William Lloyd Garrison

“ As if the continuance of the horrid system were not criminal! as if the robberies of another generation justify the robberies of the present! as if the slaves had not an inalienable right to freedom! as if slavery were not an individual as well as a national crime! as if the tearing asunder families, limb from limb,—branding the flesh with red hot irons,—mangling the body with whips and knives,—feeding it on husks and clothing it with rags,—crushing the intellect and destroying the soul,—as if such inconceivable cruelty were not chargeable to those who inflict it! ”

“ By forming a chain of colonies along the coast, a speedy check will be given to the accursed slave trade,—a trade which cannot be destroyed in any other manner. Who does not desire to see Africa civilized and evangelized? Whose heart does not leap in view of the suppression of the slave trade? Who does not pray for deliverance from the evils of slavery? Who does not wish to behold the free people of color,—cursed with ineffectual freedom here,—recalled from their banishment, and placed where no obstacles will impede their march to affluence, preferment and honor? ”

“ Why is it that the free people of color are now, in almost every part of our country, threatened with banishment from State to State, and with hunting from city to city, until there shall be no place for the soles of their feet in this their native land? Is it because they are in reality, as slaveholders tell us, an inferior race of beings? No, my friends: their consistent conduct, their polished manners, and their great respectability, wherever they have enjoyed the advantages of equality of education and equality of motives, proclaim the contrary. ”

“ There is no people that treat their slaves with so little cruelty and with so much kindness. There is nothing in the condition of slavery more congenial with the feelings of the South than with the feelings of the North. Philanthropy and benevolence flourish with as much vigor with them as with us—their hearts are as warm as ours—they feel for the distresses of others with as much acuteness as we do—their ears are as open to the calls of charity as ours—they as deeply regret as we do the existence of slavery—and oh! ”

“ And tell us now no more about colonization; for America is as much our country as it is yours. Treat us like men, and there is no danger but we will all live in peace and happiness together; for we are not, like you, hard-hearted, unmerciful, and unforgiving. What a happy country this will be, if the whites will listen! What nation under heaven, will be able to do any thing with us, unless God gives us up into its hand? But, Americans, I declare to you, while you keep us and our children in bondage, and treat us like brutes, to make us support you and your families, we cannot be your friends. ”

“ I rejoice that he has made one star to differ from another star in glory; that he has not given to the sun the softness and gentleness of the moon, nor to the moon the intensity and magnificence of the sun; that he presents to the eye every conceivable shape, and aspect, and color, in the gorgeous and multifarious productions of Nature; and I do not rejoice less, but admire and exalt him more, that, notwithstanding he has made of one blood the whole family of man, he has made the whole family of man to differ in personal appearance, habits and pursuits. ”

“ In every part of the United States there is a broad and impassible line of demarcation between every man who has one drop of African blood in his veins and every other class in the community. The habits, the feelings, all the prejudices of society—prejudices which neither refinement, nor argument, nor education, nor religion itself can subdue—mark the people of color, whether bond or free, as the subjects of a degradation inevitable and incurable. The African in this country belongs by birth to the very lowest station in society ”

“ It is a conspiracy to send the free people of color to Africa under a benevolent pretence, but really that the slaves may be held more securely in bondage. It is a conspiracy based upon fear, oppression and falsehood, which draws its aliment from the prejudices of the people, which is sustained by duplicity, which really upholds the slave system, which fascinates while it destroys, which endangers the safety and happiness of the country, which no precept of the bible can justify, which is implacable in its spirit, which should be annihilated at a blow. ”

“ Far different is the situation of the free blacks. How slender are their means! how mean and limited their occupations! how inferior their advantages! Almost every avenue to wealth, preferment and usefulness, is closed against them. How are they persecuted! how avoided in the streets! how excluded from the benefits of society! To point at them the finger of scorn, to taunt them for their inferiority or helplessness, is like putting out the eyes and clipping the wings of the eagle, and then reproaching him because he can neither see nor fly. ”

“ Why should we leave a land in which the arts and sciences are flourishing, and which is beginning to yield to our research, for one, where the irradiating beams of the sun of science have yet to be announced by the bright star of hope? Why should we leave a land illuminated with the blaze of gospel light, for one enshrouded in pagan gloom? Why should we, who are in tolerable circumstances in America, who enjoy many of the comforts of life, and are evidently on the advanced march of mind, cast away these certain, real, and growing advantages, for those which are precarious and chimerical? ”

“ There are rights to be respected, prejudices to be conciliated, fears to be quelled, and safety to be observed in all our operations. And we protest, most solemnly protest, against the adoption of your views, as alike destructive of the ends of justice, of policy, and of humanity. No wild dream of the wildest enthusiast was ever more extravagant than that of turning loose upon society two millions of blacks, idle and therefore worthless, vicious and therefore dangerous, ignorant and therefore incapable of appreciating and enjoying the blessings of freedom. ”

“ Nothing but a love of falsehood, or an utter disregard of facts, could embolden these calumniators to deal so extensively in fiction. What! the slaves more happy, more moral, more industrious, more orderly, more comfortable, more exalted, than the free blacks! A more enormous exaggeration, a more heinous libel, a wider departure from truth, was never fabricated, or uttered, or known. The slaves, as a body, are in the lowest state of degradation; they possess no property; they cannot read; they are as ignorant, as their masters are reckless, of moral obligation; they have no motive for exertion ”

“ Tax your utmost powers of imagination, and you cannot conceive one motive to honorable effort, which can animate the bosom, or give impulse to the conduct of a free black in this country. Let him toil from youth to age in the honorable pursuit of wisdom—let him store his mind with the most valuable researches of science and literature—and let him add to a highly gifted and cultivated intellect, a piety pure, undefiled, and "unspotted from the world"—it is all nothing: he would not be received into the very lowest walks of society. ”

“ No man has a right to form an alliance with others, which prevents him from rebuking sin or exposing the guilt of sinners. Every individual is bound to oppose the system of slavery in the most direct, strenuous, unfaltering manner—bound by the ties of brotherhood, by the spirit of Christianity, by the genius of republicanism, by the dictates of humanity, by the requirements of justice, by the love of country, by duty to his God. ”

“ We know that we have not the power, even if we had the inclination, to do so. Your rights, as guarantied by the Constitution, are held sacred in our eyes; and we should be among the foremost to resist, as a flagrant usurpation, any encroachment upon those rights. Our only object, as at all times avowed, is to provide for the removal to the coast of Africa, with their own consent, of such persons of color as are already free, and of such others as the humanity of individuals, or the laws of the different states, may hereafter liberate. ”

“ Instead of returning to those, whom they have so deeply injured, 'with repenting and undissembling love;' instead of seeking to conciliate and remunerate the victims of their prejudice and oppression; instead of resolving to break the yoke of servitude and let the oppressed go free; it seems to be their only anxiety and aim to outwit the vengeance of Heaven, and strengthen the bulwarks of tyranny, by expelling the free people of color from our shores, and effecting such a diminution of the number of slaves as shall give the white population a triumphant and irresistible superiority! ”

“ The very commencing act of freedom to the slave, is to place him in a condition still worse, if possible, both for his moral habits, his outward provision, and for the community that embosoms him, than even that, deplorable as it was, from which he has been removed. He is now a freeman; but his complexion, his features, every peculiarity of his person, pronounce to him another doom,—that every wish he may conceive, every effort he can make, shall be little better than vain. Even to every talent and virtuous impulse which he may feel working in his bosom, obstacles stand in impracticable array ”

“ It is, says Rowland Hill, made up of every crime that treachery, cruelty and murder can invent. Wilberforce says, it is the full measure of pure, unmixed, unsophisticated wickedness; and scorning all competition or comparison, it stands without a rival in the secure, undisputed possession of its detestable pre-eminence. In this country, slavery is a system which leaves the chastity of one million females without any protection! which condemns more than two millions of human beings to remediless bondage! ”

“ If they really mean and believe what they say, it is something more heinous than impertinence to urge the planters to dispossess themselves of their property by colonization; and if the slaves belong of right to them,—are on a par with goods and chattels,—how idle, how supremely ridiculous it is to mourn over their wretched condition, to sigh for their emancipation, to declaim against the evil and wickedness of slavery, or even to denounce the slave trade! But the unfortunate blacks are not now, and never can be, the property of the planters ”

“ As neither mountains of prejudice, nor the massy shackles of law and of public opinion, have been able to keep them down to a level with slaves, I confidently anticipate their exaltation among ourselves. Through the vista of time,—a short distance only,—I see them here, not in Africa, not bowed to the earth, or derided and persecuted as at present, not with a downcast air or an irresolute step, but standing erect as men destined heavenward, unembarrassed, untrammelled, with none to molest or make them afraid. ”

“ These are the objections the African Colonization Society offer to this community to our remaining in this country—in the land of freemen! These are the considerations that prompt them to tell us that we the descendants of Africa can never be men unless we abandon the land of our birth, our homes and people, and submit to that uncongenial clime, the barbarous regions of Africa, amidst unyielding contagion and mortality! O, that man would remember, that knowledge and virtue, not complexion, are the emblems that constitute the value of human dignity! ”

“ But my complaint is, that they content themselves with representing slavery as an evil,—a misfortune,—a calamity which has been entailed upon us by former generations,—and not as an individual CRIME, embracing in its folds robbery, cruelty, oppression and piracy. They do not identify the criminals; they make no direct, pungent, earnest appeal to the consciences of men-stealers; by consenting to walk arm-in-arm with them, they virtually agree to abstain from all offensive remarks, and to aim entirely at the expulsion of the free people of color ”

“ The tide of moral death is constantly rising and widening; but no efforts are made to stay its desolating career. The fire of God's indignation is kindling against us, and thick darkness covers the heavens, and the hour of retribution is at hand; but we are obstinate in our transgression, we refuse to repent, we impiously throw the burden of our guilt upon our predecessors, we affect resignation to our unfortunate lot, we descant upon the mysterious dispensations of Providence, we deem ourselves objects of God's compassion rather than of his displeasure. ”

“ Why, Sir, slavery is the very Upas tree of the moral world, beneath whose pestiferous shade all intellect languishes, and all virtue dies. And if you would get quit of the evil, you must go more thoroughly and effectually to work than you can ever do by any or by all of those palliatives, which are included under the term "mitigation." The foul sepulchre must be taken away. The cup of oppression must be dashed to pieces on the ground. ”

“ May a righteous indignation be kindled in their breasts against a combination which is holding them up, for the scorn and contempt of other nations, as incorrigible oppressors, whom neither self-respect, nor the opinions of mankind, nor the fear of God, can bring to repentance! Their duty is plain, and it may easily be done. Slavery must be overthrown either by their own moral strength, or by the physical strength of the slaves. ”

“ Knowing themselves the evils of slavery, can they wish to impose upon us an evil scarcely less tolerable? We think it a mistaken philanthropy, which would liberate the slave, unfitted by education and habit for freedom, and cast him upon a merciless and despising world, where his only fortune must be poverty, his only distinction degradation, and his only comfort insensibility.' * * * 'I will look no farther when I seek for the most degraded, the most abandoned race on the earth, but rest my eyes on this people. ”

“ People of Great Britain, it is your business—it is your duty,—to give to negro slavery no rest, but to put it down—not by letting the trunk alone, while you idly busy yourselves in lopping off, or in aiding others to lop off, a few of [Pg 154] the straggling branches—but by laying the axe at once to its roots, and by putting your united nerve into the steel, till this great poison-tree of lust and blood, and of all abominable and heartless iniquity, fall before you; and law, and love, and God and man, shout victory over its ruin. ”