“The white race has had the benefit of Christianity and Education for hundreds of years, and all the means of culture, and it hain’t hendered ’em from bein’ as mean as the Old Harry to the black man, and they despise and wrong the negro jest as much to-day as if St. Paul had never preached or Jesus had not died for the world.”
(I meant some on ’em—I didn’t mean all; but I wuz kinder carried away by my own eloquence.)
“Now,” sez I, “it is a settled thing, and can’t be got round, this inherient, instinctive difference between the black and white races—if they would, they never can amalgamate and be a united people.
“I have said it and repeated it time and agin, and it is true every time, and will keep on bein’ true ‘after my poor, feeble, falterin’ tongue lies silent in the grave.’”
I sez this in a kinder him axent, very strikin’ and touchin’, but Col. Seybert wuzn’t touched nor struck by it, as I could see; but I kep’ on all the same.
“As I have said, time and agin, this law has stood ever sence creation; and so what is the use of thinkin’ it can be broke up by writin’ on a little slip of paper at Washington, D. C.?
“Good land! angels and principalities, and powers, and things present and things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creeter has never made any difference in that law, nor never will.
“And then how silly to think a little mite of paper, made out of old rags and straw, mebby, and wrote over with a few man-made words by a steel pen, is a goin’ to overcome this law and vanquish it! Why, it can’t be done. And your talk, and my talk, and talk from all the pulpits and legislators in the world is only a few whiffs of air a blowin’ over this law—a refreshin’ of it, so to speak.
“Now, this is a settled thing, and it only remains for us to deal with it the best way we can.”
Col. Seybert, I believe, wuz fairly browbeat and stunted to hear such remarkable eloquence from a female; but he wouldn’t demean himself by ownin’ it—in fact, he wanted to give me a rebuke for venturin’ out of what he considered a woman’s spear.