A Sad Case of Amalgamation
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Volume 19, Number 211
1860-09-05
page 1, column 6
Source: Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Collection
The reporter of the Philadelphia Press has been around among the colored folks of Philadelphia, and In the course of his peregrination he met with the following case of practical amalgamation:
We were next gratified with something previously new to us—a case of practical amalgamation. We had wrought up our feelings to such abhorrence of the intermarriage of races, that nothing short of the absolute misery of families so produced was expected. The chronicle, however, must be true to the experience, and we are compelled to state that this single case of wedded amalgamation was not so repulsive in its effects as we bad wished it to be.
Being cautioned by the officer to say nothing of our prejudices, we passed through a cleanly-arched alley, and trod by a row of rear brick buildings. Hastily glancing through an open door, we saw a thin, neat-looking white woman industriously sewing. At her feet a negro child was playing and she stooped to kiss it as the door post hid her from view. A black man was chopping wood in the yard. Three yellow children clustered around him, and at the moment the child which bad been gambolling at the woman’s feet tottered from the house and called him ‘Pappy!’
The man looked angrily at us, but he said nothing.
‘Do your children still help you at the market, Tom?’ said the officer.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the man, chopping away at the stick of wood. As he seemed adverse to making any reply, the officer said:
‘Such children as these I never knew—up at 5 o’clock every morning, and wheeling a heavy go-cart through the streets; they are going someday to be richer than their father.’
‘I hope so,’ said the man. ‘God knows I am poor enough.’ He continued to chop.
‘Nonsense,’ said the officer. ‘Why, Tom, you take care of your money, never drink. How much better off are vou than your neighbors?’
‘I know that,’ said the man, interestedly, leaning upon his axe, ‘but I want to be rich enough to leave this street. I don’t want these boys to grow up with low people or to live in this unhealthy neighborhood. They are good boys, but I don’t like to tell them so. They make—the three of them—as much wages as I do.’
We understood from our guide that the negro and the woman were legally married; that she had been poor, and his attentions to her in poverty had placed her under obligations which ended in wedlock. As we passed out and peeped stealthily again at the woman, fondling her negro babe, she espied us and looked straightforwardly into our faces. There was no shame upon her cheeks. She seemed to clasp her child still closer, and as we passed out of view we heard her singing.
‘After all,’ said the officer, ‘these children are better off than those miserable mulattoes who have no recognised fathers. If amalgamation is to become an institution, I prefer it sanctioned by marriage.’
We looked forward to that woman’s career. With the existing feelings of society, thrift and integrity will benefit her little; for the life she has chosen will ever cling to her, and every social advance she may make with her dusky husband will make her more opprobrious and abhorred. It is a hard case.