Persecution on Account of Faith, Persecution on Account of Color: Aan Address Delivered in Rochester, New York, on January 26, 1851
PERSECUTION ON ACCOUNT OF FAITH, PERSECUTION ON
ACCOUNT OF COLOR: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN
ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, ON 26 JANUARY 1851
North Star, 30 January 1851.
Douglass resumed his Sunday-night lecture series at Corinthian Hall in
Rochester by giving his eighth such address on 26 January 1851.
It was once said by O’Connell, that the history of the Irish people might be
traced, like a wounded man through the crowd, by the blood. This was not
mere rhetoric in O’Connell; it was doubtless the outburst of [a full heart] as
he contemplated the grievous wrongs of his people. Centuries of oppres-
sion had rolled over his country, and left his people weak, depressed and
disunited; and this thought, without doubt, pressed heavily on the patriot’s
heart when he uttered that strong figure. A sense of human wrong and
oppression has ONE language the world over.
Ireland was Roman Catholic. She suffered under Protestant ascen-
dancy. The p [er]secution of her people resulted from religious bigotry and
political folly, and not from a difference of race. The fact that religious
differences have caused far more persecution and oppression than any
physical peculiarities among men, often affords me a melancholy satisfaction.
I am glad to know that tyranny is not always shielded under the flimsy
pretext of a difference of blood.
“Nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, by a law enacted by the
British Parliament, any son of a Catholic who had turned Protestant, suc-
ceeded to the family estate. Catholic fathers were barred, by a penalty of
five hundred pounds, from being guardians to their own people. If the
child, however young, declared himself a Protestant, he was to be deliv-
ered immediately to the custody of some Protestant relation. No Catholic
was permitted to purchase or lease land for more than thirty-one years; and
if the profit of the land so leased by the Catholic amounted to more than a
certain rate, the farm was to belong to the first Protestant that made the
discovery. No Catholic was allowed to hold any office, civil or military, or
to vote in elections. They were prohibited from holding an annuity for life.
For simply keeping schools, they were prosecuted as convicts. Rewards
were given for the discovery of Popish clergymen; fifty pounds for discov-
ering a bishop, and twenty pounds for a common clergyman. Two Justices
of the Peace could compel any Papist above eighteen years of age to
disclose every particular which had come to his knowledge respecting
Popish priests, the celebration of mass, or Papist schools. If he refused to
inform, he was imprisoned for one year. Catholics were not allowed to
serve on grand juries in any trial upon statutes for strengthening Protestant
interests. The horses of Catholics were attached, and allowed to be seized
by the militia; and so deep was the degradation of the Catholics, that while
they were not permitted to be either high or petty constables, they were
made to provide Protestant watchmen. Those who married Papists were
ranked with Papists, and made to suffer all the penalties of the laws against
Papists. Marriage between Catholics and Protestants was almost absolutely
prohibited; and any priest celebrating such a marriage was to be punished
with death."*See Rev. Sidney Smith's works, vol. 1, p. 157.1Douglass loosely paraphrases the Reverend Sydney Smith‘s review of Henry Pamell's History of the Penal Laws against the Irish C atholics, from the Treaty of Limerick to the Union (London, 1808). Originally published in the Edinburgh Review, Smith's essay is reprinted in The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith, 3 vols. (London, 1840), 1: 153—60.
Ladies and gentlemen, here is a brief outline of most oppressive legis-
lation. I have called your attention to it, not because I intend to give you a
lecture either upon the past or present condition of Ireland, but because
(having no part nor agency in that legislation) you have neither pride nor
prejudice to overcome in passing an intelligent judgment upon it. He who
can see his own faults, possesses a noble virtue, and one which is common
to but few men. It has always been easier for a people to form correct
conclusions in regard to certain forms of injustice, when established by
others, than to condemn the same forms of injustice and wrong when
established by themselves. Such is our case. As a nation, we see with
distinctness, and regard with just abhorrence, every form of tyranny
abroad. Our reason, therefore, for bringing before you this subject, is to
call forth that judgment which I am sure that every man who hears me is
prepared to proclaim. My second reason is, that the cruelty and barbarity of
British legislation bear a most striking resemblance to those characteristics
in American legislation manifested towards the free colored people. I have
another; and it is the one to which I have already alluded. It is, that the case
of Ireland presents an entirely different excuse for rigorous tyranny from
that alleged by Americans in defence of their bitter persecution and tyranny
towards the colored people. It was not the Catholic’s skin but the Catholic’s
faith that subjected him to persecution. Legislators were offended at his
faith, and made an effort to legislate him out of Roman Catholicism. Upon
the folly, bigotry and injustice of that legislation, posterity has already set
its broad seal of condemnation. Englishmen turn, with cheeks suffused
with shame, from this sad and disgraceful page in their history, and say that
it was done in the days of ignorance, when the science of government was
little understood.
Precisely where England was more than a hundred years ago in legislat-
ing for the Irish, just there the American people are now in legislating for
the free colored people of the United States. There is the same folly, and
more than the same cruelty and brutality evinced. The government of
England is gradually making amends for its mal-administration towards
Ireland. Catholic emancipation has been triumphantly carried, after a long
and mighty struggle, in which Ireland furnished orators whose eloquence
shook and astonished the world. Her Grattans, her Currans, her Fitzgeralds,
her Emmets, her Sheridans, her Burkes, her Sheils, her O’Connells, are
names that will never die.2The struggle for Catholic “emancipation,” meaning the right to sit in Parliament, began in Ireland during the late eighteenth century and was carried on principally by Irish Catholics both before and after the dissolution of Ireland's separate Parliament as a result of the 1800 Act of Union. The movement culminated with the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, applying to the entire United Kingdom but directed primarily at Ireland. Henry Grattan (1746—1820), orator and statesman, helped achieve legislative independence for the Irish Parliament while serving in that body during the 1780s. After his election to the British Parliament in 1805 he sponsored a variety of unsuccessful measures for Roman Catholic relief. James Fitzgerald (1742-1835), politician, strongly opposed the 1800 Act of Union but served in both the Irish and British Parliaments. Lord Edward Fitzgerald (1763-—1798) was a parliamentary ally of Grattan's before becoming military leader of the United Irishmen in 1797. He died from wounds received at the time of his arrest in 1798. Robert Emmet (1778—1803), also a member of the United Irishmen, was executed for his role in the abortive 1803 uprising in Dublin. Thomas Addis Emmet (1764-1827), brother of Robert Emmet and himself a leading United Irishman, was imprisoned following the 1798 insurrection. He subsequently resided in France before emigrating permanently to America to practice law in 1804. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), orator, playwright, and politician, entered the British Parliament in 1780 as a supporter of Charles James Fox. An active supporter of Catholic emancipation, Sheridan condemned the 1798 insurrection and opposed the Act of Union. Edmund Burke (1729-97), Dublin-born statesman and conservative political theorist, was a consistent supporter of Irish and Catholic rights while serving in the British Parliament from 1766 to 1794. Richard Lalor Sheil (1791-1851), dramatist, orator and politician, was a leading ally of Daniel O'Connell in the struggle for Catholic emancipation. Sheil served in Parliament from 1830 to 1851 and defended John O'Connell in the state trials of 1844. DNB, 3: 345—65, 6: 780-82, 7: 110-11, 130-31, 8: 418-25, 18: 17-21, 78-85. In the light of this brilliant constellation, England
was taught the folly of oppression, and, in consequence, Irish wrongs and
Irish disabilities have gradually subsided, and a growing interest in the
well-being of that country is becoming more and more apparent in the
legislation of England.
But how is it with the American government and the free colored
people of this country? The proper answer to this question is far from
cheering. It cannot be disguised that our burdens are increasing every hour,
and that the American government, both the state and national, is becoming
more and more tyrannical towards us.
The adage that “troubles do not come alone,” is being most signally
verified, especially to our free colored people. The events of the last few
months are of serious significance to all who desire the downfall of slavery
and the triumph of liberty in this country. Blow after blow falls in rapid
succession upon our almost defenceless heads. The moral horizon is dark
and gloomy—not merely portentous of fierce and wrathful storms, but of a
long and dreary winter of oppression and cruelty.
Four months ago, the accursed Fugitive Slave Bill became a law of the
land, and brought to our hearths and homes its bitter fruits of apprehension,
alarm and anguish. The flagrant injustice, the cold-blooded inhumanity,
and the demonical spirit inwrought and exhibited in that abominable
enactment have impressed the free people of color throughout this country
with an appalling sense of approaching calamity. When we think of that
law, it is impossible not to feel that, as a people, we are in an enemy ’s land.
We look up to the “star-spangled banner,” the emblems of a nation’s
liberty, but it affords us no protection. It is suggestive to us only of men-
hunters, of cruel stratagems, and of blood-thirsty hounds, who are ready to
spring upon us with more than the agility and ferocity of tigers. Our homes,
our families, and the little of this world’s goods which patient industry in
the most menial employments has given us, are all insecure. Under the
imposing folds of that boasted flag, we can see for the present nought but
danger, trials, bitter mockery, scorn and oppression, such as have fallen to
the lot of few people since the world began.
In the name of the American Union, frightful multitudes are found who
make haste to betray innocent blood. Wherever the eagle spreads his wings
against the blue vaults of heaven, the sable American finds no refuge.
There is no valley so deep, no mountain so high, no plain so extensive, no
spot so sacred to God and liberty in all this extended country, where the
black man may not fall a prey to the remorseless cupidity of his white
brother.
“And man, whose heaven-created face
the smiles of love adorn;
Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn."3Douglass closely paraphrases lines 53—56 of “Man Was Made To Mourn" by Robert Burns: “And man, whose heaven-erected face/The smiles of love adorn/Man's inhumanity to man/Makes countless thousands mourn!" Smith, Complete Works of Robert Burns, 66.
Would to God that I could on this occasion impart to my audience even
a slight idea of the mournful condition and deep sadness of the people with
whom I am identified. You are strangers to our feelings. A few of you only
appreciate them. There is a bitter peculiarity in the feelings which are
induced by the present state of things, which you cannot fully understand.
To dread the serpent, the hyena, the tiger, and other ferocious inhabitants
of the untamed forest, is natural. From these we shrink instinctively. But to
be afraid of our brother man; to dread the approach of a being with faculties
and powers like our own—a being whose presence should shed over us the
bright beams of social happiness and brotherly kindness—a being who
should embody in his character the life and light of justice and mercy; I say,
my friends, that to look for, in a being ranked by the living God as “but
little lower than the angels,"4Douglass slightly adapts Ps. 8: 5. the qualities of the wolf and the vulture, adds
to the pang of fear and dread, an intense mortification, too deep, too keen
and too bitter to be described. In this state of apprehension and anxiety are
the free colored people of the United States at this moment; and every day’s
experience brings additional cause of alarm and distress.
A young man in Pittsburgh, with whom I am well acquainted, was but a
few days ago pursued by a slave-hunter, and was only saved from all the
horrors of a life of slavery by the payment of money. The young man had
lived in the employment of Mr. J. B. Vashon, an intelligent and humane
colored gentleman, and that gentleman, from his own purse and by the aid
of his friends, paid the price demanded by the remorseless man-hunter, and
thus ransomed the victim from the jaws of oppression.5Douglass refers to the case of George White, a former slave apprehended in Pittsburgh on 14 January 1851, after being recognized by his owner, a Mr. Rose of Wellsburg, Virginia. White, like numerous other fugitives in the 1840s and 18505, was aided and protected by local blacks. John B[oyer?] Vashon (?—1853), a prosperous Negro barber and bathhouse proprietor who had employed White as an apprentice, raised $200 and legally purchased White‘s freedom. A veteran of the War of 1812 and one of Pittsburgh's leading black residents, Vashon had been an outspoken abolitionist and anticolonizationist since the early 1830s. He was an early supporter of William Lloyd Garrison. and served on the Board of Managers of the American Anti-Slavery Society, contributing substantial sums to help finance publication of the Liberator. Vashon also served as the first president of Pittsburgh‘s African Education Society in 1832. Over a twenty-year period he attended several national Negro conventions, including the 1853 Rochester gathering that launched the National Council of Colored Men. Douglass was a frequent guest in Vashon‘s home beginning in the early 1840s, and in 1854 Vashon's son George B. Vashon became a regular contributor to Frederick Douglass' Paper. In announcing the father’s death, Douglass eulogized the elder Vashon as “one of the most consistent advocates of the slave’s freedom, and of the colored man’s elevation, who has yet arisen among our proscribed race." Irene E. Williams, “The Operation of the Fugitive Slave Law in Western Pennsylvania, From 1850 to 1860," Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, 4: 150—60 (July 1921), 153; R. J. M. Blackett, “‘Freedom, or the Martyr's Grave': Black Pittsburgh’s Aid to the Fugitive Slave," ibid., 61: 117—34 (April 1978); Erasmus Wilson, ed., Standard History of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Chicago, 1898), 821; FDP, 20 August 1852, 15 July 1853, 6 January, 8 September 1854; ASB, 7 January 1854; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 20, 21, 24, 29, 32, 33, 81, 108, 200.
I alluded to the case of Henry Long in my last lecture. Certain facts
have transpired since his return to Virginia, which cannot be too exten-
sively known. Long was last Saturday-week placed upon the auction-
block, in the city of Baltimore, and sold under the hammer, as a brute, to
the highest and only bidder. The terms of sale were, that the person buying
should give bonds in the sum of three thousand dollars that he would
remove Long forthwith to the far South. Although we are assured that a
purchaser was on the ground with a view to ransom him, and to bring him to
the North, this benevolent project was defeated, and Long, according to
Richmond papers, was hurried into hopeless slavery, amidst shouts of
derision from a crowd of people, among whom were a large number of the
members of the Legislature of that State, who had gathered to see a man
sold into bondage who had tasted the sweets of freedom.6On 18 January 1851 Henry Long was sold at auction by the Richmond, Virginia, slave-trading firm of Pullam and Slade. The sale took place at 2:00 PM. in the auction mart near the City Hotel. Both the Virginia legislature and the Constitutional Convention of 1850-51 were in session, and a correspondent of the New York Evening Post observed “a number of the members of the Convention and of the Legislature congregated about" by 11:00 A.M. “From twelve o'clock, the President of the Senate stood close by the stand of the auctioneer, whilst many of the members of each of the bodies of the Legislature . . . as well as of the Convention . . . were scattered about, waiting the demonstration. . . . All passed on quietly with no noisy expressions—some saying ‘the damned nigger ought to be strung up,' another that he was not to be blamed for trying to get away, if he could. . . . One member possessing some comical features of character was asked to go. He replied facetiously . . . that it would never do to go until the ‘nigger' was sold; that he must see him sold, or he would get turned out of office." Samuel J. May, The Fugitive Slave Law and its Victims (New York, 1856), 12-13; Lib., 24 January 1851; NASS, 23 January 1851.
“Gone—gone—sold and gone
To the rice-swamp dank and lone;
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings;
Where the noisome insect stings;
Where the Fever Demon strews
Poison with the falling dews;
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air—
Gone, gone, sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone."7Douglass quotes from the verse of “The Farewell of A Virginia Slave Mother to Her Daughters, Sold Into Southern Bondage," by John G. Whittier, Poetical Works, 3 : 56.
Another fact which throws a blaze of light on this whole affair, is that
contained in a letter of Parker, the slave-catcher and pretended owner of
Long, in which he expresses his profound gratitude to “The Union and
Safety Committee of New York,” for their generous assistance in recaptur-
ing and returning Long to slavery.8Douglass probably refers to William W. Parker's public statement or “card” of 13 January 1851, published originally in the Richmond Enquirer and reprinted by various northern papers in New York and elsewhere. Parker stated that “the course taken by the Union Safety Committee was eminently praiseworthy. The expense borne by the Committee exceeded $500.... There was also manifested much personal kindness towards the agent by several members of this Committee . . . which he will long remember with the liveliest gratitude." Lib., 24 January I851. Here, then, we have a self-constituted
combination of reputable Northern gentlemen, in the city of New York,
who have taken upon themselves the business of man-hunting upon a large
and systematic scale. For this purpose, they hold regular meetings, collect
money, and publish pamphlets with a view to dispose the public favorable
to their object. A slave-claimant has but to point out his prey, and forthwith
these gentlemen and Christians (?) hold themselves ready to engage in the
inhuman chase.
The other day, I received a copy of “the Thanksgiving sermon” of
Rev. Dr. Lord, of Buffalo. This pamphlet has been republished, by this
same Committee, for general circulation—and why? Because it is one of
the ablest defences of slave-holding, slave-trading, and slave-catching,
which has emanated of late years from the Northern pulpit. It is needless to
comment on this circumstance. The fact alone speaks volumes.
“What! preach and kidnap men!
Give thanks and rob God’s own afflicted poor:
Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then
Bolt hard the captive’s door.
Pilate and Herod friends!
Chief priests and rulers as of old combine!
Just God and holy! Is that priest who lends
Strength to the spoiler, Thine?
How long, O Lord! how long
Shall such a Priesthood barter truth away,
And, in Thy name, for robbery and wrong
At Thy own altar pray?”9Douglass quotes and slightly adapts the second, fourth, and seventh verses of “Clerical Oppressors" by John G. Whittier. Poetical Works, 3: 38, 39.
The newspapers come to us crowded with accounts of slave-hunts,
recaptures and violence. In Indiana and Illinois, colored men are arrested,
and imprisoned, on the mere suspicion of being fugitive slaves; and South-
ern papers boast that slaveholders are receiving letters from those two
States to come and take possession of their property. The house of a colored
lady, an industrious and respectable milliner of Cincinnati, was, but a few
days ago, entered by a band of white ruffians, who, in the most wanton
manner, broke up her furniture, including her piano, and heaped upon her
all manner of abuse. The papers state, that, goaded by the wanton outrage,
the poor woman defended herself as well as she could, and in the fray, fired
a pistol and shot one of the ruffians dead.
While the land is thus filled with meanness, treachery and violence
towards the colored people, a decision has been proclaimed, from the
Bench of the Supreme Court, that the Ordinance of 1787, excluding slavery
from the North-west, was repealed by the adoption of the present United
States Constitution.10Douglass refers to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the case of Strader vs. Graham (1850). Originating in the state courts of Kentucky, the case grew out of Christopher Graham's attempt to recover damages for three slaves who had fled first to Cincinnati, Ohio, and then to Canada. Because Graham had previously allowed two of the slaves to visit Cincinnati with a traveling musical group, the question arose as to whether the fugitives were already liberated by virtue of residence in a free state. ln arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court the attorney for the plaintiffs contended that “as soon as they [the slaves] touched the soil of Indiana or Ohio, with the consent of their master, the quality of freedom attached to their persons, and could never afterwards be dissociated from them. . . . The ordinance of 1787 declares that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist in the Northwest Territory. The laws of Ohio and Indiana only reiterate the provisions of that Ordinance. The instant, therefore, the slave came within the boundaries of such States. . . he became clothed with every attribute of freedom." In his majority decision denying federal jurisdiction in the matter, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that the Ordinance of 1787 “ceased to be in force upon the adoption of the Constitution." Justices John McLean and John Catron agreed that the Court lacked jurisdiction but differed with Taney over the precise legal status of the Northwest Ordinance. Although unpopular in antislavery circles, the Strader vs. Graham decision attracted comparatively little public notice amid the larger uproar over the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. The most elaborate critique of the case came two years later in a procolonization pamphlet by James G. Bimey, Examination of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the Case of Strader, Gorman and Armstrong vs. Christopher Graham, Delivered at Its December Term, 1850: Concluding With An Address to the Free Colored People, Advising them to Remove to Liberia (Cincinnati, 1852). Although he opposed the author's endorsement of colonization, Douglass felt that Birney's arguments in support of the Northwest Ordinance would “commend themselves . . . to abolitionists generally." New York Daily Tribune, 10 January 1851; FDP, 26 February 1852; NASS, 23 January 1851; Lib., 31 January 1851.
It is difficult to calculate what may be the consequences of this deci-
sion; it is certainly of no good.
Now, too, we see an extraordinary and before unheard-of movement
going forward at the Capital of the nation. It is the circulation of a pledge,
declaring it to be the purpose of the signers to put down all anti-slavery
efforts; to silence all agitation in favor of emancipation; to maintain in-
violate “the Fugitive Slave Bill;” to resist all attempts to repeal, or to alter
it, unless by the general consent of the slaveholders who may possibly wish
to make it more stringent and effective for evil than it now is; and they
further declare, that they will not support any man for President, Vice-
President, Senator, Representative, or for any political office, who is not
opposed to any form of anti-slavery agitation. The peaceful perpetuity of
slavery seems to be the “end and aim” of this iniquitous combination.
Letter-writers at Washington tell us that this pledge has already been
signed by many members of Congress, and that powerful influences are
brought to bear upon those who hesitate to sign it.11Fearful that continued slavery agitation would destroy the Union, various conservative Whigs and Democrats, including Henry Clay, Lewis Cass, Daniel Webster, and Daniel Dickinson, toyed briefly with the idea of forming a national “Union” party based on the finality of the Compromise of 1850. Most Democrats remained aloof from the scheme, believing that the proposed new party would merely serve as a vehicle for the presidential aspirations of Clay or Webster. To promote the party, Clay sponsored a congressional “anti-agitation “ pledge whose signers agreed “to resist all attempts to repeal or alter" the compromise measures, “unless by the general consent of the friends of the measures," and declared “that they will not support for the office of President or Vice President, or of Senator or of Representative in Congress, or as Member of a State legislature any man, of whatever party, who is not known to be opposed to the disturbance of the settlements aforesaid, and to the renewal, in any form, of agitation upon the subject of Slavery." When only 5 Democrats and 39 Whigs endorsed the pledge, the attempted fusion collapsed abruptly in January 1851. Roy Franklin Nichols, The Democratic Machine, 1850-1854 (New York, 1923), 26—29; Colton, Henry Clay, 204-05; Washington (DC) National Intelligencer, 15, 22 January 1851; Congressional Globe, 31st Cong., 2d sess., 304-05; ibid., 32d Cong., 1st sess., 453. In accordance with the
general spirit of the times, and consistent with what Gerrit Smith has aptly
denominated “the hush policy, ” every petition yet presented to the Senate
of the United States, for the repeal or for the modification of “the Fugitive
Slave Law,” has been virtually rejected by the Senate; the motion to
receive in every instance, being promptly voted to lie on the table.
But the chief and most important aspect of passing events, the one
which indicates the most truly the state of the public mind, and throws most
light on the probable course of the American government in its treatment of
the colored people, is that which is presented in the vigorous efforts now
being made in nearly all parts of the United States (and especially in
Washington) to revive and vitalize the American Colonization Society.
While most of our doctors of divinity are teaching that it is vain to keep
a conscience; that Divine law must yield to human law; that man may be
rightfully made a chattel; that God himself is a slaveholder; that the Bible is
but another Fugitive Slave Bill; that the great Apostle to the Gentiles was a
slave-catcher; and that slaveholding and slave-catching are both high
Christian duties, which the people of this country are required alike by God
and man, to perform or sink to endless hell. I say, that while all this is going
on to our hurt, another and far more subtle and dangerous source of alarm
and annoyance is marshaled forth in the shape of the American Coloniza-
tion Society. Yes! This arch enemy of the free colored citizens of the
United States, is again to take the field against us, and in a far more
plausible form than heretofore.
In proof of this assertion, I ask the attention of my audience to a few
facts.
At the last session of the thirty-first Congress, a number of slave-
holders, at the head of whom was Judge Bryan, of Alabama, memorialized
Congress for the establishment of a line of steamers of the largest size, to
ply between the United States and the western coast of Africa. The design
of this line of steamers was declared to be the colonization of free persons
of color to suppress the African slave trade, to convey the mail, and to
extend the commerce of the United States. That memorial, unlike the fate
of anti-slavery petitions, was referred to a committee of which Frederick P.
Stanton was Chairman. That committee made an elaborate report, remark-
able for its ability, commending the whole scheme as one of the highest
importance to the United States.12Douglass refers to a memorial signed by Joseph Bryan of Alabama on behalf of various associates including former Kentuckian George Nicholas Sanders, a sometime New York naval agent and speculator, best known for his belligerent leadership of the “Young America" movement while editor of the United States Democratic Review. Bryan and Sanders proposed to build and operate a line of four 4,000-ton steamships. Each ship would make at least four yearly trips to Africa. In exchange for loans of $600,000 per vessel (two-thirds the estimated construction cost) and federal subsidies later set at $40,000 per trip, the government would be allowed to arm the ships in peacetime and send mail and govemment personnel to and from Liberia free of charge. The petitioners also agreed to transport several thousand black emigrants on each Liberia-bound vessel at a cost to the American Colonization Society of $10 for each adult and half that amount for children under twelve years of age. Sent to Washington early in 1850, the Bryan and Sanders memorial was referred to the House Committee on Naval Affairs, chaired by the avid colonizationist Frederick Stanton of Tennessee. On 1 August 1850 Stanton’s committee endorsed the proposal in a glowing twelve-page report that accompanied House Resolution 367 embodying most of the provisions of the original memorial. The American Colonization Society publicized the bill in the African Repository and urged its local auxiliaries to pressure Congress through petitions and letter-writing campaigns. The proposed “Ebony Line" received approval from the governors and/or legislatures of Virginia, Delaware, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, as well as from local bodies in Washington, D.C., and Brooklyn, New York. After newspapers in Rhode Island, Kentucky, Maryland, Tennessee, Louisiana, New York, and Pennsylvania approved the plan, the African Repository concluded that “seldom has the voice of the public press been so unanimously in favor of any measure." Despite the best efforts of Stanton, Henry Clay, and other congressional supporters, however, the steamship line was not constructed. Efforts to attach the measure to the Naval Appropriations Bill failed in both 1850 and 1851. When reintroduced in 1852, the bill was reported unfavorably and allowed to die.Congressional Globe, 31st Cong., 1st sess., 1491, 1563, 1867-68, 1914—15; ibid., 31st Cong., 2nd sess., 246, 491, 503, 574, 595, 623, 756-58, 769, 811; ibid., Appendix, 200-04; Joseph Bryan, To the Honorable the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Congress Assembled ([Washington, D.C.?], n.d.); U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Naval Affairs, Joseph Bryan: Report to Accompany Bill, H.R. 367, 31st Cong., 1st sess., 1 August 1850, H. Rept. 438, ser. 585; Memorial of the Members of the Legislature of Virginia, in Favor of the Establishment of a Line of Mail Steamers Between the United States and the Western Coast of Africa, February 11, 1851 (31st Cong., 2d sess., Senate Miscellaneous Document No. 18, ser. 592); Memorial of Members of the Virginia Reform Convention in Favor of the Establishment of a Line of Mail Steamers Between the United States and the Western Coast of Africa, February 11, 1851 (31st Cong., 2d sess., Senate Miscellaneous Document No. 19, ser. 592); African Repository, 26: 129-37, 264-65, 321-22 (May, September, November 1850), 27: 52-54, 80, 204-06, 209-11 (February, March, July 1851), 28: 2-3, 12-13, 26, 77-80, 146-47 (January, March, May 1852); Merle Eugene Curti, “George N. Sanders—American Patriot of the Fifties," South Atlantic Quarterly, 27: 79-87 (January 1928); Staudenraus, African Colonization Movement, 245-46. That report was widely circulated, and
called forth extensive comments from the political press of the country.
New life was thus breathed upon the dry bones of colonization. Since that,
much attention has been given, by the leading political journals of the
country, to the Colony of Liberia, called, by way of eminence, the Repub-
lic of Liberia. Every item of news from that quarter that could serve to fix
attention upon the young Republic, has found its way to the public eye in
this country.
Letters of President Roberts, President of the sable Republic, private or
otherwise, have been greedily caught up, and ushered before the world.
High-sounding State papers, emanating from his excellency, have found
ready publication, and exerted much attention.13Founded in 1822 as a haven for black emigrants from the United States, Liberia was governed by the American Colonization Society for a quarter century. The Society proclaimed Liberia a “Commonwealth” in 1839, hoping to strengthen the central government's authority, but this designation did not alter the area’s ambiguous status in international law. Neither a sovereign power nor a colony of the United States, Liberia struggled vainly during the early 1840s to enforce trade and commercial regulations against British merchants from neighboring Sierra Leone. Clashes with the Royal Navy were frequent, and Liberian efforts to obtain United States protection or formal colonial status proved futile. In 1846 the Colonization Society's Board of Managers concluded that “the time had arrived" for Liberians “to take into their own hands the whole work of self-government, including the management of all their foreign relations." At a convention in Monrovia the next year, delegates approved a Declaration of Independence and Constitution drafted by Massachusetts jurist Simon Greenleaf and previously approved by the Colonization Society. Independence was formally declared on 26 July 1847 and national elections, which excluded the vast native African population, took place in October. The new nation's first president was Joseph Jenkins Roberts (1809-76), a Petersburg, Virginia, free Negro who emigrated to Liberia in 1829 and became a successful merchant. Roberts had been governor of the Commonwealth since 1841 and he served six terms as president of the Republic (1847-55, 1871-75). Following Roberts's 1848 tour of England and the Continent, Liberia secured diplomatic recognition from Great Britain and various European nations. Roberts also maintained close ties with the American Colonization Society, which sent American immigrants and “recaptured” African slave trade victims to the new republic in unprecedented numbers. In 1856 Roberts was appointed president of the American-controlled College of Liberia and was later Belgian consul in his adopted country. Staudenraus, African Colonization Movement, 154, 241-46; Cassell, Liberia, 115-16, 128-39, 156-59; African Repository, 52: 58—59 (April 1876); DAB, 16: 10-11. Nothing can exceed the
avidity with which editors now seize upon every incident, which transpires
on the western coast of Africa. I saw, but recently that a “distinguished
citizen of Liberia had actually caught a snake” !! and all the particulars
relating to the capture, were narrated with the most solemn fidelity. I am
inclined to think that Liberia will have to catch a great many more snakes,
before it catches many more colored Americans in the trap of colonization.
But to return. The products, the commerce, and the progress of education
have formed subjects for many articles. The Liberians are highly
applauded. Papers that never speak of colored men in this country but to
abuse and slander them, speak in the most flattering terms of [obliterated]
Liberia. It is not necessary to question the sincerity of the conductors of
[obliterated]. If we believe them, we may [say like] Cassius:
“Upon what meat does this our Caesar feed, that he is grown so
great?”14The quotation is from Julius Caesar, act 1. sc. 2, line 149.
That I am not mistaken, as to the present intentions of leading col-
onizationists, may be seen by the remarks of Mr. Clay in the United States
Senate made on the 15th of January. The petitions which he presented, and
the speech which he made on presenting them, were alike significant. They
indicate a settled purpose to make the colonization in Africa of the free
colored people a national government measure.15On 15 January 1851 Henry Clay presented two petitions to the U.S. Senate on the subject of the African slave trade and the colonization of American free blacks. One petition, signed by “a large number of citizens" from Indiana, urged Congress to enact legislation “providing means to remove" all United States blacks who were “both willing and ready to emigrate to Africa.” The petitioners proposed that the govemment support the settlers for one year and, “as a further inducement for them to emigrate, that a bounty of land be given them on their arrival" in Africa. Clay took “particular pleasure" in presenting a second petition from Rhode Island, signed by “a large portion of the elite of that state," including the governor, lieutenant governor, chief and associate justices of the state supreme court, fifty-four of the eighty-six members of the state legislature, former congressmen, senators, and federal district judges, and by “many of the literati of that State, heads of colleges, and by a vast number of citizens in private life." The petition depicted the horrors of the African slave trade, and concluded that “colonization of the slave coast of Africa" was the “only feasible scheme" for stopping the traffic. The signers asked Congress to promote free black emigration to Africa either through annual appropriations to support colonization or by establishing a line of government steamers or sailing packets to transport emigrants to West Africa free of charge. Clay endorsed the petitions in a brief speech elaborating on the difficulty of stopping the slave trade, renewing his well-known support for colonization, and calling for an end to sectional debate over slavery. Congressional Globe, 31st Cong, 2d sess., 246-47; NASS, 23 January 1851.
Depend upon it, this is designed to be the next national guarantee for
the protection of American slavery. Having now consented to measures for
the recapture of Fugitive Slaves, you will be required to [hunt] out your
free colored citizens, and drive them into exile. The same hand [is at] the
helm that fastened the Fugitive Slave Law upon the land; and never was a
man better fitted for the inhuman task. The common treasure of the United
States must now be appropriated to building steamers, and affording the
means to one part of the American people by which to expatriate another.
There must be no whimpering—no halting—no fears expressed by
Northern men that they have gone far enough—and no complaining that they
are overburdened. The imperious slaveholder will listen to no such pusil-
lanimous and servile excuses. You have commenced, and must go through.
That the measure is unjust, unnecessary and unconstitutional, is nothing.
These are “trifles light as air,” compared to the stupendous importance of
giving peace to “the great and peculiar institution” of the American
Union. With Clay at the South, Webster at the North, if their lives are
spared a few years longer, I venture the prediction that Colonization will be
fostered by the Government, and carried on under its direction. The money
of the North, to the amount of millions, will be swallowed up in the vain
attempt to colonize in Africa “the free colored people” of these United
States. The project is fairly launched, and presents an imposing and beguil-
ing front. The petitions presented by Mr. Clay were signed by a large
number of citizens of the State of Indiana, and of the State of Rhode Island.
According to Mr. Clay, the petition from Rhode Island was signed by a
great number of Senators, Ex-Governors, and Ex-Members of the House of
Representatives, and many others of great distinction; for you must know
that Henry Clay’s affinities are with the upper ten thousand, and not with
the common clay of his country. These petitions pray for a number of
things. But they all settle into one—the removal of the free colored people
from these United States to Africa. This is the primary object of both
petitions, and of the speech of Mr. Clay upon them; for he certainly made a
speech upon them, although it is contrary to the rules of the Senate, as will
be seen by the unsuccessful attempt of Mr. Hale to make a speech on
presenting a petition for the repeal of “the Fugitive Slave Law.”16Immediately following Clay's remarks Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire obtained the floor to present a petition signed by some three hundred residents of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, seeking “immediate repeal of the act of September 18, 1850, for the recapture of fugitive slaves." Humorously contrasting this petition to the Rhode Island memorial presented by Henry Clay, Hale observed that his Pennsylvania document was not signed by “any ex-governors, ex-members of Congress, or present literati." He was told, however, “that one of [the signers] is a relative of a man who was a candidate for Governor! (Laughter.)" Hale began to speak in support of the petition but was immediately interrupted by Henry S. Foote of Mississippi, who said the New Hampshire senator had no right to describe the Fugitive Slave Law as “a reproach on the civilization of the age, and a perfect parody on the Constitution." Thomas J. Rusk of Texas raised the more valid objection that Senate rules prohibited lengthy speeches on petitions. The Chair sustained Rusk’s point of order, and Hale relinquished the floor after noting the presiding officer's “tender regard for the rules." Congressional Globe, 31st Cong, 2d sess., 247-48. But
Hale is not a slaveholder, and therefore must be subject to the rules of the
Senate. Slaveholders only are exempt from obedience. Let that pass, how-
ever. Northern men are becoming rapidly familiar with this difference, and
are preparing their necks for the yoke. The speech of Mr. Clay is altogether
a remarkable performance. He sets out by stating the failure of Great
Britain, France, and the United States to suppress the slave-trade; he speaks
of the frightful horrors of that traffic; he declares that the only effectual
remedy for this traffic, is the establishment of Colonies. He descants upon
the increase of the slave-trade, and shows that that trade is carried on, for
he most part, under the American flag. He speaks of measures being
suggested to put an end to the participation of American vessels in what he
calls “this odious traffic.” But he cautiously leaves those suggestions in
the back-ground; and expatiates upon the many evils and the little good,
which have resulted from keeping a squadron on the African coast. Having
thus skillfully g[il]ded the pill which he intended to administer, he closed
his remarks after this manner:—
“But I own that the subject of colonization, important as I think it is, in
view of the great object of the suppression of the slave-trade, commends
itself to my mind by other and additional considerations. I declare to you,
Sir—I may perhaps be extravagant in my views—but I think, of all the
projects of the age, there is none which is to be compared to that great
project of transporting the free people of color, with their own consent,
from the United States to the coast of Africa. What is to be done with them?
I ask again, what is to be done with them? They are here under our very
noses; and in this District in the course of the last ten years they have
doubled. In a number of the States laws are being passed—rigorous
laws—of exclusion of them from their Territory. Some States, indeed, are
introducing into their fundamental laws, into their Constitutions, pro-
visions against the reception of any free people of color within their bor-
ders. What is to become of them? I ask again. In the name of humanity and
justice, what is to become of them? I see no other remedy than that of
sending them back to the land whence their ancestors were taken; and I can
conceive of no interest of any portion of the people of the United States that
will not be benefited by such a transfer of the free people of color from the
United States to Africa.
“The whites at the North will be benefited—the whites at the South
will be benefited—the slaves at the South will be benefited—the poor
creatures themselves will be benefited; for, instead of remaining in a coun-
try where they never can be elevated to the high social and political condi-
tion of the whites—where they must forever remain a degraded, corrupt
and dissolute class—they can be carried to the country of their ancestors,
and rise into an importance there which they never will attain here. Every
conceivable interest will be promoted—commerce will be promoted,
civilization will be promoted, religion will be promoted by the transfer of
free people of color, with their own consent, from the United States to
Africa. And what portion of the population of the country will be injured by
the transportation of these persons? None whatever.
“Sir, I will not detain the Senate longer upon this subject. I would be
extremely glad if honorable Senators would turn their attention to the
executive document to which I have referred, and give some consideration
to the suggestions I have made. Ah! if we could only give up—if we could
only renounce these unhappy subjects of agitation which have disturbed
our country so long and so greatly—if the people of the North would only
allow the people of the South to manage their own domestic affairs in their
own way, unaffected and unimpeded by them—if they would only reflect
that if slavery is fraught with evils, the evils are not yet felt by the people at
the North, but they are confined to the South where the slaves are—if they
would only cease to agitate each other and our country, and endanger our
Union itself, by continuing these unhappy subjects of strife and con-
troversy, and all would come together upon this great common object, in
which the free States are just as much interested as the slave States, uniting
all our energies in sending the free people of color, from the shores of
America to that place where they can enjoy real freedom, and pursue their
own happiness—what a glorious result would it be for our country."17Douglass summarizes Henry Clay's speech of l5 January 1851 in the Senate. The passagesin quotation marks closely paraphrase the final three paragraphs of Clay's speech as printed in the Congressional Globe, 31st Cong., 2d sess., 246-47.
Here is a long text, and one from which I should like to preach a long
sermon, if I had the time to preach it, and you had the patience to hear it.
But as I am persuaded there is neither time nor patience, I shall be con-
tented, for the present, with only a very brief review of its leading features,
and will leave a more extended examination of the whole subject of Coloni-
zation for another and a more suitable occasion.
The first thought presented in these remarks of Mr. Clay, is the mag-
nitude and grandeur of his favorite scheme; which, in his imagination
transcends, in moral sublimity, every other project of the age. He says: “Of
all the projects of the age, there is none to be compared to that great project
of transporting the free people of color, with their own consent, from the
United States to the coast of Africa.”
This is a bold, dashing, and enthusiastic statement; and, admiring
enthusiasm as I do (for nothing great can be accomplished without it), I
must confess that I feel some reluctance in throwing even the slightest
damper upon any manifestation of it. I hate mediocrity—or doing things by
halves; I admire boldness—and when there are so much dullness and
insipidity in the world, one hails the least gleam of enthusiasm, even in a
bad cause, with a kind of satisfaction. Yet the truth must be told, though
even enthusiasm itself should suffer in consequence.
“Of all the projects of the age,” (says Mr. Clay), “there is none which
is to be compared to that great project of transporting the free colored
people, with their own consent, from the United States, to the coast of
Africa.” This is an age of “great projects; ” and there is always danger of
assuming a superiority for one at the expense of others. One of the “great
projects” of this age is that of constructing a grand high-way across this
broad continent, extending from the shores of the Atlantic to the shores of
the Pacific, a sort of world’s thoroughfare, by the side of which, cities,
towns and villages are to rise, as if by magic; and this I deem a very
commanding project of this age; but, in the mind of Mr. Clay, it is not to be
compared to the “GREAT PROJECT” of “transporting the free people of
color to the coast of Africa. ” There is another "great project” which has
attracted some attention, and must be ranked as one of the age; it is that of
overthrowing in Europe, absolute and arbitrary rule, and establishing in its
place, free constitutional governments. Some of the American people think
this a very important “project of the age.” But, says Mr. Clay, “it is not to
be compared with that GREAT PROJECT of transporting the free people of
color from the United States, to the coast of Africa.”
Then, there is “the great project” of banishing intemperance from the
world; and the ten thousand ills of which it is the parent; but this is not to be
compared with “the great project” of transporting the free people of color
from the United States to the coast of Africa.
The Land-Reform project, too, with its aim to elevate labor; to
ameliorate the condition of the poor, to give homes to the homeless; and
land to the landless—this project has engaged some of the noblest heads,
and most philanthropic hearts of this age; yet this is not to be compared with
that “great project" of transporting the free colored people from the
United States to the Western coast of Africa.
There is still another "project of the age” to which I would allude: it is
that to which Elihu Burritt of America, Richard Cobden of England, Victor
Hugo of France, and Baron Humboldt of Germany, are earnestly devoting
their great energies. It is the establishment of a grand system of interna-
tional arbitration,18The movement to include stipulated arbitration clauses in international treaties gained wide support among world peace advocates following the publication of Judge William Jay 's 1842 pamphlet War and Peace, the Evils of the First, and a Plan for Preserving the Last. American peace reformer Elihu Burritt favored the more radical idea of a separate "Congress of Nations" to adjudicate international disputes, but supported arbitration as a step toward that end. Endorsed by five international peace conferences between 1843 and 1850, the arbitration movement reached its zenith in 1849 when English M.P. Richard Cobden (1804-65) introduced an unsuccessful motion in the House of Commons in support of arbitration treaties. Known primarily as a free-trade advocate and founder of the Anti-Com Law League. Cobden joined the peace movement in 1842 after concluding that war was a natural consequence of economic competition. Victor Hugo (1802-85), poet, novelist, and member of the French National Assembly, presided at the 1849 Paris Peace Conference, where his opening speech prophesying the end of all war and the creation of a “United States of Europe" won wide acclaim. Hugo also drew up an “Address to the Peoples of Christendom," advocating disarmament, arbitration, and a Congress of Nations. A committee of French delegates subsequently presented the address to President Louis Napoleon on behalf of the Paris Conference. Baron Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), German natural scientist and advisor to kings William III and Frederick William IV of Prussia, was known for his republican political views and vocal antislavery sentiments, particularly his 1827 Ensayo politico sobre la isla de Cuba strongly condemning Cuban bondage. Angered by the deletion of antislavery passages from an 1855 American translation of his Cuban essay, Humboldt publicly reaffirmed his abolitionist stance and endorsed Republican John C. Frémont in the 1856 presidential contest. Although Humboldt voiced internationalist sentiments early in his career, he later became an ardent German nationalist and apparently never participated actively in organized peace efforts. Disillusioned by the failure of liberals to unify Germany through peaceful means in the late 1840s, Humboldt had little enthusiasm for the Frankfort Peace Conference of 1850. In an interview with Elihu Burritt he agreed to endorse the Conference by letter but declined to attend. Four years later Humboldt's attitude toward the peace movement bordered on outright hostility. “My American connexions having entailed upon me the predilections of the Peace Society, I am molested by them with many of their writings and tracts," he complained. Merle Eugene Curti, The American Peace Crusade, 1815-1860 (Durham, 1925), 148, 166—200; Christina Phelps, The Anglo-American Peace Movement in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York, 1930), 36-37, 61, 150-64; Tolis, Elihu Burritt, 186-95; E. R. Brann, The Political Ideas of Alexander Von Humboldt: A Brief Preliminary Study (Madison, Wisc., 1954), 46; Congres des Amis de la Paix Universelle, Reuni a Bruxelles, en 1848 (Brussels, 1849); Report of the Proceedings of the Second General Peace Congress, Held in Paris, on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th of August 1840 . . . (London, 1849); Verhandlungen des Dritten Allgemeinen Friedens congresses, Gehalten der Paulsfriche zu Frankfurt. . . am 22, 23, und 24 August, 1850 (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1851), 19. before which “Grim visaged war will smoothe its
wrinkled front,"19Douglass paraphrases act 1, sc. 1, line 9, of Shakespeare's King Richard III. and nations will be saved from the folly and wickedness
of shedding rivers of blood, and slaughtering men, women and children in
thousands, by the edge of the sword, and by the deadly cannon. But this
magnificent and sublime project is not to be compared (according to Mr.
Clay) to that GREAT PROJECT of transporting the free people of color with
their own consent, from the United States to the western coast of Africa.
Now, it strikes me that Mr. Clay has either greatly over-estimated the
importance of his own scheme, or that he has done very great injustice to all
other “great projects” of the age. My hearers can determine as well as I,
on which horn of the dilemma Mr. Clay is at present suspended. In order to
appreciate the absurdity, folly, and inflation of the American Statesman,
you must remember that the whole number of free colored people, scattered
throughout the thirty States of this Union, only amount to about half a
million; and the removal of these would still leave in the land more than
three millions of slaves.
But I have not yet done with this opening remark of Mr. Clay; for this
sentence is the key-stone of the whole argument. If it stand, all will stand;
if it fall, all will fall. There are just a few words more which deserve a very
strict and scrutinizing examination. They are the only words in the whole
speech, the effect of which is to be dreaded. Extract that fang, and the
serpent may be easily handled. The words to which I allude, stand thus
related to each other: “WITH THEIR OWN CONSENT.” I will repeat the
words again. They arejust four in number. “WITH THEIR OWN CONSENT.”
These words have a power for mischief above all others to be found in the
whole speech.
They give a smooth point to the proposition, the harshness of which
would otherwise shock the moral sense, array against it all the kindly
feelings of the human heart. These words savor of justice, of humanity, of
respectful consideration for the feelings and wishes of “the free people of
color.” They even smack of affection; and herein consists their power for
evil.
“My Lord, my Lord,
I am___much too weak.
To oppose your cunning; you are meek and humble-mouthed;
You sign your place and calling in full seeming,
With meekness and humility; but your heart
Is crammed with arrogancy, spleen and pride."20Douglass quotes Henry VIII, act 2, sc. 4, lines 105-10.
There are different modes of gaining “consent;" and the virtue of
“consent” depends much upon the mode of gaining it. If a highway-robber
should at the pistol’s mouth demand my purse, it is possible that I should
“consent” to give it up. If a midnight incendiary should fire my dwelling, I
doubt not I should readily “consent” to leave it.
There are various considerations, and inducements, which are relied
upon by different persons, animated by different motives, for the accom-
plishment of different ends, to bring about that state of mind which we call
“consent.” The highway-robber has his method, the midnight assassin has
his; the sophisticated Jesuit has his; the tortuous and wily politician has his;
the Czar of Russia has his; the American Slaveholder has his; and the great
President of the Colonization Society has his.
Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, what do you suppose is to be the method
of gaining the consent of the free colored people of this country; born Upon
American soil; accustomed to the American climate; speaking the same
language as the white Americans; and believing in the same religion?
By what method can such a people be induced to abandon all that is
vernacular; and go to a country, as much foreign to them as [to] any other
citizen of the United States?
According to the immortal Shakespeare, men do usually
“Much rather bear the ills they have,
Than fly to others they know not of.”21Douglass paraphrases Hamlet, act 3, sc. 1, lines 81—82.
This propensity is common alike to white and to colored people.
We are anchored to the land of our birth, by the very strongest ties of
affection and honor. Our brother is in chains; and one primary object of
getting us out of the country is to enable the tyrant to hold him more
securely; for it will be observed that it is the free colored people, not the
slaves, that are an offence to the nose of Henry Clay.
I ask, then, what arguments, what considerations, what inducements,
what circumstances, and what arrangements will be adapted to secure the
“consent” of “the free colored people” to leave the United States, and to
be transported to Africa?
Bear in mind, that, so far as the “free colored people” of the North
have spoken at all, they declare their NON-CONSENT to this wholesale
expatriation. But the answer to the inquiry suggested, involves a full dis-
cussion of the history, character, and measures of the American Coloniza-
tion Society; and this, as I have before said, there is not now time to do.
I have not been able even to dispose of one sentence of Mr. Clay’s
specious and (as I think) iniquitous speech. It is throughout “Satan trans-
formed into an angel of light,"22Douglass alludes to 2 Cor. 11: 14: “Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light." and it needs the touch of “Ithuriel’s
spear” to reveal its native deformity.
It is my intention to advert further to Mr. Clay’s speech, and to enter
more fully upon the subject of African Colonization on Sunday evening
next.