JAMES CATLIN¹James Catlin (1824—90), physician and businessman, attended Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. His wife, Martha Van Rensselaer, also a physician, opened their home in Sugar Grove, Pennsylvania, as a station of the Underground Railroad. Together with his brother, Henry, Catlin published the abolitionist weekly in Erie, Pennsylvania, from 1853 to 1861. In 1853 the Catlins were hired by the owners of the Mercer Water-Cure, Robert Hanna and William M. Stephenson. , 13:45, 91 (February and April 1852); Mary Ellen Snodgrass, TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Mercer, Pa. 25 May 1853.

MY DEAR FREDERICK:—

Here I am at last, in a large water cure establishment,²William M. Stephenson opened the Mercer Water-Cure at the beginning of 1853. By July of the same year, Dr. James Catlin and his wife, Martha Van Rensselaer, were managing it. Harry B. Weiss and Howard R. Kemble, (Trenton, N.J., 1967), 194. with the prospect
of fair success.

I have scarcely seen a copy of your paper this month, so busy have I been in leaving my old home,³Catlin had previously resided in Sugar Grove, Pennsylvania. and making a commencement here. But I cannot get on, even in a water cure, without my anti-slavery and temperance papers; and as yours stands on the list, please change my address at once, and let me receive it .

How prospers our noble cause: My whole heart is with it, and I am sometimes almost resolved to devote all my time to it. A of my time go to it while I and the monster wrong of slavery . But in seeking my own health, I have learned to restore the health of others; and so, following the opening made by our good friends, and the friends of humanity and of the right in all directions—Messrs. Robert Hanna⁴Robert Hanna (1802-72) was a businessman and abolitionist. He married Mary Craig, and they built a home on Pitt and East Beaver streets in Mercer, Pennsylvania, which became a stop along the Underground Railroad. Hanna was the chairman of the Mercer County Anti-Slavery Society. Anna Pierpont Siviter, , Charles Henry Ambler, ed.
(New York, 1938), 373-74; Charles L. Blockson, (Jacksonville, N.C., 1981), 126. and Wm. M. Stephenson⁵William M. Stephenson (1808-61) was a successful lawyer in Mercer County, Pennsylvania. He was an active conductor on the Underground Railroad and helped build up the Republican party in northwestern Pennsylvania. (Chicago, 1888), 261. of this place, who have invested between $3000 and $4000 in a cure and its fixtures—I find myself here for one year at least “to heal the sick,”⁶Luke 9:2 or 10:9. and wash disease and suffering from all who may be inclined to step into the life-giving element.

And how sick is this world, as well as socially and morally! What need of physicians who shall be and . Humanity has been drugged with calomel and quinine⁷These were two very common drugs in the Civil War era. Calomel was a tasteless powder mainly consisting of mercurous chloride, which was used medicinally as a cathartic. Quinine, which occurs naturally in the bark of the cinchona tree, was used as a medicine to reduce fever in malaria victims. Michael A. Flannery, (New York, 2004), 143-44. and dosed with rum, and cursed with slavery, and dwarfed with land monopoly, and stupified with tobacco and other narcotics, till there is but little strength of manhood left.

The physician finds but little constitutional vigor, and the moral teacher but little high purpose and susceptible moral feeling with which to work.

So we have to make small beginnings, slow progress, and let patience have its perfect work.

Nevertheless, my brother, let us be of good cheer; for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.

The Free Democracy of Mercer county held their county meeting yesterday, to elect delegates to the State Conventions and make their county nominations. The party is not dead in this State.⁸The Free Democratic party in Pennsylvania suffered a greater loss of electoral support in 1852 than did the Free Soil 1848 ticket in any state. Mercer County, in the northwestern portion of the state, however, was near the antislavery stronghold of Ohio’s Western Reserve, and the Free Democrats survived there until the following year’s passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act revived the slavery
extension issue across the North. Frederick J. Blue, (Urbana, Ill., 1973), 260-61, 266. It will increase.

The people know there is no political or moral soundness in the principles of the old parties. They hate the Compromise measures,⁹Probably a reference to the effort by leaders of both major political parties to rally voters behind the package of congressional legislation known as the Compromise of 1850, which was designed to resolve the dispute over slavery’s admission to the territories gained in the Mexican War and other sectionally divisive issues, including laws that required all citizens to return runaway slaves to their masters. While support for compromise was strong in much of the North, political abolitionists, along with an increasing number of defectors from the old parties, were joining forces and forming new moderate antislavery coalitions such as the Free Soil and the Free Democratic parties. Holt, , 67-138; , 1:179-81. and inwardly despise the political jugglers who mouth out the lying words that they are either just or constitutional or necessary, sunken and obtuse as we are. Everybody feels and knows, each one for himself and herself, that the Fugitive Slave Act is neither just law or good morals, or decent politics, or necessary and wise legislation, and they cannot much longer stick to the parties that will stick to it, because a few thousand slave-breeders and
slave-traders tell them they shall.

But here I must stop. My friends are requested to address me at “Mercer, Pa.”

I remain yours in every good word and work,

JAMES CATLIN.

PLSr: FDP, 3 June 1853.