AMOS GERRY BEMAN¹Denied regular admission to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, Amos Gerry Beman (1812-74) studied privately with a white student until, threatened with physical violence, he left for Hartford, where he taught briefly in a black school. In 1835 he studied at the Oneida Institute. Three years later the Hartford North Association of Congregational Churches accepted Beman as a licensed candidate for the ministry, and in 1841 he became the first settled black pastor of the Temple Street African Church in New Haven. Like his father, Jehiel C. Beman, he combined preaching with active participation in several reform movements. At the founding convention of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, Beman filled the post of assistant secretary, and in 1844 and 1845 he served as president of Connecticut’s black temperance society. In 1843 he presided at the National Convention of Colored Citizens in Buffalo; twelve years later, at the Philadelphia convention, he was again in the chair. In the interim, he led an unsuccessful campaign for black suffrage in Connecticut and held numerous convention offices. The Rochester convention of 1853 named Beman an original delegate to the National Council. In 1858, Beman resigned his New Haven pulpit, partly in response to pressures generated by his marriage to a white woman after the death of his first wife in 1856. A succession of scattered and briefly held jobs in New England and on Long Island followed. After the Civil War, he engaged in Presbyterian mission work among Tennessee freedmen and served short ministries in Baltimore, Maryland, and Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Throughout his later career, Beman maintained a New Haven residence, and in 1872 he served as chaplain of the Connecticut senate. 1853, 46; Cleveland , 2 February 1884; New Haven (Conn.) , 15, 16 May 1888; Quarles, , 46, 68, 79, 112; Robert A. Warner, “Amos Gerry Beman—1812-1874, A Memoir on a Forgotten Leader,’ , 22:200-221 (April 1937); David O. White, “Hartford’s African Schools, 1830-1868,” , 39:47-53 (April 1974); Patrick C. Kennicott, “Negro Antislavery Speakers in America” (Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 1967), 58-61. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

New Haven, Conn. 4 Sept[ember] 1854.

Mr. DOUGLASS:
DEAR SIR :—
Previous to the arrival of your paper of the 1st inst., I had been informed
by a mutual friend—one of the members of the Council, and present at
the recent meeting in Cleveland, Ohio²A meeting of the National Council, created by the July 1853 Rochester National Convention of Colored Citizens, convened in Cleveland, Ohio, on 19 July 1854. Douglass reported the proceedings of this meeting in his newspaper on 28 July 1854. William D. Day, William C. Nell, and three others publicly protested that Douglass had knowingly published “gross misrepresentations” of what had occurred in Cleveland, especially in regard to their arguments against the Council’s proposed Manual Labor Institute. In the 1 September 1853 issue of his newspaper, to which Beman alludes, Douglass published brief letters from three Council members, J. D. Bonner, John F. Williams, and William H. Storum, attesting to the accuracy of his reporting. , 28 July, 1 September 1854.— that W. H. DayDay, William Howard

William Howard Day (1825-1900). Day was born in New York City. He attended a high school in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he became interested in printing. Possessing considerable skill in Latin and Greek, he was accepted to Oberlin College, from which he graduated in 1847. Day then settled in Cleveland. Soon after, he began to work on repealing the Black Laws of Ohio, calling a convention of African Americans, which met in Cleveland in 1848. He served as chairman on the council that initiated plans for the National Convention of Colored Freemen, of which Frederick Douglass later served as president. This convention served as the forerunner of the more famous meeting of 1853 that took place in Rochester. Day worked as a compositor for the Cleveland Daily True Democrat in 1851-52 before launching his Aliened American, which served as a strong advocate of abolition and social justice for blacks. Moving to Canada to improve his health, Day printed John Brown’s revolutionary provisional constitution for the United States, which was to be implemented if Brown proved successful at Harpers Ferry. Day traveled extensively overseas and founded the African Aid Society with Martin R. Delany. While in Europe, he was welcomed by the lord mayor of Dublin and spoke to several women’s organizations. Returning home after five years, Day became an inspector of schools for freedmen in Maryland and Delaware and founded 140 schools. In 1867 Day was ordained a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. I. Garland Penn, The Afrro-American Press and its Editors (Springfield, Mass., 1891), 74-76; ANB, 6: 275-76. ,³William Howard Day. Esq., and others, had protested against the fairness and truthfulness of your published account of that meeting. Well, I took the paper expecting to find clear and
explicit charges and specifications against that statement, with the proof
in the shape of testimony from those who were members of the Council, and present all the time, and, therefore, able to "speak of what they
knew, and to testify of what they had seen;["] but I must say, that I am
disappointed, and after carefully reviewing the whole proceedings of the
Council, I am satisfied, however painful the avowal, that your statement,
in all material points, is a FAIR AND TRUTHFUL REPRESENTATION OF THE
DOINGS AND SPIRIT of that meeting.—This is my opinion. “To accuse and
prove are very different things;"⁴John 3:11. and when the protesters shall proceed
to fulfil their pledge now given to the public, and present a statement of
FACTS with the proof by which they are sustained, I shall with pleasure
and candor examine it in the light of what I know to be the facts in the
case, and will only say now, “that when they next do ride a race, may I be
there to see.”

Respectfully yours,

AMOS GERRY BEMAN.

PLSr: FDP, 8 September 1854.