Historical Romance of the American NegroFowler, Charles Henry
History
Historical Romance of the American Negro
Fowler, Charles Henry
African Americans -- History
It therefore becomes a small part for us to perform in signalizing the
honest writer and leader by giving him our unanimous support. The author
has spent months of effort and toil in compiling data and accounts, that
Caucasian authors with alertness suppress. He has made a strong case and
defense of the Negro’s manhood and trustworthiness at a time when most
men would have been honest with pain. The simplicity with which his data
is compiled and presented to the reader stamps him neither in quest of
gold or greatness, but striving to convince the ignorant that heroes and
heroines can even be found among this despised race of America, whom
some would brand as rapists and thieves. A tale is welded together in
which every experience, occurrence and stage is passed through that can
occur to a poor, struggling people; yet, no instance presents itself by
which the character, the basal part of any people, can be impeached.
'Twill serve as a firer of the ambition and aspirations of the young
Negro, and at the same time, so thrilling are its narratives, that
'twill prove as interesting reading matter as many a romance. The
eagerness with which our youth devour such tales as relates the better
side of his ancestry’s life, is too well known to us. The story of
Beulah Jackson will fill a long-felt niche in the young Negro’s reading
matter, that will in itself prove highly beneficial.
JACOB NICHOLSON.
HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO.
CHAPTER I.
Though this is the year of grace, just forty-seven years after the date
when my adventurous story begins, my recollections of that bright
morning in May, 1855, when I arose and at one bound broke loose from
slavery, are as vivid as the lightning’s flash. "A still tongue makes a
wise head," and so I held my tongue and bided my time until I made at
last that successful spring. And never do I behold the glorious sun
rising over the hills and forests but the joyous recollection of that
Wednesday morning in May comes back to me, like the rebounding reaction
of the bow that is unbent.
I was born in the State of Kentucky, a few miles below Louisville, where
my father’s mansion stood on one of those sloping hills that faces the
river Ohio, which the French named with justice, the "Beautiful River."
That mansion, with all its splendid surroundings, belonged to my father
and owner, a white man named Lemuel Jackson; but my own mother, a woman
of uncommon beauty, belonged to the colored race. My mother, for some
cause or other, was sold down the river in New Orleans, in the year
1853, when I was but fifteen years of age. I never got over that sudden
separation, and I at once formed my own resolutions, of which I said
nothing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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