On page 147 I have named, among other members of the Society of Friends
who gave us efficient support in the day when we most needed help,
Nathaniel Barney, then of Nantucket. He was one of the earliest of
the immediate Abolitionists, was most explicit and fearless in the
avowal of his sentiments, most consistent and conscientious in acting
accordingly with them. He denounced “the prejudice against color as
opposed to every precept and principle of the Gospel,” and said, “It
betrays a littleness of soul to which, when it is rightly considered,
an honorable mind can never descend.” Therefore, he would not ride in a
stage-coach or other public conveyance, from which an applicant for a
seat was excluded _because of his complexion_.
He was a stockholder in the New Bedford and Taunton Railroad. In 1842
he learned that _colored_ persons were excluded from the cars on
that road. Immediately he sent an admirable letter, dated April 14,
1842, to the New Bedford _Mercury_ for publication, condemning such
proscription. It was refused. He then offered it to the _Bulletin_,
where it was likewise rejected. At length it appeared in the New
Bedford _Morning Register_, and was worthy of being republished in
every respectable newspaper in our country. In it he said: “The
thought never entered my mind, when I advocated a liberal subscription
to that railroad among our citizens, that I was contributing to a
structure where, in coming years, should be exhibited a cowardice and
despotism which I know the better feelings of the proprietors would, on
reflection, repudiate.... I cannot conscientiously withdraw the little
I invested, neither can I sell my share of the stock of this road,
while the existing prescriptive character attaches to it; and with my
present views and feelings, so long as the privileges of the traveller
are suspended on one of the accidents of humanity, I should be recreant
to every principle of propriety and justice, _were I to receive aught
of the price_ which the directors attach to them. In the exclusion,
therefore, by the established rules of one equally entitled with myself
to a seat, _I am excluded from any share of the money_,--the profit of
said infraction of right.”
Surely, the name of such a man ought to be handed down to our posterity
to be duly honored, when the great and mean iniquity of our nation
shall be abhorred.