Letter from Observer.

The California Excitement—Marriage Extraordinary—Colored Doctors—Beecher and Parker, Cox and Dewey

The winter here, as everywhere throughout the country, has been unusually severe: consequently trade and business of most kinds have been dull, and the poor hard put to.—Those branches of trade which have generally been kept in operation all winter, have the past winter been entirely suspended.—When labor is suspended, trade must receive a check also; when the laborer cannot buy, the shop-keeper cannot sell. But the appearance of things is changing daily; unusual activity is pervading all classes. Numbers of "our people" are daily returning from California, San Juan, Chagres and the intermediate places, who have been in pursuit of the precious metal. Others are leaving with every steamer for the above places.

So strong is the excitement that it has become a question, who ought to go, and who ought not to go, or should not all go who possibly can do so. This was a long time the feeling. Discretion and reasonable considerations seemed to have been abandoned.—Lovers hurried and married their sweet-hearts and left them. Young husbands left young wives and young children; some left profitable pursuits; a certainty for an uncertainty; some have returned much better off, and some much worse off. This, of course, was to be expected. We allude to these things as the workings of the California excitement among "our people." The consequences in numerous instances, especially with young men who have gone to California, have been anything but desirable; still, we appreciate the disposition among them to [illegible] expeditions of enterprise the same as [illegible]. But the grand effects are not [illegible] to those alone who have gone and

done well. Among them were those who were so situated that they could not well go, those whose interest in and relations to society were such that they were not willing to leave them and hazard what they already possessed, and perhaps character and constitution, for it is generally understood that the man who goes to "California," goes to get money any way he can. The effect has been to stimulate those who could not go to keep pacts with those who went. And we are pleased to say that there are now more contemplated and practical efforts on foot in this community than we have ever known before.

Mr. Wm. Hall, keeper of the "El Dorado," Church St., New York, went to California, and it is said came back fresh, was married on the 16th inst. to a Miss —. The splendor of the occasion was, perhaps, without a parallel in "the history of colored society in New York."

There has been no course of lectures by "our people" in New York city, though in its vicinity there are thirty thousand of "our people." Dr. Pennington delivered a course of three most admirable ones in Brooklyn, the early part of the season. I may here make a passing remark, indicative of progress of liberal principles and the cause you advocate. The most popular lecturers offered to the New York public, with one or two exceptions, have been of the liberal and progressive class.—When such men as Beecher and Parker are preferred to Cox and Dewey to take their turn in "the people's course." it may not be too vain to hope the time will come when the people will accord the same right to the advocates of liberty and truth in the persons of "Douglass" and "Garrison."Garrison, William Lloyd

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was the foremost white abolitionist of the nineteenth century and was credited with the discovery of Douglass as a speaker at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket in 1841. He began his career as an apprentice printer on the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald at the age of thirteen. Garrison became editor of the Newburyport Free Press in 1826, but the paper closed within a year. He was then associated with a series of periodicals in Boston that advocated reform before Benjamin Lundy offered the young journalist the opportunity to write for his antislavery newspaper. Garrison joined Lundy in editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1829, during the last year of the paper's 1821-1830 run. In 1830 a libel suit against the editors forced the paper to close and landed Garrison in jail. After his release, he courted the wealthy merchants of New York and Boston in order to start the Liberator (1831-65), a weekly journal based in Boston in which he advocated an immediate end to slavery. Garrison's brand of abolition condemned any institution that would tolerate the existence of slavery, including churches, political parties. and even the United States itself and any scheme aimed at removing black people from the country. Instead, Garrison hoped to raise the public's awareness that slavery was morally wrong and thereby force its end in an almost millennial moment of emancipation. His approach appealed to both white and black antislavery advocates but earned him many enemies among those only moderately opposed to slavery and slaveholders alike. Seeing the need for greater action and organization beyond the pages of the Liberator; Garrison joined with other abolitionists to form the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1831. Two years later he helped found the larger American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 he established ties with English abolitionists after a trip to Great Britain, and he later brought the noted and notorious speaker George Thompson to the United States for a tour. Garrison also dedicated himself to women's rights, encouraging women to enter the public sphere by inviting them, via the Liberator, to form female antislavery societies. In addition to the thirty-three women's antislavery societies that flourished by 1838, Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society welcomed women as well as blacks into its ranks. However, female delegates were excluded from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London. The issue of women's participation in the antislavery movement and Garrison's absolute refusal to turn to politics to end slavery caused a division in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, who opposed women's acting as speakers and who hoped to use politics toward abolition, broke with Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society, forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, or the "New Organization" in 1841. Garrison's ideas were so closely associated with the "Old Organization" that the American Anti-Slavery Society became known simply as the "Garrisonians." With the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Garrison believed that he had accomplished his life's work and that of the antislavery movement. He then resigned from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and closed the Liberator. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (New York, 188589); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998); James Brewer Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1992); John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1963); Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928-36), 7:168-72.

New York is at present honored with several gentlemen of color, who are candidates for the higher professions, both of Medicine and Divinity. Among them are [Park, Gibbs], Delaney, McDonough and others too numerous to mention. It is said that most of them intend to make the field of their future operations beyond the boundaries of this country, and actually despair of doing anything here.

Is this, we ask, the result of their education? One of the above named gentlemen, Mr. Delaney, being called upon at a Sabbath School Anniversary to address the children, after offering a few commendatory remarks relating to their studies and acquirements, very significantly inquired, "but to what end are all these attainments? where is the field for their future usefulness?" This certainly is indicative of despair.

The Rev. A. Freeman, now in Maine, has been called to the pastorial charge of Siloam Presbyterian church of this city, (Brooklyn,) and will enter upon his duties here, it is said, in April.

ObserverStill, James N.

James N. Still (1815–?) of Brooklyn, New York, combined reform activities with a career as a self-employed tailor and clothing retailer. Still won praise from Douglass for being a leading supporter of Frederick Douglass’ Paper and probably penned articles under the pseudonym “Observer.” Though not well educated, Still gained some reputation as an intellectual. An active proponent of black rights, Still argued that the way to obtain social equality with whites was through wealth, since he believed wealth led to empowerment. Still received scorn for this belief, most ardently from “Communipaw,” another Frederick Douglass’ Paper correspondent, James McCune Smith. Still also aided fugitive slaves to freedom through New York City via the Underground Railroad. In 1856, after he moved to Shrewsbury, New Jersey, the commissioners of the National Emigration Convention, led by Martin R. Delany, named Still an editor of a projected scholarly journal Afric-American Quarterly Repository. FDP, 15 January, 11 March, 17 December 1852, 6 May, 10 June 1853, 11 January 1855; William H. Smith, Smith’s Brooklyn City Directory for 1854 and 1855: Being a General Directory of the Inhabitants and a Street and Avenue Guide (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1854), 461; Miller, Search for a Black Nationality, 166; Ullman, Martin R. Delany, 182. .

Brooklyn, L.I., March 20th, 1852.