II

COMPARATIVE CONDITION OF THE COLORED PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES


The United States, untrue to her trust and unfaithful to her professed
principles of republican equality, has also pursued a policy of
political degradation to a large portion of her native born countrymen,
and that class is the Colored People. Denied an equality not only of
political but of natural rights, in common with the rest of our fellow
citizens, there is no species of degradation to which we are not
subject.

Reduced to abject slavery is not enough, the very thought of which
should awaken every sensibility of our common nature; but those of their
descendants who are freemen even in the non-slaveholding States, occupy
the very same position politically, religiously, civilly and socially,
(with but few exceptions,) as the bondman occupies in the slave States.

In those States, the bondman is disfranchised, and for the most part so
are we. He is denied all civil, religious, and social privileges, except
such as he gets by mere sufferance, and so are we. They have no part nor
lot in the government of the country, neither have we. They are ruled
and governed without representation, existing as mere nonentities among
the citizens, and excrescences on the body politic--a mere dreg in
community, and so are we. Where then is our political superiority to the
enslaved? none, neither are we superior in any other relation to
society, except that we are defacto masters of ourselves and joint