Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/186

172 few leagues from London. The first scholars were twentyone young negroes, sent by the Governor of Sierra Leone. The Abbé Grégoire says, "I visited this establishment in 1802, to examine the progress of the scholars; and I found there existed no difference between them and European children, except that of color. The same observation has been made, first at Paris, in the ancient college of La Marche, where Coesnon, professor of the University, taught a number of colored boys.—Many members of the National Institute, who have carefully examined this college, and watched the progress of the scholars in their particular classes, and public exercises, will testify to the truth of my assertion."

Correa de Serra, the learned Secretary of the Academy at Portugal, informs us that several negroes have been able lawyers, preachers, and professors.

In the Southern States, the small black children are proverbially brighter and more forward than white ones of the same age. Repartees, by no means indicative of stupidity, have sometimes been made by negroes. A slave was suddenly roused with the exclamation, "Why don't you wake, when your master calls!" The negro answered, "Sleep has no master."

On a public day the New England Museum, in Boston, was thronged with visiters to see the representation of the Salem murder. Some colored women being jostled back by a crowd of white people, expostulated thus: "Don't you know it is always proper to let the mourners walk first?" It argues some degree of philosophy to be able to indulge wit at the expense of what is, most unjustly, considered a degradation. Public prejudice shamefully fetters these people; and it has been wisely said, "If we cannot break our chains, the next best thing we can do, is to play with them."

Among Bonaparte's officers there was a mulatto General of Division, named Alexander Dumas. In the army of the Alps, with charged bayonet, he ascended St Bernard, defended by a number of redoubts, took possession