The following explication of MRD's view of white abolitionists appears in Ullman, pp. 82+83, dating from about 1852 but with no more specific source given.
"They earnestly contended, and doubtless honestly meaning what they said, that they (the whites) had been our oppressors and injurers, they had obstructed our progress to the high positions of civilizations, and now, it was their bounden duty to make full amends for the injuries thus inflicted on an unoffending people.
"They exhorted the Convention to cease; as they had laid on the burden, they would also take it off, as they had obstructed our pathway, they would remove the hindrance. . .the colored men stopped suddenly, and with their hands thrust deep in their breeches pockets, and their mouths gaping open, stood gazing with astonishment, wonder, and surprise at the stupendous moral colossal statues of our Anti Slavery friends and brethren, who in the heat and zeal of honest hearts, from adesire to make atonement for the many wrongs inflicted, promised a great deal more than they have ever been able half to fulfill, in thrice the period in which they expected it. . .We are not laying any thing to their charge as blame since the white abolitionists made those promises in all good faith and remained the truest friends we have among whites in this country. The cause of dissatisfaction with our former condtion was, that we were proscribed, debarred, and shut out from every respectable postion, occupying the places of inferiors and menials.
"It was expected that Anti Slavery, according to its professions, would extend to colored persons, as far as in the power of its adherents, those advantages nowhere else to be obtained among white men.
". . .Thus was the cause espoused, and thus did we expect much. But in all this, we were doomed to disappointment. Instead of realising what we had hoped for, we find ourselves occupying the same position in relation to our Anti Slavery friends, as we do in relation to the pro slavery part ofthe community, a mere secondary, underling position, in all our relations to them, and any thing more than this, is not a matter of course affair, it comes not by established anti slavery custom or right, but like that which emanates from the pro slavery portion of the community, by mere sufferance."
