APPENDIX C
EXCERPT FROM REV. JOHN J. MOORE’S ADDRESS,
CALIFORNIA STATE CONVENTION OF COLORED CITIZENS, 1865

We hurl back with scorn and contempt the frequent intimation of scurrilous newspapers that granting us “Equality before the Law,” would induce us to thrust ourselves into the society of the whites. Notwithstanding they, through their beloved institution of slavery, have thrust their race upon us,--we want it to be particularly understood we never have had and are not likely to have, any particular fondness for the Saxon race above our own. Whatever isolated cases of amalgamation of the two races have occurred in any part of the country, on marriage principles, on the part of the whites it has been mostly the Irish, who pretend to be the most violent enemies of negro rights; and what is a remarkable truth, that where such conjugal unity takes place, while the party of the Celtic race retains his caste or social standing, the party of the African race loses his caste or social standing generally among his sable brethren, of the higher order of society. We appeal to every true American whose voice shall resound in the proud capital over which the glorious stars and stripes shall float, to give us our rights in the name and spirit of the murdered and immortal Lincoln, who sealed our rights with his hallowed blood, who said this people (the colored), ought to have “Equality before the Law.”

[California State Convention of the Colored Citizens, 1855, 1856, and 1865. Proceedings. (San Francisco: R and E Research Associates, 1969), 91]