National Intelligencer Quotes

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.

Is it asked do I yet say colonize Africa? I reply, yes. The surpassing fertility of the African soil, the mildness of the climate during a great part of the year, the numerous commercial advantages, the stores of fish and herds of animals to be found here, invite her scattered children home. As regards myself, I counted the cost of engaging in this service, before I left America. I came to these shores to die, and any thing better than death, is better than I expect.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

If any gentleman from the South shall propose a scheme to be carried on by this government upon a large scale, for the transportation of the colored people to any colony or any place in the world, I should be quite disposed to incur almost any degree of expense to accomplish that object.

Nothing is more to be wished than that the United States would themselves undertake to make such an establishment on the coast of Africa ... But for this the national mind is not yet prepared. It may perhaps be doubted whether many of these people would voluntarily consent to such an exchange of situation, and very certain that few of those advanced to a certain age in habits of slavery, would be capable of self-government. This should not, however, discourage the experiment, nor the early trial of it; and the proposition should be made with all the prudent cautions and attentions requisite to reconcile it to the interests, the safety, and the prejudices of all parties

Ultimately the white man should leave the United States and the black people should go back to Africa.

No one thinks of Mexico and Peru as black. But Mexico and Peru together got 700,000 Africans in the slave trade. The coast of Acapulco was a black city in the 1870s. And the Veracruz Coast on the gulf of Mexico and the Costa Chica, south of Acapulco are traditional black lands.

The African American's relationship to Africa has long been ambivalent, at least since the early nineteenth century, when 3,000 black men crowded into Bishop Richard Allen's African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia to protest noisily a plan to recolonize free blacks in 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.

I should think the souls of the Africans would sit heavily on the swords of the Americans.

… a hideous bugbear

It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the State [instead of colonizing them]? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites, ten thousand recollections by the blacks of the injuries they have sustained, new provocations, the real distinctions which nature has made, and many other circumstances will divide us into parties and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.

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.

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

… the settlement and moral improvement of the colored population of Canada, for the purpose of purchasing crown or clergy reserve lands in the township of Raleigh and settling the same with colored families resident in Canada of approved moral character

The editor has great doubts of the justice of the plans proposed. It appears to him calculated to rivet closer the chains that already gall the sons of Africa and to insure to the miserable objects of American cruelty a perpetuity of bondage

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.