Brown man

“ If I had but one reason, why I consented to appear here, it was because, at this moment, I believe it belongs to the colored man in this country to say that his lot is a common one with every white man north of the Potomac River; and if you ask me who are my clients, I think I may answer, 'Every man north of Mason and Dixon's line, without reference to his complexion.' I have read in the newspapers that one or two distinguished men of this city propose to spend the coming summer in Europe. ”

“ This is the red man's country by natural right, and the black man's by virtue of his sufferings and toil. Your fathers by violence drove the red man out, and forced the black man in. The children of the black man have enriched the soil by their tears, and sweat, and blood. ”

“ Slaves seem to be kept busiest tending their own garden patches, of which they sell the produce. “I never meet a Negro man—unless he is quite old—that he is not whistling; and the women sing from morning to night.” Negroes are shown as ludicrous:
And when to these are added a few, reverend, wrinkled decrepit old men, with faces shortened as if with drawing strings, noses that seemed to have run all to nostril, and with feet of the configuration of a mattock, my readers will have a tolerably correct idea of the negro-quarter. ”

“ These are the aspirations of man, without regard to country, clime, or color.
"What shall we do with the slave of the south? Expatriate him," say the haters of the negro. Expatriate him for what? He has cleared up the swamps of the south, and has put the soil under cultivation; he has built up her towns, and cities, and villages; he has enriched the north and Europe with his cotton, and sugar, and rice; and for this you would drive him out of the country! "What shall be done with the slaves if they are freed?" ”

“ But give this slave the right to use his own legs, his hands, his body, and his mind, and this happy and desirable creature is instantly transformed into a most loathsome wretch, fit only to be colonized somewhere near the mountains of the moon, or eternally banished from civilized beings! You must not lose sight of the fact it is the emancipated slave and the free colored man that it is proposed to remove—not the slave. This country is perfectly adapted to negro slavery; it is the free blacks that the air is not good for! What an idea! a country good for slavery and not good for freedom! ”

“ It was then and there that I studied nature in its lonely grandeur, and saw in it the goodness of God, and felt that He who created so much beauty, and permitted the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field to roam at large and be free, never intended that man should be the slave of his fellow-man. I resolved that I would be a bondman no longer; and, taking for my guide the north star, I started for Canada, the negro's land of liberty. ”

“ But I do not despair; for the negro has that intellectual genius which God has planted in the mind of man, that distinguishes him from the rest of creation, and which needs only cultivation to make it bring forth fruit. No nation has ever been found, which, by its own unaided efforts, by some powerful inward impulse, has arisen from barbarism and degradation to civilization and respectability. There is nothing in race or blood, in color or features, that imparts susceptibility of improvement to one race over another. The mind left to itself from infancy, without culture, remains a blank. ”

“ A good-looking, well-dressed colored man approached a white man, in a business-like manner, and began talking to him, but ere he had finished the question, the white raised his walking stick, and with much force, knocked off the black man’s hat, and with an oath said, “Don’t you know better than to speak to a white man with your hat on, where’s your manners?” The negro picked up his hat, held it in his hand, and resumed the conversation. ”

“ The self-forgetfulness, the undaunted heroism, and the great endurance of the negro, as exhibited that day, created a new chapter in American history for the black man. No negro hater will ever again dare to urge the withholding of our rights upon the plea that we will not fight.
The stale and stereotyped falsehood that the blacks are wanting in patriotism, was nailed to the counter as base coin, on the banks of the Mississippi. ”

“ He was of middle height, slim in figure, of a pleasing countenance, sparkling eye, gray hair, limbs supple by bodily exercise, a splendid horseman, and liberal to the arts, even to extravagance. Possessing a polished education, he was gentlemanly in his conversation and manners. Soon after assuming the presidency, he resolved to encourage immigration, and issued an address to the colored Americans, which in point of sympathy and patriotic feeling for his race, has never been surpassed by any man living or dead. ”

“ The disgrace that once rested upon the head of the black man, now hovers over the head of every man and woman whom I have the honor to address this evening, just in proportion as they shall dare to stand erect before the oligarchy of slaveholders in the southern portion of our country; and God hasten forward the day when not only Music Hall, but every other hall in the city of Boston, the Athens of America, shall be made eloquent with tones that shall speak, as man has never before spoken in this country, for the cause of universal freedom. ”

“ Still, sir, I am a slave, a chattel, a thing, a piece of property. I've been sold in the market with horses and swine; the initials of my master's name are branded deep in this arm. Still, sir, you call this my country. And, now that I am making my escape, you feel afraid, if I reach Canada, and there should be war with England, that I will take up arms against my own country. Sir, I have no country but the grave; and I'll seek freedom there before I will again be taken back to slavery. There is no justice for me at the south ”

“ The anti-slavery agitators have never demanded that you shall take the colored man, any more than that you shall take the uncultivated and uncouth white man, and place him in a certain position in society. ”

“ The new race of Negro individualists arose. The old “mammies” and “uncles” were a people apart, and are dying out fast now. The new Negroes are with and for themselves. They make shift to be happy and to amuse themselves without the white man. ”

“ As one man learns from another, so nation learns from nation. Civilization is handed from one people to another, its great fountain and source being God our Father. No one, in the days of Cicero and Tacitus, could have predicted that the barbarism and savage wildness of the Germans would give place to the learning, refinement, and culture which that people now exhibit. Already the blacks on this continent, though kept down under the heel of the white man, are fast rising in the scale of intellectual development, and proving their equality with the brotherhood of man. ”

“ I admit that the condition of my race, whether considered in a mental, moral, or intellectual point of view, at the present time cannot compare favorably with the Anglo-Saxon. But it does not become the whites to point the finger of scorn at the blacks, when they have so long been degrading them. The negro has not always been considered the inferior race. The time was when he stood at the head of science and literature. ”

“ One instinctively felt that here in Virginia, where the color line is sharply drawn, no white man is likely to present himself on terms of equality to a black man without the desire to patronize or some guile of some kind. It is rare for any white man to call upon any educated black man, and very rarely indeed that he comes to him in a straightforward, honest, and sincere manner. ”

“ Future generations will marvel at the calm forbearance, good sense, and Christian zeal of the American Negro of the nineteenth century.
Nothing has been left undone to cripple their energies, darken their minds, debase their moral sense, and obliterate all traces of their relationship to the rest of mankind; and yet how wonderfully they have sustained the mighty load of oppression under which they have groaned for thousands of years.
After looking at the past history of both races, I could easily see the cause of the great antipathy of the white man to the black, here in Tennessee. ”

“ Indeed, I have more respect, esteem, and good feeling for him, and more confidence in his integrity, than any white man of my acquaintance. He is able to undertake any affair, of either great or small importance. ”

“ The body, and especially the skull, of a Negro is different from that of the white man. The nervous system, the brain, the mind and soul, are different. I heard the theory put forward in the name of Christian Science that in God’s perfect plan there were no Negroes. Their dark skins were other men’s evil thought about them. All men were really white, and the outward appearance of their skin could be made to correspond to the white idea by concentrated true thought about them. ”

“ A slave was one day seen passing on the high road from a border town in the interior of the state of Virginia to the Ohio river. The man had neither hat upon his head or coat upon his back. He was driving before him a very nice fat pig, and appeared to all who saw him to be a labourer employed on an adjoining farm. "No Negro is permitted to go at large in the Slave States without a written pass from his or her master, except on business in the neighbourhood." "Where do you live, my boy?" asked a white man of the slave, as he passed a white house with green blinds. ”

“ You shall hear at once what sort of folk the Browns are, at least my branch of them; and then if you don't like the sort, why, cut the concern at once, and let you and I cry quits before either of us can grumble at the other.
In the first place, the Browns are a fighting family. One may question their wisdom or wit or beauty, but about their fight there can be no question. Wherever hard knocks of any kind, visible or invisible, are going, there the Brown who is nearest must shove in his carcass. ”

“ I had long since made up my mind that I would not trust myself in the hands of any man, white or colored. The slave is brought up to look upon every white man as an enemy to him and his race; and twenty-one years in slavery had taught [Pg 95] me that there were traitors, even among colored people. After dark, I emerged from the woods into a narrow path, which led me into the main travelled road. But I knew not which way to go. I did not know north from south, east from west. I looked in vain for the North Star ”

“ Thus my complexion was construed into a crime, and I was made to curse my father for the Anglo-Saxon blood that courses through my veins.
“My master raised slaves to supply the Southern market; and every year some of my companions were sold to the slave-traders, and taken farther South. Husbands were separated from wives, and children torn from the arms of their agonized mothers. These outrages were committed by the man whom nature compelled me to look upon as my father. ”

“ To-day, far more voices are engaged in denying the yellow peril than in prophesying it. The Western world is warned, if not armed, against the possibility of it.
In the second place, there is a weakness inherent in the brown man which will bring his adventure to naught. From the West he has borrowed all our material achievement and passed our ethical achievement by. ”

“ Even whilst walking through the streets in company with another, he was not idle; for if his companion bowed to a white person, he would rebuke him, and observe that all men were born equal, and that he was surprised that any one would degrade himself by such conduct,—that he would never cringe to the whites, nor ought any one who had the feelings of a man. ”

“ We have to thank our friend for the fidelity with which he has, amid many temptations, stood by those whose good name religious prejudice is trying to undermine in Great Britain. That land is not all Paradise to the colored man. Too many of them allow themselves to be made tools of the most subtle of their race. ”

“ The ultimate destiny of the black man was discussed, our host opening that his struggle for a habitation and a name must be in America. He said that his people were attached to the republic, notwithstanding many disadvantages imposed upon them, their hope being strong that patience and good citizenship would eventually soften the prejudices of the whites. ”

“ I need not inform you that I declined introducing this pro-slavery American to these distinguished men. I only allude to this, to show what a change came over the dreams of my white American brother by crossing the ocean. The man who would not have been seen walking with me in the streets of New York, and who would not have shaken hands with me with a pair of tongs while on the passage from the United States, could come with hat in hand in Paris, and say, "I was your fellow-passenger." ”

“ Buoyant with hopes, knowing his own capacity, and aspiring in his nature, the young man went forth in search of employment, little dreaming of the [Pg 289] insurmountable prejudice which every man of his color has to meet in this country, and more especially in cities in the border states. In vain he went from shop to shop, appealing for simple justice, feeling confident that if once in employment, he could keep his situation by his ability as a workman. Wherever he appeared before a manufacturer, the reply was, "I would hire you if my hands, who are white, would not leave me." ”

“ That is what is happening to the Negro race in America. We are being taught to jump a foot higher than the Whites. We will jump it, or we will break our necks. (Laughter.)
“Of course a great difference separates the Black from the White still. And I don’t say that the white man hasn’t given us a chance. If our positions had been transposed, and we had been masters and the white folks had been the slaves, I’m not sure that we wouldn’t have treated them worse than they have treated us. But the white folk make a mistake when they think we’re not taking the chances they give us. ”