Shameful Abuse. Rev. N.C. Cannon, a colored minister of the Methodist denomination, who preaches alternately in Boston and Providence, informs us that he was recently treated in a very unjustifiable manner by a Mr. Smith, who drives the stage between those two cities. He states that he went to the stage office in Providence, sometime in February, and spoke for a passage to Boston on the following day. At the time appointed, he went to the office, and being told that the stage was ready, he took his seat inside. The driver, on coming to shut the door, asked him where he was going. He replied, ‘to Boston’. Then, said the driver, you must go on to the outside, for I’ll have no ‘damned nigger’ in my stage! Remonstrance, in such a case, was useless, and having been so grossly insulted, Mr. Cannon concluded, to his great inconvenience, to wait and go in the cars. It is not to be doubted, that an indecent, profane, and brawling white man would have been permitted to ride in the same stage without the least objection! Such conduct deserves the severest reprehension. But, while our churches are disgraced by ‘negro pews’, it is unreasonable to expect anything better from proprietors and drivers of stages.
(Liberator, March 29, 1839, Pg 3)
