John Thomas to Frederick Douglass, July 20, 1855

JOHN THOMAS'S LETTER. FRIEND DOUGLASS:—I have retired from the world so long I must give notice of my whereabouts. Just say to your readers they may address me at Syracuse, care of Hon. LYMAN STEVENS.

And now I have pen in hand, allow me to say a thing or two. It is so long since I have written for a paper, I am uneasy to speak. I am out of employment, and idleness is beginning to be oppressive in sight of the coming campaign. I want a place where I can startle the people by the plots of enemies for the defeat of temperance and freedom. Mark me— slavery don't intend to make a direct issue with freedom in New York. It counts upon the repeal of the Maine Law, as the means of scattering its opponents and accomplishing its ends. New York slaveocrats, be they Whigs or Democrats (names retained only by party hacks who will do anything for office,) adopt such repeal as the grand stroke of policy. The state of parties was indicated by the results of the

of parties was indicated by the results of the last election. The result of the coming one will be yet more decisive of their ruin. If the enemies of the Maine Law are elected, the enemies of freedom will also be elected. No man should be countenanced who is not right on both these questions. That is the only safe position, and no man should be trusted who does not represent a fashion of parties to that end.

The Maine Law has closed up the rum trade in Syracuse. A rumseller stands no more chance here than a man-thief. Hon. LYMAN STEVENS, the Mayor, is determined the law shall be carried out, if his fortune sinks with the rumshops, and there are resolute men enough here to sustain him. You may well believe there is much good blood where a Jerry was rescued by breaking the bones of a Rochester Marshal. One man was found giving liquor away at his bar, and was immediately nabbed by our vigilant police. And who do you think stepped forward to defend him? Why, none other than our old acquaintances of Jerry rescue memory, James R. Lawrence, Senr., and James R. Lawrence, Jr. Rum and slavery have the same defenders, you see. The trial is now going on. They got out a habeas corpus for the rumseller from Judge Walworth, but Walworth sent the case back to the Justice.— The Lawrences seem to think a habeas corpus is for rum, and not for freedom; but it will be hard work to bring Syracuse to that belief.

Did you know a Tennesseean has written to his merchant friend here to warn J. W. LOGUEN that the estate of his late master was about to

reclaim him and take him back to Tennessee?—So it is. Such things don't disturb Loguen.—He has had a trial of them and is prepared for them. Nevertheless, he thought to feel the pulse of Syracusians in that regard, and requested them to give him a hearing at the Congregational Church last Wednesday evening— and my conscience, what a turn out! and what a pulse beat there! It was the pulse of a people electrified by the infernal contingency which would grapple the giant limbs of the bravest black man in America. The occasion showed that he is buckled to the bosom of Syracuse with clasps stronger than steel. All the bayonets of Tennessee, backed with the power of the President, cannot loosen those clasps. For an hour his audience listened and wept—not only when the blood rushed to the heart in sympathy, with mother, brothers and sisters brutally sundered, though told in demonstration of nature's simplest and holiest love— not then only; but when that blood came back, burning through his veins, changing the subdued and weeping slave into a defiant hero— then, when his large frame was erect and swollen with holy hatred of his wrongs, and our muscle was strung to meet the enemy—then, when words of contempt and defiance of all slavedom came burning from his lips—when he spurned and denounced the thought of purchasing his freedom as an insult to nature and to God—then, when, head and shoulders, above all black men not only, but above all white men in the land, he braved the laws and people that would replunge him into slavery—then tears

of delight flowed at the effulgence of great qualities which shone through him as light comes out from the sun. There is a magnetism in genuine manhood, infinitely superior to the force of words. It is God, in his own place and person, honoring his own image, and demonstrating its sublimity and power. That is the spirit for these times. That is the magnet which is to bring together and organize the remains of holiness in the land, to save the slave and to save us all. Loguen is the only slave in America who stands upon his manhood, turns upon his pursuers, and scorns emancipation from the hand of man. There is the secret of his power. O that all fugitives would do likewise. The greatest curse of this country is cowardice.

JOHN THOMAS.