Note 61 — The Attitude of the Free Negro Toward African Colonization

[return]61. "Having now done what we could," said they, "we ask you in view of the whole case whether you ought longer to take advantage of our weakness and press on us an enterprise that we have rejected from the first? Whether you ought to persist in a scheme which nourishes an unreasonable and un-Christian prejudice--which persuades legislatures to continue their unjust enactments against us in all their rigor--which exposes us to the persecution of the proud and profligate--which cuts us off from employment, and straitens our means of subsistence--which afflicts us with the feeling that our condition is unstable--and prevents us from making efforts for our improvement, or for the advancement of our own usefullness and benefits and with our families."--Cornish and Wright, "The Colonization Scheme Considered," 8.