Struggles and Triumphs, P. T. Barnum [good books to read in english .txt] 📗

the human soul will begin to develop itself. Each generation, blessed with churches and common schools, will gradually exhibit the result of such culture; the low foreheads will be raised and widened by an active and expanded brain; the vacant eye of barbarism, ignorance and idleness will light up with the fire of intelligence, education, ambition, activity and Christian civilization; and you will find the immortal soul asserting her dignity, by the development of a man who would startle, by his intelligence, the honorable gentleman from Wallingford, who has presumed to compare beings made in God’s image with “oxen and asses.” That honorable gentleman, if he is rightly reported in the papers (I did not have the happiness to hear his speech), has mistaken the nature of the colored man. The honorable gentleman reminds me of the young man who went abroad, and when he returned, there was nothing in America that could compare with what he had seen in foreign lands. Niagara Falls was nowhere; the White Mountains were “knocked higher than a kite” by Mont Blanc; our rivers were so large that they were vulgar, when contrasted with the beautiful little streams and rivulets of Europe; our New York Central Park was eclipsed by the Bois de Bologne and the Champs Élysées of Paris, or Hyde or Regent Park of London, to say nothing of the great Phoenix Park at Dublin.

“They have introduced a couple of Venetian gondolas on the large pond in Central Park,” remarked a friend.

“All very well,” replied the verdant traveller, “but between you and me, these birds can’t stand our cold climate more than one season.” The gentleman from Wallingford evidently had as little idea of the true nature of the African as the young swell had of the pleasure-boats of Venice.

Mr. Johnson, of Wallingford: The gentleman misapprehends my remarks. The gentleman from Norwich had urged that the negro should vote because they have fought in our battles. I replied that oxen and asses can fight, and therefore should, on the same grounds, be entitled to vote.

Mr. Barnum: I accept the gentleman’s explanation. Doubtless General Grant will feel himself highly complimented when he learns that it requires no greater capacity to handle the musket, and meet armed battalions in the field, than “oxen and asses” possess.

Let the educated free negro feel that he is a man; let him be trained in New England churches, schools and workshops; let him support himself, pay his taxes, and cast his vote, like other men, and he will put to everlasting shame the champions of modern democracy, by the overwhelming evidence he will give in his own person of the great Scripture truth, that “God has made of one blood all the nations of men.” A human soul, “that God has created and Christ died for,” is not to be trifled with. It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hottentot⁠—it is still an immortal spirit; and amid all assumptions of caste, it will in due time vindicate the great fact that, without regard to color or condition, all men are equally children of the common Father.

A few years since, an English lord and his family were riding in his carriage in Liverpool. It was an elegant equipage; the servants were dressed in rich livery; the horses caparisoned in the most costly style; and everything betokened that the establishment belonged to a scion of England’s proudest aristocracy. The carriage stopped in front of a palatial residence. At this moment a poor beggar woman rushed to the side of the carriage, and gently seizing the lady by the hand, exclaimed, “For the love of God give me something to save my poor sick children from starvation. You are rich; I am your poor sister, for God is our common Father.”

“Wretch!” exclaimed the proud lady, casting the woman’s hand away; “Don’t call me sister, I have nothing in common with such low brutes as you.” And the great lady doubtless thought she was formed of finer clay than this suffering mendicant; but when a few days afterwards she was brought to a sick bed by the smallpox, contracted by touching the hand of that poor wretch, she felt the evidence that they belonged to the same great family, and were subject to the same pains and diseases.

The State of Connecticut, like New Jersey, is a border State of New York. New York has a great commercial city, where Aldermen rob by the tens of thousands, and where principal is studied much more than principle. I can readily understand how the negro has come to be debased at the North as well as at the South. The interests of the two sections in the product of negro labor were nearly identical. The North wanted Southern cotton and the South was ready in turn to buy from the North whatever was needed in the way of Northern supplies and manufactures. This community of commercial interests led to an identity in political principles especially in matters pertaining to the negro race⁠—the working race of the South⁠—which produced the cotton and consumed so much of what Northern merchants and manufacturers sold for plantation use. The Southern planters were good customers and were worth conciliating. So when Connecticut proposed in 1818 to continue to admit colored men to the franchise, the South protested against thus elevating the negroes, and Connecticut succumbed. No other New England State has ever so disgraced herself; and now Connecticut democrats are asked to permit the white citizens of this State to express their opinion in regard to reinstating the colored man where our Revolutionary sires placed him under the Constitution. Now, gentlemen, “democrats” as you call yourselves, you who speak so flippantly of your “loyalty,” your “love for the Union” and your “love for the people;” you who are generally talking right and voting wrong, we ask you to come forward and act “democratically,” by letting your masters, the people, speak.

The word “white” in the