Samuel Bacon Quotes

It is something singular that the colored race—those in reality most interested in the future destinies of Africa—should be so lightly affected by the evidences continually being presented in favor of colonization

America is the result of the amalgam of three people: Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans

We were stolen from our mother country and brought here. We have tilled the ground and made fortunes for thousands, and still they are not weary of our services. _But they who stay to till the ground must be slaves_. Is there not land enough in America, or 'corn enough in Egypt'? Why should they send us into a far country to die? See the thousands of foreigners emigrating to America every year: and if there be ground sufficient for them to cultivate, and bread for them to eat, why would they wish to send the ‘first tillers’ of the land away? Africans have made fortunes for thousands, who are yet unwilling to part with their services; but the free must be sent away, and those who remain must be slaves. I have no doubt that there are many good men who do not see as I do, and who are sending us to Liberia; but they have not duly considered the subject--they are not men of color. This land which we have watered with our tears and our blood is now our ‘mother country’, and we are well satisfied to stay where wisdom abounds and the gospel is free.

The event of the landing of these brethren upon our shores is to be, not without its beneficial effect, as well to the colored population of this country, as it promises to be to ill-fated Africa.

In order to assist unemployed workmen, in removing to one of our colonies…the not inconsiderable sum of 50,000 pounds would be set aside to subsidize emigration to the Cape, where from the mildness of the climate and the fertility of the soil in these parts, a rapid and abundant return may reasonably be expected.

In the disposition of these unfortunate people, there are two rational objects to be distinctly kept in view. First. The establishment of a colony on the coast of Africa, which may introduce among the aborigines the arts of cultivated life, and the blessings of civilization and science. By doing this, we may make to them some retribution for the long course of injuries we have been committing on their population.

There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her children, whose ancestors have been torn from her by the ruthless hand of fraud and violence

Africans in the diaspora were constantly being reminded of Africa by their European masters who tried to impress upon them that Africa was primitive. Repudiating this thinly veiled justification of slavery required diaspora intellectuals to focus on Africa and demonstrate that it had made major contributions to world civilization. Consciousness of Africa was also sustained by the continuous flow of people, ideas, values, visions, practices, and expressive culture from Africa to the Americas and vice-versa.

America has been peopled by Europeans primarily because they expected in that country to make more money more easily.

I just think you people (African Americans) would be happier back in Africa where you came from.

The white men in the East are like birds. They are hatching out their eggs every year, and there is not room enough in the East, and they must go elsewhere; and they come out West, as you have seen them coming for the last few years.

We are sufficiently aware of the vast extent of the lands within Our Empire, We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade …. We permit all foreigners to come into Our Empire, in order to settle in all the governments, just as each one may desire.

We maintain that it is a right of humanity … that this vast territory be inhabited by an industrious people.

People tend to migrate from the third world to the metropolises of the very countries that once dominated them. Algerians to Paris; Puerto Ricans to New York; Pakistanis to London.

I would be quite willing personally to leave the whole country as a wilderness for the next half-century, but I fear that if Englishmen do not go there, Yankees will.

colonizing free colored persons, with their own consent, at any place or places without the United States.

The object to which attention is to be exclusively directed, is to promote and execute a plan for colonizing (with their consent) the free people of color, residing in our country, in Africa, or such other place as Congress shall deem most expedient

Might not the inhabitants of Africa, with still greater justice on their side, than we have on ours, cross the Atlantic, seize our citizens, carry them into Africa, and make slaves of them, provided they were able to do it? But should this be really the case, every corner of the globe would reverberate with the sound of African oppression; so loud would be our complaint, and so “feeling our appeal” to the inhabitants of the world at large. We should represent them as a lawless, piratical set of unprincipled robbers, plunderers and villains, who basely prostituted the superior power and information, which God had given them for worthy purposes to the vilest of all ends. We should not hesitate to say that they made use of those advantages only to infringe upon every dictate of justice; to trample under foot every suggestion of principle, and to spurn, with contempt, every right of humanity.

The cultural barriers and social and economic differences separating the Africans and African-Americans is sometimes the cause of a simmering hostility and misunderstanding between them. Sharing the common physical characteristic of skin color has not ensured cultural and economic unity between African immigrants and American-born blacks.

Go and travel thither to inhabit or remain there, to build and fortify … take and lead in the same voyages with him … such and so many of our subjects as shall willingly accompany him…

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.

The causes of their [Indians’] degradation and diminution, are principally to be found in their baneful communication with the man of Europe, which has contaminated their morals, destroyed their population, robbed them of their country, and deprived them of their national spirit. Indeed, when we consider, that the discovery and settlement of America, have exterminated millions of the red men, and entailed upon the sable inhabitants of Africa, endless and destructive wars, captivity, slavery and death, we have reason to shudder at the gloomy perspective

Invite colonists from all the other nations of Europe.

The condition of the colored man within our borders may become a source of anxiety, to say the least .... It was looking to a settlement of this question that led me to urge the annexation of San Domingo during the time I was President of the United States. San Domingo was freely offered to us, not only by the administration but by all the people, almost without price. The island is upon our shores, is very fertile, and is capable of supporting fifteen million people. The products of the soil are so valuable that labor in her fields would be so compensated as to enable those who wished to go there to quickly repay the cost of their passage. I took it that the colored people would go there in great numbers, so as to have independent states governed by their own race. They would still be states of the Union, and under the protection of the general government, but the citizens would be almost wholly colored.

I am first-generation American, so I didn't grow up in the South or have any relatives who were slaves. My forefathers were colonized.