Mrs. Stowe's Position.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, ESQ: DEAR SIR:—I send you, according to promise, the second
of my series of three letters. In saying in
my letter of the 22d of March, that "Mrs.
Stowe knows nothing about us—'the Free
Colored People of the United States'—neith
er does any white person," I admit the ex
pression to be ironical, and not intended to
be taken in its literal sense; but I meant to
be understood in so saying, that they know
nothing, comparatively, about us, to the in
telligent, reflecting, general observers among
the Free Colored People of the North. And
while I readily admit, that I "know nothing
about Mrs. Stowe," I desire very much, to
learn something of her; and as I could not
expect it of Mrs. Stowe, to do so, were she
in the country at present, I may at least ask
it if brother Douglass, and hope that he will
neither consider it derogatory to Mrs.
Stowe's position nor attainments, to give me
the required information concerning her. I
go beyond the mere point of asking it as a
favor; I demand it as a right—from you I
mean—as I am an interested party, and how
ever humble, may put such reasonable
questions to the other party—looking upon
you, in this case, as the attorney of said
party—as may be necessary to the pending
proceedings.

First, then, assertion; is not Mrs. Stowe
a Colonizationist? having so avowed, or at
least subscribed to, and recommended their
principles in her great work of Uncle Tom.

Secondly, although Mrs. Stowe has ably,
eloquently and pathetically portrayed some
of the sufferings of the slave, is it any evi
dence that she has any sympathy for his
thrice-morally crucified, semi-free brethren
any where, or of the African race at all;
when in the same world-renowned and wide
ly circulated work, she sneers at Hayti—the
only truly free and independent civilized
black nation as such, or colored if you please,
on the face of the earth—at the same time
holding up the little dependent colonization
settlement of Liberia in high estimation? I
must be permitted to draw my own conclu
sions, when I say that I can see no other
cause for this singular discrepancy in Mrs.
Stowe's interest in the colored race, than that
one is independent of, and the other subser-

viant to, white men's power.

You will certainly not consider this idea
farfetched, because it is true American policy;
and I do not think strange, even of Mrs.
Stowe, for following in a path so conspicu
ous, as almost to become the principal pub
lic highway. At least, no one will dispute
its being a well-trodden path.

Thirdly; says brother Douglass, "Why,
then, should any man object to the efforts of
Mrs. Stowe, or any one else, who is moved to
do anything in our behalf?" Bro. Douglass
does not mean, and I will not so torture his
language, as to make it imply that he means,
that we should permit any body to under
take measures for our elevation. If so, those
of Gurley, Pinney, and other colonization
ists, should be acknowledged by us as ac-
ceptable measures. But are we to accept of
colonization measures for our elevation?—Certainly not, you will readily apply. Then,
if that be true, and Mrs. Stowe be what I
have predicated—which I hope her friends
may prove, satisfactorily, to the contrary—we should reject the proffers of Mrs. Stowe,
as readily as those of any other coloniza
tionist. What! have our children tutored
under colonization measures? God forbid!
But why question Mrs. Stowe's measures?
I will tell you. In May last, a colored man,
—humble and common placed, to be sure—chanced to meet with Mrs. Stowe at the
house of Mr. B---, in the city of N---,
State of N---, where he had called with
some articles for sale. He informs me that
Mrs. Stowe was very indifferent towards
him—more so, he thought, than any of the
several persons present; and hearing him
speak of his elevation in the United States,
she asked, very seriously, what he expected
to gain by any efforts that could be made
here; and when he referred to the West
Indies, and South America, &c., as an al
ternative, she at once asked him, "why he
did not go to Liberia"—that moral and po
litical bane of the colored people of this
country—manifesting no sympathy whatever
with the tortured feelings, crushed spirits
and outraged homes of the Free Colored peo
ple, even the poor wretch who then stood be
fore her. All this may have been, you may
say, and still Mrs. Stowe be all that we could
desire. It may be; but he who can believe
such things, has stronger faith and confidence
than I, in our American people. I must ad
mit, that in them my confidence is terribly
shattered. But, I will suppose a case as
parallel with this one.

Mrs. Christian, of Vienna, in Austria, a
highly intellectual, pious lady, writes a book
—an excellent work—which is beginning to
attract general public attention, for it is
portrayal of Hungarian wrongs. The deep
ly-moved sympathies of the lady's soul seems
to teem through every chapter and page, ex
posing Austrian oppression, and, impliedly,
advocating Hungarian rights-as would be
reasonably supposed—the right to live free
men in Austria, or, at least, Hungary, their
native part of the Empire. While the pub
lic attention is thus aroused, and that lady's
book is almost the only topic of conversa
tion among the people, from Paris to St.
Petersburgh, what would be of that
lady if a poor Hungarian chanced to meet
her, and she manifested no sympathy for
him, the present representative in poverty
and obscurity of the very people whose
cause she professed to espouse; and when he
claimed the right to live in Austria, she
would unconcernedly ask him why he did
not go to Siberia, the inhospitable criminal

colony of Russia—answering very well to
the Liberia of the American colonizations,
colony of Russia—answering very well to
only not so cruelsince Russia sends only
her criminals, mostly deserting soldiers and
political offenders, while the United States
Colonization Society forces innocent men,
women and children to go, who never did
harm to any one? Surely, according to the
supposition predicated above, the Hunga
rians would have great cause for fearing, if
not suspecting Mrs. Christian's fidelity to
their cause.

Lastly; the Industrial Institution in con
templation by Mrs. Stowe, for the tuition of
colored youth, proposes, as I understand it,
the entire employment of white instructors.
This, I strongly object to, as having a ten
dency to engender in our youth a higher de
gree of respect and confidence for white
persons than for those of their own color;
and creates the impression that colored per
sons are incapable of teaching, and only
suited to subordinate positions. I have ob
served carefully, in all of my travels in our country n all the schools that I visited—colored schools I mean—that in those taught
in whole or part by colored persons, the
pupils were always the most respectful to
wards me, and the less menial in their gen
eral bearing. I do not object to white teach
ers in part; but I do say, that wherever com
petent colored teachers could be obtained
for any of the departments, they should be
employed. Self-respect begets due obedience
to others; and obedience is the first step to
self-government among any people. Cer
tainly, this should be an essential part
of the training of our people, separated
in interests as we have been, in this country.
All the rude and abominable ideas that exist
among us, in preferences for color, have been
engendered from the whites; and in God's
name, I ask them to do nothing more to in
crease this absurdity.

Another consideration, is, that all of the
pecuniary advantages arising from this posi
tion go into the pockets of white men and
women, thereby depriving colored persons,
so far, of this livelihood. This is the same
old song sung over again,

"Dimes and dollars-dollars and dimes;"

and I will say, without the fear of offence,
that nothing that has as yet been gotten up
by our friends, for the assistance of the col
ored people of the United States, has ever
been of any pecuniary benefit to them. Our
white friends take care of that part. There
are, to my knowledge, two exceptions to this
allegation—Douglass' printing establishment,
and the "Alleghany Institute;" the one hav
ing a colored man at the head, and in the
other, the assistant being a colored man.

There is an old American story about an
Indian and a white man, hunting game to
gether; when they shot wild turkeys and
buzzards, agreeing to divide, taking bird
about; the white huntsman being the teller.
In counting, the white man would say, al
ternately taking up either bird, "turkey for
me, and buzzard for you-buzzard for you,
and turkey for me." He growing tired of
that method of counting the game, soon ac
costed his friend: "Uh! how's dis? all buz-
zard for me; but you never say, turkey for
me, once." I feel somewhat as this Indian
did; I am growing weary of receiving the
buzzard as our share, while our tellers get all
the turkeys. That "is not the way to 'sell'
it" to me.

But I have not yet read the "Key to Un
cle Tom's Cabin," and it may be that, in that,

Mrs. S.—and I sincerely hope she has—has
changed her policy, and renounced Coloniza
tion as she had made a public avowal of it;
and apriori, just so far as her work received
favor, her opinions on that subject will also
be received.

I am aware that I am saying much more
than is allowable, as I do not know of any of
our professed anti-slavery friends who have
taken public positions, who will permit any
of their measures to be questioned by a col
ored person, except in the fullness of those
great and good hearts—W. L. 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. ,
Gerrit SmithSmith, Gerrit

Gerrit Smith (1797– 1874), a New York businessman and land speculator, became best known for his philanthropic work for such reform causes as temperance and abolition. Between 1828 and 1835, he donated large sums of money to the American Colonization Society, but abandoned that movement in 1835 when his sympathies shifted to the immediate abolitionists. In the 1840s, he gave approximately 140,000 acres of land in upstate New York to three thousand black settlers, thus qualifying them to vote. Smith was a founder and frequent candidate of the Liberty party, running for governor of New York on that ticket in 1840 and winning a seat in Congress in 1852. When the Free Soil merger with moderate antislavery Democrats and Whigs lured away many Liberty party supporters, Smith helped bankroll that organization until 1860. Smith befriended Douglass when the latter moved to Rochester, and Smith frequently helped finance Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Like Douglass, Smith supported John Brown, but psychological stress caused by the failure at Harpers Ferry brought on the first of a series of bipolar episodes that greatly reduced his subsequent reform activities. Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer (1939; New York, 1972); Gerald Sorin, The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn., 1971), 269– 87; Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), 170– 80; John R. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, “The ‘Black Dream’ of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist,” Syracuse University Library Associates Courier, 20:61– 76 (Fall 1985); NCAB , 2:322– 23; DAB, 17:270– 71. , and that more than excellent
woman, Mrs. Hester Moore, of Philadelphia,
whose name you now scarcely ever hear of.
She is an abolitionist of the Garrison and
Smith sort; she loves the cause of Hungary
for the sake of the Hungarian.

Let me say another thing, brother Doug
lass; that is, that no enterprize, institution,
or anything else, should be commenced for
us, or our general benefit, without first con-
sulting us. By this, I mean, consulting the
various communities of the colored people in
the United States, by such a correspondence
as should make public the measure, and so
licit their general interests and coincidence.
In this way, the intelligence and desires of
the whole people would be elicited, and an
intelligent understanding of their real de
sires obtained. Other than this, is treating
us as slaves, and presupposing us all to be ig
norant, and incapable of knowing our own
wants. Many of the measures of our friends
have failed from this very cause; and I am
fearful that many more will fail.

In conclusion, brother Douglass, let me
say, that I am the last person among us who
would wilfully "strike a jarring note, or
awaken a feeling of distrust," uncalled for;
and although you may pronounce it "unwise,
ungraceful, and sounding high and mighty
on paper;" as much high respect as an
humble simple-minded person should have
for them, and as much honored as I should
feel in having such names enrolled as
our benefactors—associated with our de
graded position in society; believe me when
I tell you, that I speak it as a son, a brother
a husband and a father; I speak it from the
consciousness of oppressed humanity, out
raged manhood, of a degraded husband and
disabled father; I speak it from the recesses
of a wounded bleeding heart—in the name
of my wife and children, who look to me
for protection, as the joint partner of our
humble fireside; I say, if this great fund
and aid are to be sent here to foster and aid
the schemes of the American Colonization So
ciety, as I say to you—I say with reverence,
and an humbleness of feeling, becoming my
position, with a bowed-down head, that the
benevolent, great and good, the Duchess of
Sutherland, Mr. Gurney, their graces the
Earl of Shaftesbury and the Earl of Carlisle;
had far better retain their money in the
Charity Fund of Stafford House, or any
other place, than to send it to the United
States for any such unhallowed purposes!—No person will be more gratified, nor will
more readily join in commendation, than I,
of any good measure attempted to be carried
out by Mrs. Stowe, if the contrary of her
colonization principles be disproved. I will
not accept chains from a king, any sooner
than from a peasant; and never shall, will
ingly, submit to any measures for my own
degradation. I am in hopes, brother Doug
lass, as every one else will understand my
true position.

Yours for God and
down-trodden Humanity,

M. R. DELANY.

Pittsburgh, April 18th, 1853.