Richmond (VA) Dispatch, "The Underground Railroad," April 26, 1853

    Source citation
    "The Underground Railroad," Richmond (VA) Dispatch, April 26, 1853, p. 2: 2.
    Newspaper: Publication
    Richmond Daily Dispatch
    Newspaper: Headline
    The Underground Railroad
    Newspaper: Page(s)
    2
    Newspaper: Column
    2
    Type
    Newspaper
    Date Certainty
    Exact
    Transcriber
    Sayo Ayodele
    Transcription date
    The following text is presented here in complete form, as it originally appeared in print.  Spelling and other typographical errors have been preserved as in the original.

    THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. - The New York Tribune announces, with great satisfaction, that the Underground Railroad has just elected a new Board of Directors and is doing a very extensive business in the forwarding line. It adds that sixty five passengers have passed over the "Underground" since January last.

    Well, let the Underground only do enough business and the States through which its line passes will tear up and dismiss its officers. - Following the example of the States of the Northwest they will prohibit altogether the importation in self-defence. The ancestors of these Underground people stole away the long-teethed Cannibals of Africa and sold them to the Southern planter-and now that through successive generations they are civilized and appear somewhat in the dignity of humanity in its better conditions, they want to steal them away from the planter and carry them Northwardly. So it is all the time stealing. They cannot forget their instincts-sane or insane, the predominating passion for roguery appears!

    The African is not born for the North, and he will not thrive or be happy there-as well take the monkey of the tropics there, or the elephant or the hairless little dog of Mexico, and expect them to be suited, to thrive, and to always be comfortable. The negro degenerates as he goes North -his life is cut to the shortest span-he becomes a burthen and an offence to society-and society at the North cannot permit that burthen to become great. The Underground and Greely will yet learn this.

    Amalgamation, in the way of marrying delicate white girls to the rough hewn woollyheaded African, is a thing that the Northern people are not going to allow the Underground nor Horace to visit upon them. A mulato hybrid child will be no pleasant relation to aunt, or uncle, or grand-pa. The Underground has already begun its tricks in this way. Some months since there was a great row at Fulton, New York, caused by a marriage that was about to take place between Miss Mary E. King of that place, the daughter of the Rev. Lyndon King, and a black teacher at McGrawville, where there is an amalgamation school. The people enraged at the affair interfered with a mob and prevented the bans, very much to the delight of Rev. Mr. King, who, although an abolitionist, had no notion of having the poisoned chalice brought to his own lips. The teacher was frightened to death and narrowly escaped a lynching. But the union has at last been accomplishe in New York where Mr. W.G. Allen, colored, (called Professor) is married to Miss Mary E. King. So poor old King is destined to have a new stripe in his family after all.

    Let the Underground go ahead. The colored gentlemen will be very glad to go home with the officers and marry into the families.

    How to Cite This Page: "Richmond (VA) Dispatch, "The Underground Railroad," April 26, 1853," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/841.