Part 11

I was not a little surprised to learn that Mr. Gurley professed to be ignorant of this fact; for in the African Repository he reviewed Mr. Garrison's Thoughts on African Colonization; and a whole chapter of the work, if I mistake not, is taken up with the sentiments of the people of color on colonization, commencing with the Philadelphia meeting. Perhaps Mr. Gurley did not read that chapter. But if his memory is not very treacherous, he ought to have known the circumstance, for I related it to him myself in a conversation which I had with him at my house one evening, in company with the Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge, and our beloved friend, William Lloyd Garrison. The subject of colonization was warmly discussed; and I well recollect bringing our meeting of 1817 forward as a proof of our early and decided opposition to the measure. No doubt Mr. Garrison also remembers it.

Three meetings were held by us in 1817. The two first you will find in the "Thoughts on Colonization," part 2d, page 9. Of the protest and remonstrance adopted at the third meeting, I send you an exact copy. It is in answer to an address to the citizens of New York and Philadelphia, calling upon them to aid a number of persons of color, whom they said were anxious to join the projected colony in Africa. Those persons were mostly from the south, and it was to disabuse the public mind on this subject, that our meeting was held.

I remain, with great respect, Yours, JAMES FORTEN.

He (Mr. T.) could pledge himself that such were still the feelings of the free colored people of America. Wherever they possessed a glimmering of light upon the subject, they utterly abhorred the society, and would as soon _consent_ to be cut to pieces, as sent to any of the colonies prepared for their reception. Was it not then too bad that Christians should be called upon to support a society so utterly at variance with the wishes and feelings of the parties most nearly concerned? As a few moments yet remained, he would occupy it in quoting the opinions of two gentlemen, ministers of religion, and standing high in their own country, who had furnished lamentable evidence of the extent to which prejudice might possess otherwise strong and enlarged minds. The first quotation was from a report of a committee at the Theological Seminary at Andover, Massachusetts, presented to the Colonization Society of that institution in 1823. It was from the pen of the Rev. Leonard Bacon, now pastor of a Congregational church at New Haven, Connecticut.

"The Soodra is not farther separated from the Brahmin, in regard to all his privileges, civil, intellectual, and moral, than the negro is from the white man, by the prejudices which result from the difference made between them by the God of nature. A barrier more difficult to be surmounted than the institution of the Caste, cuts off, and while the present state of society continues, must always cut off, the negro from all that is valuable in citizenship."

The other was his opponent on that platform; who, in a letter to the New York Evangelist, had said, that emancipation, to be followed by amalgamation, at the option of the parties, would be reckless wickedness. But lest he should misrepresent that gentleman, he would turn to the paper, and quote the passage cited.

"I know that any abolition without the consent of the States holding the slaves, is impossible; that to obtain this consent on any terms, is very difficult;--that to obtain it without the prospect of extensive removal by colonization, is impossible; that to obtain it instantly on any terms, is the dream of ignorance; that to expect it instantly with subsequent equality, is frantic nonsense; and that to demand it, as an instant right, irrespective of consequences, and to be followed by amalgamation at the option of the parties, is RECKLESS WICKEDNESS!"

All the alarm created on the subject of amalgamation was totally unfounded. The views of the Abolitionists were simple and scriptural. They held that there should be no distinctions on account of color. That to treat a man with coldness, unkindness, or contempt, on account of his complexion, was to quarrel with the Maker of us all. They held that this prejudice should be given up, and the colored man be treated as a white man, according to his intellect, morality, and fitness for the duties of civil life. They did not interfere with those tastes by which human beings were regulated in entering into the nearest and most permanent relations of life. They confined themselves to the exhibition of gospel truth upon the subject, and left it to an overruling and watchful Providence to guard and control the consequences springing from a faithful and fearless discharge of duty. Mr. Thompson concluded, by observing, that he considered the readiest way to make men curse their existence and their God, was to oppress and enslave them on account of that complexion, and those peculiarities, which the Creator of the world had stamped upon them.

* * * * *

Mr. BRECKINRIDGE said, he would commence with a slight allusion to two references which had been made to himself by Mr. Thompson. And in regard to certain passages which had been read from speeches of his, he would only say, that he had never written or uttered a single word on this subject, which he would not rejoice to see laid before the British public. But he had a right to complain of the manner in which these passages had been quoted. It was not fair, he contended, to break down a passage, and read only half a sentence, passing over the other half because it would not answer the purpose of the reader; in fact, because it would alter the sense of the passage altogether. He charged Mr. T. with having been guilty of this in the last quotation which he had made, and, in order to show the true meaning of the garbled passage, he would read it as it stood: [See the passage as it appears in Mr. T.'s speech.] He had read this the more particularly, in order to show the consistency of his present opinions with those which he had held and uttered two years ago. They would now perceive, he said, that when the sentence was given entire, he said, that setting the slaves free without reference to consequences, constituted a material and an omitted part of that procedure, which he had characterized as reckless wickedness, whereas by breaking it up in the middle, he was made to say, that to permit voluntary amalgamation, after instant abolition, was by itself to be so considered. He was now ready to defend this statement as he had at first made it.

The next thing he would refer to, was the report of a speech which he [Mr. B.] had delivered at an annual meeting of the American Colonization Society. And with regard to it, if he was in America, he would say, decidedly, that it was not a fair report: that it was an unfair report, got up by Mr. Leavitt, the editor of the New York Evangelist, to serve a special purpose. He would not deny that he had said something which might give a pretext for the report. He had charged the parent society with having been guilty of a gross dereliction of duty to the colony and the cause, in sending away two ships' cargoes of negroes to Liberia, who were not fit for that place, and he believed that those two expeditions had done much to injure the colony itself, as well as to impair public confidence in the firmness and judiciousness of the parent board. They were emigrants unfit to be sent out--the refuse of the counties around South Hampton in Virginia; who were hurried out by the violent state of public sentiment in that region, after the insurrection and massacre there. Like a man conscious of rectitude, he had gone to the very parties concerned, and declared his grounds of complaint; a line of conduct he could not too often commend to Mr. Thompson, and no proof could be more conclusive than this anecdote afforded, that the active friends of colonization in America, however they might differ about details, meant kindly by the blacks, and by Africa. Mr. B. again expressed his surprise that Mr. Thompson should occupy the time of the meeting by repeating his own speeches. He had adverted to this matter before, he said, and as he was in a poor state of health, and had work elsewhere, and as there was much ground yet to go over, and Mr. T. declared his materials to be most abundant, he thought those repetitions might have been spared. They who took the trouble to read the published speeches of this gentleman, would find, that however exhaustless might be the boasted stores of his facts, proofs, and illustrations, about what he called "American Slavery," he was exceedingly economical of them. After reading six or seven of them, he found them so very like each other, that the same stories, in the same order, and the same illustrations, in the same sequence, and the same unfounded charges, in the same terms of unmeasured bitterness, may be often expected, and never in vain. Indeed, so meagre was his supply of wit, even, that it also went on very few changes. The whole case exhibiting a most striking illustration of the truth uttered in a personal sense by one of their own statesmen and scholars, and now proved to be of general application, namely, that when a man resorted to his memory for his jokes, it was very probable that he would draw upon his imagination for his facts. As he [Mr. B.] had been so often asked to produce certain placards for the purpose of substantiating some of his statements, there could be no better connexion in which to call upon Mr. Thompson to bring forward proof of those charges which he brought against certain persons, and classes of persons, unless he wished the world to believe that he had brought those charges without having a single iota of evidence on which to found them. He would call upon Mr. Thompson to bring forward his proofs in support of all those charges, those reckless and extravagant charges, which he brought against the ministers of religion in America. Mr. Thompson had stood before several London audiences with a runaway slave from America, who charged certain individuals with unparalleled cruelty! Amongst other things, with burning a slave alive; a matter to which Mr. T's attention had in vain been called, and his proofs demanded. He would take no further notice of the gross things he had uttered of the president of the United States than to say, that if he (Mr. B.) could condescend to imitate his conduct, and utter ribaldrous things of the king of Great Britain, he should richly deserve to be turned with contempt out of this sacred place. He would proceed, then, with his remarks on the Maryland colonization scheme. They had been told by Mr. T. that the object of the Maryland society was compulsory expatriation, as a condition precedent to freedom. When proof of this was required, he could bring none; and when he (Mr. B.) had showed that it was not so, but that its object was of unmixed good to the blacks, an object accomplished as to many, on their showing, in the proof produced, Mr. Thompson turned round, and said, that it was entirely contrary to his preconceived notions, and repeated statements, and must be false! But facts were better than notions and statements both. And what were the facts in the present case? Why, that on the one hand Mr. Thompson asserts that no slave can be manumitted in Maryland except he will instantly depart the country; whereas Messrs. Harper, Howard and Hoffman assert, in an official report, on the 31st of last December, that 299 manumissions within that state had been officially reported to them within a year, and 1101 within four years. At the same moment I have produced a record of the very names and periods of emigration, of 140, bond and free, all told, who, within the same four years, under the action of the very laws in question, had gone from the state; admitting half of whom to be of those particular manumitted slaves, there would be left 1021 more of them to prove that Mr. T. either totally misunderstood, or mis-stated, that of which he affirms--either way, his assertions are demonstrated to be untrue. As to the laws of Maryland, of which mention had been made, he had not seen them since his visit to Boston two years ago, and in adverting to them he had stated in general terms what he understood them to be. The great object of these laws was said to be the driving out of the free blacks from the state of Maryland. Now that the means taken to promote this end were not of that grinding and iniquitous character which Mr. Thompson had represented them as being, would be sufficiently obvious to the meeting, when it was considered that in that state there were three times the number of free persons of color, than were to be found in the majority of the free states, and considerably more than there were in any other state in the Union. If the laws were found more oppressive in Maryland, how did it come that the free blacks congregated there from all other parts of America? Or if they were set free by the people so much opposed to their increase, why did they not rather go to Pennsylvania, which was separated from Maryland only by an imaginary line, and where free blacks enjoyed almost the same rights as white men? But, again, it was said, that that colonization scheme was an awfully wicked scheme, because it sought to prevent the increase of free persons of color in Maryland. But if this were a grievous sin, were the people of Great Britain not equally guilty in sending away out of the country ship loads of paupers, free whites, to other parts of the globe, in order to prevent the increase of pauperism in this country? Why had not this branch of the subject been adverted to by Mr. Thompson? Why had he not, in the paroxysms of his enfuriated eloquence, while abusing the American colonizationists, not included the king and parliament of Britain for allowing the existence of laws, or if there be no such law, for a practice rife in England, of expatriating thousands of paupers not only by contributions, but at the public expense. He would be told that the paupers were sent away to distant parts of the globe, where they would be more comfortable in every respect than they were at present. And had Mr. T. bowels of compassion only for the black man? Is it lawful to export a white man against his will, at the public charge, while it is unlawful to export a black man, with his free consent, by private benevolence? Is America so detestable a place, that England may lawfully make her the receptacle of the refuse of the poor houses of the realm; while Africa is so sacred a place, that no one that can even do her good is to be permitted to go there from America, if his skin is dark? May Britain say, she has more paupers than she can support, and so make it state policy to force emigration from Ireland, by a system which makes a quarter of the people there beg bread eight months out of twelve, and produces inexpressible distress; and yet is Maryland to be precluded, on any account, or upon any terms, from seeking the diminution, or rather preventing the disproportionate increase, of a population, anomalous, and difficult of proper regulation? He should be most happy to receive an explanation of these strange contradictions! There was another feature of the Maryland laws, which he might mention, which forbade the emigration of slaves into Maryland, even along with their owners. Mr. Thompson had prudently omitted all notice of that enactment, while he had said a great deal about the registration of free persons of color, as if it were a most intolerable hardship. He (Mr. B.) was unable to see in what respect the great hardship consisted. Was not every freeholder in this country registered? But the free black was not allowed to leave the state of Maryland without giving notice, it was said. There was nothing very oppressive in all that. It was no worse interference on the part of the government, than for the king of Great Britain to say to his subjects, You must return home under certain contingencies; you shall not dwell in particular places, nor fight for certain nations. Were the governments of America, because they were republicans, not to have the power which other nations had, of controlling the actions of that portion of their population, whose movements must be regarded by all who regarded the peace of society or the public good. He admitted, that some of the laws in several of the states were hard and severe in reference to the free colored population, but while he said so, it was but fair to add that he considered the conduct of the abolitionists, in spreading their new fangled notions, had done much to alter these laws for the worse. In many instances the bad laws had become worse, and good laws had become bad, solely through the imprudent conduct of Mr. Thompson's associates. And this specific law of registration, and loss of right of residence, by removal for any considerable time out of the state, was obviously intended to prevent free persons of color from going out and becoming imbued with false and bloody theories, and then returning to disturb the public peace. The law says to them, Abide at home, or, if you prefer it, depart, and find a home more to your mind; but if you go, prudence requests us to prohibit your return. Mr. T.'s complaints of this enactment, showed how necessary it was to have made it.

In conclusion, he would recommend to Mr. Thompson, should he ever return to America, he need not be so tremendously prudent in regard to his personal safety, if he would just not be so tremendously imprudent in the principles and proceedings he advocated, and the statements he made with regard to the conduct of the American people. He had now gone over the assertions of Mr. Thompson, regarding the Maryland colonization scheme, and he trusted that he had shown the unfounded nature of those assertions. All that had been said by Mr. T. as to the principles and objects of the colonizationists, and the scope and influence of their course, had no other proof than the writings of those persons, who for some years, had formed a very small portion of the supporters of this great interest; and who, without exception, belonged to those classes, who at first, as had already been admitted, supported it, for reasons, some of which were entirely political, others perhaps severe to the slaves, and others unjust or inconsiderate towards the free blacks. But that directly opposite views, statements and arguments, could be more amply procured from the still greater, and still proportionately increasing party, who support this cause, as a great benevolent and religious operation, must be perfectly known to the individual himself. If he admit this, said Mr. B., it will show his present course to be of the same uncandid kind with all the rest of his conduct towards America, in selecting what answered his purpose; that always being the worst thing he could find, and representing it as a fair sample of all. It will do more, it will show that what he calls proof is no proof at all. But if he denies my repeated representations as to the various classes of the original supporters of the parent society, and the present state of them, I am equally content; as, in that case, all America would have a fair criterion by which to test his statements. As to the Maryland plan, and that pursued by the united societies of Philadelphia and New York, if they have any supporters except such as love the cause of the black man, of temperance, and of peace, the world has yet to find it out.

The time being expired, Mr. B. sat down.

FOURTH NIGHT--THURSDAY, JUNE 16.

MR. THOMPSON said that before proceeding to the subject decided upon for that evening's discussion, he must, in justice to himself and his cause, offer a remark or two. He had on the previous evening been struck with surprise at the extraordinary injustice of charging him (Mr. T.) with quoting unfairly from the letter of Mr. Breckinridge in the New-York Evangelist. It must have been obvious to all, that in the first instance, he quoted from memory, but all would recollect with the avowed wish of avoiding misrepresentation, he had gone to his table--produced the letter, and read the passage entire without the omission or interpolation of a letter or a comma. He, therefore, emphatically denied the charge of garbling. Mr. Breckinridge did himself, immediately afterwards, read the passage, and read it precisely as he (Mr. Thompson) had read it. The imputation, therefore, was equally unfounded and unfair. He (Mr. T.) was thankful that his argument needed not such help. It would be as absurd as it would be wicked for him to attempt to support his cause by any garbled statement.

He begged also that it might be distinctly understood that he had by no means exhausted the evidence in his possession on the subject of Colonization. He could adduce a thousand times as much as that which had been already brought forward. He had much to say of the colony at Liberia; the means taken to establish it, the nature of the climate, the character of the emigrants, the mortality amongst the settlers, how much it had done towards the suppression of the slave trade, &c. In fact, he was prepared with overwhelming evidence upon every branch of the subject, and was willing to return to it at any moment, confident that the arguments he could produce, and the facts by which he could support them, would, in the estimation of the public, destroy forever the claim of the Colonization Society to be considered a pure, peaceful, or benevolent institution. I now, (said Mr. T.) come to the topic immediately before us.

It is my solemn and responsible duty to bring before you to-night the _principles_ and _measures_ of a large, respectable, and powerful body in the United States, known by the name of IMMEDIATE ABOLITIONISTS. A body of individuals embracing not fewer than fifteen hundred ministers of the gospel, and men of the highest station and largest attainments. A body of persons that have been charged upon this platform with being a handful, "so small that they could not obtain their object, and so erroneous (_despicable_ was, I believe, the word used) as not to deserve success,"--charged with being the enemies of the slave-holder--taking him by the throat, and saying "you great thieving, man-stealing villain, unless you instantly give your slaves liberty, I will pitch you out of this third-story window,"--charged with carrying in their track a pestilence like a storm of fire and brimstone from hell; forcing ministers of religion to seek peaceful villages not yet blasted by it,--charged with saying that they were sent from God, when they possessed the fury of demons,--charged, finally, with having "thrown the cause" of emancipation "a _hundred years_ farther back than it was five years ago." These are fearful indictments, and Mr. Breckinridge has a weighty duty to fulfil to-night, for he is bound to sustain them. They have been brought by himself, a Christian minister, the professed friend of the slave; and he must, therefore, abundantly support them by incontrovertible evidence, or stand branded before the world as the worst foe of human freedom--the foul calumniator of the friends and advocates of the oppressed, the suffering, and the dumb.