through their
representatives in Congress.

I cannot make it better known than it already is that I strongly favor
colonization; and yet I wish to say there is an objection urged against
free colored persons remaining in the country which is largely imaginary,
if not sometimes malicious.

It is insisted that their presence would injure and displace white labor
and white laborers. If there ever could be a proper time for mere catch
arguments that time surely is not now. In times like the present men
should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible
through time and in eternity. Is it true, then, that colored people can
displace any more white labor by being free than by remaining slaves?
If they stay in their old places, they jostle no white laborers; if they
leave their old places, they leave them open to white laborers. Logically,
there is neither more nor less of it. Emancipation, even without
deportation, would probably enhance the wages of white labor, and very
surely would not reduce them. Thus the customary amount of labor would
still have to be performed. The freed people would surely not do more than
their old proportion of it, and very probably for a time would do less,
leaving an increased part to white laborers, bringing their labor
into greater demand, and consequently enhancing the wages of it. With
deportation, even to a limited extent, enhanced wages to white labor
is mathematically certain. Labor is like any other commodity in the
market-increase the demand for it and you increase the price of it. Reduce
the supply of black labor by colonizing the black laborer out of the
country, and by precisely so much you increase the demand for and wages of
white labor.

But it is dreaded that the freed people will swarm forth and cover the
whole land. Are they not already in the land? Will liberation make them
any more numerous? Equally distributed among the whites of the whole
country, and there would be but one colored to seven whites. Could the
one in any way greatly disturb the seven? There are many communities now
having more than one free colored person to seven whites, and this without
any apparent consciousness of evil from it. The District of Columbia
and the States of Maryland and Delaware are all in this condition. The
District has more than one free colored to six whites, and yet in its
frequent petitions to Congress I believe it has never presented the
presence of free colored