Group 2:

“People of Color” from Freedom’s Journal, Friday, April 6, 1827, vol. I, No.4

Every attempt at a thorough discussion of this subject has always been met with a cry of danger. “You will excite the slaves to insurrection,” say they. But I ask if there is now no danger? If every slave owner feels as safe when he goes to bed as if he were surrounded by a free peasantry? If not, what mean those pistols under his pillow, and that loaded rifle over it? And is there even now no small degree of danger, what will be the case when the slaves in the West Indies and the Spanish states, become all free citizens? On the subject of danger, I [quote] Mr. Buxton: I know wherever there is oppression, there is danger—wherever there is slavery there is great danger—danger, in proportion to the degree of suffering. But the question is, how that danger is to be avoided. I answer, that it is to be avoided by that spirit of humanity which has avoided it in other places—by doing justice to those whom we now oppress—by giving liberty for slavery, happiness for misery. But even supposing the danger of giving to be as great as the danger of withholding; there may be danger in moving, and danger in standing still—danger in the proceeding, and danger in doing nothing: then, I ask the house, and I ask it seriously—whether it is not better to incur peril for justice and humanity, for freedom, and for the sake of giving happiness to millions hitherto oppressed; or, whether it be better to incur peril for slavery, cruelty, and injustice, for the sake of destroying the happiness of those wretched beings, upon whom we have already showered every species of calamity?… I confess it does appear to me to be the most extraordinary of all arguments, to contend that the danger arises not from slavery itself, but from the discussion of slavery in this house. What, then, does the slave require any hint from us that he is a slave, and that slavery is of all conditions the most miserable? Why, sir, he hears this; he sees it; he feels it too, in all around him. He sees his harsh uncompensated labor; he hears the crack of the whip; he feels, he writhes under the lash…. He sees…his children sent to market to be sold at the best price they will fetch; he sees in himself, not a man, but a thing…It cannot be believed that while all the rest of mankind are advancing in the march of improvement, two millions of the race in free America, shall be left in irretrievable degradation. The foundations of rights and duties are becoming known. And have the blacks neither duties nor rights?… [S]hall the laws of nature be suspended only in the freest country on the globe?…

[W]e urge that the coloured people place their children in such schools as their circumstances will admit…. Hundreds of children daily parade the streets, to the disgrace of their parents and the mortification of our reflecting brethren; who, if their parents were to place under the tuition of some approved teacher, might possibly become ornamental to society and glorious to our race.

Source: Freedom’s Journal, Friday, April 6, 1827, vol. I, No.4