FROM OUR BROOKLYN CORRESPONDENT.

—

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, May, 1854.

MY DEAR DOUGLASS:—Amid the hurry and excitement of the moment, I seize a pen and seize a moment to write. I confess I have entertained various views relative to the subject of American slavery; still I have ever believed that the slave would one day stand erect, free, and that, too, on the very spot of his former thraldom. I have, however, relied much—I may say mostly upon the growth of moral and religious sentiments in the country. I have felt that this—if its efforts were commensurate with its growth—if put forth adequately to its strength—if, in fine, faithful to its office work, would be sufficient to rid this republic of this its greatest curse; and, too, in a manner yet unrecorded in the history of the past, and serving thereafter as a light for all coming time and coming republics. But when the infamous Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 passed, and the North and South, Church and State, the whole country cheerfully acquiesced in the enormity, I was prepared for any other enormity however great; and despaired, not of the final overthrow of slavery, but, alas, of the manner in which it would be accomplished!

A clergyman in a letter through the Tribune, some time since, says he swallowed the Fugitive Slave Law—yes, and I venture to say, made his congregation swallow it too.—How many divines did this same thing, and lo, the result! Another pill has been offered and swallowed ere the republic has been made safe. Another cry has been set up, another howl raised, and is yet ringing throughout the land. It is Nebraska! Nebraska! Nebraska! The word clanks of chains. It flavors of blood. It sounds of war, of rapine, and or murder. The bill is passed! The deed is done! Already I hear the sound of the auction hammer. Already do I see husbands and wives, parents and children, separated, manacled and driven off to the dark and lone swamps of Nebraska.—Already do I hear the sharp crash of the driver's whip from adown its vallies, followed by the cry of little children, and the wail of defenceless women. Already do I see the jaws of the ferocious bloodhounds dyed in the red gore, and the poor victimes' whitened bones as monumental curses resting in the mountain fastness and plains of Kansas.—The true friends of liberty have done all that is possible to avert this dreadful curse. But the blight has come. The blacks will not alone feel its direful influences. They will no longer be the only slaves; they are not now. Other slaves are in the land. Mean, contemptible, crouching, fawning, white slaves. The blacks have already drunk to the very dregs the bitter draughts. The blight is upon us. Well, then, let it come; I for one am prepared. We are all prepared. The curse of slavery is in the land. Tell us no more about hemming it in. The Rubicon is passed; the verge of prohibition is scaled, and with this have fled, if ever existed, the moral and religious sensibilities of the nation. Let the accursed blight now spread.

Let all be participants. Let the damning canker now eat out the very heart's core of the nation. * * * * Tear now in a thousand shivers every compact; burn in the prairie fires, or trample in the blood of the oppressed, the much cherished Constitution, or aught of its remembrance. Burn the Bible in the same pile with the rebellious slave, and let their ashes mingle together on the same spot. Raze the sacred altars of the temples of God, and batter down the doors thereof, and let the very pathways from thence overgrow with poisonous weeds and deadly night-shade, and nestle therein the more deadly serpents; or, if need be, let these temples serve as pens and prisons for the slave gang, with the robed priest of 1850, and compromise notoriety as guards and vigils. Open wide the floodgates of iniquity. Build high your forge fires, and cast out your manacles—man your slave ships, and freight over not by hundreds nor by thousands, but millions of victims from Africa's coast. Annex Cuba, subjugate Hayti, grasp Mexico, and enlarge your boundaries. Oh, my country! Oh, noble! Oh, patriotic! Oh, liberty-loving Republic. Let every foot of your ample territory make you music with the clank of a chain of a slave, and let that slave—let all of us who are in chains—strengthen therein and grow apace, and thus nurtured and bearded—wrought to a proper consistency—that is the condition—thus prepared, let us look well to the last great Drama; that it has at least two aspects; that the game have two parts; two sets of players. And let us swear first, swear last, swear ever, on the altar of eternal justice, with the God of heaven for our witness, that when the final crisis shall have come—as come it must—that for us it shall be victory or death; that then, not a remnant, not a solitary being of us who clanked a chain, shall be left with life, if liberty be not with it. This is a plain, simple compact, and must be made. * * * * My God, whither are we tending? We have already approached the verge of a tearful volcano—The whole land trembles with the iniquities of the accursed system of slavery usurpation.

In Boston, and Syracuse, and New York City, white slaves and black fugitives are already grappling with each other, while the few freemen will, I hope, yet make a manful and proper resistance. Gracious heaven! one hundred and fifty white slaves banded together in a gang, have just seized three alleged fugitives at the bidding of their Southern masters, and dragged them through the streets of New York, thence on to the South. Let the tocsin be sounded, and to arms every man whose skin is not whitened with the curse of God; and let our motto be, "Hands off, or death." Instant death.—'Tis useless to delay.

Yours,

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. .