The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

We also visited the Union school, which has been established for some years in Kingston. All the children connected with it, about one hundred and fifty, are, with two exceptions, black or colored. The school is conducted generally on the Lancasterian plan. We examined several of the boys in arithmetic. We put a variety of questions to them, to be worked out on the slate, and the reasons of the process to be explained as they went along; all which they executed with great expertness. There was a jet black boy, whom we selected for a special trial. We commenced with the simple rules, and went through them one by one, together with the compound rules and Reduction, to Practice, propounding questions and examples in each of them, which were entirely new to him, and to all of them he gave prompt and correct replies. He was only thirteen years old, and we can aver we never saw a boy of that age in any of our common schools, that exhibited a fuller and clearer knowledge of the science of numbers.

In general, our opinion of this school was similar to that already expressed concerning the others. It is supported by the pupils, aided by six hundred dollars granted by the assembly.

In connection with this subject, there is one fact of much interest. However strong and exclusive was the prejudice of color a few years since in the schools of Jamaica, we could not, during our stay in that island, learn of more than two or three places of education, and those private ones, from which colored children were excluded, and among the numerous schools in Kingston, there is not one of this kind.

We called on several colored gentlemen of Kingston, from whom we received much valuable information. The colored population are opposed to the apprenticeship, and all the influence which they have, both in the colony and with the home government, (which is not small,) is exerted against it. They are a festering thorn in the sides of the planters, among whom they maintain a fearless espionage, exposing by pen and tongue their iniquitous proceedings. It is to be regretted that their influence in this respect is so sadly weakened by their holding apprentices themselves.

We had repeated invitations to breakfast and dine with colored gentlemen, which we accepted as often as our engagements would permit. On such occasions we generally met a company of gentlemen and ladies of superior social and intellectual accomplishments. We must say, that it is a great self-denial to refrain from a description of some of the animated, and we must add splendid, parties of colored people which we attended. The conversation on these occasions mostly turned on the political and civil disabilities under which the colored population formerly labored, and the various straggles by which they ultimately obtained their rights. The following are a few items of their history. The colored people of Jamaica, though very numerous, and to some extent wealthy and intelligent, were long kept by the white colonists in a state of abject political bondage. Not only were offices withheld from them, and the right of suffrage denied, but they were not even allowed the privilege of an oath in court, in defense of their property or their persons. They might be violently assaulted, their limbs broken, their wives and daughters might be outraged before their eyes by villains having white skins; yet they had no legal redress unless another white man chanced to see the deed. It was not until 1824 that this oppressive enactment was repealed, and the protection of an oath extended to the colored people; nor was it then effected without a long struggle on their part.

Another law, equally worthy of a slaveholding legislature, prohibited any white man, however wealthy, bequeathing, or in any manner giving his colored son or daughter more than £2000 currency, or six thousand dollars. The design of this law was to keep the colored people poor and dependent upon the whites. Further to secure the same object, every effort, both legislative and private, was made to debar them from schools, and sink them in the lowest ignorance. Their young men of talent were glad to get situations as clerks in the stores of white merchants. Their young ladies of beauty and accomplishments were fortune-made if they got a place in the white man's harem. These were the highest stations to which the flower of their youth aspired. The rest sank beneath the discouragements, and grovelled in vice and debasement. If a colored person had any business with a white gentleman, and should call at his house, "he must take off his hat, and wait at the door, and be as polite as a dog."

These insults and oppressions the colored people in Jamaica bore, until they could bear them no longer. By secret correspondence they formed a union throughout the island, for the purpose of resistance. This, however, was not effected for a long time, and while in process, the correspondence was detected, and the most vigorous means were used by the whites to crush the growing conspiracy--for such it was virtually. Persuasions and intimations were used privately, and when these failed, public persecutions were resorted to, under the form of judicial procedures. Among the milder means was the dismission of clerks, agents, &c., from the employ of a white men. As soon as a merchant discovered that his clerk was implicated in the correspondence, he first threatened to discharge him unless he would promise to desert his brethren: if he could not extort this promise, he immediately put his threat in execution. Edward Jordon, Esq., the talented editor of the Watchman, then first clerk in the store of a Mr. Briden, was prominently concerned in the correspondence, and was summarily dismissed.

White men drove their colored sons from their houses, and subjected them to every indignity and suffering, in order to deter them from prosecuting an enterprise which was seen by the terrified oppressors to be fraught with danger to themselves. Then followed more violent measures. Persons suspected of being the projectors of the disaffection, were dragged before incensed judges, and after mock trials, were sentenced to imprisonment in the city jail. Messrs. Jordon and Osborne, (after they had established the Watchman paper,) were both imprisoned; the former twice, for five months each time. At the close of the second term of imprisonment, Mr. Jordon was tried for his life, on the charge of having published seditious matter in the Watchman.

The paragraph which was denominated 'seditious matter' was this--

"Now that the member for Westmoreland (Mr. Beaumont) has come over to our side, we will, by a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether, bring down the system by the run, knock off the fetters, and let the oppressed go free."