The condition and prospects of the African race in our country have never been so interesting and important as at the present moment. According to the opinion and estimate of one of the most intelligent and eminent of their friends, Mr. Latrobe of Baltimore, President of the American Colonization Society, the situation of the free blacks before the commencement of the war was miserable, if not hopeless.

"The condition of the free colored population as a class is inferior to what it was in 1816...... They find by sad experience how irresistible is white competition in a strife for bread. Excluded from many an accustomed calling, legislation has been invoked to straiten their condition, and emancipation has been prohibited lest the numbers of so superfluous a class should grow too fast. Strenuous efforts, made under favorable circumstances, to put them on a footing of equality with the white race, have resulted only in increasing public prejudice. Courts of justice have recognized the existence of this feeling, and even in those States which boast peculiar sympathies in their behalf, the distinction of caste practically pervades the entire community, so far as they are concerned. And why should all this be? Why at least have the free colored people not been permitted to maintain the kindlier relations, indifferent as those were, of half a century ago? Personally they have not deteriorated in the interval. In individual cases the free man of color has wonderfully improved; he is better educated, more refined; with appreciative tastes, an elevated ambition, comfortable means, often wealth. . . . . . They voted, in Maryland, up to 1809, and the popular almanac, at the beginning of the present century, in the States of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, was the work of Benjamin Banneker, a man of unmixed African descent. Why, then, the change in question? There is but one cause to which it can be attributed, the increase of our aggregate population. The two races are coming, day by day, into closer contact. Collisions, of old unknown, are beginning to occur between the masses of the respective populations. The old story of the Spaniard and the Moor is being re-enacted in our midst. We are but illustrating the law that invariably prevails where two races that cannot amalgamate by intermarriage occupy the same land."

What is here put forth with regard to the half-million or more of free blacks in 1860 applies with greater force to those of the present time, whose numbers we cannot attempt to compute. The problem as to the fate of these unhappy multitudes

is one of the deepest interest, not only to themselves and to us, but to the whole civilized world. Here they are, by no fault of their own, - living, sentient creatures, of generous nature, with the same needs, the same desires, the same future destiny, as our own; and, so far as their condition in this world goes, an immediate and heavy responsibility rests upon us. How, in view of all the difficulties, shall it be met? Legislation may forbid, but it is utterly incompetent to ordain, anything with regard to their future under the new régime. A free man is free, whatever be his color. We can enforce upon him the restraints of law and order; we can punish him for begging, and at the same time prohibit his practising any trade of which he feels himself capable, and by which he might earn an honest livelihood; we may tax him, though he has no political status; we may exclude him from our public conveyances, our churches, and our schools, and by laws worthy of Japanese brains may drive him from the borders of States whose lands lie untilled for want of the very labor he would bring; but we cannot force him to go hither or thither, or to practise this or that trade or way of life, without reducing him again to the condition of a slave. We can only, having first gained his confidence, enlighten, advise, aid, and defend him. He is at liberty to choose his path, narrowed as it is, wisely or unwisely, as the case may be; but we of more knowledge may warn him against the evil, and offer inducements toward the advantageous and the happy. When a river is to be forded, the man who has long lived on its banks can be of essential service to the stranger or the child who is obliged to cross; and these new-made citizens of ours, who have been so long in a "state of pupilage," yet not taught, are but children and strangers in the path of life. Even already they mutely appeal to us for help, and it must be owned that the very depth of their need chills our humanity. How can we undertake a task so immense?

It is plain that our power lies in theirs. Our ability to help them depends on their ability and willingness to help themselves. We might try in vain to lift a dead weight so fearful, but to their strength we may with good hope add the power of our machinery. They ask nothing more. To feel their - NO. 200.

VOL. XCVII.

10

own responsibility is one of their new pleasures. Under all their misfortunes, all their discouragements, all their sad and bitter memories, they are full of spirit. There is nothing of the beggar about them. Europeans as poor, as untaught, as much abused, would be abject, but the negro never. Win his affection and confidence, show him that you are thoroughly kind and true, and he will serve you heartily and faithfully. Use him ill, wound his pride, trample on his self-respect, and he will bear with you as long as he must, but you have not conquered him. This spirit, inherent in the race, its enemies and contemners call impudence, even when it exhibits itself in no more aggressive form than walking about the streets well dressed and with a cheerful and assured look. But it is what Eastern people call grit, and respect very highly in persons of their own complexion, and what the few who do not despise a black skin denominate, quite as truly, manliness. That the colored people should retain it under all the cruel injustice and wrong that have been heaped upon them is most remarkable. The black man is a perfect Jack-in-thebox as to oppression. While the lid is well on, he is quiet and submissive; but the first chance for liberty and light shows the power of a strong spring in him. In the District of Columbia, where we have, as it were, a cabinet picture of the effect of emancipation upon the individual, we cannot but admire the behavior of the blacks. Quiet, orderly, and, if somewhat elated by the great boon, yet restraining all outward signs of elation with what almost merits the name of dignity, they "bate no jot of heart or hope" at being sent forth upon the world to "take care of themselves," though they have been industriously taught to think this a task impossible to them. It is true, they do not fully appreciate the difficulties before them. They fancy that we are going to be more just and kind, more reasonable and Christian, than before. Let us hope, not only for their sake, but for our own, that it may be so. But, again, intuition has not taught them political economy. As they have no nationality and no concert, they feel and judge viduals, each deducing his future from his past. law of the dreadful science founded on human selfishness will none the less confront them as they attempt to advance: when

only as indiBut the iron

two races struggle for weaker must give way. So has it been ever since the world began; so must it be till shall we say the millennium?

existence on the same ground, the

The colonization plans of our excellent President are doubtless based upon his conviction that this struggle must be a fruitless one on the part of the colored race. He is not sanguine enough to think and, indeed, his surroundings do not seem calculated to inspire the confidence that men are more virtuous or more brotherly, wiser or more disinterested, now than they have been in times past; and his kindly nature would give the new freemen a fair chance to show their powers and use their liberty in a clear field. But his intended beneficiaries, though they love and honor him as their great benefactor and sincere friend, are not attracted by the prospect held out to them. They have their own views, with which feeling and habit have not a little to do. They have no idea of being "removed." They deny that they are foreigners, and claim the privilege of remaining in their own country, unless they see it for their interest to go elsewhere. Children of instinct, of affinities, of affections, as they are, no one of a different race can plan acceptably for them. They must work out their own salvation, and they will do it in due time. We must have patience. Mr. Latrobe says:

"Apprehensive as are the intelligent among them with regard to the future, whither can they look? They have already tried Hayti, and found it wanting. Alike in color, but unlike in all other respects, they have neither affinities nor sympathies with its people. They have no desire to be hewers of wood and drawers of water in the British colonies of Trinidad and Demerara. They fully appreciate the motives of those who invite them to the West Indies. With no spot on the American continent not appropriated to the white man's use, and his exclusively, whither can they go to avoid the throng of multiplying thousands now competing with them in all the avenues of labor? Whither, when the West, which now by absorbing the foreign immigration relieves them from the pressure on the seaboard that would otherwise crush them, whither, when the West, too, shall have a redundant population, shall they go? Whither but to Africa, where climate genial and salubrious to the descendants of the soil PROTECTS THEM

AS WITH A WALL OF FIRE AGAINST THE ENCROACHMENTS OF THE

WHITE MAN, guards the headland, sentinels the mine, and stays, even

on the very border of the sea, on the rivers, and in the forest, that march of empire which pestilence alone can check?"

Forty-four years ago, Rev. Robert Finley of New Jersey, moved, as he said, "by the increasing wretchedness of the negroes," originated the idea of planting a colony in Africa, the object of which should be to induce the free people of color" to go and settle there." He met with some sympathy, and more ridicule; excited a good deal of attention, and also a large share of violent opposition. There were those who saw that the free blacks were in a miserably degraded condition among us, and who were ready to commend, if not to aid, almost any scheme for their relief; and there were not a few to whom the idea of doing anything for the grinning, blubberlipped half-baboon called a negro was ludicrous in the extreme, and who believed that any man pretending to take an interest in them was a hypocrite, who had his own ends to answer. The thinking and conscientious among our citizens discussed the scheme in their way, and were in general favorably impressed by it, although they perceived at once that the number of persons who could be sent to Africa, properly fitted out for the new life they were to lead there and reasonably secured against its difficulties and dangers, could bear scarcely an appreciable proportion to the mass of free blacks among us, if only private benevolence was to be invoked in their behalf; while the advocates of immediate emancipation strenuously opposed the whole plan, as being likely to quiet the conscience of the slaveholder, and to make him feel all the more secure in holding his human chattels, for having freed a small fraction of them and fitted them out for exportation. Some enthusiastic individuals there were who rejoiced in the idea that all the free blacks could be removed and colonized, and who would hardly believe figures when the sum necessary for colonizing even the increase of a single year was exhibited to their wondering eyes. But good Mr. Finley persevered, saying that he knew the thing was of God, and in December, 1816, his prayers and efforts resulted in the formation of the American Colonization Society, which has ever since been sedulously at work, sustained mainly by the benevolence of individuals, and winning the approbation of many of our