The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 6.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

[415] higher place than the quiet exercise of the duties of peaceful citizenship; and we are willing that colored soldiers, with their descendants, should have the benefit, if possible, of a public sentiment which has so extravagantly lauded their white companions in arms. If pulpits must be desecrated by eulogies of the patriotism of bloodshed, we see no reason why black defenders of their country in the war for liberty should not receive honorable mention as well as white invaders of a neighboring republic who have volunteered in a war for plunder and slavery extension. For the latter class of ‘heroes’ we have very little respect. The patriotism of too many of them forcibly reminds us of Dr. Johnson's definition of that much-abused term: ‘Patriotism, sir! Tis the last refuge of a scoundrel.’
‘What right, I demand,’ said an American orator some years ago, ‘have the children of Africa to a homestead in the white man's country?’ The answer will in part be found in the facts which we have presented. Their right, like that of their white fellow-citizens, dates back to the dread arbitrament of battle. Their bones whiten every stricken field of the Revolution; their feet tracked with blood the snows of Jersey; their toil built up every fortification south of the Potomac; they shared the famine and nakedness of Valley Forge and the pestilential horrors of the old Jersey prisonship. Have they, then, no claim to an equal participation in the blessings which have grown out of the national independence for which they fought? Is it just, is it magnanimous, is it safe,