Thoughts on African Colonization

by William Lloyd Garrison

'The impropriety and impolicy of manumitting slaves, in any case, in our country, one would suppose, must be apparent to all. It is not a little astonishing that individuals acquainted with the facts, and the evils brought upon society by the free black population, should persist in declaring that duty and humanity call upon us to give the slaves their freedom. It really appears to me that there is entirely too much "namby pamby sentimentality" and affected feeling exhibited respecting the condition of slaves. Do these individuals believe that benevolence and humanity command us to turn loose upon society a set of persons who confessedly only serve to swell the amount of crime, while they add nothing to the industry, to the wealth, or the strength of the country? Because abstractedly considered, man has no right to hold his fellow man in bondage, shall we give up our liberty, and the peace of society, in order that this principle may not be violated? The fact is, the negroes are happier when kept in bondage. In their master they find a willing and efficient protector, to guard them from injury and insult, to attend to them when sick and in distress, and to provide for their comfort and support, when old age overtakes them. When in health, they are well fed and clothed, and by no means, in common cases, are they hardly worked.'—[A warm advocate of African Colonization in the Alexandria Gazette.]

'But there are other difficulties in the way of immediate emancipation. We believe that no one, who has taken charge of an infant, and made a cripple of him, either in his feet, his hands, or his mind, so that when he is of mature age, he is unable to take care of himself, has a right to turn him out of doors, to perish or destroy himself, and call it, giving him his liberty. After having reduced him to this condition, he is bound to afford him the support and protection, which he has rendered necessary.

'This appears to us to be the true relation of the southern planters to their slaves. Not that the southern planters have generally been guilty of personal cruelty; but such has been the general result of the system acted upon, and such the relation growing out of it. The slaves have grown up, under the eye of their masters, unable to take care of themselves; and their masters, for whose comfort and convenience this has been done, are bound to provide for them.

'Nor do we think that the exhortation, to "do right and trust Providence," applies at all to this case; for the very question is, "what is right?" Would it be right for the slave merchant, in the midst of the Atlantic, to knock the manacles from his prisoners and throw them overboard, and call this, giving them their liberty and trusting Providence with the result? But how else could he reduce the doctrine of immediate and complete emancipation to practice?'—[Vermont Chronicle.]

The miserable sophistry contained in the foregoing extracts scarcely needs a serious refutation. 'To say that immediate emancipation will only increase the wretchedness of the slaves, and that we must pursue a system of gradual abolition, is to present to us the double paradox, that we must continue to do evil, in order to cure the evil which we are doing; and that we must continue to be unjust, and to do evil, that good may come.' The fatal error of gradualists lies here: They talk as if the friends of abolition contended only for the emancipation of the slaves, without specifying or caring what should be done with or for them! as if the planters were invoked to cease from one kind of villany, only to practise another! as if the manumitted slaves must necessarily be driven out from society into the wilderness, like wild beasts! This is talking nonsense: it is a gross perversion of reason and common sense. Abolitionists have never said, that mere manumission would be doing justice to the slaves: they insist upon a remuneration for years of unrequited toil, upon their employment as free laborers, upon their immediate and coefficient instruction, and upon the exercise of a benevolent supervision over them on the part of their employers. They declare, in the first place, that to break the fetters of the slaves, and turn them loose upon the country, without the preservative restraints of law, and destitute of occupation, would leave the work of justice only half done; and, secondly, that it is absurd to suppose that the planters would be wholly independent of the labor of the blacks—for they could no more dispense with it next week, were emancipation to take place, than they can to-day. The very ground which they assume for their opposition to slavery,—that it necessarily prevents the improvement of its victims,—shows that they contemplate the establishment of schools for the education of the slaves, and the furnishing of productive employment, immediately upon their liberation. If this were done, none of the horrors which are now so feelingly depicted, as the attendants of a sudden abolition, would ensue.

But we are gravely told that education must precede emancipation. The logic of this plea is, that intellectual superiority justly gives one man an oppressive control over another! Where would such a detestable principle lead but to practices the most atrocious, and results the most disastrous, if carried out among ourselves? Tell us, ye hair-splitting sophists, the exact quantum of knowledge which is necessary to constitute a freeman. If every dunce should be a slave, your servitude is inevitable; and richly do you deserve the lash for your obtuseness. Our white population, too, would furnish blockheads enough to satisfy all the classical kidnappers in the land.

The reason why the slaves are so ignorant, is because they are held in bondage; and the reason why they are held in bondage, is because they are so ignorant! They ought not to be freed until they are educated; and they ought not be educated, because on the acquisition of knowledge they would burst their fetters! Fine logic, indeed! How men, who make any pretensions to honesty or common sense, can advance a paradox like this, is truly inexplicable. 'I never met with a man yet,' says an able writer in Kentucky, 'who impliedly admits the enslaving of human beings as consistent with the exercise of christian duties, who could talk or write ten minutes on the subject, without expressing nonsense, or contradicting himself, or advancing heresy which would expose him to censure on any other subject.' In this connexion, I make the following extract from the Report of the Dublin Negro's Friend Society, of which Wilberforce is President, and Clarkson Vice President:

'They do not recognize the false principle, that education, as a preparation for freedom, must precede emancipation; or that an amelioration of the slaves' condition should be a substitute for it: on the contrary, THEY INSIST UPON UNPROCRASTINATED EMANCIPATION, as a right which is unrighteously withheld, and the restoration of which is, in their opinion, the first and most indispensable step to all improvement, and absolutely essential to the application of the only remedy for that moral debasement, in which slavery has sunk its victims.'

I cannot portray the absurdity of the doctrine of gradual abolition, and the danger and folly of attempting to mitigate the system of slavery, more strikingly, than by presenting the following eloquent extracts from a speech of the Rev. Dr. Thomson of Edinburgh, one of the most learned and able divines in Great Britain, whose sudden death was recorded in the newspapers a few months since:

'The word immediate may no doubt be considered as a strong word; but you will observe that it is used as contrasted with the word gradual. And were I to criticise the term gradual as certain opponents have treated the term immediate, I could easily, by the help of a little quibbling, bring you to the conclusion, that as hitherto employed it means that the abolition is never to take place, and that, by putting it into their petition, they are to be understood as deprecating rather than asking the emancipation of the slaves. "Immediate," they argue, "evanishes as soon as you utter it; it is gone before your petition reaches parliament." How absurd! If I should say to my servant while engaged in work, "You must go to the south side of the town with a message for me immediately," is it indeed implied in the order I have given him, that he could not fulfil it, unless he set off without his hat, without his coat, without his shoes, without those habiliments which are requisite for his appearing decently in the streets of Edinburgh, and executing the task that I had assigned him? The meaning of the word as used by us is perfectly clear, and cannot be misapprehended by any one: it is not to be made a subject of metaphysical animadversion: it is to be considered and understood under the direction of common sense, and especially as modified and expounded by those statements with which it is associated both in our resolutions and in the petition; and viewed in that light, immediate abolition is not merely an intelligible phrase, but one that does not warrant a particle of the alarm which some have affected to take at it, and is not liable to any one of those objections which some have been pleased to make to it.