and
unresenting spirit. Surely no one acquainted with the Indian will agree
that he is docile or wanting in spirit, yet occasionally there is
manifested a prejudice against him; the recruiting officers in
Massachusetts refused to enlist Indians, as well as negroes, in
regiments and companies made up of white citizens, though members of
both races, could sometimes be found in white regiments. During the
rebellion of 1861-5, some Western regiments had one or two negroes and
Indians in them, but there was no general enlistment of either race in
white regiments.[11] The objection was on account of color, or, as some
writers claim, by the fact of the races--negro and Indian[12]--having
been enslaved. Be the cause what it may, a prejudice, strong,
unrelenting, barred the two races from enjoying with the white race
equal civil and political rights in the United States. So very strong
had that prejudice grown since the Revolution, enhanced it may be by
slavery and docility, that when the rebellion of 1861 burst forth, a
feeling stronger than law, like a Chinese wall only more impregnable,
encircled the negro, and formed a barrier betwixt him and the army.
Doubtless peace--a long peace--lent its aid materially to this state of
affairs. Wealth, chiefly, was the dream of the American from 1815 to
1860, nearly half a century; a period in which the negro was friendless,
save in a few strong-minded, iron-hearted men like John Brown in Kansas,
Wendell Philips in New England, Charles Sumner in the United States
Senate, Horace Greeley in New York and a few others, who dared, in the
face of strong public sentiment, to plead his cause, even from a humane
platform. In many places he could not ride in a street car that was not
inscribed, "_Colored persons ride in this car_." The deck of a
steamboat, the box cars of the railroad, the pit of the theatre and the
gallery of the church, were the locations accorded him. The church lent
its influence to the rancor and bitterness of a prejudice as deadly as
the sap of the Upas.

To describe public opinion respecting the negro a half a century ago, is
no easy task. It was just budding into maturity when DeTocqueville
visited the United States, and, as a result of that visit, he wrote,
from observation, a pointed criticism upon the manners and customs, and
the laws of the people of the United States. For fear that I might be
thought over-doing--heightening--giving too much coloring to the
strength,