uaintance with members of this despised caste
in Boston and Philadelphia, and other cities, and appreciated so deeply
their intrinsic worth and excellence, as men and brethren, that he felt
their insults and injuries as if they were done to himself. He knew that
beneath many a dark skin he had found real ladies and gentlemen, and he
knew how sharper than a serpent's tooth to them was the American
prejudice against their color. In 1832, just after a visit to
Philadelphia, where he was the guest of Robert Purvis, and had seen much
of the Fortens, he wrote a friend:

"I wish you had been with me in Philadelphia to see what I saw, to hear
what I heard, and to experience what I felt in associating with many
colored families. There are colored men and women, young men and young
ladies, in that city, who have few superiors in refinement, in moral
worth, and in all that makes the human character worthy of admiration
and praise."

Strange to say, notwithstanding all their merits and advancement, the
free people of color received nothing but disparagement and contempt
from eminent divines like Dr. Leonard W. Bacon and the emissaries of the
Colonization Society. They were "the most abandoned wretches on the face
of the earth"; they were "all that is vile, loathsome, and dangerous";
they were "more degraded and miserable than the slaves," and _ad
infinitum_ through the whole gamut of falsehood and traduction. It was
human for the American people to hate a class whom they had so deeply
wronged, and altogether human for them to justify their atrocious
treatment by blackening before the world the reputation of the said
class. That this was actually done is the best of all proofs of the
moral depravity of the nation which slavery had wrought.

Garrison's vindication of the free people of color in Exeter Hall,
London, on July 13, 1833, from this sort of detraction and villification
is of historic value:

"Sir," said he, addressing the chair, "it is not possible for the mind
to coin, or the tongue to utter baser libels against an injured people.
Their condition is as much superior to that of the slaves as the light
of heaven is more cheering than the darkness of the pit. Many of their
number are in the most affluent circumstances, and distinguished for
their refinement, enterprise, and talents. They have flourishing
churches, supplied by pastors of their own color, in various parts of
the land, embracing a large body of the truly exc