The American Prejudice Against Color | Page 8

to the Committee again. This Committee declared themselves to us
to be a self-constituted body. But whether self-constituted or otherwise,
it matters not, since they were to all intents and purposes members of
the mob--if not in deed, still in spirit and in heart. They meant no more
than to save the honor of their village by preventing, if possible,
bloodshed and death. They were not men of better principles than the
rabble--they were only men of better breeding. I do them no injustice.
The tenor of their discourse to us at the house of Mr. Porter, the spirit
of an article published by one of their number a few days after in the
"Oswego Daily Times," and the statements of the mob-leader, clearly
satisfy me that had we been married, they (the Committee) deeming
that our marriage would have been a greater disgrace to their village
than even bloodshed or death, would have left us to our fate--Miss
King to be carried off, or perchance grossly insulted, and myself left, as
the spiked barrel especially evinced, to torture and to death. That this
Committee saved my life, I have no doubt; and I have publicly thanked
them for the act. So I would be grateful even to the man who took
deadly aim at me with his revolver, and only missed his mark.
Previous to the death which I was to suffer in the spiked barrel, I was to
undergo various torturings and mutilations of person, aside from the
tarring and feathering--some of these mutilations too shocking to be
named in the pages of this book.
Mr. Porter, as I have already said, was also to be mobbed; but, as we
afterwards ascertained, only to be coated with tar and feathers and
ridden on a rail.

The leader of the mob subsequently averred that so decided was the
feeling in Fulton, that in addition to the hundreds who, in person, made
the onslaught, there were hundreds more in waiting in the village, who,
it was understood between the two companies, were ready to join the
onslaughting party at but a moment's warning. Indeed, Mrs. Allen now
assures me that on her way home that evening, conducted by a portion
of the Committee, she twice met crowds of men still coming on to join
the multitudes already congregated at Mr. Porter's. One of the
Committee, fearing that if all Fulton should get together, excited as the
people were, there would be bloodshed in spite of all that could be said
or done, entreated one of these crowds to go back. But, heeding him not;
on the villains went, some of them uttering oaths and imprecations,
some of them hurrahing, and many of them proceeding with great
solemnity of step--these last doubtless being church-members; for the
mob was not only on Sabbath evening, but it is a notorious fact which
came out early afterwards, that the churches on that evening were,
every one of them, quite deserted.
Reader, the life of a colored man in America, save as a slave, is
regarded as far less sacred than that of a dog. There is no exaggeration
in this statement--I am not writing of exceptions. It is true there are
white people in America who, while the colored man will keep in what
they call "his place," will treat him with a show of respect even. But
even this kind of people have their offset in the multitudes and
majorities--the populace at large who would go out of their way to
inflict the most demon-like outrages upon those whose skins are not
colored like their own!
I have before me at this moment recent American papers which contain
accounts of the throttling of respectably-dressed colored men and
women for venturing no further even than into the cabins of ferry boats
plying between opposite cities; of colored ladies made to get out of the
cars in which they had found seats--in cars in which the vilest loafer,
provided his skin be white might sit unmolested; of respectable
clergymen having their clothes torn from their backs, because they
presumed to ask in a quiet manner that they might have berths in the
cabins of steamers on which they were travelling, and not be compelled

to lodge on deck; and lastly, of a colored man who was not long since
picked up and thrown over-board from a steam boat, on one of the
Western rivers, because of some affray with a white man--while all the
bye-standers stood looking on, regarding the drowning of the man with
less consideration than they would have done the drowning of a brute.
Knowing all these things, and knowing also the peculiarity of the
circumstances which surrounded me on that Sabbath evening, the
reader will not be surprised, that when I saw the