Publication: The 19th Amendment Victory: A Newspaper History, 1762-1922 from National Anti-Slavery Standard
Date: MARCH 3, 1853
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NEW YORK, THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 1853.
WE think the Great American People are fast becoming seen and known of all men. At least, if they are not, it is not because they are not ready enough to expose themselves. Their pretensions to love of liberty and to zeal for religion are being brought to tests, which make them the jest and mockery of the rest of the world. Time was, and that not long since, when what was done in America was done in a corner. Big as we thought ourselves, we occupied a very small place in other people's thoughts. A moderate proportion of the trading world knew something about our means of promoting a profitable commerce with themselves, but “the rest of mankind” thought and cared very little about us. It is not altogether the same now. A traveller does not often meet well-dressed, if not well-educated, English people who think that the bulk of Americans are black, or who wonder at an American's speaking English intelligibly and ask for a specimen of his vernacular tongue. And yet these things were, not more than forty years ago. The growth of the country, the extension of our trade, the increase of our wealth, and our gradual growing up into a first-rate Power, have made us objects of new interest of late years. The tide of emigration has set in this direction—the discovery of the California gold, the hordes of American travellers which every year precipitates on the shores of Europe, and many other circumstances, have helped to press us more distinctly within the field of European vision. Still, there is abundance of ignorance in regard to us; even more (and that is saying much) than is to be found on this side as to European affairs. For Europe is nearer to America than America to Europe. But two facts are now patent to all eyes, Liberty for White Men loudly bragged of, and Slavery for Black Men openly defended as a good, or cheerfully submitted to as a necessity.
Now the inhabitants of Europe may be a very inferior race to ourselves, they may be controlled by oligarchies, and ridden by priests, in a way totally unknown to us, for we have the assurance of eminent orators and publicists to that effect. But, then, the Light of Nature is not totally extinguished even in their benighted minds, and they are not altogether fools. They do not know, generally, how the Slavery of the Blacks has absorbed and swallowed up the Liberty of the Whites, or what a perfect Nonentity the General Government is, for all purposes except the comfort and sustaining of Slavery. Even the privilege of writing and printing these words is enjoyed not under the sanction of the National Government, but of a Northern State. For the General Government has not the power (though it is a duty imposed on it by the Constitution which creates it) to perfect Liberty of Speech and of the Press in one half of the country. But they can see the absurd inconsistency of the two Ideas thus placed in juxtaposition. They can see that a Free and Independent American citizen selling, whipping, branding, hunting, shooting and working to death men and women, whom, in their ignorance, they cannot see to be naturally inferior to himself, is a spectacle which is only saved from being ridiculous by its bloody cruelty and horrible wickedness. And their braggings and boastings of their superiority to the inhabitants of the Old World only excites just contempt and deserved ridicule. Now, be God thanked for this! It is a most penetrable joint in the triple mail of self-conceit in which Jonathan has ensconced himself, at which the shafts of the ridicule and contempt of the civilized world are aimed. Thanks to Mrs. Stowe and to Mr. Hildreth and to all others who are emptying the quivers of the world at that cleft in his armour!
Of all nations the Americans are the most vain, and therefore they are the most open to assault. None are so sensitive as to their character and standing or more jealous of their social position, and so more liable to be attacked through them. The outcry which the Stafford House Address has raised throughout the country is proof enough of this. And, surely, nothing could more effectually give the lie to the old cant that it was the harsh language and bad spirit of the Abolitionists which prevented all well-disposed Americans from coming forward incontinently, and abolishing Slavery out of hand. Opposition to Slavery, certainly, could hardly assume a milder form. If gentleness of expression could make the subject-matter palatable, that Address was as gentle and as little exasperating as words could make it. And, yet, Garrison himself could hardly divine a form of denunciation that should rouse such a unanimous roar of indignation and reprobation from women as well as men.
“Heroes and heroines’ shouts confusedly rise,
And base and treble voices strike the skies.”
And why is this? Simply because there are no such tuft-hunters and toad-eaters as your genuine Americans. Rebuke from Duchesses and Lords is more than they can stand. It touches them in the tenderest point. It comes from a quarter from which they had looked for comfort and support. Anti-Slavery in Coronet and Ermine is an adversary they cannot wink out of sight or refuse to recognise as a respectable antagonist. They see in it a foretaste of that World's Contempt and Indignation before which Slavery must at last disappear. They cannot but see that it is new fuel heaped upon that narrowing circle of fire which has been built around the Scorpion they have warmed in their bosoms into deadly vitality, and which must at last compel it to bury its sting in its own brain and thus escape, by a glorious suicide, from the still growing torments of its life.
But contemporaneously with the continual protestation against this interference with our affairs which we maintain, we incessantly provoke renewed attention to our incongruities of profession and conduct. The English women may not interfere with our Domestic Institutions, but we have no scruple about interfering with the Grand Duke of Tuscany. We hold Public Meetings to protest against his punishing two of his subjects for having a Protestant Bible in their possession, and our Secretary of State, by direction of the President, writes to His Imperial Highness a letter of remonstrance. Suppose Lord John Russell, by request of Queen Victoria, had addressed a Letter of Remonstrance to President Fillmore against the incarceration of Captain Drayton, what an uproar it would have caused! Or, if he should suggest some movement for the deliverance of the millions shut up in our prison-house of Southern Bondage, how would the blood of the whole nation be at fever heat! And yet the Grand Duke has only imprisoned one man and his wife for reading the Bible, while we forbid its use to three millions of husbands and wives. We, as a nation, profess to believe that the knowledge of the truths contained in the Scriptures is essential to Salvation, and that all not obtaining them must go down to eternal woe. The Grand Duke, on the other hand, holds that the reading of the Protestant Version is fatal to the souls of his subjects, and therefore he corrects those of them who meddle with it. He is, at least, consistent. He would hold back his subjects from the jaws of hell, while we thrust our slaves into them—all the time telling him to stand farther off, for we are holier than he!
And we are not centent with meddling with what is none of our business in Tuscany, but we extend our impertinence to France and try to be even with England, too. Here we have had Mr. Meagher, the Irish patriot, in whose honour we have been holding meetings, and whom we have been congratulating by the hour on his escape to this land of Freedom, where he is sure of protection and encouragement— so long as he does not intermeddle with our pet iniquity. And all this interlarded with diatribes against English tyranny, and gushing tributes to Ireland's wrongs. Now, we should like to know what all this is but Foreign Interference—a Meddling with what is no concern of ours. Has not England as good a right to govern Ireland as she thinks good as we have to control our slaves, and have we any call to suggest that she does not do it in the best possible way? And this, not done with deferential gentleness and modesty, but with noisy harangues stirring up the worst passions of international hatred. And when two Frenchmen came from Cayenne, whither they had been relegated for obeying the Higher Law rather than M. Bonaparte, a Meeting was called in Boston by Rufus Choate and others to express sympathy with them and indignation against the Constituted Authority of France. After all this, we hope that we shall hear no more girding at Stafford House and Lord Shaftesbury, for it is clear that we are in the same boat with his lordship and her Grace of Sutherland. And we trust that, encouraged by our example, Europeans, Asiatics, Africans and New Hollanders, civilized and savage, Christians and Heathen, will not cease to cry aloud and spare not, rebuking us to our face, and exhorting us to turn from our wickedness and live.—E. Q.
LIBERTY PARTY STATE CONVENTION.—This body
convened last week at Syracuse, and continued in session
through one day and evening. An address to the
members of the party was presented by Gerrit Smith,
in which the principles of the organization are re-affirmed,
and an earnest wish expressed that the Free
Democracy will assume the same ground of equal rights
to all mankind, without distinction of sex or colour.
A series of Resolutions were also reported, of which
this synopsis is given in the
The address and resolutions were discussed at length
by Gerrit Smith, Frederick Douglass, Antoinette
Brown, and others. Mr. Douglass proposed an additional
resolution, that the U. S. Constitution does not
sustain Slavery, which, we suppose, through the brief
report of the
On the resolution relating to the ‘Jerry Rescue’ trials a debate ensued evidently of a good deal of interest. Mr. Smith spoke at length. He declared that the conduct of the Court at Albany has passed even that of Jeffries himself.
Rev. Mr. May (says the
Mr. Smith cited Mr. Waggoner, a juror in the case of Enoch Reed, who declared to him his deep regret at consenting to the conviction, and avowed that it was solely produced by physical exhaustion; also another juror who made a similar confession. The resolution upon that subject was adopted.
The resolution relative to future rescue trials being called up, Mr. Smith declared that he was glad of the acquittals; but that if they had boldly faced the matter as contemplated in the resolve, he would have been much more rejoiced. He hoped Brother Crandall, if tried, would seek no such alternative. He would have taken that course himself, and he himself and Brother May were responsible rescuers of Jerry.
Mr. May said that when examined at Albany in the trial of Salmon, the District Attorney remarked to him, “you know all about it;” to which he replied he did, and if put upon trial would tell them all about it. Mr. May and Smith eulogized the lawyers who acted for the defense.
Mr. C. A. Wheaton would not prescribe to the accused the course they ought to pursue. Perhaps he was not ripe for martyrdom.
In the evening the case of Prof. Allen, the coloured teacher in McGrawville College who was recently mobbed because suspected of an intention to marry a white woman, was considered, and an indignant resolution passed in relation to that outrage. Mr. Douglass commented upon that public opinion which has no pretext for the indiscriminate and illegitimate commingling of colours at the South, but is horrified at a fearful marriage between a coloured man and a white woman.
LYNCH LAW IN GEORGIA.—A correspondent of the
A Mr. Houston, a young man of dissolute habits, who had the reputation of being a hard task master, visited one of his plantations—an Island some distance from the Main Land. After an absence of some days, his friends became alarmed and proceeded in search of him. No tidings could at first be heard, the negroes all denying having seen their master. At length, on a promise of reward and pardon, one man confessed that his master had been murdered, and that he was buried in a certain spot.
The body was found in a mangled condition, and five men, who, upon examination on the spot, were considered the criminals, were forthwith removed to Darien, the nearest city having a jail.
Had these men been
Pending these proceedings, the Judge of the Circuit, residing in Savannah, proceeded to Darien, accompanied by one or two able lawyers, in the hope of putting a stop to such illegal proceedings; but finding he had no influence, he returned, and the men were afterwards hung by one of the leading men in the county.
Though all the parties implicated are known, the State Attorney has not arrested them, nor has the Governor of the State, who is privy to the circumstances, offered any reward for their apprehension, as is usual in like cases.
Some persons think that the Judge, who is a candidate for re-election to the Bench, will not, at the next Term of the Court in Darien County, have the courage to denounce the proceedings in his charge to the Grand Jury, well knowing that all were implicated in the discreditable affair.
I have obtained these facts from two Georgians. Their statements did not exactly agree, but I have confined my narrative to such particulars in which there appeared no discrepancy.
“UNCLE TOMITUDES.”—English papers state that the proposed tribute to Mrs. Stowe has been cordially responded to in every quarter. The Ladies’ Negroes’ Friend Society at Birmingham seem to be the responsible party in this movement.
—–A correspondent of the (London)
“The celebrated ‘Uncle Tom,’ that remarkable negro who has already encountered so many strange adventures, continues his course through the world. In Russia he is becoming known through the medium of a very negligent translation of Mrs. Stowe's book, and enjoys a great reputation. The police do not interfere, although the circulation of the work remains as yet unauthorized. In Russia, you are aware, enfranchisement is the order of the day; perhaps this has somewhat to do with the non-interference of the officials.
“As soon as the first copies of the work arrived, there were so few of them that they made the tour of the town, being let out to hire for two hours at a time, and thus passing from one hand to another of the Muscovite aristocracy. Trusty servants were sent from house to house with them wrapped up in silk, or batiste, with as much care as a new-born infant, and hidden in a little portfolio. To-day thousands of ‘Uncle Toms’ circulate in the capital, and I am informed that a very distinguished man is at this moment engaged upon a good Russian translation.”
—–“AN ITEM FOR MRS. STOWE”—Under this title
the
“Had Mrs. Stowe witnessed the funeral of Mayor Semple, one of its features would have taught her wisdom, and, may be, inculcated a spirit of charity in her breast towards us in regard to our coloured population. In the rear of the procession, and dressed in as shining silks and pure broadcloths as the most favoured, marched a company of blacks, male and female, numbering near one hundred. They came of their own accord, took position, and were as deeply afflicted with the loss the town and themselves had sustained, as any other class who participated in the sad and solemn obsequies of the day.”
The same paper, in another column, gives another “item” or two of a different sort, which, as they happen to be facts and not assertions, pictures of every-day life and not of life on exceptional occasions, are also deserving of consideration. They read thus:
NO PASSES.—Alfred Johnson, in the service of the Messrs. Hargrove, was ordered ten stripes for being in the street on Sunday night without a pass.
George Brown, the property of John L. Ligon, received twenty stripes for having no pass.
Wm. Heath, hired to Mayo & Atkinson, was flogged for failing to get permission to leave home.
—–‘Uncle Tom's Cabin’ is the name of a new Anti-Slavery paper just started in Providence, R. I.
WM. W. BROWN.—A Leeds paper, of a late date, states that Wm. W. Brown had just delivered an Anti-Slavery lecture in that city. He gave a sketch of “the system of Slavery as it prevails at the present time in the United States, and, as he was able to illustrate his statements by facts occurring in his own experience as a slave for upwards of twenty years, they made a deep impression upon all present. He showed, from the passing, in 1850, and subsequent operation of the Fugitive Slave Law, that, instead of advancing, the United States were retrograding on this important question; and called upon the people of England to enter their protest on all suitable occasions against that atrocious system which not only fetters, but enslaves the minds, of all who are its unfortunate victims. Mr. Brown brought forward many instances, for the truth of which he could vouch, to show that the charges brought against Mrs. Stowe of exaggeration in ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin’ were entirely unfounded, and that her description of slave life and its results in the Southern States of America were true to the life. He concluded a most able address, marked throughout by a moderation of tone which, when we consider how much he has suffered from the system he was denouncing, cannot be too highly commended, amidst the loud applause of the audience. The Rev. T. Adkins, in moving a vote of thanks to Mr. Brown, which was carried by acclamation, contrasted the state of feeling at the present time in this town on the subject with that which prevailed some years since, when the public mind was first directed to the existence of West Indian Slavery with a view to its abolition, and when the Town Hall, at a meeting held to discuss the question, was packed by a large party, including a great number of the gentry and clergy, opposed to any interference with the system as it then prevailed. We are glad to hear that Mr. Brown has consented to deliver two more addresses here in the course of the following week. The more public attention is directed to the matter, the better, and no one can more ably or faithfully depict the horrors of Slavery than one who has spent so many of the best years of his life in the midst of them.”
AN EXCELLENT DECISION.—An action was brought in the Brooklyn City Court, last week, against one Coffee, an omnibus-driver, by a coloured woman for assault and battery. The complainant entered the omnibus of which the defendant was driver, who, when he discovered, after driving some distance, that she was not perfectly white, ordered her out. On her refusing to obey, he resorted to force to compel her to do so.
The Jury found the accused guilty of the assault and battery charged, considering that his defence, that it was the order of the proprietors of the line not to allow coloured people to ride inside their stages, amounted to nothing.
HON. HORACE MANN will accept our thanks for a copy of the 2d Part of the Patent office Report on agriculture. We are indebted also to Hon. S. A. DOUGLASS, of the Senate, for a copy of his speech on the Monroe Doctrine; and to HON. CHALES DURKEE, of the House, for a pamphlet copy of Mr. Everetts Address at the Annual Meeting of the Colonisation Society.
LEWIS W. PAINE IN CONNECTICUT.—Mr. Paine— better known as the author of “Five Years in a Georgia Prison” than as a lecturer—has been holding meetings recently in Bridgeport, Conn. A correspondent there—D. E. Rathbun—writes that he lectured there three evenings. At the close of his first lecture “a gentleman arose and requested him to speak again the following evening. This second lecture proved so edifying to the audience that the same person arose again and requested the sense of the meeting relative to Mr. Paine's lecturing another evening in the city.
“The expression being warm and unanimous, Mr. Paine consented to stay; and if the expressions of the people by deep and earnest attention and frequent applause are any criterion, he has done a good work here, and, to say the least, has left the most favourable impression.
His expositions of the hypocrisy, double-dealings and duplicity of Politicians and the Clergy, and his answers to the objections to the Cause were triumphant. There was a deep and heartfelt interest in them, and a bold and fearless spirit.”
Mr. Paine, the
POLITICS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.—A correspondent in New Hampshire writes thus of the state of feeling in that State on the question of Slavery:
“Our annual election is near at hand, but politics are on rather slack water. At the late Presidential election, the pro-slavery mania had seized upon our Hunker politicians with great violence, but the crisis seems now to be past. Many even of the Hunker Democrats say they won't catch ‘niggers’ for anybody— that they can elect to office whom they please without the votes of slaveholders—and that the South may look after their own Peculiar Institution as best they can. There is an undercurrent of Anti-Slavery which at some time may sweep away the rubbish intermixed with the affairs of Church and State, and then the pioneers in the cause of Emancipation will be held in due regard, and will receive the plaudits of the good and true all the world over.”
A CORRESPONDENT in Knox Co., Ohio, says, in a private letter: ‘We have just had some lectures round here by J. W. Walker. Though his views on Anti-Slavery are ultra, his lectures were remarkably well attended and very favourably received. Not long ago a man could not open his lips against Slavery in these parts without subjecting himself to the greatest abuse, and the most disgusting forms of persecution. Now the people will come in greater numbers to hear an Anti-Slavery lecturer than almost any other.’
Mr. Walker is a most efficient, zealous and indefatigable lecturer, and the change of feeling in that part of Ohio is no doubt owing, in a measure, to his labours. We believe he rarely visits any locality without leaving behind him a better state of public opinion than he found on entering it.
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Hon. WM L. MARCY, N. Y., Secretary of State.
Hon. JAMES GUTHRIE, Ky., Secretary of the Treasury.
Hon. ROBERT MCCLELLAND, Mich., Secretary of the Interior.
Hon. JEFFERSON DAVIS, Miss., Secretary of War.
Hon. JAMES C. DOBBIN, N. C., Secretary of the Navy.
Hon. JAMES CAMPBELL, Penn., Postmaster-General.
Hon. CALEB CUSHING, Mass., Attorney-General.
TO MRS. EX-PRESIDENT JOHN TYLER AND OTHERS.
I quote the following from your recent reply to the address of the Women of England to the Women of the United States, on the subject of your peculiar and domestic institution—“Negro Slavery.”
“We prefer to follow our own conception of what is “proper for us to do. Our eyes are turned across the “ocean, not in the direction of England, but of Africa. “The footprints of our policy are seen in the colonies “there established, already become independent States— “in the voluntary emancipation of slaves by our “citizens as preparatory to emigration to Africa. * * * “Thus we seek to retribute the wrongs done by England “to Africa, by returning civilization for barbarism “—Christianity for idolatry.”
An enquiry naturally suggests itself: Have your
operations in these respects lessened Slavery or mitigated
the suffering of the slave in the United States?
I answer, they have not; on the contrary, you endeavoured
to increase the slaveholding interest in the
legislature, by the acquisition of slaveholding territory,
and you have succeeded. You have increased, by legal
enactments, the difficulties of your citizens emancipating
their slaves. You have obtained from the Legislature
“a fugitive slave law,” which can hardly be reconciled
with the oft-repeated statements of slaveholders,
that the slaves are happy and contented, and do
not desire their freedom. In 1790, the slave population
of the United States was under 700,000, it is now
3,000,000 to 4,000,000; you have thus increased the
legacy of slaves left you by England, five-fold; by
England, did I say! no, they were enslaved by laws
made by Americans, your ancestors. Slavery could no
more properly exist then under English law than it can
now. And be it remembered, that those laws were
made by Americans in violation of the charters granted
by England to her American colonies. In 1782, 10,000
slaves were set free in Virginia, but this happened before
the Colonisation Scheme came into operation or the
present legal obstacles had been thrown in the way of
emancipation by the Christian legislators of America—
your fathers and your husbands, over whom you, the
women of America, have such influence. But if the
women of England have no right to interfere by giving
advice in the domestic affairs of the United States, I
should like to know what right you, the women of the
United States, have to interfere in more than the
merely domestic affairs of the African people. You will
suffer no intrusion of advice, forsooth, on the subjects of
religion, or morality, in relation to your domestic institution,
and you say, look at home—physician heal
thyself. That the
Had the United States possession of the broad acres
of the African continent, as she has of the American—
and who knows, in her onward progress to extend the
area of slaveholding territory, how soon she may look
in the direction of Africa—could we expect from you any
better treatment than that to which you have subjected
the native Indian tribes, and to which you subject the
African race in your midst?
I have thus attempted to deal candidly with you in disclosing some of the grounds of the suspicion which, in the estimation of many, attaches to your proceedings. I will go farther and inform you that it is better for you to abstain in future from all possible interference in the domestic concerns of other countries. In this respect, the Women of Africa have not troubled you much, however cruel the treatment you inflict upon “YOUR NEGROES;” they have never on such occasions intruded themselves into your domestic circles, to deprive you of any gratification which it may have afforded you. In the first place, such interference would come with ill grace from either of you, and can be received with no favour. In morals, they consider themselves quite your equals, and therefore it sounds harshly in their ears to be admonished by you of their sins. There is a proud heart in the African breast which rebels against all usurpation on the part of others, no matter to what race they belong, or however white may be their skin. Manage your own affairs as best you may, and leave them to manage theirs as they think proper.
I will point you to the true field of your philanthrophy.
In view of your stately mansions there is
enough to excite your most active sympathies; look to
the Southern plantation, the dreaded hell of the American
slave; your large cities are teeming with a population
as depraved and criminal as any found in Africa.
While these exist among you, you have no right to cast
your sympathies upon Africa. Go, my good Mrs. Ex-President
Tyler, on an embassy of mercy to the
American slave; give him that liberty which you appreciate
so much for yourselves, and then cast into his
lap the superflux of your wealth which has been wrung
from his unrequited toil. Did I say go to your own
slaves? that you will not do; to the heathen in other
lands you will go. There are Bibles, and gospel, and
civilization for him, but none for your own worse than
heathen slaves; and why? because that is an American
affair; it is an affair connected with your own ease and
luxury, and by which you have your wealth. It would
imperil, forsooth, the very existence of the free, independent
and Christian Republic of the United States.
What freedom, imperial freedom; yes, the poor slave
may toil and labour, and stretch his heartstrings until
they crack, and yet the good ladies of the South will
express no sympathy for him; they will in no event
disturb themselves with the past, present or future
condition of the slave, except with the dread of his future
emancipation; we see, therefore, no reason why
you should leave
I reason not with you on the subject of the domestic
institutions of Africa. Such as they are, they are
theirs. “They fear the Greeks, though bearing presents.”
Never was adage more applicable. Though
professing friendship and sympathy, they cannot consent
that the United States should mix herself up with
their concerns. They prefer to work out their own
destiny. Where she can do the African race good, she
gives no relief; they ask for bread, she gives a stone.
Under her policy and laws, they become property, and
constitute a large portion of Southern wealth, and you
will allow no intrusion even of advice as to your individual
property rights; yet you desire to meddle with
African affairs, to introduce a religion and civilization
among them which you say will put an end to Slavery;
but the African mind is not so obtuse as to be led into
the belief that what you esteem as right and good in
America, you ever regard as a dreadful crime with
them—that the slave trade can be so immoral, and so
opposed to the civilization of Africa, while it forms part
and parcel of the religious civilization of the United
States. If it be a crime they say, first cast the beam
out of your own eye, that you may see clearly to take
the mote out of theirs. You have shown considerable
resentment by being addressed on the subject of your
domestic affairs by the ladies of England; and why
should not the ladies of Africa feel and show equal
resentment by being interfered with by you? They
are content to leave you in the possession of your religion
and your peculiar institutions, and they insist
upon the right to regulate their own without your aid.
They pray you to bear in mind that
We must also say to you frankly that they regard the United States as an indifferent adviser on the subject of Negro Slavery or the Slave Trade. The African wants no such laws and no such religion as you have in the South. They prefer to follow what is their own conception of what is proper for them to do. It is not to you they would look for religion or civilization; their eyes would rather turn in the direction of England; they see the footprints of her religion and her policy on her colonies; she has given liberty to the slave; she has let the oppressed African race go free; nor has she formed any scheme to banish them from any part of her dominions where they may choose to dwell. The African under her rule is happy in the enjoyment of liberty; he is not now sold as a beast; although the master no longer enriches himself by the unlawful gain. Africa desires no such boon as you would bestow upon her.
Africa and her children might love the United States
if the United States would permit them. A common
descent—for “God hath made of one blood all nations
of men, to dwell on the face of the whole earth”—a
common inheritance of freedom, and mutual interests,
should draw them together. The disposition of the
African mind—I speak what I do know—is to cultivate
the closest friendship with you. But if the United
States still persists in severing these ties—if, instead
of cultivating good feeling, of doing justly and loving
mercy, she subjects the African race to injury and
wrong, to taunt, to ridicule and insult in its grossest
forms, and,
My intermixture of Anglo-Saxon with the pure Negro blood, derived from my mother, who was descended from a leader of two African tribes, in no degree abates my ardour and enthusiasm in the cause of freedom, while the earnestness, sincerity and devotion which characterize the Negro race inspire me with aversion to all manner of cant and hypocrisy.
ELIZABETH JACKSON.
New York, February 10, 1853.
