Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 1

[378] been absent, for it was my desire to take every fair opportunity of testifying my utter and increasing disapprobation of the principles professed, on the subject of negro slavery, by the American Colonization Society. I can have no objection, indeed, to the plan of colonizing in Africa, with a view to its civilization, and to the extension of Christianity in that deeply injured quarter of the globe. On the contrary, I desire above all things to see such plans, conceived in the true spirit of philanthropy, multiplying on that coast. But the Colonization Society appears to me to adopt, as the basis of its schemes, not the love, but the hatred and contempt of the negro race, and to regard every one tinged with their blood as an object, not of kindness and brotherhood, but of abhorrence, and of exclusion from the common sympathies and affinities of our nature, and from that union and fellowship in that Saviour in whom there is neither Jew nor Gentile, Barbarian nor Scythian, American nor African, black nor white, bond nor free, but we are all one in Christ Jesus.

The unchristian prejudice of color, (which alone has given birth to the Colonization Society, though varnished over with other more plausible pretences, and veiled under a profession of a Christian regard for the temporal and spiritual interests of the negro which is belied by the whole course of its reasonings and the spirit of its measures,) is so detestable in itself that I think it ought not to be tolerated, but, on the contrary, ought to be denounced and opposed by all humane, and especially by all pious, persons in this country. And it especially becomes those who have taken any active part on behalf of the negro race, whether in this country or in the United States, to keep aloof from all cooperation with a body whose evident purpose is adverse, not only to the liberty of the enslaved negro, but to the moral and political elevation of the free negro.

I beg to express my sense of the eminent services you have rendered to the cause of humanity, by your able and persevering exposure of the evil tendency of the principles on which the Colonization Society acts, and trust that your exertions will be crowned with success. I remain, my dear sir,

Yours very faithfully,

Zachary MacAULAYulay.

Clarkson visited, and a few parting shots sent after the ‘impostor’ Cresson¹ (who was discovered to be on