West Vienna, Feb. 11, 1848.

Messrs. Douglass and DelanyDelany, Martin Robison

Born to a free mother and a slave father in Charlestown, in western Virginia, Martin Robison Delany (1812-85) was an editor, physician, and leading advocate of black emigration. In 1822 Delany's mother moved to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where his father later joined them, and the young Delany attended a local school. In 1831 he moved to Pittsburgh where he worked as a barber, attended a school run by a black Methodist minister, and studied medicine, upgrading his occupation from “cupper and leecher“ to physician. Between 1843 and 1847, Delany was editor of the Mystery, a black Pittsburgh newspaper. For the next two years he served as co-editor of Doug1ass’s North Star and lectured and traveled extensively to gain new subscriptions for that paper. In 1850-51 Delany attended Harvard Medical College but, owing to protests from white students, was denied admission to the final term needed to complete his medical degree. The following year he wrote The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered (Philadelphia, 1852), in which he argued that emigration was the only remedy for the oppressed state of black Americans. When many black abolitionists, including Douglass, rejected Delany's position, he organized a series of National Emigration Conventions that met in 1854, 1856, and 1858. These assemblies created a permanent National Board of Commissioners, of which Delany was president and chief propagandist. In 1856 Delany moved to Chatham, Canada West, and three years later explored the Niger river valley in Africa looking for possible emigration sites. His novel Blake was serialized in the Weekly Anglo-African from November 1861 through May 1862. During the Civil War, Delany served the North first as a recruiter and examining surgeon and eventually as a major of the 104th U.S. Colored Troops. From 1865 to 1868 Delany was a Freedmen's Bureau officer in South Carolina and later was active in that state's politics, running unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor on the Independent Republican ticket in 1874. Ullman, Martin R. Delany, 52-103, 115-21, 140-71, 211-46; Dorothy Sterling, The Making of an Afro-American: Martin Robison Delany, 1812—1885 (Garden City, N.Y., 1971); Thomas Holt, Black Over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina during Reconstruction (Urbana, Ill., 1977), 74-75, 176-77; Miller, Search for a Black Nationality, 115-33, 171-83; Martin R. Delany, Blake; or, The Huts of America, ed. Floyd J. Miller (Boston, 1970), ix; DAB, 5: 219-20. : Dear Sirs,—On looking over the 6th Number of the North Star, I noticed in the report of the Winfield Fair and Meetings, statements made respecting myself, which need a little correction; not that I charge the reporter with any intention of misrepresenting what I said, or what I meant to say.

The report says—

"Mr. Walker’s discourse was chiefly made up of statements respecting his own sufferings."

If my memory is not very defective, very little of my remarks consisted of statements of my sufferings; and what I did say in allusion to them, was, if possible, to induce others to the great work before them, and place in the hands of their neighbours and children the means of information respecting the condition of the slaves, and their claims on us and our kidnapping government.

"There was one statement respecting his poverty, which he made—that his family were now living in a miserable cabin in Plymouth, the only covering of which was a piece of cotton cloth."

I am confident I did not say, in so many words, that the only covering of my "miserable cabin was a piece of cotton cloth;" but that it was composed of a few rough boards, battened with laths on the sides, and overhead was covered with a piece of cotton cloth. I here remark, to prevent being misunderstood, that the top of the cabin is nearly flat, with common cotton sheeting tacked over it, and paid with turpentine, to make it shed water. This being put up with my own hands in a hurry, was the best I could do to shelter my family from the elements; and the materials of this I am yet in debt for, without the means of paying.

"It is a little too bad, that a man who has suffered, as Mr. Walker has done, in the cause of the slave, and who labors as he now does, should be allowed to live in such extreme destitution as he now does, or to be compelled to expose his poverty before every meeting he addresses."

This conveys the idea, that I make it a part of my discourse to make statements respecting my poverty; which is very incorrect: for it is seldom I made mention of it in public, and should not have made the statement I did at Winfield, had I not been requested to do so, while speaking.

The collection taken up on the occasion, was less, instead of more, than ten dollars. It was more, however, than all the collections taken up for us, since leaving home in November last. We do not take up collections, and have consented that any should be taken up for us only on three or four occasions, to defray expenses.

Yours, for the best cause,

Jonathan WalkerWalker, Jonathan

Jonathan Walker (1799–1878) was a northern abolitionist honored in antislavery circles for his efforts to aid slaves in Florida to escape. By turns a seaman, carpenter, and mechanic, Walker grew up on Cape Cod, converted to abolitionism sometime in the 1830s, and lived with his family in Pensacola, Florida, for five or six years before returning to Massachusetts. While on a business trip to Pensacola in the summer of 1844, he agreed to use his boat to transport some slaves to the Bahamas. The party was intercepted on the Florida Gulf Coast by two southern dredging boats. Walker was returned to Pensacola, where he was convicted of slave stealing, fined about $165, and branded on the palm of his right hand with the initials "SS" (Slave Stealer). He spent eleven months in jail before northern abolitionists secured his release by paying his fines and court and jail costs, shortly before Douglass sailed to England. Walker died in Muskegon, Michigan. Jonathan Walker, Trial and Imprisonment of Jonathan Walker . . . (Boston, 1845); Filler, Crusade Against Slavery, 164; ACAB, 6 : 329. .

P.S. Friend J. S. JacobsJacobs, John S.

John S. Jacobs (1815-73), a black abolitionist and antislavery lecturer, was the brother of abolitionist and author Harriet Jacobs. Born a slave in North Carolina, Jacobs escaped while visiting New York with his master. After working on a whaling ship for three years, Jacobs returned to New York, where he became active in the antislavery movement and helped his sister and her family to escape slavery. During March and April 1849, he toured western New York and lectured in numerous small towns and villages. He later sought fortune panning for gold in California and Australia in the 18505. By 1861 Jacobs was living in London, where he returned to his antislavery activities and published the narrative of his life as a slave. NS, 20 April 1849; Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, ed. Jean Fagan Yellin (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 245-47; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 4:168-69n. and myself will probably be at your place in three or four weeks; we are now working our way through Oswego County westward. J. W.