The North Star (Rochester)/1848/01/14/The Colored Convention
THE COLORED CONVENTION.
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON A NATIONAL PRESS.
The Committee on a "National press and printing establishment for the people of color," made the following report on the importance and practicability of such an undertaking:
"It being admitted that the colored people of the United States are pledged, before the world and in the face of heaven, to struggle manfully for advancement in civil and social life, it is clear that our own efforts must mainly, if not entirely, produce such advancement. And if we are to advance by our own efforts, (under the divine blessing,) we must use the means which will direct such efforts to a successful issue.
"Of the means for the advancement of a people placed as we are, none are more available than a press. We struggle against opinions. Our warfare lies in the field of thought. Glorious struggle! Godlike warfare! In training our soldiers for the field, in marshalling our hosts for the fight, in leading the onset, and through the conflict, we need a printing press, because a printing press is a vehicle of thought—is a ruler of opinions.
Among ourselves we need a press that shall keep us steadily alive to our responsibilities, which shall constantly point out the principles which should guide our conduct and our labors, which shall cheer us from one end of the land to the other, by recording our acts, our sufferings, our temporary defeats, and our steadily approaching triumph, or rather the triumph of the glorious truth "Human Equality," whose servants and soldiers we are.
"If a press be not the most powerful means for our elevation, it is the most immediately necessary. Education of the intellect, of the will, and of character, is, doubtless, a powerful—perhaps the most powerful means for our advancement; yet a press is needed to keep this very fact before the whole people, in order that all may constantly and unitedly labor in this, the right direction. It may be, that some other means might seem even more effectual than education; even then a press will be the more necessary, inasmuch as it will afford a field in which the relative importance of the various means may be discussed and settled in the hearing of the whole people, and to the profit of all.
"The first step which will mark our certain advancement as a people, will be our Declaration of Independence from all aid except from God and our own souls. This step can only be taken when the minds of our people are thoroughly convinced of its necessity and importance. And such conviction can only be produced through a press, which shall show that although we have labored long and earnestly, we have labored in too many directions and with too little concert of action; and that we must, as one man bend our efforts in the one right direction in order to advance.
"We need a press also as our banner on the outer wall, that all who pass by may read why we struggle, and what we struggle for. If we convince the world that we are earnestly and resolutely striving for our own advancement, one half the battle will already be won, because well and rightly begun. Our friends will the more willingly help us; our foes will quail because they have lost their best allies—our own inertness, carelessness, strifes, and dependence upon others. And there is no way, except through a press—a national press—that we can tell the world of our position in the path of human progress.
"Let there be, then, in these United States, a printing press, a copious supply of type, a full and complete establishment, wholly controlled by colored men; let the thinking writing man, the compositors, pressmen, printers' help—all, all, be men of color; then let there come from said establishment a weekly periodical and a quarterly periodical, edited as well as printed by colored men; let this establishment be so well endowed as to be beyond the chances of temporary patronage; and then there will be a fixed fact, a rallying point, towards which the strong and the weak amongst us would look with confidence and hope from which would flow a steady stream of comfort and exhortation to the wear strugglers, and of burning rebuke and overwhelming argument upon those who dare impede our way.
"The time was when a great statesman exclaimed, 'Give me the song-making of a people, and I will rule that people.' That time has passed away from our land, wherein the reason of the people must be assaulted and overcome. This can only be done through the press. We have felt, and bitterly, the weight of odium and malignity wrought upon us by one or two prominent presses in this land; we have felt also the favorable feeling wrought in our behalf by the anti-slavery press. But the amount of the hatred against us has been conventional antipathy; and of the favorable feeling, has been human sympathy. Our friends sorrow with us, because, they say, we are unfortunate! We must batter down those antipathies; we must command something manlier than sympathies. We must command the respect and admiration due men, who against fearful odds, are struggling steadfastly for their rights. This can only be done through a press of our own. It is needless to support these views with a glance at what the press has done for the down-trodden among men; let us rather look forward with the determination of accomplishing through this engine, an achievement more glorious than any yet accomplished. We lead the forlorn hope of human equality; let us tell of its onslaught on the battlements of hate and caste; let us record its triumph in a press of our own.
In making these remarks, your Committee do not forget or underrate the good service done by the newspapers, which have been, or are now, edited and published by our colored brethren. We are deeply alive to the talent, the energy, and perseverance, which these papers manifest on the part of their self sacrificing conductors; and as the proprietors are poor, their papers have been jeoparded or slopped for the want of capital. The history of our newspapers is the strongest argument in favor of the establishment of a press. These papers abundantly prove, that we have all the talent and industry requisite to conduct a paper such as we need; and they prove also, that among 500,000 free people of color, no one man is yet set apart with a competence for the purpose of advocating with the pen our cause and the cause of our brethren in chains. It is an imposition upon the noble-minded colored editors; it is a libel upon us, as a free and thinking people, that we have hitherto made no effort to establish a press on a foundation so broad and national that it may support one literary man of color and an office of colored compositors.
The importance and necessity of a National Press, your Committee trust, are abundantly manifest.
The following plan, adopted by the Committee of seven, appointed by the Convention with full power, is in the place of the propositions proposed by the Committee of three:
1st. There shall be an Executive of eleven persons, to be denominated, The Executive Committee on the National Press for the Free Colored People of the United States, viz:
2d. Massachusetts—Leonard Collins, James Mars; Connecticut—Amos G. Beman, James W. C. Pennington; Kentucky—Andrew Jackson; New York—J. McCune Smith, Chas. B. Ray, Alex. Crummell; New Jersey—E. P. Rogers; Pennsylvania—Andrew Purnell, George B. Vachon; of which Committee James McCune Smith, of New York, shall be Chairman, and Amos G. Beman, of Connecticut, Secretary.
3d. The members of this Committee residing in the city of New York, shall be a Financial Committee, who shall deposit, in trust for the Executive Committee, in the "New York Seaman's Bank for Savings," all the funds received by them from the Agents.
4th. No disposition shall be nude of the funds by any less than a two-thirds majority of the whole Committee.
5th. The Committee shall hold stated meetings once in six months, and shall then publish an account of their proceedings, the receipts, and from whom all sums are sent to them by the Agents.
6th. The Rev. J. W. C. Pennington, of Connecticut, shall be the Foreign Agent of the National Press; and the Agents shall always be ex-officio members of the Committee.
7th. The remuneration of the Home agent shall be twenty per cent.; of the Foreign agent thirty per cent., on collections made.
8th. The meetings of the Committee shall take place in the city of New York.
9th. The Agents shall report and remit to the Committee, at least once a month for the Home, and once in two months for the Foreign agent.
10th. Members of the Committee, from any two States, may call an extra meeting thereof by giving the chairman and secretary thirty days' notice.
Respectfully submitted,
J. McCUNE SMITH,
G. B. WILSON,
WM. H. TOPP.
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON ABOLITION.
The committee appointed to draft a report respecting the best means of abolishing slavery and destroying caste in the United States, beg leave most respectfully to report: That they have had the important subjects referred to them under consideration, and have carefully endeavored to examine all their points and bearings to the best of their ability; and from every view they have been able to take, they have arrived at the conclusion that the best means of abolishing slavery is the proclamation of truth, and that the best means of destroying caste, is the mental, moral and industrial improvement of our people.
First, as respects slavery: Your committee find this monstrous crime, this stupendous iniquity, closely interwoven with all the great interests, institutions and organizations of the country; pervading and influencing every class and grade of society, securing their support, obtaining their approbation, and commanding their homage. Availing itself of the advantage which age gives to crime, it has perverted the judgment, blunted the moral sense, blasted the sympathies, and created in the great mass,—the overwhelming majority of the people,—a moral sentiment altogether favorable to its own character and its own continuance. Press and pulpit are alike prostituted, and made to serve the end of this infernal institution. The power of the government, and the sanctity of religion, church and state, arc joined with the guilty oppressor against the oppressed; and the voice of this great nation is thundering in the ears of our enslaved countrymen the terrible fiat, You shall be slaves, or die! The slave is in the minority, a small minority; the oppressors are an overwhelming majority. The oppressed are three millions; their oppressors are seventeen millions. The one is weak; the other is strong. The one is without arms, without means of concert, and without government; the other possesses every advantage in these respects; and the deadly aim of their million musketry, and loud-mouthed cannon, tells the down-trodden slave, in unmistakeable language, he must be a slave or die. In these circumstances, your committee are called upon to report as to the best means of abolishing slavery. And without pretending to discuss all the ways which have been suggested from time to time by various parties and factions,—though, did time permit, they would gladly do so,—they beg at once to state their entire disapprobation of any plan of emancipation involving a resort to bloodshed. With the facts of our condition before us, it is impossible for us to contemplate any appeal to the slave to take vengeance on his guilty master, but with the utmost reprobation. Your committee regard any counsel of this sort as the perfection of folly, suicidal in the extreme, and abominably wicked. We should utterly frown down and wholly discountenance any attempt to lead our people to confide in brute force as a reformatory instrumentality. All argument put forth in favor of insurrection and bloodshed, however well intended, is either the result of an unpardonable impatience or an atheistic want of faith in the power of truth as a means of regenerating and reforming the world. Again we repeat, let us set our faces against all such absurd, unavailing, dangerous and mischievous ravings, emanating from what source they may. The voice of God, and of common sense, equally point out a more excellent way, and that way is a faithful, earnest and persevering enforcement of the great principles of justice and morality, religion and humanity. These are the only invincible and infallible means within our reach with which to overthrow this foul system of blood and ruin. Your committee deem it susceptible of the clearest demonstration, that slavery exists in this country, because the people of this country will its existence. And they deem it equally clear, that no system or institution can exist for an hour against the earnestly expressed will of the people. It were quite easy to bring to the support of the foregoing proposition powerful and conclusive illustrations from the history of reform in all ages, and especially in our own. But the palpable truths of the propositions, as well as the familiarity of the facts illustrating them, entirely obviate such a necessity.
Our age is an age of great discoveries; and one of the greatest is that which revealed that this world is to be ruled, shaped and guided by the marvelous might of mind. The human voice must supersede the roar of cannon. Truth alone is the legitimate antidote of falsehood. Liberty is always sufficient to grapple with tyranny. Free speech, free discussion, peaceful agitation—the foolishness of preaching these, under God, will subvert this giant crime, and send it reeling to its grave, as it smitten by a voice from the throne of God. Slavery exists because it is popular. It will cease to exist when it is made unpopular. Whatever, therefore, tends to make slavery unpopular, tends to its destruction. This every slaveholder knows full well, and hence his opposition to all discussion on the subject. It is an evidence of intense feeling of alarm, when John C. Calhoun calls upon the North to put down what he is pleased to term "this plundering agitation." Let us give the slaveholder what he most dislikes. Let us expose his crimes and his foul abominations He is reputable, and must be made disreputable. He must be regarded as a moral leper—shunned as a loathsome wretch—outlawed from Christian communion, and from social respectability—an enemy of God and man, to be execrated by the community till he shall repent of his foul crimes, and give proof of his sincerity by breaking every chain and letting the oppressed go free. Let us invoke the press and appeal to the pulpit to deal out the righteous denunciations of heaven against oppression, fraud and wrong; and the desire of our hearts will soon be given us in the triumph of liberty throughout all the land.
As to the second topic upon which the committee have been instructed to report, the committee think the subject worthy of a far wider range of discussion than the limited time at present allotted to them will allow. The importance of the subject, the peculiar position of our people, the variety of interests involved with questions growing out of it, all serve to make this subject one of great complexity as well as solemn interest.
Your committee would therefore respectfully recommend the appointment of a committee of one, whose duty it shall be to draft a full report on this subject, and report at the next National Convention.
Your committee would further recommend the adoption of the following resolutions as embodying the sentiments of the foregoing report:
Resolved, That our only hope for peaceful emancipation in this land is based on a firm, devoted and unceasing, assertion of our rights, and a full, free and determined exposure of our multiplied wrongs.
Resolved, That, in the language of inspired wisdom, there shall be no peace to the wicked, and that this guilty nation shall have no peace, and that we will do all that we can to agitate! agitate!! agitate!!! till our rights are restored, and our brethren are redeemed from their cruel chains.
All of which is respectfully submitted.
Frederick Douglass,
Alexander Crummell,
John Lyle,
Thos. Van Rensselaer.