prominent were Judge Harris,⁴Ira Harris (1802-75) was born in Montgomery County, New York. After graduating from Union College in Schenectady, New York, he studied law in Albany. In 1827 he was admitted to the bar and began practicing law in Albany. He lectured at the Albany Law School upon its founding, in 1850. Harris served as a justice of the New York State Supreme Court from 1847 to 1859; was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate, where he served one term (1861-67); and returned to the Albany Law School in 1867, where he remained until his death in 1875. (online). Thurlow Weed⁵Beginning as a printer’s apprentice, Thurlow Weed (1797-1882) had become one of the nation’s leading political journalists by midcentury. In 1830 he founded the Albany Evening Journal as the state organ of the Anti-Masonic party. Allying himself with the rising politician William H. Seward, Weed became a powerful figure in the Whig and the Republican parties. Although he preferred a more moderate antislavery approach, he nevertheless frequently praised Douglass’s abolitionist activities. Weed’s national influence declined after the Civil War, but he played a key role in
persuading Republicans in New York to select Douglass as one of their presidential electors in 1872. Glyndon G. Van Deusen, (Boston, 1947); , 3:12-13; , 19:598-600.—whom every body, that is any body, knows—Speaker Littlejohn,⁶Born in Oneida County, N.Y., De Witt Clinton Littlejohn (1818-92) briefly attended college before pursuing a number of mercantile pursuits. He was elected mayor of Oswego, New York, in 1849 and again in 1855. Originally a Whig, Littlejohn joined the Republican party upon its organization. He was a member of the New York State Assembly in 1853-55, 1857, 1859-61, 1866, 1867, 1870, 1871, and 1884, and he served as Speaker in 1859-61, 1866, 1867, 1870, and 1871. Littlejohn worked vigorously for Abraham Lincoln; he was offered a position as consul at Liverpool, but declined the post. In 1862, Littlejohn helped raise the 110th Regiment of the New York Volunteers, eventually becoming its colonel. He resigned his commission in the following year upon being elected to Congress from New York’s Twenty-second District, where he served until 1865. Littlejohn was deeply involved in the formation of the unsuccessful New-York and Oswego Midland Railroad Company, which opened in 1871. It was reorganized as the New-York, Ontario and Western Railroad in 1873. In 1872, Littlejohn temporarily left the Republican party to support Democrat Horace Greeley’s bid for president. He later returned to the Republican fold and was elected to the New York State Assembly for the twelfth time in 1884. (online). Lieut. Gov. Raymond,⁷Henry Jarvis Raymond (1820-69), journalist and politician, was born in Lima, New York. After graduating from the University of Vermont in 1840, he moved to New York to work for Horace Greeley’s New York . In 1848, uncomfortable under the sway of the liberal Greeley, the more conservative Raymond left his mentor’s newspaper to become the editor of the New York and soon after . Increasingly disturbed by the political partisanship of city newspapers, Raymond and another associate inaugurated the New York in September 1851 with the intention of more dispassionately reporting the day’s events. Raymond remained editor of the prosperous paper until his death in 1869, but was also a key figure at both the state and national level in the Whig and Republican parties, eventually gaining a seat in Congress from 1865 to 1867. Francis Brown, (New York, 1951); , 8:482-83; , 15:408-12; (online). Senators Crosby,⁸Clarkson Floyd Crosby (1817-58) was born to William Bedlow Crosby and Harriet Ashton (Clarkson) Crosby. He attended Union College, but being independently wealthy, he never practiced any particular profession. On 8 September 1838, he married Angelica Schuyler, with whom he had two children. One of them, John Schuyler Crosby, became territorial governor of Montana. Crosby resided in Albany County, New York, and served in the New York State Assembly in 1845. In both 1854 and 1855, Crosby was elected from the Eleventh District to the New York State Senate. New York , 23 February 1858; Franklin B. Hough, comp., (Albany, N.Y., 1858), 137, 140, 230, 268, 331. Brooks,⁹Erastus Brooks (1815-1886) was born in Portland, Maine. He attended Brown University but did not graduate, leaving college early to start a newspaper in Maine. In 1840 he joined his brother James as a managing editor of the New York . Brooks gained recognition for his opposition in a public debate to the Roman Catholic Church’s exemption from property taxes. He served in the New York State Senate from 1853 to 1857 as a member of the Know-Nothing, or American, party. In 1856 he was the American party’s nominee for governor of New York, but lost the election and subsequently joined the Democratic party. Brooks served in the New York state constitutional convention of 1866-67 and on the constitution commission of 1872-73. He served Richmond County in the New York State Assembly from 1878 to 1883. Brooks was a founder of the Associated Press, and served for a time as its manager. , 6:47-481; , 3:76-77. and Dickinson,¹⁰Andrew Bray Dickinson (1801-73) of Steuben County served as a member of the New York State Assembly in 1830. From 1840 to 1843 he represented the Sixth District, and from 1854 to 1855 the Twenty-sixth District, in the New York State Senate. In 1856 he was a member of the New York delegation to the National Republican Convention. A friend of Secretary of State William H. Seward, Dickinson was appointed U.S. minister to Nicaragua in 1861. His tenure, which lasted until 1869, is most notable for the Dickinson-Ayon Treaty (1867), which guaranteed the United States transit rights, free ports, and limited rights of military intervention. The treaty, which remained in effect until the end of the century, kept open the Nicaraguan transit route (as an alternative to Panama) for the location of a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. De Alva Stanwood Alexander, , 3 vols. (1906; Port Washington, N. Y., 1969), 2: 39-45, 397-401; Jay Monaghan, (1945; New York, 1997), 68; David M. Pletcher, (Columbia, Mo., 1998), 123. and in fact the whole Legislature. Every body who heard the speech spoke of it as a masterly, eloquent, and unanswerable effort. I will not mention any of the encomiums which were lashed upon it, for the reason that they will never see the light. The impression produced by the speech must be great good to the cause.

Our colored citizens have sent in a petition,¹¹In his second letter to Douglass, dated 24 April 1855, Inspector described the lobbying by New York African Americans to get the State Assembly to begin the process of removing the disabilities that restricted black men’s ability to vote. A petition from Long Island blacks to remove the property qualifications for suffrage launched the effort. Political alignments in the New York legislature were undergoing a rapid transformation, and a coalition of Whigs, Know-Nothings, and Republicans passed a measure in April, by a vote of 66-34, to remove that requirement. The reform attempt, however, failed the next day in the state senate. Black leaders in New York such as James McCune Smith credited Douglass’s lecture in the state capitol in February with having assisted the suffrage effort immeasurably. , 16 March, 4 May 1855; Phyllis F. Field, (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982), 89-93. numerously signed, asking the Legislature to adopt the preliminary measures to remove the political disabilities under which we labor. The feeling here among the members seems to be favorable; and all things considered among them, the good spirits in which the majority of the Legislature are, consequent upon the return of that noble champion of equal rights for all, (without regard to clime or color,) William H. Seward. It is much to be regretted that our colored friends, in various parts of the State, do not inundate the Legislature with petitions—for I think it entirely safe to affirm, that we will never get our rights unless we ask for them.

The colored Methodist friends have nearly finished a very neat and comfortable House of Worship, quite eligibly situated in Hamilton Street.¹²The Israel A.M.E. Church, on Hamilton Street, in Albany, New York, is the oldest black church in New York’s capital. The Albany congregation dates from 1828, when it was established by the Reverend William Cornish. The first structure, built on a lot purchased in 1842, burned three years after the church began building it. The second attempt at construction on Hamilton Street was finished in 1854. It is believed that the church’s pastor at the time, Thomas Jackson, designed the building. Harriet Tubman used the church as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Albany (N.Y.) , 7 May 1988; Marcella Thum, (New York, 1991), 231. If any one person is more entitled to credit than another, that person is the Rev. Mr. Weir,¹³The Reverend George Weir, Sr., presided at Buffalo’s Vine Street A.M.E. Church. Both Weir and his son, carrying the same name, corresponded frequently with on antislavery activities in the Buffalo region. , 31 March 1854, 15 February 1856, 20 February, 13 November 1857, 12 November, 3 December 1858; Foner and Walker, , 1:80. who took hold and acted nobly in getting means to erect it. Mr. Weir is one who acts as well as talks. Verily, he will have his reward.

INSPECTOR.

PLSr: , 16 March 1855.