101 COLORED ABOLITIONISTS. [CHAP. VII 



be there in the cool season.&quot; He replied, &quot;I was thinking of the 

 moral atmosphere of the southern states.&quot; His pronunciation and 

 expression were so entirely those of a well-educated white man, that 

 we were surprised, and, talking freely with him and his companion, 

 learnt that the elder, who was very black, but not quite a full negro, 

 was from Delaware, and had been educated at an &quot; abolition college&quot; 

 in Ohio. The younger, who was still darker, had been a slave in 

 Kentucky, and had run away. They were traveling to collect 

 funds for a school for runaway negroes, near Detroit, and expressed 

 great satisfaction that at Salem they had found &quot; the colored and 

 white children all taught together in the same school, this not 

 being the case in Boston.&quot; I told them that I had just seen a 

 white landholder from Barbadoes, who had assured me that 

 emancipation had answered w r ell in that island ; that there was 

 a colored man in the legislature, another in the executive council, 

 arid several in the magistracy, and that much progress had been 

 made in the general education of the blacks. The Delawarian 

 remarked that this was cheering news, because the recent bad 

 success of his race in Hayti had been used as an argument by 

 the southern planters against their natural capacity for civiliza 

 tion. He then descanted on the relative liberality of feeling to 

 ward colored men in the various free states, and was very severe 

 on Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. I expressed surprise in regard to 

 Ohio ; but the KLentuckian affirmed that the law there afforded no 

 real equality of protection to the black man, as he could not give 

 evidence in courts of law, but must procure a white man as a 

 witness. There had been a scuffle, he said, lately between a man 

 of color and a white at Dayton, and, on the white being killed, 

 the mob had risen and pulled down the houses of all the other 

 black people. He went on narrating stories of planters shooting 

 their slaves, and other tales of Kentucky, the accuracy of which 

 my subsequent visit to that state gave me good reason to question. 

 But I could not help being amused with the patriotism of this 

 man ; for, however unenviable he may have found his condition 

 as a slave, he was still a thorough Kentuckian, and ready to 

 maintain that in climate, soil, and every other quality, that state 

 was immeasurably superior to the rest of the Union, especially 



