Page:A Chapter on Slavery.djvu/121

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DISTINCT CHARACTER OR THE COLORED RACE.
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peace, and self-respect? "You will tell me," says the chivalrous George Harris, in his letter to his colored friends, "that our race have equal right to mingle in the American republic, as the Irishman, the German, the Swede. Granted, they have. But then, I do not want it; I want a ‘country, a nation of my own. I think that the African race has peculiarities yet to be unfolded, in the light of civilization and Christianity, which if not the same with those of the Anglo-Saxon, may prove to be morally of even a higher type. To the Anglo-Saxon race have been entrusted the destinies of the world during its pioneer period of struggle and conflict. To that mission, its stern, inflexible, energetic elements were well adapted; but as a Christian, I look for another era to arise. On its borders I trust we stand; and the throes that now convulse the nations are, to my hope, but the birth-pangs of an hour of universal peace and brotherhood. I trust that the development of Africa is to be essentially a Christian one. If not a dominant and commanding race, they are, at least, an affectionate, magnanimous, and for one. Having been schooled in the furnace of injustice and oppression, they have need to bind closer to their hearts that sublime doctrine of love and forgiveness, through which alone they are to conquer, and which it is to be their mission to spread over the continent of Africa — As a Christian patriot, as a teacher of Christianity, I go to my count/1y, my chosen, my glorious Africa: and to her, in my heart, I sometimes apply those splendid words of prophecy, ‘Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee, I will