Pittsburg, Oct. 12th 1850.

Frederick Douglass:—Dear Sir:—When you were in Pittsburg in July last, at a public meeting held by you in the Wesleyan Chapel, Mr. Lewis Woodson of this city, in reply to some remarks made by you, distinctly and positively said and repeated, persisting in his assertion, that when he was in the city of New York in May last, that while sitting in an upper room, of the house of a friend, that he saw Thomas Van Rensselaer, formerly Editor of the Ram's Horn, playing billiards on the Sabbath day. This he said and repeated in our hearing.

But his denial through the Liberator need not be wondered at, when, on the evening in question, he appealed to the white citizens present for a proof of his integrity. Being requested to refer to the colored citizens, he promptly replied, that he was not acquainted with the colored people, notwithstanding, he had been for years a school teacher, preacher, and member of two churches among them. We fully testify to the truthfulness of your statement concerning him.

M. R. DelanyDelany, Martin Robison

Born to a free mother and a slave father in Charlestown, in western Virginia, Martin Robison Delany (1812-85) was an editor, physician, and leading advocate of black emigration. In 1822 Delany's mother moved to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where his father later joined them, and the young Delany attended a local school. In 1831 he moved to Pittsburgh where he worked as a barber, attended a school run by a black Methodist minister, and studied medicine, upgrading his occupation from “cupper and leecher“ to physician. Between 1843 and 1847, Delany was editor of the Mystery, a black Pittsburgh newspaper. For the next two years he served as co-editor of Doug1ass’s North Star and lectured and traveled extensively to gain new subscriptions for that paper. In 1850-51 Delany attended Harvard Medical College but, owing to protests from white students, was denied admission to the final term needed to complete his medical degree. The following year he wrote The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered (Philadelphia, 1852), in which he argued that emigration was the only remedy for the oppressed state of black Americans. When many black abolitionists, including Douglass, rejected Delany's position, he organized a series of National Emigration Conventions that met in 1854, 1856, and 1858. These assemblies created a permanent National Board of Commissioners, of which Delany was president and chief propagandist. In 1856 Delany moved to Chatham, Canada West, and three years later explored the Niger river valley in Africa looking for possible emigration sites. His novel Blake was serialized in the Weekly Anglo-African from November 1861 through May 1862. During the Civil War, Delany served the North first as a recruiter and examining surgeon and eventually as a major of the 104th U.S. Colored Troops. From 1865 to 1868 Delany was a Freedmen's Bureau officer in South Carolina and later was active in that state's politics, running unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor on the Independent Republican ticket in 1874. Ullman, Martin R. Delany, 52-103, 115-21, 140-71, 211-46; Dorothy Sterling, The Making of an Afro-American: Martin Robison Delany, 1812—1885 (Garden City, N.Y., 1971); Thomas Holt, Black Over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina during Reconstruction (Urbana, Ill., 1977), 74-75, 176-77; Miller, Search for a Black Nationality, 115-33, 171-83; Martin R. Delany, Blake; or, The Huts of America, ed. Floyd J. Miller (Boston, 1970), ix; DAB, 5: 219-20. ,

J. B. VashonVashon, John B.

John Boyer Vashon (?–1853) operated a barbershop and bathhouse in Pittsburgh. He joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and served on its board of managers in the 1830s. Vashon attended several National Negro Conventions, including the 1853 Rochester gathering that launched the National Council of Colored Men. Douglass frequently visited Vashon’s home while touring the Midwest and eulogized him as “one of the most consistent advocates of the slave’s freedom, and of the colored man’s elevation, who has yet arisen among our proscribed race.” FDP, 20 August 1852, 15 July 1853, 6 January, 8 September 1854; ASB, 7 January 1854; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 20–33, 81, 108, 200; R. J. M. Blackett, “ ‘Freedom, or the Martyr’s Grave’: Black Pittsburgh’s Aid to the Fugitive Slave,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, 61:117–34 (April 1978). ,

P. BlacksonBlackson, P.

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