ANNUAL MEETING

OF THE

AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY.

The Forty-fifth Annual Meeting of the American Colonization Society was held in the Hall of the House of Representatives on the evening of the 21st January, 1862, at seven and a half o'clock, when the Hon. J. H. B. LATROBE, President of the Society, took the chair.

Prayer was offered for the blessing of Almighty God on the meeting and the cause, by the Rev. JOHN MACLEAN, D. D., President of Princeton College.

The Corresponding Secretary read extracts from the Annual Report, which afforded reason for encouragement to the friends of the Society. The President then proceeded to address the Society in an able and eloquent manner, as follows:

Members of the American Colonization Society,

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Never, perhaps, since Finley, in 1816, proclaimed that "he knew the scheme of African colonization was from God," has the anniversary meeting been called to order with more profound emotion than is now felt by the presiding officer. Nor does he doubt, in the least, that his hearers participate in his feelings.

The great statesmen who launched the ship of our cause, at the instigation of the New Jersey clergyman-Jefferson, Madison, Randolph, Harper, Mercer, Clay-confided it at once to the philanthropists who have since plied its oars and trimmed its sails, as with varying speed, it has pursued its way under a summer sky and upon placid waters; and the periodical records of the voyage have been heretofore, almost always, illuminated, richly as a missal of old times, with the gay colors and the golden tracery which hopeful enthusiasm spread upon their pages with a lavish hand, in these halcyon days of prosperity and peace. But now, the same ship, to pursue the simile, though still keeping its course, presses onward through angry waves and beneath a threatening heaven. The thunder of artillery, the clangor of trumpets, the roll of drums, the clash of steel, are echoing on all sides; and were the narrative of its progress to embrace the current events of cotemporary history, it would contain many a sad episode of battle and death,

That it lives in

with all the miserable accompaniments of civil war. such a sea, and amid such surroundings, stauncher than ever, is alone conclusive proof of the divinity of its origin.

The early advocates of African colonization looked to it as a means of improving the condition of the free people of color, morally and politically; of separating them from a contact with the slaves, that was prejudicial to both parties; or of civilizing and christianizing Africa, according to their respective stand-points.But it does not appear that any of them, even among the statesmen we have named, appreciated the great truth on which, in fact, the whole scheme depended for success, and which was, that "two free races, between whom amalgamation, by intermarriage, was impossible, could never occupy the same land, in peace, on terms of social and political equality." This, which may be regarded as a fixed and absolute law of races, has been gradually and slowly developing itself in this country, and in this connexion, during the last forty years. There was little or nothing in 1816 to suggest it. History, which amply illustrates it, was a sealed book, whose teachings were valueless, simply because no one turned to its pages to discover them. The population of eight millions, then, was so small, in comparison with the extent of our country, that the latter was assumed to be, for all practical purposes, illimitable.— But when the census of 1850 gave a population of 23,000,000, and that of 1860 a population of 32,000,000, to become, upon the data furnished by eight decennial enumerations, 100,000,000 in 1900, and upwards of 200,000,000 in 1930, this law of races, with its inevitable consequences, became so obvious that it could no longer be overlooked. It was to provide for its operation, to be prepared for the exigency of the exodus of a whole people, that the scheme of colonization, requiring, in this instance, patient labor, supported by faith and hope, to mature it, came into existence five and forty years ago, and that Liberia, afterwards, assumed its place among the nations; and to Him who filled the mind of Finley with the plan, who softened the hearts of those whom he invoked to aid him, and who has since strengthened the weak hands which have labored in the cause, be ascribed the honor and the glory.

Three years ago, from this platform, the present speaker ventured to use these words: "Ceasing to be ignored by the politicians of the day, philanthropy shall yet be thanked by statesmanship for what it has accomplished on the coast of Africa." The prediction has already been, to some extent, fulfilled; and public men, amid all the excitements of the hour, are even now studying plans of colonization, with a view of providing new homes for those who, as was said on the same occasion, "must go somewhere." The times have forced the question upon them even earlier than was anticipated.

But, as with inventors, so it often is with politicians. Ingenuity exhausts itself in reinvention; and old and discarded things are apt to be adopted as original, because investigation has been postponed until the urgency of occasion has prevented it from being

thorough. Thus, at present, colonization in the West Indies, colonization in Central America, colonization in South America, are being discussed and urged, when each of these schemes has, years ago, been examined, weighed, and abandoned. Colonization in the Territories of the United States has been already tried, and with results too, that ought to be eminently suggestive; for the Indian transplanted by us beyond the Mississippi has, long since, required agents to protect him from the intrusion of the white man; and many a longing eye is being cast, from beyond the Indian border, upon the broad prairies and the tall forests, where the descendants of the original possessors of the whole land are feebly endeavoring to protract the term of an existence which is rapidly drawing to its close.

As it is with the home of the Indian beyond the Mississippi, so will it be with every spot on the American continent, and with every adjacent island on which the white man can live and thrive; and to establish a free colored people upon either continent or island will be but to bequeath the struggle of races to a future generation, when, the numbers being greater and the enmity more bitter, while the area of the strife remains the same, the contest will be fiercer, without the smallest change in the result.

:

And what will be this result? What but the extirpation of the weaker party or its removal to a home where the white man cannot follow it not because of the intervening sea, because steam has bridged the sea, but because pestilence and death, with swords of flame, debar the white man's entrance. Africa is this home and Liberia is its portal.

It is true, that in speaking thus emphatically we are looking to the future; but then, is it not for the future that we are called upon to provide? The vice of the politicians of the day is that they deal with the present as though it were unchangeable. They legislate for thirty-two millions of people without reference to the decennial increase of thirty-four and a half per cent. They delight in make-shifts. They are enamored of emollients. They lose sight of the fact, that the arable lands of the United States are a fixed quantity, by far, very far, the greater part of which has long been taken up, while the population of the country must increase from thirty-two millions to two hundred and thirty-two millions in a life-time from to-day. They forget the effect that a redundant population must have upon wages, and ignore the idea that the latter can ever approach the European standard on this side of the Atlantic. The possible consequences of such a result, its influence upon the great questions now agitating the country, they have not yet considered. This is a problem they want the patience, just now, to attempt to solve. But, were they to rise from the level of politics to that of statesmanship, and provide for the future as well as for to-day, they would no more think of colonies of free people of color on this continent or its islands, than a pedestrian, in removing the stone that tripped him, would think of placing it where he must again fall over it.

Still, a great advance has been made. Colonization has, at last, become a matter for discussion in the halls of Congress; and, having truth for its basis, discussion must lead to its development, and America and Africa be benefited by the result.

scheme.

There is one thing, however, to be carefully avoided in this connexion. The idea of compulsion must not be associated with the The law of races is of itself competent to bring about every desirable result. It is of daily and hourly operation. It is felt at firesides, when husband and wife, talking over their affairs, recognise its force and agree that they "must go somewhere." It is felt in the fields, in the streets, in all the occupations in which the free colored people have heretofore found employment, and in all of which there is now standing, at the colored man's elbow, a white man, ready to take his place whenever he shall leave it, even if he does not, without reference to his wishes, actually eject him from it. In this way it affects communities and becomes powerful in the building up of nations. Depending, as does the colonization scheme, upon individual action for its results, there must be nothing connected with it against which individual pride may revolt for pride is every day overruling interest and sacrificing happiness. Emigration must be left to the conviction of the parties that they will do better in another land; and the silent working of the law of races, quickened by the pressure of a redundant population, will be all-sufficient, in due time, to make this conviction irresistible. There needs no other compulsion.

Nor are these the suggestions of mere expediency. They illustrate the constitutional provision upon which the American Colonization Society has acted from the beginning. It was then declared that our object was "the removal of the free people of color, with their own consent, to Africa"-words which cannot be too often repeated or two strongly emphasized, as explanatory of the scope and meaning of the colonization scheme; and which alike prohibit our becoming the agents of any plan involving compulsion, and pledge us to leave to the free man of color, so far as we are concerned, the time, the place, and the occasion of his emigration.— All we can do is to facilitate his going. To this end our means, although limited-insignificant, indeed, comparatively-have hitherto been competent. They have sufficed to found the colony and to support it in its earlier stages, and until it has become merged in the Republic of Liberia; and, if we restrict the use of them to Africa, it is not because we would interfere with the colored man's selection of a new home, but because it is our solemn conviction that in Africa alone can his people find a permanent abiding place. If lighthouses now crown the headlands of Cape Montserado and Cape Palmas, if churches and mission stations and school-houses now dot the coast from Cape Mount to the Cavalla, if steam sugar mills are at work on the St. Paul's and steam saw-mills are busy on the Junk, if the trade between the seaboard settlements is carried on in vessels built in the yards of Monrovia, and if a foreign commerce is already prosecuted by merchant shipowners

of Liberia, if all this has been done with such humble means as individual benevolence, and, sometimes, State appropriations have afforded, we may surely be permitted to say, without arrogance, that the blessing of the Almighty rests upon the choice which this Society has made of Africa as the future home of the free colored people of the United States.

But, unlike the strength of Milo, ours has not increased from day to day with our growing burden; and more efficient measures ought now to be adopted to promote the growth of the African Republic. Among the most important of these is the recognition by this country of the Government of Liberia-most important to the latter, and far, very far, from unimportant to ourselves.

The United States, whose laws and institutions the Liberians have honorably illustrated in Africa, whose great names are perpetuated where Monrovia looks down upon the deep, where Clay Ashland marks the progress of civilization in the forest, where Harper stretches along the three hills of Palmas, and by many a stream and town besides, the United States, alone almost among the leading nations of the world, withholds its recognition of the Government of Liberia; and this, too, when within the last few years we have actually been dependent upon Liberia for the ability to fulfil our treaties with reference to the slave trade for, had Liberia refused, as she might have done, to receive the more than four thousand recaptured Africans, who in that time have been landed on her shores, what would have become of them? North and South, here, alike unwilling to take charge of them, a crowd of naked savages, they must have been thrown upon the coast, remote from their respective tribes, to become again the victims of the nefarious traffic from which they had just been rescued,―a proceeding so repugnant to humanity that the withdrawal of every vessel of war maintained by us on the coast would have been preferable to its adoption. In lieu of this, Liberia received them, and distributed them among her Christian homes, where, from the last accounts, they are fast becoming qualified to have homes of their own, in which, before long, the prayers of grateful hearts will invoke blessings upon those who, in teaching the recaptives the arts of civilized life, have made them an example of what may be done throughout all Africa by such agencies as our Society has established there.

Whatever, then, may be the result of the present agitation of schemes of colonization, whether it may end in a still further postponement of the whole subject, or in immediate action, there ought to be no difficulty on the part of the United States in recognizing the Government of Liberia, if only in acknowledgment of benefits actually derived from it.

And not only would the measure be just, but it would be expedient also. We are a nation of manufacturers as well as agriculturists. We want markets for the products of our inventive genius and mechanical skill. We have fought for them in China, and spent hundreds of thousands in obtaining them in Japan, while, at the same time, we voluntarily exclude ourselves from almost the only virgin