REPORT,

Of the Committee appointed February 18, 1823, to inquire respecting the black population of the United States. Read and accepted April 22, 1823.

[See pages 29 and 31.]

The committee to whom was referred the subject of the colored population of the United States, beg leave to present the following Report :

There is at present within the limits of the United States, a colored population of one million, seven hundred and sixty-nine thousand. The character and circumstances of this class of the community fall, to some extent, under the personal observation of every man. Who is there, that does not know something of the condition of the blacks in the northern and middle states? They may be seen in our cities and larger towns, wandering like foreigners and outcasts, in the land which gave them birth. They may be seen in our penitentiaries, and jails, and poor-houses. They may be found. inhabiting the abodes of poverty, and the haunts of vice. But if we look for them in the society of the honest and respectable,—if we visit the schools in which it is our boast that the meanest citizen can enjoy the benefits of instruction,we might also add, if we visit the sanctuaries which are open for all to worship, and to hear the word of God; we shall not find them there. The Soodra is not farther separated from the Brahmin in regard to all his privileges, çivil, intellectual and moral, than the negro is from the white man, by the prejudices which result from the difference made between them by the God of nature. A barrier more difficult to be surmounted than the institution of the Caste, cuts off, and, while the present state of society con

tinues, must always cut off, the negro from all that is valuable in citizenship. In his infancy, he finds himself, he knows not why, the scorn of his playmates, from the first moment that their little fingers can be pointed at him in derision. In youth, he has no incentive to prepare for an active and honorable manhood. No visions of usefulness, or respectability, animate his prospects. In maturer years, he has little motive to industry, or to honorable exertion. He is always degraded in the estimation of the community, and the deep sense of that degradation enters into his soul, and makes him degraded indeed. We know that there are individuals, who, in spite of all these obstacles to moral and social improvement, have acquired a character for respectability, and piety. But instances like these, occasioned by the peculiar circumstances or powers of the individuals, cannot be brought to disprove the general assertion, which we make without fear of contradiction, that the blacks are degraded, without any proper means of improvement, or any sufficient incentive to exertion; that they present the strange anomaly of a large part of the nation that loves to call itself the freest, happiest, and most enlightened nation on the globe, separated by obstacles which they did not create, and which they cannot surmount, from all the institutions and privileges to which the other portions of the community owe their superiority.

But there is another still more important characteristic of the condition of our colored population, in comparison with which every other circumstance dwindles into insignificance; and from which, all that we have already said. is only a single necessary consequence. We mean slavery. And on this subject we must express ourselves briefly, yet boldly. We have heard of slavery as it existed in the nations of antiquity,-we have heard of slavery as it exists in Asia, Africa, and Turkey,-we have heard of

the feudal slavery under which the peasantry of Europe have groaned from the days of Alaric, until now; but, excepting only the horrible system of the West India Islands, we have never heard of slavery in any country, ancient or modern, Pagan, Mohammedan, or Christian, so terrible in its character, so pernicious in its tendency, so remediless in its anticipated resul's, as the slavery which exists in these United States. We do not mean here to speak of slavery as a system of bonds, and stripes, and all kinds of bodily suffering. On this point, there is, we believe, a great degree of misapprehension among our fellow citizens of the North. Many of them are accustomed to associate with the name of slavery, all that is horrible in the details of the African trade, and all that is terrific in the cruelties of Jamaica and Porto Rico. But we rejoice in the belief that these conceptions are erroneous; and that, though there may be instances of unpunished, and sometimes, perhaps, almost unnoticed barbarity, the condition of a slave, in most parts of the United States, is gen erally as much superior to that of a slave in the West Indies, as the condition of an American farmer is to that of an Irish peasant. Here we are ready to make what all will consider the most liberal concessions. We are ready even to grant, for our present purpose, that, so far as mere animal existence is concerned, the slaves have no reason to complain, and the friends of humanity have no reason to complain for them. And when we use the strong language which we feel ourselves compelled to use in relation to this subject, we do not mean to speak of animal suffering, but of an immense moral and political evil,

of slavery as it stands connected with the wealth and strength, and more especially, with the character and happiness of our nation.

We have no room to enlarge on the political aspect of this subject. We will only ask-where would be the en

terprise, the wealth, and the strength of New England, if her green hills and pleasant vallies were cultivated no longer by her own independent and hardy yeomanry, but by the degraded serfs of a Polish aristocracy? And what would not Virginia become, if she could exchange her four hundred and twenty-five thousand slaves for as many freemen, who, in blood and complexion, as well as in immunities and enjoyments, should be one with the proudest of her children?

But the mere politician cannot fail, in estimating the magnitude of this evil, to look at its moral tendency. The great men of the south have looked at it in this aspect, and have expressed themselves accordingly. Judge Washington pronounces it to be "an inherent vice in the community." Mr. Jefferson uses language on this subject, too strong for even a northern man to regard as strictly true. In his Notes on Virginia, he says "The whole commerce between master and slave, is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other."-"The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in a smaller circle of slaves, gives loose to his worst pas sions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped with odious peculiarities." -"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that his justice cannot sleep forever."-And speaking of the probability that the blacks may assert their freedom, he adds, "the Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest." It would easy to collect the sentiments of many highly honored individuals in the southern States who have expressed themselves as decidedly if not as strongly. But it is enough to say in regard to the moral influence of the system on the blacks, that laws exist in nearly all the slave

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holding States, prohibiting their instruction, and even driving them from Sunday schools, because it is supposed that the public safety requires them to be kept in perfect ignorance; and, in regard to its influence on the white population, that the most lamentable proof of its deteriorating effects may be found in the fact, that excepting the pious, whose hearts are governed, by the christian law of reciprocity between man and man, and the wise, whose minds have looked far into the relations and tendencies of things, none can be found to lift their voices against a system, so utterly repugnant to the feelings of unsophisticated humanity-a system which permits all the atrocities of the domestic slave-trade-which permits the father to sell his children as he would his cattle-a system which consigns one half of the community to hopeless and utter degradation, and which threatens in its final catastrophe to bring down the same ruin on the master and the slave.

There are two considerations in view of which we ventured to remark, that the slavery which exists in our country is more ominous in its character and tende ev, than any similar system which has ever existed in other countries. The first is, that slavery contradicts the primary principles of our republican government. Slavery was not inconsistent with the principles of Grecian and Roman democracy. It is in perfect harmony with the systems of government, which, excepting Great Britain and Switzerland, prevail in very province of the old world, from the Frozen Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope, and from the Bay of Biscay to the Pacific. But it stands in direct opposition to all the acknowledged and boasted maxims in which are laid the foundations of our political institutions. The other consideration to which we refer, is that which spreads terror over every aspect in which the subject can be viewed, and which seems to tell us—for all these evils there is no remedy. It is, the fact that the