COLOR-PHOBIA.
Our people have got it. They have got it in the blue,
collapse stage. Many of them have got it so bad, they can't get well. They will
die of it. It will be a mercy, if the nation does not. What a dignified,
philosophic malady! Dread of complexion. They don't know they have got it — or
think, rather, they took it the natural way. But they were inoculated. It was
injected into their veins and incided into their systems, by old Doctor
Slavery, the great doctor that the famous Dr. Wayland studied with. There is a
kind of varioloid type, called colonization. They generally go together,
or all that have one are more apt to catch the other. Inoculate for one, (no
matter which,) and they will have both, before they get over it. The remedy and
the preventive, if taken early, is a kine-pock sort of matter, by the name of anti-slavery.
It is a safe preventive and a certain cure. None that have it, genuine, ever
catch slavery or colonization or the color-phobia. You can't inoculate either
into them. It somehow changes and redeems the constitution, so that it is
unsusceptible of them. An abolitionist can sleep safely all night in a close
room, where there has been a colonization meeting the day before. He might sleep
with It. R. Gurley and old Dr. Proudfit, three in a bed, and not catch it. The
remedy was discovered by Dr. William Lloyd Jenner-Garrison.
This color-phobia is making terrible havoc among our
communities. Anti-slavery drives it out, and after a while cures it. But
it is a base, low, vulgar ailment. It is meaner, in fact, than the itch. It is
worse to get rid of than the “seven years' itch.” It is fouler than Old
Testament leprosy. It seems to set the dragon into a man, and make him treat
poor, dark-skinned folks like a tiger. It goes hardest with dark-complect white
people. They have it longer and harder than light-skinned people. It makes them
sing out “Nigger—nigger,” sometimes in their sleep. Sometimes they make a noise
like this, “Darkey—darkey— darkey.” Sometimes, “Wully—wully—wully.” They will
turn up their noses, when they see colored people, especially if they are of a
pretty rank, savory habit of person, themselves. They are generally apt to turn
up their noses, as though there was some “bad smell” in the neighborhood, when
they have it bad, and are naturally pretty odoriferous. It is a tasty disorder —
a beautiful ailment; very genteel, and apt to go in “first families.” We should
like to have Hogarth take a sketch of a community that had it — of ours, for
instance, when the St. Vitus’ fit was on. We have read somewhere of a painter,
who made so droll a picture, that he died a-laughing at the sight of it.
Hogarth might not laugh at this picture. It would be a sight to cry at, rather
than laugh, especially if he could see the poor objects of our frenzy, when the
fit is on — which indeed is all the time, for it is an unintermittent. Our
attitude would be most ridiculous and ludicrous, if it were not too mortifying
and humiliating and cruel. Our Hogarth would be apt to die of something else
than laughter, at sight of his sketch.
The courtly malady is the secret of all our anti-abolition,
and all our mobocracy. It shuts up all the consecrated meetinghouses — and all
the temples of justice, the court-houses, against the friends of negro
liberty. It is all alive with fidgets about desecrating the Sabbath with
anti-slavery lectures. It thinks anti-slavery pew-owners can't go into them, or
use their pulpit, when it is empty, without leave of the minister whom they
employ to preach in it. It will forcibly shut people out of their own houses
and off their own land, — not with the respectful violence of enemies and
trespassers, but the contemptuous unceremoniousness of the plantation overseer —
mingled moreover with the slavish irascibility of the poor negro, when he holds
down his fellow-slave for a flogging. It sneers at human rights through the free
press. It handed John B. Mahin over to the alligators of Kentucky. It shot
Elijah P. Lovejoy at Alton. It dragged away the free school, at Canaan. It set
Pennsylvania Hall a-fire.
It broke Miss Crandall's school windows, and threw filth
into her well. It stormed the female prayer meeting in Boston, with a “property
and standing” forlorn hope. It passed the popish resolution at Littleton, in
Grafton county. It shut up the meeting-house at Meredith Bridge, against
minister and all, — and the homely court-house there, and howled like bedlam
around the little, remote district school-house, and broke the windows at
night. It excludes consideration and prayer in regard to the forlorn and christian-made
heathenism of the American colored man, from county conferences and clerical
associations. It broods over the mousings of the New York Observer, and gives keenness
to the edge and point of its New Hampshire name-sake. It votes anti-slavery
lectures out of the New Hampshire state house, and gives it public hearing on
petitions, in a seven by nine committee room. It answers the most insulting
mandate of southern governors, calling for violations of the state constitution
and bill of rights, by legislative report and resolves that the paramount
rights of slavery are safe enough in New Hampshire, without these violations.
It sneers and scowls at woman's speaking in company, unless to simper,
when she is flattered by a fool of the masculine or neuter gender. It won't
sign an anti-slavery petition, for fear it will put back emancipation half a
century. It votes in favor of communing with slaveholders, and throwing the
pulpit wide open to men-stealers, to keep peace in the churches, and prevent
disunion. It will stifle and strangle sympathy for the slave and "
remembrance of those in bonds," to prevent disturbance of religious
revivals. It will sell the American slave to buy Bibles, or hire negro-hating
and negro-buying missionaries for foreign heathen of all quarters but
christian-wasted Africa. It prefers American lecturers on slavery, to
having that foreign emissary, George Thompson, come over here, to interfere
with American rights and prejudices. It abhors "church action" and
"meddling with politics." In short, it abhors slavery in the abstract
— wishes it might be done away, but denies the right of any body or any thing
to devise its overthrow, but slavery itself and slaveholders. It prays for the
poor slave, that he might be elevated, while it stands both feet on his breast
to keep him down. It prays God might open a way in his own time for the
deliverance of the slave, while it stands, with arms akimbo, right across the
way he has already opened. Time would fail us to tell of its extent and depth
in this free country, or the deeds it has done. Anti-slavery must cure it, or
it must die out like the incurable drunkards.
SOURCE: Collection from the Miscellaneous Writings
of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Second Edition, p. 44-7 which states it was
published in the Herald of Freedom of November 10, 1838.
