"The most scandalous
exaggerations in regard to their condition are circulated by a thousand
mischievous tongues, and no reproach seems to them too deep or
unmerited. Vile and malignant indeed is this practice, and culpable are
they who follow it. We do not pretend to say that crime, intemperance,
and suffering, to a considerable extent, cannot be found among the free
blacks; but we do assert that they are as moral, peaceable, and
industrious as that class of the whites who are, like them, in indigent
circumstances--and far less intemperate than the great body of foreign
immigrants who infest and corrupt our shores." This idea of the natural
equality of the races he presented in the _Genius_ a few weeks before
with Darwinian breadth in the following admirable sentences: "I deny the
postulate that God has made, by an irreversible decree, or any inherent
qualities, one portion of the human race superior to another. No matter
how many breeds are amalgamated--no matter how many shades of color
intervene between tribes or nations give them the same chances to
improve, and a fair start at the same time, and the result will be
equally brilliant, equally productive, equally grand."
At the same time that he was making active, personal acquaintance with
the free colored people, he was making actual personal acquaintance with
the barbarism of slavery also. "The distinct application of a whip, and
the shrieks of anguish" of the slave, his residence in Baltimore had
taught him was "nothing uncommon" in that city.
Pages:
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85