An Address to Free Coloured Americans

by Anti-slavery Convention of American Women

Resolved, That having the strongest confidence in the justice of God, and in the philanthropy of the free states, we cheerfully submit our destinies to the guidance of Him who suffers not a sparrow to fall to the ground without his special Providence."

We praise the Lord, that while the white man slumbered over the wrongs of his enslaved countrymen, or stretched out his hands to rivet the bondman's chains, or to thrust his brother from his side, your sympathy and your compassion, like that of the beneficent Redeemer, was wakeful and active, and called forth from the depths of your souls the following soul-stirring appeal. Where, oh! where were the hearts of Americans, that they responded not to your call?

"We humbly, respectfully, and fervently entreat and beseech your disapprobation of the plan of colonization now offered by the "American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States." Here, in the city of Philadelphia, where the voice of the suffering sons of Africa was first heard—where was first commenced the work of abolition on which heaven has smiled (for it could have success only from the great Master); let not a purpose be assisted which will stay the cause of the entire abolition of slavery in the United States, and which may defeat it altogether—which proffers to those who do not ask for them what it calls benefits, but which they consider injuries—and which must ensure to the multitude, whose prayers can only reach you through us, misery, sufferings, and perpetual slavery."

Nor can we pass by unnoticed the noble conduct of our sister in Ohio, who, when her father proposed to bring her to the North, where she might pass for a white woman, and settle upon her a comfortable independence, replied that she would never forsake her people—that she would rather suffer with them than enjoy all the advantages he promised. We do homage to the virtue which preferred to endure affliction with the oppressed, rather than to bask in the sunshine of worldly prosperity and popular favor.

But for the dignified opposition which you manifested—but for the developments which you made of the real designs and fearful consequences of colonization, your guilty country would probably have added to her manifold transgressions against the descendants of Africa, the transcendant crime of banishing from her shores those whom she has deeply injured, and whom she is bound by every law of justice and of mercy to cherish with peculiar tenderness. But for your virtuous and uncompromising hostility to the Colonization Society, a portion of our countrymen might never have been disabused of the idle and fallacious expectation, that this scheme would cure the moral evil of slavery, and put an end to the horrible slave traffic carried on on the coast of Africa. You saw that the root of the evil was in our own land, and that the expatriation of the best part of our colored population, so far from abolishing slavery, would render the condition of the enslaved tenfold more hopeless. You saw that the only means of destroying the slave trade, was to destroy the spirit of slavery; and how just have been your conclusions, let the following testimonies declare—we extract from an official communication to the secretary of the Navy, by Captain Joseph J. Nicholson of the Navy:—"The slave trade, within the last three years, has seriously injured the colony. Not only has it diverted the industry of the natives, but it has effectually cut off the communication with the interior. The war parties being in the habit of plundering and kidnapping for slaves all whom they meet, whether parties to the war or not, the daring of the slaver increases with the demand for slaves, which could not of late be supplied by the usual means; and within a year four slave factories have been established almost within sight of the Colony."

The following statement is taken from the "Colored American:"—A vessel arrived at Halifax on the 12th ult., from Kingston, Jamaica, which reports, that when two days out she fell in with a Spanish slaver bound to Havana, having four hundred poor wretched beings on board, in a state of starvation. Forty had died for want of food. The captain stated that the poor creatures had, during the past month, subsisted on rice water." Had we not been blinded by interest and by prejudice, our reason might have taught us that as long as the republic of the U. S. is a mart where human flesh and souls of men are bought and sold, so long will European and American cupidity furnish human merchandise for this detestable commerce. Thousands of slaves have been introduced into the United States through the island of Cuba, since the slave trade was declared piracy by our national legislature. We stand before the world as a nation of hypocrites, and you are equally concerned, as American citizens, to labor to bring your country to a sense of her crimes. You are equally concerned to do all that can be done, to arrest the progress of the spirit of colonization, which takes our countrymen from their native land without their consent, by giving them the cruel alternative of slavery or banishment, breaks up the tenderest ties of nature and casts them on a foreign soil. And what is our international slave trade, but compulsory colonization. "There have been transported—doubtless without their consent—from the older slave states to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, during the year 1836, the enormous number of two hundred and fifty thousand slaves."—Eman.

We deeply deplore the situation of our free colored citizens in the slaveholding states, we sympathize in their trials, we know that the oppressive laws enacted against them are to use the language of a writer in the Richmond Whig of March 21, 1832, "A code of penal laws in many respects worthy the temper of Draco, written indeed in blood.... By this code information to them is proscribed, social intercourse interdicted, religious worship in most of its forms prohibited." We know that these unrighteous decrees have driven many of our Southern brethren to a foreign land in the hope of finding on the shores of heathen Africa, a degree of liberty, independence and happiness which they saw no human probability of enjoying in Christian America, but while we sympathize with them in their sufferings, of which the free people of color in the non-slaveholding States largely participate, yet we believe that patient submission to these cruel inflictions, would have identified their interests more with that portion of our countrymen who are toiling in bonds, and would have advanced the cause of emancipation. The cruel policy of the slaveholder to separate as much as possible the free people of color from the slaves, to prevent all coalition between them, to destroy all sympathy of feeling and oneness of interest, has succeeded but too well—the free colored people of the South stand by themselves, unacknowledged as men by their haughty superiors, unknown as brethren by their down-trodden "countrymen in chains," a few of them have even been tempted to join hands with the oppressor and rivet bonds on those for whose deliverance they should have toiled and wept and prayed. One of the results of this crafty policy has been, that many have been seduced to abandon their country and their enslaved brethren, to seek for themselves and their families an asylum from the oppression of Christian, Republican, America. These, however unintentionally, have, we believe, fully answered the designs of the subtle politicians of the South and have bound more firmly around the quivering limbs of their kindred the manacles of slavery.—The desertion of such has added strength to the Colonization interest, and cherished the insane hope that all our valuable free colored citizens might in time be transported to Africa. We, therefore, deprecate the departure of every free colored American, unless impelled by a sense of duty, because it is injurious to the interests of the slave and contributes to foster in the bosoms of their white fellow-citizens that prejudice which Satan created and which he is now using as one of the most powerful engines to prevent the elevation of the free and the enfranchisement of the enslaved.

Our brethren and sisters in bondage have their eyes fixed with the deepest intensity of interest upon their friends in the Northern States, they are looking unto us as unto "Saviours who shall come up on Mount Zion" to deliver them out of the hand of the spoiler. Jehovah has entrusted us with a high and holy commission he has commanded us to "Defend the poor and fatherless, to do justice to the afflicted and needy, to deliver the poor and needy; to rid them out of the hand of the wicked" and we believe God will bless our efforts in this righteous cause, if we are willing to endure the reproach, the calumny, the self-denial which is involved in this Reformation, but beloved friends let us keep ever in mind, that unless we are men and women of prayer, we shall not be able to effect what we profess so earnestly to desire, viz., that God would melt the hearts of the slaveholders thro' the powerful influence of his Holy Spirit that they may "let their captives go," "not for price nor reward," but for their own peace sake and because the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts. When the Redeemer of men was about to ascend to the bosom of the Father and resume the glory which he had with Him before the world was, he promised his disciples that the power of the Holy Ghost should come upon them, and that they should be witnesses for Him to the uttermost parts of the earth. What was the effect upon their minds?" "They all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women." Stimulated by the confident expectation that Jesus would fulfil his gracious promise, they poured out their hearts in fervent supplications, probably for strength to do the work which he had appointed them unto, for they felt that without Him they could do nothing and they consecrated themselves on the altar of God, to the great and glorious enterprize of preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ to a lost and perishing world. Have we less precious promises in the Scriptures of Truth, may we not claim of our God the blessing promised unto those who consider the poor, the Lord will preserve them and keep them alive and they shall be blessed upon the earth. Does not the language "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me," belong to all who are rightly engaged in endeavoring to unloose the bondman's fetters? Shall we not then do as the Apostles did, shall we not in view of the two millions of heathen in our very midst, in view of the souls that are going down in an almost unbroken phalanx to utter perdition, continue in prayer and supplication that God will grant us the supplies of his Spirit to prepare us for that work which he has given us to do. Shall not the wail of the mother as she surrenders her only child to the grasp of the ruthless kidnapper, or the trader in human blood, animate our devotions. Shall not the manifold crimes and horrors of slavery excite more ardent outpourings at the throne of grace to grant repentance to our guilty country and permit us to aid in preparing the way for the glorious second Advent of the Messiah, by preaching deliverance to the captives and the opening of the prison doors to those who are bound.

But not alone for the down-trodden slave should we be engaged to labor, our country from Maine to Florida is more or less connected with, and involved in, the awful sin of slavery, "the blood of the poor innocents is found in our skirts," the free states are partakers with those who rob God of his creatures, for although most of them have nominally no slaves on their soil, they do deliver unto slaveholders the servant that is escaped from his master, in direct violation of the command of Jehovah "Hide the outcasts: bewray not him that wandereth.—Let mine outcasts dwell with thee; be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler."—The unhappy fugitive goaded almost to madness by oppression finds no resting place for the sole of his foot until he reaches the icy shores of Canada. An exile from his native land, because his soul cannot bow down to the unbridled passions of his fellow-worm; because he nobly dares to take the freedom which Jehovah gave him with the first inspiration of his vital breath, because rather than be a slave he braves the storm and plunges through the flood and suffers hunger and thirst and nakedness and cold. For thus magnanimously recoiling from unjust usurpation he is branded as a fugitive, and hunted through our free states with all the fierceness of savage barbarity, while no measures are adopted to procure the repeal of these unrighteous decrees. Oh when in this proud republic God maketh inquisition for blood, when he remembereth the cry of the humble—where shall we appear? will not the language be uttered against us "the land is full of blood; the iniquity is exceeding great, mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity, but I will recompense their way upon their head."

Nor is the church less corrupt than the state, she exhibits now just such a departure from primitive purity as is described by the prophet Ezekiel in speaking of the Jewish Church.—"Thou didst trust in thine own beauty, because of thy renown. Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and my silver which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them. And tookest thy broidered garments and covered them, and thou hast set mine oil and mine incense before them." Is it not the fear and the idolatry of man which makes so many of those who fill the sacred office of ministers of Jesus Christ stand dumb on the watch-tower; so many unclose their sacrilegious lips to stigmatize the God of Love as the founder of the system of American slavery—what but the deep corruption of the church could tempt her to cast over this bloody moloch her broidered garment, and try by snatching a few jewels to adorn her diadem from Ceylon and the Sandwich Islands, from Burmah, and from the Rocky Mountains, to turn away the public gaze from the leprosy which consumes her vitals.