William C. Nell
Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664589019
INTRODUCTION.
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The following pages are an effort to stem the tide of prejudice against the Colored race. The white man despises the colored man, and has come to think him fit only for the menial drudgery to which the majority of the race has been so long doomed. "This prejudice was never reasoned up, and will never be reasoned down." It must be lived down. In a land where wealth is the basis of reputation, the colored man must prove his sagacity and enterprise by successful trade or speculation. To show his capacity for mental culture he must BE , not merely claim the right to be, a scholar. Professional eminence is peculiarly the result of practice and long experience. The colored people, therefore, owe it to each other and to their race to extend liberal encouragement to colored lawyers, physicians and teachers, as well as to mechanics and artisans of all kinds. Let no individual despair. Not to name the living, let me hold up the example of one whose career deserves to be often spoken of, as complete proof that a colored man can rise to social respect and the highest employment and usefulness, in spite not only of the prejudice that crushes his race, but of the heaviest personal burdens. Dr. David Ruggles , poor, blind and an invalid, founded a well-known Water Cure Establishment in the town where I write, erected expensive buildings, won honorable distinction as a most successful and skilful practitioner, secured the warm regard and esteem of this community, and left a name embalmed in the hearts of many who feel that they owe life to his eminent skill and careful practice. Black though he was, his aid was sought sometimes by those numbered among the Pro-Slavery class. To be sure, his is but a single instance, and I know it required pre-eminent ability to make a way up to light through the overwhelming mass of prejudice and contempt. But it is these rare cases of strong will and eminent endowmentalways sure to make the world feel whether it will or nothat will finally wring from a contemptuous community the reluctant confession of the colored man's equality.
I ask, therefore, the reader's patronage of the following sheets, on several grounds; first, as an encouragement to the author, Mr. Nell , to pursue a subject which well deserves illustration on other points besides those on which he has labored; secondly, to scatter broadly as possible, the facts here collected, as instance of the colored man's successa record of the genius he has shown, and the services he has rendered society in the higher departments of exertion; thirdly, to encourage such men as Ruggles to perseverance, by showing a generous appreciation of their labors and a cordial sympathy in their trials.
Some things set down here go to prove colored men patrioticthough denied a country; and all show a wish, on their part, to prove themselves men, in a land whose laws refuse to recognize their manhood. If the reader shall, sometimes, blush to find that in the days of our country's weakness, we remembered their power to help or harm us, and availed ourselves gladly of their generous services, while we have since, used our strength only to crush them the more completely, let him resolve henceforth to do them justice himself and claim it for them of others. If any shall be convinced by these facts, that they need only a free path to show the same capacity and reap the same rewards as other races, let such labor to open every door to their efforts, and hasten the day when to be black shall not, almost necessarily, doom a man to poverty and the most menial drudgery. There is touching eloquence, as well as Spartan brevity, in the appeal of a well-known colored man, Rev. Peter Williams , of New York:
"We are natives of this country; we ask only to be treated as well as foreigners. Not a few of our fathers suffered and bled to purchase its independence; we ask only to be treated as well as those who fought against it. We have toiled to cultivate it, and to raise it to its present prosperous condition; we ask only to share equal privileges with those who come from distant lands to enjoy the fruits of our labor."
WENDELL PHILLIPS.
Northampton , Oct. 25, 1852.
PREFACE.
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In the month of July, 1847, the eloquent Bard of Freedom, John G. Whittier , contributed to the National Era a statement of facts relative to the Military Services of Colored Americans in the Revolution of 1776, and the War of 1812. Being a member of the Society of Friends, he disclaimed any eulogy upon the shedding of blood, even in the cause of acknowledged Justice, but, says he, "when we see a whole nation doing honor to the memories of one class of its defenders, to the total neglect of another class, who had the misfortune to be of darker complexion, we cannot forego the satisfaction of inviting notice to certain historical facts, which, for the last half century, have been quietly elbowed aside, as no more deserving of a place in patriotic recollections, than the descendants of the men to whom the facts in question relates, have a place in a Fourth of July procession [in the nation's estimation].
"Of the services and sufferings of the Colored Soldiers of the Revolution, no attempt has, to our knowledge, been made to preserve a record. They have had no historian. With here and there an exception, they have all passed away, and only some faint traditions linger among their descendants. Yet enough is known to show that the Free Colored Men of the United States bore their full proportion of the sacrifices and trials of the Revolutionary War."
In any attempt, then, to rescue from oblivion the name and fame of those who, though "tinged with the hated stain," yet had warm hearts and active hands in the "times that tried men's souls," I will first gratefully tender him my thanks for the service his compilation has afforded me, and my acknowledgments also to other individuals who have kindly contributed facts for this pamphlet. Imperfect as these pages may prove, to prepare even these, journeys have been made to confer with the living, and even pilgrimages to grave-yards, to save all that may still be gleaned from their fast disappearing records.
There are those who will askwhy make a parade of the military services of Colored Americans, instead of recording their attention to and progress in the various other departments of civil, social, and political elevation? To this let me answer, that I yield to no one in appreciating the propriety and pertinency of every effort on the part of Colored Americans, in all pursuits, which, as members of the human family, it becomes them to share in; and, among these, my predilections are least and last for what constitutes the pomp and circumstances of War.
Did the limits of this work permit, I could furnish an elaborate list of those who have distinguished themselves as Teachers, Editors, Orators, Mechanics, Clergymen, Artists, Farmers, Poets, Lawyers, Physicians, Merchants, etc., to whose perennial fame be it recorded that most of their attainments were reached through difficulties unknown to any but those whose sin is the curl of the hair and the hue of the skin.
