In tracing the causes which led to the organization of the American Colonization Society, the statistics of the penitentiaries down to 1827, were given, as affording an index to the moral condition of the free colored people at that period. The facts of a similar kind, for 1850, are added here, to indicate their present moral condition. The statistics are compiled from the Compendium of the Census of the United States, for 1850, and published in 1854.
Tabular Statement of the number of the native and foreign white population, the colored population, the number of each class in the Penitentiaries, the proportion of the convicts to the whole number of each class, the proportion of colored convicts over the foreign and also over the native whites, in the four States named, for the year 1850:
| Classes, etc. | Mass. | N. York. | Penn. | Ohio. |
| Native Whites, | 819,044 | 2,388,830 | 1,953,276 | 1,732,698 |
| In the Penitentiary, | 264 | 835 | 205 | 291 |
| Being 1 out of | 3,102 | 2,860 | 9,528 | 5,954 |
Foreign Whites, | 163,598 | 655,224 | 303,105 | 218,099 |
| In the Penitentiary, | 125 | 545 | 123 | 71 |
| Being 1 out of | 1,308 | 1,202 | 2,464 | 3,077 |
Colored Population, | 9,064 | 49,069 | 53,626 | 25,279 |
| In the Penitentiary, | 47 | 257 | 109 | 44 |
| Being 1 out of | 192 | 190 | 492 | 574 |
| Colored convicts over foreign, | 6.8 times | 6.3 times | 5 times | 5.3 times |
| Colored convicts over native whites, | 16.1 times | 15 times | 19.3 times | 10.3 times |
It appears from these figures, that the amount of crime among the colored people of Massachusetts, in 1850, was 68/10 times greater than the amount among the foreign born population of that State, and that the amount, in the four States named, among the free colored people, averages five-and-three-quarters times more, in proportion to their numbers, than it does among the foreign population, and over fifteen times more than it does among the native whites. It will be instructive, also, to note the moral condition of the free colored people in Massachusetts, the great center of abolitionism, where they have enjoyed equal rights ever since 1780. Strange to say, there is nearly three times as much among them, in that State, as exists among those of Ohio! More than this will be useful to note, as it regards the direction of the emigration of the free colored people. Massachusetts, in 1850, had but 2,687 colored persons born out of the State, while Ohio had 12,662 born out of her limits. Take another fact: the increase, per cent., of the colored population, in the whole New England States, was, during the ten years, from 1840 to 1850, but 171/100, while in Ohio, it was, during that time, 4576/1000.
There is another point worthy of notice. Though the New England abolition States have offered equal political rights to the colored man, it has afforded him little temptation to emigrate into their bounds. On the contrary, several of these States have been diminishing their free colored population, for many years past, and none of them can have had accessions of colored immigrants; as is abundantly proved by the fact, that their additions, of this class of persons, have not exceeded the natural increase of the resident colored population.[71] Another fact is equally as instructive. It will be noted, that, in Ohio, the largest increase of the free colored population, is in the anti-abolition counties—the abolition counties, often, having increased very little, indeed, between 1840 and 1850. But the most curious fact is, that the largest majorities for the abolition candidate for governor, in 1855, were in the counties having the fewest colored people, while the largest majorities against him, were in those having the largest numbers of free negroes and mullatoes.[72] From these facts, both in regard to New England and Ohio, one of two conclusions may be logically deduced: Either the colored people find so little sympathy from the abolitionists, that they will not live among them; or else their presence, in any community, in large numbers, tends to cure the whites of all tendencies toward practical abolitionism!
CHAPTER XVI.
Disappointment of English and American Abolitionists—Their failure attributed to the inherent evils of Slavery—Their want of discrimination—The differences in the system in the British Colonies and in the United States—Colored people of United States vastly in advance of all others—Success of the Gospel among the Slaves—Democratic Review on African civilization—Vexation of Abolitionists at their failure—Their apology not to be accepted—Liberia attests its falsity—The barrier to the colored man's elevation removable only by Colonization—Colored men begin to see it—Chambers, of Edinburgh—His testimony on the crushing effects of New England's treatment of colored people—Charges Abolitionists with insincerity—Approves Colonization—Abolition violence rebuked by an English clergyman.
The condition of the free colored people can now be understood. The results, in their case, are vastly different from what was anticipated, when British philanthropists succeeded in West India emancipation. They are very different, also, from what was expected by American abolitionists: so different, indeed, that their disappointment is fully manifested, in the extracts made from their published documents. As an apology for the failure, it seems to be their aim to create the belief, that the dreadful moral depravation, existing in the West Indies, is wholly owing to the demoralizing tendencies of slavery. They speak of this effect as resulting from laws inherent in the system, which have no exceptions, and must be equally as active in the United States as in the British colonies. But in their zeal to cast odium on slavery, they prove too much—for, if this be true, it follows, that the slave population of the United States must be equally debased with that of Jamaica, and as much disqualified to discharge the duties of freemen, as both have been subjected to the operations of the same system. This is not all. The logic of the argument would extend even to our free colored people, and include them, according to the American Missionary Association, in the dire effects of "that enduring legacy which, with its foul, pestilential influences, still blights, like the mildew of death, every thing in society that should be lovely, virtuous, and of good report." Now, were it believed, generally, that the colored people of the United States are equally as degraded as those of Jamaica, upon what grounds could any one advocate the admission of the blacks to equal social and political privileges with the whites? Certainly, no Christian family or community would willingly admit such men to terms of social or political equality! This, we repeat, is the logical conclusion from the Reports of the American Missionary Association and the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society—a conclusion, too, the more certain, as it makes no exceptions between the condition of the colored people under the slavery of Jamaica and under that of the United States.
