But we are writing coolly, as if this were an open question whether the four millions of blacks are to remain for many years to come in this country or not. It is no open question. They are here, and here they must remain for a period which no man is competent to limit, even in his argument. They cannot, or to speak mildly, they will not be transported across the sea or to any foreign land. They may eventually, as we shall endeavor to suggest, go, but they cannot be sent away. In this assertion, we leave the inclinations and the will of the black man out of the question. There are reasons which must operate on the side of the white to make it impossible. The colored race is necessary, and will be so for a period indefinitely long, to the southern country. It constitutes its labor; it is the productive force of that land; it has been for the past two hundred years. It is the foundation element of the whole social state. Now by what power shall there be a speedy removal of the whole labor of a country? How shall the entire producing element be suddenly abstracted? Were that possible to be done, the whole state would plunge at once into poverty and ruin. Once or twice the experiment has been tried, in historic times, of banishing or destroying a producing element of a state, and though done on a comparatively small scale, the result are sufficiently marked to teach all after time. Spain did it when she drove the Moors from her Castilian lands. France did it when she murdered and banished the Huguenots, and they both have scarcely, after two and three centuries, recovered from the shock and the ruin.
But we need not spend our space in discussing the point. However any one may deem the colonization of the whole colored race desirable, still it will remain an impossibility; there are natural and economic forces which would be omnipotent to prevent it. They are needed here, and where a race is needed, there, in this age of the world, it will abide. There is work to be done; they can do it, they have done it; there is no one else at present to take their place, and so a power above wishes, prejudice, or argument, holds them here—the power of an economic necessity.
The colored race is here, here for a long time it will remain; it will not—the events bewildering us by their rapid march all point one way—it will not remain in slavery; it will and must by-and-by be free. We, as an American people, must accept this double truth with all its difficulties and perplexities; we must like men, in God's fear and with many a cry for his help, bravely deal with it. We need not now go back and stand sighing over the past, and mourning that we did not a century ago meet it and escape the mighty work and sorrow of to-day; we cannot put it away any longer; the great questions rise up before us with a menace upon their brow; they demand and they will have an answer now to-day. No scheme of deportation or colonization shall open any easy door of escape; let no man console himself that the question of emancipation is to be solved by any such short and simple process; here on this continent, within the borders of these States, slavery has done its work, and just here freedom is to have her greatest and most glorious triumph. This American State has given some examples to history, it has given some demonstrations of the power of free institutions for the white, it is giving to-day its most memorable, and is it too much to hope that it will yet give to the world a more glorious, because more difficult, demonstration of the same power in the black race? What if it should remain, for it, after having completed its work for the one, it should crown it in the other, by lifting it from deepest slavery, and by self-sacrifice and toil make it a blessing to the world! So we believe it will yet be. The way is not clear now; the people do not see their work; but by-and-by it will of itself be before them, and they will address themselves to it, bringing every quickened power which marks them among the nations, and, under God, they will complete it.
How it shall be done we do not feel competent to intimate, and it was not the purpose of this paper to attempt to indicate. No man, perhaps, is sufficient for that. The Providence of God we believe will mark the path, and events will hurry us if we be ready to follow them in right line of the work.
There are some things, however, which may be said that may possibly cast some light upon the supposed difficulties of the matter of emancipation without colonization. These difficulties, we think, arise in many cases from a mistaken estimate of the negro character and capabilities.
It is not our design to enter upon the question of the inferiority of the race or the impossibility of its ever living on an equality with the white; while we are not ready to grant the first, certainly not to the extent to which it is pushed, we are disposed to believe the latter. It is doubtful, we are inclined to believe it impossible, that the two races can ever on this continent abide on terms of social equality. We are, too, inclined to believe that this country is not to be the ultimate home of the colored race. It will go out from it. We think that there is that in the character of the African race which makes this probable, perhaps certain. In the strange workings of Divine Providence this race has in a marvellous manner been brought to this land, and put under a tutelage for a great future, and that Africa, its home, may become the recipient of blessing, the foundation and preparation for which were made in this country.
The bondage of the Israelites in Egypt was not an accident, but a divinely ordered procedure, which had a striking bearing upon the character of the Jew and shaped his whole after history. It was a work of preparation, and it was not done in a short time, but took two or three centuries to be brought to perfection. American slavery, like this Egyptian bondage, will have its results on the future or Africa.
In saying this, of course no reader will suppose that there is in the thought a justification of slavery, any more than when speaking of the great benefits which flowed from the bondage in Egypt to the Jew, we justify the selling of Joseph, or the tyranny of Pharaoh. It is God's wonderful work to bring the greatest good out of the deepest evils; the Fall to issue in Redemption.
It is impossible to discuss the future of the black people in this country without immediately being brought into contact with the future of Africa. The one is closely connected with the other. The movements of Providence are synchronous. How wonderfully events are prepared in distant places, that they may be brought together at the appointed moment! The fact that at just the time when the great and absorbing questions which relate to this people in our own land are forcing themselves upon our attention, the continent of Africa is attracting more of interest in the way of discovery and travel than any other portion of the earth, has, we think, a meaning.
Geographical research has almost exhausted other lands, while here almost a continent, at least till within a few years, has remained unexplored. This has not been because no efforts have been made to break through the thick veil that has always hung over it. Travellers have been unceasing in their attempts to penetrate into the interior, and have failed, not from want of energy, but because of the insuperable difficulties in the way. If they have succeeded in reaching the shores, they died under the fatal coast fever. If they have escaped this death, and pressed towards the interior, it has been only to fall victims to savage beasts or more savage men. So that African exploration has been, until perhaps within the last fifteen years, a history of melancholy disaster and sacrifice of valuable life.