ase the speaker
was pleading for colonization--no statement of the problem as it
impressed men about 1820 or 1830 was clearer than that of Rev. Dr. Nott,
President of Union College, at Albany in 1829.[1] The question, said he,
was by no means local. Slavery was once legalized in New England; and
New England built slave-ships and manned these with New England seamen.
In 1820 the slave population in the country amounted to 1,500,000. The
number doubled every twenty years, and it was easy to see how it would
progress from 1,500,000 to 3,000,000; to 6,000,000; to 12,000,000; to
24,000,000. "Twenty-four millions of slaves! What a drawback from our
strength; what a tax on our resources; what a hindrance to our growth;
what a stain on our character; and what an impediment to the fulfillment
of our destiny! Could our worst enemies or the worst enemies of
republics, wish us a severer judgment?" How could one know that wakeful
and sagacious enemies without would not discover the vulnerable point
and use it for the country's overthrow? Or was there not danger that
among a people goaded from age to age there might at length arise some
second Toussaint L'Ouverture, who, reckless of consequences, would array
a force and cause a movement throughout the zone of bondage, leaving
behind him plantations waste and mansions desolate? Who could believe
that such a tremendous physical force would remain forever spell-bound
and quiescent? After all, however, slavery was doomed; public opinion
had already pronounced upon it, and the moral energy of the nation would
sooner or later effect its overthrow. "But," continued Nott, "the solemn
question here arises--in what condition will this momentous change place
us? The freed men of other countries have long since disappeared, having
been amalgamated in the general mass. Here there can be no amalgamation.
Our manumitted bondmen have remained already to the third and fourth, as
they will to the thousandth generation--a distinct, a degraded, and a
wretched race." After this sweeping statement, which has certainly not
been justified by time, Nott proceeded to argue the expediency of his
organization. Gerrit Smith, who later drifted away from colonization,
said frankly on the same occasion that the ultimate solution was either
amalgamation or colonization, and that of the two courses he preferred
to choose the latter. Others felt as he did. We shall now accordingly
proceed to consider at somewhat greater