From Our Brooklyn Correspondent.

Mr. Editor:—If my picture has its shades, it also has its lights: indeed there are some bright spots, brighter than I can paint them.

There are some men here engaged in business that would be, (all things considered,) an ornament to any society; men whose business-like habits and operations reflect credit alike upon themselves, and the community who sustain them. The only regret, is, that the number is so small, and the pursuits so little varied. This may be accounted for in this way: some years ago, some one bolder than his fellows, commenced in Gotham a business operation. Wonderful as it seemed to many, the example was soon followed by another and another &c. In process of time, another still bolder than the rest struck out in a new path, and was soon followed by many others. So of one or two more, and the list was complete. Now as these were neither properly begun, nor vigorously prosecuted, but little of worth resuted: hence the present poverty of our business operations, both in the variety and magnitude. It is but just, however, to say that subsequently, bolder spirits arose in the business-world, and are now doing much to enlarge its boundaries, and it is to be hoped, that this following in the footsteps of our predecessors continually, only for the sake of following, will be abandoned. It is also to be hoped that the habit of huddling together, will be abandoned also. Masters, spread yourselves, should now be the motto; masters exert yourselves, should be the watchword of these rising young spirits. If two or three find it inconvenient to hang out their signs in Canal Street, let the next betake himself to Broadway, and the next to the Bowery, Chatahm Street, Greenwich Street, Grand Street, &c.

The next decade to Brooklyn or adjacent towns, and especially let the pursuits be as varied as the towns or streets in which they are conducted; and when we grow so corpulent that these aforesaid streets will not contain us, let us abandon them to others, and take our stations down town, say, Wall, Cedar, South, or Front Streets, or any other of a like stamp.

What of one, two, or a dozen failures among our young men in their honest attempts to establish business? What of an hundred? So far from our offering them the slightest discouragement, or their being discouraged; we and they should remember that the failures, and oft-repeated attempts of an earnest and vigorous man, constitute the materials of the column, which is by each succession being builded higher and higher; till far above the surface, it rises, and upon which he finally stands, a bright example of success, before the gaze of the surrounding multitude. "Try, try again," was the lesson taught by the spider to the defeated General as he lay in his hammock, and who, after receiving the lesson, was enabled to conquer.—Seventy-nine times did his little monitor try to scale the wall, and seventy-nine times did he fail; the eightieth time was he successful. "Try, try again," must we say to our young men: by trying only, will you succeed. But we must dismiss the subject for the present.

My neighbor CommunipawSmith, James McCune

James McCune Smith (1813–65), a prominent black physician, abolitionist, and writer, was born in New York City to an enslaved father and a self-emancipated mother. He attended the New York African Free School, but was denied admission to Columbia University, Geneva Medical College, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He turned to the University of Glasgow in Scotland, where he received a B.A. (1835), M.A. (1836), and M.D. (1837). Upon returning to New York, he opened a pharmacy and medical practice that catered to both blacks and whites. He became involved in the abolitionist movement, serving as an associate editor of the Colored American in 1839, contributed regularly to the Anglo-African Magazine, and wrote correspondence for the North Star and Frederick Douglass’ Paper under the pseudonym “Communipaw.” Smith also wrote the introduction to Douglass’s second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). In 1861, Smith helped finance the revival of the Weekly Anglo-African to oppose black colonization and emigration, and he was a prominent member of the New York City Young Men’s Association, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and the New York African Society for Mutual Relief. He was the sole attending physician of the Society for the Promotion of Education Among Colored Children, a member and vestryman of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, and a trustee of the New York Society for the Promotion of Education Among Colored Children. In 1863 Wilberforce College appointed Smith professor of anthropology, but illness kept him from assuming his post. Lib., 1 June 1838; FDP, 18 May 1855; Douglass Papers, ser. 2:7–19; Miller, Search for a Black Nationality, 243; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 90–92, 103, 110; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 115, 134; Rhoda G. Freeman, “The Free Negro in New York City in the Era before the Civil War” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1966), 40–42, 177, 186, 195, 200, 247, 276, 286, 325, 353, 393; DAB, 27:288–89. across the way, says he hopes Ethiop is not a mulatto!!!! Now, (shall I confess it,) I have been sitting at my lonely window the whole of the twilight hour, wondering why he so hoped.—

But willing, notwithstanding, to satisfy his curiosity, as I trust he will be my wonder, permit me to tell him, that I am not ashamed to own, that through my veins flow, freely flow, dark Afric's proudest blood. And now, I too, have a hope in regard to him; it is not that he is a black or a mulatto, as this is a small matter, indeed, it is not of the slightest importance, when compared with the great object we have, in common before us, nay, it sinks out of sight below, in the presence of the truly wise and great. My

wish is this: that he, Communipaw, is a man that he has attained to the full stature of a man.

'Tis not because of skin with color bright or dark, nor dress
Of gaudy peacock hue, that makes us what we ought to be
Rather none of these, but manly thoughts and actions,
Manly deeds. These make up the man.

All are not men, my dear Communipaw, who wear the human form.

To me, 'twere little worth, to know the color of your skin,
'Twill do, 'twill fully satisfy, to know, you are a man,

and knowing this, I can cheerfully strike hands with you, aye, and if our [ ] lie in the same direction, travel with you too, by your permission.

Martin R. Delany, Esq., appeared before the Committee of thirteen, the other evening, I am told. Query. Has he got the Colonization fever? His symptoms were strange, and curious inferences have been drawn, who will answer? The best thing afloat in Gotham, at present, is the hurling out of the Colonization Synagogue, the great master spirit, the great father of the whole late scheme, "the African Agricultural Association," and this too, by the little satelites who have heretofore been revolving round him at very unequal and remove distances: a bold move, this, and fraught with no small degree of danger. The fall, thereof, was not greater, comparatively when his Satanic Majesty himself came down. Oh Lucifer, Lucifer, how art thou fallen!!!

New Year's day, with us, was the finest of the season. After a spell of intense cold weather, succeeded by rain and fog, alternate for several days; the New Year was ushered in by one of the finest days recorded on the calendar of time; and right well did the people enjoy it; young men and old, grave men and gay, tumbled pellmell into the streets, to pay their respects to the ladies, each striving to outvie the other, in his attentions.—May the good old custom ever continue, may it (freed from excesses,) be handed down from generation to generation, and carried from soil to soil. The best joke about here, is that of one of our city bucks, who after spending the best part of the day at this toilet in ardent preparations for an evening party, sallied forth with his head filled with the thoughts of the figure he would cut, and the conquests he would make; when lo! and behold, on arriving at the house of his lady friend, he was informed that he was a night too soon. The chap sloped. Would it not be better to pack such an one off to California, to be employed in the mines? In speaking of California, I may mention, that some enterprizing young men here, talk of sending an intelligent man of their number, thither, to make certain investigations, perparatory to the commencement of some business operations in that quarter. Success to the whole enterprise, I say, and success it must have, if it be begun and carried out with confidence and spirit. As I write, the ladies are flitting by my window. This second day of the year, they claim as theirs, and really it is so, as it should ever be. My admiration for these beautiful and fairy-like creatures, decked in all the gaiety of the season, compels me to lay down my pen—I can write no more.

Yours truly,

EthiopWilson, William Joseph ("Ethiop")

William Joseph Wilson (1818–?), a free black man from New Jersey, operated a bootmaking shop in New York City as early as the 1830s. In the 1840s he became a secondary school teacher and later a principal of a black school in Brooklyn. He was an activist on behalf of black education, encouraging access and attendance, and even opened his own library. Wilson also campaigned to secure the franchise for New York African Americans. He served as a member of the Committee of Thirteen, organized by New York black leaders to stop enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. In the early 1850s Wilson’s letters appeared frequently in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, and Douglass referred to him as the newspaper’s “Brooklyn correspondent.” Wilson’s letters to the newspaper, published under the pseudonym “Ethiop,” were often part of an ongoing debate about the condition of blacks in New York and the United States. Wilson’s most frequent sparring partner in the war of letters was “Communipaw,” actually James McCune Smith, a prominent black physician in New York City. Carleton Mabee, Black Education in New York State: From Colonial to Modern Times (Syracuse, N.Y., 1979), 54, 63-67, 123, 129, 155, 158; Foner and Walker, Black State Conventions, 1:79-88; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 87, 212, 229; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 4:144-45n. .

Brooklyn Heights, Jan. 2d, 1852.