is
demonstration was not lost on the gentleman whose dignity I had, an hour
before, most seriously offended. Col. Clifford was known to be about
the most aristocratic gentleman in Bristol county; and it was evidently
thought that I must be somebody, else I should not have been thus
noticed, by a person so distinguished. Sure enough, after Col. Clifford
left me, I found myself surrounded with friends; and among the number,
my offended friend stood nearest, and with an apology for his rudeness,
which I could not resist, although it was one of the lamest ever
offered. With such facts as these before me--and I have many of them--I
am inclined to think that pride and fashion have much to do with{314}
the treatment commonly extended to colored people in the United States.
I once heard a very plain man say (and he was cross-eyed, and awkwardly
flung together in other respects) that he should be a handsome man when
public opinion shall be changed.

Since I have been editing and publishing a journal devoted to the
cause of liberty and progress, I have had my mind more directed to the
condition and circumstances of the free colored people than when I was
the agent of an abolition society. The result has been a corresponding
change in the disposition of my time and labors. I have felt it to be
a part of my mission--under a gracious Providence to impress my sable
brothers in this country with the conviction that, notwithstanding the
ten thousand discouragements and the powerful hinderances, which beset
their existence in this country--notwithstanding the blood-written
history of Africa, and her children, from whom we have descended, or the
clouds and darkness (whose stillness and gloom are made only more awful
by wrathful thunder and lightning) now overshadowing them--progress is
yet possible, and bright skies shall yet shine upon their pathway; and
that "Ethiopia shall yet reach forth her hand unto God."

Believing that one of the best means of emancipating the slaves of the
south is to improve and elevate the character of the free colored people
of the north I shall labor in the future, as I have labored in the past,
to promote the moral, social, religious, and intellectual elevation of
the free colored people; never forgetting my own humble orgin(sic), nor
refusing, while Heaven lends me ability, to use my voice, my pen, or
my vote, to advocate the great and primary work of the universal and
unconditional emancipation of my ent