Jacob Lybrand to Frederick Douglass, April 20, 1852
Letter from Jacob Lybrand.
Frederick Douglass: Dear Sir:—There is no paper that I read with so much satisfaction, none in which I feel so much interest, none from which I receive so much benefit, as that bearing your name, owned and conducted by you. Always good, still it is continually improving. The friends of Freedom have much cause of gratulation that they have so able an advocate of "All Rights for All." And the colored inhabitants—they should be acknowledged, they will be recognized they must become citizens—of the United States, ought to prize highly that publication; they should be more than grateful to you for the benefits that you are doing them. They ought to display great liberality in the patronage—"material aid"—which they extend in helpin to support and sustain the paper.
I am aware of the many able writers that contribute to the colums of your paper, which so greatly helps to enrich it. I wish your correspondents would always write over their proper names; I think they should do so. I feel diffident in intruding myself upon your notice again, after having on former occasions been honored with access to your columns as a medium for expressing my sentiments. I have been engaged for many years, in my humble way, doing what little I could, and regretting my inability to do more for the cause of downtrodden humanity, and particularly for the American Slave—the most oppressed and outraged being upon God's earth. I blush for my country to know that she recognizes slavery. Will the
time ever come, when slavery in our greatly guilty country, will become a thing that was? Yes! the time of emancipation begins to dawn! "The signs of the times" foretell that the day is not far distant. The Fugitive Slave Act, that much more than "bill of abominations," will have a tendency to roll on the day of deliverance. The wicked will be caught in their own snare. God has so ordained it. And although the slaveholder sets himself up above the Deity, both in profession and practice, he will learn to his sorrow shame and confusion of face, that he is greatly mistaken in his calculations.
"Whom the Gods intend to destroy they first make mad."
Nothing will tend more fully to disarm the slaveholder of his power, and bring about the abolition of Slavery, than the carrying out the spirit that began to manifest itself by the people of color in the so called Free States. They are panderers to the Slave States, and to their masters, the slaveholders, in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act. Whenever the slaveholders, and their aiders and abettors, become convinced that the people of color are determined to maintain and defend their rights, they will "tremble," not perhaps as Jefferson did for his "country,"
but for themselves.
"Hereditary bondsman! know ye not
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?"
When I commenced writing this article, I designed advancing a few sentiments on Colonization, which subject has recently acquired a new impulse. But, I have already written somewhat lengthy, and will not occupy space that others more worthy than I should supply. And there have been a number of valuable communications of late on that subject, in your paper; all better than anything I can advance. Still, if it may not be deemed intrusive, I will say some little on the subject. I am fully aware that this communication is entirely at your disposal, and am perfectly satisfied that it is so.
The free people of color, as well as the slave, have much cause of regret at the course recommended by the Honorable James Gillespie Birney, that true tried and self-sacrificing friend of the slave. That he committed an error on the subject, I presume most, I might, perhaps, say all, abolitionists will admit.
["]To err is human, to forgive divine."
But for pro-slavery advocates, publications, and professed preachers of the Gospel, a minister of Christ to be an advocate of slavery, is an anomaly—to undertake to make capital out of it in aid of their cause, as they do after fully acquainting themselves with what Mr. Birney has written, and the manner in which he expressed himself on the subject, is worse, and more than mean. Had they the ennobling qualities that should adorn human nature, so far from feeling satisfaction in re-
lation to the matter, they would much rather become suffused with shame at the necessity that he conceives there is for advising the course that he did. That those who have been for years the advocates of that infernal scheme, African Colonization as it is termed, should press the subject, and if possible advance new arguments in favor of it, is as a matter of course to be expected. That there are but few friends of the colored man who wish to colonize him in Africa, there is but little doubt. There are some I believe; and I sometimes think that so far from the majority intending to do a benefit to them by their removal, the reverse is precisely the case. If it would not be thought that I indulge too much in a "fruitful imagination," I might remark that one reason, and perhaps the principal, why they wish the removal of our colored brethren, is the fear that they will prove themselves to be a superior race of beings to the white "lords of the creation." When the preliminary steps were about being taken to form a State Constitution for Wisconsin, one of the members of the Legislative Assembly, while the subject was under discussion, whether the colored inhabitants
should be considered citizens, in a speech which he made against their right, pronounced them an "inferior race." In an article which I penned for the American Freeman, I took occasion to remark, in allusion to the matter, "he does not scruple to scandalize a whole people, when he is pleased to stigmatize as an 'inferior race;' very many of whom are every way his superiors, 'inferior' as they may be considered by the gentleman, or are in reality."
The great Doctor of Divinity , (???) O. Dewey, that "pious defender of slavery" as you term him, remarks: "Upon the ground of a reflective conscience, (?) therefore, I endeavor to place myself; and these points are very clear to me:
"Firstly, That the immediate emancipation of the Southern slaves would not be right; they are not prepared for freedom, nor do they generally desire it."
Were it not that it has for a long time been "very clear to me" that every person is "prepared for freedom," except criminals, and that all who are not convicted of crime should enjoy liberty, I would be almost inclined to believe that a person who has the reputation for intellect, and deserves it, that Doctor Dewey commands, who could express himself as in the above, is not himself "prepared for freedom." Can a man be innocent of heart, who has sufficient intelligence to be a spiritual teacher, who in this day and generation, should advance such sentiments?
I transmit you by mail, a copy of the Star in the West, of February 21, 1852. An article from its "New England Correspondence," contains some valuable remarks, which I think would be appropriately transferred to your columns. It is there affirmed, that "The duty and responsibility of liberty is the PROMINENT view to be urged. Men should be told that they ought to be willing to be free." "LIBERTY, THE ONLY STATE IN WHICH MEN CAN BE PREPARED FOR LIBERTY."
I must again apologise for the great length of this communication.
For "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,"
Jacob Lybrand.
April 20th, 1852.