Communipaw [James McCune Smith] to Frederick Douglass, February 16, 1856

For Frederick Douglass' Papers.

HOROSCOPE.

Mr. EDITOR:—Frozen up here in the flats, we Jersey people have time to read the long pieces in the papers, arrange conflicting influences, and cast the nativities of the coming hours. Whatever differences in opinion may exist in other points, all must agree that the Republic has passed through one phase of its political life, and that the calculations which availed in 1852 will not "figure up" for 1856. In electing Polk and Pierce, the Democrats proved the superiority of organization over a name no matter how much that name may have deserved at the hands of the people. But recent events in the House of Representatives indicate that the organization in which the Democrats relied in by-gone days, may be relied on no longer.

The recent contest for Speaker was, in reality, a contest for the Presidency; that is to say, the old line Democrats, under their various masks, were trying the length, the breadth, and the back-bone of the new Republic party, so as to find out the trick of tripping it in the coming autumn. There also were the old line Whigs, with a little charcoal smeared over their faces, cautiously feeling whether the ice was strong enough to bear Billy Seward this time.

Seward has made up his mind to two things—to run soon, and to runs ure; he knows that in this, as in some other matters, it is not safe to trust to age; and he also knows, that once beaten, the game is up forever. He also knows that happen what may to others, his election will fall upon the House of Representatives.—In view of these facts, the recent contest for the Speakership was one of the highest importance. If the House did elect Banks, it can elect Seward. The ice, therefore, will bear him; he will run, and will probably win: convenient resignations, and other processes not unknown in politics, will swell his majority to the needed point in the ensuring session of the House.

These views are confirmed when we notice the extraordinary influences brought to bear upon the context for the Speakership. What carried Thurlow Weed, Watson Webb, and Horace Greeley to Washington? All who know Webb's antecedents, know that hatred to Slavery Propagandism, in any form, would find in him an advocate, rather than an opponent. The man who stirred up the pro-slavery mobs of 1834, and who has since shewn no fruits meet for repentance, would not travel down South to defend Freedom in Kansas; and his eagle-eyed confreres could not be gathered so far from home, unless over the carcase of some high game.

Seward and Greeley, however, were and are powers which command the House; the latter, with the characteristic want of reticence, which always makes him a Mrs. Malaprop in politics, clearly betrays his hand; in his Editorial Correspondence of Feb. 13th, he says, "I might have held on a day longer; but I would not have adjourned to-day without," &c., &c. Yes—"I," "Horace Greeley," "the House," "would not have adjourned." In saying this, Mr. Greeley says no more than the truth: he who was a very small bona fide member of the House—so small that he can never forgive Gerrit Smith for the space he filled in the same place—becomes an actual working majority when he is only a lobby member. That long wiry lash of his, reaching from Washington to New York, and snapping back with worse than scorpion stings, make him the most formidable "whipper in" that ever worred the members of any House.

Assuming, therefore, that the Government will, next fourth of March, pass into the hands of Seward and Greeley, let us ask how much Emancipation will gain from them; or rather, how much will the great cause of Human Freedom be forwarded by their administration. In human progress, in social, as well as religious life, there is a one thing needful, without which, there is, there can be, no real advancement. No matter how well endowed in all other things, if this be awaiting, their gifts are vain. And in the great question that now lies staked on the doings of the next few years—which is HUMAN BROTHERHOOD—the one thing needful, is that all who struggle therefore, shall be seized and possessed, in the inmost fibers of their being with a full and cordial belief that all men are by nature free and equal.

Tried by any other standard, the country never produced two men who so thoroughly and worthily commanded its confidence, as do Seward, the planner, and Greeley, the worker. The former has ever had the wit or wisdom to keep just so far in advance of public opinion, as to appear to lead the way in genial reforms; the latter commands the intense sympathy of the active minded, because he is emphatically a worker, and like the Alp in the siege of Corinth, his bare arm, with its white glistening corded muscles,

"Swifter to smite and never to spare— Unclothed to the shoulder it waves them on. * * * * * * There is not a banner in Moslem war Will lure the Delhis half so far It glances like a fallen star!"

And more especially on the even of an election, whether State or National, this "boat-steerer" of the Whig party, shrieks out like Stubb in Moby Dick, "Start her, start her, my men! Don't hurry yourselves; take plenty of time—but start her; start her like thunder claps, that's all"—"start her, now; give 'em the long strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy—start her, all: but keep cool, keep cool—cucumbers is the word—easy, easy—only start her like grim death and grinning devils, and raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves, boys—that's all. Start her!"

In view of their ability to act, and their power to command the confidence of the nation, in whatever beneficial reform they might undertake, we must award to Seward and Greeley the possession of both; but tried by the higher standard we have named, how stand they?—Mr. Greeley has avowed, in coarse terms, his belief in the inferiority of the negro to the white man, and his distrust at the idea of social commingling with his black brother. Mr. Seward in courtlier phrase, (for he never offends a vote,) said about the same thing in his defence of freeman, and in his speech on the admission of California. Neither Seward, nor Greeley, therefore, tried by the only just standard, are morally fitted to advance the cause of Human Freedom, which is the case before us in the cause of Human Brotherhood: whatever hopes, therefore, may, in spite of our better judgement, gather round the movements of these great leaders—such hopes are doomed to be blasted: they can no more carry this people through the great act of Emancipation, than can an unsanctified heart enter, and carry others into the Kingdom of Heaven.

The end, therefore, is not yet; the Jubilee is still afar off; the signs are not in the heavens which herald its coming. Viewed in the same light,

THE KANSAS QUESTION

is misunderstood by some of the true-hearted friends of freedom. Human Freedom, that is Human Brotherhood, is not perilled in Kansas: the question has not even been raised: the fight there is about freedom of opinion, not of person: it is behind this age, altogether: the quarrel is between the friends of slavery, about the degrees of slavery, not between slavery as such, and freedom as such, that is human brotherhood, as such; admit Kansas with the free State constitution, and you admit a State and constitution which affirms that the negro is not a man, nor a citizen of the United States: you grant a triumph to slavery greater than when, half a century ago, Louisiana admitted with her slavery and slave code—for that code admitted that a free negro was a FREE MAN!—Can I, therefore, as a black man, give my sympathy to the so-called free State men in Kansas, who have by their organic act, basely denied my manhood!

I know that there are some true and tried friends of freedom in Kansas: so there may be true and tried men in the American Colonization Society; but are we, therefore, to support the unprincipled masses which they have failed to leaven? Let not, therefore, the Republican movement, black tho' it be called, nor the Kansas turmoil, free tho' it be christened, deceive our eyes nor set our hearts beating in the wrong direction. A couple of wary and experienced politicians, have set the traps and arranged the wires and already county upon the wild rush of the people to their support; the same, or kindred hands, arranged the cries of Clay and Texas, Van Buren and Free Soil, that will soon hang out on the outer wall, Seward and Kansas: but freedom has no more to do with the first than the last: the last than the first:

True hearts! ye who desire freedom, turn not aside from the real issues which call for all our labor with all our might; these are a Constitution broad as humanity to stir our intellects and sweet Human Brotherhood crucified in the black man to kindle our hearts; whatever embraces not these embraces not freedom, and is unworthy of our sympathy or support,—Whatever we win in the name of these, we win surely and permanently. Is it not time, now, that the people and the land are covered with false issues? is it not time that we hold up the true ones? Regarded in true historic light, each Presidential election is but a record of how many people think that thing.—Shall we not put upon the record at the ensuing election, how many of the people think the Constitution of the United States established freedom for all human beings in the United States, and that the NEGRO also IS A MAN AND A BROTHER?

COMMUNIPAW.

New York City, feb. 16th and 23d, '56