d in this book, this testimony may be
admitted.

These facts show that for his energy, perseverance, eloquence,
invective, sagacity, and wide sympathy, he is indebted to his Negro
blood. The very marvel of his style would seem to be a development of
that other marvel--how his mother learned to read.{20} The versatility
of talent which he wields, in common with Dumas, Ira Aldridge, and
Miss Greenfield, would seem to be the result of the grafting of the
Anglo-Saxon on good, original, Negro stock. If the friends of "Caucasus"
choose to claim, for that region, what remains after this analysis--to
wit: combination--they are welcome to it. They will forgive me for
reminding them that the term "Caucasian" is dropped by recent writers on
Ethnology; for the people about Mount Caucasus, are, and have ever been,
Mongols. The great "white race" now seek paternity, according to Dr.
Pickering, in Arabia--"Arida Nutrix" of the best breed of horses &c.
Keep on, gentlemen; you will find yourselves in Africa, by-and-by. The
Egyptians, like the Americans, were a _mixed race_, with some Negro
blood circling around the throne, as well as in the mud hovels.

This is the proper place to remark of our author, that the same strong
self-hood, which led him to measure strength with Mr. Covey, and to
wrench himself from the embrace of the Garrisonians, and which has borne
him through many resistances to the personal indignities offered him as
a colored man, sometimes becomes a hyper-sensitiveness to such assaults
as men of his mark will meet with, on paper. Keen and unscrupulous
opponents have sought, and not unsuccessfully, to pierce him in this
direction; for well they know, that if assailed, he will smite back.

It is not without a feeling of pride, dear reader, that I present you
with this book. The son of a self-emancipated bond-woman, I feel joy in
introducing to you my brother, who has rent his own bonds, and who, in
his every relation--as a public man, as a husband and as a father--is
such as does honor to the land which gave him birth. I shall place this
book in the hands of the only child spared me, bidding him to strive and
emulate its noble example. You may do likewise. It is an American book,
for Americans, in the fullest sense of the idea. It shows that the
worst of our institutions, in its worst aspect, cannot keep down energy,
truthfulness, and earnest struggle for the right. It proves the{21}
justice and practicability of Immedi