desired a non-sanguinary evangelization of West Africa. All empire, the world over, in rude countries has been cemented by blood. In Western Africa the tribes universally, save in Liberia, are strong, independent, warlike. Even British prowess, both at Sierra Leone and on the Gold Coast, succumbs at times to their indomitable spirit. And thus you see that, for the establishment of a strong black civilization in Central Africa, a strong and a bloody hand must be used. Color is nothing anywhere. Civilized condition differences men all over the globe. Besides this, I have had a prejudice that that field God had given to the freed and cultivated men of Sierra Leone—that they were better fitted to the evangelization of the Niger than we; that we, with our peculiarities, bred amid American institutions, might prove a disturbing element to the great work, for which, by blood, training, lingual capacity, and the sympathy of character and habits they were peculiarly fitted; and that our governmental proclivities might jar with what seems a manifest providence; that is, that Christianity is to be engrafted upon such strong states as Dahomey and Ashantee; whose fundamental governmental basis it seems to me it is not for the interests of civilization and of Africa to revolutionize or to disturb.
I would not pretend to argue these points, much less to dogmatize upon them; for the need of a civilizing element at Lagos, especially at Abbeokuta and on the Niger, is so great that I fear even to state the above impressions. And I stand ready to hail, at any time, any nucleus of freedom and enlightenment
