Below is the rubric
these links need to be cited into the paper as well
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53017188
and this note needs to be cited into the paper
George Washington Williams (1849-1891) was an American Civil War veteran, Baptist minister, politician, lawyer, journalist, and writer of African-American history.
Good and Great Friend,
I have the honour to submit for your Majestys consideration some reflections respecting the Independent State of Congo […]
It afforded me great pleasure to avail myself of the opportunity afforded me last year, of visiting your State in Africa; and how thoroughly I have been disenchanted, disappointed and disheartened, it is now my painful duty to make known to your Majesty in plain but respectful language. []
When I arrived in the Congo, I naturally sought for the results of the brilliant programme: fostering care, benevolent enterprise, an honest and practical effort to increase the knowledge of the natives and secure their welfare. I had never been able to conceive of Europeans, establishing a government in a tropical country, without building a hospital; and yet from the mouth of the Congo River to its head-waters, here at the seventh cataract, a distance of 1,448 miles, there is not a solitary hospital for Europeans, and only three sheds for sick Africans in the service of the State, not fit to be occupied by a horse. [] There is not a single chaplain in the employ of your Majestys Government to console the sick or bury the dead. Your white men sicken and die in their quarters or on the caravan road, and seldom have Christian burial. With few exceptions, the surgeons of your Majestys Government have been gentlemen of professional ability, devoted to duty, but usually left with few medical stores and no quarters in which to treat their patients. The African soldiers and labourers of your Majestys Government fare worse than the whites, because they have poorer quarters, quite as bad as those of the natives; and in the sheds, called hospitals, they languish upon a bed of bamboo poles without blankets, pillows or any food different from that served to them when well, rice and fish.
I was anxious to see to what extent the natives had adopted the fostering care of your Majestys benevolent enterprise, and I was doomed to bitter disappointment. Instead of the natives of the Congo adopting the fostering care of your Majestys Government, they everywhere complain that their land has been taken from them by force; that the Government is cruel and arbitrary, and declare that they neither love nor respect the Government and its flag. Your Majestys Government has sequestered their land, burned their towns, stolen their property, enslaved their women and children, and committed other crimes too numerous to mention in detail. []
There has been, to my absolute knowledge, no honest and practical effort made to increase their knowledge and secure their welfare. Your Majestys Government has never spent one franc for educational purposes, nor instituted any practical system of industrialism. []
All the crimes perpetrated in the Congo have been done in your name, and you must answer at the bar of Public Sentiment for the misgovernment of a people, whose lives and fortunes were entrusted to you by the august Conference of Berlin, 18841 885. []
GEO. W. WILLIAMS
Stanley Falls, Central Africa,
July 18th, 1890.
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