"In every State north of Mason and Dixon's Line, except Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which attempted to raise a regiment of colored men, the blacks are disfranchised, excluded from the jury-box and in most cases from the public schools. The iron hand of prejudice in the Northern States is as circumscribing and unyielding upon him as the manacles that fettered the slave of the South.
"Now, these are facts, deny it who will. The negro has little to hope from Northern sympathy or legislation...
"When the war broke out, it was the boast of the Administration that the status of the negro was not to be changed in the rebel States. President Lincoln, in his inaugural address, took particular pains to commit himself against any interference with the condition of the blacks.
"When the Rebellion commenced, and the call was made upon the country, the colored men were excluded. In some of the Western states into which slaves went when escaping from their rebel masters, in the first and second years of the war, the black-laws were enforced to drive them out....
"With what grace could the authorities in those States ask the negroes to fight? Yet they called upon him; and he, forgetting the wrongs of the past, and demanding no pledge for better treatment, left family, home, and everything dear, enlisted, and went forth to battle. And even Connecticut, with her proscriptions of the negro, called on him to fight. How humiliating it must have been! And yet Connecticut, after appealing to black men, and receiving their aid in fighting her battles, retains her negro "black-laws" upon her statute book by a vote of more than six thousand."
P.142-146, THE NEGRO IN THE AMERICAN REBELLION, by William Wells Brown (1867)
Sunday, January 5, 2014
THE NEGRO IN THE AMERICAN REBELLION...EXCERPT
"In every State north of Mason and Dixon's Line, except Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which attempted to raise a regiment of colored men, the blacks are disfranchised, excluded from the jury-box and in most cases from the public schools. The iron hand of prejudice in the Northern States is as circumscribing and unyielding upon him as the manacles that fettered the slave of the South.
"Now, these are facts, deny it who will. The negro has little to hope from Northern sympathy or legislation...
"When the war broke out, it was the boast of the Administration that the status of the negro was not to be changed in the rebel States. President Lincoln, in his inaugural address, took particular pains to commit himself against any interference with the condition of the blacks.
"When the Rebellion commenced, and the call was made upon the country, the colored men were excluded. In some of the Western states into which slaves went when escaping from their rebel masters, in the first and second years of the war, the black-laws were enforced to drive them out....
"With what grace could the authorities in those States ask the negroes to fight? Yet they called upon him; and he, forgetting the wrongs of the past, and demanding no pledge for better treatment, left family, home, and everything dear, enlisted, and went forth to battle. And even Connecticut, with her proscriptions of the negro, called on him to fight. How humiliating it must have been! And yet Connecticut, after appealing to black men, and receiving their aid in fighting her battles, retains her negro "black-laws" upon her statute book by a vote of more than six thousand."
P.142-146, THE NEGRO IN THE AMERICAN REBELLION, by William Wells Brown (1867)