I cannot promise however, to
write such a book as ought to be written to illustrate fully the
bitterness, malignity, and cruelty, of American prejudice against color,
and to show its terrible power in grinding into the dust of social and
political bondage, the hundreds of thousands of so-called free men and
women of color of the North. This bondage is, in many of its aspects,
far more dreadful than that of the _bona fide_ Southern Slavery, since
its victims--many of them having emerged out of, and some of them never
having been into, the darkness of personal slavery--have acquired a
development of mind, heart, and character, not at all inferior to the
foremost of their oppressors.
The book that ought to be written, _I_ ought not to attempt; but if no
one precedes me, I shall consider myself bound by necessity, and making
the attempt, lay on, with all the strength I can possibly summon, to
American Caste and skin-deep Democracy.
The mob occurred on Sabbath (!) evening, January the 30th, 1853, in the
village of Phillipsville, near Fulton, Oswego County, New York. The
cause,--the intention, on my part, of marrying a white young lady of
Fulton,--at least so the public surmised.
CHAPTER II.
PERSONALITIES.
I am a quadroon, that is, I am of one-fourth African blood, and
three-fourths Anglo-Saxon. I graduated at Oneida Institute, in
Whitesboro', New York, in 1844; subsequently studied Law with Ellis Gray
Loring, Esq.
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