The American Prejudice Against Color: An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily the Nation Got into an Uproar.Allen, William G., active 1849-1853
History
The American Prejudice Against Color: An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily the Nation Got into an Uproar.
Allen, William G., active 1849-1853
Allen, William G., active 1849-1853; Miscegenation -- United States; United States -- Race relations
Confessedly, as a class, the quadroon women of New Orleans are the most
beautiful in America. Their personal attractions are not only
irresistible, but they have, in general, the best blood of America in
their veins. They are mostly white in complexion, and are, many of them,
highly educated and accomplished; and yet, by the law of Louisiana, no
man may marry a quadroon woman, unless he can prove that he, too, has
African blood in his veins. A law involving a greater outrage on
propriety, a more blasphemous trifling with the heart's affections, and
evincing a more contemptible tyranny, those who will look at the matter
from the beginning to the end, will agree with me, could not possibly
have been enacted.
Colonel Fuller, of the "_New York Mirror_," writing from New Orleans,
gives some melancholy descriptions--and some amusing ones too--of the
operations of this most barbarous law.
One I especially remember. A planter, it seems, had fallen deeply in
love with a charming quadroon girl. He desired to marry her; but the law
forbade. What was he to do? To tarnish her honour was out of the
question; he had too much himself to seek to tarnish hers. Here was a
dilemma. But he was not to be foiled. What true heart will be, if there
be any virtue in expedients?
"----In love,
His thoughts came down like a rushing stream."
At last he got it. A capital thought, which could have crept out of no
one's brain, save that of a most desperate lover. He hit upon the
expedient of extracting a little African blood from the veins of one of
his slaves, and injecting it into his own. The deed done, the letter of
the law was answered. He made proposals, was accepted, and they were
married,--he being willing to risk his caste in obedience to a love
higher and holier than any conventionalism which men have ever contrived
to establish.
O, Cupid, thou art a singular God! and a most amazing philosopher! Thou
goest shooting about with thy electrically charged arrows, bringing to
one common level human hearts, however diverse in clime, caste, or
color.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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