"Resolved, As a sense of this Convention, that the gradual and total emancipation of all persons of color, and their literary and moral education, should precede their colonization."
When the Convention met again in 1819, the Pennsylvania society, in sending up a statement of its views and proceedings, warned the "abolitionists of our country to retain in view the lessons of experience, and avoid substituting for them, schemes however splendid, yet of questionable result;" and added, "for ourselves there is but one principle on which we can act. It is the principle of immutable justice! We can make no compromise with the prejudices of slavery, or with the slavery of prejudice. The same arguments that are now urged against emancipation, unless the subjects of it be removed from our territory, were used with more plausibility when abolition was an experiment, yet they were combatted with success."
Mr. B. says, page 52, it 'would-be difficult, if not utterly impossible, for evidences of friendship to the Colonization Society from an avowed friend of slavery to be culled out, as occurring within the last three or four years.' Says the Emancipator, "So far is this from being true, that the most decisive evidences of this sort are found, within the last three or four years. Scarce a pro-slavery mob, or speech, or meeting, during this whole time, but has contained, in one and the same breath, a condemmnation of abolition and a commendation of colonization."
After quoting the resolution against the Colonization Society, in Boston last year, Mr. B. remarks, 'that the verbiage of this resolution, showed its parentage. No one who had ever heard one of Mr. Thompson's speeches could, for a moment, doubt the authorship of the resolution!' This is a small mistake indeed, and among so many great ones, scarce merits a notice, but to show that Mr. B's sagacity in conjecture, exceeds not much his veracity in assertion, we just mention in passing, that the 'authorship of the resolution' belongs not to Mr. Thompson.
'The abolitionists,' says Mr. B. page 54, 'have been going about, from Dan to Beersheba, not only attacking and vilifying the whites, for proposing to colonize the blacks, with their own free consent; but equally attacking the blacks for availing themselves of the offer.' An assertion utterly false, and wickedly slanderous.
On page 55, Mr. B. introduces an extract from an address of some of the Cape Palmas Colonists to their friends in America, for the purpose of showing the prosperity of the Colony. In connection with this, let the following letter from a colonist be read:—
'Cape Palmas, May 5th, 1834.
Dear Mother,—I write you with regret. It is true, I wrote to you of my passage, how I enjoyed it. I spent a very agreeable time, and also on my first arrival; but now I am distressed, and all Mr. C's family also. * * * O! I am sorry! yes, sorry that I ever came to this country. It is true, mother, had I taken your advice, I would not have been here. I have suffered and all my family, and Mr. C's family too, and we still continue to suffer. Not a cent of money have any of us got. Now, mother, if you can get any gentleman to advance the amount of three hundred dollars, or two hundred and fifty dollars I will work for them for it four years. I will serve as a waiter in a house, or any thing at all, to pay for it. My wife says she would maintain herself and sister, if that could get her home once more, for here they can do nothing, for we are not able, the country is so sickly—we have been sick ever since we have been here—* * * I will serve any way or at any thing. I will sell myself as a slave, for the sake of getting HOME once more. Try for me, if you please, for my family's sake. If I was by myself, I might scuffle for myself.'
In a subsequent letter, dated August 3, 1834, this same writer communicates the additional intelligence, that Mrs. C 'died of grief.'
'Every benevolent and right thinking person must see, that the scheme of colonizing Africa by black men, is necessary to enlighten Africa, and prevent the extirpation of the black man there.' So says Mr. Breckinridge. Doubtless it was to enlighten the poor natives, and prevent their extirpation, that a brisk traffic in rum, tobacco, gunpowder, and spear-pointed knives, has been carried on with them by black men colonized in Africa—that nine pound balls from 'a gun of great power' were discharged into a body of eight hundred men, standing within sixty yards, pressed shoulder to shoulder, in so compact a form that a child might easily walk upon their heads from one end of the mass to the other' and 'every shot literally spent its force in a solid mass of living human flesh[B]—that by fraud and injustice the colonists excited the hostility of the Africans, and stirred up a war with King Joe Harris, which resulted in the slaughter of numbers of the ignorant barbarians, who were unable to cope with the superior arms, and discipline, and military prowess of the American blacks—the 'missionaries in the holy cause of civilization, religion, and free institutions.'[C]