Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/296

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THE NEGRO

Note 9. Page 160. In so far as Liberia is concerned, the principal ar- gument both of the negroes, as well as their short- sighted supporters of their continued sojourn in this country, has been that the climate of that region was deadly to everyone and any one who made the attempt to reside in it. This is by no means true, and those who claim that it is true, are simply not telling the truth. In my life-time I have known not a few people who have been, and even resided, upon that part of the western coast of Africa, and it has been found to be no more unhealthy than the Atlantic Coast of the United States in the latitude of the Carolinas and of Georgia. The following report will substantiate this statement. It was published in The Evening Star, of Washington, D. C., of Friday, March 10, 1893, and reads as follows : — THE CLIMATE OF LIBERIA A Man Who Went There Forty Years Ago Gives His Views of the Country. Gen. R. A. Sherman, a negro, was sent from Georgia to Liberia by the American Colonization Society about forty years ago, and he is now one of the most in- telligent, energetic and prosperous citizens of that re- public. He resides in Monrovia and is well known at home and abroad as a reliable and enterprising merchant and a man of means. His residence there is provided with all the comforts and even luxuries that are to be found in a well-to-do American or Eng- lish home. In a letter recently received by Mr. J. Ormond Wil- son he gives his views of the opportunities offered to the American negro of intelligence and character to provide himself a home in Liberia. He says : " I came here with my father and family in the year 1853. There were eight of us in the fam-