Alexander Crummell

“ And thus disease, everywhere, produces sorrow and wretchedness. The air is filled with the shrieks and groans of the suffering. The very sounds of nature are plaintive and mournful. Every breeze that sweeps over the plains, has its tale of pain and anguish. Every wind, in melancholy tones, wails out its agonizing report of disaster and of death. Even in the gentlest gales, we may hear the groans of infants, the shrieks of convulsed children, the moans of agonized men, the throes of distressed and dying woman, and all the various notes of misery with which earth is filled. ”

“ We belong to a race possessed of the qualities of hope and endurance, equal at least, to any class of men in the world. The mid passage alone was enough to exterminate any people; but we, in large remnants, have survived it, both in body and soul! We have lived through all the lacerations and soul-crushings of the deadly system of slavery, and the miserable influences of caste. Not merely the life of the body, but the moral being, the soul of this poor race, has stood the shock of mental pain, and anguish, and sorest desolation, and yet come forth at last triumphant! ”

“ The night, I am convinced—the night of forlornness, of agony and desolation—is far spent, the day is at hand! The black charter of crime and infamy and blood, which for nigh three centuries, has given up my father-land to the spoiler, is about to be erased! The malignant lie, which would deliver up an entire race, the many millions of a vast continent, to rapine and barbarism and benightedness, is now to be blotted out! ”

“ Those persons, surely, display great ignorance, who associate the system of slavery, specially and alone, with the Negro race, and who are not aware of its existence in other races, and in all periods of history. There are no people, whether ancient or modern, with whom slavery has not been, at one period or other, a national institution. Indeed, how very little freedom has ever been enjoyed in this sin-ridden world of ours! Among the various evils to which society has been subjected, none have been more general or more deadly than slavery. ”

“ It is just this work which now claims and calls for the interest and the activity of the sons of Africa. Its plainest statement and its simplest aspect are sufficient, it seems to me, to move these men in every quarter of the world to profound sensibility, to deep resolve, to burning ardor. Such a grand and awful necessity, covering a vast continent, touching the best hopes and the endless destiny of millions of men, ought, I think, to stir the soul of many a self-sacrificing spirit, and quicken it to lofty purposes and noble deeds. ”

“ For never, in all the world's broad history, has such ill desert fallen upon learning through the character of those who, in very deed, were true scholars, whether from the schools or self-made men. For all the great generals, the founders of states, the rulers of immortal fame, the men who have inaugurated letters, and learning, and science in commonwealths and empires, the great authors, renowned teachers and philosophers, and immortal philanthropists—yea, all the names of might and power in history, with the rarest, scarcest exceptions, have been ranked in the lofty scroll of scholars. ”

“ Let us emulate one another in the prompt recognition of rare genius, or uncommon talent. Let there be no tardy acknowledgment of worth in our world of intellect. If we are fortunate enough, to see, of a sudden, a clever mathematician of our class, a brilliant poet, a youthful, but promising scientist or philosopher, let us rush forward, and hail his coming with no hesitant admiration, with no reluctant praise.
It is only thus, gentlemen, that we can bring forth, stimulate, and uplift all the latent genius, garnered up, in the by-places and sequestered corners of this neglected Race. ”

“ I beg therefore to urge upon public attention, the immediate need of raiding the standard of female education in this country, i beg to insist upon the deep necessity of elevating the mind of woman in the republic, and directing it to noble and commanding themes. I beg to enforce the duty of making woman in this land as superior, intellectual, and dignified, as we all would have her beautiful, and attractive, and moral. ”

“ We may live to behold the nations of Africa engaged in the calm occupations of industry, and in the pursuit of a just and legitimate commerce; we may behold the beams of science and philosophy breaking in upon their land, which at some happier period, in still later times, may blaze with full lustre, and joining their influence to that of pure religion, may illuminate and invigorate the most distant extremities of that immense continent. ”

“ Earth has had her beauty marred by the bloody track of the cruel men who have robbed my father-land of her children: and the choral voice of ocean, which should lift up naught but everlasting symphonies in the ears of angels and of God, has been made harsh and dissonant, by the shrieks and moans and agonizing cries of the poor victims, who have either chosen a watery grave in preference to slavery, or else have been east into its depths, the sick and the emaciated, by the ruthless slave-dealer! ”

“ Our religion is the Christian religion,—Protestant, God be praised, in its main characteristics; and it is harmonious, in all its utterances, as the music of the sphere's. Our civilization, in its elements, is that of the world's Christendom; and it springs upward, in all its legitimate tendencies, unerringly as the rustling pinions of a returning angel to the skies. Our language is that of the foremost men of all the earth ”

“ It was four thousand years before Jesus came into the world; but the nineteen hundred years of the Christian era are more than a match for those old four thousand years in beneficence, in brotherhood, in love, and in purity. What great work of goodness was ever done under the Old Covenant which can compare with what the Gospel is doing every day in our time, both on Christian and on heathen soil? What large and extended blessedness was ever carried through all the earth, to all the sons of men, by any religion before Jesus came? ”

“ Indeed, is not the religion of Christ to he the great regenerating agent in all mental, as well as all spiritual things? Is not the church to take the lead in all things that are to elevate and dignify man? In any event, and by all means, do not let us go on in the dull, unthinking way we are now treading; and leave the minds of children and youth, in our families, unblessed by that pure speech and strong Anglo-Saxon thought, which come with the most impressive force, from the graceful mind, and the tender voice of cultivated womanhood. ”

“ A spirit of vigorous enterprise must be at once originated by government as well as individuals: bold, but judicious ventures must be made in every direction—in farming, in trade, in commerce—to give importance to the nation in foreign lands, and to increase the individual wealth of our merchants and citizens. I speak of wealth as a desirable acquisition; and, as a Christian minister, I have no hesitation in doing so: for with proper aims and purposes before him, any man may as properly be ambitious of riches as of health, or shelter, or mental growth, or of innocent recreations. ”

“ Cheapness characterizes almost all the donations of the American people to the Negro:—Cheapness, in all the past, has been the regimen provided for the Negro in every line of his intellectual, as well as his lower life. And so, cheapness is to be the rule in the future, as well for his higher, as for his lower life:—cheap wages and cheap food, cheap and rotten huts; cheap and dilapidated schools; cheap and stinted weeks of schooling; cheap meeting houses for worship; cheap and ignorant ministers; cheap theological training; and now, cheap learning, culture and civilization! ”

“ Since then the shameful fact has been witnessed, by earth and by heaven, of men, civilized men, men born and reared in Christian lands and raider Christian influences, tearing their fellow-creatures from home, and friends, and country; carrying them across the wide ocean; trading in the flesh and blood of human beings! The system of slavery, as thus marked and distinguished, is a modern affair—was unknown anterior to the discovery of America; and therefore, as such, not a fact of history—not the general, universal state of the Negro race. ”

“ And when that day comes, the people of Liberia will cry out: "We have the largest advantages of all our race. We have the noblest field. Ours is the most signal providence, and our state offers the grandest possibilities of good, the finest opportunities of manly achievement. Why then suffer ourselves to be hindered in working out of 'manifest destinies' of beneficience to suffering Africa by the narrowness of our aims, or the fewness of our numbers and means? It is true we have a wide field to enter, and need more and mightier men to enter it. ”

“ Let law and religion, learning and scholarship, pure speech, noble ideas, and sacred principles—the order and moral dignity of the family—man's moral strength, woman's winning beauty, her stainless purity, her exalted excellence and piety,—and the simplicity of youth,—let these be the agencies we use in forming and compacting the main and master instrument for the fulfilment of a nation's mission—its mind and manhood! ”

“ Again, the English language is characteristically the language of freedom. I know that there is a sense in which this love of liberty is inwrought in the very fibre and substance of the body and blood of all people; but the flame burns dimly in some races; it is a fitful fire in some others; and in many inferior people it is the flickering light of a dying candle. But in the English races it is an ardent, healthy, vital, irrepressible flame ”

“ Now just go back with me to the commencement of this century, and look at this race of which we are speaking. What then incuts our eyes? Why we find one universal fact connected Avith the Negro race—the fact of universal slavery, and the slave trade. If we turned to the West Indies, whether under Danish, Spanish, Dutch or English, rule, the black man, everywhere, was a chattel. If we turned to the American continent, we would have found the race in the same position there, whether under the Protestant rule of the North American colonies, or under the Romish rule of the South American States. ”

“ I remark that the abject state of Africa is a most real and touching appeal to any heart for sympathy and aid. It is an appeal, however, which comes with a double force to every civilized man who has negro blood flowing in his veins.
Africa lies low and is wretched. She is the maimed and crippled arm of humanity. Her great powers are wasted. Dislocation and anguish have reached every joint. ”

“ A people are always as high as their idea of God. If their idea of God is a reptile or a worm, they must grovel, they cannot rise; they cannot be great; no commerce, laws, nationality, art, or manhood can proceed from such a people. The ideas of God and religion rule the human being; and if, in a nation, those ideas are low, then the heads and souls of that people are bowed down, and know no elevation. But, on the other hand, the true idea of God magnifies a nation's mind, and leads to development in every mode and direction: for it lifts up man to every thing great and noble ”

“ The strong, active, energetic Roman rises before its with a fabulous origin, strangely contrasting with the real, actual life and bearing, which mark his strong hand and his iron sway for centuries. But though Roman history is the story of the mastery of might over right, of the abeyance of individual freedom, of the crushing out of national life, of splendid, but barbaric brute force; yet Rome has transmitted the legacy of two valuable principles to man—invincible energy, and that of law and government. ”

“ For they fail to see that neither property, nor money, nor station, nor office, nor lineage, are fixed factors, in so large a thing as the destiny of man; that they are not vitalizing qualities in the changeless hopes of humanity. The greatness of peoples springs from their ability to grasp the grand conceptions of being. It is the absorption of a people, of a nation, of a race, in large majestic and abiding things which lifts them up to the skies. ”

“ I do not forget that to give our small fraction of the race the advantages I have alluded to, a whole continent has been brought to ruin; the ocean has been peopled with millions of victims; whole tribes of men have been destroyed; nations on the threshold of civilization reduced to barbarism; and generation upon generation of our sires brutalized! No, my remarks, at best, are discordant; and I avoid collateral themes in order to preserve as much unity as possible, while endeavoring to set forth the worth and value of the English language. ”

“ But, as an individual, I have earnestly desired a non-sanguinary evangelization of West Africa. All empire, the world over, in rude countries has been cemented by blood. In Western Africa the tribes universally, save in Liberia, are strong, independent, warlike. Even British prowess, both at Sierra Leone and on the Gold Coast, succumbs at times to their indomitable spirit. And thus you see that, for the establishment of a strong black civilization in Central Africa, a strong and a bloody hand must be used. Color is nothing anywhere. Civilized condition differences men all over the globe. ”

“ While yet fresh and young, with the mighty power of natural religion in their souls, they were strong, mighty, and prosperous. When luxury and affluence were secured, idolatry arose; and they gradually failed, and at last perished! No nation that we know of ever became great whose origin was coeval with a worship of stocks and stones. And however mighty a nation, that is idolatrous, is, if it clings to idolatry, it must fall! ”

“ But, as for the world's history in general, alas! how few know any thing about training and fashioning men! Among the vast millions of human beings on earth, and of all its divers nations, what a minimum of men! Vast hordes of male inhabitants there are, in this country and in that; but that largeness of soul—that quick, glad recognition of noble principles—that love of and reverence for fixed and eternal truth—that eager desire for the work of life, which mark and characterize men—true men,—in how many of the human frame and form, in any land, can you discover them? ”

“ Ask the great men of the land how this Negro problem is to be solved, and then listen to the answers that come from divers classes of our white fellow-citizens. The merchants and traders of our great cities tell us—“The Negro must be taught to work;” and they will pour out their moneys by thousands to train him to toil. The clergy in large numbers, cry out—“Industrialism is the only hope of the Negro;” for this is the bed-rock, in their opinion, of Negro evangelization! “Send him to Manual Labor Schools,” cries out another set of philanthropists. ”

“ Let us therefore call our skilful and energetic brethren to come to us and share the suffering and the glory of saving Africa. Let us stand on the beach and on the hill-side, and beckon to them in all lands to come and participate in lofty duty, in painful but saving labor, and to aid in the restoration and enlightenment of a vast continent! ”

“ There is a significant meaning in that new word just introduced into our language, that is, the "solidarity of nations:" for a nation is a collection of men; not of angels, not of demi-gods, not of indescribable celestials; but of men—men of flesh, and blood, and bone, and muscle; men "of the earth, earthy;" men of the same make, and nature, and appetencies, and destiny, as ourselves, and the men of all other nations; and, therefore, a nation is but a section of the great commonwealth of humanity, a phase of the common type of being, and no more. ”