Saratoga Springs, Feb., 1849.

Frederick Douglass, Sir:—A few weeks since, I saw a communication in your paper from Rev. H. H. Garnet. As our friend, with yourself, has frequently been engaged in such assemblies, and know how difficult it is to adopt a set of measures, unless they have previously been considered, and as the subject of Moral Reform has so many ramifications, would it not be well to specify some particular branch which it will be its object to promote? Understand me to offer no objection to the suggestion, for I feel a deep interest in any such resolution; and I think it would be ungenerous and unreasonable to suppose that any man is ignorant of the effect of concentrated action in a community where the means of the people, individually are limited.

So peculiar is the position we occupy, from a multiplicity of causes—those causes it is not my purpose to discuss; but I may simply assert, that the manner in which our ancestors were introduced into this country, that is, as servants, and of them the most abject, not possessing any knowledge of the language of the nation, being kept in ignorance of it, and so servile for a century or two, as not to excite fear in the bosom of the oppressor by manifest restlessness.

That our situation is different from that of all other men, must be admitted. No other class of men is subjected to the same species of caste; consequently, our exodus can only be through the establishment of new reciprocal relations. We want Loan and Trust Companies, formed of the united capital of our people, that the man of genius and enterprise, who has cultivated a knowledge of the sciences or mechanic arts, may have the means to engage in his favorite profession. Do we want to engage in commercial enterprise? Then will we have the facilities for forming companies on a permanent basis; thereby placing our men on the stage of action where they will have their faculties expanded and fully developed, for it is the occupation which controls his mind. This is something worth doing. How could we face posterity, if nothing is done by us to elevate the standard of manhood from its present degraded situation? True, our parents have done much in some instances, by accumulating property and educating their children; but what is that compared with the obligation which rests upon us? Are there any who would ask what claims posterity can have on us? Let them look around, and behold the great disparity between us (as colored men) and the mass of men. How free and unrestrained the one!—how abject and degraded the other! Would it not be well for some of our leading men to think of this?

R. ChapmanChapman, R.

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