Letter from William Wells BrownBrown, William Wells

William Wells Brown (c. 1814-84) was born a slave in Lexington, Kentucky, but escaped to freedom in Ohio in 1834, taking the name Wells Brown from a Quaker man who aided his escape. After settling in Cleveland, he worked on a Lake Erie steamboat, from which he helped many fugitive slaves escape to Canada. In the 1840s he moved his family to New York, where he began lecturing for the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (1843-49). Brown was active in universal reform movements advocating temperance, women's rights, and prison reform. Brown studied medicine informally, but chose to remain active in reforms instead of committing to professional medical practice. In 1847, Brown published his first book, Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, and moved to Boston. From 1849 to 1854 he traveled and lectured in Europe, meeting many prominent figures and publishing two more books: Three Years in Europe; Or, Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met (1852) and Clotel; Or, The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853), the first novel known to be written by an African American. After friends in England purchased his freedom in 1854, he returned to the United States to continue his work in the abolitionist, temperance, woman suffrage, and prison reform movements. He also wrote four books about African American history, including The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements, which appeared in 1863 and ran through ten editions in three years. During the Civil War, Brown joined Douglass in recruiting blacks for the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. Lib., 12 January 1855; London Lancet, 6 December 1884; R. J. M. Blackett, Beating against the Barriers: The Lives of Six Nineteenth-Century Afro-Americans (Ithaca, N.Y., 1986), 45, 48, 95-96, 101-02; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 35, 42, 50-51; DAB, 3:161; DANB, 71-73. .
Dear Douglass:—
The past six weeks have been of a stirring nature in this great metropolis. It commenced with the Peace Congress, the proceedings of which have long since reached you. And although that event has passed off, it may not be out of place here to venture a remark or two upon its deliberations.
A meeting upon the subject of Peace, with the support of the monied and influential men who rally around the peace standard in this country, could scarcely have been held in Exeter Hall without creating some sensation. From all parts of the world flocked delegates to this practical protest against war. And among those who took part in the proceedings, were many men whose names alone would, even on ordinary occasions, have filled the great hall. The speakers were chosen from among the representatives of the various countries, without regard to dialect or complexion; and the only fault which seemed to be found with the Committee's arrangements was, that in their desire to get foreigners and Londoners, they forgot the country delegates, so that none of the large provincial towns were at all represented in the Congress, as far as speaking was concerned. Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, and all the important towns in Scotland and Ireland, were silenced in the great meeting. I need not say that this was an oversight of the Committee, and one, too, that has done the cause some injury. Such men as the able Chairman of the late Anti-Corn Law League, cannot be forgotten in such a meeting, without giving offense to those who sent him, especially when the Committe brought forward, day after day, the same speakers, chosen from amongst the metropolitan delegation. However, the meeting was a glorious one, and will long be remembered with delight as a step onward in the cause of peace, Burritt's Brotherhood BazaarBurritt, Elihu

Elihu Burritt (1810—79), the “learned blacksmith,” taught himself several languages and various sciences while working in a smithy. Born into poverty in New Britain, Connecticut, Burritt made a career of advocating pacifism, temperance, cheap international postage, and abolitionism. A tireless champion of world peace, Burritt joined the American Peace Society in the early 18403 and in 1846 went to England, where he formed the League of Universal Brotherhood, disseminated peace propaganda through his “Olive Leaf Mission,” and helped organize two international peace congresses. Opposed to the American Civil War because of his pacifism, Burritt determined to undermine slavery by boycotting slave-grown produce, and he later urged schemes for compensated emancipation. During his career he edited several reform newspapers, the most notable being the Christian Citizen (1844—51). Elihu Burritt, The Learned Blacksmith: The Letters and Journals of Elihu Burritt, ed. Merle E. Curti (New York, 1937); Peter Tolis, Elihu Burritt, Crusader for Brotherhood (Hamden, Conn., 1968); Shepperson, “Free Church and American Slavery,” 133; DAB, 3:328. followed close upon the heels of the Peace Congress; and

this had scarcely closed, when that ever-memorable meeting of the American Fugitive Slaves took place in the Hall of Commerce. No meeting held in London for years created a greater sensation than this gathering of Refugees from "the land of the free and the home of the brave." This splendid Hall, within a stone's throw of the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange, was just the place for such a meeting. It was filled to its utmost capacity at an early hour; and when the fugitives, followed by our old and tried friend, George Thompson, ascended the platform, they were greeted with thunders of applause. No one could have remained unmoved by the pensive sympathies that pervaded the assembly. There were many in that meeting who had never before seen a slave, and when any of the speakers would refer to those on the platform, the whole audience seemed moved to tears.
The vast assembly appeared to rejoice in the fact that Monarchical England could afford a shelter to the poor friendless slave who had escaped from the Republican America; and all seemed impressed with the idea that man is only valuable when a free, intelligent and moral being. When oppressed, he is good for nothing. As I forwarded to you the papers containing the reported proceedings, I must leave you to judge of the influence this grand demonstration of fugitive slaves, held in the metropolis of the world, left upon the minds of the people.
The Temperance people made the next reformatory move. This meeting took place in Exeter Hall, and was made up of delegates from the various towns in the kingdom. They had come from the North, East, West, and South. There was the quick-spoken son of the Emerald Isle, with his pledge suspended from his neck; there, too, the Scot, speaking his broad dialect; also the representatives from the provincial towns of England and

Wales, which seemed to speak anything but good English.
The day after the meeting had closed in Exeter Hall, the county societies, together with those of the metropolis, assembled in Hyde Park, and then walked to the Crystal Palace. Their numbers while going to the Exhibition, was variously estimated at from 15,000 to 20,000, and was said to have been the largest gathering of Teetolers ever assembled in London. They consisted chiefly of the working classes, their wives and children, clean, well-dressed, and apparently happy, their look indicating in every way those orderly habits which, beyond question, distinguish the devotees of that cause above the common laborers of this country. On arriving at the Exhibition, they soon distributed themselves among the departments, to revel in its various wonders, eating their own lunch, and drinking from the Crystal Fountain.
And now I am at the world's wonder, I will remain here until I finish this sheet. I have spent fifteen days in the Exhibition, and have conversed with those who have spent double that number amongst its beauties, and the general opinion appears to be, that six months would not be too long to remain within its walls to enable one to examine its laden stalls. Many persons make the Crystal Palace their home, with the exception of night. I have seen them come in the morning, visit the dressing-room, then go to the refreshment room, and sit down to breakfast as if they had been at their hotel. Dinner and tea would be taken in turn.
The Crystal Fountain is the great place of meeting in the Exhibition. There you may see husbands looking for lost wives, wives for stolen husbands, mothers for their lost children, and towns-people for their country friends; and unless you have an appointment at a certain place at the hour, you might as well prowl through the streets of London to find a friend, as the Great Exhibition. There is a great beauty in the "Glass House." Here, in the transept, with the glorious sun-light coming through that wonderful glass roof

may taste be cultivated and improved, the mind edified, and the feelings chastened.—Here, surrounded by noble creations in marble and bronze, and in the midst of an admiring throng, one may gaze at statuary which might [might fitly decorate the house] of the proudest prince in Christendom.
He who takes his station in the gallery, at either end, and looks up that wondrous nave, on who surveys the matchless panorama around him from the intersection of the nave and transept, may be said, without presumption or exaggeration, to see all the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them. He sees not only a great collection of fine articles, but also a greater as well as more various assemblage of the human race than ever before was gathered under one roof.
One of the beauties of this great international gathering is, that it is not confined to rank or grade. The million toilers from mine, and factory, and work-shop, and loom, and office, and field, share with their more wealthier neighbors the feast of reason and imagination spread out in the Crystal Palace.
It is strange indeed to see so many nations assembled and represented on one spot of British ground. Indeed, it is one great theatre, with thousands of performers, each playing his own part. England is there, with her mighty engines, rolling and whirring, indefatigable in her enterprises to shorten labor. India spreads her glitter and paint. France, refined and fastidious, is there every day, giving the last touch to her picturesque group; and the other countries, each in their turn, doing what they can to show off.
The distant hum of thousands of good humored people, with occasionally a national anthem from some gigantic organ, together with the noise of the machinery, seems to send life into every part of the Crystal Palace.
When you get tired of walking, you can sit down and write your impressions, and there

is the "post" to receive your letter, or if it be on Friday or Saturday, you may, if you choose, rest yourself by hearing a lecture from Prof. Anstead. And then before leaving take your last look, and see something that you have not before seen. Every thing which is old in cities, new in colonial life, splendid in courts, useful in industry, beautiful in nature or ingenious in invention, is there represented. In one place we have the Bible translated into one hundred and fifty languages. In another, we have saints and archbishops painted on glass; in another, old palaces and the altars of a John Knox, a Baxter, or some other divines of the olden time.
In the old Temple of Delphi, we read that every state of the civilized world had its separate treasury, where Herodotus, born two thousand years before his time, saw and observed all kinds of prodigies in gold and silver, brass and iron, and even in linen. The nations all met there on one common ground, and the peace of the earth was not a little promoted by their common interest in the sanctity and splendor of that shrine.
As long as this Exhibition lasts, and its memory endures, we hope and trust that it may shed the same influence. With this hasty scrap, I take leave of the Great Exhibition.
Yours, right truly,
Wm. Wells Brown.
London, Aug. 29th, 1851.