Now, Mitchell was a very loyal and capable Union man. -- Walt 7/20/2003
Just look at the piece of human garbage Lincoln hired and kept hold of as Minister of Emigration. Look at what the Lincoln Administration mass produced at the Government Printing Office at taxpayer expense. This guy was worse than David Duke.
Letter on the Relation of the White and African Races in the United States Showing the Necessity of the Colonization of the Latter
Addressed to President Abraham Lincoln
May 18, 1862
Let us then, earnestly and respectfully recommend as a remedy for our present troubles and future danger, the perfecting the proposed plans of the administration in regard to those two conflicting races, and the careful and gradual removal of the colored race to some desirable and convenient home. This suggests that the tropical lands of our own hemisphere should be devoted to their use, and that all available means should be seized to pour a flood of Anglo-African civilization on the tropical lands of the old hemisphere most accessible to us (Western Africa.) In doing this we take from imperialism its temptation to tamper with our republicanism; for by preserving the heterogeneous character of our population, we perpetuate our republican equality in social and civil life.It further suggests that our legislation should cover the wants and well-being of both races, and that statesmen should consider, first, the good of the white race, then, the good and well-being of the black; making at least as liberal appropriations for the colonization of the Indian, upon whom millions on millions have been expended with but imperfect success in the cause of civilization, whilst the slender means of the friends of the African civilization have produced lasting results. Some affect to fear that the man of color will not remove to a separate locality. It is not to be expected that a race, which has hardly attained a mental majority, will rise in a day to the stature of the men who found empires, build cities, and lay the ground work of civil institutions like ours; nor should they be expected to do this unaided and alone. They should receive the kind attention, direction, and aid of those who understand such things; nor will the world condemn a gentle pressure in the forward course to overcome the natural inertia of masses long used to the driver's will and rod. Let us do justice in the provision we make for their future comfort, and surety they will do justice to our distracted Republic. If they should fail to do this, there would then be more propriety in weighing the requirement of some to remove without consultation, but not till then. The more intelligent men of color can now see the necessity that rests upon us, and they will aid us in this work. We know that there is a growing sentiment in the country which considered the removal of the freed man, without consulting him, "a moral and military necessity" -- as a measure necessary to the purity of public morals and the peace of the country; and this unhappy war of white man with white man, about the condition of the black, will multiply this sentiment. But we cannot go further now than suggesting, that the mandatory relation held by the rebel master should escheat to the Federal government in a modified sense, so as to enable his proper government and gradual removal to a proper home where he can be independent.
- Mitchell was perfecting the proposed plans of the administration.
- Mitchell advised Lincoln to use a "gentle pressure" to overcome inertia.
- Shortly thereafter, at a meeting arranged and attended by Mitchell, Lincoln used "gentle pressure" on black leaders.
- Mitchell advised Lincoln that "the more intelligent men of color ... will aid us in this work."
- Lincoln met with intelligent men of color, as arranged by Mitchell.
- The plan met with unexpected resistance. It met with resistance not only from Black leaders, but from Radical Republicans as well.
- Lincoln never gave up hope and Mitchell was kept in his position until after Lincoln's death.
- Lincoln was never able to overcome the political opposition to his plan.
U. S. Department of the Interior (RG 48): African Slave Trade and Negro Colonization, Records of, 1854-1872. M160. 10 rolls.
Roll 8: Communications relating to Rev. James Mitchell, emigration agent of the Department of the Interior, Apr. 8, 1862-June 6, 1865
The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
Series 1. General Correspondence. 1833-1916.
James Mitchell to Abraham Lincoln, May 18, 1862 (Pamphlet) Top of Form 1
LETTER
ON THE RELATION OF
THE WHITE AND AFRICAN RACES
IN
THE UNITED STATES
SHOWING THE NECESSITY OF THE
COLONIZATION OF THE LATTER
ON THE RELATION OF
THE WHITE AND AFRICAN RACES
IN
THE UNITED STATES
SHOWING THE NECESSITY OF THE
COLONIZATION OF THE LATTER
WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
1862
MAY 18, 1862
Page 3
His Excellency ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
SIR: The conviction of this nation being wide-spread, and becoming more general each day, that the peace and prosperity of the country and the permanency of our republican civilization, require a separation of the colored or negro race from us, suggests that the statesmen whose duty it is, from time to time, to reflect in their legislative movements such public sentiment as is well grounded and correct, should now assume and fix firmly in the national policy on this subject such fundamental principles of action as will prove lights and guides to the men who in after ages shall be obliged to meet and battle with difficulties like those you have encountered; for the experience of the past shows that the future is fraught with danger to the peace of this country. The calamity that now rests upon us had long been foreseen and deprecated by the wise and reflecting men of the past generation, and untiring efforts have been made to avoid them by many of the men of this. But the mass of the nation would not heed the words of warning; they abandoned themselves to the lead of our enemies, foreign and domestic; hence this storm of blighting war. Yet, terrible as is this civil war between men of kindred race for the dominion of the servant, future history will show that it has been moderate and altogether tolerable when contrasted with a struggle between the black and white race, which, within the next one or two hundred years must sweep over this nation, unless the wise and prudent statesmen of this generation avert it. In that struggle the issue will be the existence of the weaker race, and we must not flatter ourselves that the most numerous, in all localities, will be the white race.
Permit us, then, to ask you aid and influence to induce the people of this Republic, through their National and State governments, to make a speedy, energetic, and uniform move through all their courts of legislation, all their means of influence and agencies of political power, to produce the separation of those races, the removal of the colored race to a proper locality, and establishment in independence there. Surely this exercise of influence is a legitimate prerogative of the Chief Magistrate, the guardian of national peace, who, being convinced of impending danger to the country, has the undoubted right to notify the nation
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of its approach, and recommend the remedy. Being grateful for the positions you have assumed, and the recommendations you have made, we herein respectfully submit a few reflections intended to sustain (thought feeble may be the effort) the policy proposed, and asking that, so long as God grants you place and power at the head of this great nation, you will continue to this subject the cure its magnitude merits and our national dangers demand.
The rebellion that is not shaking the foundation of the nation, is the struggle of Imperialism to establish itself in a republican land. Imperialism, the government of the many by the few, the dominion of unchecked, despotic will, is one of the curses resulting from man's apostacy. For ages it has been regarded as a necessary evil amongst men - a thing of Divine appointment - and the fortunate incumbents of this power, for long centuries, have sheltered themselves behind this opinion, and strengthened themselves in this conviction. Nor are they altogether without authority in this; for, as despotic rule is a curse, we must admit that instruments for its infliction have been permitted.
Republicanism, on the other hand, is a deliverance from this curse of despotic rule - and the law is supreme - meteing out equal protection and equal justice. Such was the plan of our republicanism as projected by the fathers of the nation; such has been the practice of most of the communities embraced within the broad field of the Republic; but in other sections of the land a different economy prevailed and continues to prevail; an imperialism of a circumscribed character has been practised, which necessarily saps the foundation of republicanism and educates the people to imperial rule. This has been the source of our danger, and in this manifest weakness the imperialists of Europe have found the greatest temptation to tamper with our prosperity and integrity.
Our danger in the future arises from the fact that we have 4,500,000 persons, who, whilst amongst us, cannot be of us - persons of a different race, forming necessarily a distinct interest; the germ of a distinct political power, not now fully disclosed but to be disclosed in future ages; and from the fact that the government applied to those people is not republican, but anti-republican, having many of the imperial marks about it, the toleration of which has educated many
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of our people to look with favor on a radical change of our republican institutions.
The social and civil evils resulting from the presence of the negro race are numerous, and their magnitude can be better discovered by the stranger than the victims of the calamity.
Amongst them we rank first and most destructive to the purity and simplicity of society - which strikes deeper at the root of good order, and mines most effectually the foundations of that citadel of national stability, the family - the license of the races, which is giving to this continent a nation of bastards. No apology can be given for this; none will be received by the Great Ruler; he will punish for this with fearful severity. It should not be concealed from the authorities of the land, and the parties interested should not be permitted to disguise the criminal fact, that the most immoral maxims are retained amongst this people, and made the justification of crime in this regard - all predicated on the hope of the colored race to rise by the illicit absorption of their blood into the mass of this nation. Time and again has this hope been expressed in our hearing, and as often denounced as the source and cause of crime. That political economist must be blind indeed; that statesman must be a shallow thinker, who cannot see a fearful future before this country, if the production of this mixed race is not checked by removal. So sure as time sweeps on, giving intelligence, members, strength, and more corrupt European blood to this class, so sure the period will come when this mixed population will assume the offensive, and possibly the next great civil war will be the conflict of this race for dominion and existence. It is strange, passing strange, that our moralists will not look this part of the matter in the face, and shape their precepts accordingly.
The second social evil, we rank the production of strife in the church courts of our land, and the damage to Christian faith resulting therefrom.
The third is our civil contentions, which are now threatening our national existence; the second precedes the third, and must always go hand and hand with it. The war of words and opinions always precedes the clash of arms. Take a review of the past twenty years; the men of the North, actuated no doubt by benevolence, demanded reforms in the clear and well known abuses resulting from the presence of the negro. The questions were introduced into the
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church courts; the reforms advocated and agitated, not always in correct temper; the controllers of this undesirable population took the alarm; they sought refuge in Scripture precedents; northern resolutions and sermons were met by southern resolutions and sermons; each section succeeded in manufacturing a public opinion and conscience adverse to the other; indeed, much of the fearful responsibility of this scene of blood rests on the hierarchies of the sections. Very soon the contest passed from the church courts to the legislative halls; antagonistic laws were enacted, and States, as such, were arrayed against each other; finally, the conflict passed from the forum into the field, and there we are trying to decide the first great military struggle - but we fear not the last, arising from the presence of the negro race - demonstrating that this population is in the way of the peace of the country, the cause of immorality and misrule.
Thus far we have found that their presence here disturbs our social structure. We come now to examine how far our civil structure is damaged by this population.
As a nation we claim to be a republic, and for our institutions we claim that they are republican. We mean thereby that this nation is anti-despotic, and our institutions guarantee equal rights to all our citizens - equal protection to all under our jurisdiction. Such is the theory; but what is the practice? We hold within our limits four millions and a half of negroes, most of them slaves, under a worse form of bondage than was that of Russia. In the latter case the religion and domestic rights of the servant are respected; in the former they are disregarded in the legal provision of many slave communities. Here, in our opinion, lies the great crime of American slavery; not so much in requiring the servant to work without a fixed compensation as in disregarding the law of God; in discrediting the domestic relations of husband and wife, parent and child - which are ordinances of Heaven, that no community may disregard without bringing Divine judgments on itself - this with forbidding the use of letters to the slave, making God's word a sealed book, are crimes of the first magnitude, all resulting from the disposition to hold those people here for profit and gain. Can such an institution be cherished within a republic? We think not. However, with the relation of master and slave the inhabitants of the free States have agreed not to interfere, for the constitution must be observed
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strictly. But there is one clause of this sacred compact which requires the Federal government to "guarantee to the several States a republican form of government." Those few words, in our opinion, form the true constitutional instrument or article, which, when rightly rendered and applied as a test to State constitutions and institutions, will free all the States under the compact from this corrupting institution of African slavery. When rightly construed it must and will require the gradual removal of such anti-republican elements and peoples as cannot be engrafted on the national stock; especially when it is found that those anti-republican elements and peoples have long been regarded by the diplomats in the interest of imperialism as the fulcrum on which to rest the lever designed to overturn our whole civil structure and rend us into fragments. As a nation we are learning wisdom by the things we suffer.
The history of the great rebellion is not yet complete; the unseen influences which have produced it are not fully disclosed; but the dim outline begins to take form and place, so that the true friends and actual enemies of the Republic will soon be discovered, and each receive the place in history that infamy or honor may award. When the work is complete, when the last act in the great and fearful drama shall have been closed, it will be found that our country has been the victim of a conspiracy, the magnitude of which is without a parallel in the history of nations - though wicked, yet rendered grand through the combination of potent and princely influences arrayed, and to be arrayed, against us, because of the issues in question, and the result of the conflict - issues of no local character, but involving the fate of that system of government known in contradistinction to imperial rule as republicanism.
It is admitted on all hands that our mixed and servile population constitute the root of those issues and quarrels; what shall be done with them is the question of the hour. Suppose the relation of master and slave abolished throughout the nation, what is the new relation you will give the freed men of the slave country? This is the question which requires solution. When the relation of master and slave ceases to exist - as cease it will in time - what shall be the rights and franchises wherewith you will endow and vest the 4,000,000 freed men of the South?
To this one class of statesmen answer, we will grant them equal franchise, social and civil, and thus incorporate
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them into the body of the nation; we will Africanize, and thus remove the difficulties in the way of our republicanism. I have yet to learn that any respectable statesman has dared to assume this position, or that any large or influential body of men have attempted to defend political measures based on this system of assimilation. We are free to admit that such a system of assimilation or amalgamation is necessary, provided you will to retain those people here, under the jurisdiction of our republican form of government; nay, we maintain, that our fundamental laws demand equal rights to all our citizens. This is a cardinal principle that cannot be ignored; the name and claim are empty unless we extend those rights. To extend them, is to open every social and civil avenue to this African mass: the office, the legislative hall, the family; to pour the blood of near five million Africans into the veins of the Republic, and that, too, in the face of the most solemn protests of the sections most to be affected by this repulsive admixture of blood - the country drained by the Mississippi - the border free and slave States of the West, who think they deserve better things of their brethren of the East than an attempt to engraft the African race on their country as a permanent population. It should be known to the men of the East that the fear of having African blood engrafted on the future population of the great valley, is becoming a formidable power at the West; it has nerved the arms of thousands in this conflict; it has said to the slave despots, "you shall not Africanize this land," the heritage of our children; and what it has said in tones of thunder, and written in blood-stained characters with pointed steel, it clothes in subdued tones and words of warning to the men of the Exeter Hall school, who, far removed from the scene of danger, see not the degradation of this admixture of race.
Let the friend of English views, the disciple of Exeter hall, approach one of these western men and attempt to reason with him on the subject; he may tell him that it is not in keeping with the spirit of the age to exclude the African race from the rights and privileges of the Republic. He will answer that his social and civil structure was made for white men, not for black men; that he is opposed to social equality with the negro, and therefore opposed to the civil equality of such people with him, because social equality is a condition of society wherein each member,
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however dissimilar his circumstances in life to those of his neighbor, may attain by industry or fortune to that very social position which his neighbor holds; that this condition of social equality is predicated on civil or political equality, for there an be no social equality without it, such a supposition is absurd; that the government of his country is republican, and as such required a homogeneous population, and that republicanism is applicable to such and such alone - a people in which each man is essentially the equal of his neighbor; that by a homogeneous population he means no this color or that color, but a population that can and will amalgamate on legal and honorable terms; that he does not choose to regard the negro as his equal, and if disposed to regard him as his equal in mind and worth, he does not choose to endanger the blood of his posterity by the proximity of such a population; that here is no command in the Word of God that will oblige him to place this race on the high road to such an amalgamation with his family; and if not with his family, not with that mass of families he calls a State. He will say that a family, and that collection of families which constitute his State, have the right, beyond all organic law, to say who shall or who shall not be received into their bosom and made members of their society; that the American people, in the exercise of this right, have admitted the white races, because they could amalgamate such on legal and honorable terms, whilst they rejected the black because they could not or would not amalgamate on legal or honorable terms. He will point to the recorded opinion of the Supreme tribunal of the nation as to citizenship. He will tell you that he is a sovereign on the soil he treads, and as such has as good a right to protect the purity of his blood in future ages as has the sovereign of England, and to enact laws thereto. Nothing but the authority of the Divine law will change his purpose to hedge himself in and erect legal protections against this possible admixture of blood, which he sees endangers the peace of society more than the intermarriage of England's royal heir with plebeian line.
The student of Exeter Hall may then, with self complacency, point toe corruption of blood where slavery is cherished. And what has he accomplished by that? He rouses the pride of his antagonist, causing him to hate slavery all the more, and we much mistake his character if he does not answer with the emphasis of indignation. Where men are truly moral and religious, the white and
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black races do not mix, so that the influence of religion will never effect fusion, or destroy the right of choice in the parties. All attempts to destroy this right of choice for himself or his family he will regard as an aggression, and repel with feeling, which if provoked by constant irritation and factious opposition to his local interests, can summon armed aid. Hence I have said we are destined to see other wars in the conflict of races, unless wisdom becomes our guide.
I trust my fears in this regard are not well grounded; but let the stranger go amongst the people of the West and South, as I have done, and propose any other plan of meliorating the unfortunate condition of the free man of color than that of removal to an independent home, and the mass of the people will regard him with more than jealously. What is it gives the hate and ranchor, the venom and the ire to this wicked rebellion amongst the poorer classes of the South? It is love for the negro? No, but it is the hatred of those who would engraft, as they say, negro blood on the population of their country. All such they call by what to them is the sum of all evil, abolitionists - showing that they confound the anti-slavery men of all schools, who are not out-spoken colonizationists, with that small class of northern theorists who defend amalgamation. What is it that causes the free masses of the West to mutter suppressed displeasure and threats, such as have been often heard, against their brethren of the New England States, when the negro question is discussed? It is this ill-defined fear that New England aims at engrafting negro blood on the masses of the Mississippi valley, by embarrassing the colonization and separation movement, as has been their habit. We must, therefore, rank this now latent Eastern and Western feeling of sectional hate, which only slumbers because of a traverse antagonism, as an additional evil because of the presence of those people.
We must regard the extension of equal social and civil rights to this class of persons as distasteful to the mass of the nations; the majority will never submit to it; and attempt to enforce it will lead to restlessness and trouble in the West; nor will citizens made in the East for western or southern use, answer a wise and peaceful purpose. This ends the remedy of the first class of statesmen; it falls short of the evil it proposed to remove - it does not bring national quiet.
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A second class come in and propose a restricted franchise for the freed men of the country: Let them remain laborers and pay them for their labor; they will make you a valuable peasantry, say our English friends of the court end of London; you can employ them through all coming time; it is not necessary nor desirable to endow them with the rights of republicanism; see our fine peasantry; en England and Ireland, but few, if any of them, vote; but few, if any of them, hold read estate; it is not necessary that they should. Why not construct such a peasantry out of your freed men?
Our English friends, and those on this side who follow their views, "will never choose to comprehend the nature of our republican society and institutions," which can no more tolerate or accommodate a disfranchised peasant class, that it can accommodate a slave class; they forget, or affect to forget, that slaves and peasants deprived of the right of citizenship, and suffering social degradation, are incompatible with the genius of our republicanism. A disfranchised peasant class is essential to an aristocracy, or a monarchy; it is one of the appendages of imperialism; there could be no lords, or nobles, unless there were ignoble serfs and peasants; these must exist as a substrata on which to rear the higher orders and classes of society in a monarchy - sweep them away, and imperialism, in all its forms, falls to the ground; advocate their establishment, and so far you advocate the overthrow of republicanism and the establishment of imperialism.
One of the admitted necessities of a country covered by a classified or heterogeneous population, is a strong central government, with restricted franchise; privileged ruling families; strong military arm; the governing power going down from the head or throne, not as with us, up from the people. This is the actual condition of the States now in rebellion - the condition to which they have been drifting for years. Their manifest policy is to centralize the governing power in the hands of the few. Remove that few by special chartered rights above the laboring masses, and then govern by a strong military pressure, if necessary; this, in our opinion, is the overthrow of republicanism and the establishment of imperialism.
It is time it was known to the American people that this ruin of republicanism and establishment of imperialism is the condition of society which many of the rulers of the
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Old World wish to superinduce on this continent, but especially on this nation, for therein the courts of Europe see the sure and lasting guarantee of the perpetuity of their own imperial rule. To assure monarchy in Europe and extend its dominion down to the indefinite future, all that is necessary is to revolutionize our republican society and engraft privileged classes on us, which will surely end in a throne; for the heads of privileged families will quarrel amongst themselves, unless regulated by a supreme chief or president, who always end by assuming the crown.
Well do the nobility of England know that the negro race constitute the vulnerable point in our republicanism; some of them understand the embarrassments of our situation as well as we do ourselves. They know that we cannot make republican citizens out of our negro population. Having thus shadowed the two theories of the English school in what we have already said, let us note their management of "the American question," to our prejudice and well-nigh our ruin.
The management of this most dangerous question in American policy, though unworthy a Christian State, does honor to the political skill of the oligarchy, the finger of whose diplomacy has intermeddled with the business, the interests, and fate of every nation known, and which this day permits no rival people or power to rise without earnest efforts to retard, restrict, or to destroy.
The early statesmen of this nation saw more distinctly than their successors the dangers arising from two incompatible races in the same country, and foresaw the fearful conflicts that must result from their contact. Actuated alike by policy and humanity, they resolved to enter on the gradual emancipation of the slave and the separation of the races. So soon as the friends of human liberty in the country had defined this plan of emancipation, connected with the removal or colonization of the freed men beyond the limits of our Republic, just so soon did the men of England object, and present other plans to our American philanthropists of a widely different character, not suited to the structure of republican institutions. The English plans and theories were enforced by the exercise of all the moral and personal influence that the upper classes of that empire could bring to bear on the subject. The effect was to divide our good men amongst themselves; divide their plans, divide their influence. We were thus divided, whilst the people
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of England were a unit. They had but one cardinal plan for us, and that was to fasten this people permanently on the soil of our country. "Emancipation on the soil" was their watch cry, and the creation of a colored peasantry out of the freed men. To enforce this plan upon us two agencies were used, the Puritan and the Cavalier; the first addressed himself to the North, the last to the South. The thunders of Exeter Hall were directed upon us, and made echo and re-echo over hill and dale of our wide-spread land. The English plans were enforced by the pulpit, and the press-printed matter, and the agencies of lecturers, together with appeals to the ecclesiastical bodies of our land, and by what was more remarkable, the open mission of a member of the British parliament, who came to aid in the work of division and distraction, but especially for the prostration of all schemes of relief.
Those English agencies found a ready people amongst the polished thinkers, the benevolent and philosophic minds of cold and calm New England, who sometimes see a man of color, just enough of this to call up the well springs of benevolence, and exercise the feelings peculiar to the well ordered brotherhood of man. Here an English party and an English interest found a lodgement. Parker, Philips, and others, uttered the watch cry of opposition to the separation of the races; they talked of abstract rights and privileges peculiar to the denizens of the great domains; they loved the negro so much and well, they would plant the dusky mass permanently amongst the people of the East! Oh, no! But amongst the people of the southwest; notwithstanding the most earnest and emphatic protests of the States in that locality.
Thus the plot thickened and the controversy grew warm. New England went with the men of Exeter Hall, whilst the central communities, most endangered by an admixture of blood, advocate the removal of the negro on such terms as would be agreeable to all. This interest found its most able advocates in the Middle States and the Mississippi valley. Amongst the chief advocates of this policy, stood that true representative of American statesmen, Henry Clay; but he and his friends had a third powerful party, or interest to resist. The fragments of the old tory party, entrenched in South Carolina, under the lead of John C. Calhoun, and those who sympathized with him in other Southern States; the advocates of a colored peasantry
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Under bonds of perpetual servitude; the men of the Gulf school took advantage of the division in the ranks of the emancipationists, and whilst they were rendered impotent by their differences as to plans, those advocates of perpetual slavery moulded the southern mind to suit themselves, and proclaimed the Divinity of slavery; and under the inspiration of European imperialism, established the dogma, that the few have a right to rule, and that it is the duty of the toiling millions to obey.
By both these extreme interests the horrors of expatriation were proclaimed and denounced. It will be remembered that when Mr. Clay, at the request of some of his friends, wrote a letter to Judge Robinson, showing the necessity of a separation of the races as a measure of national policy, the Exeter Hall men were sadly outraged, and the London press covered him with reproach; whilst the court end of London, and the American planting interest sneered at the folly of expatriating our labor; notwithstanding they knew that Europe was giving this country an adequate supply of labor, for all purposes of national prosperity and wealth, and at this hour we have more than we can employ.
General Taylor, when he assumed the government, was moved to do and say something in the same direction. It will be remembered he recommended a revision of the laws relating to the slave trade, so as to admit of colonization on the west coast of Africa, giving his influence to the well remembered "Ebony Line," a line of transports designed to carry colored persons to Africa. On disclosing this policy and its discussion in this country, the men of England dispatched the Hon. George Thompson, member of the British House of Commons for Tower Hamblets, to this country to abuse the advocates and friends of this measure; and well he performed his work. He called the plan of separation a venerable humbug, and could find no terms too offensive for its advocates. This was his second visit; he had visited this country in 1839; those visits had no other object but to divide the thinkers of this land, the philanthropists of this much distracted country, on the question of emancipation, and prostrate all schemes for the removal of the blacks, who he knew, and his masters knew, stood more in the way of our country's peace and progress, than any other human obstacle. Well did Mr. Thompson know, well did his masters, the diplomats of the British empire know, that we
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Could not make republican citizens out of our 3,000,000 negroes, (now 4,500,000,) and remain free from faction and from strife. What did they require of us then? What do they demand of us now? No only that the colored race shall be emancipated - a matter for which all our good men pray; but they required more. Exeter Hall was the agent of the demand, and the good and true, yet deluded men of New England, endorsed the bill, asking retention on the soil after the act of emancipation should take place, unaccompanied with colonization, unattended with separation. We see that the London press has again opened its batteries on the colonization plan of this government, and we shall not wonder if they make it one of the counts in their new bill of indictment. May God be our help and guide, for we have embarrassments enough.
It is presumed that the men of the Mississippi valley, and the loyal men of the South, can look calmly on such a demand as places side by side with their children a nation of blacks 4,500,000 strong, soon to double and quadruple, with the dark and fearful prospect of a strife of race, and a possible corruption of blood in future generations, and sure changes in the civil institutions of this country in future years? Can it be supposed, with reason, that they will regard with indifference those men far removed in their northern or island homes, from possible contact with this undesirable population, who sneer at the dread and alarm of those sons of our Angle-Saxon line located in the west and southwest, who fear the future and would avert its dangers?
Thus wrought England at the North; but equally potent has she been with the men of the South. She has a man for every work and every interest. Nor did it require so much effort to mould the opinions of the South. Her nobility and titled classes have always found strong supporters in South Carolina, amongst the remnants of the old tory families. Those lordly planters were always in good odor with the nobility of England. The leaders of the Gulf school no doubt received assurances of sympathy. Revenue laws, tariff regulations, federal customs and duties, were regarded by both these parties as oppressive exactions not to be endured, but to be disregarded and nullified; that thereby the bands of mutual friendship might be drawn closer, to result in a substantial and lasting reunion. In South Carolina England's royal interest and aristocratic pride were enshrined with a hope of future resurrection. For eighty years they slumbered.
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It was but a slumber; the germ of future life was there. The petulance, the bursts of passion, the flippant talk of disunion, the actual effort in the days of Jackson, all betray a hope, a dependence on some outside power, some stay and support in the hour of need. Carefully was this fostered and slowly has it matured under the skilful hand of J. C. Calhoun and his followers, whilst the smiles and promises of British nobles, like the genial sun, has caused the royal crop to grow. Dr. Russell came to the south as George Thompson came to the North, the aid and advocate of an oppressed people, the friend of the gentlemen of the Gulf States; the truthful reporter of their virtues, their wrongs and injuries; the reflector of noble patronage and promiser of ribbons, stars and coronets. Under his able hand the royal crop became rapidly ripe, and with care he trained upwards its young shoots of revolutionary ambition. But the Trent case spoiled all his calculations; he and his masters were baffled for the time by the prudence and wisdom of the Administration, and the few men in London who are really our friends.
George Thompson and Dr. Russell are representative men of their class - puritan and cavalier - but whether puritan or cavalier, always English, intensely English, always anti-American, and dictatorial to their kinsmen of the Western hemisphere.
The tories of the South, and the men of Exeter Hall, unite in their opposition to the removal of the negro from very different reasons; but so far as the result is concerned, it serves the aim and end of British diplomats to distract and divide our plans and measures of national relief.
Such in our opinion is the plot of this conspiracy, to which the Emperor of the French, we fear, has lately lent such secret aid and direction as to become the master of the storm; and that, too, in contravention of the three great potent spells of his hitherto successful policy - non-intervention, universal suffrage, and the unity of nationalities, or races, with which he has brought the nations of the old world to his feet. We trust that it is now evident to him that the issues in our controversy, if disturbed by Eastern diplomacy, must become Eastern questions too; for the nations must and will examine the causes and reasons for our policy and conduct; whilst it is well known that American theories are dangerous to all systems of imperialism.
But to return. The American people, the victims of this
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management, abandoned themselves to the lead of two schools in policy, both, so far as the negro is concerned, driving in different ways at the same result - that of making the negro a permanent occupant of the Republic, as a dis-franchised laborer, or serf, with the sure corruption of republicanism as a result.
The best and most philosophic view we have seen of the Southern plans and schemes, is that presented by L.W. Spratt, published in the Charleston Mercury, of February 13th, 1861, part of which we will not quote in justification of the charge made above, that the South aims at a change of our republican government, and desire the introduction of a privileged ruling class, possibly a monarchy. Throughout this strong, strange, and bold letter, we find the doctrines of those who call for a strong government - the government of the few, and the disfranchisement of the many. The following is his truly philosophic view of the situation:
"The South is now in the formation of a slave republic. This, perhaps, is not admitted generally. There are many contented to believe that the South, as a geographical section, is in mere assertion of its independence; that it is instinct with no especial truth - pregnant of no distinct social nature; that for some unaccountable reason the two sections have become opposed to each other; that for reasons equally insufficient, there is disagreement between the peoples that direct them; and that from no overruling necessity, no impossibility of co-existence, but as a mere matter of policy, it has been considered best for the South to strike out for herself and establish an independence of her own. This, I fear, is an inadequate conception of the controversy. The contest is not between the North and South as geographical sections - for between such sections, merely, there can be no contest; nor between the people of the North and the people of the South, for our relations have been pleasant, and on neutral grounds there is nothing to estrange us. We eat together, trade together, and practice yet, in intercourse, with great respect, the courtesies of common life. But the real contest is between the two forms of society which have become established, the one at the North and the other at the South. Society is essentially different from government; as different as is the nut from the bur, or the nervous body of the shell-fish from the bony structure which surrounds it; and within this government two societies had become developed as variant in structure
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and distinct in form as any two beings in animated nature. The one is a society composed of one race - the other of two races. The one is bound together but by the two great social relations of husband and wife, and parent and child; the other by the three relations of husband and wife, and parent and child, and master and slave. The one embodies in its political structure the principle that equality is the right of man - the other that it is the right of equals only. The one, embodying the principle that equality is the right of man, expands upon the horizontal plane of pure democracy; the other, embodying the principle that it is not the right of man, but of equals only, has taken to itself the rounded form of a social aristocracy; in the one there is hireling labor, in the other slave labor; in the one, therefore, in theory, at least, labor is voluntary; in the other involuntary; in the labor of the one there is the elective franchise, in the other there is not; and, as labor is always in excess of direction, in the one the power of government is only with the lower classes, in the other the upper; in the one therefore, the reins of government come from the heels, in the other from the head, of the society; in the one it is guided by the worst, in the other by the best, intelligence; in the one it is from those who have the least, in the other from those who have the greatest, stake in the continuance of existing order; in the one the pauper laborer has power to rise and appropriate, by law, the goods protected by the State - when pressure comes, as come it must, there will be the motive to exert it - and thus the ship of State turns bottom upwards; in the other there is no pauper labor with power of rising; the ship of State has the ballast of a disfranchised class; there is no possibility of political upheaval, therefore, and it is reasonably certain that, so steadied, it will sail erect, and onward, to an indefinitely distant period. Such are some of the more obvious differences in form and constitution between these two sections which had come to contact within the limits of the recent Union. And perhaps it is not the least remarkable in this connection, that while the one, a shapeless, organless, mere mass of social elements in no definite relation to each other, is loved and eulogized, and stands the ideal of age, the other comely and proportioned with labor and direction, mind and matter in just relation to each other, presenting analogy to the very highest developments in animated nature, is condemned and reprobated. Even we ourselves have hardly ventured to
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affirm it, while the cocks crow, in fact, are ready to deny it; and if it shall not perish on the cross of human judgment, it must be for the reason that the Great Eternal has not purposed that still another agent of his will shall come to such excess of human ignominy.
"Such are the two forms of society which had come to contest within the structure of the recent Union. And the contest for existence was inevitable. Neither could concur in the requisitions of the other; neither could expand within the forms of a single government, without encroachment on the other. Like two lobsters in a single shell, if such a thing were possible, the natural expansion of the one must be inconsistent with the existence of the other. Or, like an eagle and a fish, joined by an indissoluble bond - which, for no reason of its propriety, could act together, where the eagle could not share the fluid suited to the fish and live - where the fish could not share the fluid suited to the bird and live - and where one must perish that the other may survive, unless the unnatural union shall be severed, -- so these societies could not, if they would, concur. The principal that races are unequal, and that among unequals inequality is right, would have been destructive to the form of pure democracy at the North. The principle that all men are equal and equally right, would have been destructive of slavery at the South. Each required the element suited to its social nature. Each must strive to make the government expressive of its social nature. The natural expansion of the one must become encroachment on the other, and so the contest was inevitable. Seward and Lincoln, in theory at least, whatever be their aim, are right. I realized the fact and so declared the conflict irrepressible years before either ventured to advance that proposition. Upon that declaration I have always acted, and the recent experience of my country has not induced me to question the correctness of that first conception. Nor is indignation at such leaders becoming the statesmen at the South. The tendency of social action was against us. The speaker, to be heard, must speak against slavery; the preacher, to retain his charge, must preach against slavery; the author, to be read, must write against slavery; the office-holder, to continue, must redeem the pledges of the candidate. They did not originate the policy, but they pandered to it; they did not start the current, they but floated on it, and
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were as powerless as drift-wood to control its course. The great tendency to social conflict pre-existed; it was in the heart of the North - it was in the very structure of Northern society. It was not a matter of choice but of necessity, that such society should disaffirm a society in contradiction of it. It was not a matter of choice but of necessity that it should approve of acts against it. In possession of power, it flowed to political action on the south, as fluids flow to lower levels. The acts of individuals were unimportant. It I had possessed the power to change the mind of every republican in Congress, I would not have been at pains to do so. They would but have fallen before an indignant constituency, and men would have been sent to their places whose minds could never change. Nor in fact, have they been without their uses. As the conflict was irrepressible; as they were urged on by an inexorable power, it was important we should know it. Our own political leaders refused to realize the fact. The zealots of the North alone could force the recognition; and I am bound to own that Giddings and Greeley and Seward and Lincoln, parasites as they are, panderers to popular taste as they are, the instruments, and the mere instruments, of aggression, have done more to rouse us to the vindication of our rights than the bravest and the best amongst us.
"Such, then, was the nature of this contest. It was inevitable. It was inaugurated with the government. It began at the beginning, and almost at the start, the chances of the game were turned against us. If the foreign slave trade had never been suppressed, slave society must have triumphed. It extended to the limits of New England, pari passu; with emigrants from Europe came slaves from Africa. Step by step the two in union marched upon the West, and it is reasonably certain, had the means to further union been admitted, that so they would have continued to march upon the West; that slave labor would have been cheaper than hireling labor; that transcending agriculture, it would have expanded to the arts, and that thus, one homogeneous form of labor, and one homogeneous form of society - unquestioned by one single dreamer, and cherished at home and honored abroad - would have overspread the entire available surface of the late United States. But the slave trade suppressed, democratic society has triumphed. The States of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware found an attractive market for their slaves. They
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found a cheaper pauper labor to replace it - that pauper labor poured in from Europe; while it replaced the slave, it increased the political power of the Northern States. More than 5,000,000 from abroad have been added to their number; that addition has enabled them to grasp and hold the government. That government, from the very necessities of their nature, they are forced to use against us. Slavery was within its grasp, and forced to the option of extinction in the Union, or of independence out, it dares to strike, and it asserts its claim to nationality, and its right to recognition among the leading social systems of the world.
"Such, then, being the nature of the contest, this Union has been disrupted in the effort of slave society to emancipate itself; and the momentous question now to be determined is, shall that effort be successful. That the republic of the South shall sustain her independence, there is little question. The form of our society is too pregnant of intellectual resources, and military strength, to be subdued, if in its products, it did not hold the bonds of amity and peace upon all the leading nations of the world. But in the independence of the South is there surely the emancipation of domestic slavery? That is greatly to be doubted. Our property in slaves will be established. If it has stood in a government, more than half of which has been pledged to its destruction, it will surely stand in a government, every member of which will be pledged to its defence. But will it be established as a normal institution of society, and stand the sole exclusive social system of the South? That is the impending question, and the fact is yet to be recorded. That it will so stand somewhere at the south, I do not entertain the slightest question. It may be overlooked or disregarded now. It has been the vital agent of this great controversy. It has energized the arm of every man who acts a part in this great drama. We may shrink from recognition of the fact; we may decline to admit the source of our authority; refuse to slavery an invitation to the table which she herself has so bountifully spread; but not for that will it remain powerless, or unhonored. It may be abandoned by Virginia, Maryland, Missouri; South Carolina herself may refuse to espouse it. The hireling laborer from the North and Europe may drive it from our seaboard. As the South shall become the centre of her own trade, the metropolis of her own commerce, the pauper population of the world will pour
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upon us. It may replace our slaves upon the seaboard, as it has replaced them in the Northern States; but concentrated in the States upon the Gulf it will make its stand; condensed to the point at which the labor of the slave transcends the wants of agriculture, it will flow to other objects; it will lay its giant grasp upon still other departments of industry; its every step will be exclusive; it will be unquestioned lord of each domain on which it enters. With that perfect economy of resources, that just application of power, that concentration of forces, that security of order which results to slavery from the permanent direction of its best intelligence, there is no other form of human labor that can stand against it, and it will build itself a home, and erect for itself, at some point within the present limits of the Southern States, a structure of imperial power and grandeur - a glorious Confederacy of States that will stand aloft and serene for ages amid the anarchy of democracies that will reel around it.
"But it may be, that to this end, another revolution may be necessary. It is to be apprehended that this contest between democracy and slavery is not yet over."
Such are the prescriptions and views of those advocates of anti-American theory. Is it wonderful that the life of the Commonwealth has been placed in jeopardy, and that this day we are undergoing the throes of exhausting civil war? Does it require further proof that we have been partly the victims of others, and partly in the position of the mariner without chart or compass, who vainly tries to reach the haven without a plan or policy? Is it strange that British statesmen, from their distant standpoint, saw this convulsion for many years approaching, and spoke of our troubles with the assurance of prophets. Did they not "foresee, because they foreknew?"
If England is truly our friend, she has now a golden opportunity to disclose it. Let her people withdraw their opposition to the colonization of our blacks; let her open up the way for their settlement in Central America; continue to foster Liberia; manifest more sympathy for our work of making republican freemen, and less for making disfranchised peasants; more for men who are their own masters, and less for those who lord it over the servant; more for the men who make their own laws and rulers, and less for those who rule by divine right - provided such a thing is possible in a people who can see no political wisdom outside the British constitution, which provides for the three great
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estates, king, lords, and commons - then will we believe her friendship sincere. We are not forgetful of the palliating fact, that her press and statesmen cannot, dare not, discuss the true reasons why the American people must colonize the negro, lest they should precipate the republican tendency of their own people, by telling them that that system of government requires an equality of civil rights and franchise. Such discussion would be fatal to their empire and their power.
The government of Great Britain is composed of a few thousand titled and privileged persons, located in a small island, who are born to rule and govern. From their isolated position it is not possible for them to come in contact with the numerous, heterogeneous, and inferior tribes and races under their rule. They are thus protected from possible admixture of inferior blood, not only by their isolated position, but by carefully cultivating aristocratic pride of birth, of rank, and caste. From this small centre they extend their rule over a vast empire, the power not going up from the people, as with us, but going down to the people,and extending out to them through the iron arm of imperial authority. The British government, as a strong centralized power, can with ease throw the iron bands around differing tribes, heterogeneous masses, and distant provinces, and, by external pressure, give unity to the whole. Such a government can distribute just so much civil liberty and elective franchise to the home population, distant tribes, heterogeneous populations, and remote provinces, as may be regarded safe for the ruling classes. Hence, some of the people of Great Britain are electors, others not; some of the provinces have large liberties, other have not; equal rights for all the people being no part of the British system.
How can such a people comprehend the necessity or use of removing the man of color? And those of them who do, dare not discuss it. The usual course with them, therefore, is to sneer or misrepresent our views and plans of colonization, and hold in light esteem the fears of those large portions of the American people, know[n] as colonizationistss, who have neither the citadel of an island home, nor the laws of rank and class to protect them against this repulsive admixture of blood. Here we stand on the open plain of republican institutions and plain simplicity of manners; all the guards peculiar to European society have been broken down,
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Obliged by our fundamental laws to give equal rights to all our citizens. What is to protect us as a people from degenerating as a race, but the resolve to receive no blood from the other races but that which can be honorably and safely engrafted on the stock of the nation. As we understand it, this is the only right you reserve, when you lay the liberties and privileges of a great republic at the feet of the nations of the earth. You reserve the right to choose your future citizens; but to such as you cannot receive, you say, not as empires do, come and serve us and we will bless you with our iron rule; but you say, go and establish a government like this, as for our people, the men of Europe, we constitute one family, ordered so of God, and by him kept compact and together through the ages gone; we will restrain cupidity, and refrain from extending dominion into your tropical home, go and establish such a political family for yourselves; you shall have our aid, our fraternal sympathy and support; we will tax ourselves to give you nationality and freedom. Such have been the utterances of our great men of the present. Then why should England murmur at our giving nationality to the negro? It is the best our Republic can do for them and ourselves. However, we will express the conviction that many of the gentlemen of the present English administration are truly our friends, but hey are embarrassed in their position by the republican tendency of their people, as this nation has been by the imperial tendency of ours; yet how can tat nation, or any other, object to our work of colonization? Does not this work necessarily imply the gradual emancipation of the slave and the entire extirpation of the institution of slavery? For how can slaves be colonized unless first freed?
Let us then, earnestly and respectfully recommend as a remedy for our present troubles and future danger, the perfecting the proposed plans of the administration in regard to those two conflicting races, and the careful and gradual removal of the colored race to some desirable and convenient home. This suggests that the tropical lands of our own hemisphere should be devoted to their use, and that all available means should be seized to pour a flood of Anglo-African civilization on the tropical lands of the old hemisphere most accessible to us (Western Africa.) In doing this we take from imperialism its temptation to tamper with our republicanism; for by preserving the heterogeneous
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character of our population, we perpetuate our republican equality in social and civil life.
It further suggests that our legislation should cover the wants and well-being of both races, and that statesmen should consider, first, the good of the white race, then, the good and well-being of the black; making at least as liberal appropriations for the colonization of the Indian, upon whom millions on millions have been expended with but imperfect success in the cause of civilization, whilst the slender means of the friends of the African civilization have produced lasting results. Some affect to fear that the man of color will not remove to a separate locality. It is not to be expected that a race, which has hardly attained a mental majority, will rise in a day to the stature of the men who found empires, build cities, and lay the ground work of civil institutions like ours; nor should they be expected to do this unaided and alone. They should receive the kind attention, direction, and aid of those who understand such things; nor will the world condemn a gentle pressure in the forward course to overcome the natural inertia of masses long used to the driver's will and rod. Let us do justice in the provision we make for their future comfort, and surety they will do justice to our distracted Republic. If they should fail to do this, there would then be more propriety in weighing the requirement of some to remove without consultation, but not till then. The more intelligent men of color can now see the necessity that rests upon us, and they will aid us in this work. We know that there is a growing sentiment in the country which considered the removal of the freed man, without consulting him, "a moral and military necessity" -- as a measure necessary to the purity of public morals and the peace of the country; and this unhappy war of white man with white man, about the condition of the black, will multiply this sentiment. But we cannot go further now than suggesting, that the mandatory relation held by the rebel master should escheat to the Federal government in a modified sense, so as to enable his proper government and gradual removal to a proper home where he can be independent.
"God ordained in the beginning a separate and distinct subsistence for the great races of men, 'when he separated the sons of Adam,' (when) 'he set the bounds of the people,' 'when he determined the times before appointed,
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And the bounds of their habitation." An observance of this Divine economy is essential to the peace and happiness of the human family, whilst every departure from it, caused by cupidity or ambition, results in oppression to the man, and corruption to the few.
We earnestly pray that a perpetual barrier may be reared between us and that land of the mixed races of this continent - Mexico. That, so far as this nation is concerned, we shall forever guarantee the integrity of her country, and so adjust our policy, that she might gradually receive our colored people, which when added to her already large body of five and a half or six millions of people of mixed race, would give her a population of near 12,000,000 persons of mixed caste, and, in the course of half a century, she will have a strong and compact community of near twenty million persons of color. It is the conviction of millions that this should be the line of policy towards Mexico and Central America. As Abraham and Lot agreed to separate their conflicting retainer and dependents, the one going to the right and the other to the left, so let those two governments agree to divide this continent between the Anglo-American and mixed races, the latter taking that which nature, in her wisdom, has prepared for them, and which for beauty, fertility, and grandeur of scenery, cannot be equaled on the globe - a country once the seat of empire and home of ancient civilization, he monuments of which abound in Central America.
If we would retain our republicanism, it must become a fixed principle with us not to add territory to our country on the south, unless that territory is uninhabited; for every square mile added which is encumbered with a mixed race of local and fixed habits, (unused to migration like the Mexican and Central American Indian, and Negro races,) adds danger, trouble, and sure decay to republicanism. Statesmen may boast that "it is our manifest destiny to annex all the adjoining country and cover it with our institutions." With all due respect to them, we say they speak without reflection. Our republican institutions are not adapted to mixed races and classified people. Our institutions require a homogeneous population to rest on as a basis; without this basis, the continuance of republicanism, for any great length of time, is impossible.
"Power is ever stealing from the many to the few," and ambitious and designing men are ever on the alert to take
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advantage of actual or accidental differences in race, nationality, or religion, to divide the masses of a republic into permanent factions or bands; the effect of which, is the introduction, first of an oligarchy, to be soon followed by a monarchy. The true preservative against this tendency is a removal of slaves and serfs; a thorough amalgamation of such populations as we agree to receive - educated electors and citizens, reverence for God and his word, which will give moral strength to the nation; and this will ever prove a guard against imperialism.
Such are the difficult alternatives for American and African; but they are not so hard on the African as the sufferings now resting on millions of Americans, because they were not considered long ago. Let us not talk of the hardships of separation and migration, in the light of burning cities, ruined fortunes, States desolated, murdered kindred, homeless families, widowed mothers, helpless orphans, and the nameless woes of this struggle of imperialism to regain its hold on a free people. If we wish to retain our republicanism, or rather perfect what Washington and Jefferson began, we should adopt as nearly as we can the above rules of life and government. It is then we can present to the world a compact and united people - educated and powerful - honoring God and his word - free from cupidity, that cause of aggression and wrong - making our own rulers, and respecting them when made. In this position, and with these qualifications, in the order of Providence, we must become "the light of the world."
We will close this plea for the nationality of the negro and the peace of this nation, by making a few inquiries.
Will not New England, which is now placing untold treasure and the best blood of hers sons on the altar of the country, go one step further and sacrifice therewith pride of opinion in reference to the gradual removal of this people, hereby taking away the conflict of opinion as a first step to unity of national counsel, to be followed we trust by national peace?
Will not the loyal men of the South and West cut up by the roots every false principle in southern policy that bears the imprint of that apostle of imperial rule, John C. Calhoun, and remove from place and power such as have been untrue to the teachings of Washington and Jefferson on the negro question? or will they stand up in the light of this age, the inflexible advocates of an inexorable servitude
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for the black man, until the surcharged thunder-clouds of other and worse revolutions burst on their country?
Will not the men of England enable us to respect, if not love, the land which has given us our language, most of our institutions, and national life, by permitting us to mature plans and opinions in harmony with our civil and social structure, undisturbed by the doctrines of imperial society and life?
And will not the good men of this country sink party in patriotism in the support of the wise measures already proposed on this subject, asking the intelligent free man of color to reflect and act in harmony with such measures as tend to peace?
May the Power which rules the destiny of nations grant that the above may receive an affirmative answer, and that your hands may be strengthened in this hours of peril!
Respectfully submitted
JAMES MITCHELL
Washington, May 18, 1862
