New Haven (CT) Columbian Register, "The African Race," July 30, 1859

The African Race

   The article copied below, from a Republican paper, tells so many home truths, and makes so many startling confessions, that it should be cut out by every reflecting man, and put away for future reference. If in the free States we feel the few blacks in our midst a burthen, what would be our condition if the abolition scheme should be carried out, of letting loose four millions more of a like population, to spread themselves among us? For the present evils, the African Colonization Society, which the abolitionists war against, offers the best, the natural, and the most philanthropic remedy. The climate of Africa is the negro's natural element --and there in Liberia good institutions have already been founded, and political and social equality may be found for him. But that out-let would be of no avail, if four millions more were suddenly thrown upon their own resources. It makes no difference whether political equality is offered the negro in this country or not; he cares nothing about it. Vermont, a true-blue abolition commonwealth, several years ago abolished all distinctions as to color --and we would suppose according to the abolition theory, that there would be a perfect rush of the free blacks, a stampede, to avail themselves of such desirable privileges. Instead of that however, the census tells us that there are but about five hundred negroes in the whole State of Vermont, --not as many as they formerly had, and but about half as many as we have here in the single city of New Haven, where negroes are not allowed to vote, and do not attend schools with the whites. --Maryland and Virginia, both slave States, and where the political and social disabilities of negroes, whether bond or free, are the themes of outside Black Republican sympathy, contain (as shown by the census) more free blacks than either of the great States of Pennsylvania, Ohio or New York. Why do not some of the Virginia and Maryland free blacks go to Vermont? Echo answers, why?

   There are some other telling truths which the census gives. The increase of the white population of the United States in ten years is at the rate of $6 per cent --but the free blacks in the same time, increase but 10 per cent --not withstanding the large accessions to the numbers by emancipation, and by underground railroads. Indeed, we believe the black race diminishes in the free States, and is fading away rapidly, though they have in those States generally the benefits of public schools, and in several of them the elective franchise. The ten per cent increase on the aggregate free blacks, is probably made up by these (and they are the great majority,) who choose to remain in the slave States after they have been emancipated. The slave population increases at the rate of 88 per cent in ten years --this is the natural increase, notwithstanding the losses by run-aways, and by voluntary emancipation. This increase is greater than that of the whites, which, as we have before seen, stands at 36, though aided much by the stream of white emigrants from Europe; and is nearly four times greater than that of the free blacks. But we are keeping the reader too long from the article to which attention has been invited. Here it is:

                                                                         From the Philadelphia North American.

                                                                              Our Free Colored Population.

   If there is any one fact established by steady accumulating evidence, it is that the free negro cannot find a congenial home in the United States. He is an exotic amongst us, and all the efforts of philanthropists to naturalize him on American soil and under American skies have failed. We know that it is common to contribute this failure to the prejudice of the whites, which defeats all the attempts made to improve radically and permanently the condition of the blacks; but after allowing to this cause all the influence which it deserves, it must be admitted that it does not explain the almost universal degradation of the colored population of the free States, and we must look beyond prejudice and social ostracism, and the unequal legislation which may be supposed to flow from these, for some deeper explanation --one which we believe is to be found in the constitution of the negro himself.

   It is a great mistake to suppose that the mere circumstance or removing the political disabilities under which any particular class may happen to labor, is sufficient, of itself, to alter and improve their condition. The most that liberal institutions and laws can do is to leave men free to the exercise and development of their faculties in general; and according to the nature of these faculties, and the innate qualities of the soul, will be the state of the man and of society resulting. Now, so far as the colored population of most of the free States are concerned, there are no laws that trammel their faculties and limit the sphere of their industry. They are at liberty to pursue most callings and to accumulate property. The laws extend protection to the person and property of the colored man as they do to the white. And to prove this, if proof were needed, it would be easy to mention the names of a few persons belonging to this class, who have grown rich by honest industry. And in the face of such a state of things, when we find the great bulk of our colored population, ninety-nine in a hundred, making a precarious livelihood by contentedly performing the most menial offices, or living in idleness and wretchedness, we can hardly fail to attribute it to characteristics of their own. It cannot be doubted that enough sympathy is felt for our colored people to furnish them with encouragement and patronage if they had the enterprise to become good mechanics and laborers, and the energy to compete with the white laborer. And besides, in the North, there is usually such a demand for labor as to absorb the supply, and no well qualified work man, unless in periods of depression, need fear to be unemployed. But we see the blacks daily driven from avocations once deemed almost exclusively their own. It is long since they have flourished in any of the trades, if they ever pursued them with success. Within a few years they have ceased to be hackney coachmen and draymen; and they are now almost displaced as stevedores. They are rapidly losing their places as barbers and servants. Ten families employ white servants now where one did twenty years ago. Whatever explanations may be given of these facts, the facts themselves cannot be denied --and what is to be done with our colored population, unless they can be induced to return as colonists to the native land of their race, or seek some other tropical region, baffles the wisest of us to say.

   We are led to these remarks by reflecting on the great reluctance displayed by the people of the new States to having free negroes settle amongst them. There is something more in this than mere prejudice or jealousy. It is exhibited in places where the political sentiments of the people are as diverse as in Kansas, Oregon and Iowa. It seems as if it were to become a rule, in framing a Constitution for a new State, to prohibit the residence of free negroes. In the case of a slave State it is not difficult to understand this. The presence of the free negro is a disadvantage to the slave. And besides, the policy of the slave State is to discourage manumission, which draws from the resources of the State by diminishing the number of laborers. But in a free State where emigration is invited by holding out every inducement to the inhabitants of the old States and to foreigners, this aversion to the presence of colored people can only be explained by the opinion that has obtained, almost universally, that they cannot become useful citizens of the United States, or in other words, that they cannot compete, on equal terms with the white races.

   The opinion is undoubtedly founded on observation. It has come to prevail in the free States, in spite of theories --we had almost said in defiance of the wishes of good men everywhere. And it is of the utmost importance that this truth should be fully recognized by humand and philanthropic men. We believe that all labors directed to the promotion of the welfare of the free colored man, as well as the slave population of this country, will miserably fail, unless this truth is borne in mind. We applaud to the movement the echo made in Russia by the Czar to enfranchise the peasant, and raise the serf to the dignity of a free man; and this, because there is no natural difference between the Russian landlord and his servant attached to the soil. The latter possesses all the capabilities belonging to the former, and needs only that chance of development which the restrictions imposed by the laws forbid them to enjoy. But the perplexing problem which we in the United States must bring to a practical solution, which is to be done for a race which in the absence of prohibitory laws can make no headway whatever for itself --or, at least, more in the presence of a race of superior intellectual force and energy.

   We see new communities springing up, and absolutely prohibiting the residence of a class, marked by peculiar physical and moral characteristics, among them, on the conviction that its members must be a burthen on their resources. We see the same class at our own doors, as a body, daily becoming more helpless. Of all questions, none deserves more to be well pondered, than that which relates to the disposition to be made of the negroes on this American continent. Let not a hasty judgement pronounce their case utterly hopeless; nor, on the other hand, let false theories respecting the equal intellectual and moral force of the the races deceive into a mistaken and injurious policy.