Manuel Pereira; Or, The Sovereign Rule of South CarolinaAdams, F. Colburn (Francis Colburn)
General
Manuel Pereira; Or, The Sovereign Rule of South Carolina
Adams, F. Colburn (Francis Colburn)
African Americans -- Fiction; Biographical fiction; Pereira, Manuel -- Fiction; South Carolina -- Fiction
“We are abundantly repaid if we succeed in arousing public attention to
the alarming and dangerous condition of our city. * * * Let inquiry be
entered into. We boldly challenge it. It will lead to other and more
astonishing developments than those we have revealed. (Signed)
“A RESPONSIBLE CITIZEN.”
CHAPTER XXIX. MANUEL'S ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK.
WHEN we left Manuel, he was being hurried on board the steamship, as if
he was a bale of infected goods. Through the kindness of the clerk in
the consul's office, he was provided with a little box of stores to
supply his wants on the passage, as it was known that he would have to
“go forward.” He soon found himself gliding over Charleston bar, and
took a last look of what to him had been the city of injustice. On the
afternoon of the second day, he was sitting upon the forward deck
eating an orange that had been given to him by the steward of the ship,
probably as a token of sympathy for his sickly appearance, when a number
of passengers, acting upon the information of the clerk of the ship,
gathered around him. One gentleman from Philadelphia, who seemed to take
more interest in the man than any other of the passengers, expressed his
indignation in no measured terms, that such a man should be imprisoned
as a slave. “Take care,” said a bystander, “there's a good many
Southerners on board.”
“I don't care if every slaveholder in the South was on board, holding
a knife at my throat; I'm on the broad ocean, where God spreads the
breezes of freedom that man cannot enslave,” said he, sitting down
beside Manuel, and getting him to recount the details of his shipwreck
and imprisonment. The number increased around him, and all listened with
attention until he had concluded. One of the spectators asked him if
he would have something good to eat? but he declined, pulling out the
little box that the consul had sent him, and, opening it before them,
showed it to be well-stored with little delicacies.
The Philadelphian motioned that they take up a subscription for him, and
almost simultaneously took his hat off and began to pass it around;
but Manuel, mistaking the motive, told them that he never yet sought
charity-that the consul had paid him his wages, and he had money enough
to get home. But if he did not accept their contributions, he had their
sympathies and their good wishes, which were more prized by him, because
they were contrasted with the cold hospitality he had suffered in
Charleston.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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