The following letter has just been received from our friend, Hiram Corliss, of Union Village. We sincerely sympathize with the friends there in their present affliction:

UNION VILLAGE, Jan. 29th, 1853.

MR. F. DOUGLASS: DEAR SIR:—Your kind acceptance of our invitation was received with much joy, and we are looking forward with hopes of good being done for oppressed humanity. But a severe dispensation of Providence has interposed, and renders the holding of that meeting in our place hopeless. For some two or three weeks, the small pox has been among us, and I have defered to write you in hopes that the disease might stop. But a number of new cases of real small pox has taken place within two days, and there is an almost certainty of its still encreasing. So we have now concluded to write you not to come at the time appointed; and if we should have it this spring, we will write you. No people would come in from the country; they are under great excitement. Believe me as ever yours and for humanity,
HIRAM CORLISSCorliss, Hiram

Hiram Corliss (1793-1877) was a surgeon living in Union Village, New York (now Greenwich) along the border with Vermont. He became involved in the antislavery movement perhaps as early as 1816 while practicing in Easton, New York, and helped to establish the antislavery society in Washington County. In the 1840s, as a member of the Eastern New York Anti-Slavery Society, Corliss likely was involved in some capacity with a series of fugitive slave rescues that took place in the region. He was known to have hidden numerous fugitive slaves in his basement over the year. 1840 and 1860 U.S. Census, Greenwich, Washington, New York; Crisfield Johnson, History of Washington, Co., New York (Philadelphia: Everts & Ensign, 1878), 342-44; Mary Ellen Snodgrass, ed., The Underground Railroad: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations, 2 vols. (New York: Routledge, 2008), 1:137. .