Some newspapers are trouncing the Captain and Clerk of the steamboat Globe for refusing a seat at their breakfast table to Haalilio, Embassador from the King of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands to this Government—the said Envoy laboring under the original sin of being copper-colored. Of course, the steamboat men were wrong—but was it indeed their fault, or that of a diseased public opinion—a ridiculous and disgraceful popular prejudice? Suppose this Haalilio had been a mulatto native of the United States—a free voter and ‘sovereign’ of this Country—the son, for instance, of our late Vice President—these same papers would probably have abused the Captain if he had given him a seat at the common table, and even stigmatized the passengers for consenting to eat with him! And why is not a cleanly and well-bred American freeman as good as a Sandwich Island dignitary?—There is no Country on earth where Social Aristocracy is more exclusive and absurd than here, and the less manhood a person has the more he plumes himself on his external and factitious advantages over some one whom he tries hard to look down upon.

[It sounds like things really have not changed so much.]

(New York Daily Tribune, 1/28/1843, p. 2)

The New York Daily Tribune, Volume II, Number 250, Page 2. January 28, 1843.