Letter from Jacob Lybrand

Mr. Frederick Douglass: Dear Sir:—I wish that you, or some of your able correspondents would write an article for your paper on Congresional electioneering and caucusing. The course pursued by members of Congress, while in session, is an outrage and an insult upon the people. Wasting their own precious time—or that which should be precious to them—and robbing the nation of their money in electioneering, and making Presidential speeches. Were it not that the people, good easy souls, will stand almost anything, the wonder would be that they had not long since hurled such miscreants from power, who prostitute their office to influence the people to vote for their—the members of Congress—candidate for President.

But now that Mr. FillmoreFillmore, Millard

Millard Fillmore (1800-74), thirteenth president of the United States, represented the Buffalo region in the New York state legislature (1828-32) and in the U.S. House of Representatives (1833-35, 1837-43), where he generally voted with the Henry Clay wing of the Whig party. Defeated in the 1844 New York governor's race, Fillmore secured the Whig vice-presidential nomination in 1848 and assumed the presidency upon Zachary Taylor's death in July 1850. Fillmore vigorously advocated passage of the Compromise of 1850 and signed each of its measures into law. Denied his party's nomination in 1852, Fillmore ran for president on the American party ticket in 1856 and supported John Bell and the Constitutional Union party in 1860. NCAB, 6:177-78; DAB, 6:380-82. , that supple tool of the slave power, has set the example—and in that instance he is praiseworthy—of removing Henry Fitz Warren from office, for electioneering against the President, I trust that the people will follow in his footsteps.

Mr. Marshall, of California, made what I presume he considers a flaming "speech" in the House of Representatives on the eleventh of March last, on "American Progress—Judge Douglass—the Presidency." He doubtless, thinks he is very severe against what he terms in his dignified language, "Old Fogyism." The honorable gentleman dilates in glaring language upon the "progress" that "young America" has made. And as an instance of the progress, he mentions the fact that, formerly in our Democratic, (???)—Republican (!!!) Country, it was necessary to have a property qualification to entitle a citizen to the right of suffrage. But he was very careful not to remark that, in removing the property qualification, they substituted another which is as much worse as any that can be imagined, namely, that the elector must be a WHITE citizen. That word, in the connection of citizenship, is, as I once heard a gentleman remark, the blackest word that can be named. That is reform: that is "progress" with a vengeance! To use the language of Mr. Marshall, that is trully "Retrogression, Anti-Progress."

For "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."

Jacob LybrandLybrand, Jacob

Jacob Lybrand (c. 1805–75) was born in Philadelphia but was living in Wisconsin by at least 1836. In Wisconsin, he was very active in the Liberty Party and the Liberty Association. Lybrand was put forward on several occasions for office and in 1848 was a delegate to the Buffalo Free Soil convention. He arrived in Iowa in about 1849, and settled in Allamakee County in 1850/51, planning the town that took his name. Lybrand also founded Knob Prairie (now West Union). Eventually, he relocated north to Minnesota, moving around frequently, until 1875. “Jacob Lybrand,” Redwood (Minn.) Gazette, 4 March 1875; Early M. Hancock, Past and Present of Alamakee County, Iowa, 2 vols. (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1913), 1: 498; Reinhard O. Johnson, The Liberty Party, 1840–1848: Antislavery Third-Party Politics in the United States (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 2021), 358. .

Lybrand, Allmakee Co.,

Iowa, June 11, 1852.