A negro.

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1775.  

        The women ran, the darkeys too,
  And all the bells they tolled;
For Britain’s sons by Doodle Doo
  Were sure to be—consoled.
‘The Trip to Cambridge,’ in ‘Songs of the American Revolution,’ p. 100 (1856).    

2

1840.  The darkey tried to butt him.—R. H. Dana, Jr., ‘Two Years before the Mast,’ chap. xxxiii. p. 426. (N.E.D.)

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1856.  

        ‘Owch!’ an awkward darkey’s basket
  Hit him a thump in the eye,
And stars are flashing before him,
  Like the orbs in a wintry sky.
Knick. Mag., xlviii. 546.    

4

1857.  It has been observed that the darkey population like strong medicines and big doses for their bodily complaints, and I suppose it ’s according to the same rule that they recokon most highly those preachers who get on Bible steam up to the top of the register, and tie down the safety-valve.—Id., xlix. 275.

5

1861.  It [the flat-boat] was made of two-inch plank, and manned by two infirm-looking darkies, with frosted wool, who seemed to need all their strength to sit upright.—Id., lviii. 317.

6

1862.  

        Whereas old Abe ’ud sink afore he ’d let a darkie boost him,
Ef Taney should n’t come along an’ hed n’t interdooced him.
Lowell, ‘Biglow Papers,’ 2nd S., No, 3.    

7

1864.  I asked him if he had a copy of the College laws. He immediately dispatched a “dark” to get one.—Yale Lit. Mag., xxix. 191–2 (March).

8

1864.  There were many darkies, so called, in Plaquemine, though at least nine out of ten showed a mixture of white blood, and varied in hue from the darkest Congo to the purest Circassian, from the wooly thick-lipped negro to the straight-haired girl in whom you could see no trace of an African stain and with beauty enough to make her a belle in a Northern city.—Id., p. 231 (April).

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