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CHARLOTTE K——^{1Charlotte K——- was a pseudonymous correspondent to Frederick Douglass’s Paper; her true identity is unknown. Little is known about this person other than that she corresponded from Pittsburgh. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., foreword to The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, ed. John Stauffer (New York, 2006), xxx; Christopher L. Webber, American to the Backbone: The Life of James W. C. Pennington, the Fugitive Slave Who Became One of the First Black Abolitionists (New York, 2011), 357; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 4:226n.} TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Pittsburgh, Pa. 26 Nov[ember] 1853.
MR. EDITOR :—

Oh, Mr. Editor, such times as I’ve seen about my letter! ([P]ut this into
a sly corner, do.) [B]Jut I can’t tell all. I have just sent my husband after
a piece of roast pig, you know; and must hurry before he comes back. I
haven't time to tell you how we came to this place, nor why; but Pittsburgh
is a smoky city,^{2As early as the 1850s, Pittsburgh was home to a high concentration of heavy industries such as ironworks, foundries, and cotton mills, which together produced a great deal of air pollution. This earned it the nickname the “Smoky City.” Edward K. Muller and Joel A. Tarr, “The Interaction of Natural and Built Environments in the Pittsburgh Landscape,” in Devastation and Renewal: An Environmental History of Pittsburgh and Its Region, ed. Joel A. Tarr (Pittsburgh, 2003), 16; Joseph L. Scarpaci and Kevin J. Patrick, eds., Pittsburgh and the Appalachians: Cultural and Natural Resources in a Postindustrial Age (Pittsburgh, 2006), 81.} and contains a number of people to match. Such public