FROM OUR NEW YORK CORRESPONDENT.

Mr. EDITOR:—We did not celebrate the first
of August, in our lane, because we failed to dis
cover in it, that which we ought to celebrate;
we even go the length of criticizing those, who
do celebrate it, as favoring that system of com
promises which is ruining the philosophy, and
philanthropy of our land.

The British Emancipation act was a compro
mise act, inasmuch as it paid masters, so called,
twenty millions of pounds, for property which
they never owned, thus admitting . Surely that is a principle
which no abolitionist can admit, much less cele
brate.

Whatever joy we may have felt on that first
of August, which witnessed the breaking of the
bonds of Physical Slavery of 800 millions of
our brethren in the West Indies, must now be
tempered with sorrow at the fact, that the in
terest of the British Government, and people,
in the then freed men, to a large extent, ceased
with the fruition of that act. A paltry twenty
thousand pounds was appropriated for the ed
ucation of the freed men—and except what mis
sionary enterprise has done, that is all give to
the former slave in consideration of the robbery
and embruting which had been perpetrated
on him for centuries. No effort has been made
to secure him such progress in arts and agri
culture as should vindicate the policy of Eman
cipation. Millions of pounds are devoted to
the development of the colony in Canada, in
canals, bridges and railroads, and not a hundred
pounds for like purposes in Jamaica. In look
ing at these short-comings of the British people,
in regard to their black fellow subjects, we do
not feel like sounding their praises for the little
they have done, in view of the much they have
left undone.

Then again, as black men in our lane, sympa
thizing with black men in Jamaica, we do not
see aught in the first of August to throw up
our hats about. If our black brethren had won
their freedom by the strong hand, then we could
shout with them. But as it is their freedom was
a , not a right seized upon and
held. It is the order of things.

Now, sir, we in the United States, whom God
has made black, need expect no such GIFT. Our
freedom must be won, and the sooner we wake
up to the fact, the better. And we
had better cease teaching our children, by cele
brating , to shape their hopes that
way. Such freedom is not worth the [shaving?]
It is freedom struggled for and won, that
fits the mind and the body to enjoy, defend and
improve by it. For the fight that lays before
us, we must seek some other day, with other
signification than the first of August. Let us

seek some day in which some enslaved black
man in our own land swelled beyond the meas
ure of his chains, and won Liberty or Death.—Let
us search the Calends for the day when Den
mark Vesey suffered gloriously in Charleston, as
the head of an insurrection, or when Nat. Tur
ner turned all Virginia pale with fright, or when
those brave men fought at Christiana. There
is an electric feel about those days. The blood
stirs, as it ought to stir; and the lips of speakers,
in whatever grove, would talk profitably of these
themes which cast their glorious light on our
future.

Our white brethren cannot understand us
unless we speak to them in their own language;
they recognize only the philosophy of force—They
will never recognized our manhood until we
knock them down a time or two; they will then
hug us as men and brethren. That holy love
of human brotherhood which fills our hearts
and figures our imagination, cannot get through
the—in this respect—thick skulls of the Cau
casians, unless beaten into them.

Only think of it! I have been at Newport,
saw Philo, and really must admit that in get
ting up the Sea Girt House, a splendid Hotel
in the finest location in Newport, he has done
fair fight for the good cause; there lies behind
this kind of effort, the proof of that "force"
which our saxon brethren understand, respect
and bow before.

They have had several political meetings
over at Brooklyn, to enquire how black men
shall vote in the coming election. The tide fa
vors Fremont; but your correspondents, 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.
and Observer, that is Wm. J. Wilson and Dr.
T. Joiner White, have held up the banner of
of Radical Abolitionism successfully against all
comers. Ethiop's argument was written out; it
is broad in view, masterly in logic, and of high
rhetorical finish. I would like to see it in print.
Dr. White showed great knowledge of facts, and
knew how to make them tell.

I am sorry to add that the only weak point
in their position, which the other side attacks
fiercely, is the position of Gerrit SmithSmith, Gerrit

Gerrit Smith (1797– 1874), a New York businessman and land speculator, became best known for his philanthropic work for such reform causes as temperance and abolition. Between 1828 and 1835, he donated large sums of money to the American Colonization Society, but abandoned that movement in 1835 when his sympathies shifted to the immediate abolitionists. In the 1840s, he gave approximately 140,000 acres of land in upstate New York to three thousand black settlers, thus qualifying them to vote. Smith was a founder and frequent candidate of the Liberty party, running for governor of New York on that ticket in 1840 and winning a seat in Congress in 1852. When the Free Soil merger with moderate antislavery Democrats and Whigs lured away many Liberty party supporters, Smith helped bankroll that organization until 1860. Smith befriended Douglass when the latter moved to Rochester, and Smith frequently helped finance Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Like Douglass, Smith supported John Brown, but psychological stress caused by the failure at Harpers Ferry brought on the first of a series of bipolar episodes that greatly reduced his subsequent reform activities. Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer (1939; New York, 1972); Gerald Sorin, The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn., 1971), 269– 87; Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), 170– 80; John R. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, “The ‘Black Dream’ of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist,” Syracuse University Library Associates Courier, 20:61– 76 (Fall 1985); NCAB , 2:322– 23; DAB, 17:270– 71. on Kan
sas, which the Fremonters affirm, does not dif
fer materially from the position of the Repub
lican Party. And they affirm that the man
who condemned black men for voting for men,
who voted for slaveholders, to hold office in
Civil Government, condemns himself when with
a document affirming the brotherhood of man
in one hand, he gives the sanction of his great
name, greater than his means, to those who
basely deny the black man's brotherhood with
the other hand.

Yours,

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. .