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.
Already have people of colour crossed the thresholds of many whites, as
guests, not as drudges or beggars. Already are they admitted to worship,
and to exercise charity, among the whites.
The world has heard and seen enough of the reproach incurred by America,
on account of her coloured population. It is now time to look for the
fairer side The crescent streak is brightening towards the full, to wane
no more. Already is the world beyond the sea beginning to think of
America, less as the country of the double-faced pretender to the name
of Liberty, than as the home of the single-hearted, clear-eyed Presence
which, under the name of Abolitionism, is majestically passing through
the land which is soon to be her throne.