Eli Nichols to Frederick Douglass, December 23, 1856

For Frederick Douglass' Paper.

LETTER FROM ELI NICHOLS.

WOLFPEN SPRINGS O., Dec. 23 1856.

FREDERICK DOUGLAS, Esq. DEAR SIR—

I propose to speak to you earnestly, as I once did. Will you hear? Don't argue; you are incomparably the best orator. I have no desire to measure with you in rhetoric of forensic debate. It is because of your great superiority, I would convert you. High argumentative powers often enables men to amuse themselves with fooleries, many of which may be found in the discussions of learned and able divines. First, then, the Gerrit Smith creed is impossible. The great gulph of Negro hatred is impassable in the direction. Of all the devils known to the great masses of American white men, North and South, free Negroes are the most terrible. A live, free buck nigger! Oh terrible! Of all devils, horned or not horned, this is he most dreadful, in the common catechism of over three, out of five of the free white American people. Of the remaining two-fifths, over half love to have it so. They pray night and morning, and practice all day to keep it so. To overthrow the religion of the country is no light thing. That men honestly believe, they honestly believe. If that honest belief had some truth to support it, it is still more difficult to overthrow. The common people say: "A nigger is a nigger any how. God made them niggers. "God is all wise, and we don't want them here among us. If God made them to be any where, it's not here. It's in Africa or some such place—I'll give half I'm worth to send them away, but I don`t want them among us nohow." Now, part of this is true; and tho true gives powerful support to the false. Indeed, is is a question about which philosophers may doubt. Is there a natural repugnance between the races? Does it require lust in the unprincipled, and religion and virtue in the good to overcome it? Would a colored gentleman prefer a colored gentleman for his associate and bosom friend? If the colored people were perfectly free, and the whites equally so, would each incline to collect in masses of their own color? If they would so incline, how would this natural movement take place? I incline to the affirmative of these propositions, and I am disposed to believe the colored people would go southward, and the white people would come northward. If this is true, any movement, in conformity to nature, could do no harm.

But secondly. You were for Fremont. So was I. It is the best effort yet made. Still it has little soul in it. It proposes to leave sla-

very just where it is. This is impossible, and the sharp intuition of the people felt it so, and defeated Fremont. Said the people, "If slavery is penned up, slavery will starve of necessity, and the negro devils will be turned loose among us." Many an honest old lady, nearly or quite speeched, and she thought of the buckNegroes insulting her, when Jimmy would be away, should Fremont succeed. This might have been silly, but it is not half so foolish as the philosophy of the sages, who propose to have slavery and liberty in the same government. There men have read history in vain. They are too wise to consult the seldom erring instincts of human nature, which made the masses see: "If slavery is penned up the niggers will be free."

Smithism cannot go! Fremontism cannot go! Let us turn back and look at Lundyism! Lundy sleeps quietly under the prairie sod of the West. But his principles! may they not live? I confess after over 40 years active experience In examining Anti-Slavery theories, I turn to it, as the most hopeful and truthful, yet elaborated in the teeming crucible, whether of expediency or philanthropy.

1st. Is it just that colored people should be encouraged to settle by themselves? Or with others only, as would voluntarily choose the same residence? I have already intimated my opinion; it would be most natural, that colored people and white people would each enjoy association with their own race, more than a mixed community. My observation says this is true. God is wise in all his works. Different races were either made in the beginning, or by force of climate. In either case, God is the author of them. In either case they are happily adopted to the climates where they are found. Any bringing of them into a different climate is a distubrance of the natural law. Nature in time might afford a remedy. Still in the interim, suffering the pain might be expected. So in the case of the colored man. The warm latitudes of the United States agree with him well, slavery excepted. The fallout liberty in Massachusetts does not make—rather does not enable him to prosper. The same is true, I believe, in Canada. In Cincinnati, Columbus, and other genial latitudes, the colored man does better.— White men in the warmer latitudes of our Union are said to be feeble, subject to disease and unable to work.

2d. African Colonisation is out of the question. Yet Liberia is said to be doing well.—This proves colored men can flourish as distinct communities. When then should not colored men ask a place, out of our ample territories,

acquired, of that can readily be acquired?

3d. The colored people of the free States are in a much better position for such a movement now, than in Lundy's day. Many are educated. Numbers are good mechanics and skillful farmers, physicians, attorneys, editors, merchants, capitalists, &c. Seldom have a people been in a better condition to form a colony.

4th. If our new settlements were not, as they are, standing evidences of the probable, prosperity of such a colony, still the success of the Mormons at Utah, with their filthy principles, would prove it.

5th. Nothing the colored people could ask would be so likely to be granted. The colonizationists have contributed mightily to make such a movement popular. They have prepared the way. The slaveholders, knowing African colonization of the whole race impossible, favored the feeling, in order to get rid of the free negroes. Negro haters would all go for it. Slaveholders have kindled a fire which would burn themselves up. Plant a prosperous colony of colored people, south of slavedom, and nothing can prevent the consequent abolition of slavery. The poor old ladies of the free States would loose their terror of buck niggers. The girls would loose their agonizing dread, that: "A young lady could not walk out safely." The poor men of the South would say: "Send away your niggers, and open the land to us." None but the masters could strive against it, and they have prepared the way for it.

6th. No act of Congress would be necessary, except to grant a territory in which free colored people could settle, on the same terms on which whites are allowed to settle other territories. This should be with the freedom of the public lands, and could be so prayed for.

Such is my plan. I confess it looks to me not impossible, and indeed improbable, that with our present measures, the slave trade will be re-opened, and Slavery spread all over this continent and the adjacent islands. Negro hatred is the fulcrum on which the slaveholder places the lever, that gives him success.—Nor is it certain, this hatred is diminishing.—The fact, that the great and sagacious Democratic party has just successfully risqued its fortune on it, is not a hopeful view of the case.—This party with its love of office and unscrupulous zeal, will not fail, by its able orators and powerful journals, to do all it can to keep Negro hatred burning brightly. The fact that the wise men, who founded the Republican party dared not lisp a syllable of sympathy for the

slave, nor even for the colored man, is powerful evidence of their sense of the depth and impregnability of this negro hatred. The fact that thousands of men who have labored in the cause many-long years, are less in heart now than when they began, speaks discouragingly.—Something new is demanded. Now is the time for the colored people to strike for themselves. Let them besiege Congress with petitions.—Ask nothing for the slave. Let time and the States take care of them. Seek a good country. Let at least one free State lie between Slavedom and your Eden. Besiege Congress on the score of justice. Ask a pittance of their munificent abundance. Let all the nigger haters fall in with their petitions to get rid of you, and you will suceed.

This is what I would call revamping Lundyism. It is Lundyism at a day and time more suitable for it. But there would be objections. Slaveholders and their allies, would howl dolefully: "These d——d niggers will ask a delegate in Congress, and then to be a State represented in the Senate and House! This will never do.—These semi-beasts will want to sit in the same halls with white men! Never! Never!"—Well, can you not make them a Negro pew?—"No! No! They will want to speak and vote[.] Well, let them be an independent sovereignty under the friendly protection of the United States. "Never! Never! It would be rearing up a dangerous enemy by our side." But it is only the free Negroes, and they are but a few thousands. "Nonsense! You intended to have them all free. There are more of them than there were people in the United States at the revolution. If allowed to form States, they would have 40 black representatives in Congress, and six or eight Senators. If they were allowed to form an independent nation, what a hold it would give a foreign power as England or France in war."

Such would be the opposition. Still I believe you could succeed. Now what is your opposition, the opposition of the colored people? "We are Americans born. We will not leave our country nor desert the slave." It would make you Americans in fact and finally redeem the slave, and save the whole continent from the grasp of the slaveholder. "But we are men, and we will not acknowledge inferiority." No inferiority is claimed. It is a chance of showing your equality, or if you please, superiority. It would enable you to put yourselves

in the position God and nature have qualified you for. Socially, morally, politically, whatever you have a right to be whatever you are qualified for, the open field for honest endeavor would lie before you.

If you know any colored people who are looking in this direction, please send me the names and address of two or three of the most intelligent and worthy of them. If you should publish this letter or any part of it, and comment in it, please send me a copy.

With a high sense of respect and regard, I am truly yours

ELI NICHOLS.