American Scenes, and Christian Slavery: A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United StatesDavies, Ebenezer
History
American Scenes, and Christian Slavery: A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States
Davies, Ebenezer
Slavery -- United States; United States -- Description and travel
From time to time I had given him hints that I was afraid of being too
late for dinner at my lodgings; and when the sight-seeing was at last
ended, he very coolly and complacently said, "Now, if you really think
you are too late for dinner at your place, I shall be under the
_necessity_ of asking you to go and take a plate with me." Those were
the _ipsissima verba_. I could scarcely keep my gravity; but I replied,
"Thank you, sir; I want to go to the centre of the city, and I can
easily get a dinner at any eating-house." He both nodded and expressed
an entire concurrence, and seemed to think it an _admirable_
arrangement. In parting, he pressed me to preach for him on the
following Thursday, but I declined. The next day I was told, on
unquestionable authority, that two or three years ago one of the elders
of this gentleman's church, meeting a man from South America whom he
took to be a mixture of Spaniard and Indian, requested his company to
church. The stranger assented, and sat with him in his pew. He liked
the service, became interested, and went again and again. At last it
was whispered that he was a "Nigger,"--_i.e._ had a slight mixture of
African blood in him. The next week a meeting of the Session was held,
at which it was unanimously resolved that the intruder's entrance into
the body of the church must be prohibited. Two men were stationed at
the door for that purpose. The stranger came. He was stopped, and told
that he could not be allowed to enter the body of the church, there
being a place up in the gallery for coloured people. The man
remonstrated, and said he had been invited to take a seat in Mr.
So-and-so's pew. "Yes," they replied, "we are aware of that; but public
feeling is against it, and it cannot be allowed." The stranger turned
round, burst into tears, and walked home.
Mr. Johnson, of the _Tribune_, told me that two or three years ago he
and thirty or forty more were returning from an Anti-slavery Convention
held at Harrisburgh in Pennsylvania. They had left by railway for
Philadelphia at 3 o'clock in the morning. At a town called Lancaster
they stopped to breakfast. In the company were two coloured gentlemen,
one of whom was a minister. They all sat down together. Soon the
waiters began to whisper, "A nigger at table!" "There is two!" The
landlord quickly appeared, seized one of the coloured gentlemen by the
shoulder, and asked him how he dared to sit down at table in his house.
The company remonstrated, and assured him that those whose presence
appeared to be so offensive were very respectable men, friends of
theirs, whom they had invited to sit down. It was all in vain. The
landlord would hear nothing; "the niggers must go." "Very well," said
the rest of the company; "then we shall all go." Away they went, and
left the refined landlord to console himself for the loss of a large
party to breakfast. They had to travel all the way to Philadelphia
before they could break their fast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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