Chapter VII: Section III

THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY RECOGNISES SLAVES AS PROPERTY.

The heresies of this combination are flagrant and numerous. A larger volume than this is needed to define and illustrate them all. Much important evidence, and many pertinent reflections, I am compelled to suppress.

My next allegation against it is, _that it recognises slaves as property_. This recognition is not merely technical, or strictly confined to a statutable interpretation. I presume the advocates of the Society will attempt to evade this point, by saying that it never meant to concede the moral right of the masters to possess human beings; but the evidence against them is full and explicit. The Society, if language mean any thing, does unequivocally acknowledge property in slaves to be as legitimate and sacred as any other property, of which to deprive the owners either by force or by legislation, without making restitution, would be unjust and tyrannical. Here is the proof:

'It interferes in no wise with the _rights of property_.' * *
'It is utterly opposed to any measures which might infringe upon
the _rights of property_.' * * 'We hold their slaves _as we hold
their other property_, SACRED.'--[African Repository, vol. i.
pp. 39, 225, 283.]

'Does this Society wish to meddle with our slaves as our
_rightful property_? I answer _no_, I think not.' * * 'The
Society cannot be justly charged with aiming to disturb the
_rights of property_ or the peace of society.' * * 'It seeks to
affect no man's _property_.' * * 'To found in Africa, an empire
of _christians and republicans_; to reconduct the blacks to
their native land, without disturbing the order of society, the
_laws of property_, or the rights of individuals,' &c.--[African
Repository, vol. ii. pp. 13, 58, 334, 375.]

'They are also convinced, that the Society have conducted their
operations with so much prudence, as to give no cause of alarm
to the holders of slaves, for the security of _this
property_.'--[African Repository, volume iii. p. 341.]

'The rights of masters are to remain sacred in the eyes of the
Society.'--[African Repository, vol. iv. p. 274.]

'The Society has never interfered, and has no disposition to
interfere with the rights of private property.' * * 'The alarm
for the rights of property appears to have subsided, and the
Society is no longer charged with any sinister or insidious
design. It has constantly disclaimed any intention of disturbing
the rights of others; and its conduct entitles its declaration
to credit.' * * 'The American Colonization Society has, at all
times, solemnly disavowed any purpose of interference with the
institutions or rights of our Southern communities.' * * 'Our
friends, who are cursed with this greatest of human evils
(slavery) deserve our kindest attention and consideration. Their
_property_ and safety are both involved.'--[African Repository,
vol. v. pp. 215, 241, 307, 334.]

'It has constantly disclaimed all intention whatever of
interfering, in the smallest degree, with the rights of
property.' * * 'The Society, from considerations like these,
whilst it disclaims the remotest idea of ever disturbing the
_right of property_ in slaves,' &c. * * 'It is not the object of
this Society to liberate slaves, or touch the rights of
_property_.' * * 'Honorable instances might be adduced of
_disinterested benevolence_ on the part of the owners of slaves,
and of their _sacrificing property_ to a large amount, in their
enfranchisement and restoration to the land of their ancestors.'
* * 'The American Society has disclaimed from the first moment
of its institution, all intention of interfering with _rights of
property_.' * * 'The federal government has no control over this
subject: it concerns rights of property secured by the federal
compact, upon which our civil liberties mainly depend; it is a
part of the same collection of political rights; and _any
invasion of it would impair the tenure by which every other is
held_.' * * 'It is equally plain and undeniable, that the
Society in the prosecution of this work, has never interfered or
evinced even a disposition to interfere in any way with the
_rights of proprietors of slaves_.' * * 'The slaveholder, so far
from having just cause to complain of the Colonization Society,
has reason to congratulate himself, that in this Institution a
channel is opened up, in which the public feeling and public
action can flow on, without doing violence to his
_rights_.'--[African Repository, vol. vi. pp. 13, 69, 81, 153,
165, 169, 205, 363.]

'It was proper again and again to repeat, that it was far from
the intention of the Society to affect, in any manner, the
tenure by which a _certain species of property_ is held. He was
himself a slaveholder; _and he considered that kind of property
as inviolable as any other in the country_.'--[Speech of Henry
Clay.--First Annual Report.]

'Your committee would not thus favorably regard the prayer of
the memorialists, if it sought to impair, _in the slightest
degree, the rights of private property_.'--[Report of the
committee of the House of Representatives of the United States,
on the memorial of the President and Board of Managers of the
Colonization Society.--Second Annual Report.]

'The Society has at all times recognised the constitutional and
LEGITIMATE existence of slavery.'--[Tenth Annual Report.]

'The Society protests that it has no designs on the rights of
the master in the slave--or the property in his slave, which the
laws guarantee to him.'--[Fourteenth Annual Report.]

'Something he must yet be allowed to say, as regarded the object
the Society was set up to accomplish. This object, if he
understood it aright, _involved no intrusion on property_, NOR
EVEN UPON PREJUDICE.'--[Fifteenth Annual Report.]

'To the slaveholder, who had charged upon them the wicked design
of interfering with the RIGHTS OF PROPERTY under the specious
pretext of removing a vicious and dangerous free population,
they address themselves in a tone of conciliation and sympathy.
We know your rights, say they, and _we respect them_.' * *
'Equally absurd and false is the objection, that this Society
seeks indirectly to disturb the rights of property, and to
interfere with the well established relation subsisting between
master and slave.'--[African Repository, vol. vii. pp. 100,
228.]

'I repeat, that though not a slaveholder, yet I think that every
man ought to be protected in his property, and as the laws of
our country have decreed that negroes are property, every person
that holds a slave, according to these laws, ought to be
protected.'--['A new and interesting View of Slavery.' By
Humanitas, a colonization advocate. Baltimore, 1820.]

'We are made to disregard this description of _property_, and to
touch without reserve the _rights_ of our
neighbors.'--[Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the
New-Jersey Colonization Society.]

Thus the American Colonization Society shamelessly surrenders the claims of justice, and leaves the enemies of oppression weaponless! Hence it rejects the proposition, that _man cannot hold property in man_; and we are called upon to prove that which is self-evident. No accidental differences of condition or complexion--no vicissitudes of fortune--no reprisal or purchase or inheritance, can justly make one individual the slave of another. When God created man, he gave him dominion over the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field; but not over his fellow man. 'All men are born free and equal,' and are 'made of one blood.' Shall we look to wealth as giving one a title to the labor and freedom of another? Wealth is the creature of circumstances, and not an arbitrary law of nature. It takes to itself wings, and flies away; and he who is an opulent tyrant to-day, may on this principle be an impoverished slave to-morrow. Does physical strength make valid this claim? This, too, is evanescent: sickness and age would ultimately degrade the most muscular tyrants to servitude; and mankind would be composed of but two parties--the strong and the weak. Can high birth annul the rights of the lower classes? There is no difference at their birth, between the children of the beggar and those of the king. 'We brought nothing into this world,' says an inspired apostle, 'and it is certain we can carry nothing out.'

Man is created a rational being; and therefore he is a subject of moral government, and accountable. Being rational and accountable, he is bound to improve his mind and intellect. With this design, his Creator has outstretched the heavens, and set the sun in his course, and hung out the burning jewels of the sky, and spread abroad the green earth, and poured out the seas, that he might steadily progress in knowledge.

The slaves are men; they were born, then, as free as their masters; they cannot be property; and he who denies them an opportunity to improve their faculties, comes into collision with Jehovah, and incurs a fearful responsibility. But we know that they are not treated like rational beings, and that oppression almost entirely obliterates their sense of moral obligation to God or man.

I fully coincide in opinion with the authoress of a work entitled, 'IMMEDIATE, NOT GRADUAL ABOLITION,' that the holder of a slave, whether he obtained him by purchase or by inheritance, is as guilty as the original thief.[K] The wretch who stole him could by no possible means acquire or transmit the right to make a slave of him, or to keep him in slavery. _He has a right to his liberty:_--through whatever number of transfers the usurpation of it may have passed, the right is undiminished.

No man, says Algernon Sidney, can have a right over others, unless it be by them granted to him: That which is not just, is not law; and that which is not law, ought not to be in force: Whosoever grounds his pretensions of right upon usurpation and tyranny, declares himself to be an usurper and a tyrant--that is, an enemy to God and man--and to have no right at all: _That which was unjust in its beginning, can of itself never change its nature:_ HE WHO PERSISTS IN DOING INJUSTICE, AGGRAVATES IT, AND TAKES UPON HIMSELF ALL THE GUILT OF HIS PREDECESSORS: The right to be free is a truth planted in the hearts of men, and acknowledged so to be by all who have hearkened to the voice of nature, and disproved by none but such as through wickedness, stupidity, or baseness of spirit, seem to have degenerated into the worst of beasts, and to have retained nothing of men but the outward shape, or the ability of doing those mischiefs which they have learnt from their master the devil.

The following is the indignant, emphatic, eloquent language of HENRY BROUGHAM, on the subject of slave property:

'_Tell me not of rights--talk not of the property of the planter
in his slaves._ I DENY THE RIGHT--I ACKNOWLEDGE NOT THE
PROPERTY. The principles, the feelings of our common nature,
rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the
understanding or to the heart, the sentence is the same that
rejects it. In vain you tell me of the laws that sanction such a
claim! There is a law above all the enactments of human
codes--the same throughout the world, the same in all
times--such as it was before the daring genius of Columbus
pierced the night of ages, and opened to one world the sources
of power, wealth and knowledge; to another, all unutterable
woes;--such it is at this day: it is the law written by the
finger of God on the heart of man; and by that law, unchangeable
and eternal, while men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and
abhor blood, they shall reject with indignation the wild and
guilty fantasy, that man can hold property in man! In vain you
appeal to treaties, to covenants between nations. The covenants
of the Almighty, whether the old or the new, denounce such
unholy pretensions. To those laws did they of old refer, who
maintained the African trade. Such treaties did they cite, and
not untruly; for by one shameful compact, you bartered the
glories of Blenheim for the traffic in blood. Yet, in despite of
law and of treaties, that infernal traffic is now destroyed, and
its votaries put to death like other pirates. How came this
change to pass? Not assuredly by parliament leading the way; but
the country at length awoke; the indignation of the people was
kindled; it descended in thunder, and smote the traffic, and
scattered its guilty profits to the winds. Now, then, let the
planters beware--let their assemblies beware--let the government
at home beware--let the parliament beware! the same country is
once more awake,--awake to the condition of negro slavery; the
same indignation kindles in the bosom of the same people; the
same cloud is gathering that annihilated the slave trade; and,
if it shall descend again, they, on whom its crash shall fall,
will not be destroyed before I have warned them; but I pray that
their destruction may turn away from us the more terrible
judgments of God!'

Is this the language of fanaticism? Is Henry Brougham a madman?

The following extracts must close the evidence in support of my third allegation, that the Colonization Society disregards the fundamental principle of human liberty and equality, that man cannot hold _property_ in man:

'Let me ask, who can wish under existing circumstances that the
constitution should be altered, when it must bring with it a
_violation of property_--and when that violation of private
property must engender such hostility of feelings, and elicit
such bitter vituperation? The whole Union would feel a
concussion, and no one can count the costs of the contest.'
* * * 'By means of our colony, they may remove their slaves and
restore them to freedom--and at the same time no way jeopardize
the safety of themselves or their _property_.'--[Proceedings of
the First Annual Meeting of the New-Jersey Colonization
Society.]

'The establishment of our colony will afford facilities to
proprietors for completing in Africa the exercise of the _right
which can only be partially exercised in this country, of
disposing of our property, in our own way, without injury to the
community_.'--[Fourteenth Annual Report.]

What audacity do those advocates of the Society exhibit, who use, in reference to beings made a little lower than the angels, language like this--'disposing of _our property_ in _our own way_'--'we hold their _slaves_, as we hold their other _property_, SACRED'!![L] If they really mean and believe what they say, it is something more heinous than impertinence to urge the planters to dispossess themselves of their property by colonization; and if the slaves belong _of right_ to them,--are on a par with goods and chattels,--how idle, how supremely ridiculous it is to mourn over their _wretched condition_, to sigh for their emancipation, to declaim against the evil and wickedness of slavery, or even to denounce the slave trade! But the unfortunate blacks are not now, and never can be, the property of the planters; consequently the claims of their pretended owners are no better than those of the pirate or highway robber.

FOOTNOTES:

[K] The owners of slaves are licensed robbers, and not the just proprietors of what they claim: freeing them is not depriving them of property, but restoring it to the right owner; it is suffering the unlawful captive to escape. It is not wronging the master, but doing justice to the slave, restoring him to himself. Emancipation would only take away property that is its own property, and not ours; property that has the same right to possess us, as we have to possess it; property that has the same right to convert our children into dogs and calves and colts, as we have to convert theirs into these beasts; property that may transfer our children to strangers, by the same right that we transfer theirs.--_Rice._

[L] 'Is there no difference between a vested interest in a house or a tenement, and a vested interest in a human being? No difference between a right to bricks and mortar, and a right to the flesh of man--a right to torture his body and to degrade his mind at your good will and pleasure? There is this difference,--the right to the house originates in law, and is reconcilable to justice; the claim (for I will not call it a right) to the man, originated in robbery, and is an outrage upon every principle of justice, and every tenet of religion.'--_Speech of Fowell Buxton in the British Parliament._