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Collection: African American Newspapers
Publication: FREDERICK DOUGLASS PAPER
Date: March 4, 1853
F. DouglassTitle: -------
Location: Rochester, New York

A Brutal and Scandalous Outrage.
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We give, elsewhere, in our columns, a statement from Professor William G. Allen, respecting the outrage that was to have been committed upon him by a ferocious mob, under the pretense that he was about to be married to a young lady a few shades lighter than himself.

"The very head and front of his offending
Hath this extent - no more."

The whole transaction, on the part of the mob, was villanous in the extreme, and shows most clearly how deep and bitter is the malignity cherished against us. Our absence from home has prevented an earlier notice of this fiendish manifestation of prejudice. Had Mr. Allen been about to marry a woman a few shades darker than himself, or one perfectly black, although he himself is very few shades darker than the late Daniel Webster, the want of harmony in the complexions of the parties would not have been perceived by our skin-scanning aristocracy; or, further, had Mr. Allen been a white slaveholder, fully exercising the rights which the slave code gives every master over his female slaves, these abominable rowdies would not have been at the expence of getting up a mob to mob him. No, far from it; it is notorious that a Vice President of the United States (RICHARD M. JOHNSON) was the husband of one of his slave women; and further, it is notorious that slavery is a system of wholesale amalgamation - amalgamation unsanctified and unlimited; and yet, in all probability, nine tenths of those rowdies that mobbed Mr. Allen, have yet to whisper one word in condemnation of that wholesale system; and in all the likelihoods of the case, were they transported South, they would fall as deeply into the vile practices of Southern men, as Southern men themselves.
It is not our purpose to enter, at this time, into a discussion of the propriety, or the wisdom of such alliances. It is enough to assert the right of every man and woman in the world to choose for themselves their companions; and he is a ruffian and a tyrant, who, while he exercises this right for himself, would trample upon the same right in others. As we understand it, this demonstration was got up, not because of any objection to Mr. Allen's character or history. In this respect, he is above reproach - a gentleman, a scholar, and a Christian. He is an ornament to society; his only sin is that being slightly tinged by a Southern sun, he has dared to offer his heart and his hand to a lady a few shades whiter than himself!!
Oh! when will poor worms of the dust cease to be proud of the complexion of their ashes? When will that leprous tribe (the descendants of Miriam ) repent of their haughtiness and contempt towards their equal fellow-creatures? for, since Miriam was smitten by God, with leprosy, for daring to jeer at MOSES for marrying " an Ethiopian woman," the earth has been cursed with her children!