Read Ebook: The Past and the Present Condition and the Destiny of the Colored Race: A Discourse Delivered at the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Female Benevolent Society of Troy N. Y. Feb. 14 1848 by Garnet Henry Highland New York Female Benevolent Society Other

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The slave trade is carried on briskly in the beautiful island of Cuba. A few years ago, I witnessed the landing of a cargo of slaves, fresh from the coast of Africa, in the port of Havanna, in the presence of the Governor, and under the shadow of the Moro Castle, one of the strongest fortifications of the world.

Recently, a great sacrifice has been made in that Island to the Spirit of despotism, in the death of the Patriot and Poet, Placido. Freedom mourns over his early tomb. The waves of the Atlantic, of whose vastness and sublimity he had sung, chaunted his dirge as the tyrants hid him in the grave! Placido was a mulatto, a true Poet, and of course a Patriot. His noble soul was moved with pity as he saw his fellow men in chains. Born to feel, and to act, he made a bold attempt to effect a revolution, and failing in it, he fell a martyr to his principles.

On the day previous to his death, he wrote the following lines, of which Coolridge or Montgomery would not have been ashamed. They present a blaze of poetic fire, intense and sublime:--

"O Liberty! I wait for thee, To break this chain, and dungeon bar; I hear thy voice calling me, Deep in the frozen North, afar, With voice like God's, and vision like a star.

Long cradled in the mountain wind, Thy mates, the eagle and the storm Arise; and from thy brow unbind The wreath that gives its starry form, And smite the strength, that would thy strength deform.

Yet Liberty! thy dawning light, Obscured by dungeon bars, shall cast A splendor on the breaking night, And tyrants flying thick and fast, Shall tremble at thy gaze, and stand aghast."

The next day they led Placido forth to execution, and from the mouths of bristling musketry a shower of lead was poured upon his quivering heart. That heart stood still,--and a truer, braver one, never beat in the breast of a mortal man!

The Brazillian Government holds three millions of the colored race in slavery. The United States have about the same number. The Spanish Colonies have one million.

But it is proper to turn the other side of the picture, and I rejoice that there is another side. Nine hundred thousand of these people are enjoying their freedom in the British West India Isles. There are six hundred thousand free people in the United States, while in Hayti we have an independent population of nearly a million. Possessing a land of unsurpassed fertility, they have but to turn their attention manfully to Agricultural pursuits and it will shine forth the brightest Isle that slumbers in the arms of old ocean.

In regard to the enslavement of our race, this Country presents as mournful a picture as any other beneath the sun; but still it is not hopelessly enshrouded in darkness. The good institutions of the land are well adapted to the developement of the mind. So far as the oppressed shall make their own way towards them, and shall escape the influence of those that are evil, so far shall they succeed in throwing off their bitter thraldom, and in wrenching the scourge from the hands of tyranny.

Slavery has done much to ruin us, and we ourselves have done some things which effect the same. Perhaps the evils of which I am about to speak arise from slavery, and are the things without which the system cannot exist. But nevertheless we must contribute largely towards their overthrow. If it is in our power to destroy these evils, and we do not, then much of our own blood will be found on us.

May God grant, that we may betake ourselves to greater wisdom and frugality. I know that the oppressed above all other people need holidays, and pastimes, but in no case should we bid adieu to our common sense. Let all be careful, lest in this age of ribbon, velvet and gold lace revival, that we do not fall into fanaticism. Fanatics sometimes have strange visions, and it would be strange, "passing strange," should any considerable portion of a whole race imagine themselves in a world of ribbons, painted sticks, and vanity without measure.

We should have likewise, days of bitter bread, and tabernacle in the wilderness, in which to remember our grief-worn brothers and sisters. They are now pleading with million tongues against those who have dispoiled them. They cry from gory fields--from pestilential rice swamps--from cane breaks, and forests--from plantations of cotton and tabacco--from the dark holds of slave ships, and from countless acres where the sugar cane nods to the sighing winds. They lift up their voices from all the land over which the flag of our country floats. From the banks of our silver streams, and broad rivers, from our valleys and sloping hills, and mountain tops!

The silence that reigns in the region where the pale nations of the earth slumber, is solemn, and awful. But what think ye, when you are told that every rood of land in this Union is the grave of a murdered man, and their epitaphs are written upon the monuments of the nation's wealth. Ye destroyers of my people draw near, and read the mournful inscription; aye! read it, until it is daguerotyped on your souls. "You have slain us all the day long--you have had no mercy." Legions of haggard ghosts stalk through the land. Behold! see, they come: Oh what myriads! Hark hear their broken bones as they clatter together! With deep unearthly voices they cry "We come, we come! for vengeance we come! Tremble, guilty nation, for the God of Justice lives and reigns." The screaming of the eagle as he darts through lightning and storm is unheard because of these voices. The tocsin of the sabbath, and the solemn organ are mocked by them. They drown the preacher's voice, and produce discord in the sacred choirs. Sworn senators and perjured demagogues, as they officiate around the alter of Moloch in the national capitol, they hear the wailings of the victims of base born democracy, and they are ill at ease in their unexampled hypocracy. The father of waters, may roar in his progress to the ocean--the Niagara may thunder, but these voices from the living and the dead, rise above them all.

Such, ladies and gentlemen, are the outlines of the picture of the Colored Race throughout the world. Behind us and on either side are waste places, and deserts, but before us are green spots and living springs.

The genius of slavery in this country has taken his course southward. It has passed its Rubicon, the far distant Sabine. Infatuated with its victories, it has pressed forward to the sandy shores of the Neuces, where it paused but for a moment. It has Texas and moves on beyond the Rio Del Norte.

"Six slave states added at a breath! one flourish of a pen, And fetters are riveted on millions more of men, How all the damned leap up, and half forget their fire, To think men take such pains to claim the notice of God's ire."

Nor has it been satisfied when all this was done. It has laid its hands upon the nation's standard, and has urged its way through flood, and field, until that blood-stained banner waves on the halls of the Montazumas. It claims its victories on the ensanguined plains of Monterey, Cero Gordo, Chepultepec, Churubusco, and Beuna Vista, and hangs out its stiffened and gory garments from the old grey walls of Vera Cruz. These are but a part of slavery's conquests on this continent. It is among the things that are possible that these triumphs are defeats in disguise. "God taketh the wise in their own craftiness, and the counsel of the ungodly carries headlong." I would not dispair of the triumph of freedom in the hemisphere, were Mexico to be annexed to this union. For one I would welcome my dark-browed and liberty-loving brethren to our embrace. Aye! let them come with the population of seven and a half millions. One fifth of that number are white, and they are ultra Abolitionists. Two fifths are Indians, and the other two fifths are of the black, and mixed races. I repeat it, I should not dispair if they should come.

The dominions of slavery are directly between Northern and Southern freedom--between Eastern and Western Democracy. In the East the sons of New England are waking up at freedom's call, among the tombs of their fathers.

"Grey Plymouth's Rock hath yet a tongue, and Concord is not dumb."

The men of the North begin to appreciate the doctrine which has been long inculcated, that in order to be free themselves, they must emancipate the bondmen. The young lion of the West has torn the net of voluntary servitude, and gives signs of his latent strength. "The peculiar Institution" is doomed. President Polk sees this, and he spares neither blood, nor treasure to save it. Mr. John C. Calhoun is aware of it, and like some mighty Collossus, he stands astride the dark and troubled waters of his darling system, and like a frightened girl, appeals piteously to his brethren of the North and the South, to come to the rescue, and save him from a humiliating downfall. His predicament is pictured, very correctly by the gifted and devoted Bard of Liberty, JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

"Where's now the boast, which even thy guarded tongue, Cold, calm, and proud, in the teeth o' the senate flung, O'er the fulfillment of thy baleful plan, Like Satan's triumph, at the fall of man? How stood'st thou then, thy foot on Freedom planting, And pointing to the lurid heaven afar, Whence all could see through the south window's slanting, Crimson as blood, the beams of the Lone star: The Fates are just; they give us but our own; Nemesis ripens what our hands have sown. There is an eastern story, not unknown, Doubtless to thee, of one whose magic skill, Call'd demons up his water jars to fill; Deftly, and silently they did his will, But when the task was done kept pouring still. In vain with spell, and charm the wizard wrought, Faster and faster were the buckets brought, Higher, and higher rose the flood around, Till the fiends clapped their hands above their master drowned."

New and startling scenes are passing before us continually. No man of common sense, will declare to-day, that he will not be on the side of freedom to-morrow. All the while the Colored race, are increasing in a ratio unprecedented in the history of any oppressed people.

The Spaniard conquered Mexico three hundred years ago. His impress is scarcely preceptible upon it. Many of the chiefs of the country are mixed blood, some of them pure Indian, while the population, as a whole, is altogether mongrel.

But there is another race "parallel, co-relative, and inter-mixed with the Anglo-American. Include Texas, and go from the East boundary of the Louisiana purchase, to the Rio Grande, thus:

Who is there, after looking at these facts, will question the probability of the assumption, that this republic, and this continent, are to be the theatre in which the grand drama of our triumphant Destiny is to be enacted.

The Red men of North America are retreating from the approach of the white man. They have fallen like trees on the ground in which they first took root, and on the soil which their foliage once shaded. But the Colored race, although they have been transplanted in a foreign land, have clung to and grown with their oppressors, as the wild ivy entwines around the trees of the forest, nor can they be torn thence. At this moment when so much feigned hatred is manifested toward us, our blood is mixed with every tribe from Cape Horn to the Frozen Ocean. Skillful men have set themselves to work at analyzation, and yet in many cases they are perplexed in deciding where to draw the line between the Negro and the Anglo-Saxon. Whatever our colorless brethren say of themselves, so far do they proclaim our future position. Do they say in proud exultation,

"No pent up Utica contracts our powers, The whole boundless continent is ours,"

in this they bespeak our destiny.

There are those who, either from good or evil motives, plead for the utopian plan of the Colonization of a whole race to the shores of Africa. We are now colonized. We are planted here, and we cannot as a whole people, be re-colonized back to our father-land. It is too late to make a successful attempt to separate the black and white people in the New World. They love one another too much to endure a separation. Where one is, there will the other be also. Ruth, of the Old Testament, puts the resolve of our destiny in our mouths, which we will repeat to those who would expatriate us: "Entreat me not to leave thee nor return from following after thee, for whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God shall be my God. Where thou diest there will I die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more, if aught but death part thee and me."

On the other continent, the destiny of the colored people will be similar to that of the people among whom they are scattered. Colorphobia is confined almost entirely to the United States and the Canadas. We speak of prejudice against color, but in fact, nothing of the kind exists. The prejudice is against the condition alone. Were not this the case the American feeling would pervade the whole earth.

Many things that were intended for evil to us, will result, I trust, in good. The tyrants have debarred us from the wealth accruing from trade and commerce. This is an evil. But may it not be hoped that we are their juniors in the art of cheating? We have among us some arrant cheats, but it is presumed that but a few will doubt that our white brothers bear off the palm in this department of human depravity. The besetting sins of the Anglo-Saxon race are, the love of gain and the love of power. In many instances, while our services could be dispensed with, we have not been permitted to join the army, and of course have not been killed in the wars. We have been driven from the sanctuaries where our oppressors worship, and it may be that we are not quite as hypocritical as their practices have made them. When the great national account shall be rendered before the tribunal of Justice, the guilt of course must be borne by those who might have had, or who have used the power of the government. There may, therefore, be some good that may come out of this evil. But no thanks to the evil doers. Their works are evil still, the good comes in spite of them.

The old doctrine of the natural inferiority of the colored race, propagated in America by Mr. Thomas Jefferson, has long since been refuted by Dr. John Mason Goode, and numerous respectable witnesses from among the slandered, both living and dead: Pushkin in Russia, Dumas in France, Toussaint in Hayti, Banaker, Theodore Sedgwick Wright, and a host in America, and a brilliant galaxy in Ancient History.

There are blessings in store for our patient, suffering race,--there is light and glory. The star of our hope is slowly and steadily rising above the horizon. As a land that has long been covered by storm and clouds, and shaken by the thunder, when the storms and clouds had passed away, and the thunder was succeeded by a calm, like that which cheered the first glad morning, and flower and shrub smiled as they looked up to God, and the mountains, plains and valleys rung with joy,--so shall this race come forth and re-occupy their station of renown.

We must also cherish and maintain a national and patriotic sentiment and attachment. Some people of color say that they have no home, no country. I am not among that number. It is empty declamation. It is unwise. It is not logical--it is false. Of all the people in this wide earth, among the countless hordes of misery, there is not one so poor as to be without a home and a country. America is my home, my country, and I have no other. I love whatever of good there may be in her institutions. I hate her sins. I loathe her slavery, and I pray Heaven that ere long she may wash away her guilt in tears of repentance. I love the green-hills which my eyes first beheld in my infancy. I love every inch of soil which my feet pressed in my youth, and I mourn because the accursed shade of slavery rests upon it. I love my country's flag, and I hope that soon it will be cleansed of its stains, and be hailed by all nations as the emblem of freedom and independence.

FOOTNOTES:

Rev. Beriah Green.

Numbers, 12 chap. 10 v.

The whole number of slaves in the French Colonies were almost 300,000.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or alternate spelling which may have been in use at the time of publication has been retained.

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