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them to remain in this country (that is, in their native country). We would offer them no such inducement.’1
‘The public safety of our brethren at the South requires them (the slaves) to be kept ignorant and uninstructed.’2
‘It is the business of the free (their safety requires it) to keep the slaves in ignorance.
But a few days ago a proposition was made in the legislature of Georgia to allow them so much instruction as to enable them to read the Bible; which was promptly rejected by a large majority.’3
E. B. Caldwell, the first Secretary of the American Colonization Society, in his speech at its formation, recommended them to be kept ‘in the lowest state of ignorance and degradation, for (says he) the nearer you bring them to the condition of brutes, the better chance do you give them of possessing their apathy.’
My limits will not admit of a more extended examination.
To the documents from whence the above extracts have been made I would call the attention of every real friend of humanity.
I seek to do the Colonization Society no injustice, but I wish the public generally to understand its character.4
1 Southern Religious Telegraph, February 19, 1831.
2 G. P. Dissosway, Esq., an eminent colonizationist.
3 Proceedings of New York State Colonization Society at its second anniversary.
4 I would especially invite the attention of my friends to Thoughts on Colonization, a very able and eloquent pamphlet by a much traduced but noble-hearted philanthropist, William L. Garrison, of Boston; and also to the First Annual Report of the New England Anti-Slavery Society.
Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1888-89.
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