Elihu Burritt to Frederick Douglass, May 28, 1852
Glasgow, Scot., May 28, 1852.
Mr. Frederick Douglass: Dear Sir:—Since my last communication, I have happened to witness in Scotland several manifestations of the popular sympathy towards the enslaved millions in the United States.
The revolving diorama of Mr. Henry Russell, at Glasgow, and that of Mr. Wells-Brown, at Dundee, by displaying to the eye the horrors of slavery which had previously reached the heart by the inlet of the ear only, cooked vociferous abhorrence. Similar outbreaks of indignation came forth from the throng that listened, in the Merchants Hall of Glasgow, to the Rev. Mr. Garnet, whilst he addressed "The Female Abolitionists Association."
In London, the Rev. Dr. Dyer, of Philadelphia, has provoked a vituperative controversy in the newspapers, by his appearance on the platform of Exeter Hall, at the meeting of the "Sunday School Union." Rumor having whispered that the Doctor stood in an equivocal position among abolitionists, and his replies to one or two interpellations rather strengthened the suspicion that prevailed. The "Union" is blamed for giving such prominence to a man whose sentiments upon so momentous a subject are questionable; and this impropriety is just now the more censurable, as it has been discovered that a fugitive slave was reproved by his teacher in a ragged school for escaping from his master.
If our youth are to be indoctrinated by such teachers as this specimen, we shall soon have the pity of their young hearts transposed from the victim to the villain. These incidents show that the universal feeling in Great Britain is not only abhorrent to slavery, but repulsory towards those who palliate its enormity, or apologise for its existence. A righteous retribution awaits this class. In their visits to Britain, they will find themselves in the very position of the people of color in the States, shunned and scorned; in their case it will be by the humane and the good, but in the other, by the unfeeling and the vile.
that slavery is abominable in the sight of God, and hideous in the eyes of benevolent men, are truths become trite.
Atrocities must assume a novel form to attract notice and kindle execration.
The recent outrage at Charleston, upon a free colored man on board a British ship, driven thither by a storm, has been made the subject of taunting animadversions by the London press, upon the conduct of America towards Japan; the main allegation to justify the hostile demonstration is, the inhospitality of the Japanese to shipwrecked mariners, who, instead of receiving succor, are thrown into dungeons. Well, asks the journalist is not the treatment of colored men on board foreign ships, driven to slaveholding ports, precisely parallel? Wherefore does the Government of Japan maltreat strangers thrown by casualty upon their shores? Because they are of a different complexion.
They are not Japan ware. For the very same reason the Southern States imprison colored mariners. They are a "peculiar race," corresponding in hue with those of their "peculiar constitutions." The creator has formed them of different colored clay, and the jaundiced eyes of the jaundice colored Charlestonist has a better taste in comeliness and color than the divine artificer of his variegated creatures.
A cultivator of Dahlias once told the writer that if he could produce a black one, it would be priceless; if this were tried in the South, the "blackhole," not of Calcutta, but of Charleston, would be the horticulturist's doom.
I dare say an American Republican is disgusted when he beholds the black swans sailing in all their stateliness upon the waters of our Royal Parks; and that he will deem it a depraved taste to delight in the melody of a blackbird, his anger will be appeased by the frequent sighs of the offensive bird imprisoned in a cage, and I should think few field sports would delight a Kentuckian so much as rook shooting.
It is rather surprising that those reverend christian divines, whose churches are glorified by "nigger pews," do not doff their sable garb; and I expect ere long to hear that notices are affixed over the entrances to steamboat saloons: "No persons admitted here in black garments."
I am pleased to notice that the London newspapers have poured upon a recent "affair of honor," a stream of inky ridicule; this will do more to put down the declining practice of duelling than serious remonstrance; and as the antipathy to skin color is ridiculous as well as wicked, I incline to an opinion that ridicule would be the most cutting weapons to wield for its extinction.
Extremes have met and married, and a monstrous progeny of inconsistencies result.
The most Democratic nation of the earth holds one sixth of its population in abject bondage.
The idolators of the personification of the Press, Franklin, debar millions of their fellow-countrymen from a knowledge of the alphabet. The ministers of a religion, the angelic annunciation of which, told that its end was to be "good-will to men;" these pseudo propounders of christianity either ignore the existence in the land of boasted freedom, of three millions of hopeless slaves, or offer base excuses for the deplorable fact.
I will close with a rare anglican inconsistency, but a refreshing one. The Right Honorable Representative of Oxford Tory University, has just issued a brochure advocating religious liberty untrammeled by the State, in accordance with the arguments of the "Anti-church and State Association."
Cordially yours, E. B.