NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY,
NO. 143 NASSAU STREET.
1839.
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ON THE CONDITION OF THE FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR.
It appears from the census of 1830, that there were then 319,467 free colored persons in the United States. At the present time the number cannot be less than 360,000. Fifteen States of the Federal Union have each a smaller population than this aggregate. Hence if the whole mass of human beings inhabiting Connecticut, or New Jersey, or any other of these fifteen States, were subjected to the ignorance, and degradation, and persecution and terror we are about to describe, as the lot of this much injured people, the amount of suffering would still be numerically less than that inflicted by a professedly Christian and republican community upon the free negroes. Candor, however, compels us to admit that, deplorable as is their condition, it is still not so wretched as Colonizationists and slaveholders, for obvious reasons, are fond of representing it. It is not true that free negroes are "more vicious and miserable than slaves can be,"[[97]] nor that "it would be as humane to throw slaves from the decks of the middle passage, as to set them free in this country," [[98]] nor that "a sudden and universal emancipation without colonization, would be a greater CURSE to the slaves themselves, than the bondage in which they are held."
[Footnote [97]: Rev. Mr. Bacon, of New Haven, 7 Rep. Am. Col. Soc. p. 99.]
[Footnote [98]: African Repository, Vol. IV. p. 226.]