NEW YORK.
Dr. Clarke, in the Convention which revised the Constitution of New York, in 1821, speaking of the Colored inhabitants of the State, said: "My honorable colleague has told us that as the Colored People are not required to contribute to the protection or defence of the State they are not entitled to an equal participation in the privileges of its citizens. But, Sir, whose fault is this? Have they ever refused to do military duty when called upon? It is haughtily asked, who will stand in the ranks shoulder to shoulder with a negro? I answer, no one in time of peace; no one when your musters and trainings are looked upon as mere pastimes; no one when your militia will shoulder their muskets and march to their trainings with as much unconcern as they would go to a sumptuous entertainment or a splendid ball. But, Sir, when the hour of danger approaches, your 'white' militia are just as willing that the man of Color should be set up as a mark to be shot at by the enemy as to be set up themselves. In the War of the Revolution, these people helped to fight your battles by land and sea. Some of your States were glad to turn out corps of Colored men, and to stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with them.
"In your late War they contributed largely towards some of your most splendid victories. On Lakes Erie and Champlain, where your fleets triumphed over a foe superior in numbers and engines of death, they were manned in a large proportion with men of Color. And in this very house, in the fall of 1814, a bill passed, receiving the approbation of all the branches of your Government, authorizing the Governor to accept the services of a corps of two thousand free people of Color. Sir, these were times which tried men's souls. In these times it was no sporting matter to bear arms. These were times when a man who shouldered a musket did not know but he bared his bosom to receive a death wound from the enemy ere he laid it aside; and in these times, these people were found as ready and as willing to volunteer in your service as any other. They were not compelled to go; they were not drafted. No; your pride had placed them beyond your compulsory power. But there was no necessity for its exercise; they were volunteers; yes, Sir, volunteers to defend that very country from the inroads and ravages of a ruthless and vindictive foe, which had treated them with insult, degradation and Slavery."
Volunteers are the best of soldiers; give me the men, whatever be their complexion, that willingly volunteer, and not those who are compelled to turn out. Such men do not fight from necessity, nor from mercenary motives, but from principle.
Said Martindale, of New York, in Congress, 22nd of first month, 1828: "Slaves, or negroes who had been Slaves, were enlisted as soldiers in the War of the Revolution; and I myself saw a battalion of them, as fine martial looking men as I ever saw, attached to the northern army in the last War, on the march from Plattsburg to Sackett's Harbor."
It is believed that the debate on the military services of Colored men was a prominent feature in granting them the right of suffrage, though the ungenerous deed must also be recorded, that Colored citizens of the Empire States were made subject to a property qualification of two hundred and fifty dollars.
I am indebted to Rev. Theodore Parker, of Boston, for the following historical sketch of New York soldiery:
"Not long ago, while the excavations for the vaults of the great retail dry goods store of New York were going on in 1851, a gentleman from Boston noticed a large quantity of human bones thrown up by the workmen. Everybody knows the African countenance; the skulls also bore unmistakable marks of the race they belonged to. They were shovelled up with the earth which they had rested in, carried off and emptied into the sea to fill up a chasm, and make the foundation of a warehouse.
"On inquiry, the Bostonian learned that these were the bones of Colored American soldiers, who fell in the disastrous battles of Long Island, in 1776, and of such as died of the wounds then received. At that day as at this, spite of the declaration that 'all men are created equal,' the prejudice against the Colored man was intensely strong. The black and white had fought against the same enemy, under the same banner, contending for the same 'unalienable right' to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The same shot with promiscuous slaughter had mowed down Africans and Americans. But in the grave they must be divided. On the battle field the blacks and whites had mixed their bravery and their blood, but their ashes must not mingle in the bosom of their common mother. The white Saxon, exclusive and haughty even in his burial, must have his place of rest proudly apart from the grave of the African he had once enslaved.
"Now, after seventy-five years have passed by, the bones of these forgotten victims of the Revolution are shovelled up by Irish laborers, carted off, and shot into the sea, as the rubbish of the town. Had they been white men's relics, how would they have been honored with sumptuous burial anew, and the purchased prayers and preaching of Christian divines! Now they are the rubbish of the street!
"True, they were the bones of Revolutionary soldiers; but they were black men; and shall a city that kidnaps its citizens, honor a Negro with a grave? What boots it that he fought for our freedom; that he bled for our liberty; that he died for you and me! Does the 'Nigger' deserve a tomb? Ask the American state—The American Church!
"Three quarters of a century have passed by since the retreat from Long Island. What a change since then! From the Washington of that day to the world's Washington of this, what a change! In America what alterations! What a change in England! The Briton has emancipated every bondman; Slavery no longer burns his soil on either Continent, the East or West. America has a population of Slaves greater than the people of all England in the reign of Elizabeth. Under the pavement of Broadway; beneath the walls of the Bazaar, there still lie the bones of the Colored martyrs to American Independence. Dandies of either sex swarm gaily over the threshold, heedless of the dead African—contemptuous of the living. And while these faithful bones were getting shovelled up and carted to the sea, there was a great Slave-hunt in New York; a man was kidnapped and carried off to bondage, by the citizens, at the instigation of politicians, and to the sacramental delight of 'divines'.
"Happy are the dead Africans, whom British death mowed down! They did not live to see a man kidnapped in the city which their blood helped free."