BURNING THE ROAD CLEAR.
It is related of Colonel Thomas A. Scott, that on one occasion, when making one of his swift trips over the American lines under his control, his train was stopped by the wreck of a goods train. There was a dozen heavily loaded covered trucks piled up on the road, and it would take a long time to get help from the nearest accessible point, and probably hours more to get the track cleared by mere force of labour. He surveyed the difficulty, made a rough calculation of the cost of a total destruction of the freight, and promptly made up his mind to burn the road clear. By the time the relief train came the flames had done their work and nothing remained but to patch up a few injuries done to the track so as to enable him to pursue his way.
HARSH TREATMENT OF A MAN OF COLOUR.
My treatment in the use of public conveyances about these times was extremely rough, especially on “The Eastern Railroad,” from Boston to Portland. On the road, as on many others, there was a mean, dirty, and uncomfortable car set apart for coloured travellers, called the “Jim Crow” car. Regarding this as the fruit of slaveholding prejudice, and being determined to fight the spirit of slavery wherever I might find it, I resolved to avoid this car, though it sometimes required some courage to do so. The coloured people generally accepted the situation, and complained of me as making matters worse rather than better, by refusing to submit to this proscription. I, however, persisted, and sometimes was soundly beaten by the conductor and brakeman. On one occasion, six of these “fellows of the baser sort,” under the direction of the conductor, set out to eject me from my seat. As usual, I had purchased a first-class ticket, and paid the required sum for it, and on the requirement of the conductor to leave, refused to do so, when he called on these men “to snake me out.” They attempted to obey with an air which plainly told me they relished the job. They, however, found me much attached to my seat, and in removing me tore away two or three of the surrounding ones, on which I held with a firm grasp, and did the car no service in some respects. I was strong and muscular, and the seats were not then so firmly attached or of as solid make as now. The result was that Stephen A. Chase, superintendent of the road, ordered all passenger trains to pass through Lynn, where I then lived, without stopping. This was a great inconvenience to the people, large numbers of whom did business in Boston, and at other points of the road. Led on, however, by James N. Buffum, Jonathon Buffum, Christopher Robinson, William Bassett, and others, the people of Lynn stood bravely by me, and denounced the railway management in emphatic terms. Mr. Chase made reply that a railroad corporation was neither a religious nor a reformatory body; and that the road was run for the accommodation of the public; and that it required the exclusion of the coloured people from its cars. With an air of triumph he told us that we ought not to expect a railroad
company to be better than the Evangelical Church, and that until the churches abolished the “negro pew,” we ought not to expect the railroad company to abolish the negro car. This argument was certainly good enough as against the Church, but good for nothing as against the demands of justice and equity. My old and dear friend, J. N. Buffum, made a point against the company that they “often allowed dogs and monkeys to ride in first-class cars, and yet excluded a man like Frederick Douglass!” In a very few years this barbarous practice was put away, and I think there have been no instances of such exclusion during the past thirty years; and coloured people now, everywhere in New England, ride upon equal terms with other passengers.
—Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.