For Frederick Douglass' Paper.

4, IRON ALLEY, PITTSBURGH,

Feb. 24th, 1854.

MR. EDITOR:—We are pleasantly situated
on the banks of the Monongahela, (so dear
to my old friend, Mr. Cornish!) with the Sus
pension Bridge and its life and beauty direct
ly before us. My long silence is due to one
of those occurrences in married life, that
can only be alluded to in Amerian news
papers, although duly recorded in the free
atmosphere of English Journals—an occur
ence which has made Mr. K—— the hap
piest of men, as he sits there clumsily, but
tenderly holding the result, while my pale,
slender fingers indite this note to an old
friend in Providence (as he thinks, dear
man.)

I perceive that my letter, on Odd-Fellow
ship, has attracted attention from several of
the Order, and that one gentleman throws
out a doubt concerning my sex, whilst an
other—Philo—with better manners, is con
tent with denying that my husband ever be
longed to the Grand Patriarchal Council!
In reply to the first, permit me to say, that
he may enquire of the second, his dearest
friend; and in reply to the second, I would
respectfully enquire whether he ever knew
my first husband to wear a collar on a plat
form, or a shawl at the clambake, in New York,
or Providence, or Fall River?

But, to return to Odd-Fellowship. I said
that it destroyed the New York Literary
Societies: this has not been denied. What
did it substitute? Nothing but Anniversa
ries, consisting mainly of Balls and Suppers.
I well remember the first of these. It was
a perfect jam. Two of the dear "brothers"
stood at the head of the stairs, and two of
the same at the foot; the printed tickets of
admission were soon exhausted; but Friend
ship, Love and Truth, were up to the occa
sion, and the same tickets were passed up
and down several times during the night,
netting two dollars each ticket to Friendship,
Love and Truth, who, glorious principles!
never made any returns to the Lodge Treasu
ry. Those balls were kept up, until, finally,
in the Hamilton Lodge, the funds of the
Lodge—sacredly set apart to aid the sick and
bury the dead,—were actually drawn upon
to make up the deficiency—the ball did'nt
pay.

Some of the brethren were very loud in
praise of the Order, as a reconciler among
estranged friends; other boasted its fame as
an instrument which made men pay the
debts which they owed the brethren. More
deadly and irreconcilable hatred was never
fermented in New York City among its lead
ing colored men, by any organization or
other cause than grew out of this very Odd
Fellowship. Hatreds which only ceased,
when the parties left the Order, and returned
to their natural impluses. And I am greatly
mistaken, if, both Philo and CosmopoliteBell, Philip A.

Philip A. Bell (1808-89) was educated at the New York City Free School and worked as an agent for the Liberator and at a variety of occupations in his youth. He was secretary of a January 1831 public meeting of New York blacks that protested against the colonization movement. In 1837 Bell helped found and edit the Weekly Advocate, later renamed the New York Colored American, which was an important forum for black opinion until its demise in 1842. In the 1850s he operated an employment agency for New York City blacks and was active in literary, temperance, and mutual relief societies as well as the antislavery movement. Bell attended many of the antebellum National Negro Conventions and lectured for equal suffrage for blacks. Moving to California in 1860, Bell briefly ran a real estate agency before returning to journalism, first as associate editor of the San Francisco Pacific Appeal, and later as owner and editor of the San Francisco Elevator. In the 1870s Bell was president of the Equal Rights League of California, a politically independent group that lobbied Republican politicians for better treatment of blacks. While still in New York, Bell wrote to the North Star under the pseudonym "Cosmopolite." New York Colored American, 8 December 1838; San Francisco Elevator, 12 June 1868, 11 January, 15 November 1873; William Lloyd Garrison, Thoughts on African Colonization: or; an Impartial Exhibition of the Doctrines, Principles and Purposes of the American Colonization Society (New York, 1832), 13- 17; Penn, Afro-American Press, 32-34, 94-98; Robert C. Dick, Black Protest: Issues and Tactics (Westport, Conn., 1974), 84, 173-77, 267; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 20, 31, 95; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 113-14, 175, 195, 210; James A. Fisher, "A History of the Political and Social Development of the Black Community in California, 1850-1950" (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1971), 72-75, 97-100, 140-46; Freeman, "Free Negro in New York City," 35, 46, 128, 175-76, 237, 299; "Black Elites and the Draft Riots," New York Times, July 13, 2013. Autobiography, My Life and Times, Part 2 , can
not now look back with pain, at precious op
portunities wasted in the Lodge Room, op
portunities in which their talents and ener
gies were meretriciously divested from the
real advancement of their brethren. Past, or
rather Present Grand Master Gordon, may
assent, as he does, that this Order has done
a great good in Philadelphia. If so, it must
have been on the Homeopathic principle—like
cures like—for that city has been distinguish
ed, from time immemorial for the multitude
of feuds and small hatreds among its color
ed population; it would seem, as if the tran
quil surface of Quakerdom, like other still
waters, had not one, but many —brethren—
at the bottom of it—and colored brethren at
that! If Odd-Fellowship, like some potent
acid has neutralized this state of things, I
wish Brother Gordon, joy of the improve
ment; late reports state that the extremes of
colored society have recently met and min
gled in that city—that Robert Purvis and
David Roe actually gave each other the hug
fraternal; did Odd-Fellowship do this?

But (sh—sh—sh—go to sleep, baby bunting
—there—sh) the friendship and love of the
Order of Odd Fellowship, are best illustrat
ed by the following facts, which I publicly
dare anyone to gainesay: In 1843, Mr Peter
Ogden, by obtaining for his colored brethren
in the United States, the first dispensation,
and the sole right to grant of all others of the
Grand-United-Order of Odd-Fellows in
America, earned for himself the title of the
Father of the Order in America. Within a
year or two, he was so recognized, and at one
of the processions, I saw a banner, of costly
silk, in which his likeness was elaborately
painted. In 1842 or '3, this same Mr. Peter
Ogden, sickened, in the City of New York,
at a house within five hundred yards of the
daily walks of a hundred of "the brethren"
—not one of them visited him to offer a cup
of water to his parched lips; in the same
place, in a few weeks, and of the same ill
ness, he died, and not a "brother" of the
Order was found to perform the last sad de
cencies for his body, or follow him to his
grave! His sickness and death was well
known to them. But he had not paid his dues
in the Lodge to which he belonged; and
therefore Friendship, love and Truth knew
him no longer.

Should not hatred, hypocrisy, and humbug!
be smitten on the banners of such an Order?
Have Philo or Cosmopolite anything more to
say to

Yours most truly,

CHARLOTTE K——.