From Our Brooklyn Correspondent.

Dear Douglass: — A shrewd writer once remarked of Madam Trollope, that, whether truth or fiction, the emanations from her pen, always fascinated and amused, while they never impressed you as real or natural.

Step by step you felt their unreality and want of faithfulness; still you read to amuse, and was amused to read. The same may be said of the little philippic of which 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. delivered himself, on the sixth of March, through your columns. While I have been much amused, while I have laughed, and that heartily, as I believe all New York has, at this tissue of paper creations, it has been as much at their flimsiness and disproportion, as at the neatness of finish of their awkward joints, and the fineness of their texture, as much at their extravagance as at their senselessness. Indeed, it seems a pity to burst these pretty little hollow tissue paper creations, unless it be, that he intends them as substitutes for argument. In that case, I would remind him, that his friends and mine (which, after all, I trust are one,) expect better things of him. That while in his boyish glee, he supposes he is applying a rod to Ethiope's back, they expect him to apply himself to the subject in question, and not do injustice to it: and until he does this, I shall, with a few passing remarks, be content to leave the whole matter where it is.

Seriously, our good Communipaw is at sea, without sails, helm, or compass.

He makes for no shore, how can he? he sees no point.

He strongly reminds me of a little boy, who, disobeying his mamma's injunctions, went one foggy morning down to the lake and getting upon a raft, pushed it off, and soon found himself drifting upon its bosom. Enveloped in mist, there he sits with a huge bowl of soap and water between his knees, and pipe in hand, blowing little bubbles high

and thin in air. And, as the mamma could not find her boy until the mist was passed, neither can you, gentle reader, find our good friend, Communipaw, until I blow away the fog and vapor that surrounds him. But to the point I aimed at, and let me begin where he ended.

1. His final paragraph about manhood, about our driving at a high and lofty state, to Elysium, without the necessary preparation; without pursuing the proper course, the one common and imperative to all who would arrive to such a condition; or that the Elysium he speaks of, will come to our inheritance; without deal or title, is a piece of ideal speculation, a little bubble that will burst of itself.

2. The idea of getting up an association for the propagation of the pure African race here, was never so much as hinted at by me, and hence, gratuitious on his part. It is one of those other pretty little bubbles he has blow up, and which, like all the rest, will burst in thin air, ere I touch it.

3. As the matter of "mingling," about which I certainly found no fault, but most cheerfully conceded; except, that when so doing, a sense of duty to ourselves, and a debt we owe to mankind, forbade us to demean ourselves, to barter ourselves away for nought. It is not in this case what we do, but how we do it; not the thing to be done, but the manner of doing it. Laws, as immutable as those of which you speak, my dear Communipaw, prescribe the method of our actions; which, if we violate, will as surely inflict upon us a penalty. I may get money, but to do so, I must not steal your purse, lest I be punished. I may live in society, but if to do it, I lead a wretched and miserable life, and neglect every obligation incumbent upon me, as a member of it, I shall not only suffer myself, but entail misery upon others. So, also, of this matter of "mingling." All I have said, or would say of it, is, that if just and true to ourselves, we shall be truer to society. This done, we can well afford to leave the whole process of "mingling," to mingle, mingle, and regulate itself to the final satisfaction of us all: it being then of little con-

sequence, and of less consequence, still, in regard to the brown, nutty brown, whity brown, whity white, or ebon tendency of our descendants, upon which you seem to lay so much stress.

4. As to my own ebon hue, of which you are pleased to make particular mention, surely I have no cause to be ashamed; nor am I, by any distinctive badge, known from Harisimus round to Hell Gate, nor even much in Gotham; nor will I boast of the Indian and few drops of white Dutch blood in my veins; nor will I blush because of the amount of African. The sum total, as I before stated, is of little consequence.

5. Nor am I "comely," my dear Communipaw, especially when looked at from the
Anglo-Saxon stand point, and through Anglo-Saxon lenses, to both of which I suppose both you and I unfortunately have been taught to pay too much reverence. It is time, however, to beging to throw off these shackles, expecially when they cumber our just conceptions of truth, and prevent our judgements. I freely own I am beginning to reject many notions, though old and venerable, if they have no other recommendation than that they are old and venerable to commend them to me. I have said thus much, just here, to remind you, my dear sir, that when you quote "sacred writ," to express "come[liness]," I fear it is in derision, since it is at variance with the Anglo-Saxon standard in the case; said Anglo standard being always made to accommodate only itself, without regard to the Bible, truth, nature, proportion or beauty. Still, I am not "comely," my dear Communipaw. The ladies, who are generally umpires in such matters, have never, to my knowledge, so judge me.

6. When you make worthy mention of the manly efforts of such men as Frederick Douglass, Samuel R. Ward and Alexander [ ]ell, and of their superior talents and [illegible] developments, and when you look around you and find no corresponding developments among us in other departments, so essential to man's highest well-being, to back up and sustain theirs, well may "tears

come to your swimming eyes." It is not one good quality alone that makes up the full man, or the perfect state; but a union of good qualities. There must be a varied, but harmonious whole. The more poignant still must be your grief, when you remember that your influence has contributed to dull energies it should have sharpened, and to deaden susceptibilities it should have quickened.

7. You also make mention of the recreancy to principle of Jerry Hamilton, and all such who slip out of identity. Now, this sliding out, is usually done, not "with tin kettle and noise," behind, (as you have more elegantly expressed it than I did,) but in a most clandestine manner; and if it be clear that the tendency of your doctrines (though inadvertently put forth) will contribute farther to such a course, I think you may well cry out, in the language of one of old, especially so when I remember your tender susceptibilities, "Oh! that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night," for my boyish folly.—But, my dear sir, for the present, adieu. And now, my dear Douglass, a final word with you: In truth, I cannot, my dear sir, believe, nay I am, I trust, too charitable to believe, that other than the positions of our good "Communipaw" were inadvertently taken. Still, having done so, he has created a huge monster, equalled only by that of FRANKENSTEIN. Turn, now, whichsoever way he will, there stands his three-horned Dilemma, created by his own hands, and, like Frankenstein's monster, will follow him whithersoever he goes, ready to gore him at any moement; and he, like poor Frankenstein, may well exclaim, "Oh, horrid monster, was it for this that I created you?"

But the dreadful response will come back to his doleful cars, "wherefore, then, didst thou make me?" "Why make me thus?"—But I leave the matter. I let the curtain drop over the whole scene.

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, April 1. [1852]