American colonist

“ The United States have about 2,000,000 slaves, and about 500,000 free colored people.
The American Colonization Society has existed for thirteen years, and has exported yearly, upon an average, about 150 persons. ”

“ Every reader of history is aware of the melancholy and disastrous commencement of most of our American colonies. The great cause was that they were founded in injustice. Adventurers, with charters from the English monarch in their pockets, as the Spaniards and Portuguese had the Pope's bull in theirs, landed on the coast of America and claimed it for their own, reckoning the native inhabitants of no more account than the bears and fallow-deer of the woods. ”

“ It is impossible to forget in the early history of the North American colonies, what facility the French displayed, in contrast with the English, in attaining communication with the children of the forest, in acquiring and retaining their confidence, in taking on their rude and uncultivated modes of life, and in shaping even their superstitions to their own selfish purposes. ”

“ The thirteen American colonies, which in 1775 dared defy the might of Great Britain, and which in a stubborn struggle were able to win their independence, were settled at various times, and by colonists actuated by widely different motives. ”

“ The first and most natural way of lighting the houses of the American colonists, both in the North and South, was by the pine-knots of the fat pitch-pine, which, of course, were found everywhere in the greatest plenty in the forests. ”

“ The beginnings of the continental American colonies, indeed, are too apt to be considered as isolated events. Their unique importance from the standpoint of American history has tended to obscure their real nature. From that standpoint, they are naturally viewed as the founding of a great nation; but if they are considered solely in that relation, not only the planting of the colonies themselves, but the subsequent history of their relations with the mother-country, and the whole course of England’s old colonial policy, are bound to be misunderstood. ”

“ Resolved, That it is the sincere opinion of this meeting, that the American Colonization Society is one of the wildest projects ever patronised by a body of enlightened men; and further, that many of those who support it would be willing, if it were in their power, to drive us out of existence. ”

“ One more point may be noted as having an important bearing upon the general question of the relations between a mother country and its colonies, one which in particular contributed to ill-feeling between England and the North American states. Colonization rarely takes place in an empty land. The colonists on arrival find native inhabitants, strong or weak, few or many, as the case may be. In North America there were strong fighting races of Indians, and the native question played an all-important part in the early history of European settlement in this part of the world. ”

“ In this book American colonization is considered in the light of general colonization as a phase of history. Englishmen in planting colonies in America brought with them the institutions with which they had been familiar at home: it is shown what these institutions were, and how, in adapting themselves to new conditions of growth, they differed from English models. As prominent among the changed conditions, the physical geography of America and its aboriginal inhabitants receive somewhat extended treatment ”

“ Fortunately, for the colony, many of the emigrants were men of more than ordinary ability; men who went out with a double purpose; first, to seek homes for themselves and families out of the reach of the American prejudice; second, to carry the gospel of civilization to their brethren. ”

“ Of the many schemes that have been proposed, we most approve of that of African colonization. If we were able, and at liberty to go whithersoever we would, the greater number, willing to leave this community, would prefer LIBERIA, on the coast of Africa. Others, no doubt, would turn them towards some other regions; the world is wide. Already established there, in the settlement of the American colonization society, are many of our brethren, the pioneers of African restoration, who encourage us to join them. ”

“ Respected brethren, and fellow-citizens:—As men and as christians, whose secular and eternal interests are the same, we are seriously called upon by truth and reason, and every thing of which human action is composed, to take into consideration the objects of the American Colonization Society; which aims to remove us, the free people of color, from this, our beloved and native land, to the coast of Africa; a country unknown to us in every respect. ”

“ With its power and influence with the Indians, its wealth and organization, and its knowledge of the country and means for bringing colonists from either Canada or the home country, it could have quickly and easily throttled all attempts to establish American settlements by establishing those devoted to the support of the British claim to the country. ”

“ It is a fact which bears striking testimony to the masterful qualities of the native American character that in the Western States, notwithstanding a vast foreign immigration, the dominant element is of the old colonial stock. ”

“ It is of descendants of this long-headed northern race that the great majority of the agricultural population of the United States is made up, and it is its very best elements that settled the American states. The people that founded the thirteen colonies belonged to the most energetic and most independent elements of old England. Only men of an indomitable courage and superior intellect would dare to brave the dangers of a distant and unknown country. ”

“ The observer of the providential destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race in America notices that the emancipation of the thirteen American colonies, which constituted so many states and an independent nation, instead of being the result of the alleged political grievances, was rather the impulsive force of expansion, which encountered insuperable obstacles while the states were colonies subordinate to a European nation. ”

“ The English migration and the founding of the English colonies was in fact due mainly to the initiative of the colonists themselves; and the institutions which they established in America were different from those which statesmen and traders had imagined. The character of colonial life and institutions was determined by the motives which induced the settlers to leave the land of their birth, by the inherited traditions which they carried with them into the wilderness, and by the wilderness itself—the circumstances which, in the new country, closed them round. ”

“ The Pilgrim Fathers and the early settlers in Australia and South Africa and amidst the snows of Canada were colonists of whom any mother-nation might be proud; but the emigrants who shrink at the crudeness of our present American civilization, who shirk the responsibilities of our government, who must have a leisure class with which to play, and who are shocked by the familiarity of our press, are colonists who leave their country for their country's good. ”

“ The North American colonies were a group of young communities, whose citizens were, at any rate in New England and Pennsylvania, of a strong, sober, and very tenacious type: the late war had taught them to fight: its issue had given them a feeling of strength and security: there had been no extraordinary strain upon their resources: they had reached a stage in their history when they were most dangerous to offend and not unlikely to take offence unless very carefully handled, and careful handling on the part of the mother country, as all the world knows, was conspicuous by its absence. ”

“ England Led the Way by Establishing a Colony at Sierra Leone to Provide a Home for Negroes Carried from the United States during the Revolutionary War — The Enterprise Saved by the Sturdy Maroons — Origin of the American Society for Colonizing Free People of Color — Life of the Colonists at Cape Mesurado — The Nation of Liberia Organized — An Ape of Philanthropy. ”

“ A fair inference at least from the Doctor’s article is, that he sees no hope for his people on this continent, and that their only way to success is to emigrate to the land of their mothers, and to make its reclamation their ambition. But how does that affect our work and the present generation? The American Colonization Society, as seen by its last published report, sent out to Africa during the year 1878, one hundred and one colonists ”

“ Colonization of the American continent, its earliest conditions and opportunities, 216, 218,219; safety of the colonists lay in the inter-tribal warfare of the natives, and in making alliance with one tribe against another, 217, 221; methods of the different colonists, 218-220; plea of the colonists in justification of their course towards the natives, 220, 221; theory of discovery under which Europeans took possession of the continent, 226, 227; claim of the colonists that the natives were their rightful subjects, 228-230; the white man's reasons for dispossessing the Indians, 239, 240 ”

“ The old men tell us, they remember our colonies in their infant state,—that when the inhabitants were poor and few in number, they maintained prosperous wars against the numerous combined nations of red people, who surrounded them on all sides ”

“ In speaking of the American Revolution, the Report declared: “Throughout ... there should be but one aim: to impress upon the pupils the sublime spectacle of thirteen weak colonies spread along fifteen hundred miles of sea coast, poorly equipped and poorly disciplined, giving battle to the strongest military and naval power in the world. In addition the Colonists were surrounded by hostile Indians and in their midst was a large body of Tories working at times openly, at times secretly, but, at all times against them.... ”

“ Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development. ”

“ While something is gained, then, by remembering that the racial instincts and traditions of the first colonists were overwhelmingly English, and that their political and ethical views were the product of a turbulent and distraught time, it is even more important to note how the physical situation of the colonists affected their intellectual and moral, as well as their political problems. ”

“ The men of the colonies were not so new as their continent in the ways of civilization. They were Old World men put upon fresh coasts and a forest frontier, to make the most of them, create markets, build a new trade, become masters of vast resources as yet untouched and incalculable ”

“ They compel them to remove, emigrate, disperse, sell their lands and homes, at one tenth of the value; and this is called fair dealing!
Notwithstanding that the European states or colonies, occupy or claim, nearly the whole of both Americas; yet there are many vast regions as yet unsettled by them, and where dwell or wander several free tribes, particularly in the Arctic wilds, in Oregon, California, Texas, the Missouri plains, New Mexico, Sinaloa, Tologalpa, in N. America—and in S. America in the vast plains and deserts of the Oronoko, Maranon, Brazil, Chaco, Chili and Magellania. ”

“ Again we object, on the ground of there being sufficient land in the United States, on which a colony might be established that would better meet the wishes of the colored people, and at a much cheaper rate than could possibly be done by sending them to a howling wilderness far away, and to them unknown. ”

“ The lords and gentry of England were astonished at the intelligence displayed in the opposition, by the rural population of America. They fancied the colonists to be an ignorant, ragged people, living in log cabins, scattered through the wilderness, and, in social position, two or three degrees below European and Irish peasantry. Great was their surprise to hear from all the colonies, and from the remotest districts in each colony, the voice of intelligent and dignified rebuke. ”

“ For twelve years after the defeat of the French, the English colonists in America, though suffering many things, prospered. A patriotic, vigorous race had possession of the new world—men who loved liberty, knew their rights, and dared maintain them. ”

“ Accordingly we find, from time to time, in the history of this colony, fresh plots of the natives to rid themselves of the whites, and fresh expeditions of the whites to clear the country of what they termed the wily and perfidious Indians. ”

“ We behold too, these colonies, amidst want, poverty and misfortunes, animated with the spirit of liberty and fortified by the rectitude of their cause, sustaining for nearly eight years, the weight of a cruel conflict upon their own soil. At length we behold them victorious; their enemies sullenly retiring from their shores, and these feeble colonies enrolled on the page of history as a free, sovereign and independent nation. ”

“ America opened wide her hospitable doors and gave assurance of liberty and comfort to all who came. The thirteen colonies now contained a population of about three millions.
Up to the year 1764, the Americans cherished a deep reverence and affection for the mother country. They were proud to be considered British subjects, and of the lofty place England held among the nations of the earth. They gloried in the splendor of her military achievements. They copied her manners and her fashions. Her language, laws and literature were as fondly cherished by the colonists as by the English themselves. ”