An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans

by Lydia Maria Child

I will for a moment glance at what many suppose is still the intention of the Colonization Society, viz., gradually to remove all the blacks in the United States. The Society has been in operation more than fifteen years, during which it has transported between two and three thousand free people of color. There are in the United States two million of slaves and three hundred thousand free blacks; and their numbers are increasing at the rate of seventy thousand annually. While the Society have removed less than three thousand,—five hundred thousand have been born. While one hundred and fifty free blacks have been sent to Africa in a year, two hundred slaves have been born in a day. To keep the evil just where it is, seventy thousand a year must be transported. How many ships, and how many millions of money, would it require to do this? It would cost three million

five hundred thousand dollars a year, to provide for the safety of our Southern brethren in this way! To use the language of Mr. Hayne, it would "bankrupt the treasury of the world" to execute the scheme. And if such a great number could be removed annually, how would the poor fellows subsist? Famines have already been produced even by the few that have been sent. What would be the result of landing several thousand destitute beings, even on the most fertile of our own cultivated shores?

And why should they be removed? Labor is greatly needed, and we are glad to give good wages for it. We encourage emigration from all parts of the world; why is it not good policy, as well as good feeling, to improve the colored people, and pay them for the use of their faculties? For centuries to come, the means of sustenance in this vast country must be much greater than the population; then why should we drive away people, whose services may be most useful? If the moral cultivation of negroes received the attention it ought, thousands and thousands would at the present moment be gladly taken up in families, factories, &c. And, like other men, they ought to be allowed to fit themselves for more important usefulness, as far and as fast as they can.

There will, in all human probability, never be any decrease in the black population of the United States. Here they are, and here they must remain, in very large numbers, do what we will. We may at once agree to live together in mutual good-will, and perform a mutual use to each other—or we may go on, increasing tyranny on one side, and jealousy and revenge on the other, until the fearful elements complete their work of destruction, and something better than this sinful republic rises on the ruins. Oh, how earnestly do I wish that we may choose the holier and safer path!

To transport the blacks in such annual numbers as has hitherto been done, cannot have any beneficial effect upon the present state of things. It is Dame Partington with her pail mopping up the rushing waters of the Atlantic! So far as this gradual removal has any effect, it tends to keep up the price of slaves in the market, and thus perpetuate the system. A writer in the Kentucky Luminary, speaking of colonization, uses the following argument: "None are obliged to follow our example; and those who do not, will find the value of their negroes increased by the departure of ours."

If the value of slaves is kept up, it will be a strong temptation to smuggle in the commodity; and thus while one vessel carries them out from America, another will be bringing them in from Africa. This would be like dipping up the water of Chesapeake Bay into barrels, conveying it across the Atlantic, and emptying it into the Mediterranean: the Chesapeake would remain as full as ever, and by the time the vessel returned, wind and waves would have brought the same water back again.

Slave-owners have never yet, in any part of the world, been known to favor, as a body, any scheme, which could ultimately tend to abolish slavery; yet in this country, they belong to the Colonization Society in large numbers, and agree to pour from their State treasuries into its funds. Individuals object to it, it is true; but the scheme is very generally favored in the slave States.

The following extract from Mr. Wood's speech in the Legislature of Virginia, will show upon what ground the owners of slaves are willing to sanction any schemes of benevolence. The "Colonization Society may be a part of the grand system of the Ruler of the Universe, to provide for the transfer of negroes to their mother country. Their introduction into this land may have been one of the inscrutable ways of Providence to confer blessings upon that race—it may have been decreed that they shall be the means of conveying to the minds of their benighted countrymen, the blessing of religious and civil liberty. But I fear there is little ground to believe the means have yet been created to effect so glorious a result, or that the present race of slaves are to be benefited by such a removal. I shall trust that many of them may be carried to the south-western States as slaves. Should this door be closed, how can Virginia get rid of so large a number as are now annually deported to the different States and Territories where slaves are wanted? Can the gentleman show us how from twelve thousand to twenty thousand can be annually carried to Liberia?"

Yet notwithstanding such numbers of mothers and children are yearly sent from a single State, "separately or in lots," to supply the demands of the internal slave-trade, Mr. Hayne, speaking of freeing these people and sending them away, says: "It is wholly irreconcilable with our notions of humanity to tear asunder the tender ties, which they had formed among us to gratify the feelings of a false philanthropy!"

As for the removal of blacks from this country, the real fact is this; the slave States are very desirous to get rid of their troublesome surplus of colored population, and they are willing that we should help to pay for the transportation. A double purpose is served by this; for the active benevolence which is eager to work in the cause, is thus turned into a harmless and convenient channel. Neither the planters nor the Colonization Society, seem to ask what right we have to remove people from the places where they have been born and brought up,—where they have a home, which, however miserable, is still their home,—and where their relatives and acquaintances all reside. Africa is no more their native country than England is ours,[AF]—nay, it is less so, because there is no community of language or habits;—besides, we cannot say to them, as Gilpin said to his horse, "'Twas for your pleasure you came here, you shall go back for mine."