“For in this Union, you have set
Two kinds of men in adverse rows—
Each loathing each.”
Events are rapidly shaping themselves, and at this present moment we hardly know how swiftly we are approaching the crisis which is to determine the question of color—of equal rights to all men, without regard to color, in the administration of the Government of this country. While, therefore, we remember Liberia, let us not forget ourselves, or the day may come when she can point out to us the fatal rock upon which we split.
I do not apprehend for Liberia dangers from incapacity of her rulers or instability in her institutions. She has had her Roberts, her Benson, her Benedict, and hosts of others, good and true, and she will find their peers in the time of her need. She has her schools and her churches, and under their tuition her next generation will improve upon this as this has upon the last. She will resist the heathen and drive back the Mahomedan. The danger which I do apprehend for her is the danger of absorption.
They themselves seem to have had a half-prophetic dread of this absorption. In her earliest days Elijah Johnson, amidst the dangers of a threatened attack by the surrounding savage tribes, being offered a force of marines from a British man-of-war if he would only cede a few feet of land on which to plant a British flag, promptly refused, saying, “We want no flagstaff put up here that would cost more to get down again than it would to whip the natives.” Now this danger is at their very doors.
A few years ago there was a rage for “internal improvements” in Liberia; $500,000 were borrowed in London, which netted $425,000. This sum was again reduced by paying the first two years’ interest in advance, and then from the remainder was deducted the agents’ commissions, until finally it reached Monrovia in gold and useless goods to the aggregate amount of $200,000, and this residue has disappeared without an “internal improvement.” To use a slang phrase, “We know how it is ourselves.” From Canada to California every town and village in the country has gone through the same experience, but poor Liberia, with an income at the most of $100,000 a year, is unable to pay either principal or interest. She lies at the mercy of her bondholders. England, with her lion’s paw upon the trade of the world, would, and perhaps will eventually, assume the debt for the trifling consideration of possession. It is in fact a mortgage upon the integrity of Liberia. Already England occupies 1,500 miles of the Coast; already she hems in Liberia, the most coveted of all, on the north; already the British trader is encroaching upon her boundaries and stealing in behind her settlements. Slowly and surely the process of absorption will go on to its consummation as the anaconda swallows the kid. England herself is almost powerless to stay it unless we intervene.
I don’t mean by intervention that cold-blooded indifferentism which measures every national emotion with the line and plummet of international law, which restrains within the bounds of obsolete diplomacy every beat of the nation’s heart. I mean the warm, sympathetic intervention which will say to all the world, that, happen what may, the United States of America will see to it that no power on earth shall obliterate from the map of Africa the infant Republic of Liberia.
In this centennial year, the proudest anniversary in recorded history, which proclaims in trumpet tones the triumphant fact that a government by the people and for the people is not only the best but the stablest on earth, let us extend to our own offspring the right hand of fellowship, and declare by every legitimate means we will help her forward in that career which has led us to our present proud pre-eminence. In the language of another who visited Liberia at the same time I did, and came away as deeply impressed, “We are bound to help them by all the considerations that have force with men and nations. By interest and by sympathy we are bound. By interest, because Liberia, the only American colony on the West Coast of Africa, once strong and resting under the protection of the American flag, would open to us the inexhaustible riches of Africa, and in so doing would revive the lost glories of American commerce, which, to our national shame and disgrace, has almost faded from the seas. By sympathy, because of the close parallel between their history and our own. Like us, they went forth from a land where they could no longer remain with honor; to battle for the dear sake of freedom, with poverty, with privation, with hostile savages, and with all the thousand difficulties of an unknown and barbarous land. Like us, they struggled, if not with oppression, still under neglect, and, like us, they conquered. Like us, they have declared and maintained themselves a free Republic, and if in less than thirty years of their national existence they have not accomplished all that they desired, the failure has been largely owing to our own indifference to the children whom we sent out from among us, and then left to take care of themselves. Their love for us is strong. Like most strong affections, ill-treatment only seems to augment its force. Their confidence in us, though so abused, is still unabated. Can we, in this their hour of need and danger, coldly pass by on the other side? Surely it has been want of knowledge, not want of interest, that has so long held us supine. Let us make the parallel, so strong in the past, hold good for the future. Let us strengthen the hands of Liberia, that she may be enabled to do for Africa what we have already done for America.”
Fortunately, we can intervene in the cause of Liberia, if requested so to do by her government. Article 8, of the treaty between the United States of America and Liberia, concluded at London, October 21, 1862, says: