FROM OUR BOSTON CORRESPONDENT.

BOSTON, March 10th, '56.

FRIEND DOUGLASS:—The weather here has been excessively cold. It is encouraging however, to know that it will be warmer after the cold weather abates!

Well, the two extremes of the Know Nothing party have met in solemn conclave, in the good old Quaker City, for a friendly interchange of thought, and to devise means for a more perfect union. The result is what any one who is in any way familiar with the history of the party, might have expected. Even a blind man might have seen it in the dark, without a light! The party, as such, has been reduced to a mere cypher, and every effort to revive it appears only to bury it deeper in its own slough. The leading members of the party have made every effort, since its organization, to ignore the question of human freedom altogether, and to make the party just what the South wants, and must have. In this they have not been successful.—If they could have kept together, it is not probable, that in the Presidential contest they could have kept even a respectful distance behind. Now, it is questionable, whether we can say such a party exists. The only evil result that I can see likely to proceed form the rupture of the mortified ligament which bound the two factions together, is, the Northern Know Nothings by their professed Anti-Slavery principles and platform, may tend, in a measure, to distract the Republican vote. It was in this manner that they carried this State last November. I hope the friends of freedom will look well to this in the coming contest; and I would say to all who love freedom, and hate slavery, or who are willing to do something for freedom, that the time has come, when you should not allow minor points to keep you from the great object in view. Catholicism, subtreasury, tariffs, and foreign influence, are all questions of more or less importance to the nation, but they should be waived for the present; and the whole force concentrated on the side of freedom.—The time has now come, when the battles of freedom must be fought, and if you will not do it at the ballot-box, the responsibilities of the contest which must inevitably fellow, will be

upon your heads.

Upon you, freemen of the North, hangs the responsibility, not of the simple question of the restoration of the Missouri Compromise, and the freedom of Kansas; but upon you rests the fearful responsibility as to whether freedom or slavery shall triumph. Slavery has ruled long enough; it is high time we had a reform and that freedom should take her turn.

A colored young man has been published here, for begging for money to educate himself. This I regard as a very doubtful method of reforming the young. The lad referred to, is certainly capable of a high degree of intellectual and moral culture, and if his course is twice as bad as is represented we sho'd consider the above course against him a doubtful one. It is much easier to rob a man of his good name than to give him one.

Since I wrote last, I have had a very pleasant trip in Western Massachusetts; I tried to find a copy of your paper, but no, not a soul that I asked, had it. I think an active agent might procure you many subscribers in this State. I had a "good time," and I tender my thanks to Dr. Church, Messrs. Elmer, Montague, Ringold, Baggs, Lincoln, McFarland, Wells, Stewart, Pratt, Buell, Porter, Lane, Allison, Weston, Master, Hale, and others who contributed to make my visit both pleasant and profitable.

I imagine that "Communipaw,"Smith, 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. and "Philo," will both get the best of their discussion.

"To shake that fantastic toe,"

I am inclined to believe that it cost some a mere trifle, say five or six dollars; but I am assured that some got ready at an expense of at least fifty dollars. I think if you count railroad fare, and all, the expense could not be less than $3500. I have been censured for not "blowing" the Club up in the papers, but those who were anxious to have me do so, I regard with much less favor, though professedly very devout, than most of those who attended the ball. So far as balls are concerned I regard them as of very questionable propriety for a poor people, tho' they have as much right to their opinions as I have to mine, and so far, we will agree to disagree. I have heard that "Philo" was "hanging around" Boston some two or three days; he did not come to see us. I am "half mad" at him about it, "and don't care if this gets to his ears!"

S.