Prohibition of Colored Persons

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PROHIBITION OF COLORED PERSONS.

The new Constitution of Oregon¹ prohibits colored persons, either slave or free, from entering the State—making an exclusively white population. This is objected to by several of the abolition Senators in the U.S. Senate—Mr. Hale² and others. Mr. Seward³, however, is going to vote in favor of the Constitution.

We shouldn’t wonder if this sort of total prohibition of colored persons became quite a common thing in new Western, Northwestern, and even Southwestern States. If so, the whole matter of slavery agitation will assume another phase, different from any phase yet. It will be a conflict between the totality of White Labor, on the one side, and, on the other, the interference and competition of Black Labor, or of bringing in colored persons on any terms.

When the question assumes this shape, will not the popular feeling be in favor of the prohibition? Although at first sight it seems a cruel prohibition, we see, upon examination, much to commend it, and much that will be likely to carry the judgment of the masses of the nation in its favor. The great obstacle to Southern progress and enterprise is well-known to be the fact that White Labor will not demean itself to stand, walk, sit, work, or what not, side by side with the blacks, and on an equality with them. Zealous persons may speak of this as a prejudice, but we think every man has a right to his taste in such things—and the white workingman has in this.

Once get the whole matter presented prominently in that point of view, in new States, and to be decided on those grounds, the question of the abolition of slavery, even in the old Southern States, would arise anew, and would have to be argued in a new way. All the old objections to “abolitionism” would become powerless. Indeed, the arguments would have to be transported—either party to change sides. It would be altogether a contest with reference to the interest of the masses of the Whites, and would have to be settled in the grounds of their benefit.

And can any person of moral and benevolent feelings, then, countenance for a moment, such a plan as the total exclusion of an unfortunate race, merely on account of their color, and because there is a prejudice against them? No, not if there were the shadow of a hope that battling against this prejudice will ever succeed in rooting it out in America. But taking a deep and wide view of the whole question, the answer might perhaps be Yes—strange as it sounds at first.

Who believe that the Whites and Blacks can ever amalgamate in America? Or who wishes it to happen? Nature has set anand​ impassable seal against it. Besides, is not America for the Whites? And is it not better so? As long as the Blacks remain here, how can they become anything like an independent and heroic race? There is no chance for it.

Yet we believe there is enough material in the colored race, if they were in some secure and ample part of the earth, where they would have a chance to develope themselves, to gradually form a race, a nation, that would take no mean rank among the peoples of the world. They would have the good will of all the civilized powers, and they would be compelled to learn to look upon themselves as freemen, capable, self-reliant, mighty. Of course all this, or any thing toward it, can never be attained by the Blacks here in America.

So that prohibitions like that in the new Constitution of Oregon, are not to be dismissed at first sight as arbitrary and unjust. We think the subject will bear much further examination. We even think it not unlikely but it would, when thus examined, meet the approval of the best friends of the blacks, and the farthest-sighted opponents of Slavery. For, we repeat it, once get the slavery question to be argued on, as a question of White Workingmen’s Labor against the Servile Labor of Blacks, and how many years would slavery stand in two-thirds of the present Slave States?

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