If the Colonization Society had not come out against the doctrine of
immediate emancipation, and inferentially against the doctrine of the
sinfulness of slavery, I should, in all probability, have continued a member of
it down to the present time. But for its opposition to those doctrines, I might
very probably have continued to think that it was producing a measure at least,
of the good influences and effects which you ascribe to it. It is however, but
proper to say that my confidence in the usefulness of the colonization of our
colored brethren, or any portion of them on the coast of Africa or any where
else,—and even though such colonization were conducted with great benevolence
and with no unfriendliness to the great doctrines of the anti-slavery societies,
— has undergone a great, exceedingly great diminution. It is not however on the
ground of diminution, that I avow myself an anti-colonizationist. It is because
it has, to use your own language, taken the “position that the colored race
cannot with any propriety be emancipated on the soil, — that expatriation and
emancipation must go together.” . . . I would not deny that there are members
of the Colonization Society who favor the doctrine of immediate and
unconditional emancipation; — though Judge Jay, in his book on colonization,
speaks of me as the only one. But certain it is that they are rare; and as
certain it is that the society ridicules, denounces and abhors the doctrine. .
. In view of the exceedingly wicked and abhorrent sentiments of Rev. R. J.
Breckinridge, which I have cited, I cannot but think how grateful you and I
should feel that God has led us to quit forever a society which generates and
fosters such sentiments. Had we remained in it we might have been left to
imbibe those sentiments, to adopt all its cruel and murderous policy and to
keep pace with its fast increasing wickedness.
SOURCE: Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith: A
Biography, p. 169-70
