ADDRESS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 HON. EDWARD EYERET T , 
 
 At the Anniversary of the American Colonization Society, 
 
 WASHINGTON CITY, JANUARY 18, 1853. 
 
 Mr. Pres den 1- , and Gentlemen of the Colonization Society : 
 
 It was my intention, when I was requested some weeks ago to take 
 a part in the proceedings of this evening, to give to the subject of the 
 Colonization Society and its operations on the coast of Africa, the 
 most thorough examination in my power, in all its bearings; consi er- 
 ing that, whether we lodk to the condition of this country, or the 
 interests of Africa, no more important object could engage our atten- 
 tion. But during almost the whole of ihe interval that has since 
 elapsed, my time and my thoughts have been so entirely taken up and 
 pre-occupied, that it has been altogether out of my power to give more 
 than the hastiest preparation to the part which I am to take in this 
 evening s proceedings. 1 am therefore obliged to throw myself upon 
 the indulgence of the audience, with such an imperfect view of the 
 subject as I have been alone able to take. 
 
 The Colonization Society seems to me to have been the subject ot 
 much unmerited odium; of much equally unmerited indifference on 
 the part of the great mass of the community; and to have received 
 that attention which it so well deserves, from but very few. Y\e i behold 
 it now only in its infancy. All that we see in this country is the quiet 
 operation of a private association, pursuing the even tenor of its way 
 without ostentation, without eclat; and on the coast of Africa there is 
 nothing to attract our attention but a small settlement, the germ of a 
 Republic, which, however prosperous, is but still in its infancy. 
 
 But before we deride even these small beginnings— before we make 
 up our minds that the most important futurities are not wrapped up in 
 them, even as the spreading oak is wrapped up in the small acorn 
 which we can hold in our fingers, we should do well to recollect the 
 first twenty-five or thirty years of the settlement of Jamestown, in 
 your State, Mr. President, the parent of Virginia. We should do 
 well to remember the history of that dreadful winter at Plymouth, 
 when more than half the Mayflower’s little company were laid beneath 
 the sod, and that sod smoothed over for fear the native savage would 
 come and count the number of the graves. I think, if you look to 
 what has been done in Liberia in the last quarter of a century, you 
 will find that it compares favorably with the most and the best that 
 was done in Virginia or in Plymouth during the same period. These 
 seem to me to be reasons why we should not look with too much 
 distrust at the small beginnings that have been made. 
 
W - - T > -i • - . - . V • 7 
 
 % 
 
 2 
 
 Gentlemen, the foundation of this Society was laid in a great polit- 
 ical and moral necessity. The measures which were taken for the 
 suppression of the slave trade naturally led to the capture of slave- 
 ships ; and the question immediately arose, what should be done with 
 the victims that were rescued from them. It was necessary that they 
 should be returned to Africa. They could not, each and all, be sent 
 to their native villages They had been collected from the whole 
 interior of that country, many of them from a distance of two thousand 
 miles in the interior, and it was out of the question that they should 
 immediately be sent to their homes. If they had been placed upon 
 the coast, in a body, at any of the usual points of resort, the result 
 would have been to throw them at once back again into the grasp of 
 the native chiefs, who are the principal agents of the slave trade. It 
 was, therefore, absolutely necessary, if the course of measures under- 
 taken for the suppression of the slave trade was to be pursued, that 
 some colony should be founded, under the name and influence and 
 patronage of a powerful European or American State, where these 
 poor victims should be placed at once, safely protected, supplied with 
 necessary provisions of all kinds, civilized if possible, and hy degrees 
 enabled to find their way back to their native villages, which some of 
 them, we know, both from the English and American Colony, have 
 from time to time done. 
 
 This, as I understand it, was one of the first, ideas that gave origin 
 to this Society, and, as I said before, it was a political and moral neces- 
 sity. Then came the kindred object, which was more important, 
 because applicable to a much larger number of persons, of providing 
 a suitable home for that portion of the free colored population of this 
 country that were desirous of emigrating to the land of their fathers. 
 This, at first, as I understand, for it was before my day, was an object 
 that approved itself almost universally throughout the country, to the 
 South as well as to the North, to the white as well as to the colored 
 population. Every body seemed to think at first that this was a prac- 
 ticable, desirable, and most praiseworthy object. Dy degrees, i am 
 sorry to say, jealousies crept in ; prejudices, for so I must account 
 them, arose ; and in process of time, it has come to pass that this 
 Society has become, I must say, intensely unpopular with a large 
 portion of the colored population, whose interests and welfare were 
 among the prime obje ts of its foundation. 
 
 I will not undertake, on this occasion, to discuss the foundation of 
 these prejudices. I will not dwell upon those, as they are called, 
 oppressive laws, and that still more oppressive public sentiment in all 
 parts of the country, which render the condition of the colored popu- 
 lation, in every part of the Union, one of disability, discouragement, 
 and hardship. In order to meet the objection to the operations of the 
 Society which arises from the statement that it tends to co operate 
 with and to strengthen these oppressive laws and this oppressive public 
 sentiment, 1 will, for argument’s sake, take it for granted that this 
 legislation and this sentiment are correctly thus characterized; that 
 they are as oppressive, cruel and tyrannical, as they are declared to be. 
 
 Taking this for granted, I ask, in the name of common sense, in 
 the name of humanity, does this state of things furnish any reason 
 why the free colored population of the country should be discouraged 
 
3 
 
 from leaving a state of things like this, and going to the land of their 
 fathers; — a continent of their own, where no such legislation, where 
 no such unfriendly public sentiment would exi>t ; a great and fertile 
 land, a land that is inviting them to come and take possession of it, 
 and id various parts of which there is everything that can attract and 
 reward the industry of man ? It seems to me that the objection which 
 is urged to the Society, that it co-operates with that oppressive state 
 of things here, furnishes the very strongest reason in favor of the 
 emigration. Let us take a parallel case. Suppose any one had gone 
 among that little company of persecuted Christians in England, in the 
 year 1603, who afterwards became the pilgrim church of Mr. Robin- 
 son at Leyden ; or suppose any one had gone in 1G30 to the more 
 important company of Gov. VVinthrop, the great founder of Massachu- 
 setts ; had tried to excite their feelings against the projected emigra- 
 tion ; had told them that England belonged to them as much as it did 
 to their oppressors ; had led them to stand upon their rights, and if 
 necessary, bleed and die for them ; had depicted the hardships and 
 sufferings of the passage; had painted in the darkest colors, the terrors 
 of the wilderness into which they were about to venture ; would that 
 have been true friendship, would it have been kindness, would it have 
 been humanity? Or, to come nearer home, suppose at the present 
 day one should go into Ireland, or France, or Switzerland, or Germany, 
 or Norway, or any of the countries from which hundreds of thousands 
 of men, in a depressed, destitute and unhappy condition, are emigrat- 
 ing to the United States, to find a refuge, a home, a social position 
 and employment ; suppose some one should go to them and try to stim- 
 ulate a morbid patriotism, a bitter nationality, telling them the country 
 where they were born belonged as much to them as to the more favored 
 classes, urging them to stay where they were born, telling them that it 
 was doubtful whether they would get employment in the new country, 
 talking of the expenses, the diseases, the hardi-hips of the poor emi- 
 grant, and in this way endeavor to deter them from this great adven- 
 ture, which is to end in procuring a home and a position in the 
 world and an education for themselves and their chi'dren ; would this 
 be friendship, would this be kindness, would this be humanity? But 
 these are the appeals which are made to the free colored population of 
 this country ; and it is by appeals like these that the Society and the 
 Colony have become, s as I am sorry to say I believe is the case, highly 
 unpopular among them. 
 
 But I must hasten on from this object of providing a home for the 
 free colored population who wish to emigrate, to another, which was a 
 very considerable and leading object with the founders of this Society, 
 and that is, the suppression of the foreign slave trade It is grievous 
 to reflect, it is one of the darkest things that, we read of in history, that 
 contemporaneously with the discovery of this continent, and mainly 
 from mistaken humanity towards its natives, the whole western coast 
 of Africa was thrown open to that desolating traffic, which from time 
 immemorial, had be^n carried on from the ports of the Mediterranean, 
 the Nile, and the Red Sea, and the shores of Eastern Africa. It is 
 still more painful to reflect that it was precisely at the period when the 
 best culture of modern Europe was moving rapidly towards its perfec- 
 tion, that the intercourse of Africa with Europe, instead of proving a 
 
blessing, proved a curse. Have you well considered, Mr. President, 
 that it was in the days of Shakspeare, and Spenser, and Hooker, and 
 Bacon, and other bright suns in the firmament of England’s glory, 
 that her navigators first began to go forth, and as if in derision, in 
 vessels bearing the venerable names of “ The Solomon,” and “ The 
 Jesus,” to the coast of Africa, to tear away its wretched natives into a 
 state of bondage? It was at the very time when, in England and 
 France, the last vestiges of the feudal system were breaking down, 
 when private war was put an end to, and men began to venture out 
 from the walled towns and dwell in safety in the open country, and to 
 traverse the high roads without fear ; it was then that these most pol- 
 ished nations began to enter into competition with each other, which 
 should monopolize that cruel traffic, the African slave trade, the prin- 
 cipal agency of which was, to stir up a system of universal hostility, 
 not merely between nation and nation, but between tribe and tribe, 
 clan and clan, family and family, and often between members of the 
 same household; for, I am sorry to say, it is no unprecedented thing 
 for these poor creatures to sell their wives and children to the slave 
 trader. 
 
 In this way the whole Western coast of Africa became, like the 
 Northern and Eastern coast before, one general mart for the slave 
 trade. This lasted for three hundred years. At length the public 
 sentiment of the world, in Europe and America, was awakened. Sev- 
 eral of the colonial assemblies in this country parsed acts inhibiting 
 the slave trade; but they were uniformly negatived by the Crown. 
 The Continental Congress, in 1776, denounced the traffic. The Fed- 
 eral Convention, in 1789, fixed a prospective period for its abolition 
 in this country. The example was followed by the States of Europe. 
 At the present day, every Christian and several of the Mohammedan 
 powers have forbidden it. Yet it is extensively carried on, and some 
 authorities say that the number of slaves taken from Africa has not 
 materially diminished ; but I hope this is not true. This state of facts 
 has Ld several persons, most desirous of putting an end to the traffic, 
 to devise some new system, some new agency ; and all agree — there 
 is not a dissenting voice on that point — that the most effectual, and in 
 fact the only substitute, is the establishment of colonies. Wherever a 
 colony is established on the coast of Africa, under the direction of a 
 ChrLtian power in Europe or America, there ffte slave trade disap- 
 pears; not merely from the coast of the colony, but from the whole 
 interior of the country which had found an outlet at any point on that 
 coast. In this way, from the mo^t northern extremity of the French 
 and English colonies down to the most southern limit of the American 
 settlements, the slave trade has entirely disappeared. The last slave 
 mart in that region, the Gallinas, has within a short time, I believe, 
 come within the jurisdiction of the American Colony of Liberia. 
 Now, along that whole line of coast, and throughout the whole inte- 
 rior connected with it, — a line of coast, as I believe, not less than that 
 from Maine to Georgia, — from every port and every harbor of which 
 the foreign slave trade was carried on within the memory of man, it 
 has entirely disappeared. What congresses of sovereigns at Vienna 
 and Aix-la-Chapelle could not do, what squadrons of war steamers 
 cruising along the coast could not achieve, what quintuple treaties 
 
5 
 
 among the powers of Europe could not effect hy the arts of diplomacy, 
 has been done by these poor little colonies, one of which at least, that 
 of Liberia, has, in latter times, been, almost without the recognition 
 of tins government, struggling into permanence by the resources fur- 
 nished by private benevolence. J ask, what earthly object of this kind 
 more meritorious than this can be named ? And what career is there 
 opened to any colored man in Europe or America, more praiseworthy, 
 more inviting than this, to form, as it were, in his own person, a por- 
 tion of that living cordon stretching along the coast and barring its 
 wh'de extent from the approaches of this traffic? 
 
 But even the suppression of the slave trade, all important as it is, is 
 but auxiliary to another ulterior object, of still more commanding im- 
 portance; and that is, the civilization of Africa. The condition of 
 Africa is a disgrace to the rest of the civilized world. With an extent 
 nearly three times as great as that of Europe; its known portions of 
 great fertility, teeming with animal and vegetable life; traversed by 
 magnificent chains of mountains, East and West, North and South, 
 whose slopes send down the tributaries of some of the noblest rivers 
 in the world ; connecting on the North, by the Mediterranean, with 
 the ancient and modern culture of Europe; projecting on the West 
 far into the Atlantic ocean, that great highway of the world’s civiliza- 
 tion; on the South-west making an approach to our own South 
 American continent; open on the East to the trade of India; and 
 on the North-east, by the Red Sea and the Nile, locked closely 
 into the Asiatic continent; — one would have thought ihat wiih all 
 these natural endowments, with this noble geographical position, Africa 
 was destined to be the emporium, the garden of the globe. Man, 
 alone, in this unhappy continent, has dropped so far into arrears in rhe 
 great march of humanity, behind the other portions of the human fam- 
 ily, that the question has at length been started whether he does not 
 labor uuder some incurable, natural inferiority. In this, for myself, I 
 have no belief whatever. 
 
 I do not deny that among the numerous races in the African conti- 
 nent, as among the numerous races in all the other continents, there are 
 great diversities, from the politic and warlike tribes upon the central 
 plateau, to the broken down hordes on the slave coast, and on the 
 banks of the Congo, and the squalid, half-human Hottentot. But do 
 you think the difference is greater between them than it is between 
 the Laplander, the Gipsy, the Calmuc, and the proudest and brightest 
 specimens of humanity in Europe or America? I think not. 
 
 What then can be the cause of the continued uncivilization of 
 Africa ? Without attempting presumptuously to pry into the mysteries 
 of Providence, I think that adequate causes can be found in some 
 historical and geographical circumstances. It seems a law of human 
 progress, which, however difficult to explain, is too well sustained by 
 facts to be doubted, that in the first advances out of barbarism into 
 civilization, the first impulse and guidance must come from ahroad. 
 This, of course, leaves untouched the great mystery, who could have 
 made a beginning; but still, as far back as hi>tory or tradition runs, 
 we do find that the first guidance and impulse came from abroad. 
 From Egypt and Syria the germs of improvement were brought to 
 Greece, from Greece to Rome, from Rome to the North and West of 
 
6 
 
 Europe, from Europe to America ; and they are now speeding on from 
 us to tne farthest West, until at length we shall meet the East again. 
 To w h * t extent the aboriginal element shall be borne down and over- 
 powered by the foreign influences, or enter into kindly combination 
 with them, depends upon the moral and intellectual development of 
 both parties. Th^re may be such aptitude for improvement, or the 
 disparity between the native and foreign race may be so small, that a 
 kindly combination will at once take place. This is supposed to have 
 been the case with the ancient Grecian tribes in reference to the emi- 
 grants from Egypt and the East. Or the inaptitude may be so great, 
 and the disparity between the natives and the foreigners may be so 
 wide, that no such kindly union can take place. This is commonly 
 supposed to be the case with the natives of our own continent, who 
 are slowly and silently retiring before the inroads of a foreign influence. 
 
 Now in reference to this law of social progress, there have been in 
 Africa two most unfortunate difficulties. In the first place, all the 
 other branches of the human family that have had the start of Africa 
 in civilization, have, from the very dawn of history, been concerned 
 in the slave trade, so that intercourse with foreigners, instead of being 
 a source of mutual improvement to both parties, particularly to the 
 weaker, has, in the case of Africa, only tended to sink them deeper 
 into barbarism and degeneracy of every kind. This has been one 
 difficulty. Another is the climate — this vast equatorial expanse — this 
 aggregate of land between the tropics, greater than in all the other parts 
 of the globe together ; a fervid, vertical sun, burning down upon 
 the rank vegetation of her fertile plains, and rendering her shores and 
 water-courses pestiferous to a foreign constitution. This circumstance 
 also seems to shut Africa out from the approaches of civilization 
 through the usual channels. The ordinary inducements of gain are 
 too weak to tempt the merchant to those feverous shores. Nothing 
 but a taste for advenrure approaching to mania, attracts the traveler ; 
 and when Christian benevolence allures the devoted missionary to this 
 field of labor, it lures him too often to his doom. 
 
 By this combination of influences, Africa seems to have been shut 
 out from the beginning:, from all those benefits that otherwise result 
 from foreign intercourse. 
 
 But now, mark and reverence the providence of God, educing out 
 of these disadvantages of climate, (disadvantages as we consider 
 them,) and out of this colossal moral wrong — the foreign slave trade — 
 out of these seemingly hopeless elements of physical and moral 
 evil, after long cycles of crime and suffering, of violence and retribu- 
 tion, such as history no wdiere else can parallel — educing, l say, from 
 these almost hopeless elements, by the blessed alchemy of Christian 
 love, the ultimate means of the regeneration of Africa. 
 
 The conscience of the Christian world at last was roused ; an end, 
 it was determined, should be put to the foreign slave trade, but not 
 till it had conveyed six millions of the children and descendants of 
 Africa to the Western Hemisphere, of whom about one and a half 
 millions have passed into a state of freedom; though born and edu- 
 cated, no doubt, under circumstances unfavorable to moral or intel- 
 lectual progress, sharing in the main the blessings and the lights of 
 our common Christian civilization, and proving themselves, in the 
 
7 
 
 example of the Liberian colony, amply qualified lo be the medium of 
 convey ing these blessings to t he land of iheir fathers. 
 
 Thus you see, at the very moment when the work is ready to com- 
 mence, the instruments are prepared. Do I err in supposing that the 
 same august Providence which has arranged, or has permitted, the 
 mysterious sequence of events to which I have referred, has also cnlled 
 out and is inviting those chosen agents to enter upon the work? 
 Everything else has been tried, and failed. Commercial adventure, on 
 the part of individuals, has been unsuccessful ; strength, courage, 
 endurance, almost superhuman, have failed; well appointed expedi- 
 tions, fitted out under the auspices of powerful associations and power- 
 ful governments, have ended in the most calamitous failure; and it 
 has been proved at last, by all this experience, that the white race, of 
 itself, cannot civilize Africa. 
 
 Sir, when that most noble expedition, I think in 1841, was fitted 
 out, under the highest auspices in England, to found an agricultural 
 colony at the confluence of the Niger and the Chad, out of one hun- 
 dred and forty-five white persons that formed a part of it, one hundred 
 and thirty sickened, and forty died. On the other hand, out of one 
 hundred and fifty-eight colored men, that formed part of the expedi- 
 tion, only eleven sickened, and they were men who had passed some 
 years in the West Indies and in Europe, and not one died. 1 think 
 that single fact, in reference to the civilization of Africa, is worth, 
 I had almost said, all the treasure and ail the suffering of that ill-fated 
 expedition. 
 
 Sir, you cannot civilize Africa, — you Caucasian, you proud white 
 man, you all-boasting, all-daring Anglo-Saxon, — you cannot do this 
 work. You have subjugated Europe; the native races of this country 
 are melting before you, as the untimely snows of April beneath a ver- 
 nal sun; you have possessed yourselves of India; you threaten China 
 and Japan; the farthest isles of the Pacific are not distant enough to 
 escape your grasp, or insignificant enough to elude your notice; but 
 this great Central Africa lies at your doors, and defies your power. 
 Your war steamers and your squadrons may range along the coast ; 
 but neither on the errands of peace, nor on the errands of war, can 
 you penetrate into and long keep the interior. The G«»d of nature, 
 for purposes inscrutable, but no doubt to be reconciled with his wisdom 
 and goodness, has drawn a cordon across the chief inlets, that you 
 cannot pass. You may hover on the coa.^t, but woe to you if you 
 attempt to make a permanent lodgment in the interior. Their poor 
 mud-built villages will oppose no resistance to your arms; but death 
 sits portress at their undefended gates. Yellow fevers, and blue 
 plagues, and intermittent poisons, that you can see as well as feel, 
 hover in the air. If you attempt to go up the rivers, pestilence shoots 
 from the mangroves that fringe their noble banks; and the all-glorious 
 sun, that kindles everything else into life and power, darts down dis- 
 ease and death into your languid frame. No, no, Anglo-Saxon, this 
 is no part of your vocation. You may direct the way, you may survey 
 the coast, you may point your finger into the interior ; but you must 
 leave it to others to go and abide there. The God of nature, in another 
 branch of his family, has chosen out the instruments of this great 
 work — descendants of the torrid clime, children of the burning vertical 
 
sun — and fitted them, by centuries of stern discipline, for this most 
 noble work — 
 
 From foreign realms and lands remote, 
 
 Supported by His care, 
 
 They pass unharmed through burning climes, 
 
 And breathe the tainted air. 
 
 Sir, 1 believe that Africa will be civilized, and civilized by the descen- 
 dants of those who were torn from the land. I believe it, because I 
 will not think that this great and fertile continent is to be forever left 
 in a state of barbarity. I believe it, because I see no other agency 
 fully competent to the work. I believe it, because I see in this agency 
 a most wonderful adaptation. 
 
 But doubts are entertained of the practicability of effecting this 
 object by the instrumentality that I have indicated. They are founded, 
 in the first place, on the supposed incapacity of the free colored pop- 
 ulation of this country and the West Indies to take up and carry on 
 such a work; and also on the supposed degradation, and, if I may use 
 such a word, unimprovability of the native African races, which is 
 presumed to he so great as to bid defiance to any such operation. 
 
 Now, [ think it would be very unjust to the colored population of 
 this country and the West Indies, to argue from what they have done 
 under present circumstances, to what they might effect under the most 
 favorable circumstances. I think, upon the whole, all things con- 
 sidered, that they have done quite as well as could be expected ; 
 that they have done as well as persons of European or Anglo- 
 American origin would have done after three centuries of similar 
 depression and hardship. You will recollect, sir, that Mr. Jef- 
 ferson, in his valuable work, the “ Notes on Virginia,” states in 
 strong language the intellectual inferiority of the colored race. 1 
 have always thought that it ought to have led Mr. Jefferson to hesitate 
 a little as to the accuracy of this opinion, when he recollected that in 
 the very same work he was obliged to defend the Anglo-American 
 race, to which he himself, and to which so many of us belong, against 
 the very same imputation, brought by an ingenious French writer, the 
 Abbe Raynal, whose opinions were shared by all the school of philos- 
 ophers to which he belonged. Why, it is but a very few years — I do 
 not know that the time has now ceased — when we Anglo-Americans 
 were spoken of by our brethren beyond the water, as a poor, degen- 
 erate, almost semi barbarous race. In the liberal journals of England, 
 within thirty years, the question has been contemptuously asked in 
 reference to the native country of Franklin, and Washington, and 
 Adams, and Jefferson, and Madison, and Marshall ; of Irving, Pres- 
 cott, Bancroft, Ticknor, Bryant, Cooper, Longfellow, and Hawthorne, 
 and busts of others : “ Who reads an American book?” It seems to 
 me, in view of facts like this, we ought to be a little cautious how we 
 leap to the conclusion, that the free colored African race is necessarily 
 in a condition of hopeless inferiority. 
 
 Then in reference to the other difficulty, about the unimprovability 
 of the African. It is said that the Africans alone, of all the branches 
 of the human family, have never been able to rise out of barbarism. 
 Sir, I do not know that. I do not think that anybody knows it. An 
 
9 
 
 impenetrable cloud hangs over the early history of mankind in every 
 part of the globe. We well know, in reference to the whole North 
 and West of Europe, and a great part of the South of Europe, that 
 it was utterly barbarous until the light of the Roman civilization 
 shone in upon it, and in comparatively recent times. We also know, 
 that in very early times, one of the native African races, I mean the 
 Egyptians, attained a high degree of culture. They were the parents 
 of all the arts of Greece, and through them of the ancient world. The 
 Egyptians were a colored race. They did not belong to the negro 
 type; but still they were purely a colored race, and, if we should 
 judge from their present condition, as unimprovable as any of the 
 tribes of Central Africa. Yet we find upon the banks of the Nile, 
 the massive monuments of their cheerless culture, that have braved 
 the storms of tune mote successfully than the more graceful structures 
 of Rome and of Greece. 
 
 It is true that some nations who have emerged from barba ism at a 
 later period, have attained the precedence over Africa, and have kept 
 it to the present day ; but I am not willing to believe that this arises 
 from causes so fixed and permanent in their nature, that no reversal, 
 at no length of time, is to be hoped from their operation. We are 
 led into error by contemplating things too much in the gross. There 
 are tribes in Africa which have made no contemptible progress in 
 various branches of human improvement. On the other hand, if we 
 look at ihe population of Europe — if we cast our eyes from Lisbon to 
 Archangel, from the Hebrides to the Black Sea — if for a moment we 
 turn our thoughts from the few who are born to wealth, and its con- 
 sequent advantages, culture, education, and that lordship over the 
 forces of nature which belongs to cultivated mind, — if we turn from 
 these to the benighted, oppressed, destitute, superstitious, ignorant, 
 suffering millions, who pass their lives in the hopeless toil of the field, 
 the factory, and the mine; whose inheritance, from generation to gen- 
 eration, is beggary; whose education, from sire to son, is stolid igno- 
 rance ; at whose daily table hunger and thirst are the stewards; whose 
 occasional festivity is brutal intemperance; — if we could count their 
 numbers, if we could sum up together in one frightful mass, all their 
 destitution of the comforts and blessings of life, and thus form an esti- 
 mate of the practical barbarism of the nominally civilized portions of the 
 world, we should, I think, come to the conclusion that this supposed 
 inbred essential superiority of the European races does not really exist. 
 
 If there be any such essential superiority, why has it been so late in 
 showing itself? It is said that the Africans have persisted in their 
 barbarism for four or five thousand years. Europe persisted in her 
 barbarism for three or four thousand years ; and in the great chronol- 
 ogy of Divine Providence, we are taught that a thousand years are but 
 as one day. Sir, it is only ten centuries since the Anglo-Saxons, to 
 whose race we are so fond of claiming kindred, were as barbarous and 
 uncivilized as many of the African tribes. They were a savage, fero- 
 cious, warlike people ; pirates at sea, bandits on shore; slaves of the 
 most detestable superstitions; worshiping idols as cruel and ferocious 
 as themselves. And, as to the foreign slave trade, it is but eight cen- 
 turies, and perhaps less, since there was as much slave trade, in pro- 
 portion, upon the coast of Great Britain, as in the Bight of Benin at 
 the present day. The natives of England, eight centuries ago, were 
 
10 
 
 bought and sent to the slave marts in the south and west of Europe. 
 At length, the light of Christianity shone in ; refinement, civilization, 
 letters, arts, and by degrees all the delights, all the improvements of 
 life followed in their train ; and now we talk with the utmost self- 
 complacency of the essential superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race, 
 and look down with disdain upon those portions of the human family 
 who have lagged a little behind us in the march of civilization. 
 
 Africa, at the present day, is not in that state of utter barbarism 
 which popular opinion ascribes to it. Here, again, we do not suffi- 
 ciently discriminate. We judge in the gross. Certainly there are 
 tribes wholly broken down by internal wars, and the detestable foreign 
 slave trade ; but this is not the character of the entire population. 
 They are not savages. Most of them live by agriculture. There is 
 some traffic between the coast and the interior. Many of the tribes 
 have a respectable architecture, though of a rude kind, but still imply- 
 ing some progress of the arts. Gold dust is collected ; iron is smelted 
 and wrought ; weapons and utensils of husbandry and household use 
 are fabricated ; cloth is woven and died ; palm oil is expressed ; there 
 are schools ; and among the Mohammedan tribes, the Koran is read. 
 You, Mr. President, well remember that twenty-one years ago, you 
 and I saw, in one of the committee-rooms of yonder Capitol, a native 
 African, who had been forty years a field slave in the West Indies and 
 in this country, and wrote at the age of seventy the Arabic character, 
 with the fluency and the elegance of a scribe. Why, sir, to give the 
 last test of civilization, Mungo Park tells us in his journal, that in the 
 interior of Africa, lawsuits are argued with as much ability, as much 
 fluency, and at as much length, as in Edinburgh. 
 
 Sir, I do not wish to run into paradox on this subject. I am aware 
 that the condition of the most advanced tribes of Central Africa is 
 wretched, mainly, in consequence of the slave trade. The only won- 
 der is, that with this cancer eating into their vitals from age to age, 
 any degree of civilization whatever can exist. But, degraded as the 
 ninety millions of Africans are, I presume you might find, in the 
 aggregate, on the continent of Europe, another ninety millions as 
 degraded, to which each country in that quarter of the globe would 
 contribute its quota. The difference is, and it is certainly an all im- 
 portant difference, that in Europe, intermingled with these ninety 
 millions, are fifteen or twenty millions possessed of all degrees of cul- 
 ture, up to the very highest, while in Africa there is not an individual 
 who, according to our standard, has attained a high degree of intel- 
 lectual culture; but if obvious causes for this can be shown, it is 
 unphilosoohical to infer from it an essential incapacity. 
 
 But the question seems to me to be put at rest, by what we all must 
 have witnessed of what has been achieved by the colored race in this 
 country and on the coast of Africa. Unfavorable as their position has 
 been for any intellectual progress, we still all of us know that, they are 
 competent to the common arts and business of life, to the ingenious 
 and mechanical arts, to keeping accounts, to the common branches of 
 academical and professional culture. Paul Cuffee’s name is familiar 
 to everybody in my part of the country, and l am sure you have heard 
 of him. He was a man of uncommon energy and force of character. 
 He navigated to Liverpool his own vessel, manned by a colored crew. 
 Ilis father was a native African slave ; his mother belonged to one 
 
11 
 
 of the broken down Indian tribes, some fragments of which still 
 linger in the corners of Massachusetts. 1 have already alluded to 
 the extraordinary attainments of that native African Prince, Abdul 
 Rahhaman. If there was ever a native born gentleman on earth, he 
 was one. He had the port and the air of a prince, and the literary 
 culture of a scholar. The learned blacksmith of Alabama, now in 
 Liberia, has attained a celebrity scarcely inferior to his white brother, 
 who is known by the same designation. When I lived in Cambridge, 
 a few years ago, I used to attend, as one of the Board of Visitors, the 
 examinations of a classical school, in which th< re was a colored boy, the 
 son of a slave in Mississippi,! think. lie appeared to me to be of pure 
 African blood. There were at the same time two youths from Georgia, 
 and one of my own sons, attending the same school. I mu>t say that 
 this poor negro boy, Beverly Williams, was one of the best scholars 
 at the school, and in the Latin language he was the best scholar in his 
 class. These are instances that, have fallen under my own observation. 
 There are others, I am told, which show still more conclusively the 
 capacity of the colored race for every kind of intellectual culture. 
 
 Now look at what they have done on the coast of Africa. Think 
 of the facts that were spread before you in that abstract of the Society’s 
 doings, which was read this evening. It is only twenty-five or thirty 
 years since that little colony was founded under the auspices of this 
 Society. In that time what have they done ; or rather let me ask, 
 what have they not done? They have established a well-organized 
 constitution of Republican Government, which is administered with 
 ability and energy in peace, and by the unfortunate necessity of cir- 
 cumstances, also in war. They have courts of justice, modelled after 
 our own; schools, churches, and lyceums. Commerce is carried on, 
 the soil is tilled, communication is opened to the interior. The native 
 tribes are civilized; diplomatic relations are creditably sustained with 
 foreign powers; and the two leading powers of Europe, England and 
 France, have acknowledged their sovereignty and independence. 
 Would the same number of persons, taken principally from the 
 laboring classes of any portion of England or Anglo-America, have 
 done better than this? 
 
 Ah, sir, there is an influence at work through the agency of this 
 Society, and other Societies, and through the agency of the Colony of 
 Liberia, and others which I hope will be established, sufficient to pro- 
 duce these and still greater effects. I mean the influence of pure, 
 unselfish Christian love. This, after all, is the only influence that 
 never can fail. Military power will at times be resisted and overcome; 
 commercial enterprise, however well planned, may be blasted; state 
 policy, however deep, may be outwitted ; but pure, unselfish, manly, 
 rather let me say, heavenly love, never did, and in the long run, never 
 will fail. It is a truth which this Society ought to write upon its 
 banners, that it is not political nor military power, but the moral sen- 
 timent, principally under the guidance and influence of religious zeal, 
 that has in all ages civilized the w’orld. Arms, craft, and mammon 
 lie in wait, and watch their chance to mingle in the work, but they 
 cannot poison its vitality. 
 
 Whatever becomes of the question of intellectual superiority, I should 
 insult this audience, if I attempted to argue that in the moral senti- 
 
12 
 
 ments, the colored race stand upon an equality with us. I read a year 
 or two ago in a newspaper, an anecdote which illustrates this in so 
 beautiful and striking a manner that, with your permission, I will 
 repeat it. 
 
 When the news of the discovery of gold reached us from California, 
 a citizen of the upper part of Louisiana, from the Parish of Rapides, 
 for the sake of improving his not prosperous fortunes, started with his 
 servant to get a share, if he could, of the golden harvest. They 
 repaired to the gold regions. They labored together for a while with 
 success. At length the strength of the mister failed, and he fell dan- 
 gerously sick. What then was the conduct of the slave in those far 
 off hills? In a State whose constitution did not recognize slavery, in 
 that newly gathered and not very thoroughly organized state of society, 
 what was his conduct? As his master lay sick with the typhus fever, 
 Priest and Levite came, and looked upon him, and passed by on the 
 other side. The poor slave stood by him, tended him, protected him ; 
 by night and by day his sole companion, nurse and friend. At length, 
 the master died. What then was the conduct of the slave in those 
 distant wastes, as he stood by him whom living he had served, but 
 who was now laid low at his feet by the great Emancipator? He dug 
 his decent grave in the golden sands. He brought together the earn- 
 ings of their joint labor ; these he deposited in a place of safety, as a 
 sacred trust for his master’s family. He then went to work under a 
 Californian sun, to earn the wherewithal to pay his passage home. 
 That done, he went back to the banks of the Red River, in Louisiana, 
 and laki down the little store at the feet of his master’s widow. 
 
 Sir, I do not know whether the story is true. I read it in a public 
 journal. The Italians have a proverbial saying of a tale like this, 
 that if it is not true, it is well invented. This, sir, is too good to be 
 invented. It is, it must be true. That master and that slave ought 
 to live in marble and in brass; and if it was not presumptuous in a 
 person like me, so soon to pass away and to be forgotten, 1 would say, 
 their memory shall never perish. 
 
 Fortunati ambo ! si quid mea carmina possint, 
 
 Nulla dies unquam memori vos eximet 8evo. 
 
 There is a moral treasure in that incident. It proves the capacity 
 of the colored race to civilize Africa. There is a moral worth in it, 
 beyond all the riches of California. If all her gold — all that she has 
 yet yielded to the indomitable industry of the adventurer, and all that 
 she locks from the cupidity of man in the virgin chambers of her 
 snow-clad sierras — were all moulten into one vast ingot, it would not, 
 in the sight of Heaven, buy the moral worth of that one incident. 
 
 Gentlemen of the Colonization Society, I crave your pardon for 
 this long intrusion upon your patience. I have told you — pardon that 
 word, you knew it before — I have reminded you of the importance of 
 the work, of the instrumentality by which it is to be effected, of the 
 agents chosen, as I think, in the Councils of Heaven, to carry it into 
 effect; and now what remains for us, for every friend of humanity, 
 but to bid God speed to the undertaking? 
 
 Printed for the Massachusetts Colonization Society, by T. It. Marvin, 42 Congress st.