T. G. Steward - The Colored Regulars in the United States Army

T >> T. G. Steward >> The Colored Regulars in the United States Army

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In 1824 our young friend fell in with Benjamin Lundy, and in 1828-9,
with William Lloyd Garrison, editors and publishers of the "Genius of
Universal Emancipation," a radical anti-slavery paper, whose boldness
would put the "National Era" to shame, printed and published in the
slave State of Maryland. In 1829-30 the colored people of the free
States were much excited on the subject of emigration; there had been
an emigration to Hayti, and also to Canada, and some had been driven
to Liberia by the severe laws and brutal conduct of the fermenters of
colonization in Virginia and Maryland. In some districts of these
States the disguised whites would enter the houses of free colored men
at night, and take them out and give them from thirty to fifty lashes,
to get them to consent to go to Liberia.

It was in the spring of 1830 that the young man we have sketched,
Hezekiah Grice, conceived the plan of calling together a meeting or
convention of colored men in some place north of the Potomac, for the
purpose of comparing views and of adopting a harmonious movement
either of emigration or of determination to remain in the United
States; convinced of the hopelessness of contending against the
oppressions in the United States, living in the very depth of that
oppression and wrong, his own views looked to Canada; but he held them
subject to the decision of the majority of the convention which might
assemble.

On the 2d of April, 1830, he addressed a written circular to prominent
colored men in the free States, requesting their opinions on the
necessity and propriety of holding such convention, and stated that if
the opinions of a sufficient number warranted it, he would give time
and place at which duly elected delegates might assemble. Four months
passed away, and his spirit almost died within him, for he had not
received a line from any one in reply. When he visited Mr. Garrison
in his office, and stated his project, Mr. Garrison took up a copy of
Walker's Appeal, and said, although it might be right, yet it was too
early to have published such a book.

On the 11th of August, however, he received a sudden and peremptory
order from Bishop Allen to come instantly to Philadelphia, about the
emigration matter. He went, and found a meeting assembled to consider
the conflicting reports on Canada of Messrs. Lewis and Dutton; at a
subsequent meeting, held the next night, and near the adjournment, the
Bishop called Mr. Grice aside and gave to him to read a printed
circular, issued from New York City, strongly approving of Mr. Grice's
plan of a convention, and signed by Peter Williams, Peter Vogelsang
and Thomas L. Jinnings. The Bishop added, "My dear child, we must take
some action immediately, or else these New Yorkers will get ahead of
us." The Bishop left the meeting to attend a lecture on chemistry by
Dr. Wells, of Baltimore. Mr. Grice introduced the subject of the
convention; and a committee consisting of Bishop Allen, Benjamin
Pascal, Cyrus Black, James Cornish and Junius C. Morel, were appointed
to lay the matter before the colored people of Philadelphia. This
committee, led, doubtless, by Bishop Allen, at once issued a call for
a convention of the colored men of the United States, to be held in
the city of Philadelphia on the 15th of September, 1830.

Mr. Grice returned to Baltimore rejoicing at the success of his
project; but, in the same boat which bore him down the Chesapeake, he
was accosted by Mr. Zollickoffer, a member of the Society of Friends,
a Philadelphian, and a warm and tried friend of the blacks. Mr.
Zollickoffer used arguments, and even entreaties, to dissuade Mr.
Grice from holding the convention, pointing out the dangers and
difficulties of the same should it succeed, and the deep injury it
would do the cause in case of failure. Of course, it was reason and
entreaty thrown away.

On the fifteenth of September, Mr. Grice again landed in Philadelphia,
and in the fulness of his expectation asked every colored man he met
about the convention; no one knew anything about it; the first man did
not know the meaning of the word, and another man said, "Who ever
heard of colored people holding a convention--convention, indeed!"
Finally, reaching the place of meeting, he found, in solemn conclave,
the five gentlemen who had constituted themselves delegates: with a
warm welcome from Bishop Allen, Mr. Grice, who came with credentials
from the people of Baltimore, was admitted as delegate. A little while
after, Dr. Burton, of Philadelphia, dropped in, and demanded by what
right the six gentlemen held their seats as members of the convention.
On a hint from Bishop Allen, Mr. Pascal moved that Dr. Burton be
elected an honorary member of the convention, which softened the
Doctor. In half an hour, five or six grave, stern-looking men, members
of the Zion Methodist body in Philadelphia, entered, and demanded to
know by what right the members present held their seats and undertook
to represent the colored people. Another hint from the Bishop, and it
was moved that these gentlemen be elected honorary members. But the
gentlemen would submit to no such thing, and would accept nothing
short of full membership, which was granted them.

Among the delegates were Abraham Shadd, of Delaware; J.W.C.
Pennington, of Brooklyn; Austin Steward, of Rochester; Horace Easton,
of Boston, and ---- Adams, of Utica.

The main subject of discussion was emigration to Canada; Junius C.
Morel, chairman of a committee on that subject presented a report, on
which there was a two days' discussion; the point discussed was that
the report stated that "the lands in Canada were synonymous with those
of the Northern States." The word synonymous was objected to, and the
word similar proposed in its stead. Mr. Morel, with great vigor and
ingenuity, defended the report, but was finally voted down, and the
word similar adopted. The convention recommended emigration to Canada,
passed strong resolutions against the American Colonization Society,
and at its adjournment appointed the next annual convention of the
people of color to be held in Philadelphia, on the first Monday in
June, 1831.

At the present day, when colored conventions are almost as frequent as
church meetings, it is difficult to estimate the bold and daring
spirit which inaugurated the Colored Convention of 1830. It was the
right move, originating in the right quarter and at the right time.
Glorious old Maryland, or, as one speaking in the view that climate
grows the men, would say,--Maryland-Virginia region,--which has
produced Benjamin Banneker, Nat. Turner, Frederick Douglass, the
parents of Ira Aldridge, Henry Highland Garnett and Sam. Ringold Ward,
also produced the founder of colored conventions, Hezekiah Grice! At
that time, in the prime of his young manhood, he must have presented
the front of one equal to any fortune, able to achieve any
undertaking. Standing six feet high, well-proportioned, of a dark
bronze complexion, broad brow, and that stamp of features out of which
the Greek sculptor would have delighted to mould the face of
Vulcan--he was, to the fullest extent, a working man of such sort and
magnetism as would lead his fellows where he listed.

In looking to the important results that grew out of this convention,
the independence of thought and self-assertion of the black man are
the most remarkable. Then, the union of purpose and union of strength
which grew out of the acquaintanceship and mutual pledges of colored
men from different States. Then, the subsequent conventions, where the
great men we have already named, and others, appeared and took part in
the discussions with manifestations of zeal, talent and ability, which
attracted Garrison, the Tappans, Jocelyn and others of that noble
host, who, drawing no small portion of their inspiration from their
black brethren in bonds, did manfully fight in the days of
anti-slavery which tried men's souls, and when, to be an abolitionist,
was, to a large extent, to be a martyr.

We cannot help adding the thought that had these conventions of the
colored people of the United States continued their annual sittings
from 1830 until the present time, the result would doubtless have been
greater general progress among our people themselves, a more united
front to meet past and coming exigencies, and a profounder hold upon
the public attention, and a deeper respect on the part of our enemies,
than we now can boast of. Looking at public opinion as it is, the
living law of the land, and yet a malleable, ductile entity, which can
be moulded, or at least affected, by the thoughts of any masses
vigorously expressed, we should have become a power on earth, of
greater strength and influence than in our present scattered and
dwindled state we dare even dream of. The very announcement,
"Thirtieth Annual Convention of the Colored People of the United
States," would bear a majestic front. Our great gathering at Rochester
in 1853, commanded not only public attention, but respect and
admiration. Should we have such a gathering even now, once a year, not
encumbered with elaborate plans of action, with too many wheels within
wheels, we can yet regain much of the ground lost. The partial
gathering at Boston, the other day, has already assumed its place in
the public mind, and won its way into the calculations of the
politicians.

Our readers will doubtless be glad to learn the subsequent history of
Mr. Grice. He did not attend the second convention, but in the
interval between the second and third he formed, in the city of
Baltimore, a "Legal Rights Association," for the purpose of
ascertaining the legal status of the colored man in the United States.
It was entirely composed of colored men, among whom were Mr. Watkins
(the colored Baltimorean), Mr. Deaver, and others. Mr. Grice called on
William Wirt, and asked him "what he charged for his opinion on a
given subject." "Fifty dollars." "Then, sir, I will give you fifty
dollars if you will give me your opinion on the legal condition of a
free colored man in these United States."

Mr. Wirt required the questions to be written out in proper form
before he could answer them. Mr. Grice employed Tyson, who drew up a
series of questions, based upon the Constitution of the United States,
and relating to the rights and citizenship of the free black. He
carried the questions to Mr. Wirt, who, glancing over them, said,
"Really, sir, my position as an officer under the government renders
it a delicate matter for me to answer these questions as they should
be answered, but I'll tell you what to do: they should be answered,
and by the best legal talent in the land; do you go to Philadelphia,
and present my name to Horace Binney, and he will give you an answer
satisfactory to you, and which will command the greatest respect
throughout the land." Mr. Grice went to Philadelphia, and presented
the questions and request to Horace Binney. This gentleman pleaded age
and poor eyesight, but told Mr. Grice that if he would call on John
Sargent he would get answers of requisite character and weight. He
called on John Sargent, who promptly agreed to answer the questions if
Mr. Binney would allow his name to be associated as an authority in
the replies. Mr. Binney again declined, and so the matter fell
through. This is what Mr. Grice terms his "Dred Scott case" and so it
was.

He attended the convention of 1832, but by some informality, or a want
of credentials, was not permitted to sit as full member!--Saul ejected
from among the prophets!--Yet he was heard on the subject of rights,
and the doctrine of "our rights," as well as the first colored
convention, are due to the same man.

In 1832, chagrined at the colored people of the United States, he
migrated to Hayti, where, until 1843, he pursued the business of
carver and gilder. In the latter year he was appointed Director of
Public Works in Port-au-Prince, which office he held until two years
ago. He is also engaged in, and has wide knowledge of machinery and
engineering. Every two or three years he visits New York, and is
welcomed to the arcana of such men as James J. Mapes, the Bensons,
Dunhams, and at the various works where steam and iron obey human
ingenuity in our city. He is at present in this city, lodging at the
house of the widow of his old friend and coadjutor, Thomas L.
Jinnings, 133 Reade street. We have availed ourselves of his presence
among us to glean from him the statements which we have imperfectly
put together in this article.

We cannot dismiss this subject without the remark, of peculiar
pertinence at this moment, that it would have been better for our
people had Mr. Grice never left these United States. The twenty-seven
years he has passed in Hayti, although not without their mark on the
fortunes of that island, are yet with out such mark as he would have
made in the land and upon the institutions among which he was born. So
early as his thirty-second year, before he had reached his
intellectual prime, he had inaugurated two of the leading ideas on
which our people have since acted, conventions to consider and
alleviate their grievances, and the struggle for legal rights. If he
did such things in early youth, what might he not have done with the
full force and bent of his matured intellect? And where, in the wide
world, in what region, or under what sun, could he so effectually have
labored to elevate the black man as on this soil and under American
institutions?

So profoundly are we opposed to the favorite doctrine of the Puritans
and their co-workers, the colonizationists--Ubi Libertas, ibi
Patria--that we could almost beseech Divine Providence to reverse some
past events and to fling back into the heart of Virginia and Maryland
their Sam Wards, Highland Garnets, J.W. Penningtons, Frederick
Douglasses, and the twenty thousand who now shout hosannas in
Canada--and we would soon see some stirring in the direction of Ubi
Patria, ibi Libertas.--Anglo-African Magazine, October, 1859.

B.

COMMUNICATION FROM THE NEW YORK SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF EDUCATION
AMONG COLORED CHILDREN.

To the Honorable the Commissioners for examining into the condition of
Common Schools in the City and County of New York.

The following statement in relation to the colored schools in said
city and county is respectfully presented by the New York Society for
the Promotion of Education among Colored Children:

1. The number of colored children in the city and county of
New York (estimated in 1855, from the census of 1850), between
the ages of 4 and 17 years 3,000

a. Average attendance of colored children at public
schools in 1855 913

Average attendance of colored children in
corporate schools supported by school funds
(Colored Orphan Asylum) 240
---- 1,153

b. Proportion of average attendance in public
schools of colored children to whole number
of same is as 1 to 2.60.

2. The number of white children in the city of New
York in 1855 (estimated as above), between the ages of
4 and 17 years 159,000

a. Average attendance of white children in public
schools in 1855 43,858

Average attendance of white children in
corporate schools supported by public
funds 2,826
------ 46,684

b. Proportion of average attendance of white children
in public schools to whole number of same
is as 1 to 3.40.

3. From these facts it appears that colored children attend
the public schools (and schools supported by public funds in
the city of New York) in the proportion of 1 to 2.60, and that
the white children attend similar schools in said city in the
proportion of 1 to 3.40; that is to say, nearly 25 per cent. more of
colored children than of white children attend the public schools,
and schools supported by public funds in the city of New York.

4. The number of colored children attending private schools
in the city of New York, 125.

a. The number of white children attending private
schools in 1850, census gave 10,560, which number has since
been increased by the establishment of Catholic parochial
schools, estimated in 1856, 17,560.

b. The proportion of colored children attending private
schools to white children attending same, is as 1 to 140.

c. But the average attendance of colored children in all
schools is about the same as that of the white in proportion,
that is to say, as many colored children attend the
public schools as do whites attend both public and private
schools, in proportion to the whole number of each class
of children.

Locality, capability, etc., of colored schools.

1. The Board of Education, since its organization, has
expended in sites and buildings for white schools $1,600,000.

b. The Board of Education has expended for sites and
buildings for colored schools (addition to building leased
19 Thomas), $1,000.

c. The two schoolhouses in possession of the Board
now used for colored children were assigned to same by
the Old Public School Society.

2. The proportion of colored children to white children
attending public schools is as 1 to 40.

a. The sum expended on school buildings and sites of
colored and white schools by the Board of Education is as
1 to 1,600.

3. a. Schoolhouse No. 1, for colored children, is an old
building, erected in 1820 by the New York Manumission Society
as a school for colored children, in Mulberry street, in a poor
but decent locality. It has two departments, one male and one
female; it consists of two stories only, and has two small
recitation rooms on each floor, but as primary as well as grammar
children attend each department, much difficulty and confusion
arises from the want of class room for the respective studies.
The building covers only part of the lot, and as it is, the best
attended and among the best taught of the colored schools, a
new and ample school building, erected in this place, would
prove a great attraction, and could be amply filled by children.

b. Schoolhouse No. 2, erected in Laurens street more
than twenty years ago for colored children by the Public
School Society, is in one of the lowest and filthiest
neighborhoods, and hence, although it has competent teachers
in the male and female departments, and a separate primary
department, the attendance has always been slender,
and will be until the school is removed to a neighborhood
where children may be sent without danger to their morals.

c. School No. 3, for colored children, in Yorkville, is
an old building, is well attended, and deserves, in connection
with Schoolhouse No. 4, in Harlem, a new building midway
between the present localities.

d. Schoolhouse No. 5, for colored children, is an old
building, leased at No. 19 Thomas street, a most degraded
neighborhood, full of filth and vice; yet the attendance on
this school, and the excellence of its teachers, earn for it the
need of a new site and new building.

e. Schoolhouse No. 6, for colored children, is in Broadway,
near 37th street, in a dwelling house leased and fitted
up for a school, in which there is always four feet of water
in the cellar. The attendance good. Some of the school
officers have repeatedly promised a new building.

f. Primary school for colored children, No. 1, is in the
basement of a church on 15th street, near 7th avenue,
in a good location, but premises too small for the attendance;
no recitation rooms, and is perforce both primary
and grammar school, to the injury of the progress of all.

g. Primary schools for colored children, No. 2 and 3,
are in the rear of church, in 2d street, near 6th avenue; the
rooms are dark and cheerless, and without the needful
facilities of sufficient recitation rooms, etc.

From a comparison of the schoolhouses with the splendid, almost
palatial edifices, with manifold comforts, conveniences and elegancies
which make up the schoolhouses for white children in the city of New
York, it is evident that the colored children are painfully neglected
and positively degraded. Pent up in filthy neighborhoods, in old and
dilapidated buildings, they are held down to low associations and
gloomy surroundings.

Yet Mr. Superintendent Kiddle, at a general examination of colored
schools held in July last (for silver medals awarded by the society
now addressing your honorable body) declared the reading and spelling
equal to that of any schools in the city.

The undersigned enter their solemn protest against this unjust
treatment of colored children. They believe with the experience of
Massachusetts, and especially the recent experience of Boston before
them, there is no sound reason why colored children shall be excluded
from any of the common schools supported by taxes levied alike on
whites and blacks, and governed by officers elected by the vote of
colored as well as white voters.

But if in the judgment of your honorable body common schools are not
thus common to all, then we earnestly pray you to recommend to the
Legislature such action as shall cause the Board of Education of this
city to erect at least two well-appointed modern grammar schools for
colored children on suitable sites, in respectable localities, so that
the attendance of colored children may be increased and their minds be
elevated in like manner as the happy experience of the honorable Board
of Education has been in the matter of white children.

In addition to the excellent impulse to colored youth which these new
grammar schools would give, they will have the additional argument of
actual economy; the children will be taught with far less expense in
two such schoolhouses than in the half dozen hovels into which they
are now driven. It is a costly piece of injustice which educates the
white scholar in a palace at $10 per year and the colored pupil in a
hovel at $17 or $18 per annum.

Taxes, etc., of colored population of the city.

No proposition can be more reasonable than that they who pay taxes for
schools and schoolhouses should be provided with schools and
schoolhouses. The colored population of this city, in proportion to
their numbers, pay their full share of the general and therefore of
the school taxes. There are about nine thousand adults of both sexes;
of these over three thousand are householders, rent-payers, and
therefore tax-payers, in that sense of the word in which owners make
tax-payers of their poor tenants. The colored laboring man, with an
income of $200 a year, who pays $72 per year for a room and bedroom,
is really in proportion to his means a larger tax-payer than the
millionaire whose tax rate is thousands of dollars. But directly,
also, do the colored people pay taxes. From examinations carefully
made, the undersigned affirm that there are in the city at least
1,000 colored persons who own and pay taxes on real estate.

Taxed real estate in the city of New York owned
by colored persons $1,400,000
Untaxed by colored persons (churches) 250,000
Personal estate 710,000
Money in savings banks 1,121,000
-----------
$3,481,000

These figures indicate that in proportion to their numbers, the
colored population of this city pay a fair share of the school taxes,
and that they have been most unjustly dealt with. Their money has been
used to purchase sites and erect and fit up schoolhouses for white
children, whilst their own children are driven into miserable edifices
in disgraceful localities. Surely, the white population of the city
are too able, too generous, too just, any longer to suffer this
miserable robbing of their colored fellow-citizens for the benefit of
white children.

Praying that your honorable commission will take due notice of these
facts, and recommend such remedy as shall seem to you best,

We have the honor to be, in behalf of the New York Society for the
Promotion of Education among Colored Citizens,

Most respectfully yours,

CHARLES B. RAY, President.
PHILIP A. WHITE, Secretary.
New York City, December 28, 1857.

CHAPTER II.

AMERICAN NEGRO AND THE MILITARY SPIRIT.

Early Literature of Negro Soldiers--Negro Soldiers in the
War of the Revolution--The War of 1812--Negro
Insurrections--Negro Troops in the Civil War--Notes.

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