Heading: (African American, 1874)
Author: Mellish, David B.
Title: The Money of the United States / Equal Rights / Speeches of David B. Mellish of New York…in the House of Representatives, January 10, 1874
Place Published: Washington, DC
Publisher:US Government Printing Office
Date Published: 1874
Description:

23 pp. 7¾x5", original wrappers, tied at spine. First Edition.

A New York Republican newly-elected to Congress, Mellish was a former Massachusetts teacher, New York journalist and Police Department stenographer who came to Washington with some bold ideas. In the tenth month of his term of office, he delivered these two speeches in the House. The major one was an argument for monetary reform. But buried at the tail-end of this little pamphlet were his brief remarks in favor of a bill proposed by veteran Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner "for the protection of all citizens in their civil and legal rights", ending racial discrimination in public schools and transportation. It took a year for a watered-down version of the bill to pass the Congress. Mellish did not live to that small victory. WorldCat locates only two institutional copies.

Recounting an incident which foreshadowed the famous ordeal of Rosa Parks in Alabama 80 years later, Mellish noted that in his own city of New York, "some of the lines of street-cars...did not allow any colored passengers to ride in their cars" except for those specifically labeled, 'Colored people allowed...'". As a result, "much inconvenience was occasioned to our colored fellow-citizens, to say nothing of the degradation implied by the practice." During the Civil War, the wife of a Black Union Army officer was ordered to leave an empty streetcar which was not so designated. When she "declined to go", the conductor called a policeman who "ejected her from the car." After the woman filed an official complaint against the officer, the managers of the street railroad of New York declared that this practice should end immediately. Consequently, "colored citizens have rode indiscriminately and without molestation in all the streetcars" of New York. Mellish ridiculed the arguments that the passage of a bill to guarantee similar rights of African Americans throughout the country would lead to the "terrible results...conjured up" in the "affrighted imaginations" of the bill's opponents. He lamented that, in general, "where prejudice, passion and fear are excited...arguments and appeals to reason have little effect".



Working "day and night, beyond moral endurance" on legislation he favored, "the balance of his mind was lost" and "acute mania set in." Four months after delivering these speeches - on his last appearance on the House floor, where he rambled on, giving a speech "absolutely without meaning", he was forced to go home for medical examination. But there he took his carriage and began "driving about the city" with his two little daughters," distributing money and cigars with a la lavish hand"; stopping at a newspaper office to "harangue" a gathering crowd, he was arrested at his wife's request, and, "pronounced hopelessly insane", was taken to a government lunatic hospital, where he died 11 days later.

Small hole in the last page, affecting only a few letters of a word; good.