JERMAIN WESLEY LOGUEN TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Syracuse, [N.Y.] 11 Aug[ust] 1851.

MY DEAR FRIEND DOUGLASS:—

I have no congratulations to offer to you on account of your new position in the anti-slavery field at the present time. I think that I am one of those that have admired your course from my first acquaintance with you some eight or nine years since.¹Jermain Wesley Loguen of Syracuse, New York, may have first met Douglass when Douglass toured western New York in the company of Abby Kelley in early fall 1842. Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 4:87n. I always regarded you as candid and honest in your course, let others say what they may. I, to-day, regard you the same Frederick Douglass that I did in former years, candid and honest in your purpose, and true to the poor slave in all his wrongs and degradation. I have feelings of gratitude always to God for raising up such men, and especially at such a time as the present where it calls men everywhere to be true to God and his poor, as it does at this time of great distress in this country. Dear friend, I should like to give you some account of my travels for the

last two months, and the meetings that we have attended in the time, but I will not intrude on your readers at this time with such a detail of facts. I left Syracuse the first of June, and traveled south-west to Pa. Passing through some nine counties of this State, holding meetings more or less in them all. In Chantauque²Chautauqua County lies in southwestern New York, adjacent to the Pennsylvania border. Among the first settlers of the county were the parents of Caroline Storum, Loguen’s wife. Loguen, Narrative, 355. I spent some two weeks passing into Pa. some part of the time, (where we had some grand meetings.) We had glorious meetings through all the counties in which I stopped for that purpose. We found many and true friends on the way, that have been made so by the wicked Fugitive Slave Law. I never saw the time during the last ten years, that I have been in the anti-slavery field when the public ear was so ready and willing to hear on American Slavery. The Fugitive Slave Bill has had a good effect in making the people willing to hear on the subject, and I hope it will drive them to action, as action is what we need at present. I never had a better hearing.

O that we had twenty-five living, traveling lecturers in the field at this time! They might do a world of good for the long neglected slave. But we have but few, as you know, in the field at present. Many of our strong and true men are out of the country at this the time of great distress and need of their labors. Would to the Lord that they were all on the ground with their sword and battle axes in hand, to do battle against the foul monster of hell! They might do much for their country. As weak a brother as I am in the cause, I have calls enough for five men at this time if I could fill them all, but I am but one man and poor at that, but will do what I may for the good cause in my way. I would that we could have force sufficient to commence a war upon this State, by the way of holding conventions in every county in this State, this fall. We might, by so doing, make a great change in favor of equal rights. Will you let us hear from your strong pen on the subject, if you think proper? All I think we need now to do a great work in this country for the slave, are true friends and concert of action. If this we can have, then we may defy the infernal Fugitive Slave Bill, and through God, make it a dead letter. And if a few of us are carried back, then I believe we will make it hot for them even in the prison-house of woe,³John Milton referred to Hell as the “house of woe” in Paradise Lost. John Milton, John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (New York, 1957), 344, 417. as I hope our brother Henry Long⁴Henry Long was an escaped slave from Alexandria, Virginia. In January 1851, federal officers arrested Long and took him before a federal commissioner for a hearing. The American Anti-Slavery Society provided funds for his defense. The Union Safety Committee, a group of New York merchants who opposed antislavery agitation and supported the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, contributed $800 to the expenses of Long’s alleged master, John T. Smith. Although the American Anti-Slavery Society and the New York black community raised funds for Long’s defense, he lost the case. Smith took Long back to Virginia, where he sold Long for $750. The man who purchased Long later resold the former fugitive in Atlanta, Georgia. Campbell, Slave Catchers, 117; Freeman, “Free Negro in New York City,” 85–86. is doing at this time. I, under God, am determined to stand my ground and fight until the war shall end. I take your paper, and read it with much delight every week. The name is a mere matter of taste; the principle is the thing.

I am, truly yours,

J. W. LOGUEN.

PLSr: FDP, 21 August 1851. Reprinted in Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 4:84–86.

CALVIN FAIRBANKFairbank, Calvin

Born in Wyoming County, New York, the Reverend Calvin Fairbank (1816–98) was a Methodist preacher and abolitionist in Jeffersonville, Indiana. There, he helped forty- seven fugitive slaves escape from Kentucky. Later caught and sentenced to 300 lashes, he also served a four-year prison term. Undeterred, Fairbank resumed his Underground Railroad activities. He was arrested again in 1852 and sentenced to fifteen years in a Kentucky prison for another attempted slave rescue. Finally, in early 1864, Kentucky’s acting governor, Richard T. Jacob, pardoned and released Fairbank, who subsequently returned to upstate New York. Calvin Fairbank, Rev. Calvin Fairbank during Slavery Times(1890; New York, 1969), 3, 157, 184, 186, 191; Siebert, Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, 157–59. ¹ TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Williamson, [N.Y.] 19 Aug[ust] 1851.

DEAR DOUGLASS:—
I regret, sincerely, to see among anti-slavery people, and among those, too,
who have either cut loose from all church on account of slavery, as well as
among those who have at all times kept out the pale of the church on account
of their peculiar differences upon fundamental principles of their religion,
quite as much sectarianism as among any of the "American Church."² Our
country has many anti-slavery hearts; but people have been driven from
each other, and from the true issue, merely by sectarianism, as false as the
lower regions to human rights. Go into a place, and the first question is,
"Does he belong to a church of any kind?" "Is he a Methodist?" "Or is he a
Baptist?" asks another. Another exclaims, "Why see, he has put up with that
Garrisonian," and they themselves "will not remove it with one of their fin
gers."³

The church folks are too slow, too lazy, too don't care; neglect the
slave almost entirely. Most of the Wesleyans,⁴ while they actually do but
little more than the M. E. Church, discard me for sustaining the relation I
do to a church with four thousand slaveholders,⁵ and refuse their support.
—Those of the old organization, many of them, are equally particular
through what channel I come, or refuse their support. What hair-splitting!