For Frederick Douglass' Paper.

PREJUDICE AGAINST COLOR

Columbia, Pa., June 4th, 1855.

MR. EDITOR—A few months since I ventured, through your columns, to correct what I deemed a slanderous imputation on the character and condition of the free colored population of the United States, growing out of a discussion on the subject of a "prejudice against " The doctrine that their condition, and not color, was the cause of their disfranchisemnt, received the sanction of many sincere, devoted, and gifted minds.

In differing from such high authority on a question of such vital importance, I only claim to be governed by the dictates of common sense; the testimony of the colored population, and abolitionists, as expressed in primary and public meetings, and the action of conventional and State Legislatures for the last twenty years.

If I fail to make out my case, it will be because the public will reject the testimony of the witnesses I shall bring to the stand.

I did then, and will now purposely avoid the discussion of the social department of the question, yet your numerous correspondents have chiefly confined their arguments to that department, by bringing forward a few isolated cases, which to each, if I chose to reply, I could summon a thousand witnesses from among the whites of all classes, who either in sympathy, or admiration of their condition are led to exclaim, "It is a pity he or she is ."

The colored population of Pennsylvania have complained of the injustice of being deprived the exercise of the Elective Franchise, and in order that they might successfully reply to the vulgar slander of their opponents, sent to the Reform Convention in 1838 a very able remonstrance founded on democratic principles, and endorsed by men occupying high Judicial and legislative stations, for the purpose of showing that their condition was equal to that which was demanded of others. Now what was the result? The convention scarcely noticed the document. It's argument was superflous. It was their, not their condition. Now in the face of such historical facts, who will dare to say that the "colored men" of Pennsylvania were disfranchised on account of their condition?

It is a double slander, both on the character of the "Colored population" and the Reform Convention.

Now if I could believe with your correspondents that we were disfranchised on account of our condition, I would think it immodest and presumptuous in us to petition for the exercise of a right we were not fitted to enjoy even on the grounds of our own admission. It is our complexion that disqualifies us, and nothing else. If the genius of prejudice could find another safe standard she would erect it. This special pleading about our condition being the cause of our exclusion is an insult to the common understanding and overleaps the boundary of pro slavery hate by adding insult to injury.

The doctrine of condition as a passport to enfranchisement, has long since become obsolete as an American idea, the only accepted standard is and . It has been rejected throughout the Free States with a single exception in New York, and it is only retained there by a complexional qualification.

Of what use then are monumental piles and Statistical and Ethnological arguments to prove a standard of condition that conventionists and legislators do not question. Why not direct the whole face of our artillery in battering the conventional standard, it being the only barrier that prevents colored men from exercising and enjoying the rights and privileges of American citizenship?
W. W.