Papers of the American Negro Academy. (The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers, No. 18-19.)Grimké, Archibald Henry
History
Papers of the American Negro Academy. (The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers, No. 18-19.)
Grimké, Archibald Henry
African Americans -- Congresses
From the quotations already made it can be seen that to be a colored
person was to suffer from the presumption of being a slave, and that to
be a free colored person was to be in a condition not of freedom, but of
lessened servitude. To be a free colored person was not to possess the
citizenship of the world any more than to be a Christian today is
evidence that one is an imitator of Christ. In actual practice the term
"free colored person" embraced the idea of freedom from personal service
to a specified owner and little else, particularly in the slave-holding
States. The attitude of these States is well expressed in the following
quotation from John C. Calhoun: "I hold that in the present state of
civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by
color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are
brought together the relation now existing in the slave-holding States
between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good—a positive good. I
fearlessly assert that the existing relations between the two races in
the South forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear
free and stable political institutions (Works of Calhoun, Vol. 2, p.
630)." Thus by legal enactment, judicial interpretation and orderly
expressed public opinion, race if it be African was the badge of
inferiority and slavery. This was generally true throughout the country
and yet a careful and somewhat thorough examination of the statutes,
legal decisions, and systematic treatises relating to the law of slavery
will convince any fair-minded person that the term free colored person
carried with it less of negation of right in the Northern States where
slavery had ceased to exist than in the Southern States where it still
flourished.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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