LETTER FROM REV. J. SELLA MARTIN.

—
Boston May 9th, 1861.

MY DEAR FRIEND:—I arise from the perusal of your last Monthly with feelings that I cannot repress. I have re-read the three leading articles from your pen, and I have concluded that they are among, if not the ablest articles that you ever wrote; and strange to say, or rather paradoxical as it may seem, it is this very conclusion that gives me pain, and that dictates the outburst of feeling that seeks relief in this letter. Why can't we have the daily, rather than the monthly utterances of FREDERICK DOUGLASS? To me it is a desolating thought that there is as little preparation on our part to enjoy, as there is a disposition on the part of the whites to confer our rights. With the present condition of things among us, we should lose whatever we got, with as much indifference as we now submit to what we have lost.

The war seems to promise something to us;
but in the name of manhood, must our hope
depend forever upon the negative influences
of Providence? Must we forever gain what
ever good we have from the white man's bad?
We are not even alive to the promises of this
war, and it does seem that in peace or war
we constantly alternate between the two
points of social and political paralysis—from
the apathy of indifference, to the apathy of
despair.

Excuse this train of feeling. I know that
your keen sympathies and earnest solicitude
finds enough to give pain and discouragement
without such ungracious remindings from me.
But I desired you to know there are a great
many alive to the services which you have
rendered your people, and to let you know
of our sorrow that fate had been apparently
so begrudging as to refuse the social and pe
cuniary food to such a noble mouth as we
have in Rochester.

I took your paper to the Atlas and Bee
office, and I see they have used many of your
ideas in an editorial without giving credit.—
So it is; the whites keep from us all they
can, and then steal what we get in spite of
them. Are not these Northern people the
most arrant cowards, as well as the biggest
fools on earth? Just think of Dimmick and
Slemmer sending back the fugitives that
sought protection of them. They refuse to
let white men sell the Southerners food, and
yet they return slaves to work on the plan
tation to raise all the food that the Southern
ers want. They arrest traitors, and yet make
enemies of the colored people, North and
South; and if they do force the slave to
fight for his master, as the only hope of being
benefited by the war, they may thank their
own cowardice and prejudice for the revenge
of the negro's aim, and the retribution of his
bullet while fighting against them in the
Southern States. I received a letter from
Mobile, in which the writer states that the re
turning of those slaves by Slemmer has made
the slaves determined to fight for the South,
in the hope that their masters may set them
free after the war, and when remonstrated
with, they say that the North will not let them
fight for them. I preached in one of the
richest white churches Sabbath before last,
upon the war, and made this statement and
it has called forth a number of communications
from the merchants and others; and the
Herald, in a leader yesterday, asked if the
North sent her Generals there for that pur
pose, and said it would pause for a reply.

Yours, J. SELLA MARTIN.