Before the mayor ascended the stairs to dismiss the ladies, he had done a very remarkable deed;--he had given permission to two gentlemen to pull down and destroy the anti-slavery sign, bearing the inscription, "Anti-Slavery Office,"--which had hung for two years, as signs do hang before public offices in Boston. The plea of the mayor is, that he hoped the rage of the mob would thus be appeased: that is, he gave them leave to break the laws in one way, lest they should in another. The citizens followed up this deed of the mayor with one no less remarkable. They elected these two rioters members of the State legislature, by a large majority, within ten days.
I passed through the mob some time after it had begun to assemble. I asked my fellow-passengers in the stage what it meant. They supposed it was a busy foreign-post day, and that this occasioned an assemblage of gentlemen about the post-office. They pointed out to me that there were none but gentlemen. We were passing through from Salem, fifteen miles north of Boston, to Providence, Rhode Island; and were therefore uninformed of the events and expectations of the day. On the morrow, a visitor who arrived at Providence from Boston told us the story; and I had thenceforth an excellent opportunity of hearing all the remarks that could be made by persons of all ways of thinking and feeling, on this affair.
It excited much less attention than it deserved; less than would be believed possible by those at a distance who think more seriously of persecution for opinion, and less tenderly of slavery than a great many of the citizens of Boston. To many in the city of Boston the story I have told would be news: and to yet more in the country, who know that some trouble was caused by abolition meetings in the city, but who are not aware that their own will, embodied in the laws, was overborne to gratify the mercenary interests of a few, and the political fears of a few more.
The first person with whom I conversed about this riot was the president of a university. We were perfectly agreed as to the causes and character of the outrage. This gentleman went over to Boston for a day or two; and when he returned, I saw him again. He said he was happy to tell me that we had been needlessly making ourselves uneasy about the affair: that there had been no mob, the persons assembled having been all gentlemen.
An eminent lawyer at Boston was one of the next to speak upon it. "O, there was no mob," said he. "I was there myself, and saw they were all gentlemen. They were all in fine broad-cloth."
"Not the less a mob for that," said I.
"Why, they protected Garrison. He received no harm. They protected Garrison."
"From whom, or what?"
"O, they would not really hurt him. They only wanted to show that they would not have such a person live among them."
"Why should not he live among them? Is he guilty under any law?"
"He is an insufferable person to them."
"So may you be to-morrow. If you can catch Garrison breaking the laws, punish him under the laws. If you cannot, he has as much right to live where he pleases as you."
Two law pupils of this gentleman presently entered. One approved of all that had been done, and praised the spirit of the gentlemen of Boston. I asked whether they had not broken the law. Yes. I asked him if he knew what the law was. Yes; but it could not be always kept. If a man was caught in a house setting it on fire, the owner might shoot him; and Garrison was such an incendiary. I asked him for proof. He had nothing but hearsay to give. The case, as I told him, came to this. A. says Garrison is an incendiary. B. says he is not. A. proceeds on his own opinion to break the law, lest Garrison should do so.
The other pupil told me of the sorrow of heart with which he saw the law, the life of the republic, set at naught by those who should best understand its nature and value. He saw that the time was come for the true men of the republic to oppose a bold front to the insolence of the rich and the powerful, who were bearing down the liberties of the people for a matter of opinion. The young men, he saw, must brace themselves up against the tyranny of the monied mob, and defend the law; or the liberties of the country were gone. I afterwards found many such among the young men of the wealthier classes. If they keep their convictions, they and their city are safe.
No prosecutions followed. I asked a lawyer, an abolitionist, why. He said there would be difficulty in getting a verdict; and, if it was obtained, the punishment would be merely a fine, which would be paid on the spot, and the triumph would remain with the aggressors. This seemed to me no good reason.
I asked an eminent judge the same question; and whether there was not a public prosecutor who might prosecute for breach of the peace, if the abolitionists would not, for the assault on Garrison. He said it might be done; but he had given his advice against it. Why? The feeling was so strong against the abolitionists,--the rioters were so respectable in the city,--it was better to let the whole affair pass over without notice.
Of others, some knew nothing of it, because it was about such a low set of people; some could not take any interest in what they were tired of hearing about; some had not heard anything of the matter; some thought the abolitionists were served quite right; some were sure the gentlemen of Boston would not do anything improper; and some owned that there was such bad taste and meddlesomeness in the abolitionists, that people of taste kept out of the way of hearing anything about them.
Notwithstanding all this, the body of the people are sound. Many of the young lawyers are resolved to keep on the watch, to maintain the rights of the abolitionists in the legislature, and in the streets of the city.
Many hundreds of the working men agreed to leave their work on the first rumour of riot, get sworn in as special constables, and keep the peace against the gentry; acting vigorously against the mob ringleaders, if such should be the magistrates of Boston themselves. I visited many of the villages in Massachusetts; and there everything seemed right. The country people are abolitionists, by nature and education, and they see the iniquity of mob-law. A sagacious gentleman told me that it did him good to hear, in New York, of this mob, because it proved the rest of Massachusetts to be in a sound state. It is always 'Boston _versus_ Massachusetts;' and when the city, or the aristocracy there, who think themselves the city, are very vehemently wrong, it is a plain proof that the country people are eminently right. This may, for the humour of the thing, be strongly put; but there is much truth in it.
The philosophy of the case is very easy to understand; and supremely important to be understood.
The law, in a republic, is the embodiment of the will of the people. As long as the republic is in a natural and healthy state, containing no anomaly, and exhibiting no gross vices, the function of the law works easily, and is understood and reverenced. Its punishments bear only upon individuals, who have the opposition of society to contend with for violating its will, and who are helpless against the righteous visitations of the law.
If there be any anomaly among the institutions of a republic, the function of the law is certain to be disturbed, sooner or later: and that disturbance is usually the symptom by the exhibition of which the anomaly is first detected, and then cured. It was so with free-masonry.
It will be so with slavery; and with every institution inconsistent with the fundamental principles of democracy. The process is easily traceable. The worldly interests of the minority,--of perhaps a single class,--are bound up with the anomaly:--of the minority, because, if the majority had been interested in any anti-republican institution, the republic would not have existed. The minority may go on for a length of time in apparent harmony with the expressed will of the many,--the law.
But the time comes when their anomaly clashes with the law. For instance, the merchants of the north trade in products which are, as they believe, created out of a denial that all men are born free and equal, and that the just powers of rulers are derived from the consent of the governed; while the contrary principles are the root which produces the law. Which is to be given up, when both cannot be held? If the pecuniary interest of merchants is incompatible with freedom of speech in fellow-citizens, which is to suffer?--The will of the majority, the lawmaker, is to decide. But it takes some time to awaken the will of the majority; and till it awakes, the interest of the faction is active, and overbears the law. The retribution is certain; the result is safe. But the evils meanwhile are so tremendous, that no exertion should be spared to open the eyes of the majority to the insults offered to its will. There is no fear that the majority will ultimately succumb to the minority,--the harmonious law to the discordant anomaly: but it is a fearful thing, meantime, that the brave should be oppressed by the mercenary, and oppressed in proportion to their bravery; that the masters of black slaves in the south should be allowed to make white slaves in the north; that power and wealth should be used to blind the people to the nature and dignity of the law, and to seduce them into a preference of brute force. These evils are so tremendous as to make it the duty of every citizen to bring every lawbreaker, high or low, to punishment; to strike out of the election list every man who tampers with the will of the majority; to teach every child what the law is, and why it must be maintained; to keep his eye on the rostrum, the bench, the bar, the pulpit, the press, the lyceum, the school, that no fallacy, no compromise with an anomaly, no surrender of principle be allowed to pass unexposed and unstigmatized.
One compound fallacy is allowed daily to pass unexposed and unstigmatized. "You make no allowance," said a friend who was strangely bewildered by it,--"you make no allowance for the great number of excellent people who view the anomaly and the law as you do, but who keep quiet, because they sincerely believe that by speaking and acting they should endanger the Union." This explains the conduct of a crowd of "excellent people," neither merchants, nor the friends of slave-holders, nor approving slavery, or mobbing, or persecution for opinion; but who revile or satirize the abolitionists, and, for the rest, hold their tongues. But is it possible that such do not see that if slavery be wrong, and if it be indeed bound up with the Union, the Union must fall?
Is it possible that they do not see that if the question be really this,--that if the laws of God and the arrangements of man are incompatible, man's arrangements must give way?--I regard it as a false and mischievous assumption that slavery is bound up with the Union: but if I believed the dictum, I should not be for "putting off the evil day." Every day which passes over the unredressed wrongs of any class which a republic holds in her bosom; every day which brings persecution on those who act out the principles which all profess; every day which adds a sanction to brute force, and impairs the sacredness of law; every day which prolongs impunity to the oppressor and discouragement to the oppressed, is a more evil day than that which should usher in the work of renovation.
But the dictum is not true. This bitter satire upon the constitution, and upon all who have complacently lived under it, is not true. The Union is not incompatible with freedom of speech. The Union does not forbid men to act according to their convictions. The Union has never depended for its existence on hypocrisy, insult, and injury; and it never will.
Let citizens but take heed individually to respect the law, and see that others do,--that no neighbour transgresses it, that no statesman despises it unrebuked, that no child grows up ignorant or careless of it; and the Union is as secure as the ground they tread upon. If this be not done, everything is in peril, for the season; not only the Union, but property, home, life and integrity.
SECTION V.
SECTIONAL PREJUDICE.
It is the practice at Washington to pay the Members of Congress, not only a per diem allowance, but their travelling expenses; at so much per twenty miles. Two Members of Congress from Missouri made charges widely different in amount. Complaints were made that the Members were not confined to a mail route, and that the country had to pay for any digressions the honourable gentlemen might be in the humour to make.
Upon this, a Member observed that, so far from wishing to confine the congressional travellers to a mail route, he would, if possible, prescribe the condition that they should travel, both in coming and going, through every State of the Union. Any money thus expended, would be, he considered, a cheap price to pay for the conquest of prejudices and dispersion of unfriendly feelings, which would be the consequence of the rambles he proposed.
The Members of Congress from the north like to revert to the day when there were only two universities, Harvard and Yale, to which all the youth of the Union repaired for education. The southern members love to boast of the increase of colleges, so that every State will soon be educating its own youth. The northern men miss the sweet sounds of acknowledgment which used to meet their ears, as often as past days were referred to--the grateful mention of the New England retreats where the years of preparation for active life were spent. The southern men are mortified at the supposition that everything intellectual must come out of New England. When they boast that Virginia has produced almost all their Presidents, they are met by the boast that New England has furnished almost all the school-masters, professors, and clergy of the country. While the north is still fostering a reverence for the Union, the south loses no opportunity of enlarging lovingly on the virtue of passionate attachment to one's native state.
There is much nature and much reason in all this. It is true that there is advantage in the youth of the whole country being brought together within college walls, at the age when warm friendships are formed. They can hardly quarrel very desperately in Congress, after having striven, and loved, and learned together, in their bright early days. The cadets at West Point spoke warmly to me of this. They told me that when a youth is coming from afar, the youths who have arrived from an opposite point of the compass prepare to look cold upon him and quiz him, and receive him frigidly enough; but the second Sunday seldom comes round before they wonder at him and themselves, and acknowledge that he might almost have been born in their own State. On the other hand, it is true that it would be an absurdity and a hardship to the dwellers in the south and west to have no means of educating their youth at home; but to be obliged to send them a thousand miles in pursuit of necessary learning.
It is also true that medical colleges should abound; that peculiar diseases, incident to climate and locality, may be studied on the spot.
In this, as in many other cases, some good must be sacrificed for the attainment of a greater good.
The question is, need sectional prejudices increase under the new arrangements? Are there no means of counteracting this great evil, except the ancient methods? Is West Point the last spot whereon common interests may rally, and whence state jealousies may be excluded?
I should be sorry if the answer were unfavourable; for this Sectional Prejudice, carried beyond the point of due political vigilance, is folly,--childish folly. Events prove it to be so. Deadly political enemies meet at Washington, and snarl and declaim at one another with mighty fierceness. They find themselves, some sunny day, lying on the grass under the shade of a tree, at the country-house of an acquaintance; they rise up cordial friends. They have actually discussed the question of questions, the American System and Nullification; and yet they rise up cordial friends. Again; a Boston gentleman and his lady travel for health through the south and west. They hear abuse of their State and city in abundance by the roadside; but their hearts are touched by the hospitality and friendliness they meet under every roof.
Again; the planter carries his family to a Rhode Island bathing place, for the hot season: and there he finds some to whom he can open his heart about his domestic troubles, caused by slavery; he gains their sympathy, and carries away their esteem. The sectional hatred, if not an abstraction, is founded mainly on abstractions, and gives way at once when the parties are confronted. Does it not deserve to be called childish folly?
Yet "hatred" is not too strong a term for this sectional prejudice. Many a time in America have I been conscious of that pang and shudder which are felt only in the presence of hatred. I question whether the enmity between the British and the Americans, at the most exasperating crisis of the war, could ever have been more intense than some that I have seen flashing in the eyes, and heard from the lips, of Americans against fellow-citizens in distant sections of their country. I have scarcely known whether to laugh or to mourn when I have been told that the New England people are all pedlars or canting priests; that the people of the south are all heathens; and those of the west all barbarians. Nay, I was even told in New York that the Rhode Island people were all heathens, and the New Jersey folks no better. Some Baltimore ladies told me that the Philadelphia ladies say that no Baltimore lady knows how to put on a bonnet: but that the Philadelphians have something worse the matter with them than that; for that they do not know how to be hospitable to strangers. Without stopping to settle which is the gravest of these heavy charges, I am anxious to bear my testimony against the correctness of either. I saw some pretty bonnets, most becomingly worn, at Baltimore; and I can speak confidently to the hospitality of Philadelphia.
Trifling as some instances appear of the manifestation of this puerile spirit, it sometimes, it always, issues in results which are no trifle;--always, because the spirit of jealousy is a deadly curse to him who is possessed by it, whether it be founded on fact, or no. It cannot co-exist with a generous patriotism, one essential requisite of which is an enlarged faith in fellow-citizens. All republicans are patriotic, more or less frequently and loftily. If every American will look into himself at the moment he is glowing with patriotism, he will find his sectional prejudices melted away and gone, for the season. The Americans feel this in their travels abroad, when their country is attacked. They yearn towards the remotest dwellers in their country as if they were the nearest and dearest. Would they could always feel thus at home, and in the absence of provocation!
The most mortifying instance that I witnessed of this sectional prejudice was at Cincinnati. It was the most mortifying, on two accounts; because it did not give way before intercourse; and because its consequences are likely to be very serious to the city, and, if it spreads, to the whole west. One may laugh at the untravelled citizen of the south who declares that he knows the New Englanders very well. "How should you know the New Englanders?" "O, they drive about in our parts sometimes:"--"they" meaning the Yankee pedlars with wooden clocks for sale. One may laugh at the simple youth on board a steam-boat on Lake Erie, who warned me not to believe anything the Huron people might tell me against the Sandusky people, because he could tell me beforehand that it was all false, and that the Sandusky people are far better than the Huron people. One may laugh at the contemptuous amazement of the Boston lady at my declaration that I liked Cincinnati; that wild western place, where she believed people did not sit down to dinner like Christians.
All mistakes of this kind, it is clear, might be rectified by a little travelling. But it is a serious matter to see the travelled gentlemen, the professional men of such a place as Cincinnati, setting up their sectional prejudices in one another's way.
Cincinnati is a glorious place. Few things can be conceived finer than the situation of this magnificent city, and the beauty by which she is surrounded. She is enthroned upon a high platform,--one of the rich bottoms occurring on the Ohio, which expand the traveller's notions of what fertility is. Behind her are hills, opening and closing, receding and advancing; here glowing with the richest green pasturage, and there crested and ribbed by beeches which seem transplanted from some giant land. Wherever we went among these hills, we found them rounding away from us in some new form of beauty; in steep grassy slopes, with a running stream at the bottom; in shadowy precipices, bristling with trees; in quiet recesses, pierced by sunset lights, shining in among the beechen stems, which spring, unencumbered by undergrowth, from the rich elastic turf. These hill-sides reminded me of the Castle of Indolence, of the quiet paths of Eden, of the shades that Una trod, of Windsor Forest,--of all that my memory carried about undulating wood-lands: but nothing would do; no description that I am acquainted with is rich enough to answer to what I saw on the Ohio,--its slopes, and clumps, and groves. At the foot of these hills runs the river, broad and full, busy with the commerce of the wide West. A dozen steam-boats lie abreast at the wharf, and many more are constantly passing; some stealing along, unheard so far off, under the opposite bank; others puffing and ploughing along the middle of the stream. Fine, level turnpike-roads branch off from the city among the hills, which open so as to allow a free circulation of air over the entire platform. Cincinnati is the most healthy large city in the United States. The streets are wide; and the terraces afford fine situations for houses. The furnishing of the dwellings is as magnificent as the owners may choose to make it; for commerce with the whole world is carried on from their port. Their vineyards, their conservatories, their fruit and flower gardens delight the eye in the gorgeous month of June. They have a native artist of great genius who has adorned the walls of their houses with, perhaps, the best pictures I saw in the country. I saw their streets filled with their thousands of free-school children. "These," said a lady to me, "are our populace." I thought it a populace worthy of such a city. There is no need to speak of its long ranges of furnaces, of its shipping, of its incredible commerce in pork, of its wealth and prospects. Suffice it that one of its most respected inhabitants tells that when he landed in Ohio, less than fifty years ago, it contained fewer than a hundred whites; and buffalo lodged in a cane brake where the city now stands; while the State at present contains upwards of a million of inhabitants, the city between thirty and forty thousand; and Cincinnati has four daily, and five or six weekly, newspapers, besides a variety of other periodicals.
The most remarkable circumstance, and the most favourable, with regard to the peopling of Cincinnati is, that its population contains contributions of almost every element that goes to constitute society; and each in its utmost vigour. There are here few of the arbitrary associations which exist among the members of other societies. Young men come with their wives, in all directions, from afar; with no parents, cousins, sects, or parties about them. Here is an assemblage from almost every nation under heaven,--a contribution from the resources of almost every country; and all unburdened, and ready for natural association and vigorous action. Like takes to like, and friendships are formed from congeniality, and not from accident or worldly design. Yet is there a tempering of prejudices, a mutual enlightenment, from previous differences of education and habits,--difference even of country and language. Great force is thus given to any principle carried out into action by the common convictions of differing persons; and life is deep and rapid in its course. Such is the theory of society in Cincinnati; and such is, in some degree, its practice. But here it is that sectional prejudice interferes, to set up arbitrary associations where, of all places, they should be shunned.
The adventurers who barbarize society in new places, have gone westward; and, of the full population that remains, above one-fifth are Germans.
Their function seems to be, everywhere in the United States, to develope the material resources of the infant places in which they settle; and the intellectual ones at a more advanced stage. They are the farmers and market-gardeners here. There are many English, especially among the artizans. I saw two handsome white houses, on the side of a hill above the river, with rich ground lots, and extensive garden walls.
These are the property of two English artizans, brothers, who emigrated a very few years ago. An Englishman, servant to a physician in Cincinnati in 1818, turned pork-butcher; was worth 10,000 dollars when I was there, and is rapidly growing rich. There are many New Englanders among the clergy, lawyers, and merchants; and this is the portion of society that will not freely mix with the westerners. It is no wonder if the earliest settlers of the place, westerners, are proud of it, and are careful to cherish its primitive emblems and customs. The New Englanders should not take this as an affront to themselves. It is also natural enough that the New Englanders should think and speak alike, and be fond of acting together; and the westerners should not complain of their being clannish. I was at a delightful party at the house of one of the oldest inhabitants, where a sprig of the distinctive buck-eye was hung up in the hall, and a buck-eye bowl of lemonade stood on the table. This was peevishly commented upon by some of eastern derivation: but I thought it would have been wiser to adopt the emblem than to find fault with it. Cincinnati has not gone to the eastern people: the eastern people have gone to her. If they have adopted her for their city, they may as well adopt her emblems too, and make themselves westerners at heart, as well as in presence. These discontents may appear trifling; but they are not so while they impede the furtherance of great objects.
I was told on the spot that they would be very transient; but I fear it is not so. And yet they would be very transient if the spirited and choice inhabitants of that magnificent city could see their position as it is viewed by people at a distance. When I was one day expressing my admiration, and saying that it was a place for people of ambition, worldly or philanthropic, to live in, one of its noblest citizens said, "Yes, we have a new creation going on here; won't you come and dabble in the mud?" If they will but remember that it is a new creation that is going on, and not a fortuitous concourse of atoms; that the human will is, or may be, the presiding intelligence; that centuries hence, their posterity will either bless their memories with homage like that which is paid to the Pilgrim Fathers, or suffer the retribution which follows the indulgence of human passions, all petty jealousies will surely subside, in the prospect which lies before every good man. In a place like Cincinnati, where every man may gratify his virtuous will, and do, with his own hands, the deeds of a generation, feelings should be as grand as the occasion. If the merchants of Genoa were princes, the citizens of Cincinnati, as of every first city of a new region, are princes and prophets at once. They can foresee the future, if they please; and shape it, if they will: and petty personal regards are unworthy of such a destiny. It is melancholy to see how the crusading chiefs quarrelled for precedence on the soil of the Holy Land: it would be more so to see the leaders of this new enterprise desecrating their higher mission by a like contention.
SECTION VI.
CITIZENSHIP OF PEOPLE OF COLOUR.
Before I entered New England, while I was ascending the Mississippi, I was told by a Boston gentleman that the people of colour in the New England States were perfectly well-treated; that the children were educated in schools provided for them; and that their fathers freely exercised the franchise. This gentleman certainly believed he was telling me the truth. That he, a busy citizen of Boston, should know no better, is now as striking an exemplification of the state of the case to me as a correct representation of the facts would have been. There are two causes for his mistake. He was not aware that the schools for the coloured children in New England are, unless they escape by their insignificance, shut up, or pulled down, or the school-house wheeled away upon rollers over the frontier of a pious State, which will not endure that its coloured citizens should be educated. He was not aware of a gentleman of colour, and his family, being locked out of their own hired pew in a church, because their white brethren will not Worship by their side. But I will not proceed with an enumeration of injuries, too familiar to Americans to excite any feeling but that of weariness; and too disgusting to all others to be endured. The other cause of this gentleman's mistake was, that he did not, from long custom, feel some things to be injuries, which he would call anything but good treatment, if he had to bear them himself. Would he think it good treatment to be forbidden to eat with fellow-citizens; to be assigned to a particular gallery in his church; to be excluded from college, from municipal office, from professions, from scientific and literary associations? If he felt himself excluded from every department of society, but its humiliations and its drudgery, would he declare himself to be "perfectly well-treated in Boston?" Not a word more of statement is needed.
A Connecticut judge lately declared on the bench that he believed people of colour were not considered citizens in the laws. He was proved to be wrong. He was actually ignorant of the wording of the acts by which people of colour are termed citizens. Of course, no judge could have forgotten this who had seen them treated as citizens: nor could one of the most eminent statesmen and lawyers in the country have told me that it is still a doubt, in the minds of some high authorities, whether people of colour are citizens. He is as mistaken as the judge. There has been no such doubt since the Connecticut judge was corrected and enlightened. The error of the statesman arose from the same cause; he had never seen the coloured people treated as citizens. "In fact," said he, "these people hold an anomalous situation. They are protected as citizens when the public service requires their security; but not otherwise treated as such," Any comment would weaken this intrepid statement.
The common argument, about the inferiority of the coloured race, bears no relation whatever to this question. They are citizens. They stand, as such, in the law, and in the acknowledgment of every one who knows the law. They are citizens, yet their houses and schools are pulled down, and they can obtain no remedy at law. They are thrust out of offices, and excluded from the most honourable employments, and stripped of all the best benefits of society by fellow-citizens who, once a year, solemnly lay their hands on their hearts, and declare that all men are born free and equal, and that rulers derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
This system of injury is not wearing out. Lafayette, on his last visit to the United States, expressed his astonishment at the increase of the prejudice against colour. He remembered, he said, how the black soldiers used to mess with the whites in the revolutionary war. The leaders of that war are gone where principles are all,--where prejudices are nothing. If their ghosts could arise, in majestic array, before the American nation, on their great anniversary, and hold up before them the mirror of their constitution, in the light of its first principles, where would the people hide themselves from the blasting radiance? They would call upon their holy soil to swallow them up, as unworthy to tread upon it. But not all. It should ever be remembered that America is the country of the best friends the coloured race has ever had. The more truth there is in the assertions of the oppressors of the blacks, the more heroism there is in their friends. The greater the excuse for the pharisees of the community, the more divine is the equity of the redeemers of the coloured race. If it be granted that the coloured race are naturally inferior, naturally depraved, disgusting, cursed,--it must be granted that it is a heavenly charity which descends among them to give such solace as it can to their incomprehensible existence. As long as the excuses of the one party go to enhance the merit of the other, the society is not to be despaired of, even with this poisonous anomaly at its heart.
Happily, however, the coloured race is not cursed by God, as it is by some factions of his children. The less clear-sighted of them are pardonable for so believing. Circumstances, for which no living man is answerable, have generated an erroneous conviction in the feeble mind of man, which sees not beyond the actual and immediate. No remedy could ever have been applied, unless stronger minds than ordinary had been brought into the case. But it so happens, wherever there is an anomaly, giant minds rise up to overthrow it: minds gigantic, not in understanding, but in faith. Wherever they arise, they are the salt of their earth, and its corruption is retrieved. So it is now in America.
While the mass of common men and women are despising, and disliking, and fearing, and keeping down the coloured race, blinking the fact that they are citizens, the few of Nature's aristocracy are putting forth a strong hand to lift up this degraded race out of oppression, and their country from the reproach of it. If they were but one or two, trembling and toiling in solitary energy, the world afar would be confident of their success. But they number hundreds and thousands; and if ever they feel a passing doubt of their progress, it is only because they are pressed upon by the meaner multitude. Over the sea, no one doubts of their victory. It is as certain as that the risen sun will reach the meridian.
Already are there overflowing colleges, where no distinction of colour is allowed;--overflowing, _because_ no distinction of colour is allowed.