grant, that they may deliver themselves from such a charge by coming out in favor of a national league, and the union of their down-trodden brethren. Every colored man who can realize his true condition, and that of his 500,000, brethren at the North, must see at the slightest glance, “that a union of the oppressed for the sake of freedom,”²Douglass placed this expression at the top of his editorial column in the North Star when he initially suggested the formation of a National League for colored men on 10 August 1849. is the very thing we want. The measure is entitled to respect, and the originator to the confidence of his brethren and the people. He is a devoted friend of the slave, and of the elevation of the free colored people of the north, an extraordinary man, “without a model, and without a shadow.”³Charles Phillips (c. 1787–1859), a noted Irish author and orator, delivered an address around 1817 titled “The Character of Napoleon,” in which Phillips described the French emperor as “the man without a model, and without a shadow.” On 16 October 1854 Abraham Lincoln paraphrased this description in a speech he delivered in Peoria, Illinois, on the Kansas-Nebraska Act. William Jennings Bryan and Francis W. Halsey, eds., The World’s Famous Orations, 10 vols. (New York, 1906), 6:161; Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, 10 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1953–55), 2:281; DNB, 15:1082–83.

In reference to the place of holding the Convention, I think it would be more just toward the Western portion of our people, to say Cleveland or Buffalo; however, be that as it may, I am in favor of a national league. We will lay it before the people of this place as soon as practicable, and let you know what they may determine about it. The only barriers that will prevent us from forming a perfect union, will be the church and clergy; for we have held some anti-slavery meetings in the A. M. E. Church here,⁴The African Methodist Episcopal Church of Chillicothe was involved with the earliest efforts in Ohio to educate blacks. The church was a participant in the 1844 conception and management of Union Seminary, which later became Wilberforce University, twelve miles west of Columbus, Ohio. B. W. Arnett, “Address of Bishop B. W. Arnett,” in Ohio Centennial Anniversary Celebration at Chillicothe: Complete Proceedings, ed. E. O. Randall (Columbus, Ohio, 1903), 682. but we are reliably informed that we can hold no more, because we attacked the pro-slavery character of the church, and told them that they should not let slaveholders and their abettors preach in their pulpit. For these things we are to be excluded. But we can expect nothing better, when a Rev. M. T. Newsom,⁵Matthew T. Newsome was ordained a minister in the Ohio Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844. He was one of the earliest proponents of the creation of a western seminary for the denomination, a project that culminated in the founding of the Payne Theological Institute at the denomination’s Wilberforce University in 1856. In the same year, Newson advocated prohibiting church members from owning slaves even if the motive was to protect relatives in southern states forbidding manumission. After the Civil War, Newsome helped to direct missionary efforts of the denomination in Mississippi. Daniel A. Payne, History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1891; New York, 1969), 180, 185, 203, 339, 404. a colored man, says, that none of our meetings have done any good, as yet, either as conventions or otherwise. Your valuable paper would have a wider circulation, were it not for this demoralizing and damning influence that they continually exert over our people. If you were here it would be otherwise.

W. R. G.

PLIr: NS, 16 November 1849.