'The fact was most glaring, without an inquiry, that the same shackles which bound them, fastened them also to the resources of the soil, and the interests of the community; and when these were broken, and the incentives of authority removed, the weight of ignorance, the want of better incentives, and the fatal and untried power of grateful but ruinous idleness, sunk them to a state, which, however elevated in theory, was in fact more degraded and more miserable than that of bondage. In addition to all this, pauperism, with the numerous evils of corrupt and corrupting indolence, threatened to impose its sluggish weight upon a groaning community. Hence, the progress of emancipation was, for the time, most righteously arrested.'—[Address of the Board of Managers of the African Education Society.]
'Who are the free people of color in the United States? In what circumstances does philanthropy find them! There are indeed individuals and families, who are sober, industrious, pious. But what are the remainder, the mass? Every one knows that their condition is deep and wretched degradation; but, only a few have ever formed any accurate conception of the reality. The fact is, that as a class they are branded. They have no home, no country, no such personal interest in the welfare of the community, as gives a certain degree of manliness to almost every white man.... Three hundred thousand freemen in this country, are freemen only in name, forming only little else than a mass of pauperism and crime.... Here the black man is paralysed and crushed by the constant sense of inferiority. He has no effectual incentives to manly enterprise. He stands in a degraded class of society; and out of that class he never dreams of rising.'—[Christian Spectator.]
'This is the true condition of the free colored population of our land. They are placed mid way between freedom and slavery; they feel neither the moral stimulants of the one, nor the restraints of the other, and are alike injurious to every other class of the community.'—[Southern Religious Telegraph.]
I repel these charges against the free people of color, as unmerited, wanton and untrue. It would be absurd to pretend, that, as a class, they maintain a high character: it would be equally foolish to deny, that intemperance, indolence and crime prevail among them to a mournful extent. But I do not hesitate to assert, from an intimate acquaintance with their condition, that they are more temperate and more industrious than that class of whites who are in as indigent circumstances, but who have certainly far greater incentives to labor and excel; that they are superior in their habits to the hosts of foreign emigrants who are crowding to our shores, and poisoning our moral atmosphere; and that their advancement in intelligence, in wealth, and in morality, considering the numberless and almost insurmountable difficulties under which they have labored, has been remarkable. I am informed that twenty-five or thirty years ago, the colored inhabitants of Philadelphia scarcely owned a dollar's worth of real estate, whereas they now own enough to amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. This fact speaks volumes in praise of their industry and economy; for, be it remembered, they have had to accumulate this property in small sums, by shaving the beards, cleaning the boots and clothes, and being the servants of their white contemners, and in other menial employments. In Baltimore, Philadelphia, New-York, and other places, there are several colored persons whose individual property is worth from ten thousand to one hundred thousand dollars;[T] and in all those cities, there are primary and high schools for the education of the colored population—flourishing churches of various denominations—and numerous societies for mutual assistance and improvement, &c. In Philadelphia alone, I believe, there are nearly fifty colored associations for benevolent, literary, scientific and moral purposes.[U] Yet these are the people of whom it is said, 'they are acted upon by no motives to honorable exertions;' that they are 'scarcely reached in their debasement by the heavenly light' (almost a denial of the power of the Holy Ghost); that 'their freedom is licentiousness;' that 'they are a greater nuisance than even the slaves themselves;' that they are 'the most degraded, the most abandoned race on the earth;' that they are 'worse circumstanced than the slave population;' that they have 'no privilege but the privilege of being more vicious and miserable than slaves can be;' and that they are 'a thriftless race of vagabonds, whose footsteps are the sure precursors of indigence and crime.' And these false and infamous charges are brought against them by a Society which professes to cherish for them the highest regard, and to be anxious to give them respectability in the eyes of the world!
The truth is, the traducers of the free blacks have no adequate conception of the amount of good sense, sterling piety, moral honesty, virtuous pride of character, and domestic enjoyment, which exists among this class. The spirited remarks of the colored citizens of New-York, in their address to the public, (vide Part II. p. 16,) in reference to their calumniators, are exceedingly apposite: 'Their patrician principles prevent an intercourse with men in the middle walks of life, among whom a large portion of our people may be classed. We ask them to visit the dwellings of the respectable part of our people, and we are satisfied that they will discover more civilization and refinement, than will be found among the same number of white families of an equal standing.' A personal examination enables me to say that this challenge is neither presumptuous nor boastful. I confess, I have been most agreeably, nay, wonderfully disappointed, in my intercourse with them, which is daily elevating them in my estimation. Many of their number I proudly rank among my most familiar friends and correspondents.
With regard to the 'ragged set in Boston, crying out liberty!' every candid resident will testify that this is a libellous representation; that our free blacks are a quiet, orderly, well-dressed, and (as far as they can obtain employment) industrious class of citizens; and that their improvement is rapid and constant. Every curious observer who visits their houses of worship, will be surprised at the general neatness of attire and propriety of manners of the worshippers. 'A ragged set,' forsooth! The slander may be uttered in the city of Washington, at an anniversary of the American Colonization Society; but no man, who regards his character for veracity and intelligence, dare publish it in Boston.
The effects of this reiterated abuse are eminently mischievous. It serves to kindle the fires of persecution, to strengthen prejudice, to drive its victims to despair, and to increase the desire for their banishment. 'Tax your utmost powers of imagination,' says one of the colonization advocates, 'and you cannot conceive one motive to honorable effort, which can animate the bosom, or give impulse to the conduct of the free black in this country'! Is this language calculated to allay animosity, or beget confidence, or suppress contempt, or heal division, or excite sympathy? Far otherwise. Are there not thousands of living witnesses to prove the falsity of this assertion; thousands who adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour, and whose 'motives to honorable effort' are higher than heaven and vast as eternity; thousands, who, though their enemies spare no efforts to crush them in the dust, and in despite of mountains of difficulties, rise up with a giant's strength to respectability and usefulness? 'No motive to honorable effort'! Perish the calumny!
Again, they are stigmatized as the 'wild stirrers up of sedition and insurrection.' This charge is even more malignant than the other, and utterly groundless. Its propagation, however, tends directly to excite a persecution which may drive the accused to sedition, in self-defence. There is no evidence that any free man of color was enlisted in the late bloody struggle in Virginia, or in any manner accessary thereto. On the contrary, it was deprecated by our colored citizens generally, not only on account of its sanguinary acts, but because they knew it would operate to their own disadvantage by being placed to their account. The following honorable expression of feeling was made at a public meeting of the people of color in Wilmington, Delaware, about that period:
'The subscribers, having a knowledge of the alarm which prevails in the minds of some of the citizens of this place, on account of various reports which some mischievous person or persons have circulated, in regard to the colored population, beg leave to represent, on behalf of themselves and brethren, that having made inquiry into the subject, they have found said reports to be without the least foundation; and they owe it to themselves further to declare, that, so far from any disposition on the part of the colored people to disturb the peace and good order of the community, they are, on the contrary, fully aware that it consists not less with their interests than their duty to refrain from every art that would excite commotion or disorder, in which the colored people would have every thing to lose and nothing to gain. We have been treated by the citizens of Wilmington and its vicinity with kindness, for which we ought to be grateful, and it is our solemn purpose to pursue such a course of conduct as may merit a continuance of their favor and confidence. Should any among us be found so wicked and blinded as to enter into plots and contrivances, inimical to the present harmony, we thus solemnly pledge ourselves to our white friends and neighbors, that we will be among the first to sound the alarm, and unite in effecting their apprehension and suppression.'
The free colored citizens of Baltimore, Maryland, also came out unitedly in the following pacific and truly exemplary spirit: