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Adams, Nehemiah, 1806-1878

"The Sable Cloud A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861)"

To gain
one's bread by the sweat of one's brow, is a curse. But it is a
curse attended with a blessing. It is an evil that shuts out a
greater evil. Labor for wages, labor for subsistence, and
subjection to the authority of employer or master, are the
conditions on which alone the laboring masses, white or black, can
live with advantage to themselves and to society."--_De Bow's
Review_, _Jan_. 1860, pp. 56, 57.
Mr. North asked if I did not think that the colored people should be
assisted in their efforts to get an education.
"There are collegiate institutions," I told him, "for colored people, in
Oxford, Pa., and in Xenia, O. With great sorrow have I observed, that
applications to aid these institutions and to endow others for similar
purposes have been received with coldness and distrust by many who could
have made liberal contributions, for no other reason than the suspicion
that they were designed by Abolitionists to thrust forward the colored
man in an offensive manner. I have known the name of a leading
Abolitionist to be the death of a subscription-paper for such an
institution. This was a bitter prejudice. When philanthropy with regard
to the colored race among us falls into its natural channel, we shall
see the South and the North opening wide the doors of usefulness in
every department for which the colored people shall, any of them,
manifest an aptitude.


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