The Negro and American Liberty

It seems like a paradox to speak of the Negro as efficiently related to the cause of freedom in America. He was brought here and forced into slavery, in which condition he was held most of the time since the country was settled. He was treated not as a human being, but as property to be used only for the advantage of his oppressors. Some became free, but North as well as South, they were largely shut out from the opportunities for industry and general improvement of their condition. They were under a social ban and not recognized as equal to their fellowmen of a different complexion. After suffering from such treatment for generations it could hardly be expected that Negroes would feel much enthusiasm in the cause of popular liberty on account of the wrongs they suffered, and the seeming hopelessness of ever getting their rights.

But notwithstanding this the colored man displayed an intense love of freedom, and a willingness to fight and make sacrifice for the common cause of human liberty, even when his own prospect of sharing in it, was not promising. White men, generally assuming that they had the special right to the monopoly of that blessing.

In this the Negro showed a magnanimity and noble manhood, never surpassed by those of any other race. The time is coming when due justice will be done to our African brothers by the patriotic historian, which has not yet been accorded.

It would require volumes to record what the colored man has done for the cause of liberty in this country. A presentation of a few of the facts cannot but tend to fire our patriotism as well as revive in our memories the important part our colored country-men have acted in achieving the liberties we now enjoy.

In 1770 an important event took place in Boston. There was a massacre on King Street now called State. Several men were shot by British soldiers. The most conspicuous figure there was Crispus Attucks, a Negro, who lost his life. Years before he had been a slave in Framingham and escaped from his master. Several advertisements were published in the Boston Gazette, with ample rewards for his capture; but he was not seized. Twenty years after he came to Boston. When the British soldiers were insulting and oppressing the true American patriots, Attucks appeared as the leader to the first resistance to their tyranny. On March 5th, 1770, Attucks as the leader shouted: “The way to get rid of these soldiers is to attack the main guard; strike at the root, there is the nest.” When the British soldiers fired, Attucks was the first to fall. The body of this hero with that of another who fell, lay in Fanueil Hall, while others were buried from their homes. The funeral was said to have been the largest ever known in t