MARTIN ROBINSON DELANY¹Born to a free mother and a slave father in Charlestown in western Virginia, Martin Robinson Delany (1812-85) was an editor, physician, and leading advocate of black emigration. In 1822, Delany and his mother moved to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where his father later joined them, and the young Delany attended a local school. In 1831 he moved to Pittsburgh, where he worked as a barber, attended a school run by a black Methodist minister, and studied medicine. Between 1843 and 1847, Delany was editor of the a black Pittsburgh newspaper. For the next two years he served as coeditor of Douglass’s and lectured extensively to gain new subscriptions for that paper. In 1850 and 1851, Delany attended Harvard Medical School, but owing to protests from white students, the school denied him admission to the final term needed to complete his medical degree. The following year he wrote (1852), in which he argued that emigration was the only remedy for the oppressed state of black Americans. When many black abolitionists, including Douglass, rejected Delany’s position, he organized a series of National Emigration Conventions that met in 1854, 1856, and 1858. These assemblies created a permanent National Board of Commissioners, of which Delany was president and chief propagandist. In 1856, Delany moved to Chatham, Canada West, and three years later he explored the Niger River Valley in Africa, looking for possible emigration sites. His novel Blake was serialized in the from November 1861 through May 1862. During the Civil War, Delany served the North first as a recruiter and examining surgeon and eventually as a major of the 104th U.S. Colored Troops. From 1865 to 1868, Delany was a Freedmen’s Bureau officer in South Carolina and later was active in that state’s politics, running unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor on the Independent Republican ticket in 1874. Martin R. Delany, , ed. Floyd J. Miller (Boston, 1970), ix; Thomas Holt, ^*Black over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina during Reconstruction (Urbana, Ill, 1977), 74-75, 176-77, Dorothy Sterling, (Garden City, N.Y., 1971); Victor Ullman, (Boston, 1971); Miller, 115-33, 171-83; , 5:219-20. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Pittsburgh, [Pa.] 20 March 1853.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, ESQ:

DEAR SIR:—

I notice in your paper of March 4th, an article²Delany quotes from an article by Douglass entitled “A Day and a Night in ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’,” which appeared in on 4 March 1853. in which you speak of having paid a visit to Mrs. H. E. B. Stowe, for the purpose, as you say, of consulting her. “[A]s to some method which should contribute successfully,and permanently, to the improvement and elevation of the free people of color in the United States.” Also, in the number of March 18th, in an article by a writer over the initials of “P. C. S,”³P.C.S.’s letter to the editor appeared in the 18 March 1853 edition of r. in reference to the same subject, he concludes by saying, “I await with much interest the suggestions of Mrs. Stowe in this matter.”

Now I simply wish to say, that we have always fallen into great errors in efforts of this kind, going to others than the and among ourselves; and in all due respect and defference to Mrs. Stowe, I beg leave to say, that she , “the Free Colored people of the United States,” neither does any other white person—and, consequently, can contrive no successful scheme for our elevation; it must be done by ourselves. I am aware, that I differ with many in thus expressing myself, but I cannot help it; though I stand alone, and offend my best friends, so help me God! [I]n a matter of such moment and importance, I will express my opinion. Why, in God’s name, don’t the leaders among our people make suggestions, and the most competent among brethren concerning our elevation? This they do not do; and I have not known one, whose province it was to do so, to go ten miles for such a purpose. We shall never [a]ffect anything until this is done.

I accord with the suggestions of H. O. Wagoner⁴ One of Douglass’s most enduring friendships was with Henry O. Wagoner, Sr. (1816-1901).Born in Hagerstown, Maryland, to a formerly enslaved mother and a German father, Wagoner learned to read and write despite a lack of formal education. He spent most of his youth working on western Maryland farms, but fled to Ohio in 1838 for fear that his Underground Railroad activities had aroused suspicion. The following year he moved to Galena, Illinois, where he found employment as a newspaper typesetter and bill collector. He next worked for a newspaper and taught school in Chatham, Canada West, from 1843 until he relocated to Chicago in 1846 to run a profitable milling business. Wagoner met Douglass during one of the latter’s lecture tours in Illinois in the late 1840s and became an occasional correspondent for Douglass’s newspaper. Wagoner participated in abolitionist activities and aided John Brown in March 1858 by offering his mill as a hiding place for escaping Missouri slaves en route to Canada. During the Civil War, Wagoner recruited black troops for regiments in Illinois and Massachusetts. In 1865 he settled in Denver, Colorado, where he established a barbering business and quickly became a leader in the African American community. An active Republican, Wagoner campaigned for equal male suffrage when Colorado applied for statehood in the 1860s, served as deputy sheriff of Arapaho County, Colorado, between 1865 and 1875, and received an appointment as clerk of the Colorado state legislature in 1876. With years of friend
ship between them, Wagoner and Douglass aided each other’s adult sons. In 1866, Wagoner hosted Frederick Jr. and Lewis in Denver, teaching them typography. Eight years later Douglass returned the favor by helping secure Henry O. Wagoner, Jr., a position as consular clerk in Paris, France. The younger Wagoner died in Lyons, France, and upon the elder Wagoner’s request, Douglass looked for the grave during his 1886 European tour. Henry O. Wagoner to Douglass, 27 August 1866, 10 December 1873, 23 March 1878, 13 July, 13 October 1885, 19 August 1886, 1 September 1890, 17 August 1893, Henry O. Wagoner, Jr., to Douglass, 2 April 1874, 12 May 1877, Douglass to Lewis Douglass, 24 January 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 197-98, 700-703, 733-36, reel 3, frames 122-26, 241-43, reel 4, frames 193, 217-19, 380-81, reel 5, frames 783-84, reel 32, frames 250-51, FD Papers, DLC; NS, 18 February 1848, 24 August 1849; , 11 December 1851; Denver , 28 December 1901; William J. Simmons, g (1887; Chicago 1970), 679-84; Benjamin Quarles, (New York, 1974), 39, 59; Quintard Taylor, (New York, 1998), 123. for a National Council or Consultation⁵In a letter to Douglass, H. O. Wagoner suggested a “North American Convention of colored men.” In an editorial in the same issue of his paper, Douglass had seconded Wagoner’s proposal for a national gathering of leading African Americans “for the purpose of seriously and solemnly considering our present state and condition, and of deliberating, as to the best course to be pursued in relation thereto.” , 18 March 1853. of our people, provided and , in matters among them, could be so gathered together; other than this, would be a mere mockery—like the Convention of 1848,⁶Delany negatively characterizes the National Convention of Colored Citizens, held in Cleveland, Ohio, on 6-8 September 1848. Delany had played an active role at the gathering, and Douglass had been elected its presiding officer. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 2:xxiii; Howard Holman Bell, A (New York, 1969), 94-98. a coming together of rivals, to test their success for the “biggest offices.” As God lives, I will never, knowingly, lend my aid to any such work, while our brethren groan in vassalage and bondage, and I and mine under oppression and degradation, such as we now suffer.

I would not give the counsel of one dozen intelligent colored freemen of the right stamp, for that of all the white and unsuitable colored persons in the land. But something must be done, and that speedily.

The so called free states, by their acts, are now virtually saying to the South, ‘“‘you shall not emancipate; your blacks must be slaves; and should they come North, there is no refuge for them.” I shall not be surprised to see, at no distant day, a solemn Convention called by the whites in the North, to deliberate on the propriety of changing the whole policy to that of slave states. This will be the remedy to prevent dissolution; and it will come, mark that! [A]nything on the part of the American people to save their Union. Mark me—the non-slaveholding states will become slave states.

Yours for God and Humanity,

M. R. DELANY⁷In editorial remarks immediately following this letter, Douglass disagrees with Delany’s criticisms of Harriet Beecher Stowe, encourages unity, and suggests that supporters should heed anyone who attempts to help the African American cause.

PLSr: FDP, 1 April 1853.