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halting and half-way minds, the sooner we cease dabbling in it the better. Colonization as a voluntary thing, -as a measure of relief in special cases, -as opening the door of manumission here and there, as an experiment to show and to train the capacity of the blacks in self-government, as the means of keeping a gleam of divine fire burning on the dark shore of African barbarism,- has always had our hearty honor and our warm good word. As pretending to meet the problem of slavery in this country in its length and breadth, or the deeper underlying problem of race which we have endeavored to state, it is quite futile and helpless. As to likelihood of fact, we hardly think the most ardent statistician would hope to do more than expatriate the natural increase of the black population, say a hundred thousand a year. As to physical possibility, surely no advocate of it has ever looked in the face the enormous task of hunting these four millions, ignorant, bewildered, frightened, desperate as they would be, through forest, swamp, and brake, and hauling them bodily into unwilling exile. As to financial feasibility, when we remember that to drive out a few wild Indians from the Everglades of Florida was reckoned to cost no less than eighty million dollars, -twenty thousand dollars, if we remember right, for each wild Indian, — we may well stand aghast at the proportions of the sum. As a question of humanity, we may well enough justify opening ever so wide a door of voluntary emigration, to Hayti, to Liberia, to Guatemala; but the forcible expulsion of so great a population would be a crime by the side of which all the tales that history tells of the miseries of exile are little and tame.*

Finally, as an expedient for meeting the problem which actually lies before us, we hold the scheme of Colonization (if indeed seriously entertained by any one) to be both cowardly

* The succinct platform of the colored people of Boston is worth quoting here:

"Resolved, That when we wish to leave the United States, we can find and pay for that territory that shall suit us best.

"Resolved, That when we are ready to leave, we shall be able to pay our own expenses of travel.

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Resolved, That we don't want to go now.

"Resolved, That if anybody else wants us to go, they must compel us."

and unwise. Cowardly, because it evades the difficulty with misleading names, and shirks the duty which God lays as a burden upon this great free and powerful nation. Unwise, because, if we could once imagine it successful, it would take away the very foundation on which we have to build, in any possible reconstruction of society at the South. No purity of breed, and no imaginary political advantage, can compensate for the loss of an entire laboring population. In all our discussions of this question, we must not lose sight of the fact, that the blacks are the only considerable part of the Southern population drilled and inured to productive industry. Lazy, clumsy, stupid, unambitious, we hear them called. Probably a good many of them are. It is a great pity if it is so; but we cannot alter the fact. These clumsy fingers have, at any rate, the cunning which picks wealth from its hiding-places in that rich soil. These sluggish brains have, at any rate, learned the mystery of season and plant, of forest and shore, and are in far more subtile relations than ours can be with all that boundless prodigality of nature. These dark skins and ungainly shapes are proof against tropic heats and lurking pestilences, which would sweep away whole generations of white colonists that should invade the luxuriance of these fertile marshes and fragrant shores.

Besides, it is not a wild and ferocious breed of men, but a race that takes kindly to domestication, and receives its crumbs of a higher culture with grateful submissiveness. To our imagination it is a fresh wonder still, their dumb quiet through the turmoil of this year of war, - by never a threat or blow menacing the security of their masters, with stolid patience building the ramparts and charging the cannon planted to confirm their bondage, only accepting deliverance when it came actually in sight, and then with no violence or fury, but with a certain devout ecstasy, and zeal to undertake the lowliest tasks in service of their new protectors.

Some of us have felt no little vexed and contemptuous towards this signal display of non-resistance. We had been taught that the system of slavery rests on a slumbering volcano; that the structure of Southern society was built over a magazine, which must explode with the first kindling of the

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torch of war. And many persons looked with confidenceperhaps it would not be false to say, with hope and satisfaction for insurrections and the terrors of servile war. ourselves, we are devoutly grateful that both the white and the black race have been spared the horror of such a complication. And we desire to recognize the element of hope which it gives in approaching the dark problem before us. The orderly submission of so vast a population, so tempted every way to embark in that most frightful "civil war, in which the skin is taken for cockade," is due in part, no doubt, to the precaution of the masters, to the military police suddenly augmented, and the presence everywhere of trained regiments in arms. But in larger measure, we think, it is due to one of those characteristics of race, on the right understanding of which our whole solution rests. Not the mere habit of subjection, and not the mere display of armed force, is enough to account for it. No one would have looked for it, and no one, we presume, deems that it would have been possible, if the slaves had been Circassians, or Moors, or Seminoles. The simple fact is, that we are dealing with a population of another type.

In our conversations with intelligent slaveholders, we have been most struck with their absolute reliance on the instinct. of submission among the blacks. This reliance, we know, is not always a safe thing to trust. It is apt to be fatally betrayed at unawares. It is no bar to intermittent terrors of insurrection. It does not prevent the curdling fear which women often feel, left unguarded among the dark horde, whose barbaric passions may flash out without warning. It does not exempt a slave community from those horrors of a merciless police, got up on purpose to keep the blacks in awe, as they might fear the wrath of some infernal deity, at which all Christendom stands aghast. Still, when we represent to ourselves the vast territory and numbers included in our view of slavery, and give their fair weight, especially, to the facts of the past year, we judge that the masters' confidence was better grounded than our astonishment at it; and we incline to regard it as one very valuable indication of character and temperament in that race, which offers this greatest perplexity and difficulty to our future. It by no means removes the dif

ficulty, but it does show that the task of dealing with it will be comparatively easy and safe.

In our further considerations of this subject, we shall assume two things. First, that the Africans in America will continue to be under the guardianship of the whites, that guardianship being only transferred to other hands; in other words, that it will be, not an independent, but a subordinate and subject population, as far, at least, as our present vision can extend. And secondly, that it will continue to make the bulk of the laboring population, and the basis of the system of productive industry, in the Southern States, — that is to say, within the bounds of its future habitation, as already explained.

With

As to the first, very few words of exposition are required. In stating it, we should be sorry to imply any contempt or disparagement of a people who have been so long, so cruelly debarred from the fair field of opportunity. We disclaim all sympathy with that numerous class who think to despatch the whole matter by "spelling negro with two g's." Neither do we commit ourselves in advance to any ethnological doctrine, touching the origin of species, primordial differences, limits of capacity, and the like, as setting a barrier not to be passed between the attainments of the white man and the black. such speculations our present argument has nothing whatever to do. It is enough to refer to the actual condition of those people, in a state of bondage that goes back as far as their history goes; to characteristics stamped on them through a series of generations running back into twilight; or to the physiognomical instinct of any one who has ever seen negro slaves at work on a plantation. Nor are we curious to inquire how much of that intelligence and nobility of character which we are never more forward and glad to recognize than in many individuals of the colored race, may be due to admixture of white blood; or how great varieties of intellectual level there may be in the numerous native stocks which go to make up the loose aggregate of our four million blacks. If we could, we would avoid any suggestion of their natural inferiority, whether moral or mental. But it would be a false philanthropy to overlook the fact that they are at the mercy

of their white protectors; that they must look to us not only for instruction, but for government and guidance; that, for an indefinite time to come, they will be our subjects, and not our equals in the body politic.*

Nor, in the light of history, is this fact attended with the difficulties and alarms which many apprehend. The two tests of equality are intermarriage and political power. As to the first, the bugbear of every caviller who tries to stigmatize the argument for natural justice, we have already hinted our reasons for believing that in a state of liberty there is less likelihood of it than before, for Nature then vindicates her own lines of demarcation. As to the other, we imagine that men's fears are mostly gratuitous. When we remember for how many centuries subject populations have remained distinct within their own boundaries, in perhaps every nation of Europe,† — enjoying certain municipal or tribal liberties of their own, yet never trespassing on and rarely invaded by the dominant race or class, with language utterly distinct, and with purity of blood almost absolutely unmingled at the edges where they touch, we find very little to alarm us. The question of right morality and political justice is one thing; the question of order and security is quite another thing. It is important, we think, that this last should be settled in our minds first. Let us feel sure that the political question is one which we may approach at our leisure hereafter without fear. Then we need not suffer it to intrude, while we frankly accept the responsibility of our new guardianship, and inquire what are the duties it demands of us.

In meeting the latter question, we touch the point decisive of the right and ability of the African race to maintain a foothold on our soil. No great population can be allowed to drag out an eleemosynary existence. A race or a tribe cannot live on sufferance and by charity. Every people must prove its

In the touching phrase often heard from the negroes at Port Royal, "The white man do what he pleases with us; we are yours now, massa." See Mr. Pierce's Report to Secretary Chase.

For example, the Welsh in Britain, the Basques in Spain, and the Greeks in Turkey. The ancient example of the Pelasgi in Italy and Greece would be still more apt to our present argument.

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