The Liberator

A HUMILIATING CONTRAST.

Extract of a letter from Frederick Douglass, dated Clifton House, Niagara, Canada West, June 30:

On reaching Niagara yesterday morning, and well knowing the proscriptive rules of the Hotels on the American side of the river, I, in company with a party of friends, came immediately to the Canada side of the river. On reaching this shore, and being once again under the British flag, where a man is not esteemed according to his complexion, we all felt like giving three cheers for Queen Victoria. It is astonishing that people living within a stone's throw of each other, should be so opposite in their tastes, feelings, and principles. On the American side, where liberty is the constant theme of boastful discourse: where every coin, from the cent to the eagle, is superscribed with 'Liberty'; and where the oppressions of other nations are made the topics of conversation and reproach, a colored man, no matter how genteel in appearance, how exalted in character, how superior in intelligence he may be, is refused admittance into hotels, and made the subject of insult and abuse; while, on the Canada side, where no such boastful pretensions are made, we witness an entire freedom from this proscriptive and vulgar prejudice. The hotel where we now are is the most popular place of resort among the fashionable people on this side of the Falls. On making an application for accommodation, I was received with that hearty good-will to which I am a stranger in the United States. There is no distinction here on account of color. The same parlor and the same table occupied by white persons are free to us; and the host, for aught that I could see, was as attentive to our wants, and appeared as anxious for our happiness, as for that of any other persons under his roof. I think my hatred of American slavery has been tinged with a deeper hue by witnessing this striking contrast. Were it not cowardly, and perhaps selfish, I could wish to leave the United States, and become a resident in Canada. Lord Morpeth said, when here, that, next to the beautiful leap of the waters of the Niagara, was that made across the river by the fugitive from American bondage to Canadian freedom. I would respectfully commend the manner of our reception here to the consideration of that part of the press of the United States, that allows no opportunity to escape, of pouring contempt and vulgar abuse upon colored people; and I would ask them if that prejudice which they claim to be natural, be anything more than an unworthy and wicked hatred, springing legitimately from the existence of slavery in their midst, and not from the hand of God? How is it that the people within so short a distance from themselves, and of the same complexion with themselves, should be entirely free from a feeling almost universal in the United States? Let the Americans explain this, before they claim that their feelings are either just or rational.