In the same speech from which we have quoted he says:
"There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her
children, whose ancestors have been torn from her by the ruthless hand of
fraud and violence. Transplanted in a foreign land, they will carry back
to their native soil the rich fruits of religion, civilization, law, and
liberty. May it not be one of the great designs of the Ruler of the
universe, whose ways are often inscrutable by short-sighted mortals, thus
to transform an original crime into a signal blessing to that most
unfortunate portion of the globe?"
This suggestion of the possible ultimate redemption of the African race
and African continent was made twenty-five years ago. Every succeeding
year has added strength to the hope of its realization. May it indeed be
realized. Pharaoh's country was cursed with plagues, and his hosts were
lost in the Red Sea, for striving to retain a captive people who had
already served them more than four hundred years. May like disasters
never befall us! If, as the friends of colonization hope, the present and
coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means succeed in
freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery, and at the same
time in restoring a captive people to their long-lost fatherland with
bright prospects for the future, and this too so gradually that neither
races nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will indeed
be a glorious consummation.
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