succeeding ages: 'We hold these
truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; that they are
endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'"

Then came Dr. James Derham, who could tell even the learned Dr. Rush
something of medicine, and Lemuel Haynes, to whom Middlebury College gave
an honorary A.M. in 1804. These and others we may call the Revolutionary
group of distinguished Negroes--they were persons of marked ability,
leaders of a Talented Tenth, standing conspicuously among the best of
their time. They strove by word and deed to save the color line from
becoming the line between the bond and free, but all they could do was
nullified by Eli Whitney and the Curse of Gold. So they passed into
forgetfulness.

But their spirit did not wholly die; here and there in the early part of
the century came other exceptional men. Some were natural sons of
unnatural fathers and were given often a liberal training and thus a race
of educated mulattoes sprang up to plead for black men's rights. There was
Ira Aldridge, whom all Europe loved to honor; there was that Voice crying
in the Wilderness, David Walker, and saying:

"I declare it does appear to me as though some nations think God is
asleep, or that he made the Africans for nothing else but to dig their
mines and work their farms, or they cannot believe history, sacred or
profane. I ask every man who has a heart, and is blessed with the
privilege of believing--Is not God a God of justice to all his creatures?
Do you say he is? Then if he gives peace and tranquility to tyrants and
permits them to keep our fathers, our mothers, ourselves and our children
in eternal ignorance and wretchedness to support them and their families,
would he be to us a God of Justice? I ask, O, ye Christians, who hold us
and our children in the most abject ignorance and degradation that ever a
people were afflicted with since the world began--I say if God gives you
peace and tranquility, and suffers you thus to go on afflicting us, and
our children, who have never given you the least provocation--would He be
to us a God of Justice? If you will allow that we are men, who feel for
each other, does not the blood of our fathers and of us, their children,
cry aloud to the Lord of Sabaoth against you for the cruelties and murders
with which you have and do continue to afflict us?"

This was the wild voice that first aroused Sout