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Wappinumoc to Frederick Douglass, March 25, 1853

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For Frederick Douglass' Paper.
"Der Hagel."
Observer writes like a man in the honey moon, he is so saccharine towards Ethiop: starting up with a fierce flourish of scimetar, he comes down like the fall of the rose leaves in June, light, scattering, odorous.
The philosophy of the Tribune is an admirable study just now, suggestive of the clusters which hang from the unripened vintage. It argues that the President of the United States is no great shakes after all; he has nothing to do with guiding the destinies of this great country; he is merely a sort of fraction, which, "by and with the consent of the Senate," can nominate persons to certain offices of various fatness.
For a man who "did his prettiest" to place old Chippewa into the curule chair—and didn't—this may be a very sensible way of soothing those pricks of conscience which start up, now the fury of the fight is over: but such nonsense won't do even for the marines in whose recollection is treasured up, Jackson and the Bank, Polk and Texas, and that half revealed damnable diplomacy by which slavery propagandism has coiled its snaky folds round the neck of the nation.
The Bloomer Temperance meeting in the Tabernacle, to-night, was a well-attended, but dullish affair. The voices of the women were too weak for the vast, voice-killing area of the old "wash-tub;" and the constant slamming of the doors knocked the edge off many a sparkling little "mot." And yet, I found it intensely interesting to listen to the sweet womanly tone and half dependent womanly manner in which Antoinette Brown
"glukim de t'imeroen"
rippled along her sentences. By the Lord Harry! I could have leapt down on that platform, and,*
* "And sweetly she smiled" Sappho, as preserved by Longinus de Sublimitate.
blessed with a glove from that little hand, for my crest, could have gone forth and done battle against all liquordom! Happy Horace Greeley, there he sat on that sofa on the platform aforesaid, like a huge carter potato in a bed of mignonette. That white coat is not devoid of taste, after all.
How could Theodore Parker deliver such a lecture about the Anglo-Saxons and their influence? To a more whining, canting, at truth squinting, piece of self-adulation it has seldem been my misfortune to listen. Et tu Brute! exclaimed my last vestige of faith in a white man, and wrapped itself in the mantle of despair, and fell by the sixth column in the Tabernacle. Just hear him.
"It was the Anglo-Saxon who first brought about trial by jury."-Theodore Parker
"The trial by jury of twelve men was the usual trial among the Normans in most suits; especially in assizes."-1 Hale's History of the Common Law, 219. (This was Normandy before the conquest of England by the Nor-
mans.)
"It cannot be denied that the practice of submitting causes to the decision of twelve men was universal among all the northern tribes (of Europe) from the very remotest antiquity."-Crabbe's Hist. of the English Law, p. 32.
"The Anglo-Saxon first established the habeas corpus to protect men in their natural laws."-Theodore Parker.
The Norman Barons holding the Anglo-Saxons as their serfs, wrenched the habeas corpus act from King John, when the Anglo-Saxons could not even read the Magna Charter, for it was written in Latin.
"The Anglo-Saxon is not cruel."-Theodore Parker.

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"The Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses" proves that Anglo-Saxons, south of Mason and Dixon's line, lash naked and defenceless women, maim and bruise, and brand, with hot iron, poor dumb men, tear husbands from their wives, sucking infants from their mothers, and hunt down God's image with bloodhounds, and then go down on their knees and "thank God that they are not as other men;" and the Reverend Theodore Parker, a transcendental priest of this Anglo-Saxon phariseaism lays his hands upon their heads and solemnly says, "Blessed are ye, for ye are not cruel!"
"The Anglo-Saxon turns with scorn from his African slave."—Theodore Parker.
Where, then, did the sambos, mulattoes and quadroons come from?
But what struck me most painfully, was, that this lecture, the scope of which was eminently Didactic, did, so subtley minister to the pride of race, so gild the very crimes of race with the grandeur of manifest destiny, as to make its sins splendid rather than detestable. It reminded me of the B'hoys in high feather, exclaiming "ain't we h—"
In Frederick Douglass' Paper of the 11th, I find the following in regard to the colored people: "A radical change in the process of our development is here demanded. Now is the time to begin to cultivate among us a taste for the arts and sciences themselves before we become more deeply immersed in the rougher affairs of life."-Ethiop.
So, ho! Mr. Ethiop, last winter, when frosty-headed Communipaw (peace to his ashes!) asserted that "our present real can only be bettered by a nobler ideal," you hammered away at him as best you could. Now, when that poor fellow is turned inside out, you announce that rougher pursuits (of wealth, eh?) must be preceded by the pursuit of the ideal in Arts! Eh? Art thou in health, my brother?
I do not know whether I feel more pleasure or anxiety at your announcement that Mrs. Stowe intends doing something for the elevation of the colored people. I had hoped that the times would soon knock out all the underpins and supports and leave us to our own unaided resources. We cannot rise, so long as we are dependent on any body save God and the Right. And whatever teachings, or writings, or method, shall bring us to act with this view, and shall render us self reliant, will be the great levers for our elevation. And I fear that your own proposal of a workshop for colored youth under competent white mechanics, will hardly reach the sources of our present degradation. We have in our country black mechanics competent for the charge of such a workshop, and the appointment of such would not only be a necessary stimulous for our youth, but would prevent the profits of the concern, and the fat offices, if any, from going as usual into white men's pockets: our fairer brethren have a singular affinity to the dimes in all such cases. Whilst Alexander Crummell nearly starved in New Haven, Oberlin College was established, by British liberality drawn out in sympathy for his rejection from the New York Theological Seminary of Episcopal Church.
Besides, there is no dearth of colored

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mechanics. I can, at this moment, name boot-makers, engineers, carpet-makers, carpenters, carvers, cabinet makers, tailors, coopers, &c., first class workmen, all black who have turned waiters or barbers; and is it worth the while to raise up another crop for the same menial callings? It is idle to say "white mechanics will not work with them," for the same objection would hold against your plan. The difficulty is, that these black mechanics, having a low ideal, will not work with nor as white mechanics work; they will not pinch their stomachs nor wear plain clothes long enough to establish themselves in business. To accomplish the elevation of our people, then, requires an elevation of thought (higher ideal) and character among them.
And it does seem, that the class to which our efforts should first be directed, is, the young women. Our reform must begin with the very being of those we would improve, and therefore must direct the training or discipline of the mothers. It is with this class that the deepest hold of slavery is taken upon its victims, and it is from this class that the most successful influences of liberty may begin. In our large cities, thousands of colored youth who are rushing to steamboat and hotel waiting and barbers' shops, do so at the bidding of their mothers, who will rather that their boys shall be servants, and yield them five or ten dollars a month, than that they should become mechanics, at smaller immediate profits to themselves (the mothers.)
It is no objection to this view of reform, the reform of the young women, that the end seems remote from the beginning; it is the very hurry for immediate results which keeps our young men from the workshop of the mechanic. The make up of any strong people ever has for an element, the disposition to lay down broad and durable foundations for the maintenance or elevation of their childrens' children. In the latter part of the last century, a poor, but proud Scottish nobleman absented himself from court on account of his poverty: he retired to his wild highland domain, and began to plant fir trees on the bleak and bare hill-sides. People thought him cracked; but to-day, as Duke of Argyle, his grandson looms up as one of the wealthiest, as well as most intellectual of the British aristocracy; for those trees have grown into forests of incalculable value.
Yours,
WAPPINUMOC.

SHORT TOWER, 23d Street, New York, March, 1853.

Creator

Wappinumoc

Date

1853-03-25

Description

Wappinumoc to Frederick Douglass. PLSr: Frederick DouglassP, 25 March 1853. Critiques Theodore Parker’s defense of Anglo-Saxons; argues that the intellectual elevation of black women is paramount to the elevation of all blacks.

Publisher

This document was calendared in the published volume and has not been published in full before.

Collection

Frederick Douglass' Paper

Type

Letters

Publication Status

Unpublished

Source

Frederick Douglass' Paper