MR. PRESIDENT, against these conclusions there is but one argument,
which, when considered, is nothing but a prejudice, as little rational
as what Shylock first calls his “humor” and then “a lodged hate and
a certain loathing,” making him seek the pound of flesh nearest the
merchant’s heart. The prejudice of color pursues its victim in the long
pilgrimage from the cradle to the grave, barring the hotel, excluding
from the public conveyance, insulting at the theatre, closing the
school, shutting the gates of science, and playing its fantastic tricks
even in the church where he kneels and the grave where his dust mingles
with the surrounding earth. The God-given color of the African is a
constant offence to the disdainful white, who, like the pretentious
lord, asking Hotspur for prisoners, can bear nothing so unhandsome
“betwixt the wind and his nobility.” This is the whole case. And shall
those Equal Rights promised by the great Declaration be sacrificed to
a prejudice? Shall that Equality before the Law, which is the best
part of citizenship, be denied to those who do not happen to be white?
Is this a white man’s government or is it a government of “all men,”
as declared by our fathers? Is it a Republic of Equal Laws, or an
Oligarchy of the Skin? This is the question now presented.
Once Slavery was justified by color, as now the denial of Equal Rights
is justified; and the reason is as little respectable in one case as in
the other. The old pretension is curiously illustrated by an incident
in the inimitable Autobiography of Franklin. An Ante-revolutionary
Governor of Pennsylvania remarked gayly, “that he much admired the idea
of Sancho Panza, who, when it was proposed to give him a government,
requested it might be a government of _blacks_, as then, if he could
not agree with his people, he might sell them”; on which a friend said,
“Franklin, why do you continue to side with those damned Quakers? Had
you not better sell them?” Franklin answered, “The Governor has not yet
_blacked_ them enough.” The Autobiography proceeds to record, that the
Governor “labored hard to _blacken_ the Assembly in all his Messages,
but they wiped off his coloring as fast as he laid it on, and placed it
in return thick upon his own face, so that, finding he was likely to
be _negrofied_ himself, he grew tired of the contest and quitted the
Government.”[202] To negrofy a man was to degrade him.
Thus in the ambition of Sancho Panza, and in the story of the British
governor, was color the badge of Slavery. “Then I can sell them,” said
Sancho Panza; and the British governor repeated the saying. This is
changed now; but not entirely. At present nobody dares say, “I can sell
them”; but the inn, the common conveyance, the theatre, the school, the
scientific institute, the church, and the cemetery deny them the equal
rights of Freedom.
Color has its curiosities in history. For generations the Roman circus
was convulsed by factions known from their liveries as _white_ and
_red_; new factions adopted _green_ and _blue_; and these latter colors
raged with redoubled fury in the hippodrome of Constantinople.[203]
Then came _blacks_ and _whites_, Neri and Bianchi, in the political
contentions of Italy,[204] where the designation was from the accident
of a name. In England the most beautiful of flowers, in two of its
colors, became the badge of hostile armies, and the white rose fought
against the red. But it has been reserved for our Republic, dedicated
to the rights of human nature, to adopt the color of the skin as the
sign of separation, and to organize it in law.
Color in the animal kingdom is according to the Law of Nature. The ox
of the Roman Campagna is gray. The herds on the banks of the Xanthus
were yellow; on the banks of the Clitumnus they were white. In Corsica
animals are spotted. The various colors of the human family belong
to the same mystery. There are white, yellow, red, and black, with
intermediate shades; but no matter what their hue, they are always
MEN, gifted with a common manhood and entitled to common rights. Dr.
Johnson made short work with the famous paradox of Berkeley, denying
the existence of matter. Striking his foot with mighty force against
a large stone, till he rebounded from it, “I refute it _thus_,” he
exclaimed.[205] And so, in reply to every pretension against the equal
rights of all, to every assertion of right founded on the skin, to
every denial of right because a man is something else than white, I
point to that common manhood which knows no distinction of color, and
thus do I refute the whole inhuman, unchristian paradox.