ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1877, Joseph Sehgman, the New York banker, was bluntly and noisily refused accommodations for himself and his family at the Grand Union Hotel at Saratoga Springs. On June 24, 1877, Henry Ward Beecher preached a famous sermon on the Saratoga Springs incident at Plymouth Church. Urging the Seligmans to be patient 'under this slight breath, this white frost, this momentary flash of insult", Beecher said that the incident was as the bite of a mosquito to a man in his whole armor. The sermon ended on the note that there should be "no public assemblies called, no resolutions passed, no more unfortunate letters written, no recriminations, no personalities. Social discrimination always lays the foundation for subsequent discriminations of a more significant character, first, in the sense that it has a tendency to check the process of assimilation and to emphasize differences. Second, in the sense that it forces the minority to develop its own social institutions.
