“The benevolence of your heart, my dear Marquis, is so conspicuous upon all occasions that I never wonder at any fresh proofs of it; but your late purchase of an estate in the colony of Cayenne, with a view of emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous and noble proof of your humanity. Would to God a like spirit might diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people of this country! But I despair of seeing it.”[88]
Alas! had Washington at that time united with Lafayette, there would have been a living example of untold value to our country, instead of that dead despair which was like a stone wall in the path of Progress. Who can imagine the good from such an instance, teaching the priceless benefits of Freedom? Who can estimate its happy influence in extinguishing that great controversy which is not yet ended? It is sad to think that such an opportunity was lost.
While organizing Emancipation in the distant colony of Cayenne, Lafayette gave other evidence to his American friends. In a letter to John Adams, our Minister in London, dated February 22, 1786, he expresses himself with a vigor never surpassed during the long warfare with Slavery. “In the cause of my black brethren,” he writes, “I feel myself warmly interested, and most decidedly side, so far as respects them, _against the white part of mankind_. Whatever be the complexion of the enslaved, it does not, in my opinion, alter the complexion of the crime which the enslaver commits, a crime much blacker than any African face.”[89]
The following brief note to Alexander Hamilton is another gem of character.
“MY DEAR HAMILTON,-- … In one of your New York Gazettes I find an association _against the slavery of negroes_, which seems to me worded in such a way as to give no offence to the moderate men in the Southern States. As I ever have been _partial to my brethren of that color_, I wish, if you are one in the society, you would move, in your own name, for my being admitted on the list. My best respects wait on Mrs. Hamilton. Adieu.
How much in little! The testimony is plain. The witness is a volunteer. In simple words he records himself once more “against the slavery of negroes,” and then declares that he has ever been “partial to his brethren of that color.” For him the degraded slave is brother, although of a color not his own.