. . . Our claims are on America; it is the land that gave us birth; it is the land of our nativity, we know no other country, it is a land in which our fathers have suffered and toiled; they have watered it with their tears, and fanned it with sighs.

Our relation with Africa is the same as the white man’s is with Europe, only with this difference, the one emigrated voluntarily, the other was forced from home and all its pleasures. We have passed through several generations in this country, and consequently we have become naturalized, our habits, our manners, our passions, our dispositions have become the same; the same mother’s milk has nourished us both in our infancy; the white child, and the coloured have both hung on the same breast. I might as well tell the white man about England, France, or Spain, the country from whence his forefathers emigrated, and call him a European, as for him to call us Africans; the argument will hold as good in the one case as the other. Africa is as foreign to us as Europe to them. . . .