L. DELOS MANSFIELD¹Born in Rodman, New York, the Reverend Dr. L. Delos Mansfield (1821-1900) attended Oberlin College, performed missionary work in the West Indies, became the pastor of churches in California, Illinois, and New York, and acted as the principal and president of the Rockland Female Institute in Nyack, New York. Along with Douglass, he served as a representative for New York at the 1856 Radical Abolitionists’ convention in Syracuse. In 1857, while residing in Auburn, New York, Mansfield participated in activities associated with the Underground Railroad. New York , 28 May 1856; Boston , 5 September 1867; San Francisco , 9 April 1878; Chicago , 9 April 1878, 9 May 1881, 15 May 1887, 13 January 1889; New York , 12 May 1900; William Still, (Philadelphia, 1872), 54. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

New York, [N.Y.] 12 Aug[ust] 1853.

MY DEAR DOUGLASS:—

Your paper is a welcome visitor, as it comes weekly to my table; and I feel more interest in its prosperity, than I care to entertain without expressing.

I regard it as the organ of your deeply-wronged and oppressed people; and as such, eminently deserving of the patronage of all who are interested in their moral, social and political elevation. I am pained at the course pursued towards you in Boston, by those whom common interests should have led to make common cause with you.

I honor your independence in denying that in order to evince your gratitude toward Mr. GarrisonGarrison, William Lloyd

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was the foremost white abolitionist of the nineteenth century and was credited with the discovery of Douglass as a speaker at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket in 1841. He began his career as an apprentice printer on the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald at the age of thirteen. Garrison became editor of the Newburyport Free Press in 1826, but the paper closed within a year. He was then associated with a series of periodicals in Boston that advocated reform before Benjamin Lundy offered the young journalist the opportunity to write for his antislavery newspaper. Garrison joined Lundy in editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1829, during the last year of the paper's 1821-1830 run. In 1830 a libel suit against the editors forced the paper to close and landed Garrison in jail. After his release, he courted the wealthy merchants of New York and Boston in order to start the Liberator (1831-65), a weekly journal based in Boston in which he advocated an immediate end to slavery. Garrison's brand of abolition condemned any institution that would tolerate the existence of slavery, including churches, political parties. and even the United States itself and any scheme aimed at removing black people from the country. Instead, Garrison hoped to raise the public's awareness that slavery was morally wrong and thereby force its end in an almost millennial moment of emancipation. His approach appealed to both white and black antislavery advocates but earned him many enemies among those only moderately opposed to slavery and slaveholders alike. Seeing the need for greater action and organization beyond the pages of the Liberator; Garrison joined with other abolitionists to form the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1831. Two years later he helped found the larger American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 he established ties with English abolitionists after a trip to Great Britain, and he later brought the noted and notorious speaker George Thompson to the United States for a tour. Garrison also dedicated himself to women's rights, encouraging women to enter the public sphere by inviting them, via the Liberator, to form female antislavery societies. In addition to the thirty-three women's antislavery societies that flourished by 1838, Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society welcomed women as well as blacks into its ranks. However, female delegates were excluded from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London. The issue of women's participation in the antislavery movement and Garrison's absolute refusal to turn to politics to end slavery caused a division in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, who opposed women's acting as speakers and who hoped to use politics toward abolition, broke with Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society, forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, or the "New Organization" in 1841. Garrison's ideas were so closely associated with the "Old Organization" that the American Anti-Slavery Society became known simply as the "Garrisonians." With the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Garrison believed that he had accomplished his life's work and that of the antislavery movement. He then resigned from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and closed the Liberator. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (New York, 188589); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998); James Brewer Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1992); John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1963); Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928-36), 7:168-72. ,²William Lloyd Garrison. you must be a mental menial. You do well to carry out the abolition doctrines to their legitimate issues, by insisting that liberty of speech and thought, are to be held the birthright of men, equally with personal liberty. There is a want of magnanimity in the course pursued toward you by some of your old friends, that surprises me; but I will hope, that even those will award to you, ultimately, the privilege of being —of being —at liberty to disagree with benefactors, without the charge of “ingratitude.”

I was much gratified by the honorable manner in which your people acquitted themselves at your “National Convention.”³Mansfield refers to the National Convention of Colored Citizens held in Rochester, New York, on 6, 7, and 8 July 1853. , 24 June 1853. I think it must exert a powerful influence in correcting that false and mischievous notion of the incapacity of your people for a high degree of improvement. It is plain that prejudice is giving way considerably, and that your people will steadily move forward to a position of social equality with the white race. Even in our great cotton mart there is a little prospect of the ultimate removal of that vulgar and senseless prejudice, which now excludes colored people from our cars and stages.⁴For much of the nineteenth century, custom and social attitudes limited blacks’ use of public transportation. As early as 1841 the Massachusetts railroad offices began using the phrase “Jim Crow” to designate passenger cars for blacks. This term and practice quickly became widespread and was codified into law in the 1890s as states began restricting transportation for blacks. Most laws focused on railroad transportation, but steamboats, stagecoaches, and street railway systems were also affected. A Philadelphia district court upheld a ruling in 1861 requiring blacks to ride on the outside of streetcars regardless of the car’s seating or standing capacity or the state of the weather. The federal government sanctioned such practices and laws in 1878 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Louisiana state statute prohibiting racial discrimination in transportation, on the grounds that the law interfered with interstate commerce. Abraham L. Davis and Barbara Luck Graham, (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 1995), 18, 21, 40; Foner, , 200-202.

A colored friend of mine, from the West Indies, an invalid, was obliged, when alone, to mount the omnibus (though scarcely possessed of sufficient strength to do so;) but when I was with him, I took him inside unmolested. I think a little effort on the part of white friends, to bring in their colored brethren to the public conveyances, would gradually overcome the prejudice which now exists. Prejudice is a plant of slow growth, and is generally eradicated by the same progress. Formerly ,⁵Drunkards. and all sorts of vagabonds, had free access to the cars, while respectable colored people were excluded. I see, however, that lately one of the most respectable of our city roads has refused men who are drunk; and I hope they will soon rescind their barbarous practice of excluding persons on account of color.

The influx of Chinese,⁶Although it is impossible to determine what precisely led Mansfield to anticipate an “influx” of Asians intent upon visiting the New York Crystal Palace Exhibition (or as it was known officially, the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations) in 1853, he was not alone in doing so. In 1852 the Brooklyn endorsed New York’s upcoming world’s fair as a symbol of the idea that “national prejudices and national egotisms [were] being displaced by the truths of solidarity and universal brotherhood.” Emblematic of this new era, according to the , was the fact that people as disparate as Turks, Russians, and Chinese would be able to “mingle [freely] in one enterprise” with English and American visitors. There is little evidence, however, that this proved to be the case. Although the fair included displays of Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian artifacts, most were taken from private collections belonging to either American or European collectors. Neither China nor most other Asian nations submitted exhibitions of their own. According to city officials, fewer than 150 Chinese resided in New York in the early 1850s. Brooklyn (N.Y.) , 24 November 1852; Warren I. Cohen, (New York, 1992), 13, 20-21; John Kuo Wei Tchen, (Baltimore, 1999), 74-77. and others from the East Indies, to attend our Great Exhibition,⁷Inspired by London’s larger and more famous “Crystal Palace Exhibition” of 1851, the New York World’s Fair—also known as the New York Crystal Palace Exhibition—opened in mid-July 1853 with 4,854 industrial, agricultural, and art exhibits from the United States and twenty-three foreign countries. A decline in attendance and revenues prompted beleaguered stockholders to name P. T. Barnum president of the exhibition in 1854. When Barnum’s showmanship failed to revive the fair, the project was abandoned. Frank Monaghan, (New York, 1939), 14-15; James Ford Rhodes, , 9 vols. (New York, 1886-1929), 1:414-16. will aid, I hope, in this matter; for they are generally of quite a dark complexion. I hope, too, that European feelings, exhibited in the visitants at the Exhibition, will do something in that direction.

A friend of mine, and one of the most beloved and worthy members of our church, who went as a servant in the family of one of our wealthy merchant princes, about a year since, to make the tour of Europe—writes me from Paris, that his color (he is black) is no bar to his associations there with the whites;⁸The French briefly abolished slavery in 1794 before reinstating the practice in 1802. The proclamation of the Second Republic in 1848 permanently abolished slavery, but in the early nineteenth century, African Americans living in France were rare. Those that did travel across the Atlantic were often artists, musicians, lawyers, or professors who settled in Paris. Most were members of the wealthy New Orleans elite and already spoke French. While allowed to pursue a wider range of opportunities and careers in France, blacks still faced racial prejudice. William B. Cohen, (Bloomington, Ind., 1980), 181, 209; Michel Fabre, (Urbana, Ill., 1991), 9, 17, 27, 337; Sue Peabody, (New York, 1996), 58; Patrice Higonnet, , trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), 339-40. and his complaint is that he is noticed too much, and he evidently feels embarrassed to be addressed and treated as an . The family declare that “he receives more attentions than they do.” Oh! [W]hat miserable democrats are Americans! [A]nd what a miserable Christianity it is, too, which tolerates caste in our churches!

I am happy to say, however, that by the blessing of God, New York is to have one more church (though it be of humble dimensions compared with our ) where a free gospel is to be preached to all, without distinction of color. The ⁹The Reverend Mansfield was the pastor of the Advent Mission Church located at 39 Forsyth Street in New York City. New York , 10 December 1853. (of which I have the care) have erected a neat and comfortable chapel at 39 Forsyth St., where have no place, and we intend never shall. Where colored people are at home, by an acknowledged right, not by an , sometimes quite as humiliating as actual deprecation of place.

I hope sometime to hear your earnest and eloquent appeals within the walls of our chapel, in behalf of your injured race, with whom I deeply sympathize, and for whose good I am ever ready to be used.

In addition to my own and our church’s sympathy for your cause, we are laid under some obligation to make our chapel useful to the cause of the oppressed, from the fact, that Gerrit Smith, Arthur Tappan,¹⁰Arthur Tappan (1786-1865) began work as a dry-goods clerk in Boston, but by the age of fifty had become a prosperous silk-jobbing merchant in New York City. Believing that his wealth obligated him to be “a STEWARD of the Lord,” Tappan gave generously of his time and money to such reform organizations as the American Bible Society, the American Tract Society, the American Home Missionary Society, and other efforts committed to rooting out moral vice of every sort, including intemperance. Oberlin College was founded largely through his financial contributions, and he made timely contributions at an early period to Garrison’s . After renouncing his membership in the American Colonization Society, Tappan devoted most of his philanthropic energies to the antislavery movement. In 1833 he helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society, but seven years later he left the organization because of tactical disagreements with the Garrisonians and helped organize the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Tappan served as the first president of both these major antislavery organizations and was an early supporter of the Liberty party. When missionary societies with which he had been affiliated failed to adhere to his antislavery principles, he cut his connection with them and, in 1846, helped establish the American Missionary Association. Tappan tried to promote schools and colleges for free blacks in the North, but local racist feeling frustrated his efforts. Lewis Tappan, (New York, 1870); Bertram Wyatt-Brown, (Cleveland, 1969); , 6:33; , 2:320-21; , 18:298-300, 303-04. Dennis Harris,¹¹Dennis Harris (c. 1806-68) was an ardent abolitionist and New York businessman. His New Congress Sugar Refinery in New York was a popular stop on the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves. Harris was instrumental in opening 158th Street in New York City to water traffic when he built a dock and obtained a charter for steamboat service that allowed him to transport passengers. New York , 30 March 1868; Reginald Pelham Bolton, (New York, 1924), 114-15; Tom Calarco, The Underground Railroad in the Adirondack Region (Jefferson, N.C., 2004), 178. S. P. Townsend,¹²Described in the New York as the “sarsapharilla millionaire,” Dr. Samuel P. Townsend (1813-70) suffered a serious financial loss in 1858 after losing a suit concerning the division of corporate assets with the family of a deceased partner. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, New York, 362A; New York , 2 February 1858. and others, have not forgotten us in their munificent and numerous contributions to the cause of humanity.