The Future of the Colored Race in America by William Aikman (sites to read books for free .txt) 📕

indeed some minds seem incapable of fully apprehending the world-wide difference. The legitimate effect of slavery is to thrust the victim as far down in the scale of being as is possible. The nearer the brute, the better the slave , is the true law of slavery. Slavery is the cause of ignorance, degradation, and crime. It, by a dreadful necessity, strips the slave of every attribute of manhood; neither soul nor body is his own; the one is kept in darkness as the other is sold in the shambles. What can a system that locks up all human knowledge, stalks through the soul trampling down all that constitutes the man, not accidentally, but by the necessity of its existence, what can such a system do for its victim?

There may be benefits such as we are now speaking of, coming to the slave in his slavery, but slavery does not give them. The laws which create slavery would shut out every thing, but they cannot. In spite of them all, the good will come. So it has been with the colored race in this country. This good can only be made to appear in a state of freedom.

Just here there is forced upon us another thoughht of tremendous significance. This gradual unseen, but mighty gathering of power in the slave in this land cannot be forever without one day coming into form. You cannot be evermore throwing electricity into the jar; by-and-by its overcharged contents will burst out in sudden explosion. While you may let the conductor take them safely and usefully away! No one cares to follow in imagination where the thought leads him. Emancipation must be given sooner or later, or all goes down in a hideous ruin; and no experience can calculate nicely when the last moment of safety is reached. It may come, and the crashing thunderbolt tell that it has gone.

Of the way in which this freedom is to be brought about, it is not the intention of this article to speak. To this writer, there seem perhaps no problem which approaches it in difficulty. Emancipation--it is easy to talk and declaim about, it is easy to prove right and to show desirable, but how to bring about, that is the labor. He is a rash man, who speaks very confidently on this matter. That it should be brought about, that the well-being of the two races, the interest of two continents, and humanity itself, the very existence of this American people demand it, no thinking man ought to doubt. It becomes this nation to address itself to this work, and see that it is done and done well.

While, however, we stand aghast at the difficulties of the work, it is comforting to know that the solution is not committed to us, but that the providence of God is pushing it forward. Events crowding upon each other with a rapidity which bewilders us, seem steadily and swiftly bringing the freedom of the negro to its accomplishments. No man is competent to say what the issue will be, or to what new form the events will shape themselves. A little while ago the most common consent of men looked toward a gradual emancipation, to-day it seems more and more as if the fetters were to be stricken off at a blow. How, or when, who shall say?

In whatever way it is done, one thing we may expect--it will not be by the premeditated devices of men. The great works of God are not done in that way. Smaller and comparatively unimportant ones may be, but those which affect grand interests, and shape the history of the world, the Great Jehovah takes into His own hand and brings them to pass so marvellously that all men shall recognize His power and "Know His name," (Isa. 52, 6.) "Therefore they shall know in that day that I am He that doth speak; behold it is I!" In the meanwhile it becomes all men reverently and obediently to be watching the movements of His Providence, to keep abreast of them, and boldly to take each new step as it is indicated, and as soon as it is. The end may come sooner, as it probably be vastly easier in its coming than we have dared to hope.

Taking the fact of emancipation as fixed, and to be realized, and that there will here be a race of freedom rapidly rising civilization and enlightenment, we are confronted with the question-- Is this country to be the ultimate home of this people ? We answer, No. We do not believe that this people were brought here that they might have a permanent residence. They were brought to this land for tutelage and trial. The Hebrew bondage is the example illustrating it. Whatever may be said in respect to the right of the negro to a perpetual home here, and we would be the last to dispute it; whatever may be urged against the prejudice which thrusts them out of association and into painful separation, and we would not for an instant justify it; yet still we are of the opinion that here the negro will not abide as a people. Social equality and the enjoyment of every right are well nigh hopeless for him. Were there nothing else in the way, the stigma of slavery is almost perpetual and ineradicable.

He is here, not for America, but for Africa. He is here for a training that could not have been gotten there. When it is complete, he will go back and make the continent what it could never do without him. When, under the influences which have shaped his character and built him up, he has become a self-reliant, advanced Christian man, and he is ready and able to do something for his race, he will go back to do it.

Then will be Africa's time. Exploration, advancing commerce, and with it Christianity, will have prepared the way, as we see it now being made ready, and the negro race of this land will go back gradually but with increasing rapidity, and by a natural and healthy emigration. Such emigration only could be permanently and extensively beneficial to a new land. The colonist must be more or less be impelled by the native force of his own character to seek the new home. Africa must look for her Christianity and her civilization especially to her own sons. Like all other lands which are to be elevated, the power raising her must come from without. It seems to be the course of Divine Providence that new and heathen countries are to be civilized and Christianized by Christian colonization; not commercial, but Christian colonies must go out to them. The colonists must not supplant and destroy the aboriginal inhabitants, nor must they come simply as teachers, but they must abide as those whose home is to be there, who as residents bring them the arts and practices of civilized and Christian life, and whose extended and continued example illustrates the power and benefits of the life they bring.

This has been for the most part of the course of events. No people rises alone and unaided from a state of barbarism. The early history of nations which have a history, usually begins with the coming of a colony, whether it be Phoenician, Cadmean, or Trojan. "Religion, law and letters are not indigenous, but exotic; in all the past career of man upon the globe one race hands the torch of science to another." Of no people must this be more true than of the African. If Africa is to be elevated, it must be by the infusion of life and power from without, and by means of colonies which bring with them the elements of life and power.

The colonist who brings this boon to Africa must be an African. Every year and every experiment renders this more clearly evident. The white missionary has done, and is doing, a noble, perhaps indispensable work, but the permanent results which are to be found over extensive regions must come from men whose race is similar to the people among whom they dwell, and with whom it can mingle freely and advantageously. Such a race has been preparing, and will be prepared by the overruling power of God in this country.

At present the work of preparation is not complete. A few have been made partially ready, some fit for the work have gone and, by their success on the west coast of Africa, have shown what the people are capable of doing. A beginning has been made, but in the coming time it must have a new starting-point. The Liberian colony, or any other which shall be formed, must rise from the position of a far distant place to which one is banished, to be the attractive spot which calls, and to which a manly energy and independence urges.

To send only the degraded and the low in intellect is not the method to elevate and ennoble a new land. The stream will not rise higher than the fountain, and a slave, though free, cannot at once be a truly self-reliant man, least of all can he be a good teacher of self-reliance and progress. He must first teach himself, well as he may, before he can do much for others. The colonist must, if he carry good with him, be first elevated himself. Nor, on the other hand, can the isolated and exceptional cases of advancement and cultivation be spared from their brethren here.

For the most part, as can easily be seen would naturally be the case, the colonists who have hitherto gone have been the most energetic and intelligent. But in the time to come such cannot all be spared: their example and aid are needed here to help the general rise. But if the time comes, and when it comes, that under the stimulus of freedom the colored race as a whole advances to the point which we think there is for it in the future, individuals will not be of account; emigration passing along the track of commerce, and commerce by its own great laws will set toward Africa, and in this way the problem of Africarn colonization, and of African history in America will be fulfilled. All this may be very distant, many years may go by, though, fewer than perhaps we may imagine, but the Great God who guides the hours and their burden can bring it all about, and through one of the deepest crimes of history, the Rebellion of to-day, hasten it in its coming. It will be like Him to make crime its own avenger, and both crime and vengeance illustrate his goodness and love.
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Publication Date: 05-21-2008

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