Communipaw [James McCune Smith] to Frederick Douglass, April 16, 1858

MR. EDITOR: Is it not strange that we black men, alive to news, overflowing with sympathy, and worshippers at the shrine of Freedom, at this moment, big with events in which freedom is (!) concerned, look on with a cool, unexcited gaze, as if we were regarding events which happened centuries ago, and were reading matters of history, rather than the occurrences of the present day? Is it apathy, or what is it that causes me to take up the morning paper, and lay it down, without caring a straw, never even looking to see, whether Lecompton triumphed or fell yesterday in the House?

Granted that we are not concerned in the fight; granted that both Lecompton and Topeka, deny the Christ wounded and beaten and crucified in your person and mine; granted that the liberties of white men, and white men only, are involved in the struggle of the House against the Government—should we be apathetic?—Are we not men, and should we not therefore, with our fellow black, Terentius, "feel concern in whatever pertains to men?"

Our apathy, lies deeper than this—it is not selfishness, but, in some sort, despair. Quarter of a century ago, when the Anti-Slavery enterprise awakened under the strong utterance of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, no part of the people were so electrified, so excited, so hopeful as we; our deep craving for the acknowledgment of our brotherhood, welled up in holy expectation, in beatific joy; that same craving now crushed, withered and disappointed, sinks down in hopeless apathy: in the whole wide sea of human beings who go to make up the white population of the land, we see no hand stretched forth to succor or save us, we are

"Alone, alone, all alone."

I say it is not selfishness: I grieve, not that I am shut out from Kansas by the Free State organic law, but because, with all the blaze of Anti-Slavery light opening upon them, the men who framed that law, dared baptize it with the name of freedom; dared incorporate an organic lie into organic law; it is my very concernment in the truthfulness and honor, of these "friends of freedom," that lends me to despair for my very human race, despair of finding any standpoint around which to rally a genuine struggle for the right; for if ever in all time, men had opportunity to do gloriously and beneficently right, right to one, right to all; these Kansas Topeka men had that opportunity; they were the chosen, the elect, the leaders of the forlorn hope, out of all the land; yet with liberty, and

Humanity on their lips, they offered burnt offerings to the Dagons of Slavery and caste; and all the people,—Republicans &c., &c., cry AMEN.

I say we are alone, but not in a strange land; when we sufficiently recognize our isolation, we will being to work, ourselves. Do you understand that? No man can do our work, any more than any other man can do my breathing. We have work to do, and HERE: and we must do it.

May I interpret our apathy therefore, into despair, that any other will do our work? The graven images that we have worshipped, the Websters, the Adamses, the Chases, the Sewards, the Garrisons, and that last who was twined into our very heart-strings, and whom I need not name, have crumbled away before us, while the very slave power which has slain them, and which we must slay or perish, has grown stronger and more exacting.

But while we despair that others will do this work, will overthrow this slave power, how do we feel about our own will and ability to cope and overcome it?

The reforms which have swept over this land, have been, after all their noise and fury, mere acts of intellection; there has been no heart blood in them, they were brain work all; and intellect does nothing, intellect can do nothing is a thinker not an actor, and herein lies the secret—why all these reforms ended in—talk. They lacked heart and will.

Now then have we the heart and will to compass the great Anti-Slavery reform? Have we heart and will to force the American people to a distinct, positive, and full recognition of the brotherhood of the black man? The great stumbling block in our way is this: in our despair of the possibility of the white man doing this reform, we also despair of the possibility of its being doing at all, we are educated to believe them capable of doing all things which can be done and when they fail—there is an impossibility.

This stupid fallacy misleads the best among us. I fear it holds some sway in your mind. I say "stupid fallacy," because it is about as reasonable as for me to stop breathing because Governor King cannot or will not inflate my lungs. For, every breath we draw, every thought we think, every act we do, tells decidedly on the great reform which the Almighty placed us in this land to work out.

The slaves, whom we set down as 'suffering an dumb,' are yet vocal and efficient in their activities in the right direction: have you noticed how frequently, of late, southern orators in Congress,

are taunted with their "African style of oratory?" A style stamped upon them by the negro. Have you noticed also the inevitable deduction from Senator Hammond's speech, that the black laborers of the south are equally entitled with the white laborers at the north to participate in affairs? "Gleams of the coldest comfort" say you. They are surely better than the re-enactments of the Black laws, and the legalizing of kidnapping in Ohio; better than the indignant denial by a party paper in that state, that Republican Governor Chase had ever sanctioned negro suffrage. My best fact comes last: an overseer tried for the murder of a slave, the other day (see Tribune of April 6th.) put in a please, that the slave had resisted punishment.—Judge Yonger decided "that if the slave while punished, should be put in peril of his life, he had the right to defend himself:" and in this decision the overseer was convicted and sentenced to seven years imprisonment. Compare this with the decisions of our New York judges and juries, when white men kill white men in pastime!

Now then, if the slaves are making their mark in Congress, and on the bench, what are we free blacks doing? What can we do? What can't we do?

* * * * * *

There was an interesting law suit last week in Brooklyn. Lewis H. Putnam against Anson G. Phelps, for libel; damages laid at $10,000. Now, I regard it as "some," in a black man, to estimate his character at $10,000. Verdict for defendant; Judge, white; jury, white; defendant, white, what chance had Putnam? He did a good deal for the cause, he was admitted to be the shrewdest man in the court room even by white men. John Van Buren, (who once dance with Princess Victoria), the great renegade free-soiler, was "of counsel" opposed to Putnam; while the latter was on the witness stand, undergoing a cross-examination by John Van Burne, the following occurred:

VAN BUREN.—Mr. Putnam, what was your occupation before you took up the Liberia Emigration scheme?

PUTNAM.—I was engaged in painting, paper hanging &c.

VAN BUREN.—And so forth! Come, sir, what does that mean?

PUTNAM.—I kept a Hall. "Putnam's Hall."

VAN BUREN, (sarcastically,) Ah! yes, Putnam's Hall, and pray, sir what were the goings on in Putnam's Hall?

PUTNAM (very cool, and very polite.) It was a place sir, in which "our people" held Public Meetings, it was the place sir, in which was held

the first free-soil meeting, from which originated the Free-Soil party of these United States, of which you may possibly have heard.

Judge, jury, lawyers, and the throng in the court, burst into one long uproarious shout of laughter, except Prince John, who turned red as a turkey cock, and limped off to the window for a breath of fresh air.

How deep this arrow struck, was shown by the fact that, at the end of the trial, Prince John essayed to have Putnam for perjury.

Yours,

COMMUNIPAW.

New York, 1858.