A Letter From Robert S. Reeder, Esq., To Dr. Stouton W. Dent, on the Colored Population of Maryland, and Slavery: And a Speech on the Proposition to C

by Robert S. Reeder

Description Excerpt from A Letter From Robert S. Reeder, Esq., To Dr. Stouton W. Dent, on the Colored Population of Maryland, and Slavery: And a Speech on the Proposition to Call a Convention, by a Single Act of the Legislature, to Change the Constitution, at December Session, 1845Dear Sir: - Your letter, with its postscript of inquiry, duly came to hand, and under the earliest inclination to do so, I proceed to reply to it. In the postscript to your letter, you propose this question: "Which is the better and wiser proposition or measure of the two submitted to the Free Negro Convention lately held in Baltimore - that of the majority, or of the minority?" This is a difficult question to determine, and one about which my mind wavers and doubts; and I must say, I entertain objections to each, and a strong and invincible objection to that of the majority. A temporizing policy is as a general rule ever unsafe, and tends in almost every case to an ultimate aggravation of the evil which it professes to heal.You are aware, these propositions were not fully and freely discussed in the Convention, because of an unreasonable limitation of the time of each speaker and of the discussion; and indeed against the force of reason and the spirit, and, I may add, the letter, of our institutions, by an abridgment of the freedom of speech. A philosophic wit has somewhere said, that limitation of time, is the safeguard and protection of fools.At the December session of the Legislature of this State, for eighteen hundred and forty-three and eighteen hundred and forty-five, by a Report on the Free Negroes of the State, at each session, I threw two bombshells of inquiry into the social and intellectual organization of this State; and we are now reaping the rich results, in a rapid approach to a full and complete understanding of the nature of this question.The question is one of grave importance, not only as affecting our own immediate local interests, or indeed the interests directly of fully one-half this Union, in respect to the extent of area; but in reality the ultimate organization and destiny, it may be, of the nations of the earth.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.