Volume IV Part 45 (2/2)
Concerning this paper the _Herald of Freedom_ said the following:
”_The Colored American_, we are glad to see, has reappeared in the field, under the conduct of our enterprising and talented Brother Ray. It will maintain a very handsome rank among the antislavery periodicals, and we hope will be well sustained and kept up by both, colored and uncolored patronage.
”It must be a matter of pride to our colored friends, as it is to us, that they are already able to vindicate the claims our enterprise has always made in their behalf,--to an equal intellectual rank in this heterogeneous (but 'h.o.m.ogeneous') community.
”It is no longer necessary for abolitionists to contend against the blunder of pro-slavery,--that the colored people are inferior to the whites; for these people are practically demonstrating its falseness. They have men enough in action now, to maintain the anti-slavery enterprise, and to win their liberty, and that of their enslaved brethren,--if every white abolitionist were drawn from the field: McCune Smith, and Cornish, and Wright and Ray and a host of others,--not to mention our eloquent brother, Remond, of Maine, and Brother Lewis who is the stay and staff of field antislavery in New Hamps.h.i.+re.
”The people of such men as these cannot be held in slavery. They have got their pens drawn and tried their voices, and they are seen to be the pens and voices of human genius; and they will neither lay down the one, nor will they hush the other, till their brethren are free.
”The Calhouns and Clays may display their vain oratory and metaphysics, but they tremble when they behold the colored man is in the intellectual field. The time is at hand, when this terrible denunciation shall thunder in their own race.”[8]
_The Christian Witness_ said the following:
”_The Colored American._ Returning from the country, we are glad to find upon our table several copies of this excellent paper, which has waked up with renewed strength and beauty. It is now under the exclusive control of Charles B. Ray, a gentleman in every manner competent to the duties devolving upon him in the station he occupies. Our colored friends generally, and all those who can do so, would bestow their patronage worthily by giving it to _The Colored American_.”[9]
As to the sort of editor Charles B. Ray was, we can best observe by reading two of his striking editorials on _Prejudice_ and _This Country, our only Home_.
PREJUDICE
”'Prejudice,' said a n.o.ble man, 'is an aristocratic hatred of humble life.'
”Prejudice, of every character, and existing against whom it may, is hatred. It is a fruit of our corrupt nature, and has its being in the depravity of the human heart. It is sin.
”To hate a man, for any consideration whatever, is murderous; and to hate him, in any degree, is, in the same degree murderous; and to hate a man for no cause whatever, magnifies the evil.
'Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer,' says Holy Writ.
”There is a kind of aristocracy in our country, as in nearly all others, a looking down with disdain upon humble life and a disregard of it. Still, we hear little about prejudice against any cla.s.s among us, excepting against color, or against the colored population of this Union, which so monopolizes this state of feeling in our country that we hear less of it in its operations upon others, than in other countries. It is the only sense in which there is equality; here, the democratic principle is adopted and all come together as equals, and unite the rich and the poor, the high and the low, in an equal right to hate the colored man; and its operations upon the mind and character are cruel and disastrous, as it is murderous and wicked in itself.
One needs to feel it, and to wither under its effects, to know it: and the colored men of the United States, wherever found, and in whatever circ.u.mstances, are living epistles, which may be read by all men in proof of all that is paralyzing to enterprise, destructive to ambition, ruinous to character, crus.h.i.+ng to mind, and painful to the soul, in the monster, Prejudice. For it is found equally malignant, active, and strong--a.s.sociated with the mechanical arts, in the work-shop, in the mercantile houses, in the commercial affairs of the country, in the halls of learning, in the temple of G.o.d; and in the highways and hedges. It almost possesses ubiquity; it is every where, doing its deleterious work wherever one of the proscribed cla.s.s lives and moves.
”Yet prejudice against color, prevalent as it is in the minds of one cla.s.s of our community against another, is unnatural, though habitual. If it were natural, children would manifest it with the first signs of consciousness; but with them, all are alike affectionate and beloved. They have not the feeling, because it is a creature of education and habit.
”While we write, there are now playing at our right, a few steps away, a colored and white child, with all the affection and harmony of feeling, as though prejudice had always been unknown.
”Prejudice overlooks all that is n.o.ble and grand in man's being.
It forgets that, housed in a dark complexion is, equally alike with the whites, all that is lofty in mind and n.o.ble in soul, that there lies an equal immortality. It reaches to grade mind and soul, either by the texture of the hair, or the form of the features, or the color of the skin. This is an education fostered by prejudice; consequently, an education almost universally prevalent in our country; an education, too, subverting the principles of our humanity, and turning away the dictates of our n.o.ble being from what is important, to meaner things.[10]
”THIS COUNTRY, OUR ONLY HOME.
”When we say, 'our home,' we refer to the colored community. When we say, 'our only home,' we speak in a general sense, and do not suppose but in individual cases some may, and will take up a residence under another government, and perhaps in some other quarter of the globe. We are disposed to say something upon this subject now, in refutation of certain positions that have been a.s.sumed by a cla.s.s of men, as the American people are too well aware, and to the reproach of the Christian church and the Christian religion, too, viz.: that we never can rise here, and that no power whatsoever is sufficient to correct the American spirit, and equalize the laws in reference to our people, so as to give them power and influence in this country.
”If we cannot be an elevated people here, in a country the resort of almost all nations to improve their condition; a country of which we are native, const.i.tuent members; our native home, (as we shall attempt to show) and where there are more means available to bring the people into power and influence, and more territory to extend to them than in any other country; also the spirit and genius of whose inst.i.tution we so well understand, being completely Americanized, as it will be found most of our people are,--we say, if we can not be raised up in this country, we are at great loss to know where, all things considered, we can be.
”If the Colored Americans are citizens of this country, it follows, of course, that, in the broadest sense, this country is our home. If we are not citizens of this country, then we cannot see of what country we are, or can be, citizens; for Blackstone who is quoted, we believe, as the standard of civil law, tells us that the strongest claim to citizens.h.i.+p is birthplace. We understand him to say, that in whatever country or place you may be born of that country or place you are, in the highest sense, a citizen; in fine, this appears to us to be too self-evident to require argument to prove it.
”Now, probably three-fourths of the present colored people are American born, and therefore American citizens. Suppose we should remove to some other country, and claim a foothold there, could we not be rejected on the ground that we were not of them, because not born among them? Even in Africa, ident.i.ty of complexion would be nothing, neither would it weigh anything because our ancestry was of that country; the fact of our not having been born there would be sufficient ground for any civil power to refuse us citizens.h.i.+p. If this principle were carried out, it would be seen that we could not be even a cosmopolite, but must be of nowhere, and of no section of the globe. This is so absurd that it is as clear as day that we must revert to the country which gave us birth, as being, in the highest sense, citizens of it.
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