Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman eBook

Austin Steward
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 284 pages of information about Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman.

Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman eBook

Austin Steward
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 284 pages of information about Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman.
discouraged, and groveling countrymen, if no where else.  Notwithstanding the late diminution, it exists in many of our hotels:  some of them would as soon admit the dog from his kennel, at table, as the colored man; nevertheless, he is sought as a waiter; allowed to prepare their choicest dishes, and permitted to serve the white man, who would sneer and scorn to eat beside him.  Prejudice is found also, in many of our schools,—­even in those to which colored children are admitted; there is so much distinction made by prejudice, that the poor, timid colored children might about as well stay at home, as go to a school where they feel that they are looked upon as inferior, however much they may try to excel.

Nor is that hateful prejudice—­so injurious to the soul, and all the best interests of the negro—­excluded from the professed church of Christ.  Oh, no; we often find it in the house of worship, in all its cruel rigor.  Where people assemble to worship a pure and holy God, who can look upon no sin with allowance—­the creator of all, both white and black,—­and where people professing to walk in the footsteps of the meek and quiet Jesus, who has taught us to esteem others better than ourselves; we often see the lip of some professed saint, curled in scorn at a dusky face, or a scowl of disapprobation if a colored person sits elsewhere than by the door or on the stairs.  How long, O Lord, must these things be!

Of my enslaved brethren, nothing so gratifies me, as to hear of their escape from bondage; and since the passage of that iniquitous “Fugitive Slave Bill,” I have watched with renewed interest the movements of the fugitives, not only from Slavery direct, but those who have been compelled to flee from the nominally free States, and ask the protection of a monarchial government, to save them from their owners in a land of boasted liberty!

The knowledge I have of the colored men in Canada, their strength and condition, would cause me to tremble for these United States, should a war ever ensue between the English and American governments, which I pray may never occur.  These fugitives may be thought to be a class of poor, thriftless, illiterate creatures, like the Southern slaves, but it is not so.  They are no longer slaves; many of whom have been many years free men, and a large number were never slaves.  They are a hardy, robust class of men; very many of them, men of superior intellect; and men who feel deeply the wrongs they have endured.  Driven as they have been from their native land; unprotected by the government under which they were born, and would gladly have died,—­they would in all probability, in case of a rupture, take up arms in defense of the government which has protected them and the country of their adoption.  England could this day, very readily collect a regiment of stalwart colored men, who, having felt the oppression of our laws, would fight with a will not inferior to that which actuated our revolutionary forefathers.

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Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.