I may say, because the lot of our predecessors happened
to be cast in the torrid zone, beneath the scorching beams of a
vertical sun! These are the objections the African Colonization
Society offer to this community to our remaining in this
country--in the land of freemen! These are the considerations
that prompt them to tell us that we the descendants of Africa
can never be men unless we abandon the land of our birth, our
homes and people, and submit to that uncongenial clime, the
barbarous regions of Africa, amidst unyielding contagion and
mortality! O, that man would remember, that knowledge and
virtue, not complexion, are the emblems that constitute the
value of human dignity! With these, we are worthy--without them,
we are unworthy. By the acts and operations of wicked men,
shielded under a cloak of religion, we the people of color are
doomed to all the miseries that the human body is able to
sustain--deprived of light, knowledge and social intercourse, by
the colonization gentlemen. With all their pretended zeal and
love of liberty, manifested towards the African race, I count
them as enemies, not friends. I do not solicit their love, nor
regard their friendship. I speak for one: I never did, and never
will court an enemy as a friend, knowingly, let him be whom he
may--let him belong to church or state, I feel the weight of
their predominant power, and the finishing blow they are about
to strike. Thus we move by them, poor and pennyless, despised
and forsaken by all; creeping through your streets, submissively
bowed down to every foot whose skin is tinctured with a lighter
hue than ours--thus we sojourn in solitude, not for our crimes
but color.

'I came here for the purpose of showing to this community, that
the people of color of the United States disapprove of the
African Colonization plan. They do not wish to emigrate to
Africa. These six hundred or more, that the gentleman tells you
are now waiting for a passage to Liberia, are not the free
people of color of the United States; they are, if any, the
poor, old, worn-out southern slaves, freed on the condition to
go to Africa, or die in the tracks of slavery, no more fit for
their cotton and rice fields--for the laws of those states
forbid the master, let him be possessed of all the fine feelings
that the huma