Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent.
To the Colored Inhabitants of the United States:—
Fellow-Countrymen: The duty assigned us is an important one, comprehending all that pertains to our destiny and that of our posterity, present and prospectively. And while it must be admitted that the subject is one of the greatest magnitude, requiring all that talents, prudence, and wisdom might adduce, and while it would be folly to pretend to give you the combined result of these three agencies, we shall satisfy ourselves with doing our duty to the best of our ability, and that in the plainest, most simple, and comprehensive manner.
Our object, then, shall be to place before you our true position in this country (the United States), the improbability of realizing our desires, and the sure, practicable, and infallible remedy for the evils we now endure.
We have not addressed you as citizens,—a term desired and ever cherished by us,—because such you have never been. We have not addressed you as freemen, because such privileges have never been enjoyed by any colored man in the United States. Why, then, should we flatter your credulity, by inducing you to believe that which neither has now, nor never before had, an existence? Our oppressors are ever gratified at our manifest satisfaction, especially when that satisfaction is founded upon false premises; an assumption on our part of the enjoyment of rights and privileges which never have been conceded, and which, according to the present system of the United States policy, we never can enjoy.
The political policy of this country was solely borrowed from, and shaped and modelled after, that of Rome. This was strikingly the case in the establishment of immunities, and the application of terms in their civil and legal regulations.
The term citizen, politically considered, is derived from the Roman definition, which was never applied in any other sense—cives ingenui; which meant, one exempt from restraint of any kind. (Cives, a citizen; one who might enjoy the highest honors in his own free town,—the town in which he lived,—and in the country or commonwealth; and ingenui, freeborn—of GOOD EXTRACTION.) All who were deprived of citizenship—that is, the right of enjoying positions of honor and trust—were termed hostes and peregrini; which are public and private enemies, and foreigners, or aliens to the country. (Hostis, a public, and sometimes private, enemy; and peregrinus, an alien, stranger, or foreigner.)
The Romans, from a national pride, to distinguish their inhabitants from those of other countries, termed them all “citizens,” but, consequently, were under the necessity of specifying four classes of citizens: none but the cives ingenui being unrestricted in their privileges. There was one class, called the jus quiritium, or the wailing or supplicating citizen; that is, one who was continually moaning, complaining, or crying for aid or succor. This class might also include within themselves the jus suffragii, who had the privilege of voting, but no other privilege. They could vote for one of their superiors—the cives ingenui—but not for themselves.
Such, then, is the condition, precisely, of the black and colored inhabitants of the United States; in some of the states they answering to the latter class, having the privilege of voting, to elevate their superiors to positions to which they need never dare aspire or even hope to attain.
There has, of late years, been a false impression obtained, that the privilege of voting constitutes, or necessarily embodies, the rights of citizenship. A more radical error never obtained favor among an oppressed people. Suffrage is an ambiguous term, which admits of several definitions. But according to strict political construction, means simply “a vote, voice, approbation.” Here, then, you have the whole import of the term suffrage. To have the “right of suffrage,” as we rather proudly term it, is simply to have the privilege—there is no right about it—of giving our approbation to that which our rulers may do, without the privilege, on our part, of doing the same thing. Where such privileges are granted—privileges which are now exercised in but few of the states by colored men—we have but the privilege granted of saying, in common with others, who shall, for the time being, exercise rights, which, in him, are conceded to be inherent and inviolate: like the indented apprentice, who is summoned to give his approbation to an act which would be fully binding without his concurrence. Where there is no acknowledged sovereignty, there can be no binding power; hence, the suffrage of the black man, independently of the white, would be in this country unavailable.