prejudice against colored mechanics in that city by exhibiting the
highest efficiency. He patented a corded bed which became very popular,
especially in the Southwest. With this article he built up a creditable
manufacturing business, employing from 18 to 25 white and colored
men.[61] He was, therefore, known as one of the desirable men of the
city. Two things, however, seemingly interfered with his business. In
the first place, certain white men, who became jealous of his success,
burned him out and the insurance companies refused to carry him any
longer. Moreover, having to do chiefly with white men he was charged by
his people with favoring the miscegenation of races. Whether or not this
was well founded is not yet known, but his children and grandchildren
did marry whites and were lost in the so-called superior race.

A much more interesting Negro appeared in Cincinnati, however, in 1847.
This was Robert Gordon, formerly the slave of a rich yachtsman of
Richmond, Virginia. His master turned over to him a coal yard which he
handled so faithfully that his owner gave him all of the slack resulting
from the handling of the coal. This he sold to the local manufacturers
and blacksmiths of the city, accumulating thereby in the course of time
thousands of dollars. He purchased himself in 1846 and set out for free
soil. He went first to Philadelphia and then to Newburyport, but finding
that these places did not suit him, he proceeded to Cincinnati. He
arrived there with $15,000, some of which he immediately invested in the
coal business in which he had already achieved marked success. He
employed bookkeepers, had his own wagons, built his own docks on the
river, and bought coal by barges.[62]

Unwilling to see this Negro do so well, the white coal dealers
endeavored to force him out of the business by lowering the price to the
extent that he could not afford to sell. They did not know of his acumen