FROM OUR NEW YORK CORRESPONDENT.

MR. EDITOR:—The German character is vis
ibly gaining a strong influence on our New York
Society, especially in the matter of social en
joyments and Festival Days. Christmas feels
differently from the Christmas of twenty years
ago; it is the Jubilee of the little folks, and
the Christmas Tree is already an Institution
among us. New York, for once, seems at lei
sure, resting itself, rationally enjoying itself dur
ing an entire week. Broadway has the style
and appearance of a Parisian Boulevard—the
care-worn American face evidently broadened
into the smile of pleasure seeking and pleasure
taking.

And yet our people do not thoroughly sympathize with this pleasure passion of the hour.
Our brows are knit with painful and stern re
flection on our wrongs, made doubly visible in
the general hilarity. The Jury in the Rev. Dr.
Pennington's case declared by its verdict that
the Sixth Avenue R.R. Company has a perfect
right to reject a respectable minister of the
Gospel from its cars, and to beat and pound
him while ejecting him—simply because his
complexion is dark.

Some of us laymen make bold to think that
the case was badly got up by the plaintiff's
lawyers. In opening the case, one of these gen
tlemen stated, that "Dr. Pennington did not
seek nor claim social equality with the whites,"
&c. Then it was admitted on both sides that
the Doctor intended it as "a test case," to set
tle whether colored people could legally claim
the right to ride in any of the public convey
ances.

The first statement seems as if the lawyer be
gan asking for a verdict by withdrawing his
client's plea—denying his belief in that very
equality which he sought to gain. In regard to
the second statement, it was made before the
Superior Court, an affirmative decision
on the very point in question had been twice
made in the Supreme Court of this State, the right of colored persons to the use
of all public conveyances. This is to say, they
sought to affirm in a lower Court, as a new
question, what had already been affirmed in a
higher Court. Could such bungling have hap
pened in regard to any other than colored
people?

But so it is. Not the least painful part of
our "" in the matter of
caste-hate, is the difficulty of redress. The
very sources at which we seek redress are pois
oned with the venom which stings us. In the

case under consideration, the Judge on the
bench was brother to the head of the law firm
which is counsel to the Sixth Avenue Com
pany; and thus said that he certainly had a
heavy interest in the Road if not at the time,
then shortly before hearing the case. And to
the disgrace of our New York bar, be it said,
that a really first rate lawyer, cannot be had
for love nor money to "get up" and carry on
such a suit as that of Dr. Pennington!

Colored men, hereabouts, therefore, who go
into such a fight, know the almost certain re
sult; and all praise to the moral heroism which
impels Dr. Pennington manfully to struggle
with fore-doomed defeat; it is the sort of , which becomes the true man,
and which must ultimately triumph. In the
mean time, his brethren should not be idle; he
is fighting our battle, and needs our aid, in sym
pathy and in money. The case is appealed to
the General Term of the Superior Court, and
if defeated there, he will go to the Supreme
Court, and, if need be, to the Court of Ap
peals. All this needs money, and good lawyers
from the rural districts to plead the case. Dr.
Pennington's address is 29 Sixth Avenue, where
funds may be sent for this purpose. Let us see
whether the half-dozen capitalists who own the
Sixth Avenue Railroad shall continue, with im
munity, to trample on fifty thousand colored cit
izens of the Empire State, by parading them
ignominiously as "ALLOWED IN THIS CAR?"—Let
us see whether, in this cold and storm sea
son, they may continue to force colored women,
with tender infants, to stand on the bleak curb
stone by the half hour, and even longer, until
their shall heave in sight? Let us
enter upon this matter, not as "a test" of
right, but with the determination to win; for
of the right there can be no more doubt than
there can be of our humanity. And if Court
after Court, up to the highest, decide against
us, let us begin anew in a lower Court, and
keep on until we find a Jury willing to bring
in a verdict that we are human.

We must also show the common people that
it is their case, as well as ours; of the five city
Railroads, three admit respectable colored per
sons into all their cars; the other two, the
Sixth and Eighth Avenue companies, exclude
colored persons, except from the three "" of the former. Now the three Roads
which admit persons on equal terms,
convey principally small tradesmen, mechanics
and laborers—but a small portion of the weal
thier classes residing on their routes. But on
the Sixth Avenue route, live the "quality" , the Fifth Avenue millionaires, &c.—And

it is avowedly in deference to this class,
that the company excludes colored persons;
how long will it be before they will exclude poor
whites? To be sure, they will be too cautious
to paint "POOR WHITE PEOPLE ALLOWED IN
THIS CAR;" but they will compare the same end
by instructing their bully conductors and driv
ers not to admit such if they can help it; in
deed, I have seen conductors refuse to stop the
cars for decently dressed Irish servant girls.

There is a suit pending against the Eighth
Avenue Company, by Mr. Johnson, of Ithaca,
for rude treatment in their cars; and two other
similar suits are in contemplation.

The only point having a semblance of logic
made by the counsel for the Sixth Avenue
Company, was, that inasmuch as the State of
New York makes a separate grade for colored
citizens in its organic law in relation to the
franchise, therefore, &c. I hope you will take
the lead in removing, through the Legislature,
this from our State Constitution.—Give
us, in your next paper, the brief form of
a Petition, so that we may cut it out, and get
signatures and forward them to the Legislature.
I hope you will be able to spend some time at
Albany yourself to urge the matter. Myers,
Topp, Rich, and yourself, have a splendid op
portunity to require of a Republican Legisla
ture to Republicanize our State Constitution.

Our colored citizens in Gotham are a little
lively in other directions besides the law. Mas
sonry, like 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. , has been galvanized into a
twilight illumination. A distinguished French
Mason, M. Marconis de Negris, has recently
come over from France with decorations and
orders for our colored Masons, away up to the
the hundredth degree. The white Masons of
high degree who sought these honors with ea
gerness, were obliged to admit to the honors of
their black brethren on the same level before
they obtained them. I am not a member of
the Order, nor likely to be; but there is a ju
venile Mason whom I occasionally magnatize
with rich results—which it would hardly be fair
to print.

The Odd Fellows, also, incited by their bril
iant success at the Crystal Palace, are moving
to erect a palace of their own. They com
menced operations with a grand ball and sup
per, ten days ago. Philo and Fylbel were on
hand, dancing and waltzing to their heart's con
tent. I am told that although greatly fatigued,
they did not pant half so audibly as when they
tried to keep up with my long strides, on the
beach, at Newport, last summer.

His physician tells me that he held a consul
tation over Ethiop last week; that the symptoms

are flattering, and there is every hope that he will be thoroughly restored to his identity; the only unpleasant symptoms remaining, is that he fancies himself a Chinese, and insists on cultivating a "," notwithstanding in his hair, like mine, is scant on the crown; and in speaking or writing he will place the letter "" in places where it has no business; thus "hu" for "you," "rush" for "rus," "rushticate" and Rushurban, for Rusticate and Rus-urban.

Yours,

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.

NEW YORK, Dec. 27th, 1856.