Thoughts on African Colonization

by William Lloyd Garrison

The duty of the United States to them, is the same exactly as we owe to our colored fellow-subjects in our slave colonies, viz. to obey God, by letting them go free, by placing them beneath wise and equitable laws, and by loving them all, and treating them like brethren; that is to say, the unquestionable duty of the people of the United States is to emancipate their 2,000,000 slaves, and to raise the 500,000 free colored people to that estimation in their native country which is due to them.

But the American Colonization Society deliberately rejects both of these first great duties, and confines itself to the colonization in Africa of the free colored people. They say, in page 5, of their Thirteenth Report, "To abolition she could not look—and need not look." It "could do nothing in the slave States for the cause of humanity;" and in page 8, "Emancipation, with the liberty to remain on this side of the Atlantic, is but an act of dreamy madness."

Now in thus deliberately letting the great crime of negro slavery alone; and in thus substituting a little restricted act of very dubious benevolence to a few, for the great and sacred duty of right which they owe to all,—they hurt the great cause of everlasting truth and love, in the following particulars:

1. By offering to the nation a hope, at which many of their best men seem eagerly grasping, of getting rid of the colored people abroad—they conduce more and more, as this hope prevails, to keep out of mind the superior, unalterable, and immediate duty of righting them at home.

2. By removing whatever number it be, from their native country, the number which remains must be diminished,—and the more the number which remains is diminished, the more helpless will they become—the less will be the hope of their ever recovering their own liberty—and the more and longer will they be trampled upon.

3. The more the people of the United States (and this is equally true of Great Britain) substitute a half-way duty, difficult, expensive, and partial as it must be, and criminal as it unquestionably is—for the whole duty which they owe their negro fellow-subjects, of putting them, before the law, upon a par with themselves—the less will they be likely to feel their sin in continuing to wrong them; and the less they feel their sin, the less likely will they be to repent of it, and to do their duty.

4. The greater the number of slaves transported, the greater will be the value of the labor of those who remain; the more valuable their labor is, the greater will be the temptation to over-labor them, and the more, of course, they will be oppressed.

5. The American Colonization Society directly supports the false and cruel idea that the native country of the colored people of the United States, is not their native country, and that they never can be happy until they either exile themselves, or are exiled; and thus powerfully conduces to extinguish in them all those delightful hopes, and to prevent all that glorious exertion, which would make them a blessing to their country. In this particular, the American Colonization Society takes up a falsehood, as cruel to the colored people, as it is disgraceful to themselves; dwells upon it, as if it were an irrefragable truth; urges it, as such, upon others; and thus endeavors with all its force, to make that practically true, which is one of the greatest stains in the American character; which is one of the greatest scourges that could possibly afflict the free colored people; and which, in itself, is essentially and unalterably false. For be the pertinacity of prejudice what it may, in asserting that the blacks of America never can be amalgamated in all respects, in equal brotherhood with the whites, it will not the less remain an everlasting truth, that the wickedness which produced and perpetuates the assertion, is the only ground of the difficulty, and that all that is requisite to remove the whole evil, is the relenting in love of the proud and cruel spirit which produced it. Could the American Colonization Society succeed in establishing their views on this subject, as being really true of the people of the United States, it would only prove that the people of the United States were past repentance; that they were given over, through their obstinacy in sin, finally to believe a lie; to harden themselves, and to perish in their iniquity. But they have not succeeded in establishing this fearful fact against themselves; and as long as they continue capable of repentance, it never can be true, that the proud and baneful prejudices which now so cruelly alienate them from their colored brethren, may not, will not, must not, yield to the sword of the Spirit, to the Word of God, to the blessed weapons of truth and love.

The American Colonization Society is beautiful and beneficial as far as it supports the cause commenced at Sierra Leone, by introducing into Africa, civilization, commerce, and genuine Christianity—by checking the African slave trade—and by serving in love the emigrants who choose to pass to Liberia.

But it powerfully tends to veil the existing and outrageous atrocity of negro slavery; and it corroborates against the people of color, whether enslaved or free, one of the most base, groundless, and cruel prejudices, that has ever disgraced the powerful, or afflicted the weak.