Appendix II.
On page [147] I have named, among other members of the Society of Friends who gave us efficient support in the day when we most needed help, Nathaniel Barney, then of Nantucket. He was one of the earliest of the immediate Abolitionists, was most explicit and fearless in the avowal of his sentiments, most consistent and conscientious in acting accordingly with them. He denounced “the prejudice against color as opposed to every precept and principle of the Gospel,” and said, “It betrays a littleness of soul to which, when it is rightly considered, an honorable mind can never descend.” Therefore, he would not ride in a stage-coach or other public conveyance, from which an applicant for a seat was excluded because of his complexion.
He was a stockholder in the New Bedford and Taunton Railroad. In 1842 he learned that colored persons were excluded from the cars on that road. Immediately he sent an admirable letter, dated April 14, 1842, to the New Bedford Mercury for publication, condemning such proscription. It was refused. He then offered it to the Bulletin, where it was likewise rejected. At length it appeared in the New Bedford Morning Register, and was worthy of being republished in every respectable newspaper in our country. In it he said: “The thought never entered my mind, when I advocated a liberal subscription to that railroad among our citizens, that I was contributing to a structure where, in coming years, should be exhibited a cowardice and despotism which I know the better feelings of the proprietors would, on reflection, repudiate.... I cannot conscientiously withdraw the little I invested, neither can I sell my share of the stock of this road, while the existing prescriptive character attaches to it; and with my present views and feelings, so long as the privileges of the traveller are suspended on one of the accidents of humanity, I should be recreant to every principle of propriety and justice, were I to receive aught of the price which the directors attach to them. In the exclusion, therefore, by the established rules of one equally entitled with myself to a seat, I am excluded from any share of the money,—the profit of said infraction of right.”
Surely, the name of such a man ought to be handed down to our posterity to be duly honored, when the great and mean iniquity of our nation shall be abhorred.