Viewing page 10 of 16

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

346      DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.       October, 1860.
[[dividing line across page]]

[[newspaper format, with three columns and vertical lines between]

[[column 1]]

election in our favor, and making us freemen. We can do much by your organizing and co-operation. Every colored man may cast a vote in the coming election by proxy, for surely we have friends who vote, and who will cast a vote for us. Organize, then, yourselves into clubs, and put yourselves into communication with us through our Secretaries and God will give us the victory.

The following resolutions were adopted at the meeting held Aug. 23d:

Resolved, That the New York County Suffrage Committee appoint the Rev. H. A. Thompson as their Collecting Agent, to solicit and receive funds in weekly subscriptions or single donations, to aid the cause of suffrage extension.

Resolved, That the Rev. H. A. Thompson shall keep a book containing a copy of these resolutions, in which shall be entered all money received by him, and that he shall make weekly reports to this committee.

In behalf of the New York City Suffrage Committee,

JAMES MCCUNE SMITH, Cha'n.
James P. Miller, }
John J. Zuille,  } Secretaries.

[[short line]]

[From the New York Tribune.]

A distant correspondent writes to learn what is the fact as to blacks voting in this State. We answer – If a Negro owns $250 worth of real estate, free and clear of incumbrance, he can vote the same as a white man; if not, he has no right of suffrage 'that white men are bound to respect.'

We regard this discrimination as simply atrocious. If a Property Qualification is right, it ought to be imposed upon all alike, not merely on those who have the least property and the worse chance to obtain it; if a negro has no soul, and no political [[italics]]status[[/italics]] but that of a thing, his owning a pile of dirt cannot rightfully give him any. In any light, the present rule is wrong and indefensible.

We shall have a chance this Fall to vote down this anomaly, and we ought to do it – Let us abolish the Property Qualification, and give the poor blacks an equal chance at the polls with their richer brethren. They are but a handfull anyhow, and cannot do much harm if they try. We shall have a Constitutional Convention in 1866 if not sooner, and then decide whether black men shall vote at all for not according to the light meantime vouchsafed us. Let us kick the Property Qualification overboard anyhow; and now is the time.

[[short dividing line]]

[From the Yates Co. Chronicle.]

It will be seen by the Election Notice which we publish this week, that at the next election the question is to be submitted whether the Property Qualification shall be abolished. It is not as some suppose, a question whether colored men shall vote. They are permitted to vote now. But they are hampered with a Property Qualification, which it is thought unjust and anti-democratic to impose upon white men. This restriction is unworthy of the State of New York, and unworthy of any people who profess to have faith in a republican system of government. The idea that property is to be the criterion of suffrage, was long since discarded so far as white men are concerned. The logic of the case, then, is clear, then it must be equally absurd in its application to black men. – If they may vote at all, (and it was long ago decided that they should,) let them vote on their manhood and not on their dollars and cents.

In 1846 the writer of this article was one of 85,000 electors in this State who voted to give colored men free suffrage equal with white men. If we live to vote at the next election, we shall repeat that vote. And we doubt not the 85,000 of fourteen years ago will be more than doubled, and we hope more than trebled. Those years should have brought us enough of moral and political progress, enough amelioration of the wicked prejudice against the colored race to do away with that unreasonable restriction upon their rights.

[[/column 1]]
[[column 2]]

DISTRIBUTION OF THE JOHN BROWN FUND.

[[short line]]

[[italic]]To the friends of John Brown:[[/italic]]

FRIENDS: – I should have made an earlier distribution of your generous contributions but for an incarceration of thirteen and a half weeks in Washington jail. On being released from prison however, and learning that all the members of the John Brown family would be present at North Elba on the 4th of the present month, I went there. Having upon the ground informed myself of the condition of each branch of the family, I proceeded to Boston before making a distribution, in order to act in concert with those there will also had a fund derived from the sale of Mr. Redpath's Life of Capt. John Brown, and from contributions paid to Wendell Phillips, and other friends, including my photograph fund of $2,600. The total amount thus far raised for the family in this country is only $6,150. The Haytian fund will probably be very much less than this. I hope, therefore, that the sympathizing gentlemen through the country who are mailing to the widow of Captain Brown leather photographs of their interesting faces, with 'offers' to borrow sums of a thousand and downward, will cease tormenting their imaginations with inflammatory pictures of bags of gold! [[italics]]The widow has no money to loan![[/italics]] Let this suffice. The $6,150 has been divided as follows:

[[two-column table]]
To the widow of Capt. Brown and her three children | $2,250
To John Brown, Jr. | 1,000
To Isabella, widow of Watson Brown | 800
To Mary Ann, widow of Wm. Thompson | 500
To Owen Brown | 400
To Jason Brown | 300
To Salmon Brown | 200
To Ruth, eldest daughter of Capt. Brown, and wife of Henry Thompson | 200
To certain of the other sufferers, colored | 350
To Barclay Coppoc, one of the escaped | 50
Amount held by Boston Committee for contingent expenses | 100
| [[sum line]]
Total | $6,150
[[/two-column table]]

My friend, Judge Arny of Kansas, accompanied me to North Elba, and, after getting a knowledge of the condition of the different members of the family, he proceeded to New York, and drew the gold, while I went to Boston, where we again met, and returned to North Elba, distributing the gold as follows:

[[two column table]]
To John Brown, Jr. | $900
To Mary, widow of Wm. Thompson | 300
To Owen Brown | 300
To Jason Brown | 300
To Mrs. Mary Ann, widow of Capt. Brown | 200
To Salmon Brown | 200
To Ruth Thompson | 200
To Isabell, widow of Watson Brown | 100
To two of the escaped |
| [[sum line]]
Total | $2,600
[[/two-column table]]

The sum of $1,450 had been previously received by the widow of Capt. Brown and other members of the family. The balance remains in the hands of the Boston Committee, subject to the call of those to whom it belongs. I submit the following letter, signed by Capt. Brown's widow and children:

North Elba, New York, July 14, 1860.

THADDEUS HYATT, Esq.: DEAR SIR: – The great kindness you have manifested toward us as a family, in your efforts to obtain for us the means for our pecuniary relief, which you yesterday distributed so judiciously to the various members of our family, has placed us under new obligations.

We feel confident that the amount ($2,600) could not have been more equitably distributed than it has been by you. The generous and self-sacrificing manner in which you have performed the work of kindness you undertook on our behalf, calls for our warmest thanks. Be assured that we will ever hold in grateful remembrance your affectionate regards for us.

In conclusion we would say that the grateful feelings of our hearts cannot be expressed in words, for the noble stand which you took in defense of civil liberty and the constitutional rights of every citizen against the usurpations of power attempted to be exercised by the U. S. Senate, and for the many sacrifices that you made for the cause of universal Freedom and suffering humanity.

May your life long be spared to gladden, by

[[/column 2]]
[[column 3]]

your active sympathy, other hearts, as you have ours, is the prayer of your grateful friends,

Mary A. Brown,
John Brown, Jr.,
Jason Brown,
Owen Brown,
Ruth B. Thompson,
Salmon Brown,
Isabell Brown,
Mary Thompson.

Friends, I am fully recompensed for my labor in this matter.  It is something to have 'looked into the eyes of John Brown!'  It is something to have 'looked into the eyes' of his noble family - illustrious survivors of an illustrious sire!  Charlestown has not put out the hero; his fires still live and burn in his descendants, burn in the seething blood of the third generation.

'I'll stab him!'  I was startled at these words as they fell from the lips of a robust little boy, John Brown's grandson, child of John Brown, Jr.  The child was playing on the green sward before the cabin on the mountain.  It was a bright morning after my arrival among the Adirondacks.  Not dreaming of what was passing in the mind of the young prattler, I carelessly observed, 'Oh! no, my little boy; you wouldn't stab any one would you?'  With a solid and defiant air, that bespoke his inherited blood, and with no wavering of purpose in his mien, he replied: 'Yes, I would stab them if they hurt my grandfather!'  Behold, oh! Virginia!  The blood of the martyr is already bearing its fruit!  In the future of the third generation see God the Avenger!

Eight hundred persons assembled around the grave of John Brown on Independence Day; and, standing upon the great rock that marks his grave, the prophets of a fiery dispensation re-affirmed his principles!  Charlestown throttles in vain!  God and the Adirondacks still stand.  John Brown has passed from earth into the everlasting heavens, but the mantle of Elijah remains.  And what though the heart of the prophet lies stilled amid the shadows of these mountains, and cold and pulseless forever!  A myriad still survive him; still left, still loving; warm and throbbing; his heart beats perpetuating; taught by his example that life's great end is life; taught by his example that he only lives to self who truly dies; taught by his example how even a felon's fat and a felon's scaffold may become irradiate with light sepernal by the baptism of a life celestial, immortal, and divine!

THADDEUS HYATT.
North Elba, July 16, 1986.

[[medium line]]

THE COLORED MAN'S CATECHISM. - The Synod of Mississippi has published 'a catechism for the religious instruction of the colored people,' in which the following questions and answers occur:

Q. - Are not the servants bound to obey their masters?
A. - Yes - the Bible exhorts servants to be obedient to your masters, and to please them in all things.
Q. - If a master be unreasonable, may the slave disobey?
A. - No - the Bible says, 'Servants be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.'
Q. - What does the Bible say to servants on the subject?
A. - They are to obey, not with eye service as men pleasers, but as the servants of Christ.
Q. - If servants suffer unjustly, what are they to do?'
A. - They must bear it patiently.
Q. - Ought servants to rebel against the authority of their masters?
A. - No - it is a sin against God and man.
Q. - How do we know this?
A. - The Bible tells us that the Apostle Paul found a servant who had run away from his master, and sent him home.
Q. - Why did not Paul conceal him that he might be free?
A. - Because he would not make religion a cloak for injustice!

That will do!  This is certainly the pursuit of religion under difficulties.

[[medium line]]

- Under the caption of 'Great Destruction of Property,' the New Orleans Bee announces the accidental drowning of a slave boy, nineteen years of age, while attempting to escape from his master, who was taking him to the police jail for the purpose of having him punished for bad conduct.

[[/column 3]]