The Word "Colored," In The
States, Seems To Apply To The Whole Negro Race, Whether Full-Blooded
Or Half-Blooded.
I allude to this now because I wish to explain
that, in speaking of what I conceive to be the intellectual
inferiority of the negro race, I allude to those of pure negro
descent - or of descent so nearly pure as to make the negro element
manifestly predominant.
In the West Indies, where I had more
opportunity of studying the subject, I always believed myself able
to tell a negro from a colored man. Indeed, the classes are to a
great degree distinct there, the greater portion of the retail trade
of the country being in the hands of the colored people. But in the
States I have been able to make no such distinction. One sees
generally neither the rich yellow of the West Indian mulatto nor the
deep oily black of the West Indian negro. The prevailing hue is a
dry, dingy brown - almost dusty in its dryness. I have observed but
little difference made between the negro and the half-caste - and no
difference in the actual treatment. I have never met in American
society any man or woman in whose veins there can have been presumed
to be any taint of African blood. In Jamaica they are daily to be
found in society.
Every Englishman probably looks forward to the accomplishment of
abolition of slavery at some future day. I feel as sure of it as I
do of the final judgment. When or how it shall come, I will not
attempt to foretell. The mode which seems to promise the surest
success and the least present or future inconvenience, would be an
edict enfranchising all female children born after a certain date,
and all their children. Under such an arrangement the negro
population would probably die out slowly - very slowly. What might
then be the fate of the cotton fields of the Gulf States, who shall
dare to say? It may be that coolies from India and from China will
then have taken the place of the negro there, as they probably will
have done also in Guiana and the West Indies.
CHAPTER IV.
WASHINGTON TO ST. LOUIS.
Though I had felt Washington to be disagreeable as a city, yet I was
almost sorry to leave it when the day of my departure came. I had
allowed myself a month for my sojourn in the capital, and I had
stayed a mouth to the day. Then came the trouble of packing up, the
necessity of calling on a long list of acquaintances one after
another, the feeling that, bad as Washington might be, I might be
going to places that were worse, a conviction that I should get
beyond the reach of my letters, and a sort of affection which I had
acquired for my rooms. My landlord, being a colored man, told me
that he was sorry I was going. Would I not remain?
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