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Black Republic of Letters

Note – Léopold Louis Joubert

Léopold Louis Joubert (1842-1827) was a French soldier and missionary in central Africa. Learn more about Léopold Louis Joubert.

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Speech by His Eminence Cardinal Lavigerie (Continued)

In those diverse countries, each nation remains independent, and can now work toward its own interests, while ensuring the work of all. The political transformation of Africa was thus hastened, without a violent jolt, by the two passions that nobly and effectively motivate peoples: the love of humanity and the love of country.

I say the same thing about the Anti-Slavery Campaign.

From the beginning, this double thought was the same as that of the great Pope who called for our devotion.

He wanted, by the free cooperation of all without distinction of nationality, to bring about the abolition of a scourge, withered by all civilized nations. It will be one of the most noble sights in history that in two years, responding to the voice of that great old man, such a resolution was proposed, taken and proclaimed in the General Act of Brussels, by the vote of the nations.

But our crusade would have gone the way of the political division of Africa if, after we had been united in a common spirit to demand solemn engagements from the powers, we did not share the sphere where each of us must act.

That is what the Holy Father wanted.

Our Campaign was thus divide from the beginning, in the anticipation of its current situation, into as many Committees as there are different nations that take a practical interest in the future of our Continent. Each of these Committees must focus on the regions in Africa that are under the dependency of the nation to which they themselves belong. No doubt, all Christian governments of Europe maintain the liberty to employ the support that they spontaneously propose for themselves in their domains, wherever they come from. English, American and French workers offered themselves to Belgium. It was for the latter that Stanley crossed Africa two times. It was in this domain that our heroic Joubert courageously armed, for ten years, the nègres on the shores of Tanganyika, to maintain the peace there with his little troupe and to protect our anti-slavery missions.

The powers are engaged in giving liberty and protection to all who present themselves to aid in the destruction of slavery: Incorporated companies, isolated individuals, or missionaries.

The Committees of the Anti-Slavery Campaign incorporated under our auspices or those of the Holy See, it is thus, after God and the poor Blacks, for their respective fatherlands that they want to work. United in their hearts in one thought which is that of the cessation of the evils of Africa, we had, in serving religion and humanity, the desire and the will to each serve our own respective country, in the lands that are specially set aside for it, bringing an end to slavery there: the English in those of England, the Germans in those of Germany, the Portuguese, the Belgians, the Spanish and the Italians in those of Portugal, Belgium, Spain and Italy; and, finally, since I am speaking today in front of a French audience, the French in those of France.

The members of France's National Committee know the new field that Providence opens, after so many others at this time, ahead of them.

France did not wait for the current times to begin the African conquest. She preceded nearly all other people in this immense duel of civilization and barbarity. For over half a century, she has worked in Algeria, in Senegal, in the Atlantic Ocean colonies, and more recently, finally, in Tunisia. But between these countries that have belonged to her on the two seas, an immense region still remains, almost as large as half of Europe and where slavery demonstrates the worst cruelties, perhaps, than in the rest of the Black continent; in the Soudan where Muslim princes have raised it to the status of a public institution, with their nègres de trésor, in the Sahara which serves as the place of exportation and of incessant passage, with nameless barbarians, to the slaves destined for markets in Morocco, Turkey, Tripolitania. It seems that behind the doors we had opened so wide to European civilization, to its trade, its arts, its industry, its faith, rises like an impassable barrier in the wild solitude of the deserts. To travel from the coast of the Mediterranean, where we are masters, and which today we can reach in just two days thanks to the developments in steam travel, it is necessary, to penetrate to the Soudan, which offers us so many hopes, with its numerous populations, its natural products, its silver and gold mines, to bypass half a continent and go up the Niger, with innumerable fees and perils, whereas, with a railroad, in four days, a railroad would permit us to open our France, to Europe, the last depths of Africa.

So many times I have heard our men of war lamenting that they were not allowed, from the very beginning, to push their conquest further. So many times I myself, after crossing the plains already invigorated by the bravery, the richness, the genius of our soldiers, have said with sadness at the edge of the desert: ahead of us, now, and to the extremities of Africa, millions of souls and innumerable tribes, are inescapably buried in an abyss of evils, in the midst of tropical splendour, and all that separates us is these arid sands. But one day, with the marvels of modern industry, we will be able to vanquish the deserts and cross them in perhaps less time than it took me to come from Algiers to these oases. O God, I would add, may this one day be the work of France!

In these thoughts, that my hopes brought me to, I wanted, for the past twenty-two years, to prepare the Christian possession of these lost regions. Pius IX, with his ardent courage, came into these same views, and a pontifical act of 6 August 1868 placed the Sahara desert and all the regions of the interior Soudan that extend beyond the missions already established on the Ocean by the Holy See under the special jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Algiers, with the mission to prepare the way for Christian liberty and the Gospel.

(More to follow)

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