Page:An address to the free people of color of the state of Maryland.djvu/3



a person assumes the privilege of addressing another, or any body or class of people, upon matters appertaining to them, or affecting their interest, it is but proper that he assign some reasons for so doing, setting forth why he should feel any peculiar interest in their welfare, and also, wherefore he considers himself competent to counsel and advise. A brief sketch of the main incidents in the life of the writer, will, he hopes, be his sufficient apology for the liberty he now assumes, and also impress upon those he addresses a conviction of the honesty of his purpose, and in some degree, his ability to see clearly what may be considered as conducive to their best interests. Near thirty years since he visited the Spanish Island of Cuba, and there became more or less acquainted with the condition of the people of color, both slave and free. He spent, the winter of the subsequent year in Hayti, where he first saw the black man administering government, and performing all functions properly appertaining to Manhood. Circumstances, afterwards, placed him in Liberia, where he acted for some years as physician, then as founder and Governor of the Maryland settlement at Cape Palmas, and subsequently, as trader on the Liberian coast, among the natives and at the civilized settlements contiguous, embracing in all, a residence in Africa of about ten years. For eighteen years past he has held the office of General Agent of the Maryland State Colonization Society, and again, very recently, visited the different settlements in Liberia. During this long period, he has not only been intimate with people of color, the slave, the nominally and actually free, but his business, his correspondence and almost all the acts of his life have been, more or less, intimately connected with them; and 'tis no affectation of humanity to say, mainly devoted to their interests. And this, not from settled principles of action, or from any philanthropic motives, but from feelings engendered by long and agreeable intercourse, from repeated acts of kindness and hospitality he has ever experienced at their hands. He, therefore, considers, that there is not only no impropriety, but a peculiar pertinence in his addressing the free people of color of the State of Maryland at this time.