Buffalo, March 15th, 1851.

Mr. EditorーSir:ーI was somewhat astonished to find in your paper of the 13th inst., an article copied from the New York Evening Post, in relation to the effects of the Fugitive Slave Bill in Buffalo, stating that one hundred and thirty communicants from the colored Baptist Church had left, for fear of arrest on the charge of being fugitive slaves, and also that the Methodist Church had lost a considerable number from the same cause. From whatever source this information emanated, allow me to inform you that it is incorrect, and instead of the large number spoken of, not three have left from either church, and I know that not three have left from the whole city; therefore the report is entirely incorrect and without the least shadow of foundation. The Buffalonians are made up of different stuff. We are not so easily frightened as to leave our homes in consequence of any such machinations of the Devil; and I imagine that it would require more force than any of the FillmoreFillmore, Millard

Millard Fillmore (1800-74), thirteenth president of the United States, represented the Buffalo region in the New York state legislature (1828-32) and in the U.S. House of Representatives (1833-35, 1837-43), where he generally voted with the Henry Clay wing of the Whig party. Defeated in the 1844 New York governor's race, Fillmore secured the Whig vice-presidential nomination in 1848 and assumed the presidency upon Zachary Taylor's death in July 1850. Fillmore vigorously advocated passage of the Compromise of 1850 and signed each of its measures into law. Denied his party's nomination in 1852, Fillmore ran for president on the American party ticket in 1856 and supported John Bell and the Constitutional Union party in 1860. NCAB, 6:177-78; DAB, 6:380-82. clique could summon in Buffalo to drive us from the homes of our adoption, at least in such numbers as spoken of. We have long since considered the matter, and have come to the conclusion that we have a right to live here, and also that we have a right to use the same means to maintain our rights that our revolutionary fathers taught us on a "certain occasion." No attempts have been made here as yet to arrest any one. Our city has enjoyed a quietude and repose which it is devoutly to be hoped may continue. But when it shall be broken, Buffalo will be heard from.

Yours, &c.,

George Weir, Jr.Weir, George, Jr.

The son of a minister of Buffalo’s Vine Street African Methodist Episcopal Church, George Weir, Jr., was a minister and abolitionist in Buffalo. Arthur O. White, “The Black Movement against Jim Crow Education in Buffalo, New York, 1800-1900,” , 30:383 (Winter 1969).