For Frederick Douglass' Paper.

LETTER FROM ELI NICHOLS.

WOLFPEN SPRINGS O., Dec. 23 1856.

FREDERICK DOUGLAS, Esq. DEAR SIR—

I propose to speak to you earnestly, as I once did. Will you hear? Don't argue; you are incomparably the best orator. I have no desire to measure with you in rhetoric of forensic debate. It is because of your great superiority, I would convert you. High argumentative powers often enables men to amuse themselves with fooleries, many of which may be found in the discussions of learned and able divines. First, then, the Gerrit Smith creed is impossible. The great gulph of Negro hatred is impassable in the direction. Of all the known to the great masses of American white men, North and South, free Negroes are the most terrible. A live, free buck nigger! Oh terrible! Of all devils, horned or not horned, this is he most dreadful, in the common catechism of over three, out of five of the free white American people. Of the remaining two-fifths, over half love to have it so. They pray night and morning, and practice all day to keep it so. To overthrow the religion of the country is no light thing. That men honestly believe, they honestly believe. If that honest belief had some truth to support it, it is still more difficult to overthrow. The common people say: "A is a any how. God made them . "God is all wise, and we don't want them here among us. If God made them to be any where, it's not here. It's in Africa or some such place—I'll give half I'm worth to send them away, but I want them among us ." Now, part of this is true; and tho true gives powerful support to the false. Indeed, is is a question about which philosophers may doubt. Is there a natural repugnance between the races? Does it require lust in the unprincipled, and religion and virtue in the good to overcome it? Would a colored gentleman prefer a colored gentleman for his associate and bosom friend? If the colored people were perfectly free, and the whites equally so, would each incline to collect in masses of their own color? If they would so incline, how would this natural movement take place? I incline to the affirmative of these propositions, and I am disposed to believe the colored people would go southward, and the white people would come northward. If this is true, any movement, in conformity to nature, could do no harm.

But secondly. You were for Fremont. So was I. It is the best effort yet made. Still it has little soul in it. It proposes to leave sla-

very just where it is. This is impossible, and
the sharp intuition of the people felt it so, and
defeated Fremont. Said the people, "If sla
very is penned up, slavery will starve of neces
sity, and the will be turned loose
among us." Many an honest old lady, nearly
or quite speeched, and she thought of the buck
Negroes insulting her, when Jimmy would be
away, should Fremont succeed. This might
have been silly, but it is not half so foolish as
the philosophy of the sages, who propose to
have slavery and liberty in the same government.
There men have read history in vain. They
are too wise to consult the seldom erring in
stincts of human nature, which made the masses
see: "If slavery is penned up the will be
free."

Smithism cannot go! Fremontism cannot
go! Let us turn back and look at Lundyism!
Lundy sleeps quietly under the prairie sod of the
West. But his principles! may they not live?
I confess after over 40 years active experience
In examining Anti-Slavery theories, I turn to it,
as the most hopeful and truthful, yet elaborated
in the teeming crucible, whether of expediency
or philanthropy.

1st. Is it just that colored people should be
encouraged to settle by themselves? Or with
others only, as would voluntarily choose the
same residence? I have already intimated my
opinion; it would be most natural, that colored
people and white people would each enjoy asso
ciation with their own race, more than a mixed
community. My observation says this is true.
God is wise in all his works. Different races
were either made in the beginning, or by force
of climate. In either case, God is the author
of them. In either case they are happily adopted to the climates where they are found. Any bringing of them into a different climate is a distubrance of the natural law. Nature in time might afford a remedy. Still in the interim, suffering the pain might be expected. So in the case of the colored man. The warm latitudes
of the United States agree with him well, sla
very excepted. The fallout liberty in Massa
chusetts does not make—rather does not enable
him to prosper. The same is true, I believe, in
Canada. In Cincinnati, Columbus, and other
genial latitudes, the colored man does better.—
White men in the warmer latitudes of our
Union are said to be feeble, subject to disease
and unable to work.

2d. African Colonisation is out of the question. Yet Liberia is said to be doing well.—This proves colored men can flourish as distinct communities. When then should not colored men ask a place, out of our ample territories,

acquired, of that can readily be acquired?

3d. The colored people of the free States are in a much better position for such a move
ment now, than in Lundy's day. Many are
educated. Numbers are good mechanics and
skillful farmers, physicians, attorneys, editors,
merchants, capitalists, &c. Seldom have a people been in a better condition to form a colony.

4th. If our new settlements were not, as they are, standing evidences of the probable, prosperity of such a colony, still the success of the Mormons at Utah, with their filthy principles, would prove it.

5th. Nothing the colored people could ask would be so likely to be granted. The colonizationists have contributed mightily to make such a movement popular. They have prepared the way. The slaveholders, knowing African colonization of the whole race impossible, favored the feeling, in order to get rid of the free negroes. Negro haters would all go for it. Slaveholders have kindled a fire which would burn themselves up. Plant a prosperous colony of colored people, south of slavedom, and nothing can prevent the consequent abolition of slavery. The poor old ladies of
the free States would loose their terror of
. The girls would loose their agonizing
dread, that: "A young lady could not walk
out safely." The poor men of the South would
say: "Send away your , and open the
land to us." None but the masters could strive
against it, and they have prepared the way for
it.

6th. No act of Congress would be necessary,
except to grant a territory in which free color
ed people could settle, on the same terms on
which whites are allowed to settle other territories. This should be with the freedom of
the public lands, and could be so prayed for.

Such is my plan. I confess it looks to me
not impossible, and indeed improbable, that
with our present measures, the slave trade will
be re-opened, and Slavery spread all over this
continent and the adjacent islands. Negro ha
tred is the fulcrum on which the slaveholder places the lever, that gives him success.—Nor is it certain, this hatred is diminishing.—The fact, that the great and sagacious Democratic party has just successfully risqued its fortune on it, is not a hopeful view of the case.—This party with its love of office and unscrupulous zeal, will not fail, by its able orators and powerful journals, to do all it can to keep Negro hatred burning brightly. The fact that the wise men, who founded the Republican party dared not lisp a syllable of sympathy for the

slave, nor even for the colored man, is powerful evidence of their sense of the depth and impregnability of this negro hatred. The fact
that thousands of men who have labored in the
cause many-long years, are less in heart now
than when they began, speaks discouragingly.—Something new is demanded. Now is the time
for the colored people to strike for themselves.
Let them besiege Congress with petitions.—Ask nothing for the slave. Let time and the
States take care of them. Seek a good country. Let at least one free State lie between
Slavedom and your Eden. Besiege Congress on the score of justice. Ask a pittance of their
munificent abundance. Let all the haters fall in with their petitions to get rid of you, and you will suceed.

This is what I would call revamping Lundy
ism. It is Lundyism at a day and time more
suitable for it. But there would be objections.
Slaveholders and their allies, would howl dole
fully: "These d——d niggers will ask a delegate in
Congress, and then to be a State represented in
the Senate and House! This will never do.—These semi-beasts will want to sit in the same
halls with white men! Never! Never!"—Well, can you not make them a Negro pew?—"No! No! They will want to speak and vote[.] Well, let them be an independent sovereignty
under the friendly protection of the United States. "Never! Never! It would be rearing up a dangerous enemy by our side." But it is only the free Negroes, and they are but a few thousands. "Nonsense! You intended to have them all free. There are more of them than there were people in the United States at the revolution. If allowed to form States, they would have 40 black representatives in Congress, and six or eight Senators. If they were allowed to form an independent nation, what a hold it would give a foreign power as England or France in war."

Such would be the opposition. Still I believe you could succeed. Now what is your
opposition, the opposition of the colored people?
"We are Americans born. We will not leave
our country nor desert the slave." It would
make you Americans in fact and finally redeem
the slave, and save the whole continent from
the grasp of the slaveholder. "But we are
men, and we will not acknowledge inferiority."
No inferiority is claimed. It is a chance of
showing your equality, or if you please, superiority. It would enable you to put yourselves

in the position God and nature have qualified
you for. Socially, morally, politically, what
ever you have a right to be whatever you are
qualified for, the open field for honest endeavor
would lie before you.

If you know any colored people who are
looking in this direction, please send me the
names and address of two or three of the
most intelligent and worthy of them. If
you should publish this letter or any part of it,
and comment in it, please send me a copy.

With a high sense of respect and regard,
I am truly yours

ELI NICHOLS.