A Friend has shown us this week's number, and we see by it
that poor Mr. Barton is yet at home. We wonder people should be so
insensible to the pleasures of journeying. To be sure, the season is getting to
be inauspicious—the trees are naked, and the landscape muddy, and the winds
chilled, and the music of the birds hushed—all, all very uncongenial to such a mellifluous
spirit as the patriot's of New Hampshire. But still we somehow feel
disappointed that he don't travel more. We would respectfully suggest to Mr.
Barton the interesting objects with which this free country abounds—all
parts of which he cannot yet have visited. Has he ever been to the White
Sulphur springs? He need be under no apprehension in going there. To be
sure, complexion is attended with inconvenience there, and blood has its
hazards. But we think Judge Larrimer and Colonel Singleton and General
Carter and Major Thornton would stand the friend of a Colonel from the North,
and prevent him any disagreeable consequences of an indiscriminate operation of
the domestic slave trade. They are keen observers. They know the invasions the
peculiar institution has made upon the Anglo-Saxon color, and they know how the
pure Americo-Anglo-Saxon has verged towards the servile shadows without coming
within the lawful scope of the institution, and then the symptomatic cry of “nigger,”
ever and anon breaking out asleep and awake, would reveal to them at once that
the Colonel had the genuine negro-phobia, which a nominal slave never has, and
which goes so hard with doubtful white people. They would protect any
northern gentleman against being imprisoned and sold for fees, provided they
could be satisfied that his proslavery merits overbalanced his colored
liabilities—which we think might easily be vouched. The Colonel has a vein of “chivalry”
about him, which would go a good way in offset to mere color of
liability, which after all is but prima facie evidence of servility.—We
warrant him a journey to the White Sulphur against the lawful claims of
any person or persons whomsoever.
Then there is Texas—the Colonel has not, peradventure, been
to Texas. It is a place of resort for people of enterprise, and where
patriotism is a ready passport to consideration, although it has been
slanderously styled a valley of villains, field of felons, sink of scoundrels,
sewer of scamps, &.c. &,c. Yet it is a most republican clime, “where
patriots most do congregate.”
There is Arkansas too—all glorious in new-born liberty—fresh
and unsullied, like Venus out of the ocean—that newly-discovered star in the
firmament-banner of this republic. Sister Arkansas, with her bowie knife
graceful at her side, like the huntress Diana with her silver bow—her knife
dripping with the heart's blood of her senators and councillors, shed in
legislative debate,—O, it would be refreshing and recruiting to an exhausted
patriot to go and replenish his soul at her fountains. The newly-evacuated
lands of the Cherokee, too—a sweet place now for a lover of his country to
visit, to renew his self-complacency by wandering among the quenched hearths of
the expatriated Indians, a land all smoking with the red man's departing curse—
a malediction that went to the centre. Yes, and Florida—blossoming and leafy Florida,
yet warm with the life-blood of Osceola and his warriors, shed gloriously under
flag of truce. Why should a patriot of such a fancy for nature immure himself
in the cells of the city, and forego such an inviting and so broad a landscape?
Ite viator. Go forth, traveller, and leave this mouldy editing to less
elastic fancies. We would respectfully incite our Colonel to travel. What
signifies? Journey—wander—go forth —itinerate—exercise—perambulate—roam.
We cannot sustain ourselves or our waning cause against the
reasonings of this military chieftain if he stays at home and concentrates his
powers. Nigger nigger nigger, and nigger, and besides that nigger,
and moreover nigger, and therefore nigger, and hence nigger,
and wherefore nigger, and more than all that, and yielding every
thing else, “bobalition!” urged with the peculiar force and genius of this
deadly writer—with his grace, point and delicacy—with his “nihil tetigit,
quod non ornavit." We crave a truce. We appeal to the magnanimity of
the Patriot,— to his nighthood—to go abroad, and leave us in apprentice
hands or some journeyman's; or if he won't travel in courtesy, we beseech him
to turn his editorship upon other enemies than us. Let him point his guns at
the Statesman, or the Courier.
But if we must meet him, we protest against encountering the
arguments aforesaid. That we are a nigger we can't deny, and we can't help it.
That our little paper is a "Nigger Herald," we can't deny, and we
can't help it. What signifies arguing that against us, all the time? We
don't deny it—we never did deny it—we never shall. And what can we do? We can't
wash off our color. We cannot change our Ethiopian skin any more than the
Patriot can its “spots.” The
sun has looked upon us, and burnt upon us a complexion incompatible with
freedom?
Is it so? Will the demoeratic Patriot aver this? Are
we to be denied the right of a hearing because we are a "nigger?" Are
we to be deprived in New Hampshire of human consideration because we are black,
and shall Cyrus Barton dispose of us thus, because he is White? We lay before
the yeomanry of New Hampshire the appalling truth, that slavery has rooted
itself deep into the heart of American liberty;—“Nigger Herald,” argues this
snow-drop Colonel; “Bobalition!” and our appeal is silenced. We warn the
country that slavery is overshadowing the North, and that ranting and rampant
professing democrats will give their very backs to the southern cart-whip.
"Nigger!" replies the Honorable Cyrus Barton; “eh, old nigger!” “old black
nigger!” Is it an answer, we ask the country?
But poor Mister Barton is jealous we are after votes for
James Wilson. If he is really so, we pity him. He is non compos if he
suspects it. He ought to be sent right up to the town farm. Votes for James Wilson!
Is this the purpose and aim of the great anti-slavery enterprise that now
shakes Europe and America to the centre? Is West India emancipation a plot to
defeat the Patriot's democracy here in universal New Hampshire? Are George
Thompson and Daniel O'Connell and Henry Brougham thundering for human liberty
in Exeter Hall, (henceforth and forever the cradle of liberty—not the cradle of
the bastard infant, rocked in Faneuil Hall of Boston, now formally dedicated to
the Genius of Slavery,) are these champions of liberty plotting with the
fifteen hundred anti-slavery societies of America to defeat the election of
Governor John Page?
We give our poor jaundice-visioned neighbor no other answer
than this to his paltry accusations about plotting against his partisans. We
have other and bigger objects altogether.
SOURCE: Collection from the Miscellaneous Writings
of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Second Edition, p. 51-4 which states it was
published in the Herald of Freedom of November 17, 1838.
