training, habits, customs, education, and political experience, have made us—it is not, it is true, a dignified mode of expression, but I have used it in private, and may be pardoned its use here—they have made us "Black Yankees;" and I feel assured that in Liberia, we shall find a more congenial field, better appliances, a government more suitable to our antecedents, better fitted to a youthful nation and an aspiring emigrant population; to achieve that which seems to me the master aim of all our colonization to Africa, and the noblest duty of the Republic of Liberia—I mean the evangelization and enlightenment of heathen Africa! But, sir, I fear I tire you, and I close at once.
For three hundred years the European has been traversing the coast of Africa, engaged in trade and barter. But the history of his presence and his influence there, is a history of rapine and murder, and wide-spread devastation to the families and the homes of its rude and simple inhabitants. The whole coast, sir, has been ravaged wherever his footstep has fallen; and he has left little behind him but exaggerated barbarism, and a deeper depth of moral ruin.
Now, sir, we are there: we black men of America—we who have been trained in the severe school of trial and affliction—we who have been educated amid the free institutions of this country; and, sir, I pledge you in behalf of that able man, our national chieftain, and all the other leading men of Liberia, that we will endeavor to fulfil the duties which devolve; upon men laying the first foundations of new empire; and to meet in a proper manner, the obligations which Divine Providence has brought upon us.
