Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v6.djvu/186

164  Indies, which the owner, a man named Koch, had unloaded on the Government. The experiment of colonizing it with American freedmen was a disastrous failure. Inadequately provisioned, without a leader, and brought face to face with the problems of life in a strange country, the disheartened colonists fell an easy prey to sloth and disease. Many died of malaria before the Government sent a ship to bring the half-starved and debilitated survivors back to the United States.

The following is a report of the substance of the President's remarks:

Why should the people of your race be colonized, and where? Why should they leave this country? This is, perhaps, the first question for proper consideration. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss; but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think. Your race suffer very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason, at least, why we should be separated. You here are freemen, I suppose?

[A voice: Yes, sir.]

Perhaps you have long been free, or all your lives. Your race is suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people. But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoys. The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours. Go where you are treated