Clotel - William Wells Brown (good books to read for beginners txt) 📗

“I shan’t do any such thing.”

“Don’t you mean to pay for riding?”

“Yes, but I won’t pay a dollar and a half for riding up here in the freight-van. If you had let me come in the carriage where others ride, I would have paid you two dollars.”

“Where were you raised? You seem to think yourself as good as white folks.”

“I want nothing more than my rights.”

“Well, give me a dollar, and I will let you off.”

“No, sir, I shan’t do it.”

“What do you mean to do then, don’t you wish to pay anything?”

“Yes, sir, I want to pay you the full price.”

“What do you mean by full price?”

“What do you charge per hundredweight for goods?” inquired the negro with a degree of gravity that would have astonished Diogenes himself.

“A quarter of a dollar per hundred,” answered the conductor.

“I weigh just one hundred and fifty pounds,” returned William, “and will pay you three eighths of a dollar.”

“Do you expect that you will pay only thirty-seven cents for your ride?”

“This, sir, is your own price. I came in a luggage-van, and I’ll pay for luggage.” After a vain effort to get the negro to pay more, the conductor took the thirty-seven cents, and noted in his cash-book, “Received for one hundred and fifty pounds of luggage, thirty seven cents.” This, reader, is no fiction; it actually occurred in the railway above described.

Thomas Corwin, a member of the American Congress, is one of the blackest white men in the United States. He was once on his way to Congress, and took passage in one of the Ohio river steamers. As he came just at the dinner hour, he immediately went into the dining saloon, and took his seat at the table. A gentleman with his whole party of five ladies at once left the table. “Where is the captain?” cried the man in an angry tone. The captain soon appeared, and it was sometime before he could satisfy the old gent, that Governor Corwin was not a nigger. The newspapers often have notices of mistakes made by innkeepers and others who undertake to accommodate the public, one of which we give below.

On the 6th inst., the Hon. Daniel Webster and family entered Edgartown, on a visit for health and recreation. Arriving at the hotel, without alighting from the coach, the landlord was sent for to see if suitable accommodation could be had. That dignitary appearing, and surveying Mr. Webster, while the hon. senator addressed him, seemed woefully to mistake the dark features of the traveller as he sat back in the corner of the carriage, and to suppose him a coloured man, particularly as there were two coloured servants of Mr. W. outside. So he promptly declared that there was no room for him and his family, and he could not be accommodated there, at the same time suggesting that he might perhaps find accommodation at some of the huts up back, to which he pointed. So deeply did the prejudice of looks possess him, that he appeared not to notice that the stranger introduced himself to him as Daniel Webster, or to be so ignorant as not to have heard of such a personage; and turning away, he expressed to the driver his astonishment that he should bring black people there for him to take in. It was not till he had been repeatedly assured and made to understand that the said Daniel Webster was a real live senator of the United States, that he perceived his awkward mistake and the distinguished honour which he and his house were so near missing.

In most of the Free States, the coloured people are disfranchised on account of their colour. The following scene, which we take from a newspaper in the state of Ohio, will give some idea of the extent to which this prejudice is carried.

The whole of Thursday last was occupied by the Court of Common Pleas for this county in trying to find out whether one Thomas West was of the voting colour, as some had very constitutional doubts as to whether his colour was orthodox, and whether his hair was of the official crisp! Was it not a dignified business? Four profound judges, four acute lawyers, twelve grave jurors, and I don’t know how many venerable witnesses, making in all about thirty men, perhaps, all engaged in the profound, laborious, and illustrious business, of finding out whether a man who pays tax, works on the road, and is an industrious farmer, has been born according to the republican, Christian constitution of Ohio⁠—so that he can vote! And they wisely, gravely, and “judgmatically” decided that he should not vote! What wisdom⁠—what research it must have required to evolve this truth! It was left for the Court of Common Pleas for Columbian county, Ohio, in the United States of North America, to find out what Solomon never dreamed of⁠—the courts of all civilised, heathen, or Jewish countries, never contemplated. Lest the wisdom of our courts should be circumvented by some such men as might be named, who are so near being born constitutionally that they might be taken for white by sight, I would suggest that our court be invested with smelling powers, and that if a man don’t exhale the constitutional smell, he shall not vote! This would be an additional security to our liberties.

William found, after all, that liberty in the so-called Free States was more a name than a reality; that prejudice followed the coloured man into every place that he might enter. The temples erected for the worship of the living God are no exception. The finest Baptist church in the city of Boston has the following paragraph in the deed that conveys its seats to pewholders:

And it is a further condition of these presents, that if the owner or owners of said pew shall determine hereafter to sell the same, it shall first