Abolition Logic
“Not
hate of one's neighbor.” We prove it to be hate, because it wants to
send off. Hatred repels, and would expel. Love attracts, draws, wishes
to detain. Colonization proposes to rid the land of colored people. It
therefore, cannot love them. Its love is mere pretence. — Herald of
Freedom.
This argument, poor as it is, with
hardly speciousness enough to deceive a sensible boy of six years old, is the
same that was used by George Thompson, in our debate with him in Boston. But
how will this argument work? A New Hampshire father sends off his son to
make his fortune on the rich lands of the West. Therefore he hates him.
A Boston merchant sends off his son to Europe or the East Indies, that
he may extend his schemes of enterprise, and acquire wealth. Therefore he hales
him. We send off missionaries to barbarous nations, that they may
extend the blessings of Christianity, and receive in a future world the rewards
of those that turn many to righteousness. Therefore we hate these
missionaries. The consent of those who depart seems to make no difference in
the view of this sage editor. “We prove it to be hate because it wants to send
off.”
It is a little ludicrous that the
editor of the Herald should actually kill his own argument, even before he reaches
the bottom of his column. “It won't hurt a slave to send him to Africa. It
won't, to send him any where out of the infernal regions. We had rather he
might get to Canada, — but if he can't go there — or to the West Indies — or to
England — or France — or Spain, or Turkey, or Algiers — or any other
comparatively free country under heaven — why, rather than remain in America,
among our Colonizationists, let him go to Liberia — or to the bottom of the sea
— or to the sharks. No monster of the deep would devour him with the cruel
tooth of our republicanism.”
He also proposes, in another article,
to colonize slaves in Canada. Seriously, we think there are strong indications
of insanity in the Herald.
The above is from the Rev. R. R. Gurley, Secretary and chief
engineer of the American Colonization Society — that grand "American
system” of machinery for clearing this country of free colored people, by a
sort of suction-pump force, called “consent.” They say, however, the “Niggers” come
hard; and though the pump draws upon them, like doctor's instruments upon a
tooth, yet they stick to the soil like a lamprey eel to the rocks; and though
the Secretary “hangs on like a dog to a root,” they “hang back, like a dog
going to the gallows.” Resist sternly, colored friends! “Abide in the ship.”
The land shall soon be indeed your country and your home. Lay your bones in it.
Your tyrants and persecutors will go and evangelize Africa, themselves, when
they really wish her evangelized.
The wily Secretary has ventured upon a little article of
ours, with true Tracy philology and word-hunting. “Send off.” The magnificent “statesman”
here finds a field for the scope of his continental philanthropy. The
argument, he says, is the same that was used by George Thompson. All the better
for that. George Thompson is an authority. He is a mm of instinctive and
intuitive judgment on this question. But it is a poor argument, says the
Secretary, “with hardly speciousness enough to deceive a sensible school boy of
six years old.” Any argument is always poor in the eyes of the Secretary, that
is clear “of speciousness and false show, and that can't deceive sensible
school boys. We don't intend to use specious arguments,— “showy,
plausible, superficially not solidly right,” as Walker defines them! The
Secretary had better not use any more of them. “Fair play is a jewel.”
“How will this argument work?” Try it and see, Secretary.
You don't try it. You put different cases. You speak of
farmers sending away sons for their benefit and fortunes. We speak of sending
off — a sending off to get rid of. Farmers don't send off their
sons, unless they get angry, and forget their nature, and disinherit them.
Then they send them off. This sending to the West is not true in
fact. The sons want to go from New Hampshire rocks to the prairied West. They
have heard stories about it almost as extravagant and false as the Secretary
tells about the death-haunted capes of Liberia, where bones lie bleaching as
they do in the valley of the fabled Upas. The father wants them to stay with
him, if he has got land for them, and if he han't, he would go with
them. That is the way the father sends off his sons. Does the
Secretary send off the dear colored people so? Would he accompany them? Let him go and
edit at Cape Palmas, and sing his ditty of the “African steeples” about among
king Joe Harris' people. They would admire his tall presence and his fine head,
as the Cossacks did Murat on his black charger. No. The Secretary loves — “society,” that has got more “frame-work” in
it. The dragon take Liberia, for all his going there! It is a grand country for
“free niggers;” but the Secretary belongs to another race.
“The Boston merchant sends off his son,” &c. Whoever
heard of such a sending off? Would the weeping father, as the vessel,
with his dear boy on board, was clearing the harbor and standing out into the
wide sea, tell the disconsolate mother and the brothers and sisters — all in
tears — “I've sent off Charles?” Sent him off! for shame,
Secretary! If you had instanced a Boston merchant, who had a poor, miserable,
profligate, drunken, prodigal son, that had exhausted his paternal nature, and
forged his name to checks — whom he did not wish to see hanged at home, for the
disgrace it would bring on the family, and he had shipped him aboard a
man-of-war for the Mediterranean — or a whaler for a three years' chance among
the storms of the cape, and the grampuses of the arctic circle, peradventure to
come back, and peradverture not, then you might talk of a father's
sending his son off. But that comes too near colonizing, for the
Secretary's purpose, — only he wants to ship the innocent — the blameless — the
unoffending — guilty of nothing but want of the roseate hue of the beauteous,
Absalom-looking Secretary.
“We send off missionaries,” &c. Only to Liberia,
Secretary. We send out to every other quarter. Note this peculiarity,
reader, in our American efforts to evangelize the world. We send out white,
educated, college-learned, beneficiary, Andover-finished theologians to those
people we have never enslaved; and to our old human hunting-ground we send off
“abated nuisances,” called “free niggers,” — sent
off “with their own consent.”
(“He ’ticed him out of the
field,” says the witness; “’ticed him clear out.” How did he ’tice him? said
the court. “O, he 'ticed him with a pitchfork.’”) We had the curiosity
to look, in this very number of the Secretary's “Statesman,” to see what he
called the sending of missionaries. He has a deal to say about love to the
heathen. We lit upon “Missions to Liberia,” the first thing almost. It is not
the Secretary's own, but his faithful Achates, R. McDowell's. He gives us the
very technical phrase for missionary sending; but there is no off to it.
“The first mission, established in Liberia,” says McD., “was the Swiss mission,
&c., sent out by Rev. Dr. Bleinhardt,” &c.
Don't talk of sending off sons and missionaries, any
more, Mr. Secretary. It is too “specious.”
The Secretary says, we “ludicrously kill our argument before
we get down our column.” What is our argument? That sending off our
free colored people, to rid the country of them, is proof of hatred
towards them. How do we kill it? Why, by saying it won't hurt a slave
to send him away. Commend us to such killing. “What is sauce for the
goose, may be for the” Secretary; but it don't follow, that what is bad for
the freeman, would be bad for the slave. Would it be good
for the freeman of America to be sent to Algiers? We say it would not hurt the
slave to be sent there. He would rejoice to get there, and we should rejoice to
have him, if we can't free him here,—even to Liberia—rather than stay within
influence of such teachers of humanity as McDufie and Gurley.
The Secretary's mention of our proposal to colonize the
slaves in Canada, as a serious proposal, is so roguishly “specious,” that we can't answer it. —
The charge of “insanity,” abolitionists are used to. The Secretary will be glad
to be so, by and by, when we get slavery down in this country. The cry from the
West Indies makes him look wild. He will exclaim, by another year or two, when
Congress, with old John Quincy Adams at their head, and Alvan Stewart and
Wendell Phillips and Vermont Knapp to back him up, declare slavery down in the
capital and the' district — he will then cry out, as Atlialiah did, when she “heard
the noise of the guard, the clapping of hands, and the God save king Joash.” He
will be stark crazy then, — if he does not repent — which we hope he may.
SOURCE: Collection from the Miscellaneous Writings
of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Second Edition, p. 21-5 which states it was
published in the Herald of Freedom of September 8, 1838.
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