change of public sentiment, or any symptoms of
moral indignation at such unchristian and anti-republican treatment. On
the contrary, I find the doctrine every where inculcated that this
hatred and contempt, this abuse and proscription, are not only
excusable, but the natural, inevitable and incurable effects of
constitutional dissimilitude, growing out of an ordination of
Providence, for which there is no remedy but a separation between the
two races. If the free blacks, then, have been 'still further degraded
by the mockery of nominal freedom,' if they 'must always be a separate
and degraded race,' if 'degradation must and will press them to the
earth,' if from their present station 'they can never rise, be their
talents, their enterprise, their virtues what they may,' if 'in Africa
alone, they can enjoy the motives for honorable ambition,' the American
Colonization Society is responsible for their debasement and misery; for
as it numbers among its supporters the most influential men in our
country, and boasts of having the approbation of an overwhelming
majority of the wise and good whose examples are laws, it is able, were
it willing, to effect a radical change in public sentiment--nay, it is
at the present time public sentiment itself. But though it has done
much, and may do more, (all that it can it will do,) to depress,
impoverish and dispirit the free people of color, and to strengthen and
influence mutual antipathies, it is the purpose of God, I am fully
persuaded, to humble the pride of the American people by rendering the
expulsion of our colored countrymen utterly impracticable, and the
necessity for their admission to equal rights imperative. As neither
mountains of prejudice, nor the massy shackles of law and of public
opinion, have been able to keep them down to a level with slaves, I
confidently anticipate their exaltation among ourselves. Through the
vista of time,--a short distance only,--I see them here, not in Africa,
not bowed to the earth, or derided and persecuted as at present, not
with a downcast air or an irresolute step, but standing erect as men
destined heavenward, unembarrassed, untrammelled, with none to molest or
make them afraid.

FOOTNOTES:

[V] Walker's Appeal.

[W] Why is it that the free people of color are now, in almost every
part of our country, threatened with banishment from State to State, and
with hunting from city to city, until there shall be no place for the
soles of th