therefore the union of these parties would be to bring the principle of
amalgamation into respectability. So reasoned those who attempted to
reason on behalf, or rather in excuse, of the mob. "We are sorry," they
went on condescendingly to say, "for Professor Allen, for though a man
of color, he is nevertheless a gentleman, a Christian and a scholar. But
this union must not be; the 'proprieties of society,' must not be
violated!" Here then was the secret of this extraordinary outbreak. Had
we moved in what these good people would have been pleased to term a
lower strata of society, they would have let us alone with infinite
contempt.

The most lamentable feature of this Fulton mob was the fact, that we
could not, if we had sought it, have secured any redress. No court of
law in the State would have undertaken to bring to justice the
perpetrators of this outrage. But on the contrary, such court would have
been inclined to take sides with the mobocrats, and to justify them in
the means which they employed wherewith to chastise a colored man who
had presumed so grossly to violate the "proprieties of society."

Before closing I cannot forebear a further word with regard to New York
Central College. During the four years I was in connexion with that
college as professor, I never experienced the slightest disrespect from
trustees, professors or students. All treated me kindly, so kindly
indeed that I can truly say that the period of my professorship forms
one of the pleasantest remembrances of my life. Terrible as prejudice
against color is, my experience has taught me that it is not invincible;
though, as it is the offspring of slavery, it will never be fully
vanquished until slavery has been abolished.

In illustration of the direct influences of slavery as they affect the
free man of color, I again go back for a single moment. Having spent
three years at Oneida Institute, I proposed to myself a visit to
Virginia, to look once more into the faces of beloved parents, relatives
and friends, to walk again upon the strand at Fortress Monroe, where I
had so often in childhood beheld the sunbeams play upon the coves and
inlets, and seen the surf beat upon the rocks. I, at first, had some
difficulty in getting a passage to Virginia, most of the masters of the
New York vessels to whom I applied seeming to be of a friendly nature,
and not willing to expose me to the slave laws of Virginia. I, however,
succeeded at last--the captai