OUR LEADERS.

MR. EDITOR:—The last objection (to the In
dustrial School) made by the is in the following words: "The colored
people are not so apathetic from a want of de
sire to rise, but from the repeated failures of
the high-wrought plans which their leaders have
presented for their adoption. Forgetting the
materials with which they must work and the
resources upon which they must rely, they (the
leaders) have looked upon the enterprises of the
whites, and laying their plans on the same scale,
and have called on an ignorant, poverty-stricken
and divided people to accomplish the work.— The
consequence has always been disheartening
failures. If this cannot be verified in a nation
al point of view, many local experiences will
justify the statement. On the list of impracti
cabilities we must place the Industrial College."

What is said about leadership will be exam
ined at present, as a former article treats of the
practicability of the Industrial School. I deny,
absolutely, that the colored people in the United
States now have, or ever had, an es
sential to the idea of "leader" in relation to
any people, is the assumption that said people
can be led: the Whigs had a leader, Henry
ClayClay, Henry

Henry Clay (1777-1852), a native Virginian, entered politics during the 1790s in his adopted state of Kentucky and rose quickly to national prominence. As a congressman, senator, secretary of state, founder of the Whig party, and regular presidential candidate, Clay espoused broadly nationalistic programs designed to avoid sectional antagonism caused by the issue of slavery. He figured prominently in the debates that led to the passage of the Missouri Compromise, and he was a leading architect of the Compromise of 1850. His support of the American Colonization Society earned him the lasting hostility of Garrisonian abolitionists. In Congress, Clay vigorously opposed abolitionist petitions against slavery in the District of Columbia. Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New York, 1991); Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837-1860 (New York, 1976), 109; DAB, 4:73-79. ; and the Democrats had a leader, An
drew JacksonJackson, Andrew

: both Whigs and Democrats
had a capacity for being led: but can we say
this thing, in this sense of the colored people?
Certainly not; for whoever among us may have
attempted to grasp this people and bear them
aloft, has bet the fate of the jackdaw in the
fable. And the reason why we cannot be led by
one of ourselves may be found in the fact that
whilst we bear a common relation to the whites—attraction—we
bear the opposite relation to
each other—repulsion. I speak of the masses,
who must move, or be moved, or we cannot rise.
This attraction to the whites, and repulsion
from each other, is but an instance of a general
law, which holds good in physics and psychics,
matter and mind. It is of the same class of
facts with chemical affinity, head, and the elec
trical phenomena: we
could not have a common impulse to amalga
mate with the whites without mutual repulsion
or dehiscence. Hence the remark of Mr.
Clark that "we are a divided people," is abso
lutely true, and contains the sub-statement that
we have no leaders; for if we had leaders we
would not be what we are, absolutely disin
tegrated in regard to each other.

It is not pertinent at this time to enquire
this is so: yet the reason seems to be, that ours
is the common destiny of all the peoples in this
land, to amalgamate with all the rest and have
no separate nationality.

Is it necessary to adduce facts to show that
we have no leaders and that we are mutually
repellent? The Anti-Colonization movement,
and the embracing of Methodism, the two great
facts in the history of our people, were sponta
neous movements of the masses, without leader
ship by anyone. The history of these events
affords a curious study of a people otherwise
scattered and divided, yet moved by a common
impulse The first was but an ex
pression of the tendency to amalgamate, and the
second was the cravings of a spiritual nature
apart from the concerns of this life, and
our mutual relations. In all our history, no
man from among us has stood forth and an
nounced a principle, or line of conduct, or set
an example of progress to which any thousand
have assented, or carried out. Let any
many among us, rising above menial occupation,
set up a creditable business in the midst of a
colored neighborhood; and he will find, as oth
ers have found, that his brethren, so far from
supporting him and holding up his hands, will,
on the contrary, pass his door to trade with the
whites: if he succeed, he must depend largely
upon the patronage of the whites: of all the
colored churches in the land, I know not one
which pays a decent salary to a colored minis
ter, out of its own funds: and if a colored man
seek the higher ranks of life as a lawyer, physi
cian or editor, the same treatment by his breth
ren meets him. "The ,"
says John I. Gaines, "in the midst of a colored
population of nearly 4000 in and about Cincin
nati—a population who command one million
and a half of dollars—receives from them, for
its support, Yet the
is a straightfoward, earnest
advocate of our common rights, and is doing
manly service in battering down the special
forms of oppression under which our people
labor in Cincinnati.

But, if we have no "leaders" among the col
ored people, by what term are we to distinguish
the colored men who assemble in conventions,
write addresses, pass first rate resolutions, &c.,
&c., for the elevation of "our people?" These
men, who are, or have been—for some have
passed away—men of public spirit, earnest for
the general good and zealous for the advance
ment of the down-trodden, men willing to spend
and be spent; but, alas! they have never had
the masses to support them, nor even to give
an approving cheer of God's-speed to their well
meant efforts: so far from being leaders of the
people, they are "like unto children sitting in
the markets, and calling unto their fellows and
saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have
not danced; we have mourned unto you, and you
ye have not lamented."

Such are the men whom Mr. Clark blames as
"leaders:" so far are these from "forgetting the
materials" with which they must work, and "the
resources on which they must rely," that it is
the "materials"—a mutually repellent people—who
forget them, or if they remember them it
is for purposes of blame or ridicule. Ten col
ored men to one white, have I heard blame
Dr. Pennington and Frederick Douglass for
their manly resistance against caste in cars and
steamboats. This is the secret, moreover of
the absence of Garnett, and Ward, and Crum
mell, from among us. "It would not do for
such a man as I am," write Alexander Crum
mell, "to live in New York, the Rector of a
colored congregation, amid all the moral con
fusion in church and State which pertains to
the question of the rights of our poor and op
pressed race. The galling pressure of the
whites would be sad enough: but to have to
endure the malignant spite of our own people,
ever ready to lick the dust before our common
oppressors, and to turn with venom upon their
black vindicators, and to crush their hearst as
they did mine, is something which I cannot
learn over again. I have had a twelve years'
schooling of this kind; and it has passed—for
ever!"

There is now left, in this city of New York,
but one of these "leaders," or public spirited
individuals. Early in June last, he began ar
rangements for a grand celebration of the on Staten Island: poor in pocket,
he labored night and day to raise the means to
print and distribute hand-bills and other adver
tisements to rouse the people up to the glorious
occasion: civic societies and military companies
were assiduously drummed up: by dint of per
severing energy, and the aid of an old friend, he
secured that grand yet lovely site, Clifton Park,
where, some years before, Kossuth's tent had
been pitched when he first landed on American
soil: after all this toil, and trouble, and inven
tion, when he called the people together for
preliminary organization of the procession, he
was scarcely permitted to say a word: the peo
ple elected marshall and aids, but left him out:
and, on the eventful First of August, when
there assembled, in squads of dozens, and hun
dreds, no less colored people
called together by his almost unaided efforts
our "leader" was the only man who came and
departed alone ! he wore cocked hat, and sword,
and sabertash, and marched into the grand old
park, as some one cruelly remarked, "Captain
of the Invisible Guards!" and his brother
"leaders!" as Mr. Clark calls them, may they
not, in like manner, be termed, "leaders of an
invisible people?"

It is not the fault of the "leaders," then, for
we have none. Now, I cannot do more than
point out where our difficulty lies. After a
quarter of a century of earnest, patient thought
over this heart problem, I can faintly utter my
sad eureka, and leave to others the discovery of
the remedy : it is for those who, with true
hearts and clear heads, will assemble at Phila
delphia in October, to begin the work of con
triving the cure: if they take a clear view
of the nature of our divided-ness, they will ad
vance far: if they furthermore can seize upon
the grand talisman which shall substitute mu
tual attraction for mutual repulsion, love for
hate, their labors will be more than blessed:
there is no need that we shall hate the white
man in order to love one another: but come
when or whence it may, the remedy will at first
be slow, very slow, in action: there is so much to
be overcome: myriad molecular affinities to
be substituted for myriad molecular repulsions:
let us be patient, therefore: the revolution is
almost too great to be done in one generation.
To the generous few who are laboring with true
hearts, and walk by faith rather than sight, let
me say, "let us pump as long as we can work
our arms."

Yours as ever

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, Sept., 1855.