already lost in supineness, shall we still waste our precious time in disquisitions, as needless as they are unreconcilable with our boasted republican character, on what we call the right of property in our slave; while the deadly evil which we all profess to deplore, is gaining ground upon us with gigantic strides every year and every hour. We say needless disquisitions; for such they appear to us to be. Let liberal means be provided for removing far away those unfortunate beings amongst us whom we denominate free blacks, together with those slaves who shall be voluntarily manumitted for the purpose of removal. On this single condition, we are satisfied that there will be no necessity to interfere in a compulsory way with any man's right of property in his slaves. Public sentiment, incessantly acquiring expansion and strength will much better achieve the glorious consummation.

But suppose this to be a visionary picture. Suppose that yet greater sacrifices shall be found indispensable. What then? Shall we shrink from the making of those sacrifices for the salvation of our native land, the loveliest and the choicest of all lands? Shall we tamely sit still, and see Virginia despoiled of much of her strength by unexampled emigration to other regions, and by this means ripening the more speedily as a harvest for the scythe of the assassin. Shall we, after all that we have seen and heard within nine months past, persist in the slumber and indolence of infatuation? Or shall we soon arise in all our zeal, and all our united strength, to devise and to pursue the measures by which alone such a tremendous issue may be arrested, and our country rendered truly prosperous and happy? How these questions are to be answered by facts, time must discover, and God only, who is omniscient, can certainly foresee. For our part, though we deeply lament that the equally able and eloquent discussion which recently took place on this most important topic in the hall of our legislature was suffered to float away into the air, yielding no practical results; yet we think we ought not to abandon the cause of liberating our beloved country from the abominations and the curse of slavery, in utter despair. A better day may be about to dawn upon us. Perhaps the discussion to which we have referred, itself a wondrous phenomenon in Virginia, may not die away as a fruitless expenditure of feeling and genius. And in the meanwhile, let us continue our labors for the improvement of the Colony, that it may become a more capacious, and in every way convenient receptacle for drawing off, when the good season for the extended operations shall arrive, the pestilential nuisance of our African population.

The prominent men of that period associated with Mr. Peyton in this good work were Rev. Conrad Speece, Joseph Cowan, Samuel Clarke, John McCue, George Eskridge, Charles A. Stuart and others.