FROM OUR NEW YORK CORRESPONDENT.

MR. EDITOR:—For my long silence you must
thank the Chinese. Hue repeats an adage of
theirs, "A man may as well amuse himself with
his pen as with his kite—if it please him as well—it
is all a matter of taste." What a cruel
! Ye authors who have advanced and
illustrated literature, just listen to it! shade of
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. , so recently resuscitated by the
divine skill of the Brooklyn Galen, only listen
to it! How can any man with proper self-re
spect, ever against take up his pen, when once
he reads that abominable Chinese saying? The
worst of the saying is its lurking truthfulness.—Of
the realms of foolscap scribbled over to-day
for the Press, how much would be better em
ployed if hoisted in the air at one end of a
string, while the scribblers held the other?

Notwithstanding our boastfulness in the mat
ter of the multiplicity of our newspapers and
cheap publications, there is no doubt that for the
same areas even in our free State, the Chinese
issue more printed matter and a larger number
of sheets in China.

"But our free institutions! While the Chi
nese are governed by a Despot and held in sub
jection by a handful of Matchou Tartars"—you
will say. The Chinese institutions are just,
as free as ours: their despot is a con
crete man, ours an abstract thing, called a com
promise: and the Matchou Tartars who keep
us down are a few Southern slaveholders, who
like the Tartars in China, command our armies
our fleets, and our money chests.

The same business energy, the same recuper
ative power, under disaster, mark the Yankees
and the Chinese. The New Yorkers boasted
in 1834 at the wonderful energy with which we
recovered from the effects of the Great Fire, in
replacing the destroyed, by new buildings with
in six months: so many weeks would have suf
ficed John Chinaman to do the same thing: in
fact it is usual with them to contract for rebuild
ing while the fire is still raging, and to commence
operations as soon as the heat is subdued in the
smouldering ruins.

Indeed the painfullest analogy between the
Chinese and ourselves is contained in the fact,
that in both, seems the
end of national existence, and so long as trade
is left alone, despotic tyranny may play any
fantastic tricks whatever before high heaven.

In the Chinese present we may see our sad
future. The Chinese are servile Yankees in

their second childhood. Did ever High Manda
rins go before the Emperor at Pekin, with more
submissive crouchings and kneelings in the dust,
than our Wilson, and Trumbulls, and Sewards,
made this week before the Immaculate Goddess
of Slavery in the slave States?

It is interesting to notice that in China, Cau
cassian ingenuity is antedated in many contrivan
ces in the material and social world. The
Printing Press, Socialism, 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. 's idea
that the family relation should be the foun
dation of civil Government, (is the actual fun
damental principle of the Chinese Empire,)
water tight compartments in sailing vessels,
acapuncture in Surgery, Colleges, Homeopa
thy, the vital principle as an element in Pathol
ogy, Glorious sprees in which each man carries
away a "brick of tea" under his belt—in short
everything except SLAVERY!

They have complimented the Malthusian
theory, in the strange way of erecting most
beautiful monuments to widows who have re
frained from a second marriage, and to Virgins
who have devoted their lives to the care and
support of their parents. Yet they treat their
women very much as our Southern masters do
their female slaves, in all things, except in sell
ing their own offspring for gain. And this fact,
by the way, confutes a statement which I shall
quote directly for although the Chinese treat
their women in the worst possible manner, yet
the Chinese cannot be called Barbarians: they
are a highly civilized, a long civilized, and the
most numerous of the civilized nations of the
earth. Which leads to a word about

WENDELL PHILLIPS AND THE SAXON WOMEN.

"The situation of women was a complete in
dex of civilization: Utah was barbarism. The
Saxon race had led the van in the elevation of
woman. The first line of Saxon History was
written by Tacitus when he chronicled that 'on
all great occasions they consult their women.' "

So spake Wendell Phillips at the Women's
Rights Convention held in the Tabernacle last
week. Now I am of the opinion that Mr.
Phillips was "flying his kite" pretty high when
he made that quotation from Tacitus:

1st. Because Tacitus never wrote a word
about the Saxons, in such of his works as have
reached the present time. He names many
German tribes, and among them the Aviones
and the Angli, who dwelt near the present
Holstein—but says nothing about the Saxons,
who did not emerge from obscurity until they
time Ptolemy, almost a century after the last
date recorded by Tacitus and Ptolemy men
tions them for their skill in the use of the knife,
and not their habit of holding bisexed conven
tions.

2nd. What Tacitus does say on this point relates

to the whole German nation, as their an
cient practice "that they do not spurn the counseld of their women, nor neglect their responses.
And "Valeda, a
virgin" of the tribe of Bructerae mildly ruled
the German nations; according to the old Ger
man custom, which regarded most women as
soothsayers, and in the increase of superstition
as Goddesses.
Now these passages, clearly indicate that the
Germans consulted their women as they did the
neighing of horses, and as Saul did the witch of
Endor, and as many half barbarous tribes have
in all ages.

3rd. In the treatise on Germany, 15,
22, &c., Tacitus states that the Germans, when
not engaged in war left their fields, and house
hold labors to the women, while the men,
if not engaged in the chase, passed their time
in eating, drinking and sleeping: and that the
title to land or goods, , although the mother who had borne
sons might have a life estate in such property.
And the of France, grew from this
German custom.

4th. Plutarch relates, in his Treatise on the
Virtues of the Female sex, that a dispute arose
among the tribes of the CELTIC emigrants be
fore they passed over the Alps, so fierce and vi
olent, that nothing but the decision of the sword
could end the quarrel. The Celtic women on
that occasion, rushed between the two armies,
and determined the question with such good
sense, that the Celtic nations ever after made
it their practice to call women to their consul
tations about peace or war.

I have taken great pleasure in cutting the
strings of Wendell Phillip's Saxon Kite. With
Theodore Parker, he is distinguished for wor
shipping the Anglo-Saxon race: and it is well
to make known to both, occasionally, the as well as the stupidity of such pitiful
tribe worship. Such worship will do very well
for Dr. Nott of Alabama, Mr. Gliddon, or any
supporters of the naturalness of the Divine In
stitution of Slavery, but it comes with an ill
grace, with positive noisomeness, from PHILLIPS,
and PARKER, whose talents, learning and elo
quence are devoted to the great cause of hu
man brotherhood, and the Abolition of Slavery
and caste. Our Republican Senators, who inhibit the extension of slavery while they uphold it where it is are not less logical than these other men, who advocate the equality of all men, while they assert the superiority of the

Anglo-Saxon race.

Yours affectionately,

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. .

NEW YORK, Dec. 1856.

P.S. Our old friend Stephen Myers is about
these diggings, busy among the quartz veins
and gulches. He addressed the only Fremont
meeting that I attended during the campaign:
an undertaker was in the chair. He failed in
making me a Fremonter, although he asserts
that I voted for John A. King for Governor.