Editorial Correspondence.

LA GRANGE, Feb. 23d, '55

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, Esq.: DEAR SIR:—
This leaves me in good health and cheerful spirits. Who would not be cheerful, surrounded by good, kind friends, near a blazing fire, which is making the kettle piping hot for a healthy, substantial, lively sort of supper, one that makes hunger steal almost insensibly upon a-body, whether it is supper time or no? But what a world this we live in? While I am comparatively cheerful, my neighbor may be plunged in the lowest depths of misery. Yes! he is miserable—By "my neighbor," I do not mean the man or woman living by my side. I used the term in a broader and more comprehensive sense. My neighbor may be in Africa, or in Asia, or America. My thoughts are just now turned towards my neighbor in the Southern states of this "happy" country. And now my cheerfulness has fled. Thoughts as gloomy as the grave, reflections "sharper than a serpent's tooth," have entered the habitation of my soul. Could all the misery, and suffering, and heart-rending agony fo those with whom we are in bonds, be summed up in one word, that word would be—reader, can you tell? I cannot. When will the day of Redemption come? When will our "light break forth as the morning?" When will we get out of the wilderness? When will the last storm be over? When will the stars peep forth from the quiet sky? The answer is at hand. WHEN EVERY MAN DOES HIS DUTY. Then, how earnestly should we engage in the work! We should work every moment, as though it were the arbiter of our future destiny. The crisis demands momentary action. And the ever-changing forms of aggression, which the Slave power assumes, require corresponding variety of effort, in sustaining the great conflict of the age.

Twenty years ago, it was the duty of Abolitionists to teach the inherent criminality of slaver, to expose its cruelty, its unparalleled enormity. But now, something more is necessary. People are wiser than they were a quarter of a century ago; men know now by intuition, what their fathers could discern only by close thinkings, but unwearied application of their reflective powers. Every body, (save Drs. Lord, Spring, Dewey, ,) knows that slavery is a crime against God and man, and ought to be abolished. Yes! this is a truth of which the masses have an intuitive apprehension. Our efforts must now be immediately directed to the extirpation of that which the people already acknowledge is an evil. We must not with our present light, stop to make an concessions to the enemy. Those are conducive to his aid and comfort. We must fight without any apologies. The time for apologetic warfare has come to an end. The Nebraska Bill has inaugurated a new era in the conflict. We must off with the head of the enemy. We must do all in our power towards precipitating the long wished for period, when there will be but two Parties known in the country, those who love Freedom, , and those who feel like fighting for slavery in the sunlight.—And then we must take care that nothing divert us from the real issue; we must not be whistled off the right track.

Public sentiment, prior to the advent of Know-Nothingism, was favorable to the organization of such a body as that to which we have adverted. The Nebraska Bill was rankling in the heart of Freedom. Northern servility was weary of its own existence.—The fiat had gone forth. The Angel of Death hovered over the well-battered walls of Despotism. But, alas, for the poor, foolish, easy to be entreated, North! By strategy was she again led into the wilderness. And now she is again "off" into tangents.

If the Northern heart had really been engaged in the work of conquering the enemy, the enemy would long ago have been conquered. But the heart has not been engaged. True, she has petitioned Congress to repeal the Fugitive Slave Bill, and the Nebraska Bill. But her prayers have not soul, mind, or strength in them. They remind me of the evening prayer of a little child, of five years old. It was after this manner: "Now, I lay me down, Does Santa Claus come every night, mother?—to sleep, I pray—Did Aunty give me the red doll or the black one?—the Lord my soul to keep. And if I—mother, don't you think Santa Claus was very good to bring me so many presents?—I die before I wake, I pray the Lord—mother does Santa Claus come down the chimney?—my soul to take." This child's heart was on Santa Claus, although she prayed, "the Lord my soul to keep." The prayer was simply a form. We presume all our readers can make the application of this simple story.

I must now bring this letter to a close.— Last evening, I had an excellent meeting at La Grange. A good impression was made. My next meeting is at Covington Centre, thence to Middlebury. I shall then proceed to Buffalo, to fill my Erie appointments. I hope that persons have been written to in each place, as such an arrangement is indispensable to the success of the meetings.

W. J. WATKINS.

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For Frederick Douglass' Paper.

A WEEK IN NEW YORK.

Colorphobia is fast abating in our Island City, as a brief account of the doings of the present week will show.

On Monday evening, C. W. Elliott, Esq., delivered a lecture before the New York Library Association, in the hall of the Mercantile Library, late Astor Place Opera House, on the life and character of Toussaint L'Overture, the black hero of St. Domingo. The lecture was a masterly production, evincing much care and laborious study. A small but intelligent audience listened attentively
to the thrilling account of the perils and vicissitudes of the noble negro. His rise from slavery, to lead the armies and rule the councils of the black Republic—his patriotism, his devotion to his country, his abnegation of even paternal ties, his abduction, his exile and melancholy death, were all truthfullyportrayed, bringing into striking contrast the virtues and heroism of the brave black with the treachery and cruelty of Abbott's idol, the monster Napoleon.

The feature of the evening, however, was the audience —small, but intelligent, and an equal admixture of black and white. Side by side sat they—no shrinking of the aristocratic white lady from companionship with the black one. The white philanthropist, Peter Cooper, sought an introduction to the black savan, Dr. J. W. E. Pennington[.]

Tuesday evening the concluding lecture of the anti-slavery course was delivered by that devoted friend of the slave, Wm. Lloyd 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. ; and here was another mingling of the races, Saxon and African in close proximity. A large audience honored the man and the occasion; and frequent bursts of applause testified their appreciation of the scathing review which the orator gave of Gen. Sam. Houston's slavery speech in Boston. He struck down the famous Indio-Anglo-Saxon President hunter with his own tomahawk, and tore the scalp from his head with his own knife. However much I may differ with Mr. Garrison on certain points, which I do most widely, I will ever honor him for his persistent advocacy of universal, unconditional emancipation.

Wednesday evening I went to the new Opera House, Academy of Music, Irving Place. La Favorita was the Opera—Vestuali. Lovini and Bachali the principal performers. There is not much prejudice against color among the upper Ten. Colorphobia is on the move "above Bleecker." The Academy of Music is the resort of wealth and fashion —the aristrocratic place of amusement—but here Democracy prevails: no "negro pew," no place for "respectable persons of color;" the black amateur of music takes his seat beside the white professor of la belle science. The limits of my purse and modesty took me into the amphitheatre or gallery, but I saw a colored gentleman seated in the boxes.

Thursday evening the Black Swan (Miss E. T. Greenfield) gave a concert at the Tabernacle, assisted by a colored gentleman of rare musical abilities. From his appearance, I should suppose he was an Africo-American, but he is called, for effect, Indian Mario.—The concert was well attended, and the
artists gave unbounded satisfaction. Here also the prevailing feature was a mixing up of