Except we do, it is idle to talk about
rights, it is mere chattering for the sake of being seen and heard--like
the slave, saying something because his so called "master" said it, and
saying just what he told him to say. Have we not now sufficient
intelligence among us to understand our true position, to realise our
actual condition, and determine for ourselves what is best to be done?
If we have not now, we never shall have, and should at once cease
prating about our equality, capacity, and all that.
Twenty years ago, when the writer was a youth, his young and yet
uncultivated mind was aroused, and his tender heart made to leap with
anxiety in anticipation of the promises then held out by the prime
movers in the cause of our elevation.
In 1830 the most intelligent and leading spirits among the colored men
in the United States, such as James Forten, Robert Douglass, I. Bowers,
A.D. Shadd, John Peck, Joseph Cassey, and John B. Vashon of
Pennsylvania; John T. Hilton, Nathaniel and Thomas Paul, and James G.
Barbodoes of Massachusetts; Henry Sipkins, Thomas Hamilton, Thomas L.
Jennings, Thomas Downing, Samuel E. Cornish, and others of New York; R.
Cooley and others of Maryland, and representatives from other States
which cannot now be recollected, the data not being at hand, assembled
in the city of Philadelphia, in the capacity of a National Convention,
to "devise ways and means for the bettering of our condition.
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