Fayetteville observer. [volume] (Fayetteville, Tenn.) 1850-1966, 1866-08-16
0utcasts on Account Of
Caste in New England.

1uS OootOai Correspondents VI tuC
Chicago Tribune tells the follow
ing story:
"Among the visitors whom the
summer has brought to Boston is
a Liberian family of wealth and po-
sition, proposing to travel through
America, and expecting certainly
to find a hospitable welcome in
Boston, if nowhere else. They
travel in luxurious style, accom-
panied by their servants, several
degrees blacker than themselves.
They stopped here at the Marlbo-
rough Hotel, recommended to them
as the most liberal in the city
But after a stay of only one day
they were called on by the land
lord and informed that he could
not permit them to sit at his pub
lie table, on account of the preju-
dices of his customers. He gen.
erously offered to send meals to
their rooms; but this exclusion
the proud spirits of the Liberians
could not brook, and they left the
house. Not another place in the
fanatical city of Boston could be
found to shelter them, and they
sought refuge in a boarding house
at Salem. Even here the spirit of
caste pursues them, and the pres
sure from her other guests has
compelled the landlady to ask them
to sit at a second and separate ia.
BILE. They are both astonished and
grieved at this display of popular
sentiment in what they had ex-
pected to find a democratic locali-
ty. Being told, and truly, that a
far worse treatment would meet
them at Niagara the White Noun
tains, and other resorts of fashion
and conservatism, they are con-
templating, l believe, an immedi-
ate return to their own country
from a land which offers them
nothing but insults"
This narrative conveys an impor-
tant fact, that however much poll
ticians of the Radical school may
theorise in regard to the equality
of the races, the work can never
be accomplished. One would sup
pose that if the negro would be
tolerated any where as the equal
of the white man it would be in
New England; yet in Boston, the
hot bed of the widest of Radical
schemes, the negro is plainly told
that on account of the color Of his
skin he cannot be permitted to go
to the public table. There is a
social prejudice against the negro,
and it is more deeply implanted
in the Northern than in the South
ern people. In Massachusetts, it
is by law an offense to refuse any
one, to sit at the table of pub
lie house, yet such is the force
of public opinion in that State
that the law is universally disre-
garded. We believe a few par
ties have been fined for disregard
ing the law, but the fines were
nominal. These fines had no
terrors to coerce landlords into a
disregard of public opinion. The
fanaticism which rules the Radio
ais may triumph in the United
States Congress in comforting the
right of suffrage upon the negro,
but what sort of man is he to ex-
ercise that right in a community
where he is socially ostracised?-
Such voters are the material
through which demagogues seek
and obtain position to which their
merits do not entitle them. The,
extinction of slavery has bequeath-
ed us a problem that imposes du-
ties of a higher and nobler charac-
ter than the effort to make negroes
voters. Their moral and intellect
ual condition demands the first
of the American
people, and to the solution of this
great question should their ener-
gies be directed.-Mashcale Dis
patch.
The Icaisville Journal saws