Phillis Wheatly received her freedom in 1775; and two years after married a colored man, who, like herself, was considered a prodigy. He was at first a grocer; but afterward became a lawyer, well known by the name of Doctor Peter. He was in the habit of pleading causes for his brethren before the tribunals of justice, and gained both reputation and fortune by his practice. Phillis had been flattered and indulged from her earliest childhood; and, like many literary women in old times, she acquired something of contempt for domestic
occupations. This is said to have produced unhappiness between her and her husband. She died in 1780.
Mr. Wilberforce, (on whom may the blessing of God rest for ever!) aided by several benevolent individuals, established a seminary for colored people at Clapham, a few leagues from London. The first scholars were twenty-one young negroes, sent by the Governor of Sierra Leone. The Abbé Grégoire says, "I visited this establishment in 1802, to examine the progress of the scholars; and I found there existed no difference between them and European children, except that of color. The same observation has been made, first at Paris, in the ancient college of La Marche, where Coesnon, professor of the University, taught a number of colored boys. Many members of the National Institute, who have carefully examined this college, and watched the progress of the scholars in their particular classes, and public exercises, will testify to the truth of my assertion."
Correa de Serra, the learned Secretary of the Academy at Portugal, informs us that several negroes have been able lawyers, preachers, and professors.
In the Southern States, the small black children are proverbially brighter and more forward than white ones of the same age. Repartees, by no means indicative of stupidity, have sometimes been made by negroes. A slave was suddenly roused with the exclamation, "Why don't you wake, when your master calls!" The negro answered, "Sleep has no master."
On a public day the New-England Museum, in Boston, was thronged with visiters to see the representation of the Salem murder. Some colored women being jostled back by a crowd of white people, expostulated thus: "Don't you know it is always proper to let the mourners walk first?" It argues some degree of philosophy to be able to indulge wit at the expense of what is, most unjustly, considered a degradation. Public prejudice shamefully fetters these people; and it has been wisely said, "If we cannot break our chains, the next best thing we can do, is to play with them."[AI]
[AI] In a beautiful little volume called Mary's Journey, by Francis Graeter.
Among Bonaparte's officers there was a mulatto General of Division, named Alexander Dumas. In the army of the Alps, with charged bayonet, he ascended St. Bernard, defended
by a number of redoubts, took possession of the enemy's cannon, and turned their own ammunition against them. He likewise signalized himself in the expedition to Egypt. His troop, composed of blacks and mulattoes, were everywhere formidable. Near Lisle, Alexander Dumas, with only four men, attacked a post of fifty Austrians, killed six, and made sixteen prisoners. Napoleon called him the Horatius Cocles of the Tyrols.
On his return from Egypt, Dumas unluckily fell into the hands of the Neapolitan government, and was two years kept in irons. He died in 1807.