is not your country—though you have served it as faithfully; and according to your opportunities, done as much for it; and behaved as well in it, all things fairly considered; and when occasion called, poured out your blood for it, as cheerfully and as bravely, as we have—yet it is not your country—it is the white man's land—that is, it is the land of the men of all colors, by courtesy called white amongst themselves, who, as a body, have always been your spurners and your tyrants, and never your slaves! Off—off to Africa, your fathers' land; though half of you have more orthodox than heterodox blood in your veins; and there, in a comparative wilderness, surrounded by barbarian despotisms, and in the midst of a heathen people, not yet gospel-hardened, far away forever from your native country, you may find a degree of equity and kindness, which in the United States, your native land, you never can."
The national state of mind in England, was and is, that of a brother and a friend, towards the free colored people. The national state of mind towards them, in the United Slates, was and is, (except when their aid has been needed in times of danger and emergency; witness Gen. Jackson's orders near New Orleans, last war;) a contemptuous sufferance, or a supercilious benignity. "Stand off," it says, "we are better than ye. Keep far enough from our mooncolored nobility, and we will magnanimously suffer you!"
Here it may be useful to remark, that the color, with any propriety called white, extends not to one-tenth of the human family; and, that little more than one-tenth of this tenth, is afflicted with the color-phobia.[1] That is, about one person in a hundred of the whole human family, is subject to this cruel disease; and then, he, in his hallucinations, dreams that his feelings are the law of nature! and that whoever does not feel as he he does, is a fool or a villain.
But this cruel and criminal madness, is beneath the colored nine-tenths of the world—and to all the white people
- ↑ The terror which the Africans have of white men, is rather the terror of the reputation which white men have acquired amongst them, of cannibalism, robbery and murder, than of color.
