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THOUGHTS

ON

AFRICAN COLONIZATION.

PART II.

SENTIMENTS OF THE PEOPLE OF COLOR.

If the American Colonization Society were indeed actuated by the purest motives and the best feelings toward the objects of its supervision; if it were not based upon injustice, fraud, persecution and incorrigible prejudice; still if its purposes be contrary to the wishes and injurious to the interests of the free people of color, it ought not to receive the countenance of the public. Even the trees of the forest are keenly susceptible to every touch of violence, and seem to deprecate transplantation to a foreign soil. Even birds and animals pine in exile from their native haunts; their local attachments are wonderful; they migrate only to return again at the earliest opportunity. Perhaps there is not a living thing, from the hugest animal down to the minutest animalcule, whose pleasant associations are not circumscribed, or that has not some favorite retreats. This universal preference, this love of home, seems to be the element of being,—a constitutional attribute given by the all-wise Creator to bind each separate tribe or community within intelligent and well-defined limits: for, in its absence, order would be banished [PART II.]

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from the world, collision between the countless orders of creation would be perpetual, and violence would depopulate the world with more than pestilential rapidity.

Shall it be said that beings endowed with high intellectual powers, sustaining the most important relations, created for social enjoyments, and made but a little lower than the angelsshall it be said that their local attachments are less tenacious than those of trees, and birds, and beasts, and insects? I know that the blacks are classed, by some, who scarcely give any evidence of their own humanity but their shape, among the brute creation but are they below the brutes? or are they more insensible to rude assaults than forest-trees?

men are

'Men,' says an erratic but powerful writer like trees they delight in a rude [and native] soil-they strike their roots downward with a perpetual effort, and heave their proud branches upward in perpetual strife. Are they to be removed?—you must tear up the very earth with their roots, rock and ore and impurity, or they perish. They cannot be translated with safety. Something of their home-a little of their native soil, must cling to them forever, or they die.'

This love of home, of neighborhood, of country, is inherent in the human breast. It accompanies the child from its earliest reminiscence up to old age: it is written upon every tangible and permanent object within the habitual cognizance of the eye -upon stone, and tree, and rivulet-upon the green hill, and the verdant plain, and the opulent valley-upon house, and garden, and steeple-spire-upon the soil, whether it be rough or smooth, sandy or hard, barren or luxuriant.

'Like ivy, where it grows, 't is seen

To wear an everlasting green.'

The man who does not cherish it is regarded as destitute of sensibility; and to him is applied by common consent the burning rebuke of Sir Walter Scott:

'Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

John Neal.

This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,

From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim ;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.'

Whose bosom does not thrill with pleasurable emotion whenever he listens to that truest, sweetest, tenderest effusion,— 'Home, sweet home?'

< 'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,

Which, seek thro' the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere.
Home-home!

Sweet, sweet home!

There's no place like home!'

An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain

O give me my lowly thatched cottage again;

The birds singing gaily that came at my call—

Give me them, with the peace of mind dearer than all
'Home-home!

Sweet, sweet home!

There's no place like home?'

No one will understand me to maintain that population should never be thinned by foreign emigration; but only that such an emigration is unnatural. The great mass of a neighborhood or country must necessarily be stable only fractions are cast off and float away on the tide of adventure. Individual enterprise or estrangement is one thing: the translation of an entire people to an unknown clime, another. The former may be moved by a single impulse-by a love of novelty, or a desire of gain,

or a hope of preferment: he leaves no perceptible void in society. The latter can never be expatriated but by some extraordinary calamity, or by the application of intolerable restraints. They must first be rendered broken-hearted or loaded with chains-hope must not merely sicken but diecord after cord must be sundered-ere they will seek another home. Our pilgrim-fathers were driven out from the mother country by ecclesiastical domination to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, was the only cause of their exile. Had they been permitted to enjoy this sacred right,—no matter how great were their temporal privations, or their hopes of physical enjoyments,-they would not have perilled their lives on the stormy deep, to obtain an asylum in this western hemisphere.

It may be said, in reply to the foregoing remarks upon the love of home and of country, that the people of color cannot cherish this abhorrence of migration, because here they have no continuing city,' and are not recognised as fellow-countrymen. In PART I., I have shown, by copious extracts, that colonizationists artfully represent them as aliens and foreigners, wanderers from Africa-destitute of that amor patriæ, which is the bond of union-seditious-without alliances-irresponsible-unambitious-cherishing no attachment to the soil-feeling no interest in our national prosperity-ready for any adventure -eager to absent themselves from the land-malignant in their feelings towards society-incapable of local preference-content to remain in ignorance and degradation-&c. &c. &c.

Every such representation is a libel, as I shall show in subsequent pages. The language of the people of color is," This is our country here were we born-here will we live and die

we know of no other place that we can call our true and appropriate home-here are our earliest and most pleasant associations-we are freemen, we are brethren, we are countrymen and fellow-citizens-we are not for insurrection, but for peace and equality. This is not the language of sedition or alienated affection. Their amor patriæ is robust and deathless like the oak, tempests do but strengthen its roots and confer victory

upon it. Even the soil on which the unhappy slave toils and bleeds, is to him consecrated earth.

African colonization is directly and irreconcileably opposed to the wishes of our colored population as a body. Their desires ought to be tenderly regarded. In all my intercourse, with them in various towns and cities, I have never seen one of their number who was friendly to this scheme—and I have not been backward in canvassing their opinions on this subject. They are as unanimously opposed to a removal to Africa, as the Cherokees from the council-fires and graves of their fathers. It is remarkable, too, that they are as united in their respect and esteem for the republic of Hayti. But this is their country -they are resolute against every migratory plot, and willing to rely on the justice of the nation for an ultimate restoration to all their lost rights and privileges. What is the fact? Through the instrumentality of BENJAMIN LUNDY,* the distinguished and veteran champion of emancipation, a great highway has been opened to the Haytien republic, over which our colored population may travel toll free, and at the end of their brief journey be the free occupants of the soil, and meet such a re-. ception as was never yet given to any sojourners in any country, since the departure of Israel into Egypt. One would think, that, with such inducements and under such circumstances, this broad thoroughfare would present a most animating spcctacle; that the bustle and roar of a journeying multitude would fall upon the ear like the strife of the ocean, or the distant thunder of the retiring storm; and that the song of the oppressor and the oppressed, a song of deliverance to each, would go up to heaven, till its echoes were seemingly the responses of angels and justified spirits. But it is not so. Only here and there a traveller is seen to enter upon the road-there is no noise of preparation or departure; but a silence, deeper than the breathlessness of midnight, rests upon our land—not a shout of joy is heard throughout our borders!

*Vide the Fourth Volume of the Genius of Universal Emancipation for

1829.

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