William D. Kelley

“ And, to bring this subject up to date, may be added the late rebel mob at New Orleans, which was hissed on, in its wholesale work of murder, by the President of the United States through the telegraph. The brain does not more surely impel or restrain the hand, than do the more educated and influential classes, however imperceptibly, those which are less so, in all cases in which premeditated violence is forseen. And had there really existed any considerable degree of this moral restraining power in this community, these outrages against our people of color would long since have ceased. ”

“ Possibly, here and there an extremist might be found to object, that, thus openly to set up, as he did, his own prejudices and those of his family, in the place of law, justice and humanity, as his rule of official conduct, to the manifest injury of twenty-seven thousands of innocent people, was a most shameless abuse of power and perversion of authority. ”

“ Philadelphia once owned more of them as slaves than any other northern city, with the possible exception of New York; she retains a greater number of them now, in proportion to her white population, than any other such city, with the accidental exception of New Bedford, [1] when emancipation took place the process was left incomplete, and of all cities, north or south, she most fears amalgamation.
The evils of slavery are in proportion to its density. ”

“ This touch of nature suggests that any statement of wrongs which does not enter into the causes and conditions which made their commission possible, is imperfect. And to the question which constantly recurs—what is it that has caused the people of Philadelphia thus to stand apart from those of the other northern and western free cities, in this disposition to persecute negroes? ”

“ Another, whose voice neither denouncement nor desertion can silence, or make falter, because its words are but the imperative utterances of a great heart ever flowing in full tide, with good will to man, simply as man, always finds fit audience though few. But these are exceptions, and though courage might add to them, the great body of our clergymen must preach what their people are not unwilling to hear, or cease to earn bread for their families as clergymen. ”

“ But great as were these evils in our slave States, where the Whites always outnumbered the Blacks, they were infinitely greater in the West Indies, and especially in St. Domingo, where the Blacks, in a much greater degree, outnumbered the Whites. The most comprehensive evidence of this is to be found in the fact that, in the United States there was a natural increase in the slave population, while in the West Indies the reverse was the case, to a remarkable degree. A slave, when landed in the United States, always found there at least two Whites to one Black ”

“ Slavery has been, and is, destroying itself everywhere; and in this country, the great system of free labor and equal rights which prevails, without qualification, in some of the Northern States, is now being offered, and in spite of all opposition will soon be applied, to every State, north and south. It is not probable that it will stop there. It is believed that the same system is destined, in time, to be extended into our tropics. The so-called Anglo-Saxon race in England colonizes; in the United States it expands. ”

“ By taking a firm stand on this ground, and refusing absolutely to support candidates of inadequate ability, bad personal character, or doubtful firmness of principle for office, private men may become a power in the State, instead of remaining the mere voting machines in the hands of cunning, short-sighted and selfish politicians, which they are at present. ”

“ We are forced then to the conclusion that this community, as a body, by long indulgence in. the wicked habit of wronging and maltreating colored people, has become, like a moral lunatic, utterly powerless, by the exercise of its own will, to resist or control the propensity. ”

“ Hence the chronic false position in which they stand to society. For from the very nature of their relations either with their people, an aristocracy, or their order, the clergy are everywhere conservative and not progressive. ”

“ Now while anything which relates to the final position in this country of four millions of its people, a question which has already caused one war, and which may cause another, is contemptuously termed "small" by highly intelligent and influential men, we have much to learn and much to suffer before this question can be settled. ”

“ And from these ladies, no doubt, comes an opposition—indirect and partially concealed—apparent perhaps only through the manner and tone of the father, husband or brother, but still most obstinate. It is often curious to observe how the discussion of this subject will set in motion two opposing moral currents in the same religious and cultivated female mind; that of conscience, which calls for the admission of the colored people, and that of prejudice, which hopes they will not get it. ”

“ D'Israeli lately pronounced England more an Asiatic than a European power; and the day may come when this country will be more South than North American. We have a means to facilitate future extension towards the tropics in an element of our home population, suited to them, which England never possessed in hers; and after this has been received into our body politic, and is thus enabled to develop its powers, it is not easy to resist the conclusion that its destiny it to carry our civilization into those tropics. ”

“ The men who led in these movements did not go to politicians and ask if their plans were expedient, party interests considered. But with the desire to do good for their motive and their own native energies for their power, success soon brought the politicians to them. And if private men, or associations of private men, will, this may always be the case. To this end they have but to accept, and act up to these propositions: That this country, with such a people in it as carried through the late war, can never be ruined, politicians to the contrary notwithstanding ”

“ This has been the process by which they have been carried into California, by Whites alone—gold being the lure; but to places farther south our people of color must assist in being their vehicle, from their special climatic fitness for it; and the two races must go towards the tropics, if at all, together. The African will never leave this country, but he may, in the legitimate pursuit of his own interests and happiness, assist in its expansion beyond its present limits ”

“ The sense of justice not being quickened by sympathy, their movements in respect to it are like those of a man palsied on one side—hindering rather than helpful. And it is this great, respectable and intelligent portion of the community which is really responsible for these wrongs and disturbances.
John Swift, a hard, shrewd man, now gone to his place, but in 1838 Mayor of this city, told a committee of Friends who called on him, on the 17th of May of that year, for protection against men who threatened violence, that "public opinion makes mobs;" ”

“ The colored people at present rarely make any attempt to enter the cars. As is their wont, they submit peaceably to what they must. The last case of ejection was that of a young woman, so light of color that she was mistaken for white, and invited into a car of the Union Line by its conductor. When he found she was colored, he ejected her with violence, and somewhat to her personal injury. ”

“ Domingo, than any other humanized people have with savages. It is fair to admit that this superior moral and physical condition of our southern Blacks over those of St. Domingo is due, in some degree, to difference of race in the masters. The descendants of French Protestants, English Wesleyans and Baptists, and Austrian Salzburgers, and even those resulting from a cross between Cavaliers and convict-servants, were doubtless less inhuman slave-masters than the progeny of buccaneers and flibustiers. ”

“ Now it is the general belief of those who have all along taken an interest in this matter, that, with the assistance of the Mayor, our colored people could have gained full admission to the cars more than eighteen months ago, just as similar admission was obtained for the colored people of New York, through the energetic course adopted in their favor by Police Commissioner Ecton. There was then a sort of factitious public feeling still running in favor of colored folks; war-made abolitionism had not all melted away; peace had not come, and we might need more of them to fight for us ”

“ This theory is accepted by those who fear amalgamation, and is often quoted by them, as an argument against the theory of equal rights. They also hate negroes and would be glad to see their numbers less. But pure-blooded negroes, it is generally conceded, possess great vitality of race and are killed off with difficulty. This difficulty, it seems, can be overcome by amalgamation. By this process, in one generation, all these negroes become mulattoes, and this once accomplished, the whole African race is in a fair way to disappear from the land. ”

“ Successful private men of business are free from these entanglements and temptations; they alone, as a class, can afford to disregard them, and therefore they and no others are fitted to take the lead in, or be the chief promoters of, new movements for the good of society. ”

“ The towns around the coast, where a few white merchants and the educated mulattoes reside, may be considered as tufts of civilization, and the savage traits inseparable from dense slavery have been a good deal softened down among the country people. ”

“ Meantime it is well to feel assured that these people are here for the good, and not the evil of both races; and that interest as well as justice demands that every right and privilege which we possess should be freely and at once extended to them. ”

“ And whether they act as political or social reformers, there must be no distrust of justice, as always a safe guide, and no putting her aside for the lead of party hacks, as was unfortunately the case with the aforesaid Car Committee; and the colored people, when they saw their chosen champions thus postpone justice, in their case, to party expediency, might well ask where they were to look for staunch support in this demand for their simple rights. ”

“ But fair and reasonable men are tired of hearing clergymen berated for not doing that which, if they would still remain clergymen, they cannot do. It is easy and safe for a pastor to lay before his people a certain set of what may be called sins by common consent, such as over-worldliness, inattention to religion and the like. ”

“ The broad distinction, so often pointed out, between political and social equality, is still by many of our people persistently confounded, and perhaps it may be necessary to say once more, in respect to it, that the former, everybody has the present or prospective right to demand—the latter, nobody ”

“ Events early last year, such as the voting in the cars, the petition of the men working at the Navy Yard for continued exclusion of colored people on the Second and Third Street Line, the "filibustering" of several hundred women, employed by the Government on army clothing, to defeat the Fifth and Sixth Street experiment of admission, and other acts of violence, show clearly that the classes represented by these men and women are bitterly opposed to admission. ”

“ Hitherto, there has been little amalgamation of the two races at the North, and as the colored people never make advances to the Whites, that little cannot be increased until the Whites make advances to them. When is this to begin? Let each one answer this question individually. This matter, in its negative aspect, rests entirely within the control of the white population. ”

“ These advocates for pure white blood have been defeating their own purpose. Let them reverse their policy and encourage, for a time, the amalgamation they have hitherto opposed, and, with patience, they can have a white man's government yet. ”

“ One, rich in natural gifts, holds his hearers by the power of personal magnetism, while he pours into their ears a torrent of unwelcome truths, to which they listen, like the Wedding Guest, because they "cannot choose but hear," and then, not a few go away, like an awakened medium, uninfluenced by them. ”

“ Colored children have never been admitted to our general public schools, and the Associated Friends of the Freedmen in this city, who have lately assumed, as one of their cardinal rules, the admission of children of both colors, indiscriminately, to their schools in the South, consider that any effort to introduce the same rule here would be vain. ”

“ A little friction, however, brings to the surface unmistakable evidence that this body also is permeated with latent prejudice sufficient to carry it, imperceptibly perhaps, and by dead weight, but still to carry it against the colored people. ”