Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/193

Rh forget that the cruel prejudice, under which colored people labor, makes it extremely difficult for them to gain admission to the best colleges and schools; they are obliged to contend with obstacles, which white men never encounter.

It might seem wonderful that the descendants of wise Ethiopia, and learned Egypt, are now in such a state of degradation, if history did not furnish a remarkable parallel in the condition of the modern Greeks. The land of Homer, Pericles, and Plato, is now inhabited by ignorant, brutal pirates. Freedom made the Grecians great and glorious—tyranny has made them stupid and miserable. Yet their yoke has been light, compared with African bondage. In both cases the wrongs of the oppressed have been converted into an argument against them. We first debase the nature of man by making him a slave, and then very coolly tell him that he must always remain a slave because he does not know how to use freedom. We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate. Truly, human selfishness never invented a rule, which worked so charmingly both ways!

No one thinks of doubting the intellect of Indians; yet civilization has certainly advanced much farther in the interior of Africa, than it did among the North American tribes. The Indians have strong untutored eloquence,—so have the Africans. And where will you find an Indian chieftain, whose pride, intellect, and valor, are more than a match for Zhinga's? Both of these classes have been most shamefully wronged; but public prejudice, which bows the negro to the earth, has borne with a far less crushing power upon the energies of the red man; yet they have not produced a ShakspeareShakespeare [sic] or a Newton. But I shall be asked how it is that the nations of Africa, having proceeded so far in the arts of civilization, have made a full stop, and remained century after century without any obvious improvement? I will answer this by another question: How long did the ancient Helvetians, Gauls, and Saxons remain in such a state of barbarism, that what they considered splendor and