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Moral condition of the free colored people in United States—What have they gained by refusing to accept Colonization?—Abolition testimony on the subject—Gerrit Smith—New York Tribune—Their moral condition as indicated by proportions in Penitentiaries—Census Reports—Native whites, foreign born, and free colored, in Penitentiaries—But little improvement in Massachusetts in seventy years—Contrasts of Ohio with New England—Antagonism of Abolitionism to free negroes.

In turning to the condition of our own free colored people, who rejected homes in Liberia, we approach a most important subject. They have been under the guardianship of their abolition friends, ever since that period, and have cherished feelings of determined hostility to colonization. What have they gained by this hostility? What has been accomplished for them by their abolition friends, or what have they done for themselves? Those who took refuge in Liberia have built up a Republic of their own; and with the view of encouraging them to laudable effort, have been recognized as an independent nation, by five of the great governments of the earth. But what has been the progress of those who remained behind, in the vain hope of rising to an equality with the whites, and of assisting in abolishing American slavery?

We offer no opinion, here, of our own, as to the present social and moral condition of the free colored people in the North. What it was at the time of the founding of Liberia, has already been shown. On this subject we might quote largely from the proceedings of the Conventions of the colored people, and the writings of their editors, so as to produce a dark picture indeed; but this would be cruel, as their voices are but the wailings of sensitive and benevolent hearts, while weeping over the moral desolations that, for ages, have overwhelmed their people. Nor shall we multiply testimony on the subject; but in this, as in the case of Canada and the West Indies, allow the abolitionists to speak of their own schemes. The Hon. Gerrit Smith, in his letter to Governor Hunt, of New York, in 1852, while speaking of his ineffectual efforts, for fifteen years past, to prevail upon the free colored people to betake themselves to mechanical and agricultural pursuits, says:

"Suppose, moreover, that during all these fifteen years, they had been quitting the cities, where the mass of them rot, both physically and morally, and had gone into the country to become farmers and mechanics—suppose, I say, all this—and who would have the hardihood to affirm that the Colonization Society lives upon the malignity of the whites—but it is true that it lives upon the voluntary degradation of the blacks. I do not say that the colored people are more debased than the white people would be if persecuted, oppressed and outraged as are the colored people. But I do say that they are debased, deeply debased; and that to recover themselves they must become heroes, self-denying heroes, capable of achieving a great moral victory—a two-fold victory—a victory over themselves and a victory over their enemies."

The New York Tribune, September 22, 1855, in noticing the movements of the colored people of New York, to secure to themselves equal suffrage, thus gives utterance to its views of their moral condition:

"Most earnestly desiring the enfranchisement of the Afric-American race, we would gladly wean them, at the cost of some additional ill-will, from the sterile path of political agitation. They can help win their rights if they will, but not by jawing for them. One negro on a farm which he has cleared or bought patiently hewing out a modest, toilsome independence, is worth more to the cause of equal suffrage than three in an Ethiopian (or any other) convention, clamoring against white oppression with all the fire of a Spartacus. It is not logical conviction of the justice of their claims that is needed, but a prevalent belief that they would form a wholesome and desirable element of the body politic. Their color exposes them to much unjust and damaging prejudice; but if their degradation were but skin-deep, they might easily overcome it..... Of course, we understand that the evil we contemplate is complex and retroactive—that the political degradation of the blacks is a cause as well as a consequence of their moral debasement. Had they never been enslaved, they would not now be so abject in soul; had they not been so abject, they could not have been enslaved. Our aborigines might have been crushed into slavery by overwhelming force; but they could never have been made to live in it. The black man who feels insulted in that he is called a 'nigger,' therein attests the degradation of his race more forcibly than does the blackguard at whom he takes offense; for negro is no further a term of opprobrium than the character of the blacks has made it so..... If the blacks of to-day were all or mainly such men as Samuel R. Ward or Frederick Douglass, nobody would consider 'negro' an invidious or reproachful designation.

"The blacks of our State ought to enjoy the common rights of man; but they stand greatly in need of the spirit in which those rights have been won by other races. They will never win them as white men's barbers, waiters, ostlers and boot blacks; that is to say, the tardy and ungracious concession of the right of suffrage, which they may ultimately wrench from a reluctant community, will leave them still the political as well as social inferiors of the whites—excluded from all honorable office, and admitted to white men's tables only as waiters and plate-washers—unless they shall meantime have wrought out, through toil, privation and suffering, an intellectual and essential enfranchisement. At present, white men dread to be known as friendly to the black, because of the never-ending, still-beginning importunities to help this or that negro object of charity or philanthrophy to which such a reputation inevitably subjects them. Nine-tenths of the free blacks have no idea of setting themselves to work except as the hirelings and servitors of white men; no idea of building a church, or accomplishing any other serious enterprise, except through beggary of the whites. As a class, the blacks are indolent, improvident, servile and licentious; and their inveterate habit of appealing to white benevolence or compassion whenever they realize a want or encounter a difficulty, is eminently baneful and enervating. If they could never more obtain a dollar until they shall have earned it, many of them would suffer, and some perhaps starve; but, on the whole, they would do better and improve faster than may now be reasonably expected."

In tracing the causes which led to the organization of the American Colonization Society, the statistics of the penitentiaries down to 1827, were given, as affording an index to the moral condition of the free colored people at that period. The facts of a similar kind, for 1850, are added here, to indicate their present moral condition. The statistics are compiled from the Compendium of the Census of the United States, for 1850, and published in 1854.

Tabular Statement of the number of the native and foreign white population, the colored population, the number of each class in the Penitentiaries, the proportion of the convicts to the whole number of each class, the proportion of colored convicts over the foreign and also over the native whites, in the four States named, for the year 1850:

Classes, etc.	Mass.	N. York.	Penn.	Ohio.
Native Whites,	819,044	2,388,830	1,953,276	1,732,698
In the Penitentiary,	264	835	205	291
Being 1 out of	3,102	2,860	9,528	5,954
Foreign Whites,	163,598	655,224	303,105	218,099
In the Penitentiary,	125	545	123	71
Being 1 out of	1,308	1,202	2,464	3,077
Colored Population,	9,064	49,069	53,626	25,279
In the Penitentiary,	47	257	109	44
Being 1 out of	192	190	492	574
Colored convicts over foreign,	6.8 times	6.3 times	5 times	5.3 times
Colored convicts over native whites,	16.1 times	15 times	19.3 times	10.3 times

It appears from these figures, that the amount of crime among the colored people of Massachusetts, in 1850, was 6⁸/₁₀ times greater than the amount among the foreign born population of that State, and that the amount, in the four States named, among the free colored people, averages five-and-three-quarters times more, in proportion to their numbers, than it does among the foreign population, and over fifteen times more than it does among the native whites. It will be instructive, also, to note the moral condition of the free colored people in Massachusetts, the great center of abolitionism, where they have enjoyed equal rights ever since 1780. Strange to say, there is nearly three times as much among them, in that State, as exists among those of Ohio! More than this will be useful to note, as it regards the direction of the emigration of the free colored people. Massachusetts, in 1850, had but 2,687 colored persons born out of the State, while Ohio had 12,662 born out of her limits. Take another fact: the increase, per cent., of the colored population, in the whole New England States, was, during the ten years, from 1840 to 1850, but 1⁷¹/₁₀₀, while in Ohio, it was, during that time, 45⁷⁶/₁₀₀0.

There is another point worthy of notice. Though the New England abolition States have offered equal political rights to the colored man, it has afforded him little temptation to emigrate into their bounds. On the contrary, several of these States have been diminishing their free colored population, for many years past, and none of them can have had accessions of colored immigrants; as is abundantly proved by the fact, that their additions, of this class of persons, have not exceeded the natural increase of the resident colored population.[71] Another fact is equally as instructive. It will be noted, that, in Ohio, the largest increase of the free colored population, is in the anti-abolition counties—the abolition counties, often, having increased very little, indeed, between 1840 and 1850. But the most curious fact is, that the largest majorities for the abolition candidate for governor, in 1855, were in the counties having the fewest colored people, while the largest majorities against him, were in those having the largest numbers of free negroes and mullatoes.[72] From these facts, both in regard to New England and Ohio, one of two conclusions may be logically deduced: Either the colored people find so little sympathy from the abolitionists, that they will not live among them; or else their presence, in any community, in large numbers, tends to cure the whites of all tendencies toward practical abolitionism!