Page:A Chapter on Slavery.djvu/130

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116
A CHAPTER ON SLAVERY.

ments which expose them to a forfeiture of their freedom, if they should dare set foot upon the soil. Louisiana, sometime since, required all free persons of color who had removed to the State since the year 1825 to leave it. Thousands, who had taken refuge in Ohio, driven out from that State, sought a home in Canada; but the result is, that the Canadians, in their turn, have threatened their expulsion. They are laid under restrictions which cannot but be exceedingly painful, in most of the States both North and South; and in none do they enjoy anything much better than a nominal freedom Various expedients are resorted to by the State Legislatures, to deliver themselves from a free colored population, by disabilities and other embarrassments. The South casts them off; the North has no place for them; the West pushes them away; Canada threatens to expel them: and where shall they go? — what shall they do? They are here isolated; they have no home of their own, no community of their own, no country of their own, no government of their own, no system whatever, intellectual or moral, in which their individual existence forms a part of the machinery; but every cheerful hope seems crushed. They are, I was going to say, dislocated from humanity. — The free people of color in Baltimore seem to have taken a correct though painful view of this subject, in a memorial which is now before me. Addressing the citizens of Baltimore, they thus speak: I

"'We have hitherto beheld, in silence, but with intense interest, the efforts of the wise and philanthropic in our behalf. If it became us to be silent, it became. us also to feel the liveliest anxiety and gratitude.