which is but a mere
introduction to what will henceforth emanate from the pen of colored men
and women, appeared to be in most anxious demand, in order to settle
their minds entirely, and concentrate them upon an effective and
specific course of procedure. We have never conformed with that class of
philosophers who would keep the people in ignorance, lest they might
change their opinion from former predilections. This we shall never do,
except pressing necessity demands it, and then only as a measure to
prevent bad consequences, for the time.

The colored people of to-day are not the colored people of a quarter of
a century ago, and require very different means and measures to satisfy
their wants and demands, and to effect their advancement. No wise
statesman presumes the same measures for the satisfaction of the
American people now, that may have been with propriety adopted
twenty-five years ago; neither is it wisdom to presume, that the
privileges which satisfied colored people twenty years ago, they will be
reconciled with now. That with which the father of the writer may have
been satisfied, even up to the present day, the writer cannot be content
with; the one lived in times antecedent to the birth of the other; that
which answered then, does not answer now: so is it with the whole class
of colored people in the United States. Their feelings, tastes,
predilections, wants, demands, and sympathies, are identical, and
homogeneous with those of all other Americans.

"Fleecy locks and black complexions,
Cannot alter nature's claim;
Skins may differ, but affections,
Dwell in black and white the same."

Many of the distinguished characters referred to in this work, who lived
in former days, for which there is no credit given, have been obtained
from various sources--as fragments of history, pamphlets, files of
newspapers, obsolete American history, and some from Mrs. Child's
Collection. Those of modern date, are living facts known to the writer
in his travels through the United States, having been from Canada and
Maine to Arkansas and Texas. The origin of the breast-works of cotton
bales on Chalmet Plains, at the battle of New Orleans, the writer
learned in that city, from old colored men in 1840, and subsequently,
from other sources; as well as much useful information concerning that
battle, from _Julien Bennoit_, spoken of in the work. He has before
referred to it some five or six years a