America uninsulted and unharmed. So long as the conventional and sham Christianity, which builds negro-pews, and which qualifies and limits social rights by complexion, shall bear sway in this land, so long you will be exposed to insults and injuries. It is this spurious Christianity which subjects you to discomforts and insults, and exposes you to violence and murder. It is this which educates and lets loose the mob upon you. It is this which moulds the Websters²Daniel Webster. and Dickinsons³Daniel Stevens Dickinson (1800–1866), one of the leading conservative Democrats in antebellum New York politics, entered the U.S. Senate in 1845 following the resignation of Nathaniel P. Tallmadge. He was an outspoken opponent of the Wilmot Proviso and earned the praise of both Henry Clay and Daniel Webster for his support of the Compromise of 1850. Dickinson left the Senate in 1852 but remained an active campaigner for the Democratic party. NS, 26 April 1850; Daniel S. Dickinson, Speeches, Correspondence, etc., of the Late Daniel S. Dickinson, ed. John R. Dickinson, 2 vols. (New York, 1867); DAB, 3:294–95; NCAB, 5:388–89. of the Senate, and the Morses of the New York Observer⁴Sidney Edwards Morse (1794–1871) was a New England inventor and author who founded the New York Observer in 1823 with his brother, Richard Cary Morse. He remained at his editorial post until 1858. Morse also published a number of geographical texts and both statistical and religiously oriented atlases. Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3:421n; DAB, 7:251–52. and the Bennets⁵James Gordon Bennett. of the New York Herald and which makes expediency, instead of principle, the governing motive of them all.—This spurious Christianity is indeed a murderous and a dev[i]lish thing. Would that all its churches but that they would be rebuilt—might be burnt up, and that all its ministers might be huddled together where they could repent and do no harm.

A negro-pew church, a church of Christ! What a misnomer! I would not honor it so far as to call it the church of the Devil. The Devil is not so unreasonable—I was about to say, not so unjust—as to classify persons by the color of their skin. Even the Devil is willing to leave to its operation the great law, that character assigns to every man his place.

But think not, my dear Douglass, that it is you colored men alone who suffer from this insane and rampant prejudice. The wound it inflicts on you, it inflicts on us who s[y]mpathize with you, and who have identified ourselves and made ourselves colored men with you. In your sufferings, we suffer. In your afflictions, we are afflicted. Did I never tell you, that one reason I so seldom leave my house is that, because of my sympathy with my colored brethren, I am made so unhappy abroad? I look around for them in vain.—They are not there to share with me in my comforts and privileges. It is true that I am not thus tried in the churches I attend when from home, since I attend no negro-hating churches. For some fifteen years, I have shunned such churches, as I would a pest-house.⁶Gerrit Smith’s concern with the established Christian denominations and their tendency toward discrimination and proslavery attitudes was well established. He was an outspoken critic of all ministers and denominations that segregated congregations or refused to speak out against slavery. Although he remained a member of the Presbyterian church for many years, as early as 1818 Smith became involved in a nondenominational reform movement called Christian Union that was devoted to the abolitionist and temperance causes. In 1843 Smith formally withdrew his membership in the Presbyterian church and organized the nondenominational Church of Peterboro, which practiced no discrimination and had a strong antislavery and reformist orientation. Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 196–205; McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 95–96, 159. But when traveling and visiting, I cannot always steer clear of the places and occasions where my colored brother is despised, and hated, and crucified. I often find myself in public houses and private houses, in steamboats, and cars, and omnibuses; in gatherings and circles, where I know my poor colored brother (if allowed at all) is not allowed to be as the equal of the white man.—And how can I be happy in such circumstances! How can I enjoy that in which my equal brother is permitted no participation? Even the attempt to enjoy it, I feel to be traitorous to him; and if enjoyment begin, the rising of such a feeling arrests and withers it. In such circumstances, I am wont to remember that, by reason of the interference and remonstrance of his sympathy with others,