presence in the country," says the President to the colored men, "we
should have no war!" If it were not for silverware and jewelry, no
burglaries would be committed! Don't let us get rid of the villains, but
of the victims; thereby villainy will cease!

Let Mr. Pomeroy be sent to annex some of the Paumotu or Tongan groups,
where spontaneous bread-fruit would afford Mr. Floyd good plucking, and
Messrs. Wigfall, Benjamin, and Prior could even have their chewing done
by proxy, for the native pauper employs the old women to masticate his
Ava into drink. There they might continue to take their food from other
people's mouths, with the chance now and then of a strong anti-slavery
clergyman well barbecued, a luxury for which they have howled for many a
year. That is the place for your oligarchic pauper, where the elements
themselves are field-hands, with Nature for overseer, manufactures
superfluous and free-trade a blessing, and plenty of colored persons to
raise the mischief with. That is the sole crop which they have raised at
home. Let their propensities be transferred to a place unconnected with
the politics or the privileges of a Christian Republic.

But let this great Republic drive into exile the wheat-growers of the
West, the miners and iron-men of Pennsylvania, and the farmers of New
England, as soon as these men who have created the cotton-crop which
clothes a world, and who only wait for another stimulus to supersede the
lash. Let them find it, as in Jamaica, in a plot of ground, their seed
and tools, their hearth-side and marriage, their freedom, and the
shelter of a country which wants to use the products of their hands.

If it be an object to stretch a great band of free tropical labor across
Central America, to people those wastes with ideas which shall curb
the southward lust of men, and nourish a grateful empire against the
intrigues of European States, let that be done, if the colored American
of the Border States is willing to advance the project. Let the project
be clearly understood, and its prospective upholders frankly invited to
become men, and aid their country's welfare. But never let colonization
be opened like an artery, through whose "unkindest cut" some of the best
blood of the country shall slip away and be lost forever. We want the
cotton labor even more extensively diffused, to conquer John Bull with
bales, as at New Orleans. Let no cotton-grower ever budge.

_The Life and Letters of Was