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INTRODUCTION TO
PAMPHLET EDITION
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 burthens.
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 skillful
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 preeminent 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 endowment, — always sure to make
the world feel them whether it will or no, — that 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 beside those on which he has labored;
secondly, to scatter broadly as possible the facts here
collected, ns instances of the colored man's success — a
record of the genius he lias 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
patriotic — though denied a country: — and all show a
wish, on their part, to prove themselves men, in a land
whose laws refuse to recognise 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 something of 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
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