LETTER FROM BYRD PARKER.

CHICAGO, Feb. 3, 1854.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS: DEAR BROTHER:— It is with some degree of diffidence that I take my pen in hand to become an occasional correspondent to your excellent paper, if found worthy. I do not feel at a loss for a subject to write on, but at a loss for ability to write on the important subjects that at once present themselves, and about which we should all feel deeply concerned, in such manner as to do something in advocacy of the cause of our elevation. I was about to say something in reference to the prospects—yea, encouraging prospects that are presenting themselves before the colored people of this country, growing out of the united effort that was commenced in your city at our late National Convention, which seemed to me like the little leaven that was hid in the three measures of meal, about which we read in the New Testament, that leavened the whole lump; or, like the electricity of which the Methodists frequently speak in prayer, that run from breast to breast, and from heart to heart, until we hoped that all our people, or especially those in the free States, would be aroused to sense of their best interest, and have been ready to have made a simultaneous move—yes, to make a strong, long and united pull in order to convince the world, and especially our hyprocritical enemies and our half-hearted friends, that can see everything else in this day of boasted light and understanding but this is one thing, that God hath made of one blood every nation to dwell upon the face of the whole earth. It seems to be essentially necessary, notwithstanding all the Scripture teaches, and notwithstanding all the parson preaches, and notwithstanding all that has been said and written by our friends for the last 20 years,

and in despite of all opposition that has been thrown in our way, and the unparalleled progress of the colored people in this country;—I say, that notwithstanding all this, it seems yet to be necessary to convince the world of our individuality, and that we are men and women—yes, after more than two hundred years of the severest oppression that ever any people were called to endure under the circumstances, the punishment being inflicted by those who profess to be governed by those self-evident truths, that all men are created free and equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Yes sir, we are called upon in the presence of this nation of Christians, after we have showed our hand in clearing out the forest, hewing wood, drawing water, tilling the ground, watering the earth with our tears, sweat and blood, and our mothers, our sisters and our daughters being made the wives, concubines and slaves to those who have oppressed us—we must now rise from this low state of degradation, and, as Moses went in before Pharaoh, and in ten different ways attempted to convince him that it was the will of God that Israel should be free, so have we go in before such men as Doctors of Divinity, ministers of Jesus Christ, and all the meek followers of our Lord and Savior, and prove to them that God has made us capable of living and breathing, reading, writing, hoping and believing, seeing and feeling, and existing and enjoying our health if we had the chance, in this glorious country, that has spread wide her doors to receive of every nation under the whole heavens, and that stands ready to welcome them to this land, securing them that they can be happy here, while they are seriously and solemnly convinced notwithstanding they have nearly four millions of our brethren in the South that they are holding on to like grim death. This is no country for the free people of color, I am sorry to say, Bro.

Douglass, is not only the doctrine that is believed and preached by pro-slavery people North and South, but at last many of our anti-slavery friends have become convinced that the best thing that can be done for the free people of color is to send them to Liberia/ It is no use to tell them that the Colonization scheme, according to the declaration of John Randolph, and many others of the early advocates of that enterprise, was not intended for any other purpose, or at least that was the principal object to remove the free blacks, in order to increase the usefulness of slaves. And again, it is of no use to tell them and to prove that all that have been removed to Liberia, since the commencement of the American Colonization Society up to the present time, to say nothing of the suffering and death of those that have been removed, has not been equal to the increase of this despised race in one year in this country, where the Christians say we cannot live. Although all of these things have failed to keep together the leaders in the great cause of human freedom, and although the great Liberator has conceded the point that the great anti-/slavery cause has become so sublime that the colored people cannot understand its philosophy; yet we must go on. Although some of our best men of color (sorry we are to say it) have seen fit, just at the time when we had met in solemn assembly from eight of the principal free States, coming up from important points in that vast territory, and after mature deliberation resolved, without a dissenting voice, that this was our native land, and that here we were bound to stay to plant our tree and repose under tis shades—yes, just at this time, when we had unitedly resolved to give the world to understand that this was our home, and that we intended to remain until our brethren in bonds are set free, and when even our enemies are beginning to believe that matter at least was settled, is it not to be lamented that some of our best men should call for a National Emigration Convention, as

though nothing had been done? What effect will this have?—What shall be the conclusion of those that feel interested for our welfare? What shall be the feeling of our enemies? Will not our friends feel that nothing has been settled, that is of no use to assist us to remain, as we are about to take steps to remove? Will not our enemies say their ranks are broken? One says, advance; another says, retreat.—What could be more desirable to any and all of our enemies that to see us thrown into confusion and misunderstanding—such misunderstanding as seems to exist at this time among our leading men? Why is it that we colored people do not hang together like the white people, especially in a cause in which we are and ought to feel alike interested.—I know well that the effects of slavery, among many of its blasting consequences, is calculated to create a spirit of distrust and a want of confidence in us, respecting the plans and arrangements that are put forth by ourselves for our own elevation. We are taught from our infancy, by those that would keep us in bondage, to not only look with a suspicious and envious eye at each other, but to do all that is in our power to destroy the character and standing of our brethren. And has our enemies, in this respect, not succeeded but too well? Hence, the great want of that high regard and manly defence, which we should all be ready to make for those among us that are laboring in the cause of elevation. Why not let us effectually try this one great thing that was proposed at our last National Council, before agitating another, in the meantime leaving any of our people free to emigrate to any place they may choose; but for Heaven's sake let not the idea of us emigrating, as a nation, be so much named among us, until we have effectually tried the plans already proposed—and I say not until our brethren in the South are set free.

But I must close, after asking one question: what is the reason that the Aliened American has not given an expression with regard to its views on what friend GarrisonGarrison, 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. has seen fit to say in the late war that has been going on against yourself, and, I consider, against the colored people generally in this country? Are we understand by its silence, that it consents to the death blows that was aimed at us, in the declaration that the anti-slavery cause had rose above the capacity of colored men? To understand its philosophy, are we to understand, according to the declaration of that journal, that Mr. Day is not abolitionist enough of the Fred. Douglass school to speak when his friend and brother is attacked? But I hope we will hear from his soon; so, no more at present, but remain

Yours, for God and Universal Liberty

BYRD PARKER.