Dr. Clarke, in the Convention which revised the Constitution of New
York, in 1821, speaking of the Colored inhabitants of the State, said:
"My honorable colleague has told us that as the Colored People are not
required to contribute to the protection or defence of the State they
are not entitled to an equal participation in the privileges of its
citizens. But, Sir, whose fault is this? Have they ever refused to do
military duty when called upon? It is haughtily asked, who will stand
in the ranks shoulder to shoulder with a negro? I answer, no one in
time of peace; no one when your musters and trainings are looked upon
as mere pastimes; no one when your militia will shoulder their muskets
and march to their trainings with as much unconcern as they would go to
a sumptuous entertainment or a splendid ball. But, Sir, when the hour
of danger approaches, your 'white' militia are just as willing that the
man of Color should be set up as a mark to be shot at by the enemy as
to be set up themselves. In the War of the Revolution, these people
helped to fight your battles by land and sea. Some of your States
were glad to turn out corps of Colored men, and to stand 'shoulder to
shoulder' with them.
"In your late War they contributed largely towards some of your most
splendid victories. On Lakes Erie and Champlain, where your fleets
triumphed over a foe superior in numbers and engines of death, they
were manned in a large proportion with men of Color. And in this very
house, in the fall of 1814, a bill passed, receiving the approbation
of all the branches of your Government, authorizing the Governor to
accept the services of a corps of two thousand free people of Color.
Sir, these were times which tried men's souls. In these times it was
no sporting matter to bear arms. These were times when a man who
shouldered a musket did not know but he bared his bosom to receive a
death wound from the enemy ere he laid it aside; and in these times,
these people were found as ready and as willing to volunteer in your
service as any other. They were not compelled to go; they were not
drafted. No; your pride had placed them beyond your compulsory power.
But there was no necessity for its exercise; they were volunteers;
yes, Sir, volunteers to defend that very country from the inroads and
ravages of a ruthless and vindictive foe, which had treated them with
insult, degradation and Slavery."
Volunteers are the best of soldiers; give me the men, whatever be their
complexion, that willingly volunteer, and not those who are compelled
to turn out. Such men do not fight from necessity, nor from mercenary
motives, but from principle.
Said Martindale, of New York, in Congress, 22nd of first month, 1828:
"Slaves, or negroes who had been Slaves, were enlisted as soldiers in
the War of the Revolution; and I myself saw a battalion of them, as
fine martial looking men as I ever saw, attached to the northern army
in the last War, on the march from Plattsburg to Sackett's Harbor."
It is believed that the debate on the military services of Colored men
was a prominent feature in granting them the right of suffrage, though
the ungenerous deed must also be recorded, that Colored citizens of
the Empire States were made subject to a property qualification of two
hundred and fifty dollars.
I am indebted to Rev. Theodore Parker, of Boston, for the following
historical sketch of New York soldiery:
"Not long ago, while the excavations for the vaults of the great
retail dry goods store of New York were going on in 1851, a gentleman
from Boston noticed a large quantity of human bones thrown up by the
workmen. Everybody knows the African countenance; the skulls also bore
unmistakable marks of the race they belonged to. They were shovelled up
with the earth which they had rested in, carried off and emptied into
the sea to fill up a chasm, and make the foundation of a warehouse.
"On inquiry, the Bostonian learned that these were the bones of Colored
American soldiers, who fell in the disastrous battles of Long Island,
in 1776, and of such as died of the wounds then received. At that
day as at this, spite of the declaration that 'all men are created
equal,' the prejudice against the Colored man was intensely strong.
The black and white had fought against the same enemy, under the same
banner, contending for the same 'unalienable right' to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness. The same shot with promiscuous slaughter
had mowed down Africans and Americans. But in the grave they must be
divided. On the battle field the blacks and whites had mixed their
bravery and their blood, but their ashes must not mingle in the bosom
of their common mother. The white Saxon, exclusive and haughty even in
his burial, must have his place of rest proudly apart from the grave of
the African he had once enslaved.
"Now, after seventy-five years have passed by, the bones of these
forgotten victims of the Revolution are shovelled up by Irish laborers,
carted off, and shot into the sea, as the rubbish of the town. Had
they been white men's relics, how would they have been honored with
sumptuous burial anew, and the purchased prayers and preaching of
Christian divines! Now they are the rubbish of the street!
"True, they were the bones of Revolutionary soldiers; but they were
black men; and shall a city that kidnaps its citizens, honor a Negro
with a grave? What boots it that he fought for our freedom; that he
bled for our liberty; that he died for you and me! Does the 'Nigger'
deserve a tomb? Ask the American state--The American Church!
"Three quarters of a century have passed by since the retreat from
Long Island. What a change since then! From the Washington of that
day to the world's Washington of this, what a change! In America what
alterations! What a change in England! The Briton has emancipated
every bondman; Slavery no longer burns his soil on either Continent,
the East or West. America has a population of Slaves greater than the
people of all England in the reign of Elizabeth. Under the pavement
of Broadway; beneath the walls of the Bazaar, there still lie the
bones of the Colored martyrs to American Independence. Dandies of
either sex swarm gaily over the threshold, heedless of the dead
African--contemptuous of the living. And while these faithful bones
were getting shovelled up and carted to the sea, there was a great
Slave-hunt in New York; a man was kidnapped and carried off to bondage,
by the citizens, at the instigation of politicians, and to the
sacramental delight of 'divines'.
"Happy are the dead Africans, whom British death mowed down! They did
not live to see a man kidnapped in the city which their blood helped
free."