African Colonisation
THE series of brilliant explorations of Africa witnessed by the present generation has filled up the larger part of the blank spaces on maps of the “Dark Continent,” and a country has been revealed such as the outside world, fifty years ago, never suspected. Previous to that time, the little that, from the coast settlements, could be discerned of the interior, encouraged the belief that not only was it inaccessible, but unworthy of the pains and sacrifices required to attempt access. But, within the last five-and-twenty years a whole library has been written, giving minute particulars of the country and people in the heart of the continent; unfolding regions that seem fresh from the hands of God; only waiting the energies of man to bring to perfection the numerous products of the soil—great rivers, extensive pasturage and tillage, cities of respectable size, a large inland commerce, countless millions of people; in some parts with the rudiments, at least, of history, and with a capacity for receiving and contributing to an advanced civilisation.
These discoveries have turned the attention of Europe to Africa with renewed curiosity and interest. And, very recently, this interest has so much increased that the competition among the leading European powers for the possession of territory on the coast has been described by the London Times, with no touch of exaggeration, as “The Scramble for Africa.”
An European writer, delighting in epigrammatic rhetoric, has recenty said, “The eighteenth century stole the black man from his country; the nineteenth century steals his country from the black man.” And, just as the stealing of the man in the eighteenth century originated in philanthropic ideas, so the motive for stealing his country in the nineteenth century is put into philanthropic language. The nations engaged in the “scramble” are all models of the highest civilisation, and their aims and purposes are all in the interest of enlightenment and progress. The Congo Conference laid down admirable rules for occupation and protectorates, whatever the native may have to say against them. But they will not countenance any acts against right and justice. They are at once the invaders of his country and the protectors of his rights. The spirit of the international alliance is the spirit of liberty and equity for Africa.
But it does not seem probable to us that what foreigners have failed to accomplish in all the past ages will be achieved by their descendants of this generation. Modern Europe, with all its vast machinery of intellectual and material progress, and with all its humanitarian intentions—with all its appliances for civilising, instructing and elevating—stands paralysed before difficulties not a whit less appalling than those which, for centuries, have confronted European efforts in this country. To any thinking man, of whatever race, who, living in West Africa, surveys the current of events, the reflection must bring a feeling of discouragement that the very extension and multiplication of means of foreign communication with the country, which give material facilities for the task of her regeneration, throw moral obstacles in the way of its accomplishment, by allowing or encouraging counteracting social forces to have equal access to the field.
It is in view of the physical obstacles which beset the efforts of foreigners, and of the moral difficulties raised by the introduction of European civilisation that we purpose, in the following pages, to attempt to show how closely all prospect of regenerating the African continent is connected with human elements in the United States, which seem to be superfluous there, and with the principle represented by the American Colonisation Society.
The Negro, in exile, is the only man, born out of Africa, who can live and work and reproduce himself in this country. His residence in America has conferred upon him numerous advantages. It has quickened him in the direction of progress. It has predisposed him in favour of civilisation, and given him a knowledge of revealed truth in its highest and purest form. “We believe that the deportation of the Negro to the New World was as much decreed by an all-wise Providence, as the expatriation of the Pilgrims from Europe to America. When we say that Providence decreed the means of Africa’s enlightenment, we do not say that He decreed the wickedness of the instruments. When the deportation first began, it was looked upon as simply the transportation of Africans to America for purposes of labour; but with a view, also, as Sir John Hawkins made Queen Elizabeth believe,[1] to their spiritual improvement. But, in course of time, human passions became mixed up with, and wicked hands prosecuted, what it had been before determined should be carried out; and the enterprise, having, at first, a beneficent aim and a humane form, became the slave trade, with all its unspeakable enormities. It was not the first time that wicked hands were suffered to execute a Divine purpose. No special guilt on the part of the African, no special merit on the part of the European, made one the slave and the other the master. Many a wicked man became master, and flourished the rod of the oppressor over the head of his’ moral and intellectual superior. The good are often in distress; the wicked in prosperity. “They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men.”
Says Cotta, in Cicero’s treatise on the Nature of the Gods, arguing against a moral government of the world--
Why did the Carthaginian overbear, in Spain, the two Scipios, the bravest and the best of men? Why did Maximus bury his son, who had already been consul? Why did Hannibal slay Marcellus? Why did the field of Cannæ snatch away Paulus? Why was the body of Regulus given up to the cruelty of the Poeni? Why did not his own roof cover our Africanus? . . . The day would fail me, were I to tell of the evils that have befallen the righteous; no less so, were I to recount the successes of the wicked. For why did Marius die so happily in his home in a ripe old age, and consul for a seventh time? Or, why did Cinna, the cruellest of .all men, rule so long? [2]
These discoveries have turned the attention of Europe to Africa with renewed curiosity and interest. And, very recently, this interest has so much increased that the competition among the leading European powers for the possession of territory on the coast has been described by the London Times, with no touch of exaggeration, as “The Scramble for Africa.”
An European writer, delighting in epigrammatic rhetoric, has recenty said, “The eighteenth century stole the black man from his country; the nineteenth century steals his country from the black man.” And, just as the stealing of the man in the eighteenth century originated in philanthropic ideas, so the motive for stealing his country in the nineteenth century is put into philanthropic language. The nations engaged in the “scramble” are all models of the highest civilisation, and their aims and purposes are all in the interest of enlightenment and progress. The Congo Conference laid down admirable rules for occupation and protectorates, whatever the native may have to say against them. But they will not countenance any acts against right and justice. They are at once the invaders of his country and the protectors of his rights. The spirit of the international alliance is the spirit of liberty and equity for Africa.
But it does not seem probable to us that what foreigners have failed to accomplish in all the past ages will be achieved by their descendants of this generation. Modern Europe, with all its vast machinery of intellectual and material progress, and with all its humanitarian intentions—with all its appliances for civilising, instructing and elevating—stands paralysed before difficulties not a whit less appalling than those which, for centuries, have confronted European efforts in this country. To any thinking man, of whatever race, who, living in West Africa, surveys the current of events, the reflection must bring a feeling of discouragement that the very extension and multiplication of means of foreign communication with the country, which give material facilities for the task of her regeneration, throw moral obstacles in the way of its accomplishment, by allowing or encouraging counteracting social forces to have equal access to the field.
It is in view of the physical obstacles which beset the efforts of foreigners, and of the moral difficulties raised by the introduction of European civilisation that we purpose, in the following pages, to attempt to show how closely all prospect of regenerating the African continent is connected with human elements in the United States, which seem to be superfluous there, and with the principle represented by the American Colonisation Society.
The Negro, in exile, is the only man, born out of Africa, who can live and work and reproduce himself in this country. His residence in America has conferred upon him numerous advantages. It has quickened him in the direction of progress. It has predisposed him in favour of civilisation, and given him a knowledge of revealed truth in its highest and purest form. “We believe that the deportation of the Negro to the New World was as much decreed by an all-wise Providence, as the expatriation of the Pilgrims from Europe to America. When we say that Providence decreed the means of Africa’s enlightenment, we do not say that He decreed the wickedness of the instruments. When the deportation first began, it was looked upon as simply the transportation of Africans to America for purposes of labour; but with a view, also, as Sir John Hawkins made Queen Elizabeth believe,[1] to their spiritual improvement. But, in course of time, human passions became mixed up with, and wicked hands prosecuted, what it had been before determined should be carried out; and the enterprise, having, at first, a beneficent aim and a humane form, became the slave trade, with all its unspeakable enormities. It was not the first time that wicked hands were suffered to execute a Divine purpose. No special guilt on the part of the African, no special merit on the part of the European, made one the slave and the other the master. Many a wicked man became master, and flourished the rod of the oppressor over the head of his’ moral and intellectual superior. The good are often in distress; the wicked in prosperity. “They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men.”
Says Cotta, in Cicero’s treatise on the Nature of the Gods, arguing against a moral government of the world--
Why did the Carthaginian overbear, in Spain, the two Scipios, the bravest and the best of men? Why did Maximus bury his son, who had already been consul? Why did Hannibal slay Marcellus? Why did the field of Cannæ snatch away Paulus? Why was the body of Regulus given up to the cruelty of the Poeni? Why did not his own roof cover our Africanus? . . . The day would fail me, were I to tell of the evils that have befallen the righteous; no less so, were I to recount the successes of the wicked. For why did Marius die so happily in his home in a ripe old age, and consul for a seventh time? Or, why did Cinna, the cruellest of .all men, rule so long? [2]
Footnotes:
1 Walker’s History of the Slave Trade, p. 37.
2 De Natura Deorum; lib. iii, o. 32.
1 Walker’s History of the Slave Trade, p. 37.
2 De Natura Deorum; lib. iii, o. 32.
But the Christian has been taught, that whatever is done, is done, not from the caprice of the gods, but because it seems good in the sight of a merciful Father, infinite in wisdom, power, justice, holiness, goodness and truth. No grief, therefore, at the recollection of the ravages in Africa; no memory of the evils of the “middle passage”; no abhorrence of successful and damnable crime; no indignation at the iniquities of unparalled oppression in the house of bondage, can prevent us from recognising the hand of an over-ruling Providence in the deportation of Africans to the Western world, or interfere with our sense of the incalculable profit —the measureless gains—which, in spite of man’s perversity, cruelty and greed, must accrue to Africa and the Negro race from the long and weary exile.
Africans were carried away by millions. There is no means of estimating the number. Had they been taken to the foreign school as individuals, and been brought back after their training, the desirable results would not have been attained. Individuals might have lost their knowledge of their own people, and their interest in them; or, receiving foreign training, under circumstances of personal isolation, might have received it under a sort of mental protest as having no relation to the interest or happiness of their people at home; or, returning to their country as the prophets of a new era, they would have shared the proverbial fate of the solitary reformer among his own people. They were, therefore, carried away in such numbers, that, while under the control of a civilised people of a different race, and undergoing the process of enforced improvement, they might be sufficiently numerous to find among themselves encouragement, sympathy and support, amid the rigours of their schooling; and, on returning might exert the influence of organised communities, able to introduce and establish wholesome reforms.
Careful observers have noticed that the Negroes have retained their manliness, self-reliance and self-respect, to a far greater degree in those sections of the United States, and in the West Indies, where they could exist in large numbers, and where the climate more nearly resembled their own, than in countries where the paucity of their numbers and an uncongenial climate made them always feel like strangers. And in tropical, or semi- tropical countries, they were, though slaves in some respects, masters of the situation; for they had often to instruct their European overseers in the art of tropical agriculture, and in the value and use of tropical productions. They had the advantage, at times, of being able to dictate, and to see their suggestions adopted. But, in temperate climes, where for six months of the year, they had to deal with frost, ice and snow—with a flora and fauna entirely unknown to them—they were obliged to ignore all their past experience. Their knowledge previously gained amounted to nothing. They had to be told everything, and to render, even in the merest trifle, mechanical obedience; hence, they hung in helpless dependence upon their masters. For them the modus vivendi was absolute submission. Whenever they moved they must move in the track of their guides. Reason and judgment were abdicated, and the mimetic faculty took their place. No such combination against their oppressors as occurred in Hayti or Jamaica, was possible to them. Nature, instead of affording them the sympathy and shelter of her recesses, repelled them. The wintry stars, in their courses, fought against them; and trusting to the white man became as complete an instinct as keeping their balance. Though the condition of the Negroes of the Northern States was theoretically better than that of their brethren in the South, they have not held their own either in numerical or intellectual importance. They have steadily decreased in numerical and social status.
In the meanwhile, the Fatherland has been left a prey to European greed, and to its own untutored devices, enjoying only here and there, isolated efforts of a timid and cautious philanthropy.
The chief obstacle to the wholesome influence of Europeans in Africa is the climate. From the earliest antiquity this has been the insuperable barrier. Barth says that the relics of Roman dominion in North-central Africa are chiefly sepulchral monuments.[3] Such monuments, alas, are still the melancholy reminders, all along the West coast, of European efforts. And notwithstanding the increase of foreign conveniences, and the vast progress accomplished in climatology, the climate of Africa produces on European constitutions the same fatal effects. Recent advices state that the mission of the London Missionary Society, on Lake Tanganyika, is nearly abandoned, on account of the repeated deaths of the missionaries. The Rev. Bowen Rees, one of the missionaries, in tendering his resignation to the Committee, pathetically says:--
Having been unwell since I have settled in this country, and there being at present no signs of my getting well; also, that I see my fellow missionaries falling one after the other, I am convinced that Europeans are not qualified, physically, for the climate of this part of Africa. Consequently, I feel that I am compelled to return home as soon as possible.
Given a healthy climate, or even a less pernicious climate, for Europeans, and all other difficulties would be overcome. But it is a melancholy fact, that wherever, and as far as they can penetrate and live, the concomitants of their successful residence have largely hindered the improvement which their presence is supposed to stimulate.
Bishop Foster, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, by his address before the General Missionary Committee of his Church, in November last, has furnished serious matter for thought and reflection. The Bishop has travelled, and knows whereof he affirms. We do not know whether he has visited West Africa, but this we know, that, whatever may be the fact in other parts of the world, every word of his address, so far as it applies to this country, should be emphasised by capitals. We will give the testimony on this subject of the earliest of modern explorers of this portion of Africa, and the result of the observations of the very latest.
Mungo Park recorded his impressions as follows:--
Although the Negroes, in general, have a great idea of the wealth and power of Europeans, I am afraid that the Mohammedan converts among them think but very little of our superior attainments in religious knowledge. The white traders in the maritime districts take no pains to counteract this unhappy prejudice. . . . . The poor Africans, whom we affect to consider as barbarians, look upon us, I fear, as little better than a race of formidable but ignorant Heathen.[4]
The Landers observed, that the natives, in proportion as their aspect and attire showed symptoms of intercourse with Europeans, became always more barbarous and lawless.[5]
A century has made no change for the better, Mr. Joseph Thomson, the well-known traveller, visited the Nigritian countries last year, and in a recent article detailing his experiences, he says:--
My voyage along the coast of Africa, and visits to all the principal places, have astonished mo profoundly. I looked forward with pleasure to a study of the influence which a century of contact with civilisation has effected in the barbarous tribes of the seaboard. The result has been unspeakably disappointing. Leaving out of consideration the towns of Sierra Leone and Lagos, where the conditions have been abnormal, the tendency has been everywhere in the line of deterioration. There is absolutely not a single place where the natives are left to their own free will, in which there is the slightest evidence of a desire for better things. The worst vices and diseases of Europe have found a congenial soil, and the taste for spirits has risen out of all proportion to their desire for clothes. . . . . In these villages, men, women, and children, with scarcely a rag upon their persons, follow you about beseeching you for a little gin or tobacco. Eternally gin, tobacco, or gunpowder. These are the sole wants aroused by a century of trade and contact with Europeans.[6]
Africans were carried away by millions. There is no means of estimating the number. Had they been taken to the foreign school as individuals, and been brought back after their training, the desirable results would not have been attained. Individuals might have lost their knowledge of their own people, and their interest in them; or, receiving foreign training, under circumstances of personal isolation, might have received it under a sort of mental protest as having no relation to the interest or happiness of their people at home; or, returning to their country as the prophets of a new era, they would have shared the proverbial fate of the solitary reformer among his own people. They were, therefore, carried away in such numbers, that, while under the control of a civilised people of a different race, and undergoing the process of enforced improvement, they might be sufficiently numerous to find among themselves encouragement, sympathy and support, amid the rigours of their schooling; and, on returning might exert the influence of organised communities, able to introduce and establish wholesome reforms.
Careful observers have noticed that the Negroes have retained their manliness, self-reliance and self-respect, to a far greater degree in those sections of the United States, and in the West Indies, where they could exist in large numbers, and where the climate more nearly resembled their own, than in countries where the paucity of their numbers and an uncongenial climate made them always feel like strangers. And in tropical, or semi- tropical countries, they were, though slaves in some respects, masters of the situation; for they had often to instruct their European overseers in the art of tropical agriculture, and in the value and use of tropical productions. They had the advantage, at times, of being able to dictate, and to see their suggestions adopted. But, in temperate climes, where for six months of the year, they had to deal with frost, ice and snow—with a flora and fauna entirely unknown to them—they were obliged to ignore all their past experience. Their knowledge previously gained amounted to nothing. They had to be told everything, and to render, even in the merest trifle, mechanical obedience; hence, they hung in helpless dependence upon their masters. For them the modus vivendi was absolute submission. Whenever they moved they must move in the track of their guides. Reason and judgment were abdicated, and the mimetic faculty took their place. No such combination against their oppressors as occurred in Hayti or Jamaica, was possible to them. Nature, instead of affording them the sympathy and shelter of her recesses, repelled them. The wintry stars, in their courses, fought against them; and trusting to the white man became as complete an instinct as keeping their balance. Though the condition of the Negroes of the Northern States was theoretically better than that of their brethren in the South, they have not held their own either in numerical or intellectual importance. They have steadily decreased in numerical and social status.
In the meanwhile, the Fatherland has been left a prey to European greed, and to its own untutored devices, enjoying only here and there, isolated efforts of a timid and cautious philanthropy.
The chief obstacle to the wholesome influence of Europeans in Africa is the climate. From the earliest antiquity this has been the insuperable barrier. Barth says that the relics of Roman dominion in North-central Africa are chiefly sepulchral monuments.[3] Such monuments, alas, are still the melancholy reminders, all along the West coast, of European efforts. And notwithstanding the increase of foreign conveniences, and the vast progress accomplished in climatology, the climate of Africa produces on European constitutions the same fatal effects. Recent advices state that the mission of the London Missionary Society, on Lake Tanganyika, is nearly abandoned, on account of the repeated deaths of the missionaries. The Rev. Bowen Rees, one of the missionaries, in tendering his resignation to the Committee, pathetically says:--
Having been unwell since I have settled in this country, and there being at present no signs of my getting well; also, that I see my fellow missionaries falling one after the other, I am convinced that Europeans are not qualified, physically, for the climate of this part of Africa. Consequently, I feel that I am compelled to return home as soon as possible.
Given a healthy climate, or even a less pernicious climate, for Europeans, and all other difficulties would be overcome. But it is a melancholy fact, that wherever, and as far as they can penetrate and live, the concomitants of their successful residence have largely hindered the improvement which their presence is supposed to stimulate.
Bishop Foster, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, by his address before the General Missionary Committee of his Church, in November last, has furnished serious matter for thought and reflection. The Bishop has travelled, and knows whereof he affirms. We do not know whether he has visited West Africa, but this we know, that, whatever may be the fact in other parts of the world, every word of his address, so far as it applies to this country, should be emphasised by capitals. We will give the testimony on this subject of the earliest of modern explorers of this portion of Africa, and the result of the observations of the very latest.
Mungo Park recorded his impressions as follows:--
Although the Negroes, in general, have a great idea of the wealth and power of Europeans, I am afraid that the Mohammedan converts among them think but very little of our superior attainments in religious knowledge. The white traders in the maritime districts take no pains to counteract this unhappy prejudice. . . . . The poor Africans, whom we affect to consider as barbarians, look upon us, I fear, as little better than a race of formidable but ignorant Heathen.[4]
The Landers observed, that the natives, in proportion as their aspect and attire showed symptoms of intercourse with Europeans, became always more barbarous and lawless.[5]
A century has made no change for the better, Mr. Joseph Thomson, the well-known traveller, visited the Nigritian countries last year, and in a recent article detailing his experiences, he says:--
My voyage along the coast of Africa, and visits to all the principal places, have astonished mo profoundly. I looked forward with pleasure to a study of the influence which a century of contact with civilisation has effected in the barbarous tribes of the seaboard. The result has been unspeakably disappointing. Leaving out of consideration the towns of Sierra Leone and Lagos, where the conditions have been abnormal, the tendency has been everywhere in the line of deterioration. There is absolutely not a single place where the natives are left to their own free will, in which there is the slightest evidence of a desire for better things. The worst vices and diseases of Europe have found a congenial soil, and the taste for spirits has risen out of all proportion to their desire for clothes. . . . . In these villages, men, women, and children, with scarcely a rag upon their persons, follow you about beseeching you for a little gin or tobacco. Eternally gin, tobacco, or gunpowder. These are the sole wants aroused by a century of trade and contact with Europeans.[6]
Footnotes:
3 Travels, &c., in North and Central Africa, in the Years 1849-1855; vol. i, p. 156.
4 Travels in 1795,1796,1797; p. 161.
5 Journal of an Expedition to Explore the Course and Termination of the Niger; by Richard and John Landor, 1832.
6 Good Words; January, 1886.
3 Travels, &c., in North and Central Africa, in the Years 1849-1855; vol. i, p. 156.
4 Travels in 1795,1796,1797; p. 161.
5 Journal of an Expedition to Explore the Course and Termination of the Niger; by Richard and John Landor, 1832.
6 Good Words; January, 1886.
“When Mr. Thomson speaks of places “where the natives are left to their own free will, he means, places where the unbridled propensities of godless Europeans are unchecked by law or public sentiment. In these places the morality with which the natives come into contact is of the lowest character. The generality of the trading agents act upon the theory that European trade with Africa is a species of one-sided contract, in which all the benefit must be on the side of the European, and all the disadvantages on the side of the African. They are men, as one of their own countrymen has recently described them, “who left their country for their country’s good.” They bring with them the arts and the strength of civilisation, but, personally, they are at large from the influence of its higher principles. They resemble the men who resorted to David in the cave of Adullam: “Every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented.” Such reckless spirits are utterly indifferent to the character of the method, or to the moral results of their intercourse with the natives.
But these sad results occur, not only “where the natives are left to their own free will,” but even where civilised governments are supposed to control, and where the “conditions are described by Mr. Thomson as “abnormal.” The strict application of Free-trade principles to the sale of spirits, within, and in localities adjoining, British colonies, is attended with deplorable consequences; and often, by the disturbances created, the philanthropic objects of Free-trade are largely defeated. Sir Arthur Conynghame, in his work, My Command in South Africa, gives the following melancholy account:--
The facility with which those untamed savages (Kafirs) can obtain any amount of villainous drink, is one of the most fruitful sources of danger. Some of the chiefs, being aware of the evil, forbid canteens in their localities, and have repeatedly requested that the same prohibition should be extended among the adjoining (British) districts. The answer of authority has always been, “that the natives should place a moral restraint on themselves, and not imbibe more than is beneficial; and that trade cannot be impeded, simply because it may engender evil consequences among the natives.
What a “ simply.” During the visit of Cetewayo, King of the Zulus, to England, a few years ago, a deputation from the British National Temperance League called upon him, to urge their views as to the evils produced in native races by the use of spirituous liquors. After they had spoken, the King replied as follows:--
I can only say that, as a nation, my people are, so to speak, abstainers; or, at all events, they are not accustomed, nor do they, as a people, partake of spirituous liquors. The beer which they use, which is actually a food, is like gruel— our beer is really a food; but the others—your spirits and your intoxicants—are death. It may be interesting to the gentlemen of the deputation, to know that there was an order issued, or a proclamation by me, that spirits were not to be introduced, or allowed to enter my country. But I think that the right place to shut the door is the side from which the spirits come. It is no good my shutting the door on my side, for I have no distilleries. But I think the proper way would be for the Natal Government to assist, by placing restrictions upon the introduction of spirituous liquors into my country.
The Zulus are celebrated as logicians. The above is a specimen of the unanswerable answers which, in verbal fence, they are accustomed to give to Europeans.
Rev, R. H. Nassau, M.D., of the Presbyterian Mission on the Ogowe, writes (Dec. 31, 1881):--
The inroad of intoxicating liquor into the mission premises, and used by Church members and inquirers, distressed us exceedingly, and burdened our hearts as the carking care of station work alone would not have done.
Rev. David A. Day, of the Lutheran Mission in West Africa, with pathetic indignation, says:--
The vilest liquors imaginable are being poured into Africa in shiploads from almost every quarter of the civilised world. On one small vessel, in which myself and wife were the only passengers, there were, in the hold, over 100,000 gallons of New England rum, which sold on the coast for one dollar a gallon in exchange for African produce.
The religious press in West Africa is loud in its denunciations of the infamous traffic. The Methodist Herald (December 9, 1885), published at Sierra Leone by natives, making grateful record of the proceedings of the Missionary Conference held at Bremen, October 27, to protest against the trade in spirits, says:--
In considering the advance of European civilisation into Africa, one of the chief sources of anxiety for the future in the minds of intelligent Africans is the introduction of ardent spirits, which seem to be, along the coast, the chief article of European traffic with the natives. It is gratifying, therefore, to see that the attention of one of the most powerful of the European Governments whose citizens are enlarging their trade with the country, is being earnestly and seriously directed to this evil. We do not believe that the article is indispensable to the African trade. The spirits introduced are confined to the coast, the interior natives knowing little or nothing of them. If European traders would agree to eliminate the articles from their African trade, they could do a far more flourishing business without them. Money the natives now spend for the poison would be devoted to far more useful things. The revenue of civilised Governments would not be diminished. We have hope that, owing to the energetic protests being made in various Christian countries against the manufacture and sale of the poison, Africans will be saved the melancholy fate which has befallen some other races, through their contact with foreigners who are indiscriminate in their trade.
Mr. Stanley, who has been, for many years, a close and sympathetic observer of missionaries and their work in this country, says:--
Pious missionaries have set forth devotedly to instil into the dull, mindless tribes the sacred germs of religion; but their material difficulties are so great, that the progress they have made bears no proportion to the courage and zeal they have exhibited.[7]
The indefatigable traveller turns, with more hopeful prospects and for wider beneficial results, to “the missionaries of commerce.” But we have seen how, as a rule, their work has affected the African.
The next agency proposed for Africa’s regeneration is COLONISATION. From the preceding discussion it may be inferred that no great hopes can be placed on the achievements of European colonists. There is, first, the physical difficulty which unfavourably affects the colonists; and next, the moral difficulties which injuriously affect the natives. European colonists have been able to settle in no large numbers in equatorial Africa.
The equatorial regions of Africa (says Mr. Stanley) have for ages defied Islamism, Christianity, science and trade. Like the waves beating on a rocky shore, so Islamism has dashed itself repeatedly from the North in its frantic effort to reach the line of the equator. Christianity has also made ineffectual attempts, for the last three centuries, to obtain a footing in the same region, but ignorance of the climate caused its retirement. Science has directed strategic assaults upon the closely-besieged area, and has succeeded in retiring with brilliant results; its success, however, has been only temporary, as Trade, which ought to have followed, stood dazed with the difficulties which the pioneers encountered. . . . .Civilisation, so often baffled, stands railing at the barbarism and savagery that presents such an impenetrable front to its efforts. . . . . Had a few of those waves of races, flowing and eddying over Northern Africa, succeeded in leaping the barrier of the equator, we should have found the black aboriginal races of Southern Africa very different from the savages we meet to day.[8]
The fact is, we should not have found them at all; and this is the reason why the races who drink the waters of the Niger and the Congo, and dwell on the borders of the great lakes, have been severed from the interests of Europe by insurmountable barriers of sand, and by inhospitable shores.
In South Africa, where European settlements have been possible, the results for the aborigines have been far from encouraging. During the three- quarters of a century that England has held that portion of the continent, her administration has been attended by ceaseless troubles, and the clash of arms has rarely been silent, for many years at a time. Nothing but the extraordinary vitality of the Kafirs has kept them from extermination. An able writer in the Edinburgh Review,[9] said sometime ago:--
There is one most striking and all-important peculiarity, in which the Kafirs differ from almost all aboriginal tribes with which our colonists have come in contact. To the Rod Indians, and New Zealanders, the Australians, and even their own Hottentot neighbours, Christian (European) civilisation has boon as an Upas tree, destroying them by its diseases, or still more fatally poisoning them by the infectious contamination of its drunkards and debauchees; but the Kafirs have shown that they can live on the borders of a civilised community, and unless killed off by war, or by famine caused by war, they keep up their numbers.
The history of European civilisation has, indeed, but too plainly proved how hard it is for a strong race to do more for a weak race than to bestow upon it its vices; and too quickly deducing from the sad facts of this history the conclusion that that which is hard must be impossible; there are many persons who advocate severe measures against the Kafirs, as against all savages, on the principle that it is more humane to kill them quickly with powder and shot than slowly by drink or disease. The Boers, we are told, are great readers of the Old Testament; and comparing themselves to the Israelites, as did the Puritans of New England, they shoot a native on the strength of a text out of Joshua.
But these sad results occur, not only “where the natives are left to their own free will,” but even where civilised governments are supposed to control, and where the “conditions are described by Mr. Thomson as “abnormal.” The strict application of Free-trade principles to the sale of spirits, within, and in localities adjoining, British colonies, is attended with deplorable consequences; and often, by the disturbances created, the philanthropic objects of Free-trade are largely defeated. Sir Arthur Conynghame, in his work, My Command in South Africa, gives the following melancholy account:--
The facility with which those untamed savages (Kafirs) can obtain any amount of villainous drink, is one of the most fruitful sources of danger. Some of the chiefs, being aware of the evil, forbid canteens in their localities, and have repeatedly requested that the same prohibition should be extended among the adjoining (British) districts. The answer of authority has always been, “that the natives should place a moral restraint on themselves, and not imbibe more than is beneficial; and that trade cannot be impeded, simply because it may engender evil consequences among the natives.
What a “ simply.” During the visit of Cetewayo, King of the Zulus, to England, a few years ago, a deputation from the British National Temperance League called upon him, to urge their views as to the evils produced in native races by the use of spirituous liquors. After they had spoken, the King replied as follows:--
I can only say that, as a nation, my people are, so to speak, abstainers; or, at all events, they are not accustomed, nor do they, as a people, partake of spirituous liquors. The beer which they use, which is actually a food, is like gruel— our beer is really a food; but the others—your spirits and your intoxicants—are death. It may be interesting to the gentlemen of the deputation, to know that there was an order issued, or a proclamation by me, that spirits were not to be introduced, or allowed to enter my country. But I think that the right place to shut the door is the side from which the spirits come. It is no good my shutting the door on my side, for I have no distilleries. But I think the proper way would be for the Natal Government to assist, by placing restrictions upon the introduction of spirituous liquors into my country.
The Zulus are celebrated as logicians. The above is a specimen of the unanswerable answers which, in verbal fence, they are accustomed to give to Europeans.
Rev, R. H. Nassau, M.D., of the Presbyterian Mission on the Ogowe, writes (Dec. 31, 1881):--
The inroad of intoxicating liquor into the mission premises, and used by Church members and inquirers, distressed us exceedingly, and burdened our hearts as the carking care of station work alone would not have done.
Rev. David A. Day, of the Lutheran Mission in West Africa, with pathetic indignation, says:--
The vilest liquors imaginable are being poured into Africa in shiploads from almost every quarter of the civilised world. On one small vessel, in which myself and wife were the only passengers, there were, in the hold, over 100,000 gallons of New England rum, which sold on the coast for one dollar a gallon in exchange for African produce.
The religious press in West Africa is loud in its denunciations of the infamous traffic. The Methodist Herald (December 9, 1885), published at Sierra Leone by natives, making grateful record of the proceedings of the Missionary Conference held at Bremen, October 27, to protest against the trade in spirits, says:--
In considering the advance of European civilisation into Africa, one of the chief sources of anxiety for the future in the minds of intelligent Africans is the introduction of ardent spirits, which seem to be, along the coast, the chief article of European traffic with the natives. It is gratifying, therefore, to see that the attention of one of the most powerful of the European Governments whose citizens are enlarging their trade with the country, is being earnestly and seriously directed to this evil. We do not believe that the article is indispensable to the African trade. The spirits introduced are confined to the coast, the interior natives knowing little or nothing of them. If European traders would agree to eliminate the articles from their African trade, they could do a far more flourishing business without them. Money the natives now spend for the poison would be devoted to far more useful things. The revenue of civilised Governments would not be diminished. We have hope that, owing to the energetic protests being made in various Christian countries against the manufacture and sale of the poison, Africans will be saved the melancholy fate which has befallen some other races, through their contact with foreigners who are indiscriminate in their trade.
Mr. Stanley, who has been, for many years, a close and sympathetic observer of missionaries and their work in this country, says:--
Pious missionaries have set forth devotedly to instil into the dull, mindless tribes the sacred germs of religion; but their material difficulties are so great, that the progress they have made bears no proportion to the courage and zeal they have exhibited.[7]
The indefatigable traveller turns, with more hopeful prospects and for wider beneficial results, to “the missionaries of commerce.” But we have seen how, as a rule, their work has affected the African.
The next agency proposed for Africa’s regeneration is COLONISATION. From the preceding discussion it may be inferred that no great hopes can be placed on the achievements of European colonists. There is, first, the physical difficulty which unfavourably affects the colonists; and next, the moral difficulties which injuriously affect the natives. European colonists have been able to settle in no large numbers in equatorial Africa.
The equatorial regions of Africa (says Mr. Stanley) have for ages defied Islamism, Christianity, science and trade. Like the waves beating on a rocky shore, so Islamism has dashed itself repeatedly from the North in its frantic effort to reach the line of the equator. Christianity has also made ineffectual attempts, for the last three centuries, to obtain a footing in the same region, but ignorance of the climate caused its retirement. Science has directed strategic assaults upon the closely-besieged area, and has succeeded in retiring with brilliant results; its success, however, has been only temporary, as Trade, which ought to have followed, stood dazed with the difficulties which the pioneers encountered. . . . .Civilisation, so often baffled, stands railing at the barbarism and savagery that presents such an impenetrable front to its efforts. . . . . Had a few of those waves of races, flowing and eddying over Northern Africa, succeeded in leaping the barrier of the equator, we should have found the black aboriginal races of Southern Africa very different from the savages we meet to day.[8]
The fact is, we should not have found them at all; and this is the reason why the races who drink the waters of the Niger and the Congo, and dwell on the borders of the great lakes, have been severed from the interests of Europe by insurmountable barriers of sand, and by inhospitable shores.
In South Africa, where European settlements have been possible, the results for the aborigines have been far from encouraging. During the three- quarters of a century that England has held that portion of the continent, her administration has been attended by ceaseless troubles, and the clash of arms has rarely been silent, for many years at a time. Nothing but the extraordinary vitality of the Kafirs has kept them from extermination. An able writer in the Edinburgh Review,[9] said sometime ago:--
There is one most striking and all-important peculiarity, in which the Kafirs differ from almost all aboriginal tribes with which our colonists have come in contact. To the Rod Indians, and New Zealanders, the Australians, and even their own Hottentot neighbours, Christian (European) civilisation has boon as an Upas tree, destroying them by its diseases, or still more fatally poisoning them by the infectious contamination of its drunkards and debauchees; but the Kafirs have shown that they can live on the borders of a civilised community, and unless killed off by war, or by famine caused by war, they keep up their numbers.
The history of European civilisation has, indeed, but too plainly proved how hard it is for a strong race to do more for a weak race than to bestow upon it its vices; and too quickly deducing from the sad facts of this history the conclusion that that which is hard must be impossible; there are many persons who advocate severe measures against the Kafirs, as against all savages, on the principle that it is more humane to kill them quickly with powder and shot than slowly by drink or disease. The Boers, we are told, are great readers of the Old Testament; and comparing themselves to the Israelites, as did the Puritans of New England, they shoot a native on the strength of a text out of Joshua.
Footnotes:
7 The Congo, and the Founding of its Free State; vol, ii, p, 377.
8 Congo Free State; vol. ii, pp. 372, 373.
9 July, 1854.
7 The Congo, and the Founding of its Free State; vol, ii, p, 377.
8 Congo Free State; vol. ii, pp. 372, 373.
9 July, 1854.
But events, every day occurring, are forcing the world to accept the truth, that Europeans cannot occupy equatorial Africa, either for their own advantage, or that of the natives.
They cannot occupy it by force. One of the officers of Samudu, the celebrated Mohammedan military chieftain of Nigritia, said to the present writer a few weeks ago: “ As long as it is not possible for the white man to send armies composed of iron men, who need no food or drink, who are impenetrable by sun or rain, so long will it be impossible for them to take our country by war, or to achieve and maintain ascendancy away from the coast.” In the interior, European artillery and ironclads, nitro-glycerine and panclastite are of no avail. With all the appliances of modern warfare, the troops of the most wealthy of European nations found the Nort-eastern Soudan inaccessible. The Marquess of Salisbury, in announcing the policy of the new Conservative Government, in the House of Lords (July 6, 1885), referred to the British invasion of the Soudan as follows:--
One of the most complicated and entangled problems ever submitted to a Government to solve, is the problem of the present position of Egypt. . . . Now, the first of all the difficulties with which we have to contend, is, that we have a triumphant enemy on the frontier. On the frontier at Khartoum, and on the frontier at Suakim, we have an enemy who, at all events, according to his own ideas, has been triumphant in the recent struggle. He has prevented us from attaining the objects we had in view, and he has seen us retire from the ground which we occupied.
In the entry made in his Journal under date September 17, 1884, General Gordon said:--
From a, professional military point of view, and speaking materially, I wish I was the Mahdi, and I would laugh at all Europe.
Under date September 12th, he wrote:--
The people are all against us, and what a power they have; they need not fight, but have merely to refuse to sell us their grain. The stomach governs the world, and it was the stomach (a despised organ) which caused our misery from the beginning.[10]
It is impracticable to occupy the interior of Africa by European colonies. It is being found out that, even if the insuperable climatic difficulty could be overcome, the resources of Africa are not so conveniently accessible as the imagination of enthusiasts had pictured.
On the 15th of November, 1884, the Plenipotentiaries of all the Powers of Europe, and of the United States, met in conference at Berlin. One of the objects of this illustrious gathering was to decide the formalities to be observed for the valid annexation of territory in future on the African Continent. No assembly of such importance in connection with Africa had ever met in Europe before, if we except the Congress of 1815, at Vienna, which made the celebrated declaration against the slave trade. In keeping with the understanding arrived at in Berlin, Germany, France, England, Italy and Portugal, have been appropriating African territory. But the most elaborate bit of recent machinery for the occupation and civilisation of Africa is that at the head of which stands that Royal philanthropist, Leopold II, King of the Belgians. He has already, with more than regal munificence, lavished a vast fortune in the Congo country with a view to the extinction of Slavery and the introduction of a select civilisation among the aborigines. It is a noble purpose, a magnificent aim, to build up a civilisation in Africa by free labour. But Europeans have never achieved such a result in the tropics. No Europeans will ever go to the Congo and work as farmers or labourers. Serious drawbacks are presenting themselves. Dr. Fischer, the recent German traveller, in his work entitled More Light on the Dark Continent, scouts the idea that Europeans will never be able to colonise Africa. The natives, he says, will not work without being compelled; and therefore, slavery, or life service, as he puts it, is inevitable.
Mr. William P. Tisdel, United States Agent to the Congo Free State, in his Report to the Department of State, dated June 29th, 1885, gives a startling account of the condition of things in the Congo Free State.[11] According to his statement it was an exception to find a white man anywhere in good health. Out of six hundred whites who had contracted with the Association to serve for three years, only five have been able to remain the full time. Only two Americans have ever been employed by the Association, and of these, one returned to the United States, ill with African fever, and committed suicide while under its effects; and the other was left by Mr, Tisdel, dangerously sick, in the Congo country. It is said that the Belgian Government have appointed an independent Commission for the investigation of the circumstances of the new State.
It appears that the Germans did not hit upon an El Dorado when they annexed Angra Pequena. Several Saxon miners who went out when the acquisition was first made, and hopes were brilliant, have returned home. They report unfavourably on the scarcity of water.
Another recent observer, Mr. W. Montague Kerr, in a paper read before the Royal Geographical Society (November 30, 1885), describing ‘A Journey Overland from Cape Town, across the Zambesi, to Lake Nyassa,’ said--
It had not been his good fortune to fall upon any extraordinarily fertile spots which would offer inducements to the inhabitants of overcrowded Europe. In every instance, the discouragements had been greater than the inducements, to foster the colonisation of Africa by European subjects.[12]
Mr. Kerr took the opportunity to bear the following testimony to the character of the natives--
From the time he left the Cape of Good Hope till he arrived at the shores of Lake Nyassa, he was never robbed of a single bead or a yard of cloth, though, for months, the goods were completely at the mercy of the natives.
From what we have seen, it will appear that Europe must give up the idea of regenerating Africa through colonies of her own subjects. Hearty, thrifty, energetic colonisation for whites, must be in climates where the winter or cold weather brings its healthy and recuperative influences to body and mind. Nature will not allow herself to be tied down to the theories of even the wisest and most benevolent of men, however high their aims or exalted their motives. Those who, instead of humbly searching for a knowledge of Nature’s laws, arrogate to themselves the right of making laws for Nature, must always fail. Expelled with a pitchfork, she will ever return.
After this survey of the nature of the difficulties which confront and attend European effort in Africa, we are forced to the conclusion— which any careful reader will have seen was with us, from our protracted experience and observation on the spot, a foregone conclusion—that the instruments for the regeneration of this continent are the millions of Africans in the Western hemisphere, where, after nigh three hundred years of residence, they are still considered as strangers. It seems to us that European and American workers for Africa should recognise this fact; and those nations who actively co- operated in the work of their deportation should as earnestly co-operate in the work of their restoration. This is the redress which Nature is waiting for before she will lend a finger to European effort. Justice must precede mercy. Be just before you are generous. Under some Assiento Contract[13] the work of restoration should begin. We are sometimes told that the descendants of Africa are in America to stay there. A similar view was taken of slavery, by the generality of masters, in the days when it was surrounded by all the safeguards that intelligence and wealth, and even piety, could contrive. It was thought that by Divine arrangement, the institution was to be perpetual, and not simply disciplinary and preparatory. Different views on that subject now prevail. The Negro never accepted the abnormal relation as permanent, and was ceaseless in his prayers for deliverance, and looked for deliverance. So now, not a few seem to think that all the preparation of the days of bondage, and all the instruction now imparted, are simply to produce a population of domestic servants, to be kept in a subordinate place by the dominant race. This Samson for African achievements is to grind at the mill of the Philistines. The great Artist and Architect is to fail of the ideal foreshadowed:
Amphora cœpit
Institui; currente rota cur urceua exit? [14]
They cannot occupy it by force. One of the officers of Samudu, the celebrated Mohammedan military chieftain of Nigritia, said to the present writer a few weeks ago: “ As long as it is not possible for the white man to send armies composed of iron men, who need no food or drink, who are impenetrable by sun or rain, so long will it be impossible for them to take our country by war, or to achieve and maintain ascendancy away from the coast.” In the interior, European artillery and ironclads, nitro-glycerine and panclastite are of no avail. With all the appliances of modern warfare, the troops of the most wealthy of European nations found the Nort-eastern Soudan inaccessible. The Marquess of Salisbury, in announcing the policy of the new Conservative Government, in the House of Lords (July 6, 1885), referred to the British invasion of the Soudan as follows:--
One of the most complicated and entangled problems ever submitted to a Government to solve, is the problem of the present position of Egypt. . . . Now, the first of all the difficulties with which we have to contend, is, that we have a triumphant enemy on the frontier. On the frontier at Khartoum, and on the frontier at Suakim, we have an enemy who, at all events, according to his own ideas, has been triumphant in the recent struggle. He has prevented us from attaining the objects we had in view, and he has seen us retire from the ground which we occupied.
In the entry made in his Journal under date September 17, 1884, General Gordon said:--
From a, professional military point of view, and speaking materially, I wish I was the Mahdi, and I would laugh at all Europe.
Under date September 12th, he wrote:--
The people are all against us, and what a power they have; they need not fight, but have merely to refuse to sell us their grain. The stomach governs the world, and it was the stomach (a despised organ) which caused our misery from the beginning.[10]
It is impracticable to occupy the interior of Africa by European colonies. It is being found out that, even if the insuperable climatic difficulty could be overcome, the resources of Africa are not so conveniently accessible as the imagination of enthusiasts had pictured.
On the 15th of November, 1884, the Plenipotentiaries of all the Powers of Europe, and of the United States, met in conference at Berlin. One of the objects of this illustrious gathering was to decide the formalities to be observed for the valid annexation of territory in future on the African Continent. No assembly of such importance in connection with Africa had ever met in Europe before, if we except the Congress of 1815, at Vienna, which made the celebrated declaration against the slave trade. In keeping with the understanding arrived at in Berlin, Germany, France, England, Italy and Portugal, have been appropriating African territory. But the most elaborate bit of recent machinery for the occupation and civilisation of Africa is that at the head of which stands that Royal philanthropist, Leopold II, King of the Belgians. He has already, with more than regal munificence, lavished a vast fortune in the Congo country with a view to the extinction of Slavery and the introduction of a select civilisation among the aborigines. It is a noble purpose, a magnificent aim, to build up a civilisation in Africa by free labour. But Europeans have never achieved such a result in the tropics. No Europeans will ever go to the Congo and work as farmers or labourers. Serious drawbacks are presenting themselves. Dr. Fischer, the recent German traveller, in his work entitled More Light on the Dark Continent, scouts the idea that Europeans will never be able to colonise Africa. The natives, he says, will not work without being compelled; and therefore, slavery, or life service, as he puts it, is inevitable.
Mr. William P. Tisdel, United States Agent to the Congo Free State, in his Report to the Department of State, dated June 29th, 1885, gives a startling account of the condition of things in the Congo Free State.[11] According to his statement it was an exception to find a white man anywhere in good health. Out of six hundred whites who had contracted with the Association to serve for three years, only five have been able to remain the full time. Only two Americans have ever been employed by the Association, and of these, one returned to the United States, ill with African fever, and committed suicide while under its effects; and the other was left by Mr, Tisdel, dangerously sick, in the Congo country. It is said that the Belgian Government have appointed an independent Commission for the investigation of the circumstances of the new State.
It appears that the Germans did not hit upon an El Dorado when they annexed Angra Pequena. Several Saxon miners who went out when the acquisition was first made, and hopes were brilliant, have returned home. They report unfavourably on the scarcity of water.
Another recent observer, Mr. W. Montague Kerr, in a paper read before the Royal Geographical Society (November 30, 1885), describing ‘A Journey Overland from Cape Town, across the Zambesi, to Lake Nyassa,’ said--
It had not been his good fortune to fall upon any extraordinarily fertile spots which would offer inducements to the inhabitants of overcrowded Europe. In every instance, the discouragements had been greater than the inducements, to foster the colonisation of Africa by European subjects.[12]
Mr. Kerr took the opportunity to bear the following testimony to the character of the natives--
From the time he left the Cape of Good Hope till he arrived at the shores of Lake Nyassa, he was never robbed of a single bead or a yard of cloth, though, for months, the goods were completely at the mercy of the natives.
From what we have seen, it will appear that Europe must give up the idea of regenerating Africa through colonies of her own subjects. Hearty, thrifty, energetic colonisation for whites, must be in climates where the winter or cold weather brings its healthy and recuperative influences to body and mind. Nature will not allow herself to be tied down to the theories of even the wisest and most benevolent of men, however high their aims or exalted their motives. Those who, instead of humbly searching for a knowledge of Nature’s laws, arrogate to themselves the right of making laws for Nature, must always fail. Expelled with a pitchfork, she will ever return.
After this survey of the nature of the difficulties which confront and attend European effort in Africa, we are forced to the conclusion— which any careful reader will have seen was with us, from our protracted experience and observation on the spot, a foregone conclusion—that the instruments for the regeneration of this continent are the millions of Africans in the Western hemisphere, where, after nigh three hundred years of residence, they are still considered as strangers. It seems to us that European and American workers for Africa should recognise this fact; and those nations who actively co- operated in the work of their deportation should as earnestly co-operate in the work of their restoration. This is the redress which Nature is waiting for before she will lend a finger to European effort. Justice must precede mercy. Be just before you are generous. Under some Assiento Contract[13] the work of restoration should begin. We are sometimes told that the descendants of Africa are in America to stay there. A similar view was taken of slavery, by the generality of masters, in the days when it was surrounded by all the safeguards that intelligence and wealth, and even piety, could contrive. It was thought that by Divine arrangement, the institution was to be perpetual, and not simply disciplinary and preparatory. Different views on that subject now prevail. The Negro never accepted the abnormal relation as permanent, and was ceaseless in his prayers for deliverance, and looked for deliverance. So now, not a few seem to think that all the preparation of the days of bondage, and all the instruction now imparted, are simply to produce a population of domestic servants, to be kept in a subordinate place by the dominant race. This Samson for African achievements is to grind at the mill of the Philistines. The great Artist and Architect is to fail of the ideal foreshadowed:
Amphora cœpit
Institui; currente rota cur urceua exit? [14]
Footnotes:
10 The Journals of Major-General Gordon, at Khartoum.
11 United States’ Consular Reports; No. 55 (August, 1885), pp. 551, 552.
12 London Times, December 1, 1885.
13 For forty years, during the last century, England, under the Assiento Contract, had the monopoly of carrying Negroes to the Western world.
14 Horace: ‘Ars Pœtica,’ 21:--
A vase was meant; how comes it, then, about,
As the wheel turns, a common jug comes out?
Sir Theodore Mart in’ s Translation.
10 The Journals of Major-General Gordon, at Khartoum.
11 United States’ Consular Reports; No. 55 (August, 1885), pp. 551, 552.
12 London Times, December 1, 1885.
13 For forty years, during the last century, England, under the Assiento Contract, had the monopoly of carrying Negroes to the Western world.
14 Horace: ‘Ars Pœtica,’ 21:--
A vase was meant; how comes it, then, about,
As the wheel turns, a common jug comes out?
Sir Theodore Mart in’ s Translation.
But, as in the days of slavery, so now, the Freedman feels something in his soul—“ God put it there,” he says—which tells him that, if not for himself, at least for his children, there are scenes of wider freedom, higher duties and larger proprietorships, in the land whence his ancestors were torn.
And in Africa there is sympathetic response. The elder natives tell of the bitterly-tragic scenes which took place on the coast, as children in the grasp of the murderous trader were being wrenched from the embrace of their parents—the wail of sorrow and unutterable grief which went up to heaven, and the prayers— prophetic prayers—the passionate and fervent appeals to the Judge of all the earth, not for vengeance on the robbers, but for the return of the stolen ones. Those sublime and awe-striking prayers are still before the throne of Supreme Justice, waiting to be answered; and they will not cease to be heard until, by the return of the exiles, they are merged in such music of exultation and triumph, as has never been heard since the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.
To the present generation of whites and blacks in America, it may seem that the Negro “ is there to stay,” but the next generation will take a different view. Descendants of Africa have never been permitted to feel at home in those countries, even where they are most numerous, and where the geographical and climatic conditions are congenial. Freedmen from Brazil and other parts of South America, are continually making their way back to the Fatherland, anxious to breathe again the ancestral air, and to lie down at last, and be buried with their fathers.[15]
In the United States, notwithstanding the great progress made in the direction of liberal ideas, the Negro is still a stranger. The rights and privileges accorded by constitutional law, offer him no security against the decrees of private or social intolerance. He is surrounded by a prosperity— industrial, commercial and political— in which he is not permitted to share, and is tantalised by social respectabilities from which he is debarred. The future offers no encouragement to him. In the career of courage and virtue, of honour, emolument and fame, which lies open to his white neighbours, and to their children, neither he himself, nor his sons or daughters, can have any part. From that high and improving fellowship, which binds together the elements from Europe, however incongruous, the Negro child is excommunicated before he is born.
One fatal drawback to the Negro in America is the incubus of imitation. Ho must be an imitator; and imitators see only results —they never learn processes. They come in contact with accomplished facts, without knowing how they were accomplished. They never get within, so as to see how a thing originates or develops. Therefore, when they attempt anything, they are apt to begin at the end, without the insight, patience or experience which teaches that they begin at the beginning. They are impatient theorists—in the literal sense—who can neither understand, nor wait for the slow results and precarious combinations of arduous and prolonged effort. Hence they are ready to criticise processes, to find fault with details. The destructive faculty is largely developed; but to originate, and point out methods of effective action, is impossible to them. John Jasper is a respectable Negro preacher of Virginia, who has constructed his own theory of the solar-system; and the fact that he has constructed something, and has the temerity to explain and defend his theory against the theories of the learned, causes a large following, and he has lately been invited to lecture in Europe as a curiosity. His earnestness and acuteness, in spite of his defiance of grammar, and his ignorance of scholastic methods, command the respect of the intelligent listener. It is easier to smile at his scientific perversity, than to give the reasoning by which the mighty results of astronomy have been obtained.
“Whatever may be said of the advantages of education and civilisation, and a great deal is being said just now, and, perhaps, so far as the Negro is concerned, a great deal ought to bo said—it seems certain that such advantages are not without serious dangers. It is our earnest belief that a real independent moral growth, productive of strength of character and self- reliance, is impossible to natures in contact with beings greatly superior to themselves. This is one reason, we suppose, why our spiritual training was not entrusted to angelic beings, why “we have this treasure in earthen vessels.” Everybody knows that a powerful, massive character—though it be nearly perfect—may positively injure those within the circle of its influence by giving them a bent in a direction opposite to their own natural tendencies, so as to make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for them to shake themselves free.
This is one of the great drawbacks to the introduction of civilisation by foreigners into Africa. In the European settlements on the coast there are visible the melancholy effects of the fatal contagion of a mimic or spurious Europeanism. Some who have been to Europe, bring back and diffuse among their people a reverence for some of the customs of that country, of which the more cultivated are trying to get rid. But, happily, the inhospitable and inexorable climate prevents this pseudo-civilisation, called “progress,” from spreading to the interior. The tribes still retain their simplicity and remain an affected. And may they remain so until they pass by normal and regular progress and natural steps to a higher plane on the line of their own race- development, when European habits and customs will be aimed at as accessories, rather than a principle of life.
But, besides the drawbacks in the learning of the schools, the educated Negro, in the United States, in the enjoyment of the advantages of culture, has come in contact, throughout the period of his training, with influences which warp him in the direction of self-depreciation, even more powerfully than the books which he reads, or the teachers to whom he listens. The instruction of the schools does, to a certain extent—perhaps to a great extent—-improve, but it can neither reverse or supersede the far more efficient education which comes from the experiences of daily life, which--
Week in, week out, from morn till night,
control and give direction to the mind.
And in Africa there is sympathetic response. The elder natives tell of the bitterly-tragic scenes which took place on the coast, as children in the grasp of the murderous trader were being wrenched from the embrace of their parents—the wail of sorrow and unutterable grief which went up to heaven, and the prayers— prophetic prayers—the passionate and fervent appeals to the Judge of all the earth, not for vengeance on the robbers, but for the return of the stolen ones. Those sublime and awe-striking prayers are still before the throne of Supreme Justice, waiting to be answered; and they will not cease to be heard until, by the return of the exiles, they are merged in such music of exultation and triumph, as has never been heard since the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.
To the present generation of whites and blacks in America, it may seem that the Negro “ is there to stay,” but the next generation will take a different view. Descendants of Africa have never been permitted to feel at home in those countries, even where they are most numerous, and where the geographical and climatic conditions are congenial. Freedmen from Brazil and other parts of South America, are continually making their way back to the Fatherland, anxious to breathe again the ancestral air, and to lie down at last, and be buried with their fathers.[15]
In the United States, notwithstanding the great progress made in the direction of liberal ideas, the Negro is still a stranger. The rights and privileges accorded by constitutional law, offer him no security against the decrees of private or social intolerance. He is surrounded by a prosperity— industrial, commercial and political— in which he is not permitted to share, and is tantalised by social respectabilities from which he is debarred. The future offers no encouragement to him. In the career of courage and virtue, of honour, emolument and fame, which lies open to his white neighbours, and to their children, neither he himself, nor his sons or daughters, can have any part. From that high and improving fellowship, which binds together the elements from Europe, however incongruous, the Negro child is excommunicated before he is born.
One fatal drawback to the Negro in America is the incubus of imitation. Ho must be an imitator; and imitators see only results —they never learn processes. They come in contact with accomplished facts, without knowing how they were accomplished. They never get within, so as to see how a thing originates or develops. Therefore, when they attempt anything, they are apt to begin at the end, without the insight, patience or experience which teaches that they begin at the beginning. They are impatient theorists—in the literal sense—who can neither understand, nor wait for the slow results and precarious combinations of arduous and prolonged effort. Hence they are ready to criticise processes, to find fault with details. The destructive faculty is largely developed; but to originate, and point out methods of effective action, is impossible to them. John Jasper is a respectable Negro preacher of Virginia, who has constructed his own theory of the solar-system; and the fact that he has constructed something, and has the temerity to explain and defend his theory against the theories of the learned, causes a large following, and he has lately been invited to lecture in Europe as a curiosity. His earnestness and acuteness, in spite of his defiance of grammar, and his ignorance of scholastic methods, command the respect of the intelligent listener. It is easier to smile at his scientific perversity, than to give the reasoning by which the mighty results of astronomy have been obtained.
“Whatever may be said of the advantages of education and civilisation, and a great deal is being said just now, and, perhaps, so far as the Negro is concerned, a great deal ought to bo said—it seems certain that such advantages are not without serious dangers. It is our earnest belief that a real independent moral growth, productive of strength of character and self- reliance, is impossible to natures in contact with beings greatly superior to themselves. This is one reason, we suppose, why our spiritual training was not entrusted to angelic beings, why “we have this treasure in earthen vessels.” Everybody knows that a powerful, massive character—though it be nearly perfect—may positively injure those within the circle of its influence by giving them a bent in a direction opposite to their own natural tendencies, so as to make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for them to shake themselves free.
This is one of the great drawbacks to the introduction of civilisation by foreigners into Africa. In the European settlements on the coast there are visible the melancholy effects of the fatal contagion of a mimic or spurious Europeanism. Some who have been to Europe, bring back and diffuse among their people a reverence for some of the customs of that country, of which the more cultivated are trying to get rid. But, happily, the inhospitable and inexorable climate prevents this pseudo-civilisation, called “progress,” from spreading to the interior. The tribes still retain their simplicity and remain an affected. And may they remain so until they pass by normal and regular progress and natural steps to a higher plane on the line of their own race- development, when European habits and customs will be aimed at as accessories, rather than a principle of life.
But, besides the drawbacks in the learning of the schools, the educated Negro, in the United States, in the enjoyment of the advantages of culture, has come in contact, throughout the period of his training, with influences which warp him in the direction of self-depreciation, even more powerfully than the books which he reads, or the teachers to whom he listens. The instruction of the schools does, to a certain extent—perhaps to a great extent—-improve, but it can neither reverse or supersede the far more efficient education which comes from the experiences of daily life, which--
Week in, week out, from morn till night,
control and give direction to the mind.
Footnotes:
15 It is stated that the new Governor of Lagos, Captain Alfred Moloney, C.M.G., looks with favour upon the return, to the part of the coast under his jurisdiction, of the exiles from South America; and with a sagacious and judicious statesmanship, is disposed to do all in his power to facilitate it.
15 It is stated that the new Governor of Lagos, Captain Alfred Moloney, C.M.G., looks with favour upon the return, to the part of the coast under his jurisdiction, of the exiles from South America; and with a sagacious and judicious statesmanship, is disposed to do all in his power to facilitate it.
Living as the wards of a people, who, out of their own habitat, instinctively dread deterioration—the loss of vitality and vigour— and who believe that their existence and growth depend upon constant self-assertion, as against all alien comers; and who, therefore, can neither give place nor opportunity to their former slaves, the Africans must be subjected to experiences which, in spite of the training received in the schools, must warp them out of the moral and intellectual perpendicular, and incline them to the attitude and practices of the creature who either climbs or crawls. Bishop H. M. Turner, of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, is constantly calling attention, in his outspoken and energetic style, to the disadvantages of the Negro in America; but nowhere has he given a more vivid presentation of the dreary and discouraging subject, than in a recent short article in the Quarterly Review, of his Church.[16] To some, his picture will, perhaps, appear as a repulsive photograph. Still, he writes with a kindly indignation—with a deep and fervid earnestness, and a surprising humour and fun, that compel attention. He says:--
I need not repeat my well-known convictions as to the future of the race. I think our stay in this country is but temporary, at most. Nothing will remedy the evils of the Negro, but a great Christian nation upon the continent of Africa. White is God in this country, and black is the Devil. White is perfection, greatness, wisdom, industry, and all that is high and holy. Black is ignorance, degradation, indolence, and all that is low and vile; and three-fourths of the coloured people of the land do nothing day and night but cry: “ Glory, honour, dominion and greatness to White.” Many of our so-called leading men are contaminated with the accursed disease or folly, as well as the thoughtless masses; and, as long as such a sentiment pervades the coloured race, the powers of Heaven cannot elevate him. No race of people can rise and manufacture better conditions while they hate and condemn themselves. A man must believe he is somebody, before he is acknowledged to be somebody Hundreds of our most educated young men will put on as many airs over a position that requires them to dust the clothes of white men, as a superior man would over an appointment to the President’s Cabinet. I deny that God himself could make a great man out of such a character, without a miracle--
“Mit dummheit Kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.” [17]
The imagination of the Negro has been taken captive by his surroundings. His consciousness is not sufficiently disengaged to enable him to respect his own peculiarities. He can conceive of nothing different from his surroundings; and he does not wish to conceive of anything different, believing as he does that the Ultima Thule of progress has been reached by the Anglo-Saxon. The Negro of the most powerful intellect must work by the pattern before him, and reproduce only what he has seen with his bodily eyes. The ideal faculty has not fair play, or any play at all. He is bound to endless imitation. If any original image is formed in his mind, it must be banished, or it is crowded out by the pressure of the actual. There is neither time nor opportunity to work it out. He must spend his days longing for the crumbs of social and political existence which fall from the white man’s table:--
Simile ad uom che va di porta in porta Mendicando la vita.
There must be Africans in America who feel all this, who feel that they have a lite of their own—a life destined to last; who protest against many things they see around them, even while they are bound to respect them. We are told that when Michael Angelo looked at the lofty dome of the cathedral at Florence, he exclaimed, “ I will not make one like you; I cannot make one better than you.” There must be, among the seven millions, some, ‘if not many, who share the proud humility of the great artist. To such, at times, there must come the tears of another artist: not, however, because they have exhausted, their ideals, but from the conviction that there is no opportunity, to work them out; and that, even if there were such opportunity, the result would mean nothing amid incompatible and unsympathetic surroundings; that, like the monolith in Central Park, though fitted to beautify and adorn other scenes for thousands of years, the result of their conceptions, if not still-born, would rapidly crumble to decay under the action of an inhospitable and uncongenial climate. To such, there must be a longing for other scenes, where, forgetting the things that are behind, they may reach forward to things which promise vitality, usefulness and prosperity to their race. But there are many, alas, who may never gain the fructifying atmosphere—who must always resemble those figures one sees in museums in Europe, which would be magnificent if they were complete; as they now stand, they are only splendid torsos—melancholy suggestions of unattainable possibilities.
It is a curious and suggestive fact, however, that the Negroes of country districts in the Southern States, who have had the slenderest educational opportunities, enjoy a comparative freedom from the deleterious effects of the general oppression. They are largely unsophisticated. They have neither been elevated nor vitiated by the conventionalities of society. Their condition is not the deplorable one of their educated brother, who feels, with greater keenness, the disabilities to which he is subject; and whose case, in many instances, is that of a despised man—as Bishop Turner points out—who despises himself and his race. The Southern Negro denizens of rural districts make, therefore, as a rule, better colonists in the Fatherland than those who are able to declaim, in the language of the schools, about the wrongs and rights of the race, but whose sympathies and admiration go to the dominant class— who step out of the ranks of their own people, without elevating themselves above them—continually wandering away from the crowd in sullen and contemptuous isolation, but compelled always to keep the same social and political plane. These make unsatisfied and unsatisfactory colonists. The pioneer and self-sacrificing spirit is altogether absent from their mental, moral and physical constitution.
It should not be surprising- that a people, living under such conditions, should find it difficult to recognise any leader among themselves; or that those, whom circumstances have thrust to the front, should suffer from the jealous and irritable susceptibilities of those forced to follow. Everything tends to disintegration and dissolution —to the separation of chief friends and the making a man’s foes those of his own household, or race. A man like Frederick Douglass who is, by common consent, acknowledged to be primus—hardly primus inter pares—standing among his people, like the Bartholdi statue among the steeples of New York—is often selected for ill-mannered criticisms, by some to whom his labours assisted in bringing, not only freedom, and ability to write and speak, but the freedom to walk and move without feeling the friction and hearing the clanking of the ancestral chains. These things tend to increase and perpetuate the difficulties of the coloured man’s position. The prejudices against him, now slowly dying out—alas, too slowly!—are thus unfortunately perpetually confirmed and fanned.
But the Negro’s residence in America, in spite of all drawbacks, has been of incalculable advantage to him; nor has it been without peculiar benefits to the dominant race. The discussions which have arisen in consequence of his presence there have taught numerous wholesome lessons to the ruling class. One book on the subject of the Negro’s wrongs unsealed the fountain of tears in all countries and among all races. Human rights have been better understood, and have been placed upon a firmer footing than ever before. The assumption of the right to hold slaves was deeply rooted in the minds of men, derived from antiquity, transmitted in the writings of philosophers, and accepted by all legislators, Asiatic, European, African and American. This right was un-qestioned until Negro emancipation first established the principle that no circumstances justify the making or holding of slaves. And it may be, as Dr. Reeve contends,[18] that the presence of the Negro in the Western world is still necessary to teach other lessons equally important in the direction of Christ-likeness, to the hard and conquering Anglo-Saxon; to impress upon him the truth of the essential sociability and solidarity of humanity. We can quite believe that if the day should ever come when this man of love, and suffering, and song, shall leave the United States, after his 260 years of residence, there will be left an insatiable void. Taking this view of the work of the Negro in America, we can earnestly say of those who choose to remain, “ Peace be within their walls, and plenteousness within their palaces;” for our brethren and companions’ sake, we wish them prosperity.
But still we believe that there is a wider sphere, and there are loftier achievements, for those who come to take part, on the spot, in the work of the regeneration of Africa.
An Eglishman who visited the United States in the Autumn of 1884, has made the following remarks on the condition of the Negro in the country:--[19]
I need not repeat my well-known convictions as to the future of the race. I think our stay in this country is but temporary, at most. Nothing will remedy the evils of the Negro, but a great Christian nation upon the continent of Africa. White is God in this country, and black is the Devil. White is perfection, greatness, wisdom, industry, and all that is high and holy. Black is ignorance, degradation, indolence, and all that is low and vile; and three-fourths of the coloured people of the land do nothing day and night but cry: “ Glory, honour, dominion and greatness to White.” Many of our so-called leading men are contaminated with the accursed disease or folly, as well as the thoughtless masses; and, as long as such a sentiment pervades the coloured race, the powers of Heaven cannot elevate him. No race of people can rise and manufacture better conditions while they hate and condemn themselves. A man must believe he is somebody, before he is acknowledged to be somebody Hundreds of our most educated young men will put on as many airs over a position that requires them to dust the clothes of white men, as a superior man would over an appointment to the President’s Cabinet. I deny that God himself could make a great man out of such a character, without a miracle--
“Mit dummheit Kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.” [17]
The imagination of the Negro has been taken captive by his surroundings. His consciousness is not sufficiently disengaged to enable him to respect his own peculiarities. He can conceive of nothing different from his surroundings; and he does not wish to conceive of anything different, believing as he does that the Ultima Thule of progress has been reached by the Anglo-Saxon. The Negro of the most powerful intellect must work by the pattern before him, and reproduce only what he has seen with his bodily eyes. The ideal faculty has not fair play, or any play at all. He is bound to endless imitation. If any original image is formed in his mind, it must be banished, or it is crowded out by the pressure of the actual. There is neither time nor opportunity to work it out. He must spend his days longing for the crumbs of social and political existence which fall from the white man’s table:--
Simile ad uom che va di porta in porta Mendicando la vita.
There must be Africans in America who feel all this, who feel that they have a lite of their own—a life destined to last; who protest against many things they see around them, even while they are bound to respect them. We are told that when Michael Angelo looked at the lofty dome of the cathedral at Florence, he exclaimed, “ I will not make one like you; I cannot make one better than you.” There must be, among the seven millions, some, ‘if not many, who share the proud humility of the great artist. To such, at times, there must come the tears of another artist: not, however, because they have exhausted, their ideals, but from the conviction that there is no opportunity, to work them out; and that, even if there were such opportunity, the result would mean nothing amid incompatible and unsympathetic surroundings; that, like the monolith in Central Park, though fitted to beautify and adorn other scenes for thousands of years, the result of their conceptions, if not still-born, would rapidly crumble to decay under the action of an inhospitable and uncongenial climate. To such, there must be a longing for other scenes, where, forgetting the things that are behind, they may reach forward to things which promise vitality, usefulness and prosperity to their race. But there are many, alas, who may never gain the fructifying atmosphere—who must always resemble those figures one sees in museums in Europe, which would be magnificent if they were complete; as they now stand, they are only splendid torsos—melancholy suggestions of unattainable possibilities.
It is a curious and suggestive fact, however, that the Negroes of country districts in the Southern States, who have had the slenderest educational opportunities, enjoy a comparative freedom from the deleterious effects of the general oppression. They are largely unsophisticated. They have neither been elevated nor vitiated by the conventionalities of society. Their condition is not the deplorable one of their educated brother, who feels, with greater keenness, the disabilities to which he is subject; and whose case, in many instances, is that of a despised man—as Bishop Turner points out—who despises himself and his race. The Southern Negro denizens of rural districts make, therefore, as a rule, better colonists in the Fatherland than those who are able to declaim, in the language of the schools, about the wrongs and rights of the race, but whose sympathies and admiration go to the dominant class— who step out of the ranks of their own people, without elevating themselves above them—continually wandering away from the crowd in sullen and contemptuous isolation, but compelled always to keep the same social and political plane. These make unsatisfied and unsatisfactory colonists. The pioneer and self-sacrificing spirit is altogether absent from their mental, moral and physical constitution.
It should not be surprising- that a people, living under such conditions, should find it difficult to recognise any leader among themselves; or that those, whom circumstances have thrust to the front, should suffer from the jealous and irritable susceptibilities of those forced to follow. Everything tends to disintegration and dissolution —to the separation of chief friends and the making a man’s foes those of his own household, or race. A man like Frederick Douglass who is, by common consent, acknowledged to be primus—hardly primus inter pares—standing among his people, like the Bartholdi statue among the steeples of New York—is often selected for ill-mannered criticisms, by some to whom his labours assisted in bringing, not only freedom, and ability to write and speak, but the freedom to walk and move without feeling the friction and hearing the clanking of the ancestral chains. These things tend to increase and perpetuate the difficulties of the coloured man’s position. The prejudices against him, now slowly dying out—alas, too slowly!—are thus unfortunately perpetually confirmed and fanned.
But the Negro’s residence in America, in spite of all drawbacks, has been of incalculable advantage to him; nor has it been without peculiar benefits to the dominant race. The discussions which have arisen in consequence of his presence there have taught numerous wholesome lessons to the ruling class. One book on the subject of the Negro’s wrongs unsealed the fountain of tears in all countries and among all races. Human rights have been better understood, and have been placed upon a firmer footing than ever before. The assumption of the right to hold slaves was deeply rooted in the minds of men, derived from antiquity, transmitted in the writings of philosophers, and accepted by all legislators, Asiatic, European, African and American. This right was un-qestioned until Negro emancipation first established the principle that no circumstances justify the making or holding of slaves. And it may be, as Dr. Reeve contends,[18] that the presence of the Negro in the Western world is still necessary to teach other lessons equally important in the direction of Christ-likeness, to the hard and conquering Anglo-Saxon; to impress upon him the truth of the essential sociability and solidarity of humanity. We can quite believe that if the day should ever come when this man of love, and suffering, and song, shall leave the United States, after his 260 years of residence, there will be left an insatiable void. Taking this view of the work of the Negro in America, we can earnestly say of those who choose to remain, “ Peace be within their walls, and plenteousness within their palaces;” for our brethren and companions’ sake, we wish them prosperity.
But still we believe that there is a wider sphere, and there are loftier achievements, for those who come to take part, on the spot, in the work of the regeneration of Africa.
An Eglishman who visited the United States in the Autumn of 1884, has made the following remarks on the condition of the Negro in the country:--[19]
Footnotes:
16 The African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, January, 1885.
17 “With stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain.”
18 Dr. J. B. Reeve, a Negro clergyman, of Philadelphia, in the African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, July, 1885.
19 Macmillan’s Magazine, November, 1885.
16 The African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, January, 1885.
17 “With stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain.”
18 Dr. J. B. Reeve, a Negro clergyman, of Philadelphia, in the African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, July, 1885.
19 Macmillan’s Magazine, November, 1885.
The Negro is eager to learn, and is steadily improving his position. But the old antagonism of the races is as strong as ever; if, indeed, not stronger than ever. . . . . The black man is despised as of old, and no one halls him as a brother. His children must go to separate schools—he must travel by separate cars on the railway.[20] Will it be so always with those six millions of free citizens of the American Republic. It is a grave and difficult question. . . . . In an alien land, at least, he has not the independent vitality which gains respect for its originality and strength; at best, he is but a weak imitator of his old enslavers. What may be the future of the dark continent and its inhabitants, is one of the great problems of the world. But it is my own conviction, that the tribes and peoples which have been sold from it into slavery, will never reach the height of perfect manhood in the countries of their exile, until the race from which they spring develops a new endemic civilisation in Africa. . . . The new experiment with the African must be made in his own magnificent home.
After this survey of the European in Africa, and the African in America, it is difficult to escape the conclusion forced upon Bishop Haven, after visiting Liberia, that the solution of Africa in America, is America in Africa; and further, that the solution of Africa in Africa, is Africa in America. This brings us to a consideration of the work and its results, of the only agency which is labouring to bring about the solution by the means just suggested, namely, the American Colonisation Society.
This Society had its origin in a sympathy with the noblest aspirations of the bondman in exile. Its object was to secure for him not only personal liberty, but effective political organisation, in the land of his fathers. It is the only agency capable of effectively obliterating painful recollections, by providing, for him, in the ancestral home, a future worthy of his ambition. But the objects of the Society were not simply to affect the political status of the comparatively few descendants of Africa in America. The most eminent among its founders looked to the higher results to be produced upon Africa, recognising, as they did, even at that time, the impossibility of effective white agency in this land. Just as they believed that the black man could not be prosperous and comfortable in America, so they read in the dispensations of Providence, that Africa had been absolutely interdicted to the white man. Daniel Webster, in almost the last public address he made, said solemnly, as from the verge of the eternal world;--
Gentlemen,—There is a Power above us which sees the end of all things from the beginning, though we see it not. Almighty God is His own interpreter of the ways of His own Providence; and I sometimes contemplate with amazement—and, I may say, with adoration—events which have taken place through the instrumentality of the cupidity and criminality of men, designed, nevertheless, to work out great ends of beneficence and goodness, by our Creator. . . . . African slaves were brought hither, to the shores of this Continent, almost simultaneously with the first tread of a white man’s foot upon this, our North America. We see in that—our shortsightedness only sees—the effect of a desire of the white man to appropriate to himself the results of the labour of the black man, as an inferior and a slave. Now lot us look at it.
These Negroes, and all who have succeeded them, brought hither as captives, taken in the wars of their own petty provinces, ignorant and barbarous, without the knowledge of God, and with no reasonable knowledge of their own character and condition, have come here; and here, although in a subordinate—in an inferior, in an enslaved—condition, have learned more, and come to know more, of themselves and of their Creator, than all whom they have left behind them in their own barbarous kingdoms. It would seem that this is the mode—as far as we can judge—this is the destiny, the rule of things, established by Providence; by which knowledge, letters, and Christianity shall be returned by the descendants of those poor ignorant barbarians, who were brought here as slaves to the country from which they came.[21]
The Hon. Edward Everett, in one of his inimitable orations, said:--
Mark the providence of God, educing out of these natural disadvantages (disadvantages to man’s apprehension), and this colossal moral wrong—the African slave trade; out of these seemingly hopeless elements of physical and moral evil—out of long cycles of suffering and crime, of violence and retribution, such as history can nowhere parallel—educing, I say, from these elements, by the blessed alchemy of Christian benevolence, the means of the ultimate regeneration of Africa. . . . . All other means have been tried in vain. Private adventure has miscarried; strength, and courage, and endurance, almost superhuman, have languished and broken down; well-appointed expeditions, fitted out under the auspices of powerful associations and powerful Governments, have ended in calamitous failure; and it is proved, at last, that the Caucasian race cannot achieve this long-deferred work.
When that last noble expedition, which was sent out from England—I think in the year 1841—under the highest auspices, to found an agricultural settlement in the interior of Africa, ascended the Niger, every white man out of one hundred and fifty sickened; all but two or three—if my memory serves me—died; while, of their dark-skinned associates—also one hundred and fifty in number—with all the added labour and anxiety that devolved upon them, a few only were sick; and they, individuals who had passed years in a temperate climate, and not one died. I say, again, Sir, you Caucasian, you proud Anglo-Saxon; you self-sufficient, all-attempting white man, then, you cannot civilise Africa. You have subdued and appropriated Europe; the native races arc melting before you in America, as the untimely snows of April before a vernal sun; you have possessed yourself of India; you menace China and Japan; the remotest isles of the Pacific are not distant enough to escape your grasp, nor insignificant enough to elude your notice—but Central Africa confronts you, and bids you defiance. Your squadrons may range or blockade her coast; but neither on the errands of peace, nor on the errands of war, can you penetrate the interior. The God of Nature, no doubt for wise purposes, however inscrutable, has drawn across the chief inlets a cordon you cannot break through. You may hover on the coast, but you dare not set foot on the shore. Death sits portress at the undefended gateways of her mud-built villages. Yellow fevers, and blue plagues, and intermittent poisons, that you can see as well as feel, await your approach as you ascend the rivers. Pestilence shoots from the mangroves that fringe their noble banks; and the glorious sun, which kindles all inferior nature into teeming, bursting life, darts disease into your languid system. No, you are not elected for this momentous work. The Great Disposer, in another branch of His family, has chosen out a race, descendants of this torrid region, children of this vortical sun, and fitted them by ages of stern discipline, for the gracious achievement.
From foreign realms and lands remote,
Supported by His care,
They pass unharmed through burning climes,
And breathe the tainted air.
Sir, I believe the auspicious work is begun; that Africa will bo civilised— civilised by her offspring and descendants. I believe it, because I will not think that this mighty and fertile region is to remain for ever in its present state; because, I can see no other agency adequate to the accomplishment of the work, and I do behold in this agency a most mysterious fitness.’[22]
The objects and aims of the Colonisation Society, at the time of its organisation, seventy years ago, met the sympathy of leading statesmen and divines in all parts of the United States, as offering a solution of the difficulties at once legitimate and eminently humanitarian. But there were two classes who could not tolerate its pretensions, namely, those who looked upon the institution of slavery as having Divine sanction, and, therefore, permanent, and those who thought it the “ sum of all villanies,” and insisted upon its immediate abolition. It was a significant fact, often remarked in the days of the struggle, that the Colonisation Society was charged by the one with having “ abolition affinities and tendencies,” and by the other with being “ the twin sister of slavery.” The most elaborate and ingenious argument against Colonisation we have ever seen was from the pen of a Southerner, Professor Thomas R. Dew, of William and Mary College, Virginia. In an exhaustive article, written in 1832, in defence of Slavery, the Professor uttered the following prediction of the result of Colonisation:--
We look confidently to the day, if this wild scheme should bo persevered in for a few years, when the poor African slave, on bended knee, might implore a remission of that fatal sentence which would send him to the land of his forefathers. . . . . We do not see how the whole scheme can be pronounced anything less than a stupendous piece of folly.[23]
“This wild scheme” has been persevered in for more than fifty years since the prophet spoke, and thousands of African ex-slaves (a class not contemplated in his prophecy) are to-day imploring aid to reach the land of their “forefathers;” and the promoters of the “ wild scheme,” not yet defunct, are unable to supply facilities for the transportation of earnest applicants for passage. Fifty years hence (we now prophecy), the current of African humanity setting eastward will be absolutely irresistible.
From the Northern, or Abolition standpoint, the reasoning which has most forcibly impressed us is summed up in an eloquent paragraph in a letter denouncing Slavery, addressed, in 1839, to Jonathan Phillips, Esq., by Dr. W. E. Channing.
After this survey of the European in Africa, and the African in America, it is difficult to escape the conclusion forced upon Bishop Haven, after visiting Liberia, that the solution of Africa in America, is America in Africa; and further, that the solution of Africa in Africa, is Africa in America. This brings us to a consideration of the work and its results, of the only agency which is labouring to bring about the solution by the means just suggested, namely, the American Colonisation Society.
This Society had its origin in a sympathy with the noblest aspirations of the bondman in exile. Its object was to secure for him not only personal liberty, but effective political organisation, in the land of his fathers. It is the only agency capable of effectively obliterating painful recollections, by providing, for him, in the ancestral home, a future worthy of his ambition. But the objects of the Society were not simply to affect the political status of the comparatively few descendants of Africa in America. The most eminent among its founders looked to the higher results to be produced upon Africa, recognising, as they did, even at that time, the impossibility of effective white agency in this land. Just as they believed that the black man could not be prosperous and comfortable in America, so they read in the dispensations of Providence, that Africa had been absolutely interdicted to the white man. Daniel Webster, in almost the last public address he made, said solemnly, as from the verge of the eternal world;--
Gentlemen,—There is a Power above us which sees the end of all things from the beginning, though we see it not. Almighty God is His own interpreter of the ways of His own Providence; and I sometimes contemplate with amazement—and, I may say, with adoration—events which have taken place through the instrumentality of the cupidity and criminality of men, designed, nevertheless, to work out great ends of beneficence and goodness, by our Creator. . . . . African slaves were brought hither, to the shores of this Continent, almost simultaneously with the first tread of a white man’s foot upon this, our North America. We see in that—our shortsightedness only sees—the effect of a desire of the white man to appropriate to himself the results of the labour of the black man, as an inferior and a slave. Now lot us look at it.
These Negroes, and all who have succeeded them, brought hither as captives, taken in the wars of their own petty provinces, ignorant and barbarous, without the knowledge of God, and with no reasonable knowledge of their own character and condition, have come here; and here, although in a subordinate—in an inferior, in an enslaved—condition, have learned more, and come to know more, of themselves and of their Creator, than all whom they have left behind them in their own barbarous kingdoms. It would seem that this is the mode—as far as we can judge—this is the destiny, the rule of things, established by Providence; by which knowledge, letters, and Christianity shall be returned by the descendants of those poor ignorant barbarians, who were brought here as slaves to the country from which they came.[21]
The Hon. Edward Everett, in one of his inimitable orations, said:--
Mark the providence of God, educing out of these natural disadvantages (disadvantages to man’s apprehension), and this colossal moral wrong—the African slave trade; out of these seemingly hopeless elements of physical and moral evil—out of long cycles of suffering and crime, of violence and retribution, such as history can nowhere parallel—educing, I say, from these elements, by the blessed alchemy of Christian benevolence, the means of the ultimate regeneration of Africa. . . . . All other means have been tried in vain. Private adventure has miscarried; strength, and courage, and endurance, almost superhuman, have languished and broken down; well-appointed expeditions, fitted out under the auspices of powerful associations and powerful Governments, have ended in calamitous failure; and it is proved, at last, that the Caucasian race cannot achieve this long-deferred work.
When that last noble expedition, which was sent out from England—I think in the year 1841—under the highest auspices, to found an agricultural settlement in the interior of Africa, ascended the Niger, every white man out of one hundred and fifty sickened; all but two or three—if my memory serves me—died; while, of their dark-skinned associates—also one hundred and fifty in number—with all the added labour and anxiety that devolved upon them, a few only were sick; and they, individuals who had passed years in a temperate climate, and not one died. I say, again, Sir, you Caucasian, you proud Anglo-Saxon; you self-sufficient, all-attempting white man, then, you cannot civilise Africa. You have subdued and appropriated Europe; the native races arc melting before you in America, as the untimely snows of April before a vernal sun; you have possessed yourself of India; you menace China and Japan; the remotest isles of the Pacific are not distant enough to escape your grasp, nor insignificant enough to elude your notice—but Central Africa confronts you, and bids you defiance. Your squadrons may range or blockade her coast; but neither on the errands of peace, nor on the errands of war, can you penetrate the interior. The God of Nature, no doubt for wise purposes, however inscrutable, has drawn across the chief inlets a cordon you cannot break through. You may hover on the coast, but you dare not set foot on the shore. Death sits portress at the undefended gateways of her mud-built villages. Yellow fevers, and blue plagues, and intermittent poisons, that you can see as well as feel, await your approach as you ascend the rivers. Pestilence shoots from the mangroves that fringe their noble banks; and the glorious sun, which kindles all inferior nature into teeming, bursting life, darts disease into your languid system. No, you are not elected for this momentous work. The Great Disposer, in another branch of His family, has chosen out a race, descendants of this torrid region, children of this vortical sun, and fitted them by ages of stern discipline, for the gracious achievement.
From foreign realms and lands remote,
Supported by His care,
They pass unharmed through burning climes,
And breathe the tainted air.
Sir, I believe the auspicious work is begun; that Africa will bo civilised— civilised by her offspring and descendants. I believe it, because I will not think that this mighty and fertile region is to remain for ever in its present state; because, I can see no other agency adequate to the accomplishment of the work, and I do behold in this agency a most mysterious fitness.’[22]
The objects and aims of the Colonisation Society, at the time of its organisation, seventy years ago, met the sympathy of leading statesmen and divines in all parts of the United States, as offering a solution of the difficulties at once legitimate and eminently humanitarian. But there were two classes who could not tolerate its pretensions, namely, those who looked upon the institution of slavery as having Divine sanction, and, therefore, permanent, and those who thought it the “ sum of all villanies,” and insisted upon its immediate abolition. It was a significant fact, often remarked in the days of the struggle, that the Colonisation Society was charged by the one with having “ abolition affinities and tendencies,” and by the other with being “ the twin sister of slavery.” The most elaborate and ingenious argument against Colonisation we have ever seen was from the pen of a Southerner, Professor Thomas R. Dew, of William and Mary College, Virginia. In an exhaustive article, written in 1832, in defence of Slavery, the Professor uttered the following prediction of the result of Colonisation:--
We look confidently to the day, if this wild scheme should bo persevered in for a few years, when the poor African slave, on bended knee, might implore a remission of that fatal sentence which would send him to the land of his forefathers. . . . . We do not see how the whole scheme can be pronounced anything less than a stupendous piece of folly.[23]
“This wild scheme” has been persevered in for more than fifty years since the prophet spoke, and thousands of African ex-slaves (a class not contemplated in his prophecy) are to-day imploring aid to reach the land of their “forefathers;” and the promoters of the “ wild scheme,” not yet defunct, are unable to supply facilities for the transportation of earnest applicants for passage. Fifty years hence (we now prophecy), the current of African humanity setting eastward will be absolutely irresistible.
From the Northern, or Abolition standpoint, the reasoning which has most forcibly impressed us is summed up in an eloquent paragraph in a letter denouncing Slavery, addressed, in 1839, to Jonathan Phillips, Esq., by Dr. W. E. Channing.
Footnotes:
20 The Jubilee Singers, at one time the guests of the Prime Minister of England, are refused accommodation in the hotels of their native country.
21 Address before the American Colonisation Society, January, 1852.
22 Delivered before the American Colonisation Society, January, 1853.
23 The Pro - Slavery Argument, p. 399.—Charleston: Walker, Richards and Co., 1852.
20 The Jubilee Singers, at one time the guests of the Prime Minister of England, are refused accommodation in the hotels of their native country.
21 Address before the American Colonisation Society, January, 1852.
22 Delivered before the American Colonisation Society, January, 1853.
23 The Pro - Slavery Argument, p. 399.—Charleston: Walker, Richards and Co., 1852.
No man can say, positively, what ought to be done in a matter of such serious importance as the destiny of a race. But men are prone to dogmatise on questions entirely beyond them. They often prefer to be guided by what, from the circumstances of their training, they think God ought to do, rather than to study, with unbiased temper, His providence, and find out what He has done and is doing. The fact, however, is, that the Anti-Slavery and the Colonisation Society were both born of the liberal and emancipative tendencies of the age. In the early days of the abolition movement, some of its promoters favoured a scheme of colonisation of the blacks. Benjamin Lundy, editor of The Genius of Universal Emancipation, obtained, about the year 1835, a grant of land from the Mexican Government on which to settle coloured people.[24] Mr. Garrison was a Colonisationist before he became an Abolitionist. It was the misapprehension of the policy of the Colonisation Society, in its full scope and meaning, that furnished the theme and motive of the satire of Garrison, the invective of Douglass, and the rhetorical pyrotechnics of Phillips.
Nearly all the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society have passed away. Of the founders of the American Colonisation Society and the pioneers of Liberia, among the few living are Hon. John H. B. Latrobe, President of the Society; Dr. James Hall, the founder of the County of Maryland, in Liberia; and H. M, Schieffelin, Esq., New York, the founder of a promising settlement in Liberia—all full of years and honour. The active life of Mr. Latrobe has been coeval with the life of Liberia. It was he who suggested, or rather formed, the name of LIBERIA, from the Latin word liber; and the name of its capital Monrovia, from that of President Monroe. He has had only four predecessors in the office of President of the Society; Justice Bushrod “Washington, elected in 1817; Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, elected in 1830; Ex-President James Madison, elected in 1833; Hon. Henry Clay, elected in 1836. Mr. Latrobe was elected in 1853. The records of the Society for the sixty years of its existence are full of the most remarkable specimens of eloquence, delivered from time to time with inexhaustible fervour and freshness by this veteran colonisationist. We have read them nearly all, and all are so impressive that we find a difficulty in selecting any for especial tribute or recognition. Even the platitudes of the African cause are made luminous and instructive by the ardour of his zeal and the glow of his intelligence. These early friends of colonisation have seen Liberia in her darkest hours; they have all exceeded the allotted years of man, but they are still strong in the hopes for the Negro nationality, which inspired their early efforts; and they -are realising that they did not exaggerate their prognostications of the future of the colony.
Those only (exclaimed Mr. Latrobe, with thoughtful enthusiasm) accomplish great ends among men, who are prophets with a conviction of the truthfulness of their visions, and who have the patience to wait without despondency. No doubter ever won a battle or realised a fortune. Our success, up to this time, in the prosperity and order of our colonies; in the contentment, healthfulness and numbers of their people; in the commerce that has sprung up around and with Liberia; far surpasses the like experience of all preceding colonisation. We have had, in truth, nothing to discourage us.[25]
But, in view of the great work to be done, the narrowness of its resources, and the vast ignorance prevailing among multitudes of Negroes on the subject of their Fatherland, the Society is still the “ voice of one crying in the wilderness.” They persist, however, with the same intense and profound belief in the rightness and righteousness of their cause; and stand, with regard, both to the past and the future, like the Chevalier Bayard, sans peur et sans reproche.
No one can read the accounts—their own reminiscences—put before the world from time to time, by these veteran friends of Liberia, of the early days of the colony, without feeling that it was a daring enterprise on the part of the Colonisationists to plant peaceful settlements on the coast of Africa, which, at the time they began operations, was the scene of war, plunder and piracy. In 1822, the year after the settlement was founded, the British Minister at Paris wrote:--
There seems to be scarcely a spot on that coast (from Sierra Leone to Cape Mount) which does not show the traces of the slave trade, with all its attendant horrors; for, the arrival of a ship in any of the rivers on the windward coast, being the signal for war between the natives, the hamlets of the weaker party are burnt, and the miserable survivors carried off and sold to the slave-traders.[26]
In 1825, Mr. Ashmun, the first Governor of the Colony, wrote to the Society:--
From eight to ten, and even fifteen, vessels were engaged at the same time in this odious traffic,- almost under the guns of the settlement. In the month of July contracts were existing for eight hundred slaves to be furnished in the short space of four months, within eight miles of the Capo (Monrovia). Four hundred of these were to be purchased for two American traders.[27]
Several times, through the diabolical intrigues of the miscreant traders, the settlements were on the verge of extinction. But the courage and energy of the resolute colonists thwarted the plots of the demons.
With all their alleged contempt of the Negro, colonisationists had faith enough in him to believe that he could hold his own away from the leading- strings of his master. Mr. Ashmun, the white Governor, and the only white man in the colony, at the time when the slave-traders were concentrating their forces in the neighbourhood of Monrovia for its destruction, expressed entire confidence in the ability of the colonists to maintain their position. “The colony only wants the right,” he writes to the Society; “ it has the power to expel this traffic to a distance, and force it, at least, to conceal some of its worst enormities.”
In the United States, many influential slaveholders supported the Society, gave liberty to their slaves, and sent them to Liberia, because they believed in their manhood, or rather, in their possibilities of manhood. Ex-President Monroe assured Elliott Cresson, that eminent philanthropist and colonisationist, “that if adequate funds were possessed by the Colonisation Society, he could procure ten thousand slaves, by voluntary emancipation, in his native state alone.”[28]
The struggles of the early Liberian colonists against the ignorant opposition of their own untutored people, stimulated by slave-traders, have a species of pathos and romance to which the struggles of the first colonists in America offer nothing similar. The battles of the African pilgrims were not for empire over an alien race; not for power or dazzling wealth; but for room in the land to which they had a hereditary right, De vita et sanguine certant.[29] The pathetic aspect of their position was, that they had to confront a ferocity, not natural, but generated under the dark influence of incarnate fiends—to fight against a people allied to them by blood, and probably, identical in their antecedents, who would gladly have welcomed them but for the malevolent interference of those supreme criminals of humanity—hostes generis humani— who had ruthlessly robbed their fathers of their homes.
We could here recite—if this were the place for it—the thrilling experiences of these courageous pioneers. We could tell of their hardships and heroism, of their hunger and thirst and nakedness, of their chills and fever; of their confronting, with axe in one hand and gun in the other, the illimitable forests and the malarious swamps; of the devotion and bravery of their women, by whose unswerving fidelity and magical inspiration one was made to chase a thousand, and two were able to put ten thousand to flight. But it is enough to say that they were triumphant over all obstacles, and succeeded in laying in suffering and sorrow, and in indomitable faith, the foundation of a State. The colony, in the twenty-seventh year of its existence, became an independent Republic, and as such now enjoys the confidence and respect of all foreign nations.
Nearly all the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society have passed away. Of the founders of the American Colonisation Society and the pioneers of Liberia, among the few living are Hon. John H. B. Latrobe, President of the Society; Dr. James Hall, the founder of the County of Maryland, in Liberia; and H. M, Schieffelin, Esq., New York, the founder of a promising settlement in Liberia—all full of years and honour. The active life of Mr. Latrobe has been coeval with the life of Liberia. It was he who suggested, or rather formed, the name of LIBERIA, from the Latin word liber; and the name of its capital Monrovia, from that of President Monroe. He has had only four predecessors in the office of President of the Society; Justice Bushrod “Washington, elected in 1817; Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, elected in 1830; Ex-President James Madison, elected in 1833; Hon. Henry Clay, elected in 1836. Mr. Latrobe was elected in 1853. The records of the Society for the sixty years of its existence are full of the most remarkable specimens of eloquence, delivered from time to time with inexhaustible fervour and freshness by this veteran colonisationist. We have read them nearly all, and all are so impressive that we find a difficulty in selecting any for especial tribute or recognition. Even the platitudes of the African cause are made luminous and instructive by the ardour of his zeal and the glow of his intelligence. These early friends of colonisation have seen Liberia in her darkest hours; they have all exceeded the allotted years of man, but they are still strong in the hopes for the Negro nationality, which inspired their early efforts; and they -are realising that they did not exaggerate their prognostications of the future of the colony.
Those only (exclaimed Mr. Latrobe, with thoughtful enthusiasm) accomplish great ends among men, who are prophets with a conviction of the truthfulness of their visions, and who have the patience to wait without despondency. No doubter ever won a battle or realised a fortune. Our success, up to this time, in the prosperity and order of our colonies; in the contentment, healthfulness and numbers of their people; in the commerce that has sprung up around and with Liberia; far surpasses the like experience of all preceding colonisation. We have had, in truth, nothing to discourage us.[25]
But, in view of the great work to be done, the narrowness of its resources, and the vast ignorance prevailing among multitudes of Negroes on the subject of their Fatherland, the Society is still the “ voice of one crying in the wilderness.” They persist, however, with the same intense and profound belief in the rightness and righteousness of their cause; and stand, with regard, both to the past and the future, like the Chevalier Bayard, sans peur et sans reproche.
No one can read the accounts—their own reminiscences—put before the world from time to time, by these veteran friends of Liberia, of the early days of the colony, without feeling that it was a daring enterprise on the part of the Colonisationists to plant peaceful settlements on the coast of Africa, which, at the time they began operations, was the scene of war, plunder and piracy. In 1822, the year after the settlement was founded, the British Minister at Paris wrote:--
There seems to be scarcely a spot on that coast (from Sierra Leone to Cape Mount) which does not show the traces of the slave trade, with all its attendant horrors; for, the arrival of a ship in any of the rivers on the windward coast, being the signal for war between the natives, the hamlets of the weaker party are burnt, and the miserable survivors carried off and sold to the slave-traders.[26]
In 1825, Mr. Ashmun, the first Governor of the Colony, wrote to the Society:--
From eight to ten, and even fifteen, vessels were engaged at the same time in this odious traffic,- almost under the guns of the settlement. In the month of July contracts were existing for eight hundred slaves to be furnished in the short space of four months, within eight miles of the Capo (Monrovia). Four hundred of these were to be purchased for two American traders.[27]
Several times, through the diabolical intrigues of the miscreant traders, the settlements were on the verge of extinction. But the courage and energy of the resolute colonists thwarted the plots of the demons.
With all their alleged contempt of the Negro, colonisationists had faith enough in him to believe that he could hold his own away from the leading- strings of his master. Mr. Ashmun, the white Governor, and the only white man in the colony, at the time when the slave-traders were concentrating their forces in the neighbourhood of Monrovia for its destruction, expressed entire confidence in the ability of the colonists to maintain their position. “The colony only wants the right,” he writes to the Society; “ it has the power to expel this traffic to a distance, and force it, at least, to conceal some of its worst enormities.”
In the United States, many influential slaveholders supported the Society, gave liberty to their slaves, and sent them to Liberia, because they believed in their manhood, or rather, in their possibilities of manhood. Ex-President Monroe assured Elliott Cresson, that eminent philanthropist and colonisationist, “that if adequate funds were possessed by the Colonisation Society, he could procure ten thousand slaves, by voluntary emancipation, in his native state alone.”[28]
The struggles of the early Liberian colonists against the ignorant opposition of their own untutored people, stimulated by slave-traders, have a species of pathos and romance to which the struggles of the first colonists in America offer nothing similar. The battles of the African pilgrims were not for empire over an alien race; not for power or dazzling wealth; but for room in the land to which they had a hereditary right, De vita et sanguine certant.[29] The pathetic aspect of their position was, that they had to confront a ferocity, not natural, but generated under the dark influence of incarnate fiends—to fight against a people allied to them by blood, and probably, identical in their antecedents, who would gladly have welcomed them but for the malevolent interference of those supreme criminals of humanity—hostes generis humani— who had ruthlessly robbed their fathers of their homes.
We could here recite—if this were the place for it—the thrilling experiences of these courageous pioneers. We could tell of their hardships and heroism, of their hunger and thirst and nakedness, of their chills and fever; of their confronting, with axe in one hand and gun in the other, the illimitable forests and the malarious swamps; of the devotion and bravery of their women, by whose unswerving fidelity and magical inspiration one was made to chase a thousand, and two were able to put ten thousand to flight. But it is enough to say that they were triumphant over all obstacles, and succeeded in laying in suffering and sorrow, and in indomitable faith, the foundation of a State. The colony, in the twenty-seventh year of its existence, became an independent Republic, and as such now enjoys the confidence and respect of all foreign nations.
Footnotes:
24 Life of Samuel J. May; Boston, 1876: p. 140.
25 Address delivered at the Anniversary of the American Colonisation Society January 17,1854.
26 Sir T. Powell Buxton on the ‘Slave-trade, and its Remedy.’
27 Gurley’s Life of Ashmun, p. 261.
28 African Repository; 1839, p. 298.
29 Æneid; xii, 736.
24 Life of Samuel J. May; Boston, 1876: p. 140.
25 Address delivered at the Anniversary of the American Colonisation Society January 17,1854.
26 Sir T. Powell Buxton on the ‘Slave-trade, and its Remedy.’
27 Gurley’s Life of Ashmun, p. 261.
28 African Repository; 1839, p. 298.
29 Æneid; xii, 736.
The late Bishop Haven, after seeing Liberia, in 1877, wrote:--
The St. Paul’s River is the heart of Liberia, the key to its future, the hope of the African in Africa. In no other colony is there such developed country life. Sierra Leone is city; South Africa is white; the rest is savage. This is country, and country always; and country only makes country. Let Liberia fill up her land with farms, and she will conquer Africa. . . . .
It only remains to be seen whether America will help her firstborn—her representative, her child still, in every pulse—to win this honour for herself and for us. Such an enterprise will give our trade and manufactures a new impulse. Let the North Pole remain in its icy isolation; while this vaster, nobler, and more useful undertaking is furthered by our Government.
The heroic William Taylor, “ Bishop of Africa,” after holding his first Conference at Monrovia, in January, 1885,[30] wrote of Liberia as follows:--
Liberia is the garden spot of West Africa; splendid soil, well watered, good spring water for use, salubrious climate, and more exempt from flies and mosquitoes than any tropical country in which I have laboured. I am very sorry that the Liberian Government has, by bad management, got into debt. I hope our Government will feel maternal interest in it, and help it out of its embarrassment. . . . . If our Government won’t help the Liberians, our coloured people should give them one dollar each—about a million of them— for the sake of their race. There is a grand future yet for Liberia, if they will learn by what they have seen and suffered, in the past fifty years.
We might cite here the concurrent favourable testimony of several naval officers, American and English, who have, from time to time, visited Liberia; but space allows us to give only one. It is the testimony of that most distinguished and useful officer, Commodore Perry. After spending some time on the Liberian coast, he wrote:--
In truth, I cannot but believe that the colony of Liberia is firmly and permanently established; and that it possesses, at this early period of its existence, the germ of a powerful empire, to be populated by a class of people hitherto unknown, at least to modern times—a community of blacks, destined to enjoy all the advantages of civilisation, and to exercise its full share of political influence in the family of nations.
Liberia is a Republican State, modelled after the United States. She is superior in self-reliance and self-control to Sierra Leone, now on the eve of her centennial anniversary. In that British colony, the foreign soldier—and, until very recently, the Bishop of the Church of England—took part with the civil officer in the work of government. And, to this day, when the Governor is absent, his place is supplied by the “Officer commanding the Troops.” In Liberia, there is no standing army; and if any difference is observable in the public security of the two places, the difference is not to the disadvantage of the Republic.
With astonishing success has Liberia been able to impress the aboriginal tribes in favour of her Government and laws. While the neighbouring colony of Sierra Leone is, not unfrequently, troubled by raids of marauders into British territory, the aborigines, throughout Liberia, are getting to understand the political creed of the Republic, and to sympathise with the national aims. They are beginning to look upon Liberia as their own—a social, political and industrial commonwealth, which includes them, and contemplates their highest interest; so that, with no large material resources for offensive or defensive purposes, the Republic is able to keep in check the predatory tendencies of the wayward elements.
Celsa sedet Æolus arce,
Sceptra tenens; mollitque animos, et temperat iras.[31]
Æolus, throned on high, the sceptre sways, Controls their mood, their wrath allays.
Conington’s Translation.
The theory of the American Colonisation Society is verified, as their protegés take their place in Liberia, and come under the influences of the Fatherland. As they advance to maturity in the ancestral home, the propensity to imitation grows weaker and weaker, and their improving faculties gradually divert them from the models they left in the house of bondage, to ideal standards, more in accordance with their tastes and instincts. White is dethroned, and black takes its proper position. The habit of thinking, of observation, of reflection—without the disturbing action of any alien influence—adds, as it were, a new eye to the mind; slumbering faculties are aroused; and they learn many things, which, with less freedom to be themselves, less responsibility, and less necessity for intellectual concentration, it would have been impossible for them to acquire.
The men, who, as a rule, succeed in Liberia, are of two classes: Firstly, those who were born, or have grown up, and were educated in the country; and, secondly, adult emigrants of humble educational attainments, who have been taught to use their muscles, and to rely upon themselves; and who, on their arrival, feel that they have entered a new school, where they have much to learn. Excellent fruits of their former schooling are not lacking. They make good farmers, good carpenters, good brickmakers, good shoemakers, good blacksmiths—in short, they prove to be capable in most of the ordinary branches of useful industry. Large numbers of them are members of the various Christian Churches, and are, as a rule, orderly in their walk, and firm in their belief. Their views of morals are often criticised as defective, yet, they display in their new homes, sterling moral qualities; not only habits of industry, but of obedient subordination; of reverence for authority, human and Divine. They come from that set of men who won the admiration of the world, for their fidelity and self-control, during the crisis which came upon their masters five-and-twenty years ago, and, of whom, the following testimony is born by an ex-slaveholder of learning and culture:--
When the South was largely overrun by a hostile soldiery; when every able-bodied white man of that section had been hurried to the front; when none were left for the protection of our women and children but mere boys and infirm old men, our slaves cultivated our fields, protected our property, and stood by our families in their helpless condition, thus becoming an element of strength instead of weakness, of security rather than danger.[32]
History shows no parallel to this. Europe, from all precedent, looked on at the commencement of the Civil War with an indescribable intensity of interest and anxiety. The Times despatched its able and graphic correspondent, Mr. W. H. Russell, to the scene. Writing from the spot, he said, reflecting the feeling of the Old World:--
If the Negroes occasion any trouble, there is no saying how far the difficulties of the Slave States may not go; but, at present, they arc possessed with a confidence, which may be blind or farseeing, that their slaves will remain quiet, if not faithful; and the absence of any white element from the population o whole districts is very remarkable. The spectacle of an uprising of 4,000,000 of Negroes in the plantations, burning, plundering, and destroying the whites, is one which, I confess, I am not humanitarian or Abolitionist enough to be prepared to desire or to enjoy.
The slaveholders trusted to the loyalty of their slaves—to those whom the world believed to be in the utmost degradation, and in the depths of savagery—and were not disappointed. It might have been otherwise if they had been alone, or altogether, responsible, for slavery; but it was an inheritance, which they could not have got rid of by any safe or normal means. They were, as we believe, providentially, the guardians of Africa’s future regenerators; and while, as individuals, they may have been at times punished for abuse of their trust, yet, when it was possible, and probable, in the view of strangers—when the instinctive reasoning of the human conscience concluded that the time had come for retaliation and retribution by human hands — this awful calamity was not permitted. They were not allowed to suffer, as a class, through the unbridled passions of their slaves, for a relationship and its concomitants which they did not originate, and could not abruptly terminate. They suffered only so far as they failed to recognise the handwriting on the wall, stating that the time had come, and pointing out the methods for safe emancipation. Pharaoh was punished, not for having held the Hebrews in bondage, but for refusing to let them go when commanded to do so.
Yet, when everything else connected with the Negro’s residence in America is forgotten, this wonderful story of his loyalty and self-control, will be recited to generations yet unborn, as a brilliant page—perhaps the only brilliant page—in the record of Africa in America. Surely, if all the years of toil and suffering are not sufficient to strengthen the appeal for help now made by thousands of these people, who are anxious to return to the land of their fathers; surely, this last act of theirs, this incomparable, this more than loyal devotion, ought to bring abundant assistance and relief to the “cry of the exile towards the graves of the beloved over the sea, that weeps and is not weary.”
The refusal to listen to these pathetic appeals, constantly made through the Colonisation Society—this melancholy chorus that comes from the south and south-west, on every wind that blows—may bring the punishment, at least, of remorse. We are “ verily guilty, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us, and we would not hear.” Yes; when he besought us. We look in vain in the wills of dying millionaires for one cent given to aid the return of these faithful servants. But we are sure, if these wealthy stewards of God’s gifts could have heard the bitter cries on board those “ floating tombs of gasping humanity, on the mighty deep,” as they bore away their suffering freights to the Western world, they would be anxious to make some compensation, if only in sending back one who may be anxious to return. Let the facilities to return to their ancestral land be given to this people; let a generous God-speed be extended to them; let them be urged to take possession of the hills and plains awaiting their advent:
Ply all the sinews of industrious toil,
Glean up the refuse of a generous soil;
Rebuild the towns that smoked upon the plain,
And hope the sun will gild their roofs again.
This merciful dealing with the needy will be twice blessed—blessing him that gives, and him that takes.
Next to the Christian religion, the most important element of strength and prosperity in Liberia, is her possession of the English language. This gives her an advantage with the outside world, for it connects her with the life of the most vigorous and progressive of modem nations. “The English Language,” says President Eliot, “is the native tongue of nations which are preeminent in the world by force of character, enterprise and wealth; and whose political and social institutions have a higher moral interest, and greater promise, than any which mankind has hitherto invented.” It is the language in which knowledge, secular and religious, is most abundantly diffused; two great nations being engaged in printing and circulating in it, in the cheapest possible form, the best thoughts of past and contemporary humanity. It partakes of the character of the people who speak it, and is, therefore, a wonderful stimulus. The native African, like all Oriental or tropical people, can see no reason or propriety in extra work, as long as he has enough to supply his wants. But he is imitative. And as the English language is diffused in his country, vivified by its domiciliation on the American continent,[33] with its constantly-increasing vocabulary, its numerous words and phrases—some of which, produced by a restless and invincible activity, suggest and inspire activity—the native will be raised unconsciously; and, in spite of hereditary tendencies and surroundings, will work, not, then, in order to enjoy repose—the dolce far niente—but to be able to do more work, and to carry out higher objects, Climate, after all, is not an insuperable barrier to progress. Every variety of climate has produced an indigenous civilisation, by outward stimulus.
One of the most important counteracting influences to Mohammedanism in Africa, will be the pressure of the English language. Dr. Nassau Lees, says, that the Koran was written for conquerors; so the English language, with its multitudinous books and newspapers, is the language of conquest—not of physical, but of moral and intellectual conquest.[34] The schoolmaster against the soldier; the primer against the sword. It has everywhere, on the coast, driven out other European languages. The French are struggling against its irrepressible aggressiveness in their own colony at Gaboon. Dr. Lenz found the language at Cameroons, the new German acquisition, to be universally English. Official notices are drawn up in English and German. Dr. Fischer, says, that in Zanzibar the natives say, “ All good things come from England.” Mr. Joseph Thomson has been recently making treaties on behalf of the English African Trading Company, with the most powerful tribes on the Niger. They refused to entertain the proposals for similar arrangements of a German trading agent.[35] And where the English language once takes root, it is a permanent occupant. In the West Indies, we find the Danish, Dutch and Swedish flags floating over an English-speaking population. The only rival in Africa that will offer anything like stubborn resistance to the pretensions of English, is Arabic. But the increasing desire of the interior tribes for material advancement, and the effort to hold communication with the outside world, which, for them, as Liberia-and Sierra Leone extend eastward, will be more and more the English-speaking world, will diminish the practical importance of Arabic, and be a powerful stimulus to their civilisation and Christianisation. The force of material interests will divert the Pagan element from Mohammedan influence.
A writer in Macmillan’s Magazine (April, 1885) says: “ It is our bad luck at present that there are only two independent English nations.” The writer has probably not heard of Liberia. By recent negotiations, the territory of Liberia has become conterminous with that of the British Colony of Sierra Leone. On the occasion of the settlement of this long-pending question, the British Commissioner, Sir Samuel Rowe, remarked:--
The happy duty, now devolved upon me, of signing, on behalf of Her Majesty, the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, that Convention, which, having been signed also by the accredited Commissioners of the Government of Liberia, will, I trust, set at rest those differences, which, from time to time, have impeded the progress of civilisation, and lessened, perhaps, the harmony which it always is desirable should exist between States whose territorial limits are conterminous. . . . . Sister States, side by side on this Eastern shore of the broad Atlantic, peopled by members of the African race, who have adopted the habits of Western civilisation, cannot be other than united by the ties of one common duty; and that duty is, the furtherance of civilisation in this African land, amongst those native tribes, their immediate neighbours, who have not enjoyed the opportunities afforded to the inhabitants of Sierra Leone, and to the emigrants from the United States to Liberia, of becoming acquainted with that higher life and purer thought, which we of the Northern clime maintain pervades the people of Europe and America.
The St. Paul’s River is the heart of Liberia, the key to its future, the hope of the African in Africa. In no other colony is there such developed country life. Sierra Leone is city; South Africa is white; the rest is savage. This is country, and country always; and country only makes country. Let Liberia fill up her land with farms, and she will conquer Africa. . . . .
It only remains to be seen whether America will help her firstborn—her representative, her child still, in every pulse—to win this honour for herself and for us. Such an enterprise will give our trade and manufactures a new impulse. Let the North Pole remain in its icy isolation; while this vaster, nobler, and more useful undertaking is furthered by our Government.
The heroic William Taylor, “ Bishop of Africa,” after holding his first Conference at Monrovia, in January, 1885,[30] wrote of Liberia as follows:--
Liberia is the garden spot of West Africa; splendid soil, well watered, good spring water for use, salubrious climate, and more exempt from flies and mosquitoes than any tropical country in which I have laboured. I am very sorry that the Liberian Government has, by bad management, got into debt. I hope our Government will feel maternal interest in it, and help it out of its embarrassment. . . . . If our Government won’t help the Liberians, our coloured people should give them one dollar each—about a million of them— for the sake of their race. There is a grand future yet for Liberia, if they will learn by what they have seen and suffered, in the past fifty years.
We might cite here the concurrent favourable testimony of several naval officers, American and English, who have, from time to time, visited Liberia; but space allows us to give only one. It is the testimony of that most distinguished and useful officer, Commodore Perry. After spending some time on the Liberian coast, he wrote:--
In truth, I cannot but believe that the colony of Liberia is firmly and permanently established; and that it possesses, at this early period of its existence, the germ of a powerful empire, to be populated by a class of people hitherto unknown, at least to modern times—a community of blacks, destined to enjoy all the advantages of civilisation, and to exercise its full share of political influence in the family of nations.
Liberia is a Republican State, modelled after the United States. She is superior in self-reliance and self-control to Sierra Leone, now on the eve of her centennial anniversary. In that British colony, the foreign soldier—and, until very recently, the Bishop of the Church of England—took part with the civil officer in the work of government. And, to this day, when the Governor is absent, his place is supplied by the “Officer commanding the Troops.” In Liberia, there is no standing army; and if any difference is observable in the public security of the two places, the difference is not to the disadvantage of the Republic.
With astonishing success has Liberia been able to impress the aboriginal tribes in favour of her Government and laws. While the neighbouring colony of Sierra Leone is, not unfrequently, troubled by raids of marauders into British territory, the aborigines, throughout Liberia, are getting to understand the political creed of the Republic, and to sympathise with the national aims. They are beginning to look upon Liberia as their own—a social, political and industrial commonwealth, which includes them, and contemplates their highest interest; so that, with no large material resources for offensive or defensive purposes, the Republic is able to keep in check the predatory tendencies of the wayward elements.
Celsa sedet Æolus arce,
Sceptra tenens; mollitque animos, et temperat iras.[31]
Æolus, throned on high, the sceptre sways, Controls their mood, their wrath allays.
Conington’s Translation.
The theory of the American Colonisation Society is verified, as their protegés take their place in Liberia, and come under the influences of the Fatherland. As they advance to maturity in the ancestral home, the propensity to imitation grows weaker and weaker, and their improving faculties gradually divert them from the models they left in the house of bondage, to ideal standards, more in accordance with their tastes and instincts. White is dethroned, and black takes its proper position. The habit of thinking, of observation, of reflection—without the disturbing action of any alien influence—adds, as it were, a new eye to the mind; slumbering faculties are aroused; and they learn many things, which, with less freedom to be themselves, less responsibility, and less necessity for intellectual concentration, it would have been impossible for them to acquire.
The men, who, as a rule, succeed in Liberia, are of two classes: Firstly, those who were born, or have grown up, and were educated in the country; and, secondly, adult emigrants of humble educational attainments, who have been taught to use their muscles, and to rely upon themselves; and who, on their arrival, feel that they have entered a new school, where they have much to learn. Excellent fruits of their former schooling are not lacking. They make good farmers, good carpenters, good brickmakers, good shoemakers, good blacksmiths—in short, they prove to be capable in most of the ordinary branches of useful industry. Large numbers of them are members of the various Christian Churches, and are, as a rule, orderly in their walk, and firm in their belief. Their views of morals are often criticised as defective, yet, they display in their new homes, sterling moral qualities; not only habits of industry, but of obedient subordination; of reverence for authority, human and Divine. They come from that set of men who won the admiration of the world, for their fidelity and self-control, during the crisis which came upon their masters five-and-twenty years ago, and, of whom, the following testimony is born by an ex-slaveholder of learning and culture:--
When the South was largely overrun by a hostile soldiery; when every able-bodied white man of that section had been hurried to the front; when none were left for the protection of our women and children but mere boys and infirm old men, our slaves cultivated our fields, protected our property, and stood by our families in their helpless condition, thus becoming an element of strength instead of weakness, of security rather than danger.[32]
History shows no parallel to this. Europe, from all precedent, looked on at the commencement of the Civil War with an indescribable intensity of interest and anxiety. The Times despatched its able and graphic correspondent, Mr. W. H. Russell, to the scene. Writing from the spot, he said, reflecting the feeling of the Old World:--
If the Negroes occasion any trouble, there is no saying how far the difficulties of the Slave States may not go; but, at present, they arc possessed with a confidence, which may be blind or farseeing, that their slaves will remain quiet, if not faithful; and the absence of any white element from the population o whole districts is very remarkable. The spectacle of an uprising of 4,000,000 of Negroes in the plantations, burning, plundering, and destroying the whites, is one which, I confess, I am not humanitarian or Abolitionist enough to be prepared to desire or to enjoy.
The slaveholders trusted to the loyalty of their slaves—to those whom the world believed to be in the utmost degradation, and in the depths of savagery—and were not disappointed. It might have been otherwise if they had been alone, or altogether, responsible, for slavery; but it was an inheritance, which they could not have got rid of by any safe or normal means. They were, as we believe, providentially, the guardians of Africa’s future regenerators; and while, as individuals, they may have been at times punished for abuse of their trust, yet, when it was possible, and probable, in the view of strangers—when the instinctive reasoning of the human conscience concluded that the time had come for retaliation and retribution by human hands — this awful calamity was not permitted. They were not allowed to suffer, as a class, through the unbridled passions of their slaves, for a relationship and its concomitants which they did not originate, and could not abruptly terminate. They suffered only so far as they failed to recognise the handwriting on the wall, stating that the time had come, and pointing out the methods for safe emancipation. Pharaoh was punished, not for having held the Hebrews in bondage, but for refusing to let them go when commanded to do so.
Yet, when everything else connected with the Negro’s residence in America is forgotten, this wonderful story of his loyalty and self-control, will be recited to generations yet unborn, as a brilliant page—perhaps the only brilliant page—in the record of Africa in America. Surely, if all the years of toil and suffering are not sufficient to strengthen the appeal for help now made by thousands of these people, who are anxious to return to the land of their fathers; surely, this last act of theirs, this incomparable, this more than loyal devotion, ought to bring abundant assistance and relief to the “cry of the exile towards the graves of the beloved over the sea, that weeps and is not weary.”
The refusal to listen to these pathetic appeals, constantly made through the Colonisation Society—this melancholy chorus that comes from the south and south-west, on every wind that blows—may bring the punishment, at least, of remorse. We are “ verily guilty, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us, and we would not hear.” Yes; when he besought us. We look in vain in the wills of dying millionaires for one cent given to aid the return of these faithful servants. But we are sure, if these wealthy stewards of God’s gifts could have heard the bitter cries on board those “ floating tombs of gasping humanity, on the mighty deep,” as they bore away their suffering freights to the Western world, they would be anxious to make some compensation, if only in sending back one who may be anxious to return. Let the facilities to return to their ancestral land be given to this people; let a generous God-speed be extended to them; let them be urged to take possession of the hills and plains awaiting their advent:
Ply all the sinews of industrious toil,
Glean up the refuse of a generous soil;
Rebuild the towns that smoked upon the plain,
And hope the sun will gild their roofs again.
This merciful dealing with the needy will be twice blessed—blessing him that gives, and him that takes.
Next to the Christian religion, the most important element of strength and prosperity in Liberia, is her possession of the English language. This gives her an advantage with the outside world, for it connects her with the life of the most vigorous and progressive of modem nations. “The English Language,” says President Eliot, “is the native tongue of nations which are preeminent in the world by force of character, enterprise and wealth; and whose political and social institutions have a higher moral interest, and greater promise, than any which mankind has hitherto invented.” It is the language in which knowledge, secular and religious, is most abundantly diffused; two great nations being engaged in printing and circulating in it, in the cheapest possible form, the best thoughts of past and contemporary humanity. It partakes of the character of the people who speak it, and is, therefore, a wonderful stimulus. The native African, like all Oriental or tropical people, can see no reason or propriety in extra work, as long as he has enough to supply his wants. But he is imitative. And as the English language is diffused in his country, vivified by its domiciliation on the American continent,[33] with its constantly-increasing vocabulary, its numerous words and phrases—some of which, produced by a restless and invincible activity, suggest and inspire activity—the native will be raised unconsciously; and, in spite of hereditary tendencies and surroundings, will work, not, then, in order to enjoy repose—the dolce far niente—but to be able to do more work, and to carry out higher objects, Climate, after all, is not an insuperable barrier to progress. Every variety of climate has produced an indigenous civilisation, by outward stimulus.
One of the most important counteracting influences to Mohammedanism in Africa, will be the pressure of the English language. Dr. Nassau Lees, says, that the Koran was written for conquerors; so the English language, with its multitudinous books and newspapers, is the language of conquest—not of physical, but of moral and intellectual conquest.[34] The schoolmaster against the soldier; the primer against the sword. It has everywhere, on the coast, driven out other European languages. The French are struggling against its irrepressible aggressiveness in their own colony at Gaboon. Dr. Lenz found the language at Cameroons, the new German acquisition, to be universally English. Official notices are drawn up in English and German. Dr. Fischer, says, that in Zanzibar the natives say, “ All good things come from England.” Mr. Joseph Thomson has been recently making treaties on behalf of the English African Trading Company, with the most powerful tribes on the Niger. They refused to entertain the proposals for similar arrangements of a German trading agent.[35] And where the English language once takes root, it is a permanent occupant. In the West Indies, we find the Danish, Dutch and Swedish flags floating over an English-speaking population. The only rival in Africa that will offer anything like stubborn resistance to the pretensions of English, is Arabic. But the increasing desire of the interior tribes for material advancement, and the effort to hold communication with the outside world, which, for them, as Liberia-and Sierra Leone extend eastward, will be more and more the English-speaking world, will diminish the practical importance of Arabic, and be a powerful stimulus to their civilisation and Christianisation. The force of material interests will divert the Pagan element from Mohammedan influence.
A writer in Macmillan’s Magazine (April, 1885) says: “ It is our bad luck at present that there are only two independent English nations.” The writer has probably not heard of Liberia. By recent negotiations, the territory of Liberia has become conterminous with that of the British Colony of Sierra Leone. On the occasion of the settlement of this long-pending question, the British Commissioner, Sir Samuel Rowe, remarked:--
The happy duty, now devolved upon me, of signing, on behalf of Her Majesty, the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, that Convention, which, having been signed also by the accredited Commissioners of the Government of Liberia, will, I trust, set at rest those differences, which, from time to time, have impeded the progress of civilisation, and lessened, perhaps, the harmony which it always is desirable should exist between States whose territorial limits are conterminous. . . . . Sister States, side by side on this Eastern shore of the broad Atlantic, peopled by members of the African race, who have adopted the habits of Western civilisation, cannot be other than united by the ties of one common duty; and that duty is, the furtherance of civilisation in this African land, amongst those native tribes, their immediate neighbours, who have not enjoyed the opportunities afforded to the inhabitants of Sierra Leone, and to the emigrants from the United States to Liberia, of becoming acquainted with that higher life and purer thought, which we of the Northern clime maintain pervades the people of Europe and America.
Footnotes:
30 Bishop Taylor is now (January 30, 1886) holding his second Conference at Grand Bassa, Liberia.
31 Æneid i, 56, 57.
32 The Education of the Negro; an Address by Gustavus J. Orr, LL.D., State School Commissioner of Georgia.—1880.
33 ‘The American Language,’ is the subject of an interesting chapter by Mark Twain. The language spoken by the Liberians, is known throughout the adjacent interior countries as “Merican.”
34 In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.
35 London Times, Oct. 27, 1885
30 Bishop Taylor is now (January 30, 1886) holding his second Conference at Grand Bassa, Liberia.
31 Æneid i, 56, 57.
32 The Education of the Negro; an Address by Gustavus J. Orr, LL.D., State School Commissioner of Georgia.—1880.
33 ‘The American Language,’ is the subject of an interesting chapter by Mark Twain. The language spoken by the Liberians, is known throughout the adjacent interior countries as “Merican.”
34 In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.
35 London Times, Oct. 27, 1885
It is now expected that the relations of Liberia and Sierra Leone will become more intimate, and that there will be, in course of time, uniform tariff regulations, by which the trade of the two countries may be carried on under the same rules. And this would seem not unreasonable, when it is considered that the Mannah River, fixed by England as the south-east boundary of Sierra Leone, and the north-west boundary of Liberia, is not an ethnological frontier, but cuts off and takes into Sierra Leone, a portion of the Vey tribe, the majority of whom are in the recognised limits of Liberia; so that British subjects and Liberian citizens speak across the boundary to each other in the same aboriginal tongue, and obey foreign laws couched in the same European language, and based on the same system of jurisprudence. Gallinas and Sulymah belong, geographically and ethnographically, to Liberia; they belong, politically and territorially, to Sierra Leone, through the accidents of diplomatic management. The idea of joint-legislation, then, it may be seen, is by no means alien to the purposes and aims of the two communities, nor is it repugnant to the spirit of the age. The impression has been produced in West Africa, by articles in American newspapers, and private letters from the United States, that the American Government is likely, in future, to take greater practical interest in Liberia than has been hitherto customary. Whether this notion is well founded or not, it is evident that, in view of the vast energies, pecuniary, intellectual and moral, being expended by Europe upon the solution of the African problem, the United States cannot sit much longer as an indifferent spectator, possessing, as she does, to a far greater extent than any other nation, the facilities for effective work on this continent.
It is not for nothing, that to the United States has been committed the trust of millions of Africa’s descendants, the natural and appointed agents in the regeneration of the continent; and it is not without meaning, that they should have been set at liberty at the precise period when the vast field of their future energies was being opened to the gaze of an astonished world. It cannot be unwise for the United States Government to employ some of its surplus capital—not too much—in opening the way to a career for millions of people, who can have none in a country to whose material progress they have so largely contributed. We looked in vain in the last Message of President Cleveland, for a single reference to the continent of Africa, the original home of millions of his hapless fellow-citizens, who are anxious to return. But we do not imagine that this was the silence of indifference. It was rather, we suspect, the reticence which often comes from earnest practical interest—the silence which scans the distance before taking the leap.
It seems to us, that the United States Government is now standing, so far as Africa is concerned, at the parting of the ways. And if the lingering at the bifurcation be not too long, or long enough to cause insuperable doubts and fears, the hesitation will do good, and Africa may hope for great things from the new régime.
But some of the best friends of colonisation have entertained doubts as to whether such an enterprise ought to be, or can be, legally assisted by the United States Government. Daniel “Webster, the great expounder and defender of the Constitution, had no doubt on this score. He said, shortly before his death:--
It appears to me that this emigration is not impracticable. What is it to the great resources of this country to send out a hundred thousand persons a-year to Africa? In my opinion, without any violation of the analogies which we have followed in other cases, in pursuance of our commercial regulations, it is within our Constitution—it is within the powers and provisions of that Constitution, as a part of our commercial arrangements—just as we enter into treaties and pass laws for the suppression of the slave trade. If we look, now, to other instances, we shall see how great may be the emigration of individuals, with slight means from Government.[36]
Mr. Webster then referred to the vast emigration from Ireland to the United States, under the stimulus of “ very slight Governmental support.”
On the several grounds of justice, humanity and expediency, it seems to us that the Government should give its aid. In contemplating the possibility of such assistance, the only drawback that occurs to us is that the immigration might be so excessive as to imperil the vital interests of the colony. But this would depend, greatly, upon the class of people sent. A few ambitious and turbulent spirits, who, in America, supposed themselves to be ascending in the scale of political life, and determined, on their arrival in Africa, to make way for themselves by the methods of American demagogism, would soon upset the nascent institutions of the young Republic. But thousands of industrious, hard-working farmers and mechanics, would be no source of danger or anxiety. They would go to work, and the aborigines would gladly welcome them as returning brethren, similar to themselves in aspect, in origin, and in destiny. With such immigrants, however numerous, we can imagine no serious difficulty. As long as Liberia includes vast tracts of fertile land unoccupied and uncultivated, there will be space and opportunities to afford safe outlets for any inconvenient accumulations of working energy. Where abundance of land is so easily accessible, there is no danger of local congestions of population. They will be allured to the rich forests and the fruitful plains, and will very soon find out that Africa is the best country in the world for an absolutely poor man. Meat, fire, and clothing, may also be regarded as luxuries in a climate so genial, and to them, so congenial.
There are in the various counties of Liberia—Montserrado, Bassa, Sinou, Maryland—in the rich countries drained by the St. Paul’s, the St. John’s, the Sinou, the Cavalla and the San Pedro Rivers—eligible sites for profitable farms, for villages and towns, commanding a lucrative trade in the valuable products of the wealthy interior. And there is an active, intelligent native population ready for co-operation, for an interchange of ideas, of produce, of transactions, and of capital, which must unite their country with Liberia by the closest civil and social, as well as political, ties. Their Government, as a rule, has very few of the features of what is understood by royalty, or monarchy. The people govern, and they furnish everywhere most interesting specimens of Republicanism.
The Christian Church in the United States should recognise the instruments at their door for the African work.
It would seem to have been designed that Christianity should not come into Africa from Europe, where it had been taken from its Semitic mould, and either Latinised or Teutonised; but that it should cross the ocean, and acquire larger freedom and greater elasticity, under new conditions, and be imparted to millions of Africans, who should be the bearers of it to their Fatherland. American Christianity, though having its roots in Europe, differs from European Christianity in many important respects—in the wide tolerance which pervades it, in the form which it has assumed, and the impression which it leaves on the mind. It is the religion of a democratic people.
Liberia is blamed because she has made no greater progress. But where, in Western Africa, has there been greater progress in proportion to the means used or effort put forth? At Senegal, the authorities are perplexed by the obstructive operations of hostile Mohammedans. At the Gambia, the adjacent tribes, when they please, disorganise the trade by wars. Sierra Leone is one hundred years old, and the aborigines around it are ready, at any time, to defy its authority, and menace its existence. At the Gold Coast, the Ashantees periodically put the Settlements in jeopardy. Lagos is under the influence of the interior tribes. Foreigners are confined to the coast, or admitted to the wealthy and populous inland districts by the edicts at Abbeokuta. At Gaboon, Dr. Lenz tells us, that the whole native population is being rapidly driven to the interior by the Fans. In the Congo country, serious difficulties environ the situation. Liberia, and her influences, compare favourably with all these.
It is not for nothing, that to the United States has been committed the trust of millions of Africa’s descendants, the natural and appointed agents in the regeneration of the continent; and it is not without meaning, that they should have been set at liberty at the precise period when the vast field of their future energies was being opened to the gaze of an astonished world. It cannot be unwise for the United States Government to employ some of its surplus capital—not too much—in opening the way to a career for millions of people, who can have none in a country to whose material progress they have so largely contributed. We looked in vain in the last Message of President Cleveland, for a single reference to the continent of Africa, the original home of millions of his hapless fellow-citizens, who are anxious to return. But we do not imagine that this was the silence of indifference. It was rather, we suspect, the reticence which often comes from earnest practical interest—the silence which scans the distance before taking the leap.
It seems to us, that the United States Government is now standing, so far as Africa is concerned, at the parting of the ways. And if the lingering at the bifurcation be not too long, or long enough to cause insuperable doubts and fears, the hesitation will do good, and Africa may hope for great things from the new régime.
But some of the best friends of colonisation have entertained doubts as to whether such an enterprise ought to be, or can be, legally assisted by the United States Government. Daniel “Webster, the great expounder and defender of the Constitution, had no doubt on this score. He said, shortly before his death:--
It appears to me that this emigration is not impracticable. What is it to the great resources of this country to send out a hundred thousand persons a-year to Africa? In my opinion, without any violation of the analogies which we have followed in other cases, in pursuance of our commercial regulations, it is within our Constitution—it is within the powers and provisions of that Constitution, as a part of our commercial arrangements—just as we enter into treaties and pass laws for the suppression of the slave trade. If we look, now, to other instances, we shall see how great may be the emigration of individuals, with slight means from Government.[36]
Mr. Webster then referred to the vast emigration from Ireland to the United States, under the stimulus of “ very slight Governmental support.”
On the several grounds of justice, humanity and expediency, it seems to us that the Government should give its aid. In contemplating the possibility of such assistance, the only drawback that occurs to us is that the immigration might be so excessive as to imperil the vital interests of the colony. But this would depend, greatly, upon the class of people sent. A few ambitious and turbulent spirits, who, in America, supposed themselves to be ascending in the scale of political life, and determined, on their arrival in Africa, to make way for themselves by the methods of American demagogism, would soon upset the nascent institutions of the young Republic. But thousands of industrious, hard-working farmers and mechanics, would be no source of danger or anxiety. They would go to work, and the aborigines would gladly welcome them as returning brethren, similar to themselves in aspect, in origin, and in destiny. With such immigrants, however numerous, we can imagine no serious difficulty. As long as Liberia includes vast tracts of fertile land unoccupied and uncultivated, there will be space and opportunities to afford safe outlets for any inconvenient accumulations of working energy. Where abundance of land is so easily accessible, there is no danger of local congestions of population. They will be allured to the rich forests and the fruitful plains, and will very soon find out that Africa is the best country in the world for an absolutely poor man. Meat, fire, and clothing, may also be regarded as luxuries in a climate so genial, and to them, so congenial.
There are in the various counties of Liberia—Montserrado, Bassa, Sinou, Maryland—in the rich countries drained by the St. Paul’s, the St. John’s, the Sinou, the Cavalla and the San Pedro Rivers—eligible sites for profitable farms, for villages and towns, commanding a lucrative trade in the valuable products of the wealthy interior. And there is an active, intelligent native population ready for co-operation, for an interchange of ideas, of produce, of transactions, and of capital, which must unite their country with Liberia by the closest civil and social, as well as political, ties. Their Government, as a rule, has very few of the features of what is understood by royalty, or monarchy. The people govern, and they furnish everywhere most interesting specimens of Republicanism.
The Christian Church in the United States should recognise the instruments at their door for the African work.
It would seem to have been designed that Christianity should not come into Africa from Europe, where it had been taken from its Semitic mould, and either Latinised or Teutonised; but that it should cross the ocean, and acquire larger freedom and greater elasticity, under new conditions, and be imparted to millions of Africans, who should be the bearers of it to their Fatherland. American Christianity, though having its roots in Europe, differs from European Christianity in many important respects—in the wide tolerance which pervades it, in the form which it has assumed, and the impression which it leaves on the mind. It is the religion of a democratic people.
Liberia is blamed because she has made no greater progress. But where, in Western Africa, has there been greater progress in proportion to the means used or effort put forth? At Senegal, the authorities are perplexed by the obstructive operations of hostile Mohammedans. At the Gambia, the adjacent tribes, when they please, disorganise the trade by wars. Sierra Leone is one hundred years old, and the aborigines around it are ready, at any time, to defy its authority, and menace its existence. At the Gold Coast, the Ashantees periodically put the Settlements in jeopardy. Lagos is under the influence of the interior tribes. Foreigners are confined to the coast, or admitted to the wealthy and populous inland districts by the edicts at Abbeokuta. At Gaboon, Dr. Lenz tells us, that the whole native population is being rapidly driven to the interior by the Fans. In the Congo country, serious difficulties environ the situation. Liberia, and her influences, compare favourably with all these.
Footnotes:
36 Address before the American Colonisation Society, January, 1852.
36 Address before the American Colonisation Society, January, 1852.
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