Walker Brown Quotes
I will admit that the word expatriation is not universally applicable to the free people of color generally, and even to the great majority of the three millions of slaves; but the plan does not propose to consult the predilection of any, but if they must be removed from the country without their consent, then surely humanity would dictate that we ought to make their privations as light as possible. Why not establish a colony in California for those who object to go to Africa? The climate, the soil, and the location, would all be propitious; our government could throw around them the shield of her protection, and if one seventh part of our whole population are to be removed, we could afford to spare the poor blacks a tract of wild land that has been obtained by conquest.
More than a decade before the Civil War there were many proposals and plans for ending slavery in America without war. Many of these debates took place amongst major religious institutions. John Price Durbin, an eminent Methodist clergyman and former president of Dickinson College proposed one. His plan called for compensation to slaveholders and the relocation of the freed slaves to Africa—a form of ethnic cleansing. Brown disagreed with forced colonization to Africa. Instead, he suggested California as a voluntary option. Brown’s idea received about 9 months of serious consideration, but in January of 1848, gold was discovered in California and the Gold Rush was on. Black colonization of California was off the table.
Walker Brown, *, Warden, Christ Church of Philadelphia, Letter to The New York Christian Advocate, March 17, 1847
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General David Hunter had unilaterally freed all the slaves in the Southern Department. See {619331}. Lincoln rescinded Hunter’s proclamation instantly. Lincoln would issue the first Emancipation Proclamation 4 months later, but did not want each Army Department setting its own policy on such a touchy and serious subject. Also, Lincoln did not want to offend the two slave states that had remained loyal to the Union, Kentucky and Maryland. Some Lincoln critics claim that there was little or no moral motivation for Lincoln, and he was pressured into the Emancipation Proclamation. See {619335} for the Confederate Government reaction to Hunter’s Emancipation.
This is a very important quotation historically. There are a few historians and many politicians who claim that the rebellion of the South in the Civil War was motivated by a number of principles having little or nothing to do with slavery, while most historians have found that slavery was the only major issue. This quote further supports that view. This is the only Union General Officer would be executed if captured by the South. What crimes did he perform to warrant such exceptional treatment? He issued an order Emancipating the Slaves of the Southern Department of which he was the Commanding General. See {619331} . Lincoln quickly countermanded the order, but the act of freeing slaves was to the Southern government so heinous that it deserved the death penalty.
See {625675}, {625686}, {625684}, {625682}, {625676} for additional quotations arguing for Black emigration.
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Many whites thought that the solution to the problem of free and emancipated Negroes was to send them to Africa. They assumed that the negroes would by desirous of that solution also, but they rarely asked them. When they did, they received answers much like this one from one of the leading Black clergymen in America.
Approximately 15,000 Blacks chose to emigrate.
Most free Blacks were not enthusiastic about the possibility of colonization. Those that were, wanted a colony in the Western part of America—not Africa or the Caribbean. See {613811}.
Jefferson was referring to a plan then proposed and discussed to establish a colony in Africa which would be populated with free American Negroes and slaves when and if slavery could be ended. See Quotation xxx.
Lincoln early in his career had thought that voluntary Negro emigration would be a solution to the race problem in America. However, over time he lost his enthusiasm for this. Conversations with Black leaders had persuaded him that American Negroes had helped build this country and wanted their fair place in it. Hay thought that the idea was not only immoral but impractical and considered the suggestion always to be a proposed solution which would never be practically implemented. There were a few attempts and there was a society set up to encourage emigration. The Nation of Liberia was founded by returning American ex-slaves, but there has been friction between the descendants of the Americans and those of the natives ever since.
The United States should authorize payment for
Abraham Lincoln in his famous eulogy to Clay in Springfield, IL, used this quotation.
This is an incredibly important political and historical quotation. One of the leading white ministers of Boston, advises all Blacks (and implicitly whites as well) not to cooperate with the Boston Police. Under the Dred Scott and other legal doctrines, the law enforcement mechanism of even Northern, anti Slavery states, would arrest and hold those suspected of being runaway slaves. This included many ex slaves but also many freemen who were then enslaved by the system. Law enforcement was no better than the slave owners and the slave catchers as far as the welfare of Blacks was concerned. The result has been a hostility to and an antipathy to law enforcement in the North who – even in the view of many whites like Parker were not worthy of trust and cooperation. After slavery, law enforcement supported and enforced the Jim Crow discriminatory laws. The resentment and distrust remains.
Grant had negotiated for what is today the Dominican Republic to become a Black state where American Negroes could go. However, like Lincoln before him and most others arguing for Negro emigration, he underestimated the Negro desire to remain where they were and just be free with equal opportunity. See {625675}, {625686}, {625684}, {625683}, {625682} for additional quotations arguing for Black emigration.
This idea has been rejected by American Blacks from before the Civil War. There were many Black families that have been in America longer than Rockwell who always had the choice to go back to where they cam from if they were unhappy with America but they never did.
Free Negroes were banned by many states and local governments or otherwise restricted in their movements and occupations. The “safety of society” referred to the belief of most Southern whites that the mere presence of free Negroes would undermine the slavery system and encourage slave revolts and retribution against the slave owners. At this point Jefferson was considering a plan to patriot Negroes back to Africa. Jefferson, at this point, thought that this might be the fairest and best solution for all.
Lincoln, just before the Civil War, quoted Jefferson that if slavery were not ended in America the results would be disastrous. But Lincoln at the time probably did not imagine how right Jefferson was, and Jefferson himself probably 1 how terrible the Civil War would be.
Actually Blacks did all three. Some returned to Africa and established the state of Liberia. Others went to South America and most stayed in the United States and continued to help build the nation.
Illinois Democrats had made a few visible appointments of Blacks to patronage positions during the campaign, but who were generally opposed to Civil Rights Legislation or any economic reforms that would help the majority of Blacks—some would argue that this was the obverse of the party situation entering the third millennium.
In 1862 the president requested a $600,000 congressional appropriation to finance a pilot program for Negroes freed by the Civil War to emigrate to Africa. He met with a delegation of Black leaders:
One of the many complaints that many people made at the time about Smith and his Mormons was that they opposed slavery. In fact, Smith not only opposed it be had a plan for compensating the slave owner and a method for paying for it. Smith was not advocating the kinds of personal lifestyle issues of his church the way modern religious leaders do, but was concerned with the much larger issues of expansionism, corruption of the courts and judiciary, and land distribution. He was a classic reform candidate in that sense. Smith had written to most of the then likely Presidential candidates of both major parties asking for their position on the Mormons who were facing persecution wherever they went. None of the politicians would make any satisfactory commitments. Smith took Direct Action and became the only major religious official to have run for the Presidency of the United States until Pat Robertson tried and failed in 2000. Smith’s assassination shortly thereafter cut his run for the Presidency short before it made much headway and politically he had no chance to affect the race.
