"In the days when The Colored American found its way into many homes, bearing the weight of influence ever exerted by the press, some of the vital questions claiming public attention did not differ materially from those that serve to interest the thinking community of to-day, as will be evidenced by the following editorials:
Prejudice.
"Prejudice," said a noble man, "is an aristocratic hatred of humble life."
Prejudice, of every character, and existing against whom it may, is hatred. It is a fruit of our corrupt nature, and has its being in the depravity of the human heart. It is sin.
To hate a man, for any consideration whatever, is murderous; and to hate him, in any degree, is, in the same degree murderous; and to hate a man for no cause whatever, magnifies the evil. "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer," says Holy Writ.
There is a kind of aristocracy in our country, as in nearly all others,—a looking down with disdain upon humble life and a disregard of it. Still, we hear little about prejudice against any class among us, excepting against color, or against the colored population of this Union, which so monopolizes this state of feeling in our country that we hear less of it in its operations upon others, than in other countries. It is the only sense in which there is equality; here, the democratic principle is adopted, and all come together as equals, and unite the rich and the poor, the high and the low, in an equal right to hate the colored man; and its operations upon the mind and character are cruel and disastrous, as it is murderous and wicked in itself. One needs to feel it, and to wither under its effects, to know it; and the colored men of the United States, wherever found, and in whatever circumstances, are living epistles, which may be read by all men in
