William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

In going to the Capitol with Senator Fowler, we meet Tom Chester, a Negro of pure blood, from New Orleans, whose acquaintance I made some years since, in our salad days. Chester was a student of the Middle Temple when I was eating mutton at the Inner Temple. Called to the English bar, he went to New Orleans, where he has practised ever since. He sails to Europe now and then, and we have met in good houses, of the revolutionary sort, tenanted by Polish, French, and German refugees.

“Are you a Kelloggite?”

“No! A native of the South, I wish to live at peace with my White neighbours. I am not exactly a public man, for I have never sought and never held office. I am not ashamed of my complexion. Many of my people are very ignorant and very stupid. I admit the laziness, too; but they are such as God made them; and, in truth, they have fine qualities. If left alone, they would soon be on good terms with their old masters. It is not the Negro, as a rule, who makes the row.”