George Weir, Jr. to Frederick Douglass, November 26, 1858

WILLIAM J. WATKINS AND WILLIAM H. DAY, IN BUFFALO.

MR. EDITOR: SIR:—you will perceive by the above caption that our city had been honored by a visit from two of our distinguished apostles of reform, Mr. Watkins and Mr. Day, men of whom the people of our State and nation may well be proud, men whose gigantic powers of intellect loom far up in the horizon, and who stand forth as living, moving, breathing monuments, upon which is written in letters of living light, as it were by the finger of God himself, a direct and glaring confutation of the oft-repeated, but, thank God! nearly exploded doctrine of black men's inferiority—a doctrine which, for meanness and audaciousness, has no parallel upon record, and serves only to show the great depth of depravity to which the human heart can descend, while allowing their baser and more degrading passions to assume the place of those finer qualities, with which the God of nature has endowed them. This doctrine of inferiority is not only mean and contemptible, but it also cowardly, from the fact that it seeks underminingly, by this foul and loathsome charge to nip as it were in the bud, or cripple in its incipient state, every effort and energy that might tend in its more full development, to counteract and falsify to base a charge, fearful that should the least encouragement be given, or rather that unless a steady and perserving opposition is waged against it. Truth, which is mightier than error, will prevail, and the doctrines of the Gospel, as well as the Constitution of our common country which guarantees to every man his inalienable and God-given rights, shall be made to flash forth with magic power from the lips of black men, and by their force of eloquence and power of reasoning, convince the world of the absurdity of their position. But, as has been already intimated, notwithstanding the unmanly and vigorious exertions on the part of our defamers, the doctrine has become well nigh exploded; and well might such be the case, when we remember the influence brought to bear against it. Though in former days, giant-like, it towered aloft, rearing its polluted head far above the thoughtless crowd, stalking abroad through our land desecrating our pulpits and breathing its pestilential breath throughout the halls of Legislation, thereby imparting the dread malady to the nation at large; nevertheless, as for all ills, so for this has a remedy been found, under the scorching, withering rebuke of a Douglass, a Garnet, a Watkins, a Day, a Martin, and such like, immortal minds has this demon been made to bow. His deformed head has been mutilated; the death blow has been struck, and by untir-

ing perseverance, we shall yet behold his dead carcass, buried beyond the power of even the last resurrection.

Mr. Watkins spoke in the East Presbyterian Church, (which is under the pastoral charge of the Rev. E. J. Adams,) on Sunday evening last. The weather, though inauspicious, afforded but little barrier against the assembling of a large audience. At the appointed hour, the house was comfortably filled, and each one seemed eager to catch the living truths as the poured in fresh torrents of burning eloquence from the lips of the orator. Mr. Watkins was certainly in one of his happiest moods. The principal theme of his discussion was "The Duties and Responsibilities devolving up on colored men at the present crisis." He dealt hard and heavy blows upon the hydraheaded monster, American slavery, pursuing him from the cotton fields of Georgia through all his course to the sanctum sanctorum of his habitation, the American church, whose tall spires tower aloft seemingly in their wickedness and mockery to invoke upon their polluted altars the ire of God's eternal wrath. He called upon colored men everywhere to arouse to the true state of their condition, to shake off the garments of apathy and despair, to gird about them the armor of Hope, and pushing onward, know no motto but that of perseverance and continued effort, relying upon the omnipotent arm of Jehovah, until complete and triumphant victory shall dawn in all its meridian splendor upon their pathway, and the bird of liberty shall soar aloft flapping its glad wings in ecstacies of joy, while millions of God's image, now in chains, shall arise amid loud hosannahs, and echo and re-echo the glorious anthems of praise and adoration of the God of the universe.

He designated this as the field where the great battle of Liberty was to be fought—He denounced the Colonization scheme, together with all its associated train, "the Ex- ploring Expeditions by gentlemen of color," "Migration Conventions," "the African Civilization Society," and such like ill timed and wholly injudicious movements. He sifted each of these various schemes in a fine sieve, and found them but chaff, which with one breath might be entirely swept away, and as such unworthy of confidence, especially so when it is publicly known that they receive sanction, aid, and comfort from their great progenitor, the American Colonization Society, of which they are the legitimate offspring. Mr. Watkins concluded by a strong and urgent appeal to the audience to buckle on the armor of faith, and upon American soil mainly contend for their rights, until the auspicious morn shall burst upon our raptured vision, when the last clank of the last chain upon the limb of the bleeding captive shall be heard to sound no more forever.

On Monday evening, Mr. Wm. H. Day spoke to a large and intelligent audience in the Michigan Street Baptist (Rev. J. Sella Martin's) Church. The exercises were com-

menced by reading the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah, and un-impressive prayer by the pastor. Mr. Day was then introduced to the audience, and spoke for over an hour in such true Roman-like style, as would have done credit to any orator or statesman of our land. In his imagination, which was at once clear and comprehensive, he carried us back nearly two centuries and a half ago, when almost simultanously upon Plymouth Rock and the eastern shores of Virgini as landed two vessels, the one freighted with our pilgrim fathers, whose eyes uplifted to heaven invoked the aid of their Heavenly Father to vouchsafe to them his kind protection in the establishment of civil and relegious liberty; while the other, a black piratical craft, was freighted with the bodies and souls of the poor African, doomed to perpetual bondage.

Mr. Day, in his peculiar happy style, followed minutely the working of the system of slavery from that day to the present, showing almost conclusively that the demon monster was now writhing in the last agony of despair, and that ere long his polluted, sin-cursed carcass would be completely and entirely annihilated. England, France, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, and other countries, afforded abundant evidence of this. He showed distinctly that wherever the spirit of liberty had become uppermost in the hearts of the people and slavery and oppression strongly and unceasingly opposed, that there liberty invariably triumphed. But to endeavor to follow the learned gentleman through his discourse, would be a fruitless task for me. Suffice it to say, that for beauty and force it was all that could be desired. At the close of the lecture, Brother Martin followed in a few brief and eloquent remarks, and concluded by an appeal to the audience for pecuniary aid, in which he was altogether successful, Both gentlemen left on the same evening on the ten o'clock train for Cincinnati, whither they go to attend the Ohio State Convention, bearing with them the precious seed of liberty.

But I have already, I fear, continued this letter to too great a length.

Yours, for Freedom,

GEORGE WEIR, JR.

BUFFALO, Nov. 26th, 1858.