An Address to Free Coloured Americans — Story, Setting & Ideas

The Rhetoric of Shared Suffering and Agency

The address consistently uses first-person plural pronouns—'we,' 'us,' 'our'—to create a collective identity that includes both the white women authors and their free Black readers. This is not a passive solidarity; the authors explicitly praise the 'soul-stirring appeal' made by free Black Philadelphians against the colonization movement. They quote that appeal at length, allowing the words of Black activists to speak directly through the text. The effect is to position free Black Americans as leaders in the struggle, not merely as beneficiaries of white advocacy.

The authors also highlight the story of a woman in Ohio who refused to pass as white, choosing instead to 'suffer with them'—her people. This anecdote serves as a moral exemplar, reinforcing the address's central claim that true virtue lies in solidarity with the oppressed. By foregrounding such acts of resistance, the address transforms free Black readers from objects of pity into subjects of moral courage.

Colonization as a Threat to Abolition

A major portion of the address is devoted to opposing the American Colonization Society, which proposed resettling free Black Americans in Africa. The authors argue that colonization is not a benevolent scheme but a dangerous diversion that would 'render the condition of the enslaved tenfold more hopeless.' They present the free Black community's own 1817 Philadelphia resolutions as evidence, quoting the charge that colonization offers 'benefits which they consider injuries' and ensures 'perpetual slavery' for those left behind.

The address supports this argument with contemporary testimony: a naval captain's report on how the slave trade has 'seriously injured the colony' in Liberia, and a newspaper account of a Spanish slaver carrying 'four hundred poor wretched' captives. These details are meant to show that colonization does not end the slave trade but coexists with it. The authors thus frame the fight against colonization as integral to the fight for emancipation.

The Limits of the Address's Perspective

While the address is remarkable for its era in addressing free Black Americans as equals, it also reveals the constraints of its white authors' perspective. The text repeatedly speaks about the enslaved in the third person, describing their suffering in vivid terms—'the wailings and wo, the bloody cut of the keen lash'—but never quotes an enslaved person directly. The enslaved are present as objects of sympathy and as a moral problem to be solved, not as speaking subjects.

Similarly, the address's religious framework, while sincere, sometimes risks reducing political struggle to a matter of individual conscience. The call to 'implore the God of the oppressed to guide and bless our labors' sits alongside a detailed political critique of colonization, but the relationship between divine will and human action is left implicit. Readers must decide for themselves how to balance the address's spiritual and strategic arguments.

This address is best read as a document of political persuasion, not a neutral report. Its power lies in its rhetorical construction of a unified 'we' that crosses racial lines, and in its insistence that free Black Americans are not a problem to be removed but partners in a shared struggle. Readers should attend to the voices the text includes—the quoted Philadelphia resolutions, the Ohio woman's story—and those it does not. The address invites us to consider how moral authority is claimed and distributed in movements for justice.

That 1837 address still feels like a hand extended across decades—its plea for dignity and kinship over exile. I recall it whenever I wander past The Personal Relation in Industry — Background and Themes, another quiet voice insisting that human bonds, not cold utility, must govern how we treat one another. They share a gentle, stubborn hope.