Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/282

258 of England. B. B. Thatcher presented the views of the Colonization Society and the growing value of the Liberian Colony, in eloquent and fervid oratory. He voiced the cultured and far-seeing ideas of statesmen and philanthropists, while the Abolitionists were looked upon as fanatics, and the negro stood between the two like the animal between the two bundles of hay. If we except a few members of their race, the negro has never wasted his abundant sensuality upon any questions of race improvement. Toussaint L'Ouverture was a great man, despite of race, and Count Timines, who was in this country just before the opening of the Civil War, was a man of elegant culture, educated in Paris, and holding brave hopes for the emancipation of Hayti, which was the limit of his world, and he wrote a history of it, describing the terrible war of races, which has deluged that lovely island with blood. The negro has never made endeavors to attain do- minion or power. The negro has never made a start for liberty. Liberty has been thrust upon him, — and he receives it without dignity, uttering complaints and making statements known to be false, with constant appeals to Northern sympathy. It may be Utopian to think of removing six millions of people to Africa, but once let emigration turn that way, and Africa will be remunerated for the wrong we have done her. We wrenched from her a sensual, ignorant, barbarous population, and we return thither a people with civilized instincts, and it is to be hoped with aspirations that may help the dark continent to wipe out her old pagan barbarism, cruelty, and sen- suality, by creating in them the hope of culture and the intimations of Empire. Elizabeth Oakes Smith. Hollywood, N. C, February 12, 1890. In the following contribution to The Open Court (Chi-