London
Nelson Moss
I have lived in a slave State all my life until seven years ago. I am now forty-five. I lived three years in Pennsylvania, in which State I suffered more from prejudice than in Virginia, and there is a great deal here in London, but not so much as in Pennsylvania. I got along well, having energy to attend to business properly. I carry on the boot and shoe business. I was never sent to school in my life, and it is a loss to me not to know how to keep accounts; but I am able to employ another to do it for me.
I did not leave Pennsylvania so much on account of the prejudice, as on that of the fugitive slave bill. I did not like to live in a country which was governed by a partial law. I made considerable sacrifice in breaking up.
The laws here are impartial. We have access to the public schools here, and can have our children educated with the white children. If the children grow up together, prejudice will not be formed.
There are a large majority who are industrious; a few are wealthy; a good many are well off. There are not many who are dissolute and abandoned—not so many in proportion as of the whites, taking every thing into consideration. If there are some who are not so industrious as they should be, it is easily accounted for. Solomon says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” It’s a bad rule that do n’t work both ways: they have been trained in a way they should not go. Accustomed to be driven when they work, it is no wonder that they do n’t work so smartly as they would otherwise. But in the face of this, I know many colored men who came here fugitive slaves, who came here without any thing to help themselves with, not even money for a night’s lodging, and who had nothing given to them, who now have a house and land of their own. It is not necessary to give a fugitive money—it may make him lazy and dependent. All he needs to have given him is work.
Nearly all the grown colored people have been slaves. Of course, they are not capable of instructing their children well themselves,—but, under the free schools, I am of opinion that we are progressing