Letter from Wm. C. Nell.
Frederick Douglass:
Dear Sir:—
The Tribune statement, that you was about leaving for Nassau, has probably helped many to suppose that a tour for observation and health seeking had really been anticipated by you. A letter from my friend Putnam, furnishes the following on the subject, which I have taken the liberty of submitting.
"I observe by the papers that the reverend rascal, Sam. Hanson Cox, has sailed for Nassau, N. P. I saw also the announcement that Frederick Douglass would sail shortly for the same place. The regret which the former statement caused me was counteracted by the latter; for I knew that the pro-slavery influence which Cox would be sure to exert in Nassau, would as certainly be more than neutralized by Mr. Douglass.—The people of Nassau are just now peculiarly susceptible to anti-slavery impressions. They are much interested in the subject of the imprisonment of colored seamen in our Southern States. It was by the representations principally of the people in the Bahamas, that the British government was induced to direct the consul, Gov. Matthews, to agitate the subject at Charleston. A recent number of the Nassau Guardian, the most influential journal in the Bahamas, recommends reprisals upon citizens of South Carolina. This paper is under the editorial charge of a colored gentleman, Thomas Dellette, Esq., a talented lawyer. Nassau is the home of the heroes of the Creole. Madison Washington himself is there. Cox, by that insidious jesuitism, which only a priest knows how to use, can do the cause much harm.—Douglass can crush him. You did this once in England; but it seems his pro-slavery vitality is yet active. (See his letter in the Tribune.) Any pro-slavery efforts which Cox may make, will be warmly seconded by the few Yankees who reside there, and who are as mean as any to be found between Maine and California. Douglass' health would be benefitted by a short visit to Nassau, and he would there find ample materials for interesting letters to his paper.

He afterwards saw the Tribunestatement contradicted in the Commonwealth. Let me give you another item from his letter about the Black Swan, or perhaps more properly as you have termed her, the White Raven.
"Miss Greenfield gave a concert here (Salem) a few nights ago. She had an audience of seven hundred persons, and made a very good impression. I called at her hotel, and sent up my card. The servant returned with the answer that, 'the swan begged to be excused, that she didn't see nobody.' She is evidently under the complete control of that swell Col. Wood. I expect she sees none without his permission. No friend accompanies her to look out for her interest. Even the person acting as her waiting maid, is a white woman of Wood's selection. She must be utterly destitute of self-respect to submit to such terms. I called upon her merely as a matter of duty, in return for attentions received from her when I was in Philadelphia."
The sequel will determine whether she possesses that skill for matching a hundred Barnums, which you generously and hopefully give her credit for.
Of course I did not intend this for your paper, but the facts are for any use you can make of them.
Yours,
Wm. C. Nell.Nell, William Cooper

William Cooper Nell (1816–74), a black Garrisonian abolitionist, was one of the original editors of the North Star. A graduate of Boston’s segregated Smith School, Nell studied law but never practiced because he refused, on Wendell Phillips’s advice, to take an oath to support the U.S. Constitution. During the early 1840s he worked for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and the Liberator. From 1847 to 1851 he assisted Douglass on the North Star and served as acting editor when Douglass was absent on speaking tours. Nell remained a Garrisonian loyalist and severed his ties with the North Star when Douglass shifted his allegiance to the Liberty party. At meetings of the Colored National Convention and its council in the 1850s, Nell, an opponent of racially exclusive organizations, attacked Douglass’s plans for a black manual-labor college on the grounds that it would hinder, not help, the movement for racial equality. After Nell advised Boston blacks not to subscribe to Douglass’s newspaper, Douglass branded his former associate a “hanger on” and “contemptible tool” of Garrison. In addition to his abolitionist activities, Nell wrote important histories of African Americans. His Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812 (1851) and The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution (1855) detailed the contributions of black people to the nation’s founding. In 1858 Nell staged the first Crispus Attucks celebration. During Lincoln’s administration he was appointed a clerk in the Boston post office. NS, 16 February 1849; FDP, 12, 19 August, 9 December 1853, 28 February, 31 March 1854, 12 January 1856; San Francisco Elevator, 27 June 1874; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 111–12; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 86, 245, 254; Robert P. Smith, “William Cooper Nell: Crusading Black Abolitionist,” JNH, 55:182–99 (July 1970); ACAB, 4:489; NCAB, 14:306; DAB, 13:413.
Rochester, March 8th, 1852.