Letter from 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. .

Frederick Douglass:—It relieved a world of anxiety to find in your paper to-day, a column brought up in the rear by "mon ami" of the "heights;" for passing through Church St. the other night, I heard a hoarse objurgation on an "Ethiopian corpse," which made me fear that the daring Brooklyner had fallen a victim to his researches in St. Phillip's row. As it is, he has suffered some in his adventures; for, after promising to attend to me in due time, the poor fellow sprinkles me over with sage, and green at that, which reminds me of an old Carolina story: John was seated at table for his Christmas meal, and, plunging his knife into the principal dish, exclaimed, "Peggy, my dear, you tuffy de goose with green yarb in the de dead ob winter?" It turned out that John had cut into the gall.

A little further down the column, I exclaimed in boyish glee, "Buck, buck, how many horns?" And was sorely puzzled at Ethiop's three horned dilemma, until a lady suggested that he meant a chimera, which the classical dictionary says, was a three-headed monster, with "his fore parts a lion, the middle parts a goat, and the hind parts a dragon. (And Anthon's L'Empriese, Art, Chimaera.) This hypothesis I reject indignantly; for I am a plain Dutch negro, with only one head, without horns or tail: I am well known in the flats, and Harsimus and Bergen, and way up to Hell Gate, and am lineal descendant from one of the jolly fellows whom Washington Irving alluded to in his sketch book, as shining and laughing on our side of Buttermilk Channel.

The last paragraph in Ethiop'sWilson, 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. letter, the touching, winning, deprecatory, insinuating, melting, heart-of-stone-softening expression, "dear Communipaw," brings all freshly to my swimming eyes the vivid recollection of what occurred once, where Phil Bell, Ulysses, (brevitee, Bub,) VidalVidal, Ulysses

, Frank Myers, and some others who,

"Lie where Cassia marks the spot,"

went to school together. One of us, (now, Phil, I shan't say who,) had "played hookey," (truant,) and came to school duly prepared, by extra pantaloons, to undergo the usual flagellation; which would have passed on very well, had it not been for an unfortunate layer of paper, which betrayed an unusual sound to Charley Andrew's quick ear, as the rattan went wop! Stripping off the extra garment, Charley laid on with a mischievous vigor which brought from the boy a hundred exclamations of Oh! Oh! Oh! Mr. Andrews, I'll never! Oh! Mr. Andrews, and finally, "dear Mr. Andrews! my dear Mr. Andrews!" which brought down the house; even Charley Andrews could cut no more, neither can I.

Seriously, then, I still hold, in regard to our people, that "our present real can only be bettered by a noble ideal." That money is not that nobler ideal; but liberty, equality, human brotherhood, in a word—manhood—is that nobler ideal; and we can only reach it by the right development of character, here where God has placed us. I take it that Frederick Douglass' manhood on board the Alida, did more for our elevation, than poor, old Godwin and his thirty thousand dollars he toiled for, and then, poor black, gave back to a white man, disinheriting his own people. I take it, that Alexander Crummell has done more for the advancement of our people, by his true manhood, than any colored man could do by amassing gold.

Compare Sam Ward with the only black millionaire in New York, I mean Jerry Hamilton: and it is plain that manhood is a "nobler ideal" than money. The former has illustrated his people and his country, the other has fled from his identity, (to use the elegant phraseology of Ethiop,) like a dog with a tin kettle tied to his tail!

There is no doubt, dearest Ethiop, that in the language of Scripture, you are "black, but comely." Learn to look at you[r] complexion, as a thing which, in your descendants, will pass [away:] laws, stronger than you will inevitably declare.

"[Black spot and white,]"
"[illegible]"

and however dear to you may be your ebon hue, your great grand children will be "many a whitey brown;" and when you marry, or if you are married, you will tend the same way. It is quite too late in the day to get up an association for the propagation of the pure African, or Irish, or any other breed.

New York is stricken with sickness and death among our people. Thomas [Tabtiskie], the oldest blackman in the city, a colored man, died the other day at the age of 62: his father before him was engaged in the same business, and he leaves a son who continues it with energy. Mr. John L. Esteve, an energetic, thrifty man, of great industry, also died last week; and our friend, Peter Paul [Simons], a most worthy son, lost his mother, at the age of 7[illegible], today.

Gerrit SmithSmith, Gerrit

Gerrit Smith (1797– 1874), a New York businessman and land speculator, became best known for his philanthropic work for such reform causes as temperance and abolition. Between 1828 and 1835, he donated large sums of money to the American Colonization Society, but abandoned that movement in 1835 when his sympathies shifted to the immediate abolitionists. In the 1840s, he gave approximately 140,000 acres of land in upstate New York to three thousand black settlers, thus qualifying them to vote. Smith was a founder and frequent candidate of the Liberty party, running for governor of New York on that ticket in 1840 and winning a seat in Congress in 1852. When the Free Soil merger with moderate antislavery Democrats and Whigs lured away many Liberty party supporters, Smith helped bankroll that organization until 1860. Smith befriended Douglass when the latter moved to Rochester, and Smith frequently helped finance Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Like Douglass, Smith supported John Brown, but psychological stress caused by the failure at Harpers Ferry brought on the first of a series of bipolar episodes that greatly reduced his subsequent reform activities. Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer (1939; New York, 1972); Gerald Sorin, The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn., 1971), 269– 87; Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), 170– 80; John R. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, “The ‘Black Dream’ of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist,” Syracuse University Library Associates Courier, 20:61– 76 (Fall 1985); NCAB , 2:322– 23; DAB, 17:270– 71. 's letter to Gov. Hunt comes as welcome news from a far country. Can't we have a few thousand down our way. Its influence on colored men is most happy and timely. [We needed] some such thing to strenthen our hands.

Yours,

Communipaw.

New York, March 6, 1852.