William Garrison - Thoughts on African Colonization

Exquisite! The picture is crowded with attractions, delightful to the eye. The story is skilfully told, and implicitly believed; but, like every other story, it has two sides to it. So complete is the delusion, however, that many good people are ready to class those who denounce the Colonization Society, among the opposers of foreign missions, bible and tract societies, and the other benevolent operations of the age!

Far be it from me to accuse the agents of the Society of intentionally perverting the truth or deliberately imposing upon the credulity of the public. Some – perhaps all of them, are men of sincerity and probity; but, deluded themselves, they help to delude others. Their vision is imperfect; and 'if the blind lead the blind,' we may expect to find them in the same ditch together.

Great complacency has been manifested on various occasions, by the advocates of the Society, on the ground that it was at first suspected of sinister designs, both at the north and the south, but is now receiving the countenance of both. This exultation is premature. The opposition formerly manifested to the Society by the holders of slaves, grew out of their ignorance of its purpose; but a very large majority of them now perceive that it is their devoted servant, crouching down at their feet, shielding them from reproach, dragging those away whom they dread, allowing them to sin with impunity, and generously granting them and their children whole centuries in which to repent, and to surrender what they have stolen! It dissuades them from emancipating their slaves faster than they can be transported to Africa; and thus regards their persistance in robbery and oppression as evidence of wisdom, benevolence and sanity! It is natural, that, discovering their mistake, they should now rally in a body around the Society; and, consequently, we find that the legislatures of the several slaveholding States are passing encomiums upon it, and in some instances appropriating sums of money to be paid over to it by instalments.

The people of the north have been shamefully duped by this scheme; but, like the slaveholders, they begin to discover their error. Unlike them, however, they are withdrawing their support, in obedience to the injunction of the Apostle: 'Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial? Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.'

To Africa this country owes a debt larger than she is able to liquidate. Most intensely do I desire to see that ill-fated continent transformed into the abode of civilization, of the arts and sciences, of evangelical piety, of liberty, and of all that adds to the dignity, the renown, and the temporal and eternal happiness of man. Shame and confusion of face belong to the Church, that she has so long disregarded the claims of Africa upon her sympathies, and prayers, and liberality – claims as much superior as its wrongs to those of any other portion of the globe. It is indeed most strange that, like the Priest and the Levite, she should have 'passed by on the other side,' and left the victim of thieves to bleed and sicken and die. As the Africans were the only people doomed to perpetual servitude, and to be the prey of kidnappers, she should have long since directed almost her undivided efforts to civilize and convert them, – not by establishing colonies of ignorant and selfish foreigners among them, who will seize every opportunity to overreach or oppress, as interest or ambition shall instigate, – but by sending intelligent, pious missionaries; men fearing God and eschewing evil – living evidences of the excellence of christianity – having but one object, not the possession of wealth or the obtainment of power or the gratification of selfishness, but the salvation of the soul . Had she made this attempt, as she was bound to have made it by every principle of justice and every feeling of humanity, a century ago, Africa would have been, at the present day, 'redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled,' and the slavery of her children brought to an end. No pirates would now haunt her coast to desolate her villages with fire and sword, in order to supply a christian people with hewers of wood and drawers of water. How much has been needlessly lost to the world by this criminal neglect!

The conception of evangelizing a heathenish country by sending to it an illiterate, degraded and irreligious population, belongs exclusively to the advocates of African colonization. For absurdity and inaptitude, it stands, and must forever stand, without a parallel. Of all the offspring of prejudice and oppression, it is the most shapeless and unnatural. But more of this hereafter.

History is full of instruction on the subject of colonization. The establishment of colonies, in all ages, with scarcely an exception, has resulted either in their subversion by the vices or physical strength of the natives, or by a fatal amalgamation with them; or else in the rapid destruction of the natives by the superior knowledge and greedy avarice of the new settlers. It is presumption to suppose that the colony at Liberia, composed of the worst materials imaginable, will present an example of forbearance, stability and good faith, hitherto unwitnessed in the world.

Soon after its establishment, the colony narrowly escaped a bloody extirpation, and was the cause of a murderous warfare in which several of the colonists and a large number of the natives were slain. The steady growth of the colony excited the jealousy and alarm of some of the neighboring tribes; and, accordingly, a consultation was held, at which King George, Governor, and all the other head men, contended that 'The Americans were strangers who had forgot their attachment to the land of their fathers ; for if not, why had they not renounced their connexion with white men altogether, and placed themselves under the protection of the kings of the country? King George had already been under the necessity of removing from his town, and leaving the Cape in their hands. This was but the first step of their encroachments. If left alone, they must, in a very few years, master the whole country. And as all other places were full, their own tribe must be without a home, and cease any longer to remain a nation.' 6 6 Memoir of American Colonists – vide 'The African Repository,' vol. 2, p. 174. This appeal (which evinces an intimate acquaintance with human nature and much foresight) induced the attack to which allusion has been made. A single paragraph from the Rev. Mr Ashmun's account of the battle with the natives may suffice to give the reader an idea of its destructiveness:

'A few musketeers with E. Johnson at their head, by passing round upon the enemy's flank, served to increase the consternation which was beginning to pervade their unwieldy body. In about twenty minutes after the settlers had taken their stand, the front of the enemy began to recoil. But from the numerous obstructions in their rear, the entire absence of discipline, and the extreme difficulty of giving a reversed motion to so large a body, a small part only of which was directly exposed to danger, and the delay occasioned by the practice of carrying off all their dead and wounded, rendered a retreat for some minutes longer, impossible. The very violence employed by those in the front, in their impatience to hasten it, by increasing the confusion, produced an effect opposite to that intended. The Americans perceiving their advantage, now regained possession of the western post, and instantly brought the long nine to rake the whole line of the enemy. Imagination can scarcely figure to itself a throng of human beings in a more capital state of exposure to the destructive power of the machinery of modern warfare! Eight hundred men were here pressed shoulder to shoulder, in so compact a form, that a child might easily walk upon their heads from one end of the mass to the other, presenting in their rear a breadth of rank equal to twenty or thirty men, and all exposed to a gun of great power, raised on a platform, at only thirty to sixty yards distance! Every shot literally spent its force in a solid mass of living human flesh! Their fire suddenly terminated. A savage yell was raised, which filled the dismal forest with a momentary horror. It gradually died away; and the whole host disappeared. At 8 o'clock, the well known signal of their dispersion and return to their homes was sounded, and many small parties seen at a distance, directly afterwards, moving off in different directions. One large canoe, employed in reconveying a party across the mouth of the Montserado, venturing within the range of the long gun, was struck by a shot, and several men killed.' 7 7 African Repository, vol. 2, p. 179.