Part 7

"If we were to invoke the greatest blessing on earth, which Heaven, in its mercy, could now bestow on this nation, it would be the separation of the two most numerous races of its population and their comfortable establishment in distinct and different countries."[103]

VIEWS OF LINCOLN

The biographers of Abraham Lincoln, Nicolay and Hay, declare:

"The political creed of Abraham Lincoln embraced among other tenets, a belief in the value and promise of colonization as one means of solving the great race problem involved in the existence of slavery in the United States.... Without being an enthusiast, Lincoln was a firm believer in colonization."[104]

Speaking at Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857, Mr. Lincoln said:

"I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect prevention of amalgamation. I have no right to say that all the members of the Republican Party are in favor of this nor to say that as a party they are in favor of it. There is nothing in their platform directly on the subject. But I can say a very large proportion of its members are for it and that the chief plank in that platform—opposition to the spread of slavery—is most favorable to that separation. Such separation, if ever effected at all, must be effected by colonization.... The enterprise is a difficult one but where there is a will there is a way; and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and at the same time favorable to, or, at least, not against our interests, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be."[105]

Upon his assumption of the office of President Mr. Lincoln sought to carry into effect his colonization views. In his first annual message to Congress—December, 1861—after alluding to the act "to confiscate property used for insurrectionary purposes," enacted by Congress at its extra session, under the operations of which thousands of slaves had come into the custody of the Federal authorities and the further fact that some of the states might adopt similar statutes with similar results, he proceeds to say:

"In such cases I recommend that Congress provide for accepting such persons from such states according to some mode of valuation in lieu _pro tanto_ of direct taxes, or upon some other plan to be agreed on with such states respectively; that such persons, on such acceptance, by the General Government, be at once deemed free, and that in any event steps be taken for colonizing both classes (or the first mentioned if the other shall not be brought into existence) at some place or places in a climate congenial to them. It might be well to consider too whether the free colored people already in the United States could not, so far as individuals may desire, be included in such colonization.

"To carry out the plan of colonization may involve the acquiring of territory, and also the appropriation of money beyond that to be expended in the territorial acquisition. Having practised the acquisition of territory for nearly sixty years the question of constitutional power to do so is no longer an open one with us....

"If it be said that the only legitimate object of acquiring territory is to furnish homes for white men this measure effects their object, for the emigration of colored men leaves additional room for white men remaining or coming here. Mr. Jefferson however placed the importance of procuring Louisiana more on political and commercial grounds than on providing room for population. On this whole proposition, including the appropriation of money with the acquisition of territory, does not expediency amount to absolute necessity—that without which the government itself cannot be perpetuated."[106]

As a result of these urgent representations Congress, at its session of 1862, placed at the disposal of the President the sum of $600,000.00 to be expended at his discretion in colonizing with their consent free persons of African descent in some country adapted to their condition and necessities.[107]

Mr. Lincoln, with a view of carrying out this act of Congress, invited a number of prominent colored men to meet him at the White House on the 14th of August, 1862, and then and there urged upon them the wisdom of availing themselves of the opportunity thus offered to make for themselves a home beyond the borders of this country. Mr. Lincoln said that the action of Congress in placing at his disposal a sum of money for the purpose of aiding the colonization of the people of African descent made it his duty, as it had for a long time been his inclination, to favor that cause. Continuing, he said:

"And why should the people of your race be colonized, and where? Why should you leave this country? This is perhaps the first question for proper consideration. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss; but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both as I think. Your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this be admitted, it affords a reason, at least, why we should be separated.

"The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours. Go where you are treated the best, and the ban is still upon you. I do not propose to discuss this, but to present it as a fact with which we have to deal. I cannot alter it if I would."

In conclusion he said:

"I ask you then to consider seriously not pertaining to yourselves merely, nor for your race and ours for the present time but as one of the things if successfully managed, for the good of mankind—not confined to the present generation."[108]

In his special message to Congress April 16th, 1862, after alluding to the passage of the bill abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, he approves the same and declares: "I am grateful that the principles of compensation and colonization are both recognized and practically applied in this act."[109]

Footnote 98:

_Jefferson Manuscript_, Raynor, p. 64.

Footnote 99:

_Writings of Jefferson_, Ford, Vol. X, p. 290

Footnote 100:

_Lincoln and Slavery_, Arnold, p. 124.

Footnote 101:

_The African Repository and Colonial Journal_, Vol. II, No. 1, p. 5.

Footnote 102:

_The African Repository and Colonial Journal_, Vol. II, p. 12.

Footnote 103:

_Idem_, p. 23.

Footnote 104:

_Abraham Lincoln, A History_, N. & H., Vol. VI, p. 355.

Footnote 105:

_Abraham Lincoln, Speeches, Letters and State Papers_, N. & H., Vol. I, p. 235.

Footnote 106:

_Messages and Papers of the Presidents_, Vol. VI, p. 64.

Footnote 107:

_The Life, Public Services and State Papers of Abraham Lincoln_, Raymond, p. 504.

Footnote 108:

_The Life, Public Services and State Papers of Abraham Lincoln_, Raymond, p. 504.

Footnote 109:

_Messages and Papers of the Presidents_, Vol. VI, p. 73.

XIII

ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS OF PROMINENT VIRGINIANS

No account of Virginia's record in regard to slavery would be complete which failed to set forth the position of her foremost men with respect to the institution. From a mass of data we have selected the following declarations as fairly expressive of their sentiments. We have not recorded the views of Virginians, however worthy, who were not by birth, training and sympathies, representative of the dominant element of her people.

ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS PRIOR TO 1810

Richard Henry Lee, speaking in the Virginia House of Burgesses 1772, in support of a bill prohibiting the slave trade, said:

"Nor, sir, are these the only reasons to be urged against the importation. In my opinion not the cruelties practised in the conquest of South America, not the savage barbarity of a Saracen, can be more big with atrocity than our cruel trade to Africa. There we encourage those poor ignorant people to wage eternal war against each other; ... that by war, stealth or surprise, we Christians may be furnished with our fellow-creatures, who are no longer to be considered as created in the image of God as well as ourselves and equally entitled to liberty and freedom by the great law of Nature, but they are to be deprived forever of all the comforts of life and to be made the most wretched of the human kind."[110]

Patrick Henry, writing on the 18th day of January, 1773, said:

"Is it not a little surprising that Christianity, whose chief excellency consists in softening the human heart, cherishing and improving its finer feelings, should encourage a practice so totally repugnant to the first impressions of right and wrong? What adds to the wonder is that this abominable practice has been introduced in the most enlightened ages....

"Would any one believe I am the master of slaves of my own purchase! I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living here without them. I will not, I cannot justify it.... I believe the time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we can do is to improve it, if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence for slavery."[111]

At another time he wrote: "Our country will be peopled. The question is, shall it be with Europeans, or Africans?... Is there a man so degenerate as to wish to see his country the gloomy retreat of slavery?"[112]

George Washington, writing in 1786, to Robert Morris, of Philadelphia, after alluding to an Anti-slavery Society of Quakers in that city and suggesting that unless their practices were discontinued, "None of those whose misfortune it is to have slaves as attendants will visit the city if they can possibly avoid it," continues:

"I hope it will not be conceived from these observations that it is my wish to hold the unhappy people, who are the subjects of this letter, in slavery. I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it. But there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is by legislative authority; and this, as far as my suffrage will go, shall never be wanting."

Writing in the same year to John F. Mercer, he said:

"I never mean, unless some particular circumstance shall compel me to it, to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law."[113]

George Mason, speaking in the Virginia Convention of 1788 having the adoption of the Federal Constitution under consideration, said:

"Mr. Chairman, this is a fatal section (Article 1, Section 9) which has created more dangers than any other. The first clause allows the importation of slaves for twenty years. Under the royal government this evil was looked upon as a great oppression, and many attempts were made to prevent it; but the interest of the African merchants prevented its prohibition. No sooner did the Revolution take place than it was thought of. It was one of the great causes of our separation from Great Britain. Its exclusion has been a principal object of this state, and most of the states in the Union. The augmentation of slaves weakens the state; and such a trade is diabolical in itself and disgraceful to mankind; yet by this constitution, it is continued for twenty years. I have ever looked upon this as a most disgraceful thing to America. I cannot express my detestation of it."[114]

John Tyler, Sr., speaking in the same Convention in condemnation of the clause permitting the slave trade:

"Warmly enlarged on the impolicy, iniquity and disgracefulness of this wicked traffic. He thought the reasons urged by gentlemen in defense of it were inconclusive and ill-founded. It was one cause of the complaints against British tyranny that this trade was permitted. The Revolution had put a period to it; but now it was to be revived. He thought nothing could justify it.... His earnest desire was that it should be handed down to posterity that he had opposed this wicked cause."[115]

Edmund Randolph, in 1789, wrote to Madison that he desired to go to Philadelphia to practise law, saying, "For if I found that I could live there I could emancipate my slaves, and thus end my days without undergoing any anxiety about the injustice of holding them."[116]

St. George Tucker,[117] in his edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, reviewing the origin of slavery in Virginia, and the status of the institution at the time he writes, 1803, declares:

"Among the blessings which the Almighty hath showered on these states, there is a large portion of the bitterest draught that ever flowed from the cup of affliction. Whilst America hath been the land of promise to Europeans and their descendants, it hath been the vale of death to millions of the wretched sons of Africa.... Whilst we adjured the God of Hosts to witness our resolution to live free, or die; and imprecated curses on their heads who refused to unite with us in establishing the empire of freedom, we were imposing upon our fellowmen who differ in complexion from us, a slavery ten thousand times more cruel than the utmost extremity of those grievances and oppressions of which we complained."[118]

At the conclusion of his carefully prepared article showing the efforts made by the people of Virginia during the period of British rule to suppress the slave trade, their prompt prohibition of the traffic immediately upon the assertion of their independence, and the various statutes enacted to mitigate the hardships of the institution, he uses these earnest yet almost pathetic words:

"Tedious and unentertaining as this detail may appear to all others, a citizen of Virginia will feel some satisfaction in reading a vindication of his country from the opprobrium, but too lavishly bestowed upon her, of fostering slavery in her bosom, whilst she boasts a sacred regard for the liberty of her citizens, and of mankind in general."[119]

The foregoing quotations express the sentiments of the leading Virginians of the Revolutionary period with respect to slavery.

ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENTS FROM 1810-1831

The following quotations, taken from speeches and letters of the period between 1810 and 1831, express the sentiments of men, many of whom, though contemporaries of Washington and Mason and Henry, yet survived them by a quarter of a century.

Jefferson, in his _Notes on Virginia_, wrote:

"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God; that they are not violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever."[120]

Writing in 1820 to John Holmes, he said:

"I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. The cession of that kind of property—for so it is misnamed—is a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought if, in that way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected; and gradually, and with due sacrifice, I think it might be; but as it is, we have the wolf by the ears and can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."[121]

John Tyler, in February, 1820, speaking in Congress as a Representative from Virginia when the bill for the admission of Missouri was under discussion, together with the amendment prohibiting the admission of slaves into the territories, said:

"Slavery has been represented on all hands as a dark cloud and the candor of the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Whitman, drove him to the admission that it would be well to disperse this cloud. In this sentiment I entirely concur with him. How can you otherwise disarm it? Will you suffer it to increase in its darkness over one particular portion of this land till its horrors shall burst upon it?... How is the North interested in pursuing such a course? The man of the North is far removed from its influence; he may smile and experience no disquietude. But exclude this property from Missouri by the exercise of an arbitrary power; shut it out from the territories; and I maintain that you do not consult the interests of this Union.

"The gentleman from Massachusetts also conceded that for which we contend—that by diffusing this population extensively you increase the prospects of emancipation. What enabled New York, Pennsylvania and other states to adopt the language of universal emancipation? Rely on it, nothing but the paucity of the number of their slaves. That which would have been criminal in those states not to have done would be an act of political suicide in Georgia or South Carolina to do. By this dispersion you also ameliorate the condition of the black man."[122]

John Randolph of Roanoke, speaking in Congress, March 2, 1826, said:

"My feelings and instincts were in opposition to slavery in every shape; to the subjugation of one man's will to that of another; and, from the time I read Clarkson's celebrated pamphlet, I was, I am afraid, as mad as Clarkson himself. I read myself into this madness, as I have read myself into some agricultural improvements; but, as with these last, I worked myself out of them.... The disease will run its course. It has run its course in the Northern States; it is beginning to run its course in Maryland. The natural death of slavery is the unprofitableness of its most expensive labor."[123]

Replying to a Northern member in Congress, in 1826, he said: "Sir, I envy neither the head nor the heart of the man from the North who arises here to defend slavery upon principle."[124]

Francis W. Gilmer, writing to William Wirt, from England in July, 1824, said:

"I begin to be impatient to see Virginia once more. It's more like England than any other part of the United States—slavery _non obstanti_. Remove the stain—blacker than the Ethiopian's skin, and annihilate our political schemers and it would be the fairest realm on which the sun ever shone."[125]

John Marshall, writing in 1826, said:

"I concur with you that nothing portends more calamity and mischief to the Southern States than their slave population. Yet, they seem to cherish the evil, and to view with immovable prejudice and dislike everything which may tend to diminish it. I do not wonder that they should resent any attempt, should one be made, to interfere with the rights of property, but they have a feverish jealousy of measures which may do good without the hazard of harm, that I think very unwise."[126]

James Monroe, speaking in the Virginia Constitutional Convention on the 2nd of November, 1829, said:

"What has been the leading spirit of this state ever since our independence was attained? She has always declared herself in favor of the equal rights of man. The Revolution was conducted on that principle. Yet there was at that time a slavish population in Virginia. We hold it in the condition in which the Revolution found it, and what can be done with this population?... As to the practicability of emancipating them, it can never be done by the state itself, nor without the aid of the Union....

"Sir, what brought us together in the Revolutionary War? It was the doctrine of equal rights. Each part of the country encouraged and supported every other part. None took advantage of the other's distresses. And if we find that this evil has preyed upon the vitals of the Union and has been prejudicial to all the states where it has existed, and is likewise repugnant to their several state constitutions and Bills of Rights, why may we not expect that they will unite with us in accomplishing its removal?"[127]

Benjamin Watkins Leigh, speaking in the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829-30, said:

"I wish indeed that I had been born in a land where domestic and negro slavery is unknown—no, sir,—I misrepresent myself—I do not wish so. I shall never wish that I had been born out of Virginia—but I wish that Providence had spared my country this moral and political evil. It is supposed that our slave labor enables us to live in luxury and ease, without industry, without care. Sir, the evil of slavery is greater to the master than to the slave. He is interested in all their wants, all their distresses, bound to provide for them, to care for them, to labor for them, while they labor for him, and his labor is by no means the less severe of the two. The relation between master and slave imposes on the master a heavy and painful responsibility."[128]

James Madison, in 1831 wrote concerning slavery and the American Colonization Society:

"Many circumstances of the present moment seem to concur in brightening the prospects of the Society and cherishing the hope that the time will come when the dreadful calamity which has so long afflicted our country and filled so many with despair, will be gradually removed, and by means consistent with justice, peace, and general satisfaction; thus giving to our country the full enjoyment of the blessings of liberty, and to the world the full benefit of its great example."[129]

Footnote 110:

_Life of R. H. Lee_, Lee, Vol. I, p. 18.

Footnote 111:

_The True Patrick Henry_, Morgan, p. 246.

Footnote 112:

_Life of Patrick Henry_, William Wirt Henry, Vol. I, p. 114.

Footnote 113:

_The Writings of Washington_, Marshall, Vol. II, p. 159.

Footnote 114:

_Madison Papers_, Vol. II, p. 1391.

Footnote 115:

_Letters and Times of the Tylers_, Tyler, Vol. I, p. 154.

Footnote 116:

_Life of Edmund Randolph_, Conway, p. 125.

Footnote 117:

Judge Tucker, who was professor of law at William & Mary College, made it a part of his course of lectures to demonstrate the moral and economic objections to slavery.

Mr. Roosevelt points out that Thomas H. Benton acquired his deep-rooted antagonism to the institution while studying Blackstone "as edited by the learned Virginian Judge Tucker who in an appendix treated of and totally condemned black slavery in the United States." (_Thomas H. Benton_, Roosevelt, p. 297).

Footnote 118:

_Tucker's Blackstone_, Vol. II, Appendix, note H., p. 31.

Footnote 119:

_Idem_, p. 53.

Footnote 120:

_Writings of Jefferson_, Ford, Vol. III, p. 267.

Footnote 121:

_Idem_, Vol. VII, p. 157.

Footnote 122:

_Letters and Times of the Tylers_, Tyler, Vol. I, p. 312.

Footnote 123:

_Abridgment of Debates in Congress 1789-1856_, Vol. VIII, p. 40.

Footnote 124:

_American Conflict_, Greeley, Vol. I, p. 109.

Footnote 125: