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… the son of a slaveholder and an almost white slave

who was so white that “the closest obsever could not

detect in his appearance any trace of African descent.”

His father sent him off for an education and trade and

he “married an estimable young white woman, and had

a family of five or six children,” all of this without

“the slightest knowledge of the [ ] African blood in

his veins, and no one in the neighborhood knew that

he was the son of an octoroon slave woman.

He made a comfortable living for his family” and

was a member of the white Methodist Church.

Then his father died, and his white half-brother

hunted him down and finally found him in Guilford

County, North Carolina, and informed him for the

first time who he was. The inhuman half-brother

sold him into slavery.

“To get him black enough to sell without question,

they washed his face in tan ooze, and kept him

tied in the sun, and to complete his resemblance

to a mulatto, they cut his hair short and seared it

with a hot iron to make it curly.”

See

Levi Coffin

Reminiscenses

1876 pp29-31

electronic edition by

Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,

2001.

“In Louisiana, women, preparatory to whipping, are often stripped to a state of perfect nudity.” Black women only, some aristocrat of color may think. “There is a girl,” said one Colonel Hanna, a member of Mr. Aughey’s church, to the latter, “who does not look very white in the face, owing to exposure; but when I strip her to whip her, I find that she has a skin as fair as my wife.” It is thus evidently the habit of these Mississippi patriarchs to strip and whip women as white of skin as their own wives.

Mr. Aughey speaks of preaching “to a large congregation of slaves, the third of whom were as white as himself,” some with red hair and blue eyes. We remember that slave in Mississippi whose skin, when she was stripped for whipping, was as white as that of her master’s wife. Mr. De Camp, the surgeon above referred to, speaks of having seen standing before him three negro recruits, in whom the “the most critical examination could not detect the slightest trace of negro blood.”

See

John Hill Aughey

Tupelo

1881 pp421, 424

electronic edition

Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,

1999.

………….

… a little girl, about nine years old, whose complex-

ion was as fair as the average of white children. She

attracted some attention, and the purchaser related

her history. She was the child of a handsome mulatto

woman, and her father was the Hon. Mr. ________ ,*

Member of Congress from this State. Her mother was

not the slave of Mr. ________ , but was owned by a

neighbor. I believe it is a custom among the Patriarchs

to make an interchange of civilities of this kind.

Here was a child of tender age, appa-

rently white, driven off with a gang of slaves to a distant

land, never again to know a mother’s love, but to be thence-

forth the victim of a tyrant’s lash or lust, while her father,

in the august Senate of the United States, declaims of Lib-

erty!” — Correspondent of the Daily Tribune, St. Louis,

Missouri, Oct. 31st, 1859.

* Our correspondent, who is a most reliable man, gives the name in full,

which will bo imparted to any one entitled to know it:’ — Editor Tribune.

…..

It is impossible to deny that amalgamation prevails to a

fearful extent throughout the South. The testimony is of

too positive and personal a character to be overcome. Nei-

ther is it to be found only in the lower order of the white

population. It pervades the entire society. Its followers

are to be found among all ranks, occupations and professions.

See

Lydia Child

The Patriarchal Institution

1860 p28