FROM OUR BROOKLYN CORRESPONDENT.

—

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, April 22, 1854.

MY DEAR DOUGLASS:—We thought here the time of the singing of the birds had fully come. They thought so, too—blessed little warblers! But alas! it has proved the time of their burial. Yes, though past mid-April, we have had a snow—sleighing snow —and whole armies of robins—our great favorites here, and leaders of our forest-orchestra—found beneath it untimely and unwelcome graves. So much for the uncertainty of coming events. We may recall the past but tell nothing of the future.—Within the last few weeks the dull tedium of time in Brooklyn has been somewhat relieved by concerts.

The first of these was given in the Siloam Church by Madam Miller—Professors Brady and Jackson conducting the orchestra. I was, at the time of the occurrence of this concert, disposed to enter into some criticisms; but it has so long passed, I deem it now unnecessary, except to say, Madam Miller's powers and compass of voice are truly wonderful, and her executiveness good—in some respects, excellent. Though laboring under a severe cold at the time, none, I think, could fail to discover this. She was assisted throughout, by Messrs. Waldron, Bowser, and R. Hamilton—in some parts well sustained, and in others not as well as could have been desired; but, upon the whole, it was a fine mental treat, and well did we enjoy it. Mr. Robert Hamilton sang "Rocked in the cradle of the deep,"with fine effect.

Not satisfied, however, with this, (why should we be,) the choir of the Siloam Church took flame, which nothing would quench save another concert. This came off about a week after Madam Miller's, to a crowded house, and to the satisfaction of all. To characterize any portion of it as best, would be a mistake. It was excellent in the beginning—middle—end. About a year ago, this same choir gave their first concert, which then pleased a large audience. You may judge of the effect produced by this second one, from the fact, that when Rev. Mr. Freeman, on the following Sunday, announced its repetition; and added, the first was good, the second better, and the repetition is intended to be best. The house was again crowded, and this only a week
distant from the first night. Jerome R. Scudder is the Leader of this choir, and deserves much credit for his years of effort and perseverance, having been with this church and choir from the commencement.

Speaking of church matters, I may here mention that the Rev. A. N. Freeman, of the Siloam Church, has just been appointed Moderator of the Brooklyn Presbytery by an unanimous vote—Dr. McLain, of Williamsburgh, late of Maryland, and the same divine who, in 1851, declared it wrong "to
refuse obedience to the Fugitive Slave Law," making the nomination, and Dr. Cox supporting it. Is this not a significant sign of the times?

A private correspondence, I am informed, has, for some time, been carried on between Observer and one of the secret correspondents of the El Mulatto; and some sharp passages have already occurred—indeed, it is a very pretty little affair, as it stands.—Toe the mark, gentlemen, on both sides; and let there be no smell of powder; Cuba will need all that commodity ere yet—and for aught, you, too.

Who that has passed along the anti-aristocratic streets of Gotham, but has observed the fierce, and often merciless attacks made by grocers' dogs, and butchers' dogs, and low-life dogs, about town in general, upon the poor rag and bone-pickers, while every body else is permitted to pass unmolested. Just after witnessing one of these fierce encounters, between an apparently old Dutch bone-picker and a snarling little whiffit, and endeavoring to pick out the philosophy of it, Spectator's last, on Ethiop, together with comments, Editorial, &c., came to hand; and between my former train of thought, and these little bilocose [sic] demonstrations, I began to be a little puzzled. Happily at this juncture, a grocer's clerk came to my relief, by
explaining, in a word, what seemed to me sufficiently philosophical for at least a week's study. "Do you know," said he, "why that firce [sic] demonstration on the part of our little dog, Joco?" "No," said I. "Because," said he, "the old Dutchman digs up and takes away all his BONES." If, in my puzzle, anything like a comparison was about to enter my mind, I instantly dismissed it.—Far from anything like a similarity be there between Spectator and Joco.

Another week later, and another budget of the same dear Aliened came, fragrant from the western wood, and blooming with flowers, not unaccompanied with thorns, thistles and brier-switches, plucked as usual by delicate lady fingers. I have said these bouquets were not without a pretty fair inter-spersion of thorns, thistles and switches—aye, and, my dear sir, don't these same delicate fingers know how to use them, too, when they think it necessary? I confesss I have been able to deeply sympathie with poor Job, after any one of Madam Caudle's curtain lectures, as I think you must; I can, too, look back far enough to remember, in my diminutive boyhood, very distinctly the thrashing once given me by my mother, (good woman!) for what she deemed some slight indiscretion or blunder; indeed, my brothers and sisters—my whole family regarded these (mishaps, blunder and errors) as my sole inheritance, and cut me off with very little else; but oh! my dear sir, you can not feel sufficiently for poor Ethiop, after the whaling he has just received, over his defenceless head and shoulders, through this same dear Aliened, with one of these switches, by the hand of Fanny Homewood. My only solace is—and, my dear Douglass, tell Fanny so—that I hope she will yet repent of not mine, but her own error. I never said that Fanny was a man. I never once intimated, that because the delicate fingers were colored that indited those sharp, epistles, over the signature of Fanny Homewood, they were men's fingers—no, never! I only stated what suspicion, with its wicked tongue, whispered hereabouts; and, if nothing more, I am happy (though blunderingly done) to have given so fine an opportunity, as she has availed herself of, to blow foul suspicion to the wrathful winds of heaven, and to say to the world that she has so nobly proven herself a woman. I bow to the beautiful response thus given profoundly.—Shame and confusion, truly, be upon Ethiop, when he so far forgets himself as to doubt a lady. "Come to Pittsburgh," you say. Nothing would give me more pleasure; and be assured, dear madam, that when a wave or so more of life's bustle and tempest is o'er, I shall endeavor to come, and to sip with you

and yours a cup of that fine Ethiopian coffee, of which you so justly boast, with a grateful heart, and pleasantly chat, I hope, the whole matter over with you.

Nothing above the horizon, just now, in Gotham, except Fred. Douglass, Jr., is well; so is Charlottle K.; so is CommunipawSmith, James McCune

James McCune Smith (1813–65), a prominent black physician, abolitionist, and writer, was born in New York City to an enslaved father and a self-emancipated mother. He attended the New York African Free School, but was denied admission to Columbia University, Geneva Medical College, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He turned to the University of Glasgow in Scotland, where he received a B.A. (1835), M.A. (1836), and M.D. (1837). Upon returning to New York, he opened a pharmacy and medical practice that catered to both blacks and whites. He became involved in the abolitionist movement, serving as an associate editor of the Colored American in 1839, contributed regularly to the Anglo-African Magazine, and wrote correspondence for the North Star and Frederick Douglass’ Paper under the pseudonym “Communipaw.” Smith also wrote the introduction to Douglass’s second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). In 1861, Smith helped finance the revival of the Weekly Anglo-African to oppose black colonization and emigration, and he was a prominent member of the New York City Young Men’s Association, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and the New York African Society for Mutual Relief. He was the sole attending physician of the Society for the Promotion of Education Among Colored Children, a member and vestryman of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, and a trustee of the New York Society for the Promotion of Education Among Colored Children. In 1863 Wilberforce College appointed Smith professor of anthropology, but illness kept him from assuming his post. Lib., 1 June 1838; FDP, 18 May 1855; Douglass Papers, ser. 2:7–19; Miller, Search for a Black Nationality, 243; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 90–92, 103, 110; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 115, 134; Rhoda G. Freeman, “The Free Negro in New York City in the Era before the Civil War” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1966), 40–42, 177, 186, 195, 200, 247, 276, 286, 325, 353, 393; DAB, 27:288–89. . I cannot just now tell of the whereabouts of Maria. CosmopoliteBell, Philip A.

Philip A. Bell (1808-89) was educated at the New York City Free School and worked as an agent for the Liberator and at a variety of occupations in his youth. He was secretary of a January 1831 public meeting of New York blacks that protested against the colonization movement. In 1837 Bell helped found and edit the Weekly Advocate, later renamed the New York Colored American, which was an important forum for black opinion until its demise in 1842. In the 1850s he operated an employment agency for New York City blacks and was active in literary, temperance, and mutual relief societies as well as the antislavery movement. Bell attended many of the antebellum National Negro Conventions and lectured for equal suffrage for blacks. Moving to California in 1860, Bell briefly ran a real estate agency before returning to journalism, first as associate editor of the San Francisco Pacific Appeal, and later as owner and editor of the San Francisco Elevator. In the 1870s Bell was president of the Equal Rights League of California, a politically independent group that lobbied Republican politicians for better treatment of blacks. While still in New York, Bell wrote to the North Star under the pseudonym "Cosmopolite." New York Colored American, 8 December 1838; San Francisco Elevator, 12 June 1868, 11 January, 15 November 1873; William Lloyd Garrison, Thoughts on African Colonization: or; an Impartial Exhibition of the Doctrines, Principles and Purposes of the American Colonization Society (New York, 1832), 13- 17; Penn, Afro-American Press, 32-34, 94-98; Robert C. Dick, Black Protest: Issues and Tactics (Westport, Conn., 1974), 84, 173-77, 267; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 20, 31, 95; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 113-14, 175, 195, 210; James A. Fisher, "A History of the Political and Social Development of the Black Community in California, 1850-1950" (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1971), 72-75, 97-100, 140-46; Freeman, "Free Negro in New York City," 35, 46, 128, 175-76, 237, 299; "Black Elites and the Draft Riots," New York Times, July 13, 2013. Autobiography, My Life and Times, Part 2 is putting his armor on, equipped, I am told, to the teeth, for the Emigration battle; Observer, ditto; with the addition of El Mulatto and Cuba fillibustering, for which, it is said, his panoply looks more formidable than a Roman legion.—Veretas—little fellow—the last I saw of him was, with cane in hand, perambulating the L. I. Railroad tunnel, just under the Heights. I hope the locomotive did not pass down just then. Occator stops within doors just now, on account of the weather.

Yours, truly,

ETHIOPWilson, William Joseph ("Ethiop")

William Joseph Wilson (1818–?), a free black man from New Jersey, operated a bootmaking shop in New York City as early as the 1830s. In the 1840s he became a secondary school teacher and later a principal of a black school in Brooklyn. He was an activist on behalf of black education, encouraging access and attendance, and even opened his own library. Wilson also campaigned to secure the franchise for New York African Americans. He served as a member of the Committee of Thirteen, organized by New York black leaders to stop enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. In the early 1850s Wilson’s letters appeared frequently in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, and Douglass referred to him as the newspaper’s “Brooklyn correspondent.” Wilson’s letters to the newspaper, published under the pseudonym “Ethiop,” were often part of an ongoing debate about the condition of blacks in New York and the United States. Wilson’s most frequent sparring partner in the war of letters was “Communipaw,” actually James McCune Smith, a prominent black physician in New York City. Carleton Mabee, Black Education in New York State: From Colonial to Modern Times (Syracuse, N.Y., 1979), 54, 63-67, 123, 129, 155, 158; Foner and Walker, Black State Conventions, 1:79-88; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 87, 212, 229; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 4:144-45n. .