13
SIMILAR EVIDENCE ON THE PART OÇ, THE FREE MEN OF COLOR.
But additional and still stronger evidence of this fact
crowd upon us, when we see that the free men of color re-
mained entirely passive during the first stage of this revolu-
tionary effervescence. This class of men, as a general thing,
was educated and wealthy ; and they were burthened with
duties by the State, without being invested with correspond-
ing political privileges. From such unjust exactions they
had every reason to seek a speedy deliverance. And this
great tumult that now swept over the island, offered them a
propitious opportunity to agitate with the rest of the free men
of the colony for the removal of their political disabilities.
They had greater cause to agitate than the whites, because
they suffered under heavier burdens than that class. Never-
theless, in the first great outbreak of the water-floods of lib-
erty—tempting as the occasion was, and diffioult as restraint
must have been ; yet the free men of color also possessed
their souls in patience, and awaited a more propitious oppor-
tunity. Certainly no one will attempt to stigmatise the calm
judgment of these men in this awful crisis of suspense, as
the result of ignorance of the blessings of freedom, when it
is known that many of this class were educated in the sem-
inaries of France, under her most brilliant professors ; and
that they were also patrons of that prodigy of literature, the
Encyclopedia of France.
Neither can they stigmatize this class of men as cowards,
as it is also known that they were the voluntary com-
peers of the Revolutionary heroes of the United States ; and
who, under the banners of France, mingled their sable
blood with the Saxon and the French in the heroic battle of
Savannah.
Then this oalm indifferenoe of the men of color in this
crisis, notwithstanding the blood of three excitable races
mingled in their veins with that of the African, viz : that of
the French, the Spanish, and the Indian ; and notwithstand-