Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812

The following pages are an effort to stem the tide of prejudice against the Colored race. The white man despises the colored man, and has come to think him fit only for the menial drudgery to which the majority of the race has been so long doomed. "This prejudice was never reasoned up, and will never be reasoned down." It must be lived down. In a land where wealth is the basis of reputation, the colored man must prove his sagacity and enterprise by successful trade or speculation. To show his capacity for mental culture he must BE, not merely claim the right to be, a scholar. Professional eminence is peculiarly the result of practice and long experience. The colored people, therefore, owe it to each other and to their race to extend liberal encouragement to colored lawyers, physicians and teachers, as well as to mechanics and artisans of all kinds. Let no individual despair. Not to name the living, let me hold up the example of one whose career deserves to be often spoken of, as complete proof that a colored man can rise to social respect and the highest employment and usefulness, in spite not only of the prejudice that crushes his race, but of the heaviest personal burdens. Dr. David Ruggles, poor, blind and an invalid, founded a well-known Water Cure Establishment in the town where I write, erected expensive buildings, won honorable distinction as a most successful and skilful practitioner, secured the warm regard and esteem of this community, and left a name embalmed in the hearts of many who feel that they owe life to his eminent skill and careful practice. Black though he was, his aid was sought sometimes by those numbered among the Pro-Slavery class. To be sure, his is but a single instance, and I know it required pre-eminent ability to make a way up to light through the overwhelming mass of prejudice and contempt. But it is these rare cases of strong will and eminent endowment,—always sure to make the world feel whether it will or no,—that will finally wring from a contemptuous community the reluctant confession of the colored man's equality.

I ask, therefore, the reader's patronage of the following sheets, on several grounds; first, as an encouragement to the author, Mr. Nell, to pursue a subject which well deserves illustration on other points besides those on which he has labored; secondly, to scatter broadly as possible, the facts here collected, as instance of the colored man's success—a record of the genius he has shown, and the services he has rendered society in the higher departments of exertion; thirdly, to encourage such men as Ruggles to perseverance, by showing a generous appreciation of their labors and a cordial sympathy in their trials.

Some things set down here go to prove colored men patriotic—though denied a country; and all show a wish, on their part, to prove themselves men, in a land whose laws refuse to recognize their manhood. If the reader shall, sometimes, blush to find that in the days of our country's weakness, we remembered their power to help or harm us, and availed ourselves gladly of their generous services, while we have since, used our strength only to crush them the more completely, let him resolve henceforth to do them justice himself and claim it for them of others. If any shall be convinced by these facts, that they need only a free path to show the same capacity and reap the same rewards as other races, let such labor to open every door to their efforts, and hasten the day when to be black shall not, almost necessarily, doom a man to poverty and the most menial drudgery. There is touching eloquence, as well as Spartan brevity, in the appeal of a well-known colored man, Rev. Peter Williams, of New York:

"We are natives of this country; we ask only to be treated as well as foreigners. Not a few of our fathers suffered and bled to purchase its independence; we ask only to be treated as well as those who fought against it. We have toiled to cultivate it, and to raise it to its present prosperous condition; we ask only to share equal privileges with those who come from distant lands to enjoy the fruits of our labor."

WENDELL PHILLIPS