The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States | Page 4

religious, and social privileges, except
such as he gets by mere sufferance, and so are we. They have no part
nor lot in the government of the country, neither have we. They are
ruled and governed without representation, existing as mere nonentities
among the citizens, and excrescences on the body politic--a mere dreg
in community, and so are we. Where then is our political superiority to
the enslaved? none, neither are we superior in any other relation to

society, except that we are defacto masters of ourselves and joint rulers
of our own domestic household, while the bondman's self is claimed by
another, and his relation to his family denied him. What the unfortunate
classes are in Europe, such are we in the United States, which is folly to
deny, insanity not to understand, blindness not to see, and surely now
full time that our eyes were opened to these startling truths, which for
ages have stared us full in the face.
It is time that we had become politicians, we mean, to understand the
political economy and domestic policy of nations; that we had become
as well as moral theorists, also the practical demonstrators of equal
rights and self-government. Except we do, it is idle to talk about rights,
it is mere chattering for the sake of being seen and heard--like the slave,
saying something because his so called "master" said it, and saying just
what he told him to say. Have we not now sufficient intelligence
among us to understand our true position, to realise our actual condition,
and determine for ourselves what is best to be done? If we have not
now, we never shall have, and should at once cease prating about our
equality, capacity, and all that.
Twenty years ago, when the writer was a youth, his young and yet
uncultivated mind was aroused, and his tender heart made to leap with
anxiety in anticipation of the promises then held out by the prime
movers in the cause of our elevation.
In 1830 the most intelligent and leading spirits among the colored men
in the United States, such as James Forten, Robert Douglass, I. Bowers,
A.D. Shadd, John Peck, Joseph Cassey, and John B. Vashon of
Pennsylvania; John T. Hilton, Nathaniel and Thomas Paul, and James
G. Barbodoes of Massachusetts; Henry Sipkins, Thomas Hamilton,
Thomas L. Jennings, Thomas Downing, Samuel E. Cornish, and others
of New York; R. Cooley and others of Maryland, and representatives
from other States which cannot now be recollected, the data not being
at hand, assembled in the city of Philadelphia, in the capacity of a
National Convention, to "devise ways and means for the bettering of
our condition." These Conventions determined to assemble annually,
much talent, ability, and energy of character being displayed; when in

1831 at a sitting of the Convention in September, from their previous
pamphlet reports, much interest having been created throughout the
country, they were favored by the presence of a number of whites,
some of whom were able and distinguished men, such as Rev. R.R.
Gurley, Arthur Tappan, Elliot Cresson, John Rankin, Simeon Jocelyn
and others, among them William Lloyd Garrison, then quite a young
man, all of whom were staunch and ardent Colonizationists, young
Garrison at that time, doing his mightiest in his favorite work.
Among other great projects of interest brought before the convention at
a previous sitting, was that of the expediency of a general emigration,
as far as it was practicable, of the colored people to the British
Provinces of North America. Another was that of raising sufficient
means for the establishment and erection of a College for the proper
education of the colored youth. These gentlemen long accustomed to
observation and reflection on the condition of their people saw at once,
that there must necessarily be means used adequate to the end to be
attained--that end being an unqualified equality with the ruling class of
their fellow citizens. He saw that as a class, the colored people of the
country were ignorant, degraded and oppressed, by far the greater
portion of them being abject slaves in the South, the very condition of
whom was almost enough, under the circumstances, to blast the
remotest hope of success, and those who were freemen, whether in the
South or North, occupied a subservient, servile, and menial position,
considering it a favor to get into the service of the whites, and do their
degrading offices. That the difference between the whites and
themselves, consisted in the superior advantages of the one over the
other, in point of attainments. That if a knowledge of the arts and
sciences, the mechanical occupations, the industrial occupations, as
farming, commerce, and all the various business enterprises, and
learned professions were necessary for the superior position occupied
by their rulers, it