A negro. The word is used by Burns (1786) and by Byron (1811): (N.E.D.)

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1796.  

        The land, d’ye mind me, is not fit to burn;
Curst paltry, say, not even fit for Negurs,
Dam’d dull for speculators and intriguers.
Address at the opening of the N.Y. Theatre: The Aurora, Phila., Sept. 30.    

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1823.  He was a walking, working Yankee man, on a journey, and, therefore, considered as nothing better than, or below, a nigger.—W. Faux, ‘Memorable Days in America,’ p. 305 (Lond.). (Italics in the original.)

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1824.  The niggers at the south, as Harvey Birch calls them.—Franklin Herald, April 30.

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1825.  He’s a Guinea nigger; fresh out; ran away from a Georgia planter, about a twelvemonth ago; and hid himself aboard a sloop of uncle Ashley’s at Savannah;—poor devil—he swam off to her, at the risk of his life.—John Neal, ‘Brother Jonathan,’ ii. 297.

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1829.  The white lords of the creation, who, on their part, would as soon think of sitting down to eat Indian corn leaves, or chopped pumpkins, with their cattle, as of entering into social intercourse with a ‘negur.’—Basil Hall, ‘Travels in North America,’ ii. 77.

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1838.  [In the House of Representatives, Mr. Downing] laid it down as a principle observed in Florida, that an Indian or nigger was not to be trusted.—Corr. Balt. Comml. Transcript, Jan. 24, p. 2/3.

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1849.  [The land system] is something in which my constituents feel an interest far deeper than in any nigger question you can raise here…. I ask gentlemen to withdraw their eyes for a few moments from the beautiful niggers, if they can,… and to proceed to the despatch of the public business.—Mr. Sawyer of Ohio, House of Repr., Jan. 10: Cong. Globe, p. 80, App.

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1859.  [The Southerner, as a child,] is undressed and put to bed by a nigger, and nestles, during the slumbers of infancy, in the bosom of a nigger; he is washed, dressed, and taken to the table, by a nigger, to eat food prepared by a nigger; he is led to and from school by a nigger; every service that childhood demands is performed by a nigger, except that of chastisement.—Mr. Lovejoy of Illinois, House of Repr., Feb. 21: id., p. 198, App.

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1859.  The Democratic party can no more run their party without niggers than you could run a steam-engine without fuel. That is all there is of Democracy; and when you cannot raise niggers enough for the market, then you must go abroad fishing for niggers through the whole world.—Mr. Wade of Ohio, U.S. Senate, Feb. 25: id., p. 1354.

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1862.  The white man shall govern, and the nigger never shall be his equal.—Mr. Willard Saulsbury of Delaware, U.S. Senate, May 2: id., p. 1923/2.

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1862.  Our soldiers … never trusted their lives to your care to be sacrificed for the liberation of the “almighty nigger.”—Mr. Nehemiah Perry of New Jersey, House of Repr., March 6: id., p. 1104/2.

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