Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/246

238 crossed the lines, and laid the foundation for a structure which promises to prove an asylum for the colored population of these United States. They have erected two hundred log-houses, and have five hundred acres under cultivation."

A college "on the manual labor system" was planned: "For the present ignorant and degraded condition of many of our brethren in these United States (which has been a subject of much concern to the convention) can excite no astonishment (although used by our enemies to show our inferiority in the scale of human beings); for, what opportunities have they possessed for mental cultivation or improvement? Mere ignorance, however, in a people divested of the means of acquiring information by books, or an extensive connection with the world, is no just criterion of their intellectual incapacity; and it has been actually seen, in various remarkable instances, that the degradation of the mind and character, which has been too hastily imputed to a people kept, as we are, at a distance from those sources of knowledge which abound in civilized and enlightened communities, has resulted from no other causes than our unhappy situation and circumstances."

The convention met again in 1833 and resolved on further plans for settling in Canada. These conventions continued to assemble annually for five years, when they were succeeded by the convention of the American Moral Reform Society which met