The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States | Page 7

colored people in this country, or the Anti-Slavery cause, as it was now
termed, expressed themselves openly and without reserve.
Sensible of the high-handed injustice done to the colored people in the

United States, and the mischief likely to emanate from the unchristian
proceedings of the deceptious Colonization scheme, like all honest
hearted penitents, with the ardor only known to new converts, they
entreated the Convention, whatever they did, not to entertain for a
moment, the idea of recommending emigration to their people, nor the
establishment of separate institutions of learning. They earnestly
contended, and doubtless honestly meaning what they said, that they
(the whites) had been our oppressors and injurers, they had obstructed
our progress to the high positions of civilization, and now, it was their
bounden duty to make full amends for the injuries thus inflicted on an
unoffending people. They exhorted the Convention to cease; as they
had laid on the burden, they would also take it off; as they had
obstructed our pathway, they would remove the hindrance. In a word,
as they had oppressed and trampled down the colored people, they
would now elevate them. These suggestions and promises, good
enough to be sure, after they were made, were accepted by the
Convention--though some gentlemen were still in favor of the first
project as the best policy, Mr. A.D. Shadd of West Chester, Pa., as we
learn from himself, being one among that number--ran through the
country like wild-fire, no one thinking, and if he thought, daring to
speak above his breath of going any where out of certain prescribed
limits, or of sending a child to school, if it should but have the name of
"colored" attached to it, without the risk of being termed a "traitor" to
the cause of his people, or an enemy to the Anti-Slavery cause.
At this important point in the history of our efforts, the colored men
stopped suddenly, and with their hands thrust deep in their
breeches-pockets, and their mouths gaping open, stood gazing with
astonishment, wonder, and surprise, at the stupendous moral colossal
statues of our Anti-Slavery friends and brethren, who in the heat and
zeal of honest hearts, from a desire to make atonement for the many
wrongs inflicted, promised a great deal more than they have ever been
able half to fulfill, in thrice the period in which they expected it. And in
this, we have no fault to find with our Anti-Slavery friends, and here
wish it to be understood, that we are not laying any thing to their
charge as blame, neither do we desire for a moment to reflect on them,
because we heartily believe that all that they did at the time, they did

with the purest and best of motives, and further believe that they now
are, as they then were, the truest friends we have among the whites in
this country. And hope, and desire, and request, that our people should
always look upon true anti-slavery people, Abolitionists we mean, as
their friends, until they have just cause for acting otherwise. It is true,
that the Anti-Slavery, like all good causes, has produced some recreants,
but the cause itself is no more to be blamed for that, than Christianity is
for the malconduct of any professing hypocrite, nor the society of
Friends, for the conduct of a broad-brimmed hat and shad-belly coated
horsethief, because he spoke thee and thou before stealing the horse.
But what is our condition even amidst our Anti-Slavery friends? And
here, as our sole intention is to contribute to the elevation of our people,
we must be permitted to express our opinion freely, without being
thought uncharitable.
In the first place, we should look at the objects for which the
Anti-Slavery cause was commenced, and the promises or inducements
it held out at the commencement. It should be borne in mind, that
Anti-Slavery took its rise among colored men, just at the time they
were introducing their greatest projects for their own elevation, and that
our Anti-Slavery brethren were converts of the colored men, in behalf
of their elevation. Of course, it would be expected that being baptized
into the new doctrines, their faith would induce them to embrace the
principles therein contained, with the strictest possible adherence.
The cause of dissatisfaction with our former condition, was, that we
were proscribed, debarred, and shut out from every respectable position,
occupying the places of inferiors and menials.
It was expected that Anti-Slavery, according to its professions, would
extend to colored persons, as far as in the power of its adherents, those
advantages nowhere else to be obtained among white men. That
colored boys would get situations in their shops and stores, and every
other advantage tending to elevate them as far as possible, would be
extended to