North America — Volume 2 by Anthony Trollope
page 85 of 434 (19%)
page 85 of 434 (19%)
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black, and the colored, taking a nomenclature which I found there
prevailing. By colored men I alluded to mulattoes, and all those of mixed European and African blood. The word "colored," in the States, seems to apply to the whole negro race, whether full-blooded or half-blooded. I allude to this now because I wish to explain that, in speaking of what I conceive to be the intellectual inferiority of the negro race, I allude to those of pure negro descent--or of descent so nearly pure as to make the negro element manifestly predominant. In the West Indies, where I had more opportunity of studying the subject, I always believed myself able to tell a negro from a colored man. Indeed, the classes are to a great degree distinct there, the greater portion of the retail trade of the country being in the hands of the colored people. But in the States I have been able to make no such distinction. One sees generally neither the rich yellow of the West Indian mulatto nor the deep oily black of the West Indian negro. The prevailing hue is a dry, dingy brown--almost dusty in its dryness. I have observed but little difference made between the negro and the half-caste--and no difference in the actual treatment. I have never met in American society any man or woman in whose veins there can have been presumed to be any taint of African blood. In Jamaica they are daily to be found in society. Every Englishman probably looks forward to the accomplishment of abolition of slavery at some future day. I feel as sure of it as I do of the final judgment. When or how it shall come, I will not attempt to foretell. The mode which seems to promise the surest success and the least present or future inconvenience, would be an edict enfranchising all female children born after a certain date, and all their children. Under such an arrangement the negro |
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