Knowing the brutal character of prejudice against color, and knowing also that I was supposed to be about to commit the unpardonable sin, I confess, that though surprised to learn that the mob intended murder, yet I was not surprised to learn many of the details which this friend so kindly gave us.

Mr. Porter suggested that after supper, he and I should retire to a neighbour’s house, he supposing that if the mob should be foiled in their attempt to get us into their hands, they would, after all, pass away, and thus the matter blow quietly over.  The suggestion, however, was not carried into effect; for we had scarcely finished tea ere they (the mob) were down upon us like wild beasts out of a den.

We first observed some twenty men turning a corner in the direction of the house; then about thirty or forty more, and soon the streets were filled with men—­some four or five hundred.  In the rear of this multitude there was driven a sleigh in which, we rightly conjectured, Miss King was to be taken home.

From the statements of the leader of the mob—­statements afterwards given to the public—­it seems that a Committee, composed of members of the mob, and constituted by the mob, suggested before reaching the house that if we were still unmarried there should be no violence done, as they intended to carry off the lady.  A portion of this Committee also made it their duty to gain access to the apartment where our company were sitting, and to inform us of the intentions of the assembled multitude below, while the remainder of the Committee endeavoured by speeches and reasoning to quiet the mob spirit, which soon after the assembling, began to reach its climax.

This Committee was composed of some of the most “respectable” men of Fulton—­lawyers, merchants, and others of like position.  The reader will doubtless think it strange that such men should be members of a mob; and so it would be, if prejudice against color were not the saddest of all comments upon the meanness of human depravity.  In this, more than in anything else did the malignant character of this American feeling evince itself—­that to drive me off or kill me, if need be, the “respectable” and the base were commingled, like—­

  “Kindred elements into one.”

Men who, under other circumstances, would have been regarded as beneath contempt, the vulgar minded and vulgar hearted—­with these, even Christians (so called) did not hesitate to affiliate themselves in order to crush a man who was guilty of no crime save that, having a colored skin, he was supposed to be about to marry a lady a few shades lighter than himself.  O, the length and breadth, the height and depth, the cruelty and the irony of a prejudice which can so belittle human nature.