Normal to Frederick Douglass, April 3, 1857

FROM OUR PHILADELPHIA CORRESPONDENT.

PHILADELPHIA, April 3, 1857.

Mr. EDITOR:—We really begin to feel quite serious concerning our Quaker city, it has become so unusually lively. These two or three weeks past we have been all excitement. You remember that Dr. E.K. KANE'S remains came here to their last resting place—what a sad but exciting time it made for us!—Well, we have had little but excitement since Dr. KANE'S remains were scarce reposed in Laurel Hill Cemetery, under the shades of the Necropolis, and within sound of the Sabbath bell of his native city—when, as if to mock our grief at the loss of him who was just now among us, and is not, and yet lives still, and ever more—ELISHA KENT KANE—the Supreme Court of the United States hurried at us its infamous decision in the case of Dred Scott vs. J.F.H. Sanford. Of course our austral-eyed city press had not much to say on the subject. The Ledger, with its accustomed meanness came to the support of TANEY, and yet this same Ledger numbers its daily colored readers by thousands. One or two other of our press came out boldly and set forth a programme of action in accordance with the infamous edict. "No more clamoring for Negro equality," said they; "no more of Negroes taking promiscuous seats in churches, and R.R. Cars: in short, Negroes must leave the country and go to Africa, or be content to remain in their proper place." The Morning Times must always be excepted in our strictures upon the course of the Philadelphia Press; it has recently come out in a double sheet, and is Republican to the core, besides being decidedly much more ably edited than its city cotemporaries. We cannot quite understand how it is that our colored fellow citizens will persist in paying their fifty dollars daily to The Ledger, when such a noble sheet exists in our midst as The Philadelphia Morning Times. We hope this will not long be so.

The colored citizens, ever wide-awake to their interests, held a rousing meeting at the Institute from which hundreds had to go away for want of room. The following, clipped

from The Times of the 2d inst., will tell you of this meeting:

At a public meeting held in Philadelphia Institute, Lombard st., above Seventh, March 30th, 1857, to consider and deliberate in regard to the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Dred Scott—Franklin Turner, Esq., was chosen President: Rev. Stephen Smith, Ulysses B. Vidal, Charles H. Bastill and James Prosser, were voted Vice Presidents; and Jacob C. White, Jr., Secretary.

On motion a committee consisting of Isaiah C. Wear, Esq., Prof. Ebenezer D. Bassett, George Washington Goines, Esq., John O Bowers, Esq., and Rev. William T. Catto, was appointed to draw up and submit an appeal to their white fellow countrymen in the United States. Said Committee reported through their Chairman, I. C. Wear, Esq., the following Appeal, which was eloquently advocated by I. C. Wear, Esq., Prof. E. D. Bassett, Rev. Wm. T. Catto, Dr. J. J. G. Bias, Rev. J. P. Campbell, John C. Bowers and others and unanimously adopted.

Whereas, A decision has emanated from the Supreme Court of the country, jeopardizing not only our political, civil, and social rights, but also endangering our personal liberties and our lives.

We, the colored inhabitants of the city and the county of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (and, as we believe, citizens of the United States,) excluded as we are by this decision from our country's guarantee of immunities and protections, whether it be in regard to our property or our lives, take this method of appeal to the liberty-loving spirit abroad in the land, pervading, as it does the great mass of the American mind. In this we address ourselves not to the feelings alone, but to the understanding and the sense of honor of the American people, believing that those whom we now address would not be willing to confess that their love of liberty does not extend beyond their own exercise of it.

The liberties which you now enjoy, were obtained by the joint effort of your fathers and ours, who fought side by side in defense of their common country. Our fathers' blood was poured out on their country's altar, because they had the same reason for doing so that the white man had; nor were they thought unworthy to join them in the vindication of the doctrines contained in the Declaration of Independence.

But there are higher considerations than those to which we have referred, upon which we base the reasons for a favorable consideration of our cause. You know that we are men in every sense of the word, men with all man's capabilities and all his necessities, capable of loving our native country, and of advancing and of improving in all that is known to be to man's advantage, but, at the same time, needing all the facilities, immunities, guarantees, protections and opportunities that are needful for white men; indeed, it would be confessing a superiority in us to which we lay no claim, to say that we could attain to and maintain the proper standard of improvement without the means that are necessary to the white man.

We do not ask you, in our appeal, to nullify this odious decision by any other than constitutional and legal means. Our confidence in you is that you will see to it that your suffrages and political advantages shall be so directed as to speak and act for those who, by this infamous decision, have been robbed of their legal standing and political rights without a cause. If the unexampled and distressing persecutions in this, as in other cases, were all that we had to plead, it would become the greatness of the American people, who,

loving freedom, are to shape the destinies of this great Republic, to protect the injured and to check the triumph of daring wickedness over helpless innocence. The execrable and murderous sentiment, for the first time since the world began, finds judicial sanction in a national Court, "That colored men have no rights which white men are bound to respect." This heretofore unheard of outrageous edict is a foul stain on our nation's fame which you alone can efface.

We have forborn to make reference to the invasion of State rights and the nationalizing of slavery which this decision involves. But we call upon you, by your affection for your children, by your love for your country, by your own virtues, by the majority and greatness of the American name by all that is sacred and dear to you and yours, to deliver the country and the sons of the compatriots of your fathers from the consequences legitimate to this ill conditioned decision—deliver them from becoming the prey of violence, usurpation and cruelty. We know you cannot so stultify yourselves as to believe that our fathers committed the unpardonable sin of risking their lives, their all to obtain their country's freedom, and when secured, voted to destroy their own citizenship by voting (as vote they did) to adopt a constitution that excluded them. No: it is either a wilful or an ignorant error of the Court—fatal error; and the remedy is with the people.

We desire that you treat this Court as you treated it when it affirmed the validity and Constitutionality of the "Alien and Sedition Acts,"—as you treated the same Court when it pronounced Constitutional the Bank of the United States.

We ask you to rebuke the meanness that would accept the office of Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States at the hands of a liberal and confiding people, and then so pervert and prostitute that high and responsible office (for responsible to the people he is who accepts it,) that it became (to use the words of one of the dissenting Judges) "an exponent of the individual political opinions of the members of this court."

We ask you to remedy this evil, to efface this foul blot, to counteract its direful consequences, as it affects both you and us, that it may be truly said that this government is, in every branch of it, a government of the people, or be content to abandon your proudest boast, which is that the purple rule. This principle that the people rule must be preserved—must be maintained and upheld as a lending fundamental idea, a living truth: it must be defended at all hazards; it must be preserved in all its fullness all the extent of its utmost signification it need not, indeed, be upheld as a mere abstraction, but as a commanding reality. This we submit believing that if you are true to yourselves you cannot but be true to us.

All of which is respectfully submitted.

ISAIAH C. WEAR, GEROGE W. GOINES.

E. D. BASSETT, JOHN C. BOWERS,

WILLIAM T. CATTO

On motion the meeting then adjourned.

FRANKLIN TURNER, President.

JACOB C. WHITE, Sec`y.

A funny sort of meeting followed close on to this one. It was announced that C.L. REMOND, ROB'T PURVIS, and others, would speak at Israel Church on the Dred Scott case and other outrages to which the colored people are subject under the Constitution; and to give the finishing touch, it was further avowed that LUCRETIA MOTT, JAMES M. McKIM (!)

and B. S. Jones, of Ohio, would attend.

The meeting was organized by appointment JAMES M. BUSTILL, Chairman, who received one vote, WM. STILL, Secretary, who also go one vote, and that from the platform. No sooner was this done, than a string of resolutions full of the most randical, and visionary of the Garrisonian doctrines, was submitted. To these Mr. JONES of Ohio, spoke, and C. L. REMOND followed. Then came the immortal PURVIS, who labored hard to kick up a terrible dust, but fell grandly short of it. Finally, the question on the resolutions came. It had leaked out some how in the course of the meeting that these were to go out as the expression of the colored people, in the face of the fact that such an expression had just been given. Our able and accomplished friend U. B. VIDAL called attention to this, and asked that the resolutions be taken up separately, when another significant fact came out, that they had been already given over to the Reporter! Mr. VIDAL and BOWERS protested calmly and rightfully against such an underhanded proceeding, whereat PURVIS flew into a terrible rage, and pitched into every thing but the subject in hand; he alluded to GERRIT SMITH as "a visionary, light-headed man," and to his followers as a "baker's dozen of unmitigated scoundrels" grew almost frantic over the fact that the colored citizens of Philadelphia had actually held a public meeting, when it was known that the most able and popular colored man in the country, C. L. REMOND, was in town, and did not invited him to meet with them;" (we trow this was a word for Robert himself.) These colored citizens be stigmatized as followers of one DOUGLASS, (not STEPHEN A.,) "who" he said, "had seen eye to eye with us for twelve years, and traveled the country in OUR employ, invoking bolts from heaven to shiver into ten thousand atoms the American Union, and then as suddenly as these same bolts, announced his conversion to the Liberty Party, when he soon went over to the Radical Abolition Party, (we never before knew there were two parties,) and when the Republican Party come up, he (DOUGLASS) tipped over to it, leaving the GERRIT SMITH party (the audience knew this to be a lie.) And he must by this time be tackled on to something else." The immortal Bob really got quite angry when he came to reflect that in addition to all those things, there were Professors in the meeting of colored citizens above alluded

to. He referred to some "renegade from Connecticut, who had come to Philadelphia to earn his bread and butter—an impudent scoundrel, vagabond, Yankee pedler, "who has printed the august name of one negro named PURVIS in Frederick Douglass` Paper, and to whom Mr. DOUGLASS "was mean and contemptible enough to open his columns!"—(Have you heard of any such gentry as this out your way?) The immortable Bob failing to get applause, which he seems to regard as his right, over his disgusting and contemptible billingsgate, here stopped short. After some further quibbling the resolutions were put and lost—lost! The fact that Bob's "baker's dozen and contemptible minority" negatived the resolutions, might serve to show what sort of a house there was, but for the circumstance that the great Robert made a slight error in his count. Our keep eyed, and clearheaded friend STEPHEN SMITH saw just the instant to move an adjournment, which Bob's "contemptible minority" carried high and dry. The resolutions "our Reporter" didn't see fit to print the secret of which you may learn one of these days. We have just learned that the proceedings of this bogus meeting have come out as "the colored people's Expression" through an entirely new channel, The Evening Bulletin. We know nothing about this; but the lawyers allow us our suspicions; and we do most certainly believe that the article in The Bulletin, (a sheet fully worthy of such an article,) was got up and penned at the anti-slavery office by JAMES M. MCKIM. It is an outrage which we happen to know our citizens will attend to.

Thus ended the latest attempt of these Garrisonians to palm of unwholesome doctrine upon us unruly and "impudent" people who will now and then look our to see how the sun shines without previously obtaining leave of the great Mr. PURVIS, ESQ., and J. M. McKim. It is strange that these people are continually getting up some sort of a fuss in the hope of dividing us. The citizens of Philadelphia know their rights, and ask nothing of McKIM and this self-sufficient impudent PURVIS, but that they keep at their respective posts out of our way. One is a Saxon, the other very near it; and we believe that neither has any other interest in us than to hold us up before the public as subscribers to their views, and thus aid their cause and enlarge their subscription