FROM OUR BROOKLYN CORRESPONDENT.

MY DEAR DOUGLASS:—Nothing seemed to mar the calm, dull, quiet horizon of life about Gotham, nor over the Heights, save the breathless anxiety occasioned by the non-arrival of the steamer Arctic—freighted, as she was, with so many souls—beings full of life —children of luxury and ease.

It is natural to suppose that the wealthy are freed from harm and danger; but alas! in this we are too often disappointed; for the destroyer, Death, comes in shapes and in forms we know not of and grasps us often in ways which we conceive not. The rich, as well as the poor, fall alike beneath his hand. We were looking for the Arctic, I have said; but alas! we shall never again behold her. That noble vessel shall never again loom up in our beautiful bay; nor ever again enter our fine harbor, nor be unladened at our busy wharves. She, with all her grandeur and her wealth, has gone! A few shattered remains of the refined and wealthy—a few hardy sons of the ocean, and the bottom of a hull drifting in a trackless path o'er the mighty deep, over which that deep sings its dirge, are all we have or perhaps will ever know of the ill fated Arctic. The shock occasioned by the news of the loss of the Arctic was greater than has been produced by any thing since the day Hendrick Hudson sailed up into our harbor. Business, in many instances, was suspended, and a deep gloom overspread the city.

In the colored world, on the Gotham side, efforts are being made by the literati to form a Literary Association and Reading Room, and get up a Library on a grand scale. The plan is substantially the same as Ethiop marked out last winter, when he called attention to the subject. Success to the undertaking. I looked in at them one evening and found a fine admixture of clergy, Doctors, and literary characters from about town, and all in grave council over the matter.

In Brooklyn we have been much revived from the deep swoon of indifference, by the advent of your junior co-laborer, Wm. Watkins, Esq., amongst us, and the able, telling, soul-stirring Lecture he gave us on Thursday evening. It was just the thing needed, and I doubt not will have its effect.

A writer, signing himself A. N. Freeman, (which, I hope for the sake of all parties, is a hoax,) asserts that the statement made in my review of a meeting in the Siloam Church, as published in your paper under date of Oct. 6th, is totally void of truth, because I used the term Doctors; and he backs up this allegation by saying "no D'rs took part, nor were any present." Now, is this ignorance, or a cavil? In either case, it is too much for even the most profane to apply to a man, that dreadful epithet, l—r. Let us look at the point of a moment. The word Doctor is derived from the Latin word Docco, to teach. Doctor, a learned man, a teacher in divinity. "Father in the church."—Webster. Will any one say there was not a teacher there—a teacher in Divinity, who took part in that meeting? Will somebody hand this writer a copy of Webster's Dictionary? Void of truth! am I and my statement utterly false? Ho ho! so it was, I, Ethiop. was it, and not the writer of this famous paper who made allusions to this matter of better associations in the white than colored schools?

I, who said I would put a child of mine in a white school, on account of better association! Wonderful, this! Now let me state a fact. It was I who refused to permit this little child in question to go to a white school —a school containing but wealthy and respectable children, though solicited and oft solicited, and waited upon and waited upon, by the teacher for that purpose; and this school not two blocks from my dwelling, preferring rather to send this same little child to a colored school over a mile and a half distant. For all this I have proof quite close at hand. Some others may not be able to say as much quite. My article void of truth, is it? The writer utters some incoherent language about my glory—some, I am sorry to say, glory in what ought to be their shame. I glory in nothing save the truth, and my endeavor to do good, not injury, to my neighbor. I glory in truths, such as were expressed in my articles, all of them, first and last. This remark about my securing glory sounds rather strangely upon my ear; and when I look back to the first unwarrantable attack made upon me, it may be that it is the key to this whole affair. I have dwelt, be it known, for more than one-third of my whole life among the quietudes of Brooklyn, and will say for myself and those about me, during this long intercourse among men, I have never had an altercation with any, nor have I ever backbitten my neighbor, nor meddled with my neighbor's private affairs, nor aught else save my own business. Is there anybody now that would rob me of any well-deserved glory I may receive? I trust not.—But, why further comment? Sir, I am amazed when I regard the source from whence comes this remarkable paper. When I remember the many persons at that meeting whose eyes may meet that remarkable paper, and the ones of mine that called it from its source—every word of which can be proven to be true —I tremble at the thought and am bathed in grief. Knowing that we were compassed about by so great a cloud of witnesses on that occasion, who can and do testify, and who must do so again at the final close of all things; and knowing, too, that a greater witness still heard, and has recorded all I uttered; and all the writer uttered on that fatal night; and that the Great Disposer himself will make a final settlement of this whole matter—I say, when I know all this, I am overwhelmed because of this remarkable paper, and the source from whence it originated; and my pen falters to write of the things which, of a truth, I do know.

Yours, as ever,

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.

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, Oct. 13, '54.