"The Old Story" August 1, 1863, page 482

The stain of the late riots on the history of the city of New York is indelible. The utter meanness of the hunting and bloody massacre of the most unfortunate class of the population is not to be forgotten. The burning of an orphan asylum is infamous beyond parallel in the annals of mobs. And how entirely undeserved this mad hatred of the colored race is, every sober man in this country knows. No class among us are and have been so foully treated as the black, yet none furnishes, in proportion, so few offenders against the laws. Proverbially a mild, affectionate, and docile people, they have received from us, who claim to be a superior race, a treatment which of itself disproves our superiority.

How the more intelligent persons among the enemies of this race console their consciences under the awful fate which their incessant and sneering depreciation of the colored people has at last brought upon those unfortunates, it is impossible to say. Yet we observe that some of them clutch at the old subterfuge, and declare that it is the unwise attempt to elevate the blacks "above their sphere" which is responsible for their late fearful martyrdom. Look at this statement a moment. Its argument is that to insist upon personal liberty, as the natural right of every innocent human being, only tends to create jealousy among other human beings. To state the argument is to smother it in ridicule.

Put in another form, the same plea is that God has made the black race subservient to the white, and that to declare their right to personal liberty is to advocate their social equality, to erect them into rival laborers, and to disorganize society. The reply to this is, that God has made the black race subservient to the white in the same way that he has made Jews subservient to Christians, and the Irish to the English, and in no other. It used to please Christians to call the Jews "dogs," and to injure and murder them in every way—and to this day to call a man "Jew" is only less offensive than to call him "nigger." It used to please the English to consider the Irish unclean beasts, and treat them accordingly. Does any body seriously defend this kind of persecution as any thing more than the basest and most criminal prejudice? Coleridge professed the same instinctive hatred of a Frenchman that so many among us profess of a negro. Was it an evidence of Coleridge’s wisdom or folly?