Not long after he returned home to the United States from Glasgow, James McCune Smith became an active member of the American Anti-Slavery Society. In one session of its annual meeting in May 1838, McCune Smith was appointed to a three-person committee to audit the treasurer’s report. McCune Smith would go on to serve as treasurer or auditor of treasurer’s reports for many other organizations – many of which he co-founded – throughout his lifetime.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Auditors’ Report

Co-author: A. F. Williams

Date: 2 May 1838

Source: Fifth Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society: With the... Speeches Delivered at the Anniversary Meeting on the 8th May 1838 (New York: William S. Dore [Printer], 1838), 44 (In Internet Archive)

Text:

AUDITORS’ REPORT

NEW-YORK, May 2, 1838.

We hereby certify that we have examined the Treasurer’s^[1] accounts and vouchers and found the same correct, and a balance due the Treasurer of Eleven Hundred and Sixty-nine dollars and Forty-eight cents.

A. F. WILLIAMS,

JAMES McCUNE SMITH,^[2] M. D.

Auditors.

^[1] John Rankin, Treasurer of the American Anti-Slavery Society, completed and signed his annual Treasurer’s Report on 1 May 1838. Rankin’s report, and presumably James McCune’s Smith’s and A.F. Williams’s brief appended auditors’ report, was read at the Society’s annual Anniversary meeting on 8 May. It was held after several days of meetings of the executive committee. See Fifth Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society: With the... Speeches Delivered at the Anniversary Meeting on the 8th May 1838 (William S. Dore [Printer], 1838), 13, 18, 43–44 (In Internet Archive). In addition to attending and participating in the multi-day annual meeting (sessions were held 2-8 May), McCune Smith was also a featured speaker at the American Anti-Slavery Society’s 1838 Anniversary meeting on 8 May; see ‘Speech of James McCune Smith at the Anniversary Meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 8 May 1838’ in The World of James McCune Smith.

^[2] McCune Smith would go on to serve as treasurer or auditor of treasurer’s reports for many other organizations – many of which he co-founded – throughout his lifetime, including Stewards’ and Cooks’ Marine Benevolent Society, the Society for the Promotion of Education Among Colored Children, the Committee of Thirteen, the American Abolition Society, and the vestry of his parish, St Philip’s. See David Thomas Valentine, Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York, for the Year 1849 (City of New York, 1849); James McCune Smith, ‘The Undersigned Respectfully...’, New-York Daily Tribune, 10 March 1851; ‘Annual Meeting of the American Abolition Society, At Syracuse, N.Y., Sept. 29 and 30, 1857’, Radical Abolitionist III, no. 3 (1857): 17–22; Guido Furman, ‘Obituary for James McCune Smith’, The Medical Register of the City of New York for the Year Commencing June 1, 1866, 1866, 203–4; Carleton Mabee, Black Education in New York State: From Colonial to Modern Times, First Edition (Syracuse University Press, 1979), 63–65; Rhoda Golden Freeman, The Free Negro in New York City in the Era Before the Civil War, Studies in African American History and Culture (Garland Publishers, 1994), 353–54; John H. Hewitt, Protest and Progress: New York’s First Black Episcopal Church Fights Racism (Garland Publishing, 2000), 127.

In the months following his return to his native New York City in late August 1837, James McCune Smith began establishing himself, in part, through delivering lectures and speeches. No part of the text of this series of lectures nor a summary of any of them appear to survive.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Lectures on the Organs of Sense [no longer extant]

Dates: 18 and 25 January and 1 and 8 February 1838

Source:

From ‘Lectures of the Philomathean Society - James McCune Smith, M.D...’, The Colored American, 13 January 1838, p. 3

Text:

LECTURES^[1] OF THE PHILOMATHEAN SOCIETY.^[2] ―James McCune^[3] Smith, will commence his Lectures on the Organs of Sense,^[4] with illustrative drawings,^[5] on Thursday evening next, 18th instant, at the Philomathean Hall, No, 161 Duane St.^[6]―Admittance twelve and a-half cents.

Dr. S.’s course will consist of 4 Lectures, to be delivered on Thursday evening of each week.^[7]

^[1] James McCune Smith’s lectures were part of a larger lecture series put on by the Philomathean Society. (See footnote below.) The others were three lectures on ‘Chemistry’ by Dr John Brown, four on ‘Oratorical Delivery’ by Ransom F. Wake, five on ‘Evidences of Christianity’ by Isaiah G. DeGrasse, four on ‘History’ by Philip A. Bell, four on ‘Geography’ by John Peterson, two on ‘Logic’ by S. V. Berry, and two on ‘Decision of Character’ by James Fields. The series cost $2.50 for the whole season or 12 ½ cents per lecture. See ‘Lectures of the Philomathean Society [For 26 December 1837]’, The Colored American, 23 December 1837.

^[2] The Philomathean Society was a literary and self-improvement society founded on 26 October 1830 by John Peterson, minister and educator; James Fields, who became a professional scholar after losing a leg to physician malpractice in his early teens; tinsmith and later educator Ransom F. Wake; shoemaker Robert Banks; Thomas Sydney (also spelled Sidney), and others. Most or all were alumni of the African Free School. Early members (and perhaps co-founders) also included McCune Smith’s close friend and later minister Isaiah DeGrasse, physician John Brown, hairdresser Robert Cromwell, budding newspaperman Philip Bell, Alexander Crummell (son of oysterman Boston Crummell and also, eventually, a minister) and McCune Smith himself, who was seventeen years old at its founding. The Society featured debates, lectures, orations, and essay contests, and its annual public events featured addresses and speeches by members and distinguished guests, recitations of inspiring texts, and readings of prize-winning essays. The winner of the essay contest got to wear the Society’s collar of distinction for the year. See Thomas Longworth, Longworth’s American Almanac, New-York Register, and City Directory (Thomas Longworth, 1830), 113, 211, 613; ‘Philomathean Society’, The Liberator, 10 December 1831; ‘Our Colored Brethren in the City of New-York...’, The Liberator, 4 June 1831; Gardner Jones, ‘Annual Exhibition of the New-York Philomathean Debating Society’, The Liberator, 4 August 1832; ‘Plutarch’, ‘New-York Philomathean Society’, The Emancipator, 21 October 1834; Alexander Crummell, ‘Eulogium on the Life and Character of Thomas Sipkins Sidney’, 4 July 1840, in Black Abolitionist Archive, University of Detroit Mercy; James McCune Smith, ‘From Our New York Correspondent [February 1855]’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 16 February 1855; Philip A. Bell, ‘Men We Have Known - Number Four: Dr. James Fields’, The Elevator, 12 June 1868; Philip A. Bell, ‘Obituary [for Robert G. Cromwell]’, The Elevator, 27 November 1868; Carla L. Peterson, ‘Antebellum Literary Societies, Polite Learning, and Traditions of Modernity’, in African American Literature in Transition: 1830-1850, ed. Benjamin Fagan, African American Literature in Transition (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 14–15, 17–19.

^[3] Misspelled ‘Mc’Cune’ in the original printing. McCune was often rendered ‘M’Cune’, including by McCune Smith himself in his signature and calling card. See James McCune Smith to Gerrit Smith, 31 July 1839, Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University Libraries; ‘J. M’Cune Smith, M. D., 162 South Third St., Brooklyn, E. D. [Calling Card]’, 1865, George T. Downing Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

^[4] McCune Smith’s lectures would have been informed at least in part by books he studied as a medical student at the University of Glasgow, some of which we can identify by entries in rare surviving registers from the University’s libraries. One book he consulted was John and Charles Bell’s Anatomy and Physiology (1817), which contains detailed descriptions of the sense organs. See John Bell and Charles Bell, The Anatomy and Physiology of the Human Body (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown [and others], 1816). (1816 edition in Internet Archive.) McCune Smith also consulted Anthelme Richerand’s Elements of Physiology (1812), which also explores the sense organs at length; see Anthelme Richerand, Elements of Physiology, trans. G. J. M. De Lis (Thomas Underwood [and others], 1812) (In Internet Archive). For these and other books on medicine and anatomy that McCune Smith borrowed from the University’s medical and main libraries, see University of Glasgow, Register of Loans, College Medical Library, University of Glasgow, November 1827 to November 1842 (Glasgow, 1842), Records, 87, p. 283, University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections; University of Glasgow, Students Receipt Book, October 1834 to c. December 1840, Glasgow University Library (Glasgow, 1840), Records, 131 (CA02b), p. 629, University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections.

^[5] McCune Smith used images and other artifacts to illustrate his lectures on other occasions as well. See, for example, ‘On the Fallacies of Phrenology [Lecture Series, No Longer Extant]’ in The World of James McCune Smith; ‘The Micronesian Islands’, New-York Daily Tribune, 15 June 1853.

^[6] Philomathean Hall at 161 Duane Street was, as Philip A. Bell described it, a ‘small room’ of such modest dimensions that an audience of around 200 people would ‘[crowd it] to its utmost.’ (See Philip A. Bell, ‘The Great Meeting’, The Liberator, 10 May 1844.) But as Carla Peterson writes, it was a ‘mecca of civic activism for black youth and “old heads” alike, beckoning them to take part in the community’s many flourishing institutions.’ (See Carla L. Peterson, Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City (Yale University Press, 2011), 117.)

^[7] For announcements of McCune Smith’s other lectures, see also ‘Lectures of the Philomathean Society - James McCune Smith, M.D.’, The Colored American, 20 January 1838; ‘Lectures of the Philomathean Society - James McCune Smith, M.D.’, The Colored American, 27 January 1838; ‘Lectures of the Philomathean Society - James McCune Smith, M.D.’, The Colored American, 3 February 1838.

In the months following his return to his native New York City in late August 1837, James McCune Smith began establishing himself, in part, through delivering lectures and speeches. The full text of this one, like most of these early ones, appears to be no longer extant. McCune Smith’s career as a physician, statistician, scientist, and author, however, bear testimony to the validity of his insistence on the ‘importance of classical and mathematical studies.’

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Extracts from James McCune Smith’s Address at the Adelphi Hall, 1 December 1837

Date: 1 December 1837

Source: ‘A Classical Scholar’, The United States Gazette, 6 December 1837 (In Newspapers.com)

(Republished as: ‘A Classical Scholar (From the United States Gazette)’, The Philanthropist, 16 January 1838) (In Internet Archive)

Note: The editorial preface is italicized; the excerpt from McCune Smith’s address is in standard text.

Text:

A Classical Scholar.

The address^[1] delivered at the Adelphi in this city, on Friday last,^[2] by Dr. J. McC. Smith, of New York, is spoken of by those who listened to it, as a highly creditable production. The orator, as our readers are perhaps aware, is a young man of color, who acquired a thorough classical education^[3] at the University of Glasgow, Scotland;^[4] and besides his scholastic attainments, which are said to be of a high order, is spoken of as possessing an excellent address, a good voice, pleasing manners and good delivery.―The following is a passage from his discourse, which was on the “importance of classical and mathematical studies.”

“The most brilliant era in the British Parliament, was that in which it contained the largest number of finished scholars. Pitt,^[5] and Fox,^[6] and Sheridan,^[7] and that galaxy of genius were all of them distinguished as learned in the ancient languages, and that man who stands alone, and far above the rest, even in so distinguished an era. Edmund Burke,^[8] made the classics his study to the latest period of his life. Later still―Lord Brougham,^[9] even amid those tremendous feats of intellectual labor which have gained for him the title of a man of iron, found leisure and necessity to cultivate the classics. And I have been told by my friend Sir Daniel Sandford,^[10] that when Lord B. was preparing that splendid peroration to his speech in defense of the Queen, he locked himself in his closet for a fortnight, constantly studying over and over again, the most powerful of the orations of Demosthenes, that concerning the crown.^[11]

And in our own republic, yet young in years but brilliant in fame, the men whose names stand most prominent, and whose writings will last, are those who have been deeply imbued in the literature of the ancients. Our Jonathan Edwards,^[12] Franklin,^[13] Livingstons,^[14] Jeffersons,^[15] Adams^[16] and Everetts,^[17] are all of them the most accomplished scholars. And the man^[18] who is now the cynosure of every eye, upon whom more than once had hung the fate of this country and the defense of her constitution, in his place in the Senate,^[19] when aggression after aggression had roused within him the lion of New-England and at the moment when the last high-handed act filled the measure of executive encroachment, that man arose in his place, and struggling with emotion, and unable to find in our language words to express his burning thoughts, burst out in the language of his Roman prototype,^[20]

Sit denique inscriptum in omnis cujusque frontem quid de republica sentiat.^[21]

Let it be written on each man’s forehead, what his opinion is regarding the republic.

Daniel Webster is a classical scholar.^[22]

^[1] No text or summary of the full address has been found.

^[2] One ad for this address announced that ‘DR. JAMES M’CUNE SMITH, of New York, a Colored Gentleman of eminent talents, and a Graduate of the University of Glasgow, Scotland, will Lecture THIS EVENING, Dec. 1st, on the subject of the Higher Branches of Education, at half past 7 o’clock, in the Adelphi Hall, South Fifth street below Walnut. Tickets of Admission, 25 cents, children 12½ cents, to be had at the door.’ See ‘Education’, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 1 December 1837.

^[3] Latin and Ancient Greek were required subjects for the University of Glasgow’s Bachelor of Arts degree. McCune Smith won a prize for general eminence in Latin at the end of his first year in the program. See Prize Lists of the University of Glasgow From Session 1777-78 to Session 1832-33, with University of Glasgow and W. Innis Addison (Carter & Pratt, 1902), 351, 362, University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections; John Kerr, Scottish Education, School and University, from Early Times to 1908, with an Addendum 1908-1913 (University Press, 1913), 235–36.

^[4] McCune Smith was extremely proud of his education at the University of Glasgow. As John Stauffer writes, McCune Smith’s completion of his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees made him the most formally educated African American of his time. (See Stauffer in James McCune Smith, The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, ed. John Stauffer (Oxford University Press, 2006), xiii.) When referring back to this address and the anti-phrenology lecture he had delivered the day before (see ‘On the Fallacies of Phrenology’ in The World of James McCune Smith) in his column for Frederick Douglass’ Paper years later, McCune Smith wrote: ‘…my next visit [to Philadelphia] was in the year of grace 1837, when, fresh from college, and considering myself “some pumpkins,” I strove to enlighten the Philadelphians on the subject of Phrenology and the study of the classics...’ See ‘Letter from Communipaw’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 21 January 1859.

^[5] British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806) was renowned for – among other things – his skills in debate and oratory, formed in the context of a thorough classical education. See J. P. W. Ehrman and Anthony Smith, ‘Pitt, William [the Younger] (1759-1806)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 44, ed. Henry C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004).

^[6] Charles James Fox, British Whig politician and friend and contemporary of William Pitt the Younger and Edmund Burke, enthusiastically pursued his classical studies when he was young and excelled; Eton even published some of his student writings in Latin. See Leslie Mitchell, ‘Fox, Charles James (1749–1806)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 20, ed. Henry C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004).

^[7] Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), playwright and radical Whig politician, took the American colonists’ side in the 1780 debate in the British Parliament. Sheridan was tutored in Latin and co-authored a translation of Love Epistles by the ancient Greek author Aristaenetus. See Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 50, ed. Henry C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004), under ‘Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)’.

^[8] Edmund Burke (1729 to 1730 – 1797), British politician, statesman, and author of some of the most influential social, aesthetic, and political treatises and speeches of the eighteenth century, received a rigorous education at Abraham Shackleton’s Quaker school. He also served as Rector of the University of Glasgow from 1783-1785. See Paul Langford, ‘Burke, Edmund (1729/30-1797)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 8, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004).

^[9] Henry Peter Brougham, first Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868), British statesman and Lord High Chancellor, was instrumental in getting the 1832 Reform Act and the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act passed. Like McCune Smith, Lord Brougham was a precocious student from his early youth and studied humanity (Latin and the history and culture of classical Rome) and philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. See Michael Lobban, ‘Brougham, Henry Peter, First Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 7, ed. Henry C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004).

^[10] The renowned classicist Sir Daniel Keyte Sandford was McCune Smith’s Greek professor. See W. Innis Addison, ed., The Matriculation Albums of the University of Glasgow, From 1728 to 1858 (James Maclehose & Sons, 1913), 392, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow Archives; Thomas Annan, Memorials of the Old College (James Maclehose, 1871), 66, University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections; David Murray, Memories of the Old College of Glasgow (Jackson, Wylie and Co, 1927), 85, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow Archives. See also footnote 15 for ‘Remarks of James McCune Smith at a Welcome Reception in His Honor, 26 September 1837’ in The World of James McCune Smith.)

^[11] See Demosthenes’ ‘On the Crown’ in Demosthenes, The Orations of Demosthenes, vol. 2, trans. Thomas Leland (J & J Harper, 1831), 176–272 (In Internet Archive).

^[12] While Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), Congregational minister and philosopher, would have had the basic classical education typical for a collegiate student (Edwards graduated from Yale), he was most influenced by thinkers (sometimes negatively) such as Isaac Newton, John Locke, Nicolas Malebranche, and Antoine Arnauld, as well as Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Lord Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper), Francis Hutcheson, and others. See Patricia Tracy, ‘Edwards, Jonathan’, in American National Biography, vol. 7, ed. John Arthur Garraty and Mark C. (Mark Christopher) Carnes (Oxford University Press, 1999).

^[13] In his memoirs, Benjamin Franklin wrote ‘I had only one year’s instruction in a Latin school, and that when very young, after which I neglected that language entirely.’ But he also wrote that he later taught himself to read French, Italian, and Spanish, which enabled him to resume studying Latin much more easily. Based on this experience, Franklin thought it better that all students learn the living Romance languages first. See Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, 2nd edn (Henry Colburn, 1818), 1:152–54 (In Internet Archive).

^[14] This may refer to 1) Founding Father William Livingston (1723-1790), scion of an elite New York family. Among other things, Livingston was a lawyer, political satirist, colonial politician, governor of New Jersey, delegate to the first and second Continental Congresses and to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, and signatory to the United States Constitution. Or, McCune Smith may have been referring to 2) statesman and amateur scientist Robert R. Livingston (1746-1813), known for his learning and oratorical skill. A native New Yorker and related by marriage to John Jay, Livingstone signed the First Continental Congress’ Articles of Association, served as a New York delegate to the Second Continental Congress, and was appointed secretary of foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation, among the many other state and national offices he served throughout his life. See James M. Banner, ‘Livingston, Robert R.’, in American National Biography, vol. 13, ed. John Arthur Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (Oxford University Press, 1999), 774–76; Carl E. Prince, ‘Livingston, William’, in American National Biography, vol. 13, ed. John Arthur Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (Oxford University Press, 1999), 778–79.

^[15] i.e., Founding Father Thomas Jefferson.

^[16] i.e., Founding Father John Adams, and possibly also his son John Quincy Adams.

^[17] Alexander Hill Everett (ca. 1790-1847), diplomat, intellectual, and author, excelled in his studies at Harvard. He studied law under John Quincy Adams, then served as his secretary. When Adams became president of the United States, Everett served as minister to Spain. See J. Chris Arndt, ‘Everett, Alexander Hill’, in American National Biography, vol. 7, ed. John Arthur Garraty and Mark C. (Mark Christopher) Carnes (Oxford University Press, 1999).

^[18] Orator and senator Daniel Webster (see text below).

^[19] Here, McCune Smith is citing Daniel Webster’s speech opposing a fortifications bill on the last meeting of the Senate of the 23^rd Congress, on the evening of 3 March 1835. The speech appears to be no longer extant (it’s not included in the Congressional Globe’s record of that session) but the Boston Courier’s summary and quotes from the speech was widely printed in newspapers and journals. Webster’s quote from Cicero is not exact but has the same meaning. Excepting errors in the reporting, this may suggest that Webster cited it from memory according to its meaning, not by rote. See, for example, ‘Last Night in the Senate [Tuesday Evening, March 3]’, Niles’ Weekly Register 48, no. 1226 (1835): 54–55, fn* (In Internet Archive).

^[20] i.e., the Roman statesman and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero. See Simon Hornblower et al., eds, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edn (Oxford University Press, 2012), 1515–19.

^[21] This is an approximation of a passage in Cicero’s In Catilinam I (Against Catiline 1): ‘Sit denique inscriptum in fronte uniuscuiusque, quid de republica sentiat.’ See Marcus Tullius Cicero, Select Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, ed. William Duncan (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1816), 136 (In Internet Archive). This may suggest that, like Webster (see footnote above), McCune Smith quoted Cicero not by rote, but according to the meaning of the quote.

^[22] Webster displayed his love for and knowledge of the classics in his 1852 address to the New York Historical Society, which McCune Smith may have read. In it, Webster included a different approximation of the Cicero quote. See Daniel Webster, An Address Delivered Before the New York Historical Society, February 23, 1852 (Press of the Historical Society, 1852), 51 (In Hathi Trust). By that time, McCune Smith had become disillusioned with Webster because of his shifting stance on slavery. See McCune Smith’s letter to Gerrit Smith of 12 May 1848 (In Syracuse University Libraries Digital Collections).

Soon after James McCune Smith arrived home in New York City at the end of August 1837, having earned three degrees from a major British university and embarked on a promising medical career, enthusiastic friends, community leaders, and well-wishers put on a large welcome event in his honour. To African Americans, McCune Smith’s achievements were a triumph, a vindication, disproving claims of the intellectual and moral inferiority of people of African descent. After all, McCune Smith had overcome a host of obstacles in pursuing his higher education, most of them the products of un-Christian racial prejudice, and did so with uncommon grace and ability. This is the speech that McCune Smith delivered on that occasion.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Remarks of James McCune Smith at a Welcome Reception in His Honor, 26 September 1837

Date: 26 September 1837

Source: Excerpted from ‘Reception of Dr. Smith, By the Colored Citizens of New York,’ The Colored American, 28 October 1837 (In Ordinary Philosophy)

Text:

MR. CHAIRMAN,^[1]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The meeting^[2] of friends^[3] after a long separation is in most instances a source of joy and congratulation; but the meeting of friends after the long and eventful period that has parted us, and under such circumstances as we now meet, gives rise to emotions I my mind which it is less difficult for you to imagine, than for me to express. Once more upon my native soil,^[4] once more in my native city, and amid those scenes which are endeared to me by the thousand happy recollections of boyhood and of youth,^[5] this public reception by so many and the most reputable of my fellow-citizens,^[6] whilst it far exceeds any thing which I deserve, or can thank you for renders my return home far more gratifying than any anticipations which I had formed. And yet, sir, I view this assembly less with the feelings of personal gratification at the honor conferred on me, than with pride and satisfaction at the state of mind which it evinces on the part of this large and highly respectable audience. I feel myself less the object of, than as one of the meeting which is called to pay a tribute of respect, less to any thing that I have done or can accomplish, than to the principles by which I have striven to guide my conduct. These principles are, to obtain education at every sacrifice and every hazard, and to apply such education to the good of our common country.

In following out these principles, I was forced to seek in another country, whose opportunities of improvement which were denied me here,^[7] and have been separated from you during the past five years. The cause of our separation, however much it pained me then and grieves me now, yet will ever give me reason to bless the effect which resulted from it. Sir, I bless the chance which threw me upon the sympathies of, and opened up to me an association with the Wardlaws^[8] and the Heughes, ^[9] the Andersons^[10] and the Murrays,^[11] men whose names are the property neither of the city or the time in which they dwell, but will be held in grateful remembrance so long as civil and religious liberty shall be remembered. The privileges which I enjoyed in their society are greater than any value at which I can estimate them, and they were privileges, too, which no other circumstances could have obtained for me, except those which forced me to go amongst them. No other combination of circumstances, no other recommendatory introduction that I know of could have gained for me so immediately and entirely, the society and the sympathy of those noble-minded men, amongst whom I went a young and friendless exile, by whom I was received and treated as a brother and an equal. The distance at which youth, and obscurity, and humble abilities placed me from them, were entirely forgotten in the ardent and generous sympathy which they felt for a voluntary exile for the sake of learning. And I was further permitted, to the extent of my humble energies, to battle side by side with them in the cause of the immediate and universal emancipation of slaves.

But I also enjoyed still greater advantages.―The temples of learning were shut against none who approached them.^[12] They were guarded by no surly sentinels, in whose learned yet studied minds the sight of glorious grace and the brilliancy of modern science, and even of christian truth itself are wasted, because they cannot expand them. No! the gates of learning were open to all on the same terms, and with equal privileges. And under the Thomsons,^[13] the Cummins,^[14] the Sandfords^[15] of the University of Glasgow, I enjoyed opportunities of improvement as ample as are afforded in any British Institution and far more ample than can be yielded by any Institution in America.^[16]

Sir, the time that I have spent from home seems rapidly to have passed away. And now that I am permitted to stand once more before my fellow-citizens, I perceive reasons to rejoice, and reason to mourn. When I look around this assembly, and recognize many old familiar faces, there are several for which I look in vain. The remorseless hand of Death has been busy amongst us, and there is one on whom it has been laid, to whose memory I cannot omit paying my humble tribute of respect and admiration. There is a great man fallen in Israel―William Hamilton^[17] is no more! The kind father, the benevolent man, the able and profound reasoner, the sterling patriot,^[18] who had at heart the good of the whole country, and who obtained and richly merited the title of a patriarch among the people, has passed away from earth. And whilst I would sympathize with you for his loss, I would also impress upon you the necessity of following the example which he set during life.

On the other hand, I have reason to rejoice in the changes which have occurred in our circumstances and prospects, since I last had the honor of addressing you. I rejoice in being able to say that I have now been three weeks in the land of prejudice, and have not yet been sensible of the fact. I rejoice in the visible desire of improvement, the devotion to the pursuit of knowledge which is everywhere apparent among our youth. There are many students amongst us now; young,^[19] ardent, and persevering, they need all your sympathy, and all the support which you can yield them in their difficult path.

In conclusion, I most sincerely thank you, Mr. Chairman, and you, Ladies and Gentlemen, for this public manifestation of your feelings. I thank you for my own part, since it is a flattering proof that in the difficult and trying situation that I have occupied during the last five years, I have not entirely failed in the endeavor to do my duty; and since it also confirms me in my determination to remain in my native land, and to spare no effort, and withhold no sacrifice in the doing all that I can for the elevation of the American people―of the whole people, without regard to caste or condition. For the whole of these states and of their inhabitants are essentially one and the same in their interests. What is weal to one is weal to all, and what is woe to one is woe to all. I thank you, moreover, for the influence which this meeting will excite on the other side of the Atlantic, and the gratification which it will yield to those great and good men who also have struggled so long in behalf of the oppressed.

^[1] Ransom F. Wake was the chairman of this welcome-home event for James McCune Smith. Wake’s remarks preface McCune Smith’s in the article reporting this event, from which this text is taken. (See Wake’s introductory marks in this issue of the Colored American, in Ordinary Philosophy.) Wake, a tinsmith-turned-educator, was a founding member of the Philomathean Society, a literary and self-improvement society founded on 26 October 1830 by prominent and ambitious young black New Yorkers. Other founding Society members who also presided over this event included minister and educator John Peterson, physician John Brown, and independent scholars James Fields and Thomas S. Sydney. See McCune Smith joined the fledgling Society when he was 17 years old. See ‘Our Colored Brethren in the City of New-York...’, The Liberator, 4 June 1831; ‘Philomathean Society’, The Liberator, 10 December 1831; Gardner Jones, ‘Annual Exhibition of the New-York Philomathean Debating Society’, The Liberator, 4 August 1832; ‘New-York Philomathean Society’, The Emancipator, 21 October 1834; ‘To the Public’, The Colored American, 29 April 1837; ‘Reception of Dr. Smith, By the Colored Citizens of New York’, The Colored American, 28 October 1837; Alexander Crummell, ‘Eulogium on the Life and Character of Thomas Sipkins Sidney’, 4 July 1840, in Black Abolitionist Archive, University of Detroit Mercy; Philip A. Bell, ‘Men We Have Known - Number Four: Dr. James Fields’, The Elevator, 12 June 1868.

^[2] The event was held in the lecture room of the Broadway Tabernacle at 7:30pm on Tuesday, 26 September 1837. Completed in April 1836, the Tabernacle was a large Congregationalist worship space on Broadway at Anthony Street that also hosted public events. According to an official early history of the Tabernacle, ‘About twenty-five hundred persons [could] be comfortably seated in it.’ See Edwin Williams, ed., New-York As It Is, in 1837 (J. Disturnell, 1837), 115; ‘To the Public - In View of the Safe and Happy Arrival...’, The Colored American, 23 September 1837; Manual of the Broadway Tabernacle Church, With a Concise History of the Building, and the Events Connected With It (John Gray (Printer), 1842), 3–4; Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City To 1898 (Oxford University Press, 1998), 530.

^[3] Other friends at the event included Philip A. Bell, Francis R. Bastien, Edward V. Clark, Edward Cills, John Jay Zuille, and brothers Patrick Henry and Charles Lewis Reason. See ‘To the Public,’ CA, 23 Sep 1837; ‘Reception of Dr. Smith,’ CA, 28 Oct 1837.

^[4] McCune Smith had returned to his native city on 30 August 1837 when the ship New-York, under Captain John Niven, docked at New York City. See “New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1891 - 22 August 1837 - 26 February 1838,” digital image s.v. “Mr. Mc Cune, Doctor,” FamilySearch.org; ‘Marine List. New-York - Arrived’, Shipping and Commercial List, and New-York Price Current, 2 September 1837; ‘Passengers’, The Evening Post, 30 August 1837.

^[5] Though McCune Smith experienced unfair and even sometimes hostile treatment on account of race during his childhood and youth – by local Irish children who attacked and bullied the African Free School students on their way to and from school, for example, and exclusion from institutions of higher learning – McCune Smith characterized his early years as generally very happy, surrounded by friends and a supportive community. See, for example, ‘The Merry Christmas Time’, The Weekly Anglo-African, 29 December 1860 (In The World of James McCune Smith); ‘Christmas!’, The Anglo-African, 24 December 1864 (In Ordinary Philosophy); and ‘Sketch of the Life and Labors of Rev. Henry Highland Garnet’ (1865), pp. 21-25 (In Internet Archive).

^[6] The call for the event was signed by James Fields, Philip Bell, William Brady, John Brown, Ransom Wake, Francis Bastien, Daniel J. Elston, Edward V. Clark, John Peterson, John J. Zuille, James Williams, Edward Cills, Henry Williams, Henry Nott, John Berrian, Thomas Sydney, Charles Reason, Patrick Reason, and Peter Vogelsang, Jr. See ‘To the Public,’ CA, 23 Sep 1837.

^[7] Hoping to weaken barriers to education for African Americans, McCune Smith’s mentor Peter Williams, Jr, helped him (along with friends Isaiah DeGrasse and Alexander Crummell) to obtain an education that qualified for entry into college or university. Williams then helped McCune Smith (and the others) apply or applied on his behalf to institutions of higher learning in New York. However, Geneva College and Columbia rejected McCune Smith on account of race. There were no such proscriptions in Scotland, however, and the University of Glasgow – where the majority of students and faculty were anti-slavery – accepted McCune Smith’s application. McCune Smith earned his bachelor’s (1835), master’s (1836), and medical degree (1837) degree there, becoming the most educated and highly credentialed African American of his day. See Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament (Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808), 49–50, 85–87; ‘The University Anti-Slavery Petition’, Glasgow Chronicle, 22 February 1833, National Library of Scotland; Peter Williams, Jr to Gerrit Smith, 4 September 1834, Incoming Correspondence Box 39, Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University Libraries; Samuel Ringgold Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada & England (John Snow, 1855), 282; Robert Hamilton, ‘Dr. James McCune Smith [Obituary]’, The Anglo-African, 9 December 1865; Philip A. Bell, ‘Death of Dr. Jas. McCune Smith’, The Elevator, 22 December 1865; Guido Furman, ‘Obituary for James McCune Smith’, The Medical Register of the City of New York for the Year Commencing June 1, 1866, 1866, 201–4; David W. Blight, ‘In Search of Learning, Liberty, and Self Definition: James McCune Smith and the Ordeal of the Antebellum Black Intellectual’, Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 9, no. 2 (1985): 7–8; John Stauffer, ‘Introduction’, in The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, by James McCune Smith (Oxford University Press, 2006), xxi.

^[8] For more about Ralph Wardlaw and his and McCune Smith’s roles in founding the Glasgow Emancipation Society, see ‘Summary of James McCune Smith’s Remarks at the Glasgow Emancipation Society’s Founding Meeting, 12 December 1833’ (In The World of James McCune Smith).

^[9] For more about Hugh Heugh and his and McCune Smith’s roles in founding the Glasgow Emancipation Society, see footnotes for the entry for ‘Summary of James McCune Smith’s Remarks at the Glasgow Emancipation Society’s Founding Meeting, 12 December 1833’ above.

^[10] William ‘Wully’ Anderson was a reformist minister, ardent abolitionist, and another founding member of the Glasgow Emancipation Society. Anderson was a passionate lover of the arts, especially music, and widely considered an eccentric. See George Gilfillan, Life of the Rev. William Anderson, LL.D., Glasgow (Hodder and Stoughton, 1873), 60–62, 97–100; Rosemary Mitchell, ‘Anderson, William (1799-1872)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 2, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004), 82–83.

^[11] Of all of the Glasgow abolitionists, John Murray was the closest to McCune Smith’s heart. McCune Smith would write a moving biographical portrait of Murray and name one of his sons after him. See entry for ‘John Murray (Of Glasgow)’ (1853) and Amy M. Cools, ‘Roots: Tracing the Family History of James McCune and Malvina Barnett Smith, 1783-1937, Part 3’, Journal of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society 37 (2020): 63, 68.

^[12] Another alumnus, minister and author Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd, also described the University of Glasgow’s admission policies around that time as remarkably liberal, open to students regardless of class, religion, or ethnicity: ‘And what a strange mixed company the thirteen or fourteen hundred students of Glasgow College make up! Boys of eleven or twelve years old…; men with gray hair, up to the age of fifty or sixty; great stout fellows from the plough; men in considerable number from the north of Ireland; lads from counting-houses in town, who wish to improve their minds by a session at the logic class; English dissenters, long excluded from the Universities of England, who have come down to the enlightened country where a Turk or a Buddhist may graduate if he will; young men with high scholarship from the best public schools; and others not knowing a letter of Greek and hardly a word of Latin.’ See Andrew K. H. Boyd, Leisure Hours in Town (Parker Son and Bourn, 1862), 338–39. The University may also have been particularly welcoming to McCune Smith given the strong anti-slavery sentiment there: the February before he arrived in Glasgow, about five hundred of the approximately eight hundred students and instructors of the University signed a petition to the British Parliament to end slavery in its colonies. See Glasgow Chronicle, ‘University Anti-Slavery Petition, GC, 22 Feb 1833’.

^[13] Misspelled ‘Thomsins’ in the original printing. This would refer to McCune Smith’s chemistry professor Thomas Thomson. Described by historian of the University James Coutts as ‘the most famous professor at Glasgow in the nineteenth century,’ Thomson literally wrote the book on the subject as far as his students were concerned: his System of Chemistry and Heat and Electricity were required reading. See Alexander Duncan, Memorials of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 1599-1850 (James Maclehose & Sons, 1896), 279; James Coutts, A History of the University of Glasgow: From Its Foundation in 1451 to 1909 (James Maclehose & Sons, 1909), 385; John Kerr, Scottish Education, School and University, from Early Times to 1908, with an Addendum 1908-1913 (University Press, 1913), lvi–lvii; David Murray, Memories of the Old College of Glasgow (Jackson, Wylie and Co, 1927), 255–56, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow Archives.

^[14] William Cumin (or Cummin) was McCune Smith’s midwifery professor; see notes for the entry for ‘Solid Nitrate of Silver in Gonorrhœa – To the Editor of the Medical Gazette’ (May 1837).

^[15] Sir Daniel Keyte Sandford was McCune Smith’s professor of Greek. He was a renowned classicist and sometime politician, widely regarded as a brilliant scholar and teacher. While Sandford opposed slavery, he favored only very gradual emancipation. Nevertheless, McCune Smith would go on to refer to Sandford as his friend. See ‘Extracts from James McCune Smith's Address at the Adelphi, 31 November 1837’ (In The World of James McCune Smith) and ‘Sir D. K. Sandford in the Trades’ Hall’, Glasgow Chronicle (Glasgow), 21 September 1832, National Library of Scotland; ‘Correspondent’, ‘Sir D. K. Sandford and Liberty’, Glasgow Chronicle (Glasgow), 24 April 1833, National Library of Scotland; Addison, Matriculation Albums, 392; George Gilfillan, The History of a Man (Arthur Hall, Virtue, & Co., 1856), 53–56; Thomas Annan, Memorials of the Old College (James Maclehose, 1871), 66, University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections; Murray, Memories, 85.

^[16] This would have been particularly true of McCune Smith’s medical education. Many medical schools in the United States offered a relatively sparse education and little if any clinical experience. Standards were often low and tests of poor quality; many medical students, especially in the smaller and more rural schools, successfully graduated even when nearly illiterate. This was likely due to medicine still being widely considered more of an art than a scientific, evidenced-based discipline. Many American students, therefore, opted to go abroad for their medical education and clinical training. When McCune Smith attended medical school in the 1830’s, Paris and the British Isles offered the highest quality of both. See Russell M. Jones, ‘American Doctors and the Parisian Medical World, 1830-1840’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 47, no. 1 (1973): 49–51; James Bordley and Abner McGehee Harvey, Two Centuries of American Medicine, 1776-1976 (W.B. Saunders Company, 1976), 5–6, 38; Hermes C. Grillo, ‘To Impart This Art: The Development of Graduate Surgical Education in the United States’, Surgery 125, no. 1 (1999): 5.

^[17] William Hamilton was a leading black New Yorker, a successful carpenter, and rumoured – including by McCune Smith – to be a son of Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was an also alumni of the African Free School, a co-founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (‘Old Zion’) and the New York African Society for Mutual Relief, and was involved in many initiatives to improve educational and other opportunities for black New Yorkers. His sons Robert, John, and Thomas followed in their father’s footsteps in the latter regard. McCune Smith would go on to work closely with Robert and Thomas for many decades in their careers as pioneering black newspapermen; John died young. See ‘Died [John Hamilton and Ezra Morris]’, The Colored American (New York), 10 April 1841; Christopher Rush, A Short Account of the Rise and Progress of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in America (Christopher Rush, 1843), 9–10; James McCune Smith, ‘Christmas!’, The Anglo-African, 24 December 1864; James McCune Smith, ‘Obituary [Thomas Hamilton]’, The Anglo-African, 10 June 1865; John Jay Zuille, Historical Sketch of the New York African Society for Mutual Relief (New York African Society for Mutual Relief, 1892), 5, 7, 15, 22, 27.

^[18] As for many of his fellow black abolitionists and community leaders, patriotism was a prominent theme throughout McCune Smith’s career of writing and speaking. He would cite African Americans’ service in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War, and their efforts to reform the nation to fulfil its promise as a land of liberty as laid out in the Declaration of Independence, as evidence of their patriotism. See, for example, ‘Universal Extinction of Slavery’, Glasgow Chronicle, 13 December 1833, National Library of Scotland; ‘Great Anti-Colonization Meeting in New York’, The Emancipator, 17 January 1839; ‘Freedom and Slavery for Afric-Americans, No. III’, New-York Daily Tribune, 24 February 1844; James McCune Smith et al., ‘Report of the New-York Delegates’, National Anti-Slavery Standard, 24 October 1844; ‘Meeting to Sympathise With and Aid the Christiana Patriots’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 13 November 1851; James McCune Smith, ‘Address to the People of the State of New York’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 5 February 1852; James McCune Smith, ‘Memoir of Rev. Peter Williams (Fragment)’, in The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, With Sketches of Several Distinguished Colored Persons: To Which Is Added a Brief Survey of the Condition and Prospects of Colored Americans., with William C. Nell (Robert F. Wallcut, 1855), 321; James McCune Smith, ‘Thomas L. Jennings’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 18 February 1859; James McCune Smith, ‘Frederick Douglass in New-York City’, The Anglo-African, 2 May 1863; James McCune Smith, ‘Why Can’t We Also!’, The Anglo-African, 9 January 1864; James McCune Smith, ‘Obituary [Thomas Hamilton]’, The Anglo-African, 10 June 1865.

^[19] Missing a comma here in the original printing.

James McCune Smith wrote his first work to be published in a professional medical journal soon after he graduated from medical school at the University of Glasgow. That letter to the editor and this follow-up regarding a paper he had recently delivered to the university’s student medical society reveal the ambition, willingness to challenge authority and established practices, and zeal for evidence-based medicine, science, and argument that characterized his life’s work.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Solid Nitrate of Silver in Gonorrhœa. To the Editor of the Medical Gazette [#2]

Co-author(s):

Date: 11 July 1837

Source: The London Medical Gazette, Vol. 20, pp. 894-895 (In Internet Archive)

Text:

SOLID NITRATE OF SILVER IN GONORRHŒA.^[1]

––––

To the Editor of the Medical Gazette.^[2]

SIR,

THE tone of a late communication in your valuable journal, by Mr. Joseph Bell,^[3] on the use of the nitrate of silver, is so unlike what your readers have hitherto been accustomed to, that I should have left the manner of that paper to correct the matter of it, had I not perceived in it several grave accusations of bad faith and deception with which Mr. Bell has charged me;^[4] and this circumstance alone compels me to solicit the insertion of the following remarks before I leave the shores of Britain for my native country.^[5]

In the first place, I beg to lay before your readers a distinct comparative statement of the transactions of the Glasgow Lock Hospital, during the first and second half years of 1836:^[6]

Patients remaining in the House, Jan. 1^st, 1836. . . . . . . . . . .24

Admitted, from June 1^st to June 30^th (inclusive,) 1836. . . . . 137

–––

Treated, during the first half year of 1836 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .161

Dismissed, cured. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

Irregular . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Died . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Remaining in the House, July 1^st, 1836. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Admitted, from July 1^st to Dec. 31^st, 1836, (inclusive) . . . . . .130

–––

Treated, during second half of 1836. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Dismissed, cured. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Dismissed, irregular . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Died . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

From this statement, carefully extracted from the journal and roll book of the house, your readers will perceive the mode in which Dr. Hannay’s numerous dismissals are accounted for. Of the patients dismissed “irregular,” five had been treated by the solid nitrate for “vaginal discharge.” All of them were dismissed very shortly after the first application. One of them (M. H., p. 266) for “feigning excuses to procure exit;” and two others (J. M’L., p. 269, and M. M’K., p. 276) for “refusing to submit to treatment.” From which it appears that the nitrate is not so great a favourite with the patients as with Dr. Hannay.^[7] It will also be perceived that the number treated during the six months when Dr. Hannay did not have the charge, was 161 instead of 159, erroneously stated by Mr. Bell. Of the 161 patients treated during the first half of 1836, two died; and of the 159, treated by Dr. Hannay, six died,^[8] all of whom are added, by Mr. Bell, to the list of dismissals, that gentleman omitting to mention that they were dead. Mr. B., by this novel and ingenious mode of recording the Hospital transactions for 1836, keeps out of view the evidence of the severity of the treatment, and the amount of mortality, while, at the same time, the residence of patients in the house seems shortened, the cost of each diminished, and the treatment made to appear more than usually successful. The number of beds in the hospital is at present 31, to which number, for the last two years, the secretary has restricted the admission of patients, unless in the case of a mother and her infant.

[Here follow the details of a number of cases, with references to the dates and pages of the hospital book. We can only make room for the conclusions.]^[9]

From this examination of fifty-nine cases taken at random from the journals, it is evident:—^[10]

1st. That in fourteen per cent. nearly, the nitrate was aided by one of the best known injections, viz. “Sol. Alum. co.”^[11]

2d. That there are 22 per cent. of relapses, most of them recorded from Dr. Hannay’s dictation.

3d. That in more than 14 per cent. considerable pain or irritation followed the application,^[12] as also recorded from the dictation of Dr. H.

I have the honour to remain, sir.

Your most obedient servant,

JAMES M. CUNE SMITH, M.D.

Glasgow, July 11^th, 1837.^[13]

^[1] For James McCune Smith’s first letter to the editor of the London Medical Gazette on this topic and associated footnotes, see ‘Solid Nitrate of Silver in Gonorrhœa. To the Editor of the Medical Gazette’, in The London Medical Gazette, vol. 20 (Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1837). (In The World of James McCune Smith.)

^[2] Though McCune Smith wrote this letter in the second week of July, it wasn’t published until September, nearly two months later. The editor of the Gazette initially refused to publish it for free because ‘the discussion [about Alexander Hannay’s silver nitrate treatment for gonorrhoea] has already proceeded as far as our readers generally can follow with interest.’ But, he continued, the Gazette would publish it if ‘the author defray[ed] the expense.’ See ‘Notice: The Letter of Dr M’Cune Smith...’, in The London Medical Gazette, vol. 20 (Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1837), 640 (In Internet Archive). Given this letter’s publication, McCune Smith apparently did so.

^[3] McCune Smith’s second letter to the Gazette regarding the silver nitrate treatment administered by Hannay and his clerks (i.e., interns) at the Lock Hospital was written in response to Joseph Bell’s vigorous rebuttal of McCune Smith’s original letter opposing it. Bell wrote that he penned his follow-up defence of Hannay because 1) Hannay didn’t see McCune Smith’s first letter to the Gazette and 2) Bell wanted to correct the record: he insisted that Hannay had written to the Gazette ‘chiefly through [Bell’s] solicitation’ and not in direct response to McCune Smith’s medical society paper. See Joseph Bell, ‘Solid Nitras Argenti in Gonorrhœa’, in The London Medical Gazette, vol. 20 (Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1837), 473-475 (In Internet Archive). Bell was one of Hannay’s former clerks at the Lock who had written a letter of support for the silver nitrate treatment at Hannay’s solicitation. (See ‘Solid Nitrate of Silver in Gonorrhœa. To the Editor of the Medical Gazette’ and relevant footnotes in The World of James McCune Smith.)

^[4] For example, Bell argued that McCune Smith’s observation that the Lock had more patients when William Cumin (McCune Smith’s instructor) was in charge rather than Hannay was ‘calculated to deceive’ readers. See Bell, ‘Solid Nitras Argenti’, 473 (In Internet Archive).

^[5] After Bigley refused McCune Smith first class accommodations on the Canonicus, it took McCune Smith some time to find another way home. See footnote below for the date of this letter.

^[6] Though the original clinical records of the Lock Hospital in Glasgow appear to be lost, these and other statistics are preserved in Alexander Patterson, Statistics of Glasgow Lock Hospital Since Its Foundation in 1805: With Remarks on the Contagious Diseases Acts, and on Syphilis (Alexander Macdougall, 1882), 3 (In Wellcome Collection).

^[7] One of Hannay’s clerks who later wrote to the Gazette in defence of the silver nitrate treatment attributed patients’ fear of the treatment to McCune Smith’s warnings against it, which were carried on by ‘his successor in office.’ See James Cross, ‘Nitrate of Silver in the Gonorrhœa of Females’, in The London Medical Gazette: New Series (Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1837), 1:99 (In Internet Archive).

^[8] To see these statistics in the context of all the patients who were admitted, cured, died, and so on that year, see Patterson, Statistics of Glasgow Lock Hospital, 3 (In Wellcome Collection).

^[9] McCune Smith would likely have been annoyed to see the case details left out, not only because he paid to have this letter published and was anxious to inform his readers about the relevant evidence, but also because the Gazette hadn’t edited out the case details in Bell’s letter. (See Bell, ‘Solid Nitras Argenti’, 474 in Internet Archive.) As his Gazette letters and his lifetime of medical and scientific writings show, McCune Smith believed devoutly in the importance of providing evidence in support of claims and arguments, and in independently verifying it. He would have considered the case details, then, to be very important, so readers could judge for themselves whether McCune Smith’s conclusions were valid.

^[10] McCune Smith was an early and enthusiastic adopter of the science of statistical analysis. His close friend Philip A. Bell wrote in his obituary for him that ‘his love of mathematical studies, together with his power of analysis enabled him to comprehend the mysteries of statistics, which were among his favorite studies.’ (See Philip A. Bell, ‘Death of Dr. Jas. McCune Smith’, The Elevator, 22 December 1865.) McCune Smith was apparently first educated in this emerging discipline while a student at the University of Glasgow. He may even have had a connection to the Statistical Society of Glasgow, co-founded by Glasgow Royal Infirmary physician Robert Cowan in February 1836. See ‘Glasgow Statistical Society’, Glasgow Argus, 18 April 1836, Mitchell Library, Glasgow; ‘Provincial Statistical Societies in the United Kingdom’, Journal of the Statistical Society of London 1 (June 1838): 115–16; Michael J. Cullen, The Statistical Movement in Early Victorian Britain: The Foundations of Empirical Social Research (The Harvester Press Limited, 1975), 119–20. McCune Smith would likely have come to know of Cowan during his (probable) clerkship at the Infirmary.

^[11] “Sol. Alum. co.” appears in a prescription book by Jonathan Pereira, a medical author McCune Smith later cited with a quote from another work. See Jonathan Pereira, The Physician’s Prescription Book (Philadelphia, 1852), 199 (In Internet Archive). McCune Smith quoted Pereira in ‘On the Influence of Opium Upon the Catamenial Functions’, London Medical Gazette (New Series) - For the Session 1843-44 1, no. 29 March (1844): 56 (In Internet Archive).

^[12] Within a few years, McCune Smith would use the direct application of solid silver nitrate on another patient, in this case on a malady affecting her tongue. See the entry for 22 September in ‘Case of Ptyalism. Fatal Termination’, September-October 1840. Apparently, McCune Smith subsequently learned of evidence that supported the treatment.

^[13] McCune Smith finally returned to the United States on the American packet ship the New-York, which departed from Greenock on 20 July 1837. He likely, then, had already booked passage on the ship by the time he wrote this letter. The New-York’s captain, John Niven, was probably British, especially given that McCune Smith as able to book cabin accommodations (he was one of 11 cabin passengers on the ship). See Jane Smeal, ‘Letter: My Dear Friend (From Jane Smeal, Glasgow, 22 July 1837)’, in The Annual Report of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, with a Sketch of the Obstacles Thrown in the Way of Emancipation by Certain Clerical Abolitionists and Advocates for the Subjection of Woman, in 1837 (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1837), 106–8; ‘Notice to Passengers’, Perthshire Advertiser, 29 June 1837; ‘Shipping Intelligence - Glasgow Tontine List’, The Caledonian Mercury, 24 June 1837; “New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1891 - 22 August 1837 - 26 February 1838,” digital image s.v. “Mr. Mc Cune, Doctor”, FamilySearch.org.

James McCune Smith wrote his first work to be published in a professional medical journal soon after he graduated from medical school at the University of Glasgow. This letter to the editor and appended paper he had recently delivered to the university’s student medical society reveal the ambition, willingness to challenge authority and established practices, and zeal for evidence-based medicine, science, and argument that characterized his life’s work.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Solid Nitrate of Silver in Gonorrhœa. To the Editor of the Medical Gazette

Date: 17 May 1837

Source: The London Medical Gazette, Vol. 20, p. 310 (In Internet Archive)

Text:

SOLID NITRATE OF SILVER IN GONORRHŒA.

––––

To the Editor of the Medical Gazette.^[1]

SIR,

I beg to send you, as an appendix to the paper of Dr. Hannay^[2] on the Permanent Cure of the Gonorrhœa of Women by Solid Nitrate of Silver, the following extract from a paper read by me to the Glasgow Medical Society^[3] on the 1st of April; to which paper I cannot help considering Dr. Hannay’s contribution to your valuable journal as an indirect reply.

The materials of my paper on the subject of the gonorrhœa of women were collected whilst I held the office of Clerk to the Glasgow Lock Hospital.^[4] As the attack on this essay has appeared in the pages of the MEDICAL GAZETTE, I trust that you will not deny me the opportunity of defending myself through the same medium.

I have the honour to be, sir.

Your very obedient servant,

JAMES M’CUNE SMITH, M.D.

Glasgow, May 17, 1837.

1st. I deem the treatment of gonorrhœa^[5] in the female by the solid nitrate of silver a cruel practice, from the horror which those who have undergone it express at what they call the ‘burning their inside with caustic;’^[6] and also from a fact, of which the journals of the house^[7] give ample evidence, that the Lock Hospital is always full whilst Dr. Cumin^[8] has charge of it, but, on the other hand, does not average above four-fifths full whilst under the charge of Dr. Hannay.

2dly. I deem the practice inefficient, because, of five patients who remained in the house on the 1st of January, 1837, ‘cured‘ according to the statement in the journal, by means of ‘the solid nitrate of silver,’ the discharge returned in all of them except one within a fortnight afterwards,—and that individual was dismissed on the 7th of January. Of the five patients above alluded to, in one the catamenia^[9] have not appeared since (whilst there is no sign of pregnancy) after a lapse of four months. A second, shortly after the application, was seized with a sanguineous^[10] discharge from the uterus, which, after lasting fifteen days, terminated in an early abortion. Another patient (B. K., page 341) stated, that on the very day of the application of the nitrate of silver, in the agony caused by it, she so strained the abdominal muscles as to cause double inguinal rupture,^[11] which she now labours under.

Cases of Relapse of Vaginal Discharge, after being cured by the Solid Nitrate of Silver.

A. C. . . . . . . . . Page 372

E. J . . . . . . . . . . — 365

M. A. C . . . . . . — 369

E. M. . . . . . . . . . — 370

J. M’C. . . . . . . . . — 285

(Page 7, Journal 1837).

The last patient having been dismissed cured to the Magdalene^[12], and thence brought back to the Lock Hospital in consequence of a relapse, could not have been exposed to new infection.

^[1] The

London Medical Gazette was edited by Roderick MacLeod. A former editor of the London Medical and Physical Journal, predecessor and rival of the Lancet, MacLeod became editor of the Gazette after a controversy and court case involving the Lancet’s founder and editor Thomas Wakley. MacLeod continued his feud with the Lancet in the pages of the Gazette. See Samuel Squire Sprigge, The Life and Times of Thomas Wakley, Founder and First Editor of the ‘Lancet’... (Longman, Green and Co., 1897), 157–60, 165–66.

^[2] Alexander John Hannay was a prominent Glaswegian physician and the first Professor of Medicine at the University of Glasgow’s rival Andersonian Institution. See Alexander Duncan, Memorials of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 1599-1850 (James Maclehose & Sons, 1896), 281. The ‘paper of Dr. Hannay’ that James McCune Smith referred to here was Hannay’s letter to the editor of the London Medical Gazette promoting the effectiveness of his silver nitrate treatment for gonorrhoea, to which he appended supporting letters from three of his former Lock Hospital clerks. See Alexander John Hannay, ‘On the Application of Solid Nitras Argenti in the Gonorrhœa of Women’, in The London Medical Gazette, vol. 20, with Joseph Bell et al. (Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1837), 185-191 (In Internet Archive).

^[3] This was not the exclusive, professional Glasgow Medical Society composed of prominent, well-established Glaswegian physicians founded in 1814 under that name. Rather, McCune Smith was referring to the Glasgow University Medico-Chirurgical Society, a student medical society originally founded in 1801. It had gone dormant and was re-reformed as the Glasgow Medical Society in 1821. It was renamed in 1826, perhaps to avoid confusion with the professional society. No membership records of the student society survive for the years McCune Smith attended medical school. See Glasgow University Medico-Chirurgical Society, ‘Minute Book, 1812-1829’, Glasgow, 1829, 43–91, 109, 123, 137, 143, 154, University of Glasgow Library: Archives and Special Collections; J. Walker Downie, The Medico-Chirurgical Society of Glasgow, 1814-1907 (Alex Macdougall, 1908), 2–3, 6; Glasgow Medical Society, ‘Minute Book, 1814-51’, Glasgow, 1851, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow Archives; ‘Thomas M. McNie to Archibald Young, 19 November 1928 (with Enclosures)’, Papers of the Young Family, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow Archives; Duncan, Memorials, 187–89. In his notice for a lecture he was to deliver in New York City in October 1837, McCune Smith described himself as the ‘late Vice President of the Glasgow Medical Society.’ See ‘Anti-Phrenology’, Commercial Advertiser, 19 October 1837.

^[4] The Lock was a privately funded charity hospital that treated women and girls with venereal disease. Though its mostly poor patients were considered to be outside of respectable society, the Lock was widely regarded as a noble philanthropic institution. See Glasgow Delineated; In Its Institutions, Manufactures, and Commerce: With a Map of the City, and Thirty-Nine Engravings of Its Principal Public Buildings, 2nd edn (University Press for Wardlaw and Cunninghame, 1827), 128; Frederick W. Lowndes, Lock Hospitals and Lock Wards in General Hospitals (J. & A. Churchill, 1882), Introduction, 1; C. Frederick Pollock, ‘The Glasgow Lock Hospital’, in The Medical Institutions of Glasgow, ed. James Christie (James Maclehose & Sons, 1888), 120–21. William Cumin (or Cummin), Professor of Midwifery at the University of Glasgow’s medical school, awarded Lock Hospital clerkships his best students. McCune Smith, therefore, must have been among them. See John Barras Hay, ‘Historical Sketch and Account of the Present State of the University’, in Inaugural Addresses by Lords Rectors of the University of Glasgow (David Robertson, 1839), lxi; Duncan, Memorials, 275.

^[5] Treatments for gonorrhoea in books that McCune Smith consulted as a medical student included cubeb pepper, opium, mercury, camphor, senna, submurias hydrargyria, colocynth, carbonate of potash, acetate of lead or zinc, and sulphate of magnesia, zinc, copper, or alumina. See University of Glasgow, Register of Loans, College Medical Library, University of Glasgow, November 1827 to November 1842 (Glasgow, 1842), Records, 87, p. 283, University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections; John Mackintosh, Principles of Pathology, and Practice of Physic, 3rd edn (Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, & Green, 1832), 2:250–52 (In Internet Archive); John Ayrton Paris, Pharmacologia; Corrected and Extended, 6th edn, I (W. Phillips, 1825), 324 (In Internet Archive); Robert Thomas, The Modern Practice of Physic..., Fifth edition, revised and considerably enlarged (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown (and others), 1816), 323 (In Internet Archive); Anthony Todd Thomson, The London Dispensatory, 3rd edn (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822), 358, 424, 682, 691, 701–2 (In Internet Archive); and Anthony Todd Thomson, Elements of Materia Medica and Therapeutics, I (Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1832), 91–92 (In Internet Archive). In all these books, nitrate of silver is generally used in a solution, not applied as a solid.

^[6] This and subsequent selections in quotes were apparently taken directly from McCune Smith’s clinical notes. In his 1832 Elements of Materia Medica, Anthony Todd Thomson had also described Nitrate of Silver as a ‘caustic’ and warned that ‘when too much is rubbed on the part, the pain is most excruciating.’ See Thomson, Elements of Materia Medica, I, 548–49 (In Internet Archive). Assuming McCune Smith read this selection from Thomson’s work, this and his own clinical observations at the Lock would have motivated him to view Hannay’s treatment as contraindicated by available evidence, unacceptable to a committed scientific empiricist like McCune Smith. (For more examples of McCune Smith’s early and enduring insistence on the primacy of facts and evidence in medicine, science, and other arenas of action, inquiry, argument, and policy, see ‘On the Fallacies of Phrenology [Lecture Series, No Longer Extant]. Delivered on 18 September 1837, 19 October 1837, and 30 November 1837’ In The World of James McCune Smith; ‘Dr. Macdonald’s Report’, The Colored American, 22 December 1838; ‘Colored Orphan’s Asylum: Physician’s Report [and Reply]’, The Colored American, 26 January 1839; Case of Ptyalism. Fatal Termination (1840), New York Academy of Medicine Historical Collections: Small Manuscript Collection; ‘On the Influence of Opium Upon the Catamenial Functions’, The New York Journal of Medicine and the Collateral Sciences 2, no. 1 (1844): 56–58; ‘Freedom and Slavery for Afric-Americans [Freedom and Slavery Part 3]’, New-York Daily Tribune, 1 February 1844; ‘Lay Puffery of Homœopathy’, The Annalist: A Record of Practical Medicine, in the City of New York 2, no. 18 (1848): 348–51. For another interpretation of ‘Solid Nitrate of Silver,’ see Matthew D. Eddy, ‘James McCune Smith: New Discovery Reveals How First African American Doctor Fought for Women’s Rights in Glasgow’, The Conversation, 8 October 2021, https://theconversation.com/james-mccune-smith-new-discovery-reveals-how-first-african-american-doctor-fought-for-womens-rights-in-glasgow-166233.

^[7] These journals are apparently no longer extant.

^[8] McCune Smith’s midwifery course in his final year of medical school was taught by William Cumin (or Cummin), the new Professor of Midwifery. An Infirmary surgeon since 1818, he was also a clinical lecturer and demonstrator there. Cumin enlivened his instruction with drawings, engravings, and the latest medical instruments, as well as casts and preserved specimens he had donated to the University’s Hunterian Museum. He apparently made quite an impression on McCune Smith: Cumin was among the few instructors McCune Smith singled out in later remarks on his University career. See Ransom F. Wake et al., ‘Reception of Dr. Smith, By the Colored Citizens of New York’, The Colored American, 28 October 1837; Hay, ‘Historical Sketch’, lv, lx–lxi; Duncan, Memorials, 275.

^[9] I.e., the discharge accompanying menstruation. See Robert Hooper, Lexicon Medicum, or, Medical Dictionary: Containing an Explanation of the Terms in Anatomy, Botany, Chemistry, Materia Medica, Midwifery, Mineralogy, Pharmacy, Physiology, Practice of Physic, Surgery, and the Various Branches of Natural Philosophy Connected with Medicine (Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1831), 829. McCune Smith consulted Hooper’s dictionary when he was a medical student at the University of Glasgow. See University of Glasgow, Students Receipt Book, October 1834 to c. December 1840, Glasgow University Library (Glasgow, 1840), Records, 131 (CA02b), p. 629, University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections; University of Glasgow, Students Receipt Book: Books Alphabetically. Glasgow University Library, October 1834 to December 1837 (Glasgow, 1837), Records, A51 (CA01e), University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections.

^[10] I.e., bloody. See Hooper, Lexicon Medicum, 1087.

^[11] See Hooper, Lexicon Medicum, 660.

^[12] Misspelled ‘Magdalen’ in the original. The Magdalene Asylum is described by a contemporary guide to the city as ‘an institution adapted for the reception and moral restoration of female penitents [i.e., former prostitutes and other girls and women who had intimate relations with men outside of marriage]. It is maintained by voluntary subscription… The chief employment of the inmates is laundry and needle-work, and great attention is paid to their religious instruction and their moral improvement.’ See Glasgow Delineated, 128. See also George Hume, The Waifs of Womanhood, or, A Plea for ‘Unfortunates’ (John Shepherd, 1854), 32.

During his first few years in Glasgow as a student in its venerable University, James McCune Smith was as active a member of the Glasgow Emancipation Society – of which he was a founding member – as his busy academic schedule would allow. On this occasion, McCune Smith, then busy preparing for his final qualifying examinations for his medical doctorate, filled in at short notice for a featured speaker who could not attend the meeting after all, thereby again reprising his role as a featured speaker at the GES’s annual public meeting.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Remarks by James McCune Smith, M.D. Seconding the Motion by the Rev. Patrick Brewster of Paisley at the Third Annual Meeting of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, 15 March 1837

Co-author(s):

Date: 15 March 1837

Source: Britain and America United in the Cause of Universal Freedom: Being the Third Annual Report of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, pp. 78-79 (In Internet Archive)

Text:

Mr JAMES M‘CUNE SMITH, M.D.,^[1] on seconding the motion,^[2] said,—It is with great pleasure that I second the resolution so ably moved by the distinguished clergyman^[3] of the Church of Scotland, who has just addressed you.^[4] And the audience will, I am sure, sympathise with me, when informed that I do so at a very short notice, in consequence of the absence of another ornament of the same church,^[5] whose name would have given the resolution additional currency among a body of Christians whom I am most anxious to see more generally engaged in the cause of Emancipation; and whose eloquence would have claimed for the motion that respectful attention which no words of mine can command. (Cheers.) For I am unable, under present circumstances^[6]—and had months of preparation been allowed me—would still have been unable—to find expression for the feelings of gratitude which I entertain for the past exertions of Mr Thompson^[7]; or the eager anxiety with which I look for a continuance of those exertions which have been fraught with so much good to my native land; and which, I trust, will continue to be of eminent service, not only there, but to every country wherein men are enslaved by their fellow-men. (Cheers.)

Sir, there are two parties more immediately concerned in this Resolution—Mr Thompson, and the Emancipation Society of this city.—An offer is made, or rather renewed, to Mr T., which he will frankly and gladly accept.^[8] For with bleeding humanity soliciting him on the one hand, and the enlightened Christians of this free and enlightened country urging him on the other, he cannot refuse to continue these efforts—laborious indeed—for which he is so pre-eminently fitted, and which are so congenial to his mind. (Cheers.)

And with regard to the Emancipation Society here assembled, you will gladly renew your engagement^[9] with Mr Thompson; and with that hearty acclamation, which can be given by freemen only, and in a free country, cheering on a gifted and zealous philanthropist in his endeavours to achieve the liberties of their kind, by the physically harmless, but morally omnipotent, weapons of truth and righteousness. Were other means resorted to, were physical force made use of, I would be among the first to resist them.^[10] And be assured, Sir, that if at this moment any warlike armament were to invade the United States, even for the purpose of liberating the victims of prejudice and of Slavery, the men who would strike first, and would struggle longest in defence of the American coast, would be the 800,000 free people of colour, who are Americans by birth, Americans in principle, and have proved themselves in many a field of fight, as well as by present sufferings, which I cannot recount,—the most ardent lovers of the American soil. But, Sir, there is no need of physical force. The weapons used by this Society are more powerful, and will prevail. The American people know this, indeed have admitted it. They have admitted it in the person of one of the most gifted among them, and on this very platform, which is consecrated to the cause of civil and religious liberty. (Loud cheers.) For in that brilliant encounter—in which truth so signally triumphed through the lips of your agent—America, by appearing before such a tribunal, admitted not only its right to make this moral invasion, but also by her attempt to maintain the justice of her present conduct, admits the irresistible power which you can wield over her destinies. Let me entreat you, therefore, never to forget these circumstances: forget not the agent who has placed such priceless influence in your hands: forget not incessantly to exercise that influence for the benefit of the helpless Slave. And then, Sir, I will go back to the land whence I came, happy in the thought that at a day not very distant, it may be my privilege once more to appear before you,—no longer an outcast from the land of the free—no longer the victim of a cruel prejudice—no longer debarred from seats of learning, for a physical accident, no fault of mine^[11]—no longer deprived of any of the privileges of an American citizen—but that it will be my lot to tell you that America is free! (Cheers.) And who knows, Sir, but that there may come with me an American Slave, whose chains shall have been broken; an American Slave-holder, whose whip shall have been destroyed; and an American Christian, whose prejudices shall have been annihilated by the means you are now using to attain these ends. (Tremendous cheering.) And we will come, not only to thank you for what you have done, but to entreat you to re-engage your eloquent and devoted agent in those labours, which, I trust, will never cease until Slavery be banished from the face of the earth. (Cheers.)

^[1] James McCune Smith was still undertaking or had recently completed the second of two clinical internships (or ‘clerkships,’ as they were called) and would have already formally announced his intention to undergo the required examinations for graduation from the University of Glasgow’s medical school in April, which is why the recorder of these remarks and perhaps McCune Smith himself was already using the honorary ‘M.D.’. His medical degree was formally conferred on him at the University of Glasgow’s annual graduation ceremony on 27 April 1837. See ‘University Prizes’, Glasgow Argus, 4 May 1837, Mitchell Library, Glasgow; James McCune Smith, ‘Solid Nitrate of Silver in Gonorrhœa – To the Editor of the Medical Gazette’, in The London Medical Gazette (Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1837), 20:310; ‘“The Nuisances”’, The Liberator, 26 May 1837; ‘Farewell Dinner to Dr. James M’Cune Smith, A.M. (From the Glasgow Chronicle of June 21st)’, The Colored American, 9 September 1837; John Barras Hay, ‘Historical Sketch and Account of the Present State of the University’, in Inaugural Addresses by Lords Rectors of the University of Glasgow (David Robertson, 1839), lxxxii; James McCune Smith, ‘On the Influence of Opium Upon the Catamenial Functions’, The New York Journal of Medicine and the Collateral Sciences 2, no. 1 (1844): 56–58; W. Innis Addison, ed., The Matriculation Albums of the University of Glasgow, From 1728 to 1858 (James Maclehose & Sons, 1913), 392, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow Archives.

^[2] McCune Smith’s remarks supported a resolution moved by Patrick Brewster, pastor of Abbey Church in Paisley, at the second day of the third Annual Meeting of the Glasgow Emancipation Society on 15 March 1837 (the first day of the meeting was 13 March 1837). Brewster “Resolved,—That the labours of Mr George Thompson, our devoted, and faithful, and indefatigable Agent, during the past year, are entitled to, and do now receive, our unqualified approbation:—That, believing it of the highest importance that he should continue his services in the Cause of Emancipation, we earnestly request him to renew his engagement to the Committee; pledging ourselves, in the event of his compliance, to sustain him in the prosecution of his arduous and philanthropic career:—it being our determination never to give up the work of peaceful agitation and moral interference, on behalf of the victims of oppression, until every unrighteous yoke is broken, and Slavery ceases from the face of the earth.” See Britain and America United in the Cause of Universal Freedom: Being the Third Annual Report of the Glasgow Emancipation Society (Printed by Aird & Russell, 1837), 6, The William Smeal Collection, Mitchell Library, Glasgow (In Internet Archive).

^[3] For more about this well-known Scottish, Chartist, anti-slavery clergyman and author, see A. H. Grant, ‘Brewster, Patrick (1788-1859)’, in Dictionary Of National Biography, vol. 6, ed. Leslie Stephen (Smith, Elder, & Co., 1886), 304.

^[4] For Brewster’s resolution and supporting remarks, see Britain and America United... 3rd Annual Report of the GES, WSC, 77–78 (In Internet Archive).

^[5] Robert Burns, pastor of the Barony Church of Scotland in Glasgow, was originally going to offer the resolution that Brewster moved and supported and that McCune Smith seconded and supported with these remarks. However, since Burns was not able to attend Wednesday’s adjourned meeting, McCune Smith was invited to support the resolution in his absence. See The Post-Office Annual Directory For 1836-37... in Glasgow and Suburbs (John Graham, 1836), Appendix, 50; Britain and America United... 3rd Annual Report of the GES, WSC, 77 fn*.

^[6] McCune Smith would have been preparing for his graduation exams for medical school around this time, and so would have found it difficult to spare much time for other projects. See Hay, ‘Historical Sketch’, lxxxi–lxxxii; Glasgow Argus, ‘University Prizes,’ GA, 4 May 1837; Addison, Matriculation Albums, 392.

^[7] The English abolitionist George Thompson. His plans for an anti-slavery mission to America had inspired the formation of the Glasgow Emancipation Society in late 1833. See footnotes for ‘Summary of James McCune Smith’s Remarks at the Glasgow Emancipation Society’s Founding Meeting, 12 December 1833’ in The World of James McCune Smith. Thompson’s ‘exertions’ in the United States would arguably prove unsuccessful: his anti-slavery speeches provoked much backlash – including from President Andrew Jackson – and he was forced to flee the country in December 1835. However, Thompson’s efforts were widely lauded by abolitionists. See H. A. S. Hewins, ‘Thompson, George Donisthorpe (1804–1878)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 54, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004), 436.

^[8] According to its third annual report, the Glasgow Emancipation Society ‘had agreed to request’ ‘a continuance of [Thompson’s] invaluable services.’ And Thompson did continue to serve as an agent of the Society. See Britain and America United... 3rd Annual Report of the GES, WSC, 10, 53, 56, 59.

^[9] Misspelled ‘engagment’ in the original printing.

^[10] McCune Smith would continue to adhere to the Garrisonian principle of nonviolent opposition to slavery until the mid-1850’s. See, for example, McCune Smith’s letter of March 1855 to friend and abolitionist Gerrit Smith, in which McCune Smith wrote of co-founding a new abolition society that would support ‘fight[ing]’ to end slavery if peaceful means failed. (‘James McCune Smith to Gerrit Smith, 1/31 March 1855’, Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University Libraries.)

^[11] Hoping to weaken barriers to education for African Americans, McCune Smith’s mentor Peter Williams, Jr, helped him (along with friends Isaiah DeGrasse and Alexander Crummell) to obtain an education that qualified for entry into college or university. Williams then helped McCune Smith (and the others) apply or applied on his behalf to institutions of higher learning in New York. However, Geneva College and Columbia rejected McCune Smith on account of race. There were no such proscriptions in Scotland, however, and the University of Glasgow – where the majority of students and faculty were anti-slavery – accepted McCune Smith’s application. McCune Smith earned his bachelor’s (1835), master’s (1836), and medical degree (1837) degree there, becoming the most educated and highly credentialed African American of his day. See Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament (Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808), 49–50, 85–87; ‘The University Anti-Slavery Petition’, Glasgow Chronicle, 22 February 1833, National Library of Scotland; Peter Williams, Jr to Gerrit Smith, 4 September 1834, Incoming Correspondence Box 39, Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University Libraries; Samuel Ringgold Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada & England (John Snow, 1855), 282; Robert Hamilton, ‘Dr. James McCune Smith [Obituary]’, The Anglo-African, 9 December 1865; Philip A. Bell, ‘Death of Dr. Jas. McCune Smith’, The Elevator, 22 December 1865; Guido Furman, ‘Obituary for James McCune Smith’, The Medical Register of the City of New York for the Year Commencing June 1, 1866, 1866, 201–4; David W. Blight, ‘In Search of Learning, Liberty, and Self Definition: James McCune Smith and the Ordeal of the Antebellum Black Intellectual’, Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 9, no. 2 (1985): 7–8; John Stauffer, ‘Introduction’, in The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, by James McCune Smith (Oxford University Press, 2006), xxi.

During his first few years in Glasgow as a student in its venerable University, James McCune Smith was as active a member of the Glasgow Emancipation Society – of which he was a founding member – as his busy academic schedule would allow. On this occasion, McCune Smith addressed the apprenticeship system of gradual abolition while reprising his role as a featured speaker at the GES’s annual public meeting.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Summary of James McCune Smith’s Remarks in Support of Rev Dr John Ritchie’s Resolution Offered at the Second Annual Meeting of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, 1 March 1836

Date: 1 March 1836

Source: ‘Second Annual Meeting of the Glasgow Emancipation Society. [Concluded.]’, The Liberator, 6 August 1836, p. 4 (In Internet Archive)

Text:

Mr. J. M’CUNE SMITH, (colored.) of New-York, seconded the motion.^[1] The apprenticeship, he said, was wrong in principle, ruinous in practice, and dangerous as a precedent.^[2] It had been said that immediate emancipation was likely to be productive of the most pernicious results; but in refutation of this it was only necessary to turn to St. Domingo, to Columbia^[3], and to Antigua,^[4] to prove the reverse. The apprenticeship was ruinous in practice, in as much as from the colonial government, composed as they were wholly of slaveowners, no measure could be expected calculated to ameliorate the condition of the negro.^[5] But the dangerous precedent afforded by the apprenticeship was particularly to be regarded. The people of Britain had nobly led the way in the abolition of slavery, and other nations might be willing to follow the example; but they might be tempted by our adoption of the seven years’ apprenticeship,^[6] to fold their arms and say, we shall wait to see what is the result of this experiment. Mr. S. then inculcated the propriety of calling for immediate emancipation. Let not, he said, the British Statute Book be stained with the assumption that man in any state is not fit for freedom. The horrors of the apprenticeship are more galling to the negro, than absolute slavery, as they are inflicted on them by the British people; and they are still further aggravated by the sound of the anthems heard from the neighboring shores of Antigua,^[7] where the slave has been completely released from his bonds.

^[1] James McCune Smith spoke in support of the resolution that Reverend John Ritchie proposed at the second annual meeting of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, held at Hugh Heugh’s church on 1 March 1836. See a reporter’s approximation of Ritchie’s resolution and supporting remarks in at the beginning of ‘Second Annual Meeting of the Glasgow Emancipation Society. [Concluded.]’ in the Liberator of 6 August 1836 (In Internet Archive). Ritchie was a member of the Edinburgh Emancipation Society. (See ‘Second Annual Meeting of the Glasgow Emancipation Society’, The Liberator, 30 July 1836; Edinburgh Emancipation Society, A Voice to the United States of America, From the Metropolis of Scotland (William Oliphant and Son, 1836), 8, 16, 17, 30.) Ritchie argued that the British people had long been ahead of their government when it came to reform and described the ongoing subjugation and sufferings of those who had been nominally freed in the British West Indies. He ‘call[ed upon his audience] to agitate in their respective circles on behalf of the negroes… address[ing] himself particularly to the students, some of whom he saw present, and bid them raise the muirburn of Anti-Slavery agitation throughout the country.’ (‘Muir-burn’ or ‘mure-burn’ is Scots for the burning of heath. See John Jamieson, An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (Edinburgh: Printed for A. Constable and Company, and A. Jameson by Abernethy & Walker, 1818, not paginated).

^[2] McCune Smith would have been well aware of reports of ongoing cruelty, coercion, and harsh conditions in the apprenticeship system that had replaced legal slavery in the British West Indies by the gradualist Act for the Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Colonies of 1833. Cropper, for one, heavily promoted such reports in an effort to get Parliament to end it the apprenticeship system, which abolitionists such as he and McCune Smith argued was just another form of slavery. Cropper’s son-in-law James Sturge would go to Jamaica from November 1836 to April 1837, where he gathered evidence of ill-treatment and other failures of the apprenticeship system. His testimony to the House of Commons and to the public about what he found helped convince Parliament to end the system in 1838, two years before it was due to end. See ‘The West Indian Apprentices’, The Leeds Mercury, 13 June 1835; ‘We Have Just Seen a Letter from the West Indies...’, The Caledonian Mercury, 7 November 1835; ‘The Colonial Question’, Liverpool Mercury, 4 December 1835; Alex Tyrell, ‘Sturge, Joseph (1793-1859)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 53, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004), 240.

^[3] Misspelled ‘Columbia’ in the original printing.

^[4] The former Spanish colony of Santo Domingo instituted full emancipation in 1821. Colombia, also a former Spanish dominion, didn’t do so until 1852. McCune Smith may have been referring here to Colombia’s abolition of birth slavery and its ban on importing slaves in 1821 which, in combination with other social and political trends and slaves’ widespread purchases of their own freedom, had dramatically diminished the practice of slavery by the time it was formally abolished. In the British sugar colony of Antigua, a forced apprenticeship system was never instituted after slavery was abolished throughout Britain and its domains in August 1834, as it was in the British West Indies. Abolitionists regularly pointed to Antigua’s continual increase in sugar production after emancipation as proof of the efficiency of free labor, showing that apprenticeship both unnecessary and counterproductive. See Aline Helg, Liberty and Equality in Caribbean Colombia, 1770-1835 (The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 163–64, 245–46; Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor vs. Slavery in British Emancipation (Oxford University Press, 2002), 145–49, 181–82; Seymour Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 190, 192.

^[5] Immediatist abolitionists – that is, those who opposed gradualist measures for ending slavery – insisted that apprenticeship interfered with free labour’s incentives for agency, self-sufficiency, and self-improvement, and therefore only served to prolong the inefficiencies, suffering, and violence that arose from the institution of slavery. See, for example, Drescher, Mighty Experiment, 136–38.

^[6] The apprenticeship system instituted in the British West Indies was originally supposed to last seven years after the formal abolition of slavery in August 1834. But, following extensive agitation against abuse and inefficiencies in the system, it was terminated early in 1838. See Drescher, Mighty Experiment, 133, 137–38, 144–51; Drescher, Abolition, 248, 264, 267.

^[7] Slavery fully ended in Antigua when the Act for the Abolition of Slavery took effect in August 1834. Unlike most other British West India colonies, Antigua did not put the temporary four-year apprenticeship system meant to smooth the transition from a slave-labour to a free-labour economy in place. Rather, Antigua and neighbouring Bermuda freed their slaves outright. See Mrs Lanaghan, Antigua and the Antiguans (Saunders & Otley, 1844; repr., MacMillan Education, 1991), 1:148–49; Jan Rogoziński, A Brief History of the Caribbean: From the Arawak and the Carib to the Present (Facts on File, 1992), 184–85.

James McCune Smith was a founding member of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, which was established – or, more precisely, re-organized from a predecessor anti-slavery society – with the expanded goal of ending slavery throughout the world. (See ‘Summary of James McCune Smith’s Remarks at the Glasgow Emancipation Society’s Founding Meeting, 12 December 1833.’) McCune Smith offered invaluable insights to the Society, its supporters, and its public audiences as an American who, along with his family, had suffered the horrors and indignities of what he called ‘slavery and caste.’

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Resolution and Summary of Supporting Remarks Offered at the First Annual Meeting of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, 25 February 1835

Date: 25 February 1835

Sources:

Resolution: First Annual Report of the Glasgow Emancipation Society: With an Appendix, and a List of Subscribers, by Glasgow Emancipation Society (Glasgow: Glasgow Emancipation Society, 1835), 5. William Smeal Collection, Mitchell Library/National Library of Scotland Microfilm). Also here, in the Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Pamphlet Collection (In the Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Pamphlet Collection)

Summary of supporting remarks: ‘Annual Meeting of the Glasgow Emancipation Society (From the Glasgow Chronicle of Feb. 27, 1835),’ The Liberator, 27 June 1835, p. 1 (In FairUse.org)

Text:

[Resolution:]

That this Meeting,^[1] contemplating the appalling statement made in the Report,^[2] that there are Five Millions of the human race in a state of the most abject Slavery, and the dreadful extent to which it appears the Slave-Trade is still carried on^[3]―of all the horrors and atrocities of which traffic, Slavery is the fruitful source,―Resolves, under the blessing of Divine Providence, to continue, and if possible increase their exertions, for the removal of the one, and the annihilation of the other.

[Summary of supporting remarks:]

Mr. Smith, a young gentleman of color, moved the second resolution, and in doing so could not but congratulate the society on the success which had already crowned their labors. In adverting to the efforts made by the society for the suppression of the slave trade, he remarked, that all exertions yet made had perhaps only tended to make the condition of the unhappy slaves still more miserable. It had been proved in many instances that when slave ships were pursued by the vessels employed to put an end to that inhuman traffic, if the slave captains saw themselves likely to fall into the hands of their pursuers, they made no scruple of throwing overboard the entire human cargo, that they might be able to swear that they had not a single slave on board.^[4] Mr. Smith then made some very judicious remarks on slavery as it exists at present in the United States, and the means which should be taken to put an end to it. According to the original constitution of the U. States, Congress had not the power to pass a law against slaveholding;^[5] but there was nothing to prevent them from putting an end to the traffic in slaves, and if Congress would be induced to pass a law for that purpose, slavery would soon die a natural death.^[6] In conclusion, he spoke of the labors of Mr. Thompson,^[7] who, although he had done much in the cause, would require to be assisted by others equally devoted to it.

^[1] This was the first annual meeting of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, held on 25 February 1835, and James McCune Smith’s resolution was the second one offered at the meeting. See First Annual Report of the Glasgow Emancipation Society: With an Appendix, and a List of Subscribers (Glasgow, 1835), 5, The William Smeal Collection, Mitchell Library, Glasgow (In the Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Pamphlet Collection).

^[2] The statement in the annual report presented and read at the meeting says: ‘[T]here are Five Millions of their fellow-men in Slavery throughout the World, and of these, Two and a half Millions under one of the reputedly freest Governments on the earth…’, i.e., the United States government. The footnote for this statement says that there were 2,250,000 slaves in the United States, 2,000,000 in Brazil, 500,000 in ‘Spanish possessions’, 300,000 in French possessions, and 100,000 in Danish, Dutch, and Portuguese possessions. See First Annual Report of the GES, WSC, 8–9 (In the Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Pamphlet Collection).

^[3] The first annual report included excerpts from reports from the abolitionist minister Thomas Roberts of Bristol and from Fernando Po, a West African island where a British squadron and courts dedicated to enforcing the laws against the transatlantic slave trade had been relocated from Sierra Leone. (This move proved to be unsuccessful). These communications indicated that between two and three hundred thousand Africans had been trafficked in the transatlantic slave trade over the past decade. See First Annual Report of the GES, WSC, 39–41 (In the Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Pamphlet Collection) and Leslie Bethell, ‘The Mixed Commissions for the Suppression of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century’, The Journal of African History 7, no. 1 (1966): 81–82; Robert T. Brown, ‘Fernando Po and the Anti-Sierra Leonean Campaign: 1826-1834’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 6, no. 2 (1973): 249–64.

^[4] Stories of captured Africans thrown overboard from illicit slave ships to avoid capture and punishment were regularly circulated but are hard to substantiate. One related case that was well-documented, however, was what came to be known as the Zong Massacre. In 1781, before the transatlantic slave trade was made illegal, the captain of a slave ship ordered that 132 sick African captives be thrown overboard so that insurance money could be collected for the losses; the policy didn’t cover natural deaths. See Charles Van Tenac, Histoire Générale de la Marine (Eugène et Victor Penaud Frères, 1853), 4:228–29; Christopher Lloyd, The Navy and the Slave Trade: The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century (Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1968), 8, 118.

^[5] McCune Smith would continue to argue that the Constitution did not grant the federal government the power to end slavery into the 1840’s. See, for example, ‘The Liberty Party (From the Northern Star)’, The Liberator, 28 June 1844; ‘The Liberty Party - No. IV (From the Northern Star and Clarksonian)’, National Anti-Slavery Standard, 14 November 1844. By 1850, however, McCune Smith had begun changing his mind, heavily influenced by his friend, the abolitionist and philanthropist Gerrit Smith. McCune Smith came to believe that while the Constitution made some concessions to slaveholders in not abolishing slavery right away, it was written with the expectation that slavery would end and with provisions that would allow the federal government to help this process along. By 1855, McCune Smith had come to see the Constitution as an essentially anti-slavery document. See, for example, Gerrit Smith, Gerrit Smith’s Constitutional Argument [to John G. Whittier, 18 July 1844] (Jackson & Chaplin, 1844); James McCune Smith et al., ‘To the People of the State of New York’, The Evening Post, 23 October 1850; James McCune Smith, James McCune Smith to Gerrit Smith, 1/31 March 1855, Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University Libraries; James McCune Smith, ‘Address to the Convention of Radical Political Abolitionists’ in Proceedings of the Convention of Radical Political Abolitionists, Held at Syracuse, N.Y., June 26th, 27th, and 28th, 1855 (Central Abolition Board, 1855); Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith: A Biography (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1878), 173–78.

^[6] To many abolitionists, the argument that slavery would die a ‘natural death’ following the abolition of slave trading initially appeared to be supported by population figures gleaned from slave registers in the British West Indies. Starting in 1808, the enslaved population started declining at a steady annual rate. However, as the population of those enslaved in the United States continued to increase at a healthy rate despite the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, it soon became clear that ending the trade was necessary but not at all sufficient for ending slavery. For example, William Wilberforce, who led the parliamentary campaign to abolish the British transatlantic slave trade and had long argued as McCune Smith did here, admitted in 1823 that the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade had not caused slavery and associated cruel practices to end as he and fellow abolitionists had expected. See William Wilberforce, An Appeal to the Religion, Justice and Humanity of the Inhabitants of the British Empire, in Behalf of the Negro Slaves in the West Indies (J. Hatchard and Son, 1823), 25–28; Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor vs. Slavery in British Emancipation (Oxford University Press, 2002), 47–52. It may appear rather curious, then, that McCune Smith was still making an argument that had been abandoned by many abolitionists. However, he may have believed this would play out differently in the United States since slavery was practiced within its borders rather than in overseas colonies, as with Britain.

^[7] The English abolitionist George Thompson. His plans for an anti-slavery mission to America had inspired the formation of the Glasgow Emancipation Society in late 1833. See footnotes for ‘Summary of James McCune Smith’s Remarks at the Glasgow Emancipation Society’s Founding Meeting, 12 December 1833’ in The World of James McCune Smith. Thompson’s ‘labors’ in the United States would arguably prove unsuccessful: his anti-slavery speeches provoked much backlash – including from President Andrew Jackson – and he was forced to flee the country in December 1835. However, Thompson’s efforts were widely lauded by abolitionists. See H. A. S. Hewins, ‘Thompson, George Donisthorpe (1804–1878)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 54, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004), 436.

Several years after he wrote them in 1832, James McCune Smith published edited extracts from the travel journal describing his journey from New York City to Britain en route to Glasgow – where he spent five years pursuing his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees at the University of Glasgow – in the Colored American. This is the eighth instalment, published while McCune Smith was serving as co-editor of the paper. (See the seventh instalment here.) The original journal is lost, but these extracts provide valuable and fascinating insights into McCune Smith’s early thought and outlook on the world.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Dr. Smith’s Journal [Liverpool, 13-15 September 1832]

Date: 13-15 September 1832

Source: The Colored American, 16 March 1839, p. 2

Keywords:

Text:

DR. SMITH’S^[1] JOURNAL.^[2]

Liverpool, Sept. 13.^[3] Strolled about the streets all day looking at men and their dwellings. The latter look horridly dull and gloomy, the former bustle along at the top of their speed. The only individuals that indulge in a moderate and stately pace are the gigantic draught horses with their sleek skins and splendid limbs, who drag burdens apparently four times heavier than are carried by our New York cart horses. Instead of tugging along with difficulty; they move majestically on and seem to rejoice in the display of their wonderful strength.

Passed through the Merchant’s Exchange, a somber building, enclosing an area in which the merchants assemble in clear weather, and which is bounded by a massive colonnade beneath which they perambulate in rainy days. The preponderance of the latter is manifested by the more worn appearance of the pave under the colonnade. In the center of the area is a monument in honor of Nelson.^[4] It is of cast iron and a most splendid piece of workmanship. The pedestal is octagonal, each face having a representation in alto relievo^[5] of some of his sea fights; and figures in chains, some partly broken, kneel opposite the facings.

The pedestal is surmounted by a colossal statue of the hero, reclining on ordnance,^[6] whilst Victory bends over him in the act of circling his brow with her deathless wreath, and from beneath the drapery of conquered flags, the grisly arm of death is stretched and the skeleton fingers clutch the victor’s heart. Death amid Victory! Genius perishing in the funeral pyre itself had kindled!

Sept. 14. Dined today at Mr. J― C―’s,^[7] whose daughter,^[8] Capt. Stuart,^[9] and several other gentlemen were present. Considerable interest was manifested by them concerning Mr. Gardiner Jones,^[10] several of whose communications in the Liberator had greatly gratified some of the party. I was informed that E. Cresson^[11] has made collections to the amount of 3,000 for the expatriating scheme. All seemed anxious that some means should be adopted which should expose the real character of this safety valve of American fears and American prejudices. Lent Capt. Stuart a copy of “Garrison’s Thoughts.”^[12]

The same gentleman handed me a small pamphlet^[13] from which it appears that the Rev. N. Paul who ‘came over’ to England this spring to collect money for Wilberforce Settlement (U.C.), is now engaged in collecting money to establish a COLLEGE in Canada where he says the people of color, of the United States, have determined to erect one in consequence of being refused the New Haven location. This is, to me, a very strange statement. For the convention which sat in Philadelphia in June last made no such determination. And I cannot conceive how such a resolve could have been made without my hearing of it.^[14]

In the evening, found myself whirling down the mazy dance at Mr. ––––’s assembly, whither I went with Mr. and Mrs. W––––,^[15] and Mr. R––––;^[16] the latter, a fellow boarder, is a young West Indian, some six feet high and of very frank, pleasing manners. He is serving an apprenticeship to the shipbuilding trade. Cupid has evidently ensnared him or there is not divination to be deduced where ‘eyes meet eyes.’^[17]

“O Love! Young Love! bound in thy rosy band

Let sage or Cynic prattle as he will

These hours and only these redeem life’s years of ill!”^[18]

Sept. 15. Engaged this evening in preparing to sail for Glasgow per steamer Ailza [sic] Craig,^[19] at 2 o’clock, P.M.―Made up a package of letters for home. There were two for dearest mother,^[20] five for my excellent friend, Rev. P.W.^[21] one for dear friend I.^[22] and one for (I dare not write the sex, but the initials are) A. D.^[23]

^[1] Several years after he wrote them in 1832, James McCune Smith published edited extracts from the travel journal describing his journey from New York City to Britain en route to Glasgow – where he spent five years pursuing his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees at the University of Glasgow – in the Colored American. See ‘Extracts’, The Colored American, 11 November 1837. The original journal has been lost, and only extracts pertaining to McCune Smith’s transatlantic crossing and sojourn in Liverpool were published. For another edited version of this and McCune Smith’s other travel journal entries published in the Colored American, see The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, ed. John Stauffer (Oxford University Press, 2006), 8–24.

^[2] This last installment of excerpts was published in the Colored American when McCune Smith was serving as its co-editor, alongside Samuel E. Cornish. Cornish, about eighteen years McCune Smith’s senior, was a close friend and frequent collaborator. Cornish had moved from his native Delaware to New York City after studying for the ministry and working as a missionary in Philadelphia. He founded the First Colored Presbyterian Church in 1821 and became co-editor (alongside John Russwurm) of Freedom’s Journal, the first newspaper owned and conducted by African Americans, upon its founding in 1827. See Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, ‘Cornish, Samuel E[Li] (1795-1858)’, in Dictionary of American Negro Biography (Norton, 1982); Jacqueline Bacon, Freedom’s Journal: The First African-American Newspaper (Lexington Books, 2007), 30–31.

^[3] Note the differences between the excerpts from the 13 September 1832 entry of McCune Smith’s travel journal as published in the 21 July 1838 and the 16 March 1839 issues of the Colored American. These differences indicate that at least some of the wording in at least some of the travel journal entries was edited prior to publication, perhaps previously by Cornish but in this instance, most likely by McCune Smith himself.

^[4] The Liverpool guidebook describes the Horatio Nelson monument as a ‘fine group of bronze statuary, with appropriate ornaments, in commemoration of the heroic and immortal Nelson… At the base of the pedestal are four emblematic figures, of heroic size, in the character of captives, or vanquished enemies, in allusion to the four signal victories obtained by lord Nelson; namely, those of St. Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen, and of Trafalgar…. The principal figure is the admiral, resting one foot on a conquered enemy, and the other on a cannon. With an eye steadfast and upraised to Victory, he is receiving from her a fourth naval crown upon his sword; which, to indicate the loss of his right arm, is held in his left hand.’ See Thomas Kaye, The Stranger in Liverpool: Or, An Historical and Descriptive View of the Town of Liverpool and Its Environs (Thomas Kaye, 1833), 230–31.

^[5] See ‘ALTO-RELIEVO. It. High relief; a mode of sculpture representing figures either entirely, or nearly, detached from the back ground’ in John Britton, A Dictionary of the Architecture and Archaeology of the Middle Ages (Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1838), 20.

^[6] Misspelled ‘ordonance’ in the original printing.

^[7] James Cropper’s. See footnotes for ‘C–––’ and ‘J.C. Esq.’ in the entry for ‘Extracts from Dr. Smith’s Journal [9-11 September 1832’ (In The World of James McCune Smith).

^[8] Eliza Cropper, who married the philanthropist and abolitionist Joseph Sturge in 1834; she died the next year in childbirth. See M. W. Kirby, ‘Cropper, James (1773-1840)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 14, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004), 406; Alex Tyrell, ‘Sturge, Joseph (1793-1859)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 53, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004), 240.

^[9] Charles Stuart. See footnote for ‘Capt. S–––’ in the entry for ‘Extracts from Dr. Smith’s Journal [9-11 September 1832]’ (In The World of James McCune Smith).

^[10] Gardner Jones had written a series of letters from New York opposing the American Colonization Society from the winter through the summer of 1832 in response to a challenge from an anonymous supporter who identified themselves as the ‘Shade of Ashmun.’ Jones identified this supporter as Isaac Orr, a member of the Society. See ‘Challenge Accepted (From the Washington Spectator)’, The Liberator, 19 November 1831; ‘To Rev. Isaac Orr. Letter I’, The Liberator, 7 January 1832; ‘To Rev. Isaac Orr’, The Liberator, 18 February 1832; ‘Rev. Isaac Orr and the Shade of Ashmun’, The Liberator, 17 March 1832; ‘African Colonization. To Rev. Isaac Orr. Letter II’, The Liberator, 28 April 1832; ‘African Colonization. To Rev. Isaac Orr. Letter III’, The Liberator, 5 May 1832; ‘African Colonization. To Rev. Isaac Orr. Letter IV’, The Liberator, 12 May 1832; ‘African Colonization. To Rev. Isaac Orr. Letter V’, The Liberator, 2 June 1832; ‘African Colonization. To Rev. Isaac Orr. Letter VI’, The Liberator, 9 June 1832; ‘African Colonization. To Rev. Isaac Orr. Letter VII’, The Liberator, 23 June 1832; ‘African Colonization. To Rev. Isaac Orr. Letter VIII’, The Liberator, 7 July 1832; ‘African Colonization. To Rev. Isaac Orr. Letter IX’, The Liberator, 21 July 1832; ‘African Colonization. To Rev. Isaac Orr. Letter X’, The Liberator, 4 August 1832 (In the Fair Use Repository). The Society was founded in December 1816 by Robert Finley and others who believed that the best way to end the oppression and enslavement of people of African descent in the United States was to expatriate them – beginning with those already free – into colonies outside of the country, preferably in Africa. For the founding of the Society and Orr’s membership in it, and for more about Jehudi Ashmun, who had helped develop the colony in Liberia, see Early Lee Fox, The American Colonization Society, 1817-1840 (Johns Hopkins Press, 1919), 43–49, 110, 218–19.

^[11] Elliot Cresson was an agent of the American Colonization Society. He travelled throughout Great Britain from the summer of 1831 to 1833 to raise money and support for the Society. See ‘Liberia’, The Preston Chronicle and Lancashire Advertiser, 4 June 1831; Fox, American Colonization Society, 61, 74, 90, 111, 133–34.

^[12] The eminent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, founder and editor of the Liberator, wrote a book denouncing the mission and principles of the American Colonization Society. He argued, among other things, that the Society had ‘pledged’ itself ‘not to interfere with the system of slavery’; that it ‘apologises for slavery and slaveholders’; that it ‘recognizes slaves as property’; that it ‘increases the value of slaves’; that it was ‘the enemy of immediate abolition’; that it sought to expel every single black person from the United States; that it routinely ‘disparage[d]’ black people; and that it was dishonest regarding it motives and ability to carry out its mission. Garrison also included letters that Stuart had written opposing the Society in response to Cresson’s efforts in Britian on its behalf. See William Lloyd Garrison, Thoughts on African Colonization: Or, an Impartial Exhibition of the Doctrines, Principles and Purposes of the American Colonization Society. Together with the Resolutions, Addresses and Remonstrances of the Free People of Color (Garrison and Knapp, 1832), 39–42, 61, 68, 74, 124, 151–54 (In Internet Archive). Though Garrison’s work influenced McCune Smith, his own opposition to colonization was likely first and most strongly influenced by his mentor Peter Williams, Jr. Though he had once supported such efforts, Williams turned against colonization and, by 1830, began to speak publicly against the project. For example, Williams delivered a discourse at St Philip’s that year to benefit the Wilberforce Settlement in Canada (see footnote below for more about the settlement) in which he, among other things, characterized the American Colonization Society as an expression of its members’ racial prejudices. See Peter Williams, Discourse Delivered in St. Philip’s Church, for the Benefit of the Coloured Community of Wilberforce in Upper Canada, on the Fourth of July, 1830 (Printed by G. F. Bunce, 1830), 5–9 (In Hathi Trust).

^[13] This pamphlet was Stuart’s Remarks on the Colony of Liberia and the American Colonization Society. It includes the text of a testimonial of support for Nathaniel Paul’s fundraising efforts for the Wilberforce Settlement in Upper Canada (in what we now know as lower Ontario), established by black Americans fleeing Ohio’s oppressive black codes. Wilberforce was to be a haven for those who wished to live and work free from racial oppression and slavery but stay in North America, and was named for the famous English anti-slave trade activist William Wilberforce. See ‘William Wilberforce, Esq.’, Glasgow Chronicle, 9 August 1833, National Library of Scotland; Charles Stuart, Remarks on the Colony of Liberia and the American Colonization Society: With Some Account of the Settlement of Coloured People, at Wilberforce, Upper Canada (J. Messeder (printer), 1832), 9–10, 15–16 (In Internet Archive) and Paul Walker, ‘The Revd Nathaniel Paul (1793-1839) Another African-American Baptist Minister in Britain’, Baptist Quarterly 43, no. 2 (2009): 99–100. Paul, a charismatic and eloquent speaker, was born free in New Hampshire around 1793. He moved to New York State where he founded the Albany African Free Schurch Association and the Union Society of Albany for the Improvement of the Colored People in Morals, Education, and the Mechanical Arts. Paul moved to the Wilberforce Settlement in 1830 and started his fundraising and promotional tour in Britain in 1832. He, like McCune Smith, Garrison, Stuart, and Cropper, opposed the American Colonization Society. See William Lloyd Garrison, ‘Rev. Nathaniel Paul’, The Liberator, 25 August 1832; Walker, ‘The Revd Nathaniel Paul’, 97–98; Robert S. Levine, ‘Fifth of July: Nathaniel Paul and the Construction of Black Nationalism’, in Genius in Bondage: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic, ed. Vincent Carretta and Philip Gould (The University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 242–43, 247–50.

^[14] As McCune Smith wrote, the ‘Second Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color in these United States’ held in Philadelphia in June did not settle on Wilberforce or any other location for establishing a college. The previous convention had planned a college for black students to be built in New Haven. However, due to opposition by some local white people there, the committee appointed by the Philadelphia convention to plan and establish the college decided to suspend those plans until a more suitable location could be found. McCune Smith’s incredulity that new plans could have been formed without his knowledge would have been due to the fact that his close friend Philip Bell was on the college committee and Samuel Cornish was its fundraiser. Bell would have kept McCune Smith informed of developments, and perhaps Cornish as well. Paul was mentioned nowhere in the Convention proceedings. See Minutes and Proceedings of the Second Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color in These United States, Held by Adjournments in the City of Philadelphia, from the 4th to the 13th of June, Inclusive, 1832 (Martin & Boden, Printers, 1832), 23–27 (Reprint in Internet Archive). However, the plan for a college – or rather, industrial school – in Wilberforce had been conceived and developed independently of the Convention. See Walker, ‘The Revd Nathaniel Paul’, 102. Despite McCune Smith’s surprise, he came to support Paul’s fundraising for the school. As a Glasgow paper reported, McCune Smith was a featured speaker at a Paul fundraising event for the school on 2 December 1834. Though, as a local paper reported, his speech was ‘received with great applause,’ no text or summary of McCune Smith’s speech is known to survive. See ‘Public Meeting - Wilberforce Settlement (From the Glasgow Chronicle of Dec. 3, 1834)’, The Liberator, 14 March 1835.

^[15] ‘Mr. and Mrs. W––––’ have not been identified.

^[16] ‘Mr. R––––’ has not been identified.

^[17] Perhaps from the poem ‘Art of Love’ by William King, Part XIV: ‘When eyes meet eyes, and smiles to smiles return, / ‘Tis then both hearts with equal ardour burn.’ See Samuel Johnson, ed., The Works of the English Poets, with Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, XXVI (J. Buckland, J. Rivington and Sons [and others], 1790), 83 (In Internet Archive).

^[18] From Byron’s ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,’ Canto II, Ch. LXXXI: ‘Oh Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band. Let sage or cynic prattle as he will. These hours, and only these, redeem Life’s years of ill!’ See George Gordon Byron, Works, I (John Murray, 1829), 78 (In Internet Archive).

^[19] Misspelled ‘Ailza Craig’ in the original printing. McCune Smith travelled from Liverpool to Glasgow on the steam packet Ailsa Craig. See ‘For Greenock and Glasgow’, The Saturday’s Advertiser (Liverpool, Merseyside, England), 8 September 1832.

^[20] Lavinia Smith.

^[21] Peter Williams, Jr.

^[22] Isaiah DeGrasse. See ‘Extracts from Dr. Smith’s Journal [9-11 September 1832]’ fn 17, in The World of James McCune Smith.

^[23] ‘A. D.’ has not been identified. If there were any young women or girls of the right age and first initial for McCune Smith to be writing to among the families of New York friends with ‘D’ names – such as the DeGrasses or the Downings – they remain unknown. Here again, McCune Smith’s coyness has proven durably effective. But McCune Smith may have written of her later, and even more coyly. In 1859, while reminiscing about his youth, McCune Smith wrote of someone who attended St Philips who ‘I fear to me was holier than service or sermon, brighter than the lamps within or the stars above the church―now, I am credibly informed a very worthy grand-mother with six immediate and twenty secondary descendants in the pines of Georgia.’ See James McCune Smith, ‘From Our New York Correspondent’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 25 March 1859.

Several years after he wrote them in 1832, James McCune Smith published edited extracts from the travel journal describing his journey from New York City to Britain en route to Glasgow – where he spent five years pursuing his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees at the University of Glasgow – in the Colored American. This is the seventh instalment. (See the sixth here) The original journal is lost, but these extracts provide valuable and fascinating insights into McCune Smith’s early thought and outlook on the world.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Dr. Smith’s Journal [12 September Part 2 - 13 September 1832]

Date: 12 September Part 2 - 13 September 1832

Source: The Colored American, 21 July 1838, p. 3

Text:

For the Colored American.^[1]

Dr. Smith’s Journal.^[2]

––––

During my walk through the Cemetery^[3] I proved but a dull companion to my fair Ciarone;^[4] for in spite of an earnest desire to be attentive to her brilliant conversation, my mind was almost constantly plunged into such reverie as the place naturally called up. In future, in order to avoid the imputation of dullness as well as to gather most profit from them, I shall strive to visit sublime and beautiful objects when alone. It must be best to be alone on such occasions; for, there being diversity of minds, each one may be differently affected by the same object. In gazing on the self same scene for example, while one revels in the unmixed pleasure of gratified vision, another drinks in poetic beauties to be woven into song, past a third may rush the “memory of the days that are gone,”^[5] and a fourth per chance, indulges in dim imaginings of the dark future, in which human happiness and human woe are mercifully pent up from mortal ken.^[6] And conversation however delightful in its appropriate sphere, would in this case break up each man’s chain of thought and check all communion with the “genius loci.”^[7] Fancy Byron, at the cataract of Niagara tete a tete with the calculating Yankee who exclaimed when gazing thereon, “Gosh! what a mighty fine water privilege!”^[8]

Sept. 13th.―Strolled through the streets, which are dull enough and sufficiently gloomy, except a few of the principal thoroughfares, in which business and gaiety are concentrated. Every one dashes along at the top of their speed; and the only individuals who indulge in a moderate stately pace, are the gigantic draught horses, also with their sleek skins and splendid limbs, with a load quadruple that borne by a New York animal, move along in the complaisant display of their wonderful strength. The people grew furious the other night when the lecturer Borthwick, compared a man to a horse; but surely so far as outward appearance, comfortable quarters, food and care are concerned, there is no comparison between these stately animals, and the miserable beggars with whom the streets are occasionally disgraced, and whose crafty display of putrescent sores, is fearfully disgusting. Yet even these wretched beings are pursuing their trade, which requires more intellect and yields more profit, than many far more honest callings.

Passed through the ‘Merchants’ Exchange,’ a sombre building of stone, blackened with smoke. It encloses a square in which merchants perambulate on clear days, and the square is surrounded by a massive colonnade,^[9] beneath which they assemble during rainy weather.^[10] The preponderance of the latter is manifest from the comparatively worn appearance of the pave under the colonnade.^[11] In the centre of the square is a monument in honor of Nelson.^[12]

^[1] Several years after he wrote them in 1832, James McCune Smith published edited extracts from the travel journal describing his journey from New York City to Britain en route to Glasgow – where he spent five years pursuing his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees at the University of Glasgow – in the Colored American. See ‘Extracts’, The Colored American, 11 November 1837. The original journal has been lost, and only extracts pertaining to McCune Smith’s transatlantic crossing and sojourn in Liverpool were published.

^[2] For another edited version of this and McCune Smith’s other travel journal entries published in the Colored American, see The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, ed. John Stauffer (Oxford University Press, 2006), 8–24.

^[3] Misspelled ‘Cemetry’ in the original printing.

^[4] The origin and significance of the name ‘Ciarone’ as used here is unknown. (Ciarone is a form of a relatively rare Italian surname or male first name.) It is possible that ‘Ciarone’ is a typographical error for a different name.

^[5] The source of this quote is unknown.

^[6] Perhaps a variation on ‘This sphere assign’d, that oft from mortal ken / Is veil’d by other’s beams.’ From Canto V of Dante Alighieri, The Vision; or, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, [The Divine Comedy] of Dante Alighieri, II, trans. Henry Francis Cary (Samuel F. Bradford, 1822), 175 (In Hathi Trust). McCune Smith checked out a copy of the Inferno, Volume II, from the University of Glasgow library on 4 June 1835. See University of Glasgow, Students Receipt Book: Books Alphabetically. Glasgow University Library, October 1834 to December 1837 (Glasgow, 1837), Records, A51 (CA01e), p. 629, University of Glasgow Archives & Special Collections. This work may have been an enduring favourite or assigned reading for a class. Or, McCune Smith may have added this passage when editing this entry for publication.

^[7] ‘Genius loci’ – spirit of a place. For examples of usage by authors McCune Smith read, see Annalium Lib. II in Cornelius Tacitus, C. Cornelii Taciti Opera Omnia, with Abraham John Valpy et al., Works.1821 (A. J. Valpy, 1821), 383 note ‘g’ (In Hathi Trust) and Walter Scott, The Antiquary, I (A. Constable and Co., 1821), 53 (In Hathi Trust).

^[8] Though no contemporary example of this quote has been found, it appears to have become part of an illustrative anecdote. For example, the German author of a mid-nineteenth century travel journal also appears to have repeated it: ‘A Canadian Briton at the sight of a fine waterfall that might be easily applied to some useful purpose, would exclaim, “What a fine water privilege!” and in the same sense he would say, “Those privileges are become my property.”’ (Translated from the original German.) See Johann G. Kohl, Travels in Canada, and Through the States of New York and Pennsylvania, trans. Percy Sinnett (George Manwaring, 1861), 288.

^[9] Misspelled ‘colonade’ in the original printing.

^[10] According to a contemporary Liverpool guidebook, the Exchange building was designed by John Foster and constructed between 1803-1806 from stone quarried in Toxteth Park. It was more than twice the size of the London Exchange, featured Corinthian and Doric columns and other design elements and three ‘piazzas for the accommodation of the merchants, to protect them from the inclemency of the weather in the winter, and from the heat of the sun in summer.’ See Thomas Kaye, The Stranger in Liverpool: Or, An Historical and Descriptive View of the Town of Liverpool and Its Environs (Thomas Kaye, 1833), 100–103.

^[11] Misspelled ‘colonade’ in the original printing.

^[12] Horatio Nelson (1758-1805), Vice-Admiral of the British Royal Navy and hero of the Battle of Trafalgar. See N. A. M. Rodger, ‘Nelson, Horatio, Viscount Nelson (1758-1805)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 40, ed. Henry C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004). See also footnote 4 for discussion of the Nelson statue in ‘Dr. Smith’s Journal [Liverpool, 13-15 September 1832]’, The Colored American, 16 March 1839 in The World of James McCune Smith.

Several years after he wrote them in 1832, James McCune Smith published edited extracts from the travel journal describing his journey from New York City to Britain en route to Glasgow – where he spent five years pursuing his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees at the University of Glasgow – in the Colored American. This is the sixth instalment. (See the fifth here) The original journal is lost, but these extracts provide valuable and fascinating insights into McCune Smith’s early thought and outlook on the world.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Dr. Smith’s Journal

Date: 12 September 1832

Source: The Colored American, 30 June 1838, pp. 2-3

Text:

Dr. Smith’s Journal. ^[1]

Sept. 12^th.^[2] This morning I was introduced to Mrs. A–––––, daughter of the member for–––––^[3] and the wife of my old friend and Schoolmate, J. A–––––^[4] whose fine genius must have withered beneath the sickly glare of a pseudo-republican^[5] sun, has by his varied powers and persevering industry won a high reputation on the British provincial stage, the esteem and hospitality of Sir Walter Scott,^[6] and the heart and hand of an elegant and accomplished daughter of a member of the British Parliament. She fondly dotes on her husband, and showed me a splendid bust in which I could trace every lineament of the countenance of my old School-fellow and comrade in many a heady fight amid the memorable marshes of the classic Collect.^[7] Little did I think when his fine eye flashed and his trumpet voice cheered us on to the conflict of stones and clubs, that the same eye and voice would one day rouse a shrill of admiration in an enlightened and polished audience.

In the afternoon, in company with Mrs. A––––– (Mr. A––––– is now performing in London)^[8] visited the new Cemetery.^[9] It is an artificial valley cut out of solid rock by the quarrying which furnished stone for the vast and magnificent docks of Liverpool. It is therefore an immense tomb hewn out of rock.^[10] Passing from the street we entered an iron gateway, and turning abruptly to the right saw peering above the shrubbery, the Chapel set apart for the performance of the service for the “Burial of the Dead.” It is built of red Sandstone, and is a beautiful specimen of architecture: fluted columns support splendid porticoes at each extremity of the building, and light is let in from the roof only. A little farther on in the same direction stands the stately mansion of the Rector of the Parish. Our path terminated in a flight of hewn steps, descending which, and passing beneath the cold dim shade of an arch or tunnel (also hewn) we entered the “valley of death.”^[11]

Its form is serpentine, and is about the size of our Park in New York.^[12] Beautiful and level green sward,^[13] young trees, and delightful flowers, render the valley a pleasant promenade, yet it is one that will cause the most thoughtless to reflect: for, beyond the vernal trees and blooming flowers, abruptly arise the naked rocks out of which are hewn the tombs of the dead. I love this mingling of life with death, this decking of the grave with flowers! They are doubly significant, they tell of the evanescence of life, they tell of that bloom beyond the grave where “there is no more sorrow.”^[14] Away with death heads and cross’d bones, away with emblems of gloom and sorrow from the tombstone―they tell nothing of the history of the soul, a great era in which they are meant to commemorate: they tell nothing of the glorious change from the crushed hopes, the blasted affections, from the bitterness and gall of earth, to a state of happiness in heaven. All must die, why then accustom all from earliest childhood to couple death with images of horror. If solemnity be wanted, let the appeal be made to the imagination rather than the senses. To stand upon a grave and know that the form we once admired lies cold and mouldering beneath, will create a feeling of awe far more vivid and enduring than the carved, perhaps, rude representations on the tombstone.

About midway along the valley there gushes from the bosom of a rock, a living spring whence a tiny streamlet wanders to the extremity of the valley. Opposite the spring, and in the very centre of the valley, a plain wooden urn lies on the green sward; it marks the grave of Huskisson.^[15] What a melancholy fate was his! He perished in the very fruition of his hopes!

^[1] Several years after he wrote them in 1832, James McCune Smith published edited extracts from the travel journal describing his journey from New York City to Britain en route to Glasgow – where he spent five years pursuing his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees at the University of Glasgow – in the Colored American. See ‘Extracts’, The Colored American, 11 November 1837. The original journal has been lost, and only extracts pertaining to McCune Smith’s transatlantic crossing and sojourn in Liverpool were published.

^[2] For another edited version of this and McCune Smith’s other travel journal entries published in the Colored American, see The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, ed. John Stauffer (Oxford University Press, 2006), 8–24.

^[3] ‘Mrs. A–––––’ refers to Margaret Aldridge, née Gill, British wife of McCune Smith’s old schoolmate and friend Ira Aldridge. She was not, however, the daughter of a member of Parliament from Berks County (‘daughter of the member for–––––’) despite claims to the contrary. Ten years older than Aldridge, Margaret was the daughter of a stocking-weaver from Northallerton in Yorkshire. She and Aldridge married on 27 November 1825. See Bernth Lindfors, Ira Aldridge: The Early Years, 1807-1833 (University of Rochester Press, 2011), 93–94. Alridge’s nephew recalled that despite claims to the contrary, ‘Mr. Aldridge did not elope with the lady he married, but married her at her father’s house in Yorkshire, England, as I very well know. Dr. James McCune Smith and the Rev. H. H. Garnet, if living, would testify to the same.’ See David I. Aldridge, ‘About Ira Aldridge. His Nephew Corrects Some Statements as to His Acting and Marriage’, New York Age, 25 January 1890.

^[4] ‘J. A–––––’ refers to Ira Aldridge; ‘J’ is apparently a typographical error.

^[5] McCune Smith would continue to argue that the United States wasn’t yet a true republic because it didn’t represent all its people, most notably in James McCune Smith, The Destiny of the People of Color: A Lecture, Delivered Before the Philomathean Society and Hamilton Lyceum in January, 1841 (Published by Request, 1843), 4–5, 10.

^[6] I have not been able to verify that Aldridge had stayed with or even met Scott by mid-September 1832. Bernth Lindfor’s detailed three-volume biography of Aldridge (2011) doesn’t mention this either.

^[7] ‘The Collect,’ or Collect Pond, was a five-acre pond in what would become the Five Points neighbourhood in New York City. Once a lovely landmark, it had become terribly polluted from the industry that had sprung up around it, including tanneries and slaughterhouses. It was gradually filled in between 1802 and 1813 and thoroughly built over. The ground, however, remained damp, and basements of building erected where Collect Pond had been would regularly flood in wet weather. See Tyler Anbinder, Five Points: The 19th-Century New York Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum (Free Press, 2010), 14–19.

^[8] Aldridge was actually performing in Lancaster at this time, though it’s possible he had been in London before he arrived in Lancaster around the first week in September to begin about two weeks of performances. See Lindfors, Aldridge, Early Years, 226–29, 345 n17, 346 n22-30.

^[9] St. James’s Cemetery. McCune Smith’s description matches that of a contemporary guidebook to the city, including the iron gates, the Grecian-style chapel, the stately minister’s house, and even down to the adjective ‘serpentine’ (though the guide describes the paths this way while McCune Smith uses it to describe the whole cemetery.) See Thomas Kaye, The Stranger in Liverpool: Or, An Historical and Descriptive View of the Town of Liverpool and Its Environs (Thomas Kaye, 1833), 114–17. See also Gore’s Directory and View of Liverpool and Its Environs, for 1832 (J. Gore and Son, 1832), Appendix p. 57.

^[10] An anonymous self-described ‘nonagenarian’ wrote an account of ‘Old Liverpool’ in which they commented approvingly that the ‘conversion of the huge stone quarry at the Mount into a cemetery was a very good idea. This immense excavation was becoming a matter of anxiety with the authorities, as to what should be done with so large an area of so peculiar a nature. To fill it up with rubbish seemed an impossibility, while the constant and increasing demand for stone added to the difficulties of the situation. The establishment of a cemetery at Kensal Green in Middlesex, suggested the conversion of this quarry to a similar purpose.’ See Anonymous, Recollections of Old Liverpool, by a Nonagenarian (J. F. Hughes, 1863), 194–95.

^[11] See Psalms 23:4: ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’ The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments [King James Version] (William W. Woodward, 1813) (In Internet Archive).

^[12] Probably City Hall Park, then the largest and most elegant park in the city and the site where major public events were held (including a reception for Lafayette on 16 August 1824, three weeks before McCune Smith delivered an address to him at the African Free School). See Henry S. Tanner, New-York [Map, 1834], Book map, 3rd edn, H. S. Tanner, 1837, David Rumsey Map Collection; Edward H. Hall, An Appeal for the Preservation of City Hall Park, New York: With a Brief History of the Park (American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, 1910), 4, 20, 25–26, 39.

^[13] ‘Green-sward’: ‘Turf green with grass.’ ‘Sward’ – ‘The grassy surface of land; turf; that part of the soil which is filled with the roots of grass, forming a kind of mat.’ See Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd edn (S. Converse, 1830), 388, 816.

^[14] See Revelation 21:4: ‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.’ Holy Bible (In Internet Archive).

^[15] William Huskisson (1770-1830) was an English politician who served for a time as Member of Parliament for Liverpool. He focused on free trade and financial reforms. As Huskisson was taking steps to revive his flagging political career, he was struck by the Liverpool-Manchester train on 15 September 1830 as it made its maiden voyage, and died that evening of his injuries. See Anthony C. Howe, ‘Huskisson, William (1770-1830)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 28, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004).

Several years after he wrote them in 1832, James McCune Smith published edited extracts from the travel journal describing his journey from New York City to Britain en route to Glasgow – where he spent five years pursuing his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees at the University of Glasgow – in the Colored American. This is the fifth instalment. (See the fourth here) The original journal is lost, but these extracts provide valuable and fascinating insights into McCune Smith’s early thought and outlook on the world.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Extract from Dr. Smith’s Journal

Date: 11 September 1832

Source: The Colored American, 19 April 1838, p. 3

Text:

For the Colored American.^[1]

Extract from Dr. Smith’s Journal.^[2]

Sept. 11th. The Amphitheatre had been hired for the debate,^[3] and admission was afforded by tickets equally distributed by the Anti-Slavery^[4] and the West India^[5] Committees. Long before the appointed hour, the place was densely crowded, from the Pit to the Gallery, with many thousands, of both sexes, and every rank in the community. It was curious to observe too, how a mere discussion on the “inalienable rights of man,”^[6] leveled the prescriptive ranks of society. The parts of the building usually allotted for the different orders of society were now promiscuously filled by all, forgetful of wonted distinctions, in their eagerness to listen to arguments concerning rights common to themselves and all mankind. Peer and clown, lady and laundress sat side by side, unaware of any “horrid contact”^[7] and remembering only that they were listening to the condition, and were about to decide on^[8] the fate of eight hundred thousand human beings, with feelings as susceptible and rights as dear and inalienable as their own. It was a spectacle whose moral sublimity might well be esteemed the glory of our age.

Above three thousand people, themselves free, intense lovers of liberty and haters of slavery, having the means and the will to disenthrall a vast number of their fellow men, dispassionately listening to the plea of the slaveholder, in defense of his ill-gotten and fearfully abused power! It was an indisputable proof that the audience enjoyed and appreciated national liberty, when they sat and calmly listened to the defense of a system which from their youth upwards, their education, prejudices, feeling and judgment had all conjoined to condemn.

Mr. Borthwick,^[9] the planters advocate, who addressed the audience this evening, is well qualified for the task of defending slavery. His mind is more subtle than comprehensive. Drilled under the severe training of the University of Glasgow, and further polished by the elegant learning of Oxford, his mind has had full scope for its original bent, and revels in the darling mares of sophistry rather than gaze on the sunlight of truth. The present discussion affords him ample opportunity for the display of his uncommon and brilliant talents. Somewhat forbidding in aspect, his fine voice won the ear, and his consummate tact, the sympathies of his audience to a certain degree. Occasionally, however, he presumed too far on their acumen, or credulity, when a few hisses would notify him of the error. Once only was he seriously interrupted. In showing the claim of the planter to compensation he said “it would be as unfair to deprive the planter of his slaves without remuneration, as to take away from an English gentlemen his coach and horses”―here his voice was drowned in one simultaneous groan of indignation, the most awful sound to which I have ever listened; and a hundred stentorian lungs cried out “Do you compare a man to a horse?”―

His concluding remarks I cannot otherwise designate than as eloquent nonsense. He earnestly plead for Gradual in preference to Immediate Emancipation, and called in Painting, Poetry, and even Nature herself as evinced in the gradual changes of the seasons, as analogies in favor of his views of the question.

When Mr. Borthwick sat down, the audience rose, and turning towards a box a little to the left of the one in which I sat gave three tremendous cheers. A gentleman bowed in acknowledgment. It was Mr. GEORGE THOMPSON.^[10]

^[1] Several years after he wrote them in 1832, James McCune Smith published edited extracts from the travel journal describing his journey from New York City to Britain en route to Glasgow – where he spent five years pursuing his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees at the University of Glasgow – in the Colored American. See ‘Extracts’, The Colored American, 11 November 1837. The original journal has been lost, and only extracts pertaining to McCune Smith’s transatlantic crossing and sojourn in Liverpool were published.

^[2] For another edited version of this and McCune Smith’s other travel journal entries published in the Colored American, see The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, ed. John Stauffer (Oxford University Press, 2006), 8–24.

^[3] For a contemporary and detailed newspaper account of Peter Borthwick’s lecture on this evening, see ‘Slavery in the West Indies - Mr. Borthwick’s Third Lecture’, The Liverpool Mercury, 14 September 1832. McCune Smith’s account matches this reporting in many respects.

^[4] The Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions, generally known as the London Anti-Slavery Society, London Anti-Slavery Committee, or, simply, the Anti-Slavery Society, was founded in early 1823. It promoted and lobbied for the abolition of slavery and against pro-slavery West India planters and merchants (see footnote blow). See Report of the Committee of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions (The Society, 1824), 1; David B. Davis, ‘James Cropper and the British Anti-Slavery Movement, 1821-1823’, The Journal of Negro History 45, no. 4 (1960): 252–53, 254.

^[5] The Committee of West Indian Planters and Merchants – popularly called the West India Committee – was formed in January 1775 to promote and lobby for the interests of planters and merchants who made their money from ‘sugar and other commodities’ produced in the British West Indies. Since these commodities were primarily produced by slave labour, anti-slavery advocates targeted the Committee as a pro-slavery organization opposed to their efforts to end slavery in all British dominions. See Douglas Hall, A Brief History of the West India Committee (Caribbean Universities Press, 1971), 2–6.

^[6] This phrase was widely used in abolitionist and other civil rights discourse at the time, based on the famous assertion in the Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal [and are] endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.’ See Thomas Jefferson, ‘The Declaration of Independence’, ed. Committee of Five, John Dunlap [Official Printer to the Continental Congress], 1776 (In Internet Archive).

^[7] A phrase occasionally and most commonly used in accounts of collisions that caused injury; no clear source inspiring McCune Smith’s use of the phrase in quotes has been identified.

^[8] McCune Smith may have been referring here to the 1832 parliamentary committees charged with gathering testimony on free and enslaved labour in British colonies prior to taking legislative action on ending slavery in them. These followed a mass petition campaign in 1830-1831 to raise signatures in support of ending slavery; this campaign was repeated in 1833. See Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor vs. Slavery in British Emancipation (Oxford University Press, 2002), 119, 121.

^[9] Peter Borthwick, an aspiring politician who gained fame (and in some circles, notoriety) giving lectures opposing the immediate abolition of slavery in British colonies. Though Borthwick insisted that he was not a defender of slavery and in fact supported gradual emancipation, he was widely perceived to be a proslavery apologist. McCune Smith’s account of his educational history is incorrect: Borthwick graduated from the University of Edinburgh and attended Cambridge and Downing College. (He does not appear in the University of Glasgow’s matriculation records.) Though Borthwick was generally regarded as a talented speaker, his political career was not particularly successful. He eventually became a newspaper editor. See P. Landreth, Life and Ministry of the Rev. Adam Thomson (Andrew Elliott, 1869), 365–67; The Liverpool Mercury, ‘Slavery in the West Indies, Liverpool Mercury, 14 Sep 1832’; H. C. G. Matthew, ‘Borthwick, Peter (1804–1852)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 6, ed. Henry C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004).

^[10] Though McCune Smith only reported the cheers for the famous English abolitionist George Thompson, the contemporary newspaper report says that Thompson was greeted with ‘a storm of yells and groans’ from the audience when he tried to speak ‘once or twice.’ This may have been due to the fact that it was Borthwick’s night to speak rather than the audience’s disapproval of Thompson in general. Borthwick’s address this night was part of a debate series in which he and Thompson presented their arguments on alternating evenings, which they repeated on other occasions. See The Liverpool Mercury, ‘Slavery in the West Indies,’ Liverpool Mercury, 14 Sep 1832; Speeches of Messrs. Thomson & Borthwick, on the Question of Colonial Slavery, as Delivered in Dr. Wardlaw’s Chapel, Glasgow (W. R. McPhun, 1833). Thompson, born in Liverpool in 1804, had only become a regular and passionate abolitionist advocate and speaker the year before. See H. A. S. Hewins, ‘Thompson, George Donisthorpe (1804–1878)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 54, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004); Maureen O’Rourke Murphy, Compassionate Stranger: Asenath Nicholson and the Great Irish Famine (Syracuse University Press, 2015), 39, 283 n31. Thompson would become a major abolitionist figure on both sides of the Atlantic, and worked closely with many abolitionists in McCune Smith’s circles.

Several years after he wrote them in 1832, James McCune Smith published edited extracts from the travel journal describing his journey from New York City to Britain en route to Glasgow – where he spent five years pursuing his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees at the University of Glasgow – in the Colored American. This is the fourth instalment. (See the third here) The original journal is lost, but these extracts provide valuable and fascinating insights into McCune Smith’s early thought and outlook on the world.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Extracts from Dr. Smith’s Journal

Date: 9-11 September 1832

Source: The Colored American, 3 February 1838, p. 3

Text:

Extracts^[1] from Dr. Smith’s Journal.^[2]

––––––––

“I am free!” was the thought which flashed through my mind, as I trod the strong wharf with a foot which coveted every inch of the space. Tancredi kissed his natal earth;^[3] I could embrace the soil^[4] on which I now live, since it yields not only to all who dwell, but to all who may come to it, a greater amount of rational liberty than is secured to man in any other portion of the globe.

True it is, that the extremes of wealth and poverty here meet; but that wealth cannot buy impunity from crime, nor the power of trampling on the soul! True it is, that the poor toil―and toil harder and longer perhaps than many of the slaves in the western world; but they toil not under the lash. And if they labor long and arduously, it is for themselves and theirs. And the artizan,^[5] master of his own person, knows whilst the sweat pours from his hard wrought frame, that his distant cot is safe, and is protected by the invisible but all-pervading power of the British law.^[6] He knows that when evening comes and his toil is at an end, he may return to his humble but happy abode, and find it not robbed of the wife of his bosom, or the children of his love. No ruthless demon shall have rushed in there, unchecked by conscience, encouraged by the law, to offer up to lust or avarice those selects orgies, which are reserved for and confined to the “Land of the free and the home of the brave!”^[7]

After an excellent dinner, prepared by my old friend Mrs. W–––––,^[8] (who looks as well, and is as kind as ever,) N––– and I sallied forth to church, in the afternoon. We attended St. George’s, (Episcopal.)^[9] To my surprise, the congregation was large, and a tone of deep devotion pervaded the sacred exercises. The whole congregation, by their united responses, evinced that they feel the spirit which breathes throughout our matchless liturgy. This surprised me because I had been informed by a “dissenting”^[10] fellow-passenger, that the baneful connection between church and state, had robbed the church established by law, not only of most of its members, but also of the small portion of piety that, in his opinion, could be attendant on “forms of prayer.”^[11]

That man could never have been within the walls of an English Episcopal Church, or the church we attended must be a glorious exception. I am told that it is not:―and it certainly is a strong argument in favor of Episcopacy, when, in spite of its odious connection with the state in England^[12]―in spite of the wealth and honor in which its dignitaries may here revel, (independently of the flocks entrusted to their care,) it yet retains within its walls examples of such unanimous, fervid, heart-felt devotion, as was manifested this afternoon in the Church of St. George.

But what chiefly forced itself on my attention, was to find that when N––– and I entered the church, our swarthy^[13] skins did not exclude those civilities which are due to man from man, in the temple of his Maker.―Several pew-doors were flung open, and books courteously offered to us. There were no cold looks, no supercilious or sanctimonious frowns; none appeared to have reached that pitch of devotion in which creatures frown upon the works of their Creator―upon their fellow creatures, not for the hue of the soul, but of the skin.

What a contrast, when compared with the reception that would have been given us in an American church! Alas for my country! alas for its religion and the promulgators of it! On these last I cannot but look with feelings of disgust and horror―disgust at their cringing to public opinion―horror at the awful fate that must inevitably be theirs, when there shall rise up in judgment against them, the thousands of lost souls that have been driven from the threshold of the sanctuary, because of the prejudices of the church.

Sept. 10th.―Called at the office of C–––, B–––, & Co.^[14] Mr. C––– was not there, but on presenting my letters^[15] to his son,^[16] he politely invited me to breakfast tomorrow. Spent the rest of the day in rambling about the city, dreaming of dear home, and wishing for the companionship of that dear friend who has hitherto trod with me the uphill path of learning.^[17] Cruel is the fate that has separated us at the very moment when we began to appreciate the beauties of ancient lore!

Sept. 11th.―Chartered a coach, and drove out to the princely mansion of J. C. Esq.,^[18] which is beautifully situated in a lovely spot, on the banks of the Mersey, a few miles from Liverpool.^[19] Mr. C. very cordially received and introduced me to the well-known philanthropist. Capt. S–––,^[20] also to Mr. H–––,^[21] a Traveling Agent of the London Agency Anti-Slavery Society. This later gentleman lately debated with Elliot Cresson, at –––––,^[22] on the Colonization question. Several other gentlemen subsequently entered, and were introduced. The tone of conversation delighted me. All appeared familiar with the names of our leading abolitionists, and were incessant and minute in their inquiries after the condition, feelings, and prospects of the unenfranchised Americans.

But what chiefly affected me was, to perceive on several articles of the breakfast set, the figure of a chained and kneeling slave^[23]―under which was written, “Remember them that are in bonds, as being bound with them.”^[24] How deeply must he feel for the sufferings of bondsmen, who makes such remembrances the companions of his meals! “The sight of a pale face” no longer “makes me sick.”^[25]

Prejudice against color was the subject on which they seemed anxious for information. They were evidently at a loss to account for it. Indeed, some appeared almost as skeptical concerning its existence, as did the African king of the existence of solid water, (Ice.)

Before taking leave, I was engaged to dine with Mr. C., previously to leaving town; and a ticket was given me for the Lecture in defence of West India Slavery, to be delivered in the Amphitheatre this evening, by Mr. Borthwick.^[26]

^[1] Several years after he wrote them in 1832, James McCune Smith published edited extracts from the travel journal describing his journey from New York City to Britain en route to Glasgow – where he spent five years pursuing his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees at the University of Glasgow – in the Colored American. See ‘Extracts’, The Colored American, 11 November 1837. The original journal has been lost, and only extracts pertaining to McCune Smith’s transatlantic crossing and sojourn in Liverpool were published.

^[2] For another edited version of this and McCune Smith’s other travel journal entries published in the Colored American, see The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, ed. John Stauffer (Oxford University Press, 2006), 8–24.

^[3] Tancredi delivered this line when returning to his homeland after exile in Gaetano Rossi and Gioachino Rossini’s eponymous opera: ‘Oh patria! – Dolce, e ingrata patria, alfine / A te ritorno! – Io ti saluto, o cara / Terra degli avi miei: ti bacio.’ In Tancredi: Dramma per Musica (Onorato Derossi, 1830), 9 (In Internet Archive).

^[4] This echoes sentiments expressed by the famous Irish orator, lawyer, and politician John Philpot Curran before he arrived in Britain, and in nearly the same language. In a 1793 courtroom speech, Curran said: ‘I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from, the British soil—which proclaims, even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of Universal Emancipation.’ See John Philpot Curran, Speeches of John Philpot Curran, Esq., I (I. Riley, 1811), 84 (In Internet Archive). McCune Smith would quote this speech – passages which closely follow this one, in fact – more than once in his future works, including a speech he gave the following year. See ‘Universal Extinction of Slavery’, Glasgow Chronicle, 13 December 1833, National Library of Scotland; James McCune Smith, ‘Introduction’, in My Bondage and My Freedom, by Frederick Douglass (Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855), xxxi.

^[5] Archaic spelling of ‘artisan,’ here used in the sense of ‘one who is employed in any of the industrial arts; a mechanic, handicraftsman, artificer.’ See The Oxford English Dictionary and Supplement, 1: A to B (1913; Oxford University Press, 1970), 475.

^[6] With the help of early British abolitionist Granville Sharp, enslaved Virginian James Somerset’s case was heard in an English courtroom. Somerset won his freedom on 22 June 1772 when Chief Justice Lord Mansfield ruled that chattel slavery was not supported by positive or common law in England. This case inspired Joseph Knight, who had been enslaved in Jamaica by Scotsman John Wedderburn, to pursue his own case for freedom once Wedderburn brought him to Scotland. Knight was set free in January 1778 when the court ruled that chattel slavery had no legality under Scottish law. These cases were generally understood to show that slavery was illegal in Great Britain and helped set the nation firmly on the path to the abolition of slavery in its colonies as well. See Iain Whyte, Scotland and the Abolition of Black Slavery, 1756-1838 (Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 16–18; George van Cleve, ‘“Somerset’s Case” and Its Antecedents in Imperial Perspective’, Law and History Review 24, no. 3 (2006): 601–3, 631–45.

^[7] From Francis Scott Key’s poem ‘Defence of Fort McHenry,’ sung to the tune of ‘Anacreon in Heaven’ and soon known as ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ See Gilbert J. Hunt, The Historical Reader; Containing ‘The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain, From June, 1812, to February, 1815, Written in the Ancient Historical Style’ (Samuel A. Burtus, 1817), 181–82; The Columbian Songster: A Collection of the Most Approved Patriotic and Other Songs (Eichbaum and Johnston, 1818), 19–20.

^[8] ‘Mrs. W–––––’ had not been identified.

^[9] McCune Smith was an Episcopalian, a leading member of St Philip’s Episcopal Church in New York City and a parishioner since his early childhood. See, for example, James McCune Smith, ‘Christmas!’, The Anglo-African, 24 December 1864; Robert Hamilton, ‘Dr. James McCune Smith [Obituary]’, The Anglo-African, 9 December 1865; Maritcha Remond Lyons, ‘Memories of Yesterdays: All of Which I Saw and Part of Which I Was - An Autobiography’, New York, 1929, 4, 72, 77–79, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. (Lyons was McCune Smith’s goddaughter.)

^[10] McCune Smith became friends with many dissenters – those who rejected practices of the established church and rejected the authority of the state or other worldly institution over the government of the church – during his years in Scotland, such as Ralph Wardlaw. Both in Scotland and England, many dissenters (later often called nonconformists) were especially drawn to the abolitionist cause and were among its most passionate advocates. See Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters, II: The Expansion of Evangelical Nonconformity (Clarendon Press, 1995), 441–43; Whyte, Scotland and the Abolition, 101, 240–41; G. M. Ditchfield, ‘Abolitionism and the Social Conscience’, in The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume II: The Long Eighteenth Century c. 1689-c. 1828, ed. Andrew Thompson (Oxford University Press, 2018), 285–92.

^[11] McCune Smith’s fellow passenger may have been alluding here to arguments made in and/or derived from such works as Anthony Collins, An Answer to Dr. Scot’s Cases Against Dissenters Concerning Forms of Prayer and the Fallacy of the Story of Commin, Plainly Discovered (A. Baldwin, 1700).

^[12] See footnote above.

^[13] McCune Smith used the terms ‘swarth’ or ‘swarthy’ in other writings, sometimes as a simple descriptor for anyone of darker complexion and in other cases to gesture at the irrationalities that inevitably arise in discourse on race and skin color. For example, he used the term ‘swarthy’ both to refer to people of African descent and to people who would ordinarily be described as white, such as the ruddy-complexioned Scottish abolitionist Ralph Wardlaw and the tan-skinned, dark-haired Hungarian revolutionary Lajos Kossuth, blurring the lines between and counteracting popular conceptions of race and highlighting the essential unity of humanity. See An Address to the Three Thousand Colored Citizens of New-York Who Are the Owners of One Hundred and Twenty Thousand Acres of Land, in the State of New York, Given to Them by Gerrit Smith, Esq. of Peterboro, September 1, 1846 (Gerrit Smith, 1846), 18, 19, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University; ‘Messrs. Editors’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 25 December 1851; ‘On the Fourteenth Query of Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia’, The Anglo-African Magazine, August 1859, 234.

^[14] ‘C–––’ refers to James Cropper, wealthy Quaker merchant and founder of the Liverpool Society for the Amelioration and Gradual Abolition of Slavery. McCune Smith would go on to cite Cropper’s writings in his own. ‘B–––’ refers to Robert Benson, Cropper’s business partner. Their office was at 31 Paradise Street. See Gore’s Directory and View of Liverpool and Its Environs, for 1832 (J. Gore and Son, 1832), 47, 97, 390; David B. Davis, ‘James Cropper and the British Anti-Slavery Movement, 1821-1823’, The Journal of Negro History 45, no. 4 (1960): 251; M. W. Kirby, ‘Cropper, James (1773-1840)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 14, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004), 406.

^[15] These would have been letters of introduction, including from Peter Williams, Jr.

^[16] This would have been either John or Edward, Cropper’s two sons. See Kirby, under ‘Cropper, James’.

^[17] This would have been Isaiah DeGrasse, who was one of McCune Smith’s closest friends. McCune Smith and DeGrasse were fellow graduates of the African Free School; both continued to pursue more advanced education with Peter Williams, Jr’s help and encouragement; both were members of the Philomathean (literary) Society; and both studied at the Rev. John Curtis’s Classical and Upper English School to prepare for college. At Curtis’s school – popularly known as the Collegiate School – McCune Smith and DeGrasse studied classical works in Latin and Greek. See ‘Classical and English School’, The Evening Post, 4 March 1831; ‘Collegiate School’, New-York American, 16 December 1831; ‘The Rev. Isaiah G. De Grasse [Obituary, from the Churchman]’, The Colored American, 3 April 1841; Philip A. Bell, ‘Men We Have Known - Number Four: Dr. James Fields’, The Elevator, 12 June 1868; Philip A. Bell, ‘Obituary [for Robert G. Cromwell]’, The Elevator, 27 November 1868.

^[18] ‘J.C. Esq.’ refers to James Cropper, see footnote above.

^[19] James Cropper lived in Toxteth Park at Dingle Bank. A history of the ‘ancient chapel at Toxteth Park’ describes this area as ‘formerly charmingly rural, and some three miles south of Liverpool.’ It later became part of Liverpool, and densely built over. See Gore’s 1832, 94; Benjamin Nightingale, Lancashire Nonconformity, or, Sketches, Historical & Descriptive, of the Congregational and Old Presbyterian Churches in the County (John Heywood, 1890), 6:66.

^[20] ‘Capt. S–––‘ refers to Cropper’s friend Charles Stuart, an abolitionist author. See James Cropper and Charles Stuart, A Letter to Thomas Clarkson by James Cropper and Prejudice Vincible (Printed by E. Smith and Co., 1832), 5. For more about the wealthy and ‘eccentric British evangelical’ Stuart who, among other things, self-financed his own anti-slavery tours in Britain and the United States, see C. Duncan Rice, ‘The Anti-Slavery Mission of George Thompson to the United States, 1834-1835’, Journal of American Studies 2, no. 1 (1968): 15, 20, 27.

^[21] ‘Mr. H–––‘ likely refers to George Hadfield, politician and a longtime member of the London Anti-Slavery Society (sometimes called the London Anti-Slavery Committee). (See also ‘Extract from Dr. Smith’s Journal [11 September 1832]’, The Colored American, 19 April 1838. For more about the Society, see footnote 4 for edited version published in The World of James McCune Smith.) He, along with another, had publicly opposed Elliott Cresson’s promotion of the American Colonization Society in April. See ‘Liberia - Colony of Free Blacks from America’, The Manchester Times and Manchester and Salford Advertiser and Chronicle (Manchester), 14 April 1832; George Hadfield, Abolition of Slavery and Protection of Missionaries Engaged in the Colonies. An Appeal to the Electors of the Borough of Manchester... (Harrison & Crosfield, 1832).

^[22] A record of this debate has not been found. It’s possible that it refers to an exchange at the public meeting in Manchester, England on 9 April 1832 (see footnote and source above) to hear Elliot Cresson speak on the merits of the American Colonization Society. In the discussion and debate that followed, George Hadfield was among those who opposed Cresson’s reported opposition to the immediate and total abolition of slavery. However, the report of that meeting that has been found – which was published widely in local papers – do not record a detailed discussion of American abolitionists and inquiry into the condition of black Americans that McCune Smith described here. There may be a more detailed record of that meeting that reveals such an exchange, or Cresson and Hadfield (or another) may have held a subsequent debate on the issues brought up there.

^[23] This would have been the image of a chained and kneeling black slave designed in the studio of the renowned British potter Josiah Wedgwood, who was apparently converted to the anti-slavery cause by his dear friend, the Liverpool abolitionist Thomas Bentley. Wedgwood also became friends with William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson. The image, originally printed on decorative pottery medallions surrounded by the motto ‘Am I Not a Man and a Brother?’ starting in early 1787, was meant to inspire sympathy for the enslaved and outrage at the cruelty and indignity of slavery. The anti-slavery Founding Father Benjamin Franklin was among those to whom Wedgwood sent the medallions for distribution. The image was later reproduced on other objects, such as the breakfast china that so impressed McCune Smith. See Samuel Smiles, Josiah Wedgwood, F.R.S.: His Personal History (John Murray, 1897), 144, 258, 282–83, 286, 296; Julia Wedgwood, The Personal Life of Josiah Wedgwood, the Potter, ed. C. H. Herford (Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1915), xli, 23–28, 179 fn, 183, 245–49, 251–57.

^[24] From the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews, 13:3: ‘Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.’ The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments [King James Version] (William W. Woodward, 1813) (In Internet Archive).

^[25] Perhaps an adaptation of lines from James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, spoken by ‘the Huron’: ‘“The ‘Spirit that made men, coloured them differently… Some he made with faces paler than the ermine of the forests: and these he ordered to be traders; dogs to their women, and wolves to their slaves… His gluttony makes him sick. God gave him enough, and yet he wants all. Such are the pale-faces.”’ See James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans; A Narrative of 1757, II (H. C. Carey & I. Lea, 1826), 206–7 (In Internet Archive).

^[26] Peter Borthwick, an aspiring politician employed by an association of West India planters and merchants to oppose the immediate abolition of slavery in British colonies. Though Borthwick insisted that he was not a defender of slavery and in fact supported gradual emancipation, he was widely perceived to be a proslavery apologist. See ‘Slavery in the West Indies - Mr. Borthwick’s Third Lecture’, The Liverpool Mercury, 14 September 1832; H. C. G. Matthew, ‘Borthwick, Peter (1804–1852)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 6, ed. Henry C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004).

Several years after he wrote them in 1832, James McCune Smith published edited extracts from the travel journal describing his journey from New York City to Britain en route to Glasgow – where he spent five years pursuing his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees at the University of Glasgow – in the Colored American. This is the third instalment. (See the second here) The original journal is lost, but these extracts provide valuable and fascinating insights into McCune Smith’s early thought and outlook on the world.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Extracts from Dr. Smith’s Journal

Date: 5-8 September 1832

Source: The Colored American, 16 December 1837, p. 2

Text:

[For the Colored American.]^[1]

Extracts from Dr. Smith’s Journal.^[2]

Sept. 5th. Weather fine, but we have made no progress. To tell the truth, I feel no great anxiety for a very speedy arrival at Liverpool; for then I will have to leave the ship, which is as it were a part and parcel of my home. Being accustomed to the motion of the vessel, I can now pursue my studies^[3] during a part of the day, the rest of which is not unprofitably spent in observing the effect which the proximity of land exercises over several of the passengers. The Irish steerage passengers―and they constitute nine-tenths on board―are leaning in crowds over the vessel’s side, straining their eye sight, and eagerly pointing towards their native isle. The calls of hunger, thirst, and even the infirmities of age are forgotten by them in their anxiety to gaze upon their own isle of beauty. Happy they! Their exile is at an end. Mine has scarcely begun. A tall, red-headed burly Scot,^[4] a cabin passenger, constantly sits in the weather-house, declaring Ireland an eye-sore to him―thumping the boards with his feet and fists, declaiming against the blues, and ardently wishing himself among his friends in Edinburgh. The ladies of the cabin―as ladies generally contrive to appear―are extremely industrious with their needles; yet tripping to the vessel’s side at the approach of every shallop, in hopes of fun, and constantly watching the little blue-eyed Englishman, who runs from stem to stern, and vaults up to the mast head with the agility of an ape. His tongue seems to have grown an inch at the sight of land, and he annoys every one with his boasted knowledge of the coast. He occasionally patronizes the Captain with a word of advice, which was rather ludicrously put an end to this morning. The decks were still wet, when the Captain stepped from the deck house to give an order; the Englishman following in his wake, slipped, and tripped up the former, who fell upon him with a shock that made the vessel quiver. The “old man”^[5] rose up, and giving the other a look which Kemble^[6] might envy, coolly bade him to “keep out of the way.” And the poor little fellow, crushed, crest fallen and mortified, crept down to his state rooms, where he remained the rest of the day.

The afternoon was calm, but exceedingly delightful. As the sun neared the eastern horizon, he became gradually shorn of his brighter beams, and assumed at first a golden, and then a crimson hue, on which the undazzled eye might rest with pleasure. When at length his lower limb touched the watery horizon, he seemed like a half extinguished ball of fire poised on the plane of ocean, into which he at first dipped, and at length disappeared, flinging o’er the clouds such gorgeous tints of purple and gold, as made them a fit canopy for the God of day: and they reflecting upon the water a tinge, which made it appear like a sea of blood.

Then Night came on with its bright array of stars; and queen amongst them, Venus arose, brilliant as a young moon, casting upon the dimpling waves, gleams of silvery light, as varied and fantastic as the way [sic] of love. N―^[7] and I sat on the bulwarks, talking of home, sweet home, the dear friends and dearer parent^[8] whom I had left behind. We were soon interrupted by a squeaking noise in the bow, wither we hurried, and found several of the sailors engaged in dancing.―One of the group ensconced in a corner, held in his hand “what seemed” a fiddle, from which he elicited something between a screech and a grunt. Two of his messmates capered with a hearty good will, but in steps and time that were evidently ‘variations’ from the original tune.―The remainder of the sailors stood by with folded arms, gravely awaiting their turn to enjoy the mazy dance. One of these men is remarkable for his personal resemblance to Cooper’s Long Tom Coffin;^[9] his character, however, is very different. N― calls him a “sea dog,”^[10] a wary old fellow, whom years have taught the most consummate skill in avoiding the post of danger. A coming storm is sure to give him the colic; and when he is sent up to reef a sail, he always avoids the extremity of the yard-arm. At pulling a rope you would deem him a Hercules from his yell, whilst his hand scarcely grasps the cord, and he is busily engaged in cursing his next neighbor for laziness!

Sept. 5th. Passed the old head of Kinsale,^[11] off which the Albion was wrecked.^[12]

Sept. 8th. Wind and tide both in our favor, we dash on at a glorious rate. At 4 P.M. passed Holyhead; at 10 P.M., anchored off Liverpool, the approach to which in the darkness of night is exceedingly splendid. In the back ground you perceive myriads of twinkling gas lights, which fancy may fling into a thousand beautiful forms; then in the front, the glowing red flashes of the statuary, and the momentary glare of the revolving lights, complete the brilliancy of the magnificent gala. If you remain on board during the night, when morning comes you rush on deck, but

“A change comes o’er the spirit of your dream,”^[13]

A multitude of wind mill shafts, black and smoky, whirling round and round, seem the scorched remains of the previous night’s superb exhibition. The long wall enclosing the docks, the dingy color of the tall brick houses, and the narrowness of the streets beyond, remind you of the enclosure and varied windings of an immense prison house.

^[1] Several years after he wrote them in 1832, James McCune Smith published edited extracts from the travel journal describing his journey from New York City to Britain en route to Glasgow – where he spent five years pursuing his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees at the University of Glasgow – in the Colored American. See ‘Extracts’, The Colored American (New York, NY), 11 November 1837. The original journal has been lost, and only extracts pertaining to McCune Smith’s transatlantic crossing and sojourn in Liverpool were published.

^[2] For another edited version of this and McCune Smith’s other travel journal entries published in the Colored American, see The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, ed. John Stauffer (Oxford University Press, 2006), 8–24.

^[3] Likely in Latin and Greek; see footnote 17 (for ‘uphill path of learning’) in ‘Extracts from Dr. Smith’s Journal [9-11 September 1832]’, The Colored American, 3 February 1838 in The World of James McCune Smith.

^[4] This may be William Boog of Edinburgh, listed among the Caledonia’s cabin passengers in a New York paper. See ‘Passengers’, New-York American, 17 August 1832.

^[5] McCune Smith referred to the captain of a ship – either this captain or another - as the “old man” (quotes in original) over twenty years later in an essay on ship’s stewards. See ‘Heads of the Colored People - No. 5: The Steward’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 24 December 1852.

^[6] This likely refers to the famous English actor John Philip Kemble. His younger brother Charles was co-owner of the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden, London, where McCune Smith’s old classmate Ira Aldridge would go on to perform – albeit briefly – in 1833. See Bernth Lindfors, ed., Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius (Boydell & Brewer, 2007), 21–24; Bernth Lindfors, Ira Aldridge: The Early Years, 1807-1833 (University of Rochester Press, 2011), 160–61, 239, 244.

^[7] Since ‘N–’ was familiar with the ‘wary old’ sailor who, McCune Smith wrote, resembled Long Tom Coffin, this suggests ‘N–’ was an employee on the ship rather than a passenger. ‘N–’ may be one of the many stewards that McCune Smith knew throughout his life, perhaps first befriended during this voyage. It’s possible, for example, that he could have been the black ship’s steward on a Liverpool liner named Thomas Newton (of New York – hence he and McCune Smith could talk of ‘home, sweet home’) who had been imprisoned in Liverpool in 1829 for stealing alcohol, delicacies, and drinking glasses from the captain in preparation for his upcoming marriage to his Liverpool fiancée. See ‘Thomas Newton’, Freedom’s Journal, 21 March 1829; ‘Mr. Thomas Newton’, Commercial Advertiser, 9 May 1829. If so, ‘N–’ may have been an inspiration for McCune Smith’s 1852 ‘Steward’ essay. The main steward in that story was a colourful and talented but not fully law-abiding character. McCune Smith told an amusing anecdote of that steward’s wedding day – ‘The same distinguished gent, when he stood up to be spliced, when told by the priest to “say after me,” repeated “say after me“’ – and commented that many stewards like him established a household on each side of the Atlantic. See McCune Smith, ‘Heads - Steward,’ FDP, 24 Dec 1852.

^[8] McCune Smith’s mother Lavinia Smith. She was a ‘self-emancipated [former] bondwoman’ – as McCune Smith described her – from South Carolina and raised McCune Smith alone in New York. See James McCune Smith, ‘Editor’s Preface’, in My Bondage and My Freedom, by Frederick Douglass (New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855), xxxi (In Hathi Trust) and ‘Death of an Aged Lady’, The Anglo-African, 24 January 1863; Robert Hamilton, ‘Dr. James McCune Smith [Obituary]’, The Anglo-African, 9 December 1865; Guido Furman, ‘Obituary for James McCune Smith’, The Medical Register of the City of New York for the Year Commencing June 1, 1866, 1866, 201–4.

^[9] James Fenimore Cooper described his character Tom Coffin as a ‘seaman’ who ‘stood nearly six feet and as many inches in his shoes, though, when elevated in his most perpendicular attitude, there was a forward inclination about his head and shoulders, that appeared to be the consequence of habitual confinement in limited lodgings. His whole frame was destitute of the rounded outlines of a well-formed man, though his enormous hands furnished a display of bones and sinews which gave indications of gigantic strength. … [He had a] harsh visage, the sharp prominent futures of which were completely encircled by a set of black whiskers, that began to be grizzled a little with age.’ See James Fenimore Cooper, The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea (Charles Wiley, 1823), 1:12 (In Internet Archive).

^[10] Probably in the sense of an experienced sailor. See definition 6 for ‘sea dog’ in The Oxford English Dictionary and Supplement, 9: S to Soldo (1913; Oxford University Press, 1970), 320.

^[11] Misspelled ‘Kinsail’ in the original printing.

^[12] On 22 April 1822, the packet ship Albion was driven onto the rocks off the Ireland coast, between Garretstown and the Point of Kinsale, en route from New York to Liverpool. Only a fraction of her passengers and crew survived the shipwreck. See Adam Hodgson, Letters From North America, Written During a Tour in the United States and Canada, II (Hurst, Robinson, & Co., 1824), 334–42.

^[13] Adapted from a line in Lord Byron’s ‘The Dream’, III: ‘A change came o’er the spirit of my dream.’ See George Gordon Byron, Works, IV (John Murray, 1829), 201 (In Internet Archive).

Several years after he wrote them in 1832, James McCune Smith published edited extracts from the travel journal describing his journey from New York City to Britain en route to Glasgow – where he spent five years pursuing his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees at the University of Glasgow – in the Colored American. This is the second instalment. (See the first here) The original journal is lost, but these extracts provide valuable and fascinating insights into McCune Smith’s early thought and outlook on the world.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Extracts from Dr. Smith’s Journal

Date: 23 August - 3 September 1832

Source: The Colored American, 2 December 1837, p. 2

Text:

For the Colored American.^[1]

DR. SMITH’S JOURNAL^[2]

–––––––––

A whole week had we wended our lonely way across the deep, when the stirring cry of “a sail! a sail!”^[3] brought every one upon deck. A dim speck in the horizon was all the eye could detect, yet in a few hours, we overhauled and passed the ship Druid of Bristol, laden with sugar, and sailing the same course with our vessel. As we sailed rapidly by the Druid, and when the usual salutations had passed, her commander remarked with a half rueful countenance, “Your ship sails fast.”^[4] She did sail fast, and swift is the sailing or American vessels generally. Untrammeled by ancient methods, or by recent laws, which compel the symmetrical to yield to the profitable tho’ clumsy form in ship building, her naval architecture pre-eminently bears the stamp of the genius of the institutions of America, and demonstrates the prerogative which those institutions process, of gathering around them and fostering mechanical genius and enterprise^[5] from every portion of the Globe. Your snail paced Druid, and our winged Caledonia were probably built by the same man,* but the former was built under British laws, which makes the most unwieldy the most profitable shape, whilst the latter was constructed in the United States, where no such restrictions cramp genius or competition in the beautiful art of ship building. The consequence is, that our vessels being the swiftest, are rapidly engrossing the carrying trade of the world; and wages being high, seamen from all quarters of the globe are attracted to our harbours. So that an American ship is an epitome of the great and rising country, whose star spangled banner proudly floats o’er her deck. “E Pluribus Unum”^[6] “From many nations”^[7] were the men gathered who felled the trees and chipped the timbers and molded^[8] them into “one” harmonious and beautiful craft that

“Walks the waters like a thing of life”―^[9]

“From many nations” are the men gathered under the command of him who “moves the monarch of her peopled deck.”^[10] Would that the parallel might here end! And that gathering something of the spirit of liberty from the ocean which she cleaves, and the chainless wind^[11] which wafts her along, she might appear in foreign ports a fit representative of a land of the free, instead of a beautiful but baneful object, like the fated box of Pandora,^[12] scattering abroad among the nations the malignant prejudice which is a canker and a curse to the soil, whence she sprung.

As the ship neared us, John, a boy of nineteen, whom the Englishman had brought from the coast of Africa, took possession of one of the cat heads in order to get a good view. An Irishman coveting the place, desired the boy to leave it, and after vainly using other arguments, pulled him down, saying he had no right there because he was black! John answered the last argument with a blow on the nose which drew blood, and a regular fight ensued, until the mate parted them. John is dubbed the belt of the ship.

August 25th. Going nine knots. The beautiful pea green of the water is a proof that we are on the banks of Newfoundland. So great is the fog that it is impossible to see five yards beyond the bowsprit. Several men are on the look out, and the Captain is constantly on deck, there being some chance of our falling into the chill embraces of an iceberg.

Aug. 26th. Fine morning. We are clear of the banks. The wind carried away our main top-gallant-mast during the night. Regret that sleep prevented me from enjoying the sight of the storm.

Sept. 2nd. At quarter past five, “Land, O!” resounded from every mouth; and as I gazed on the dim, blue hazy line, I felt as if getting a peep at another world.

Sept. 3rd. Wind ahead. Our progress during the night, if any thing, has been backwards. In the afternoon a bird, a weany^[13] little thing, alighted on the main shroud. A chase ensued, which had been kept up some time, when the little trembler alighted at my feet, where it was caught, taken care of, and afterwards restored to the land. I am almost Roman enough to deem this occurrence ominous of good. a little before sunset we copied a small craft making towards us. Her sail, painted red, had daubed on it, “2 Cork Pilot,”^[14] in clumsy white letters. Such a pilot boat! Her single mast, deckless hull, ornamented here and there with piles of dirty straw, the perfectly pig-

* One of the most eminent ship builders in New York, is a native of, and learned his trade in Great Britain.^[15]

stye look of the small, boxed up affair in the stern intended for a cabin, the confusion in which her scanty supply of tackle lay―were all in horrid contrast with the neatness and elegance of those sylph-like “skimmers of the sea”^[16] which hover round the port of New York. Yet these Cork Pilot Boats are said to be very sea-devils, riding like an egg shell on seas that have overwhelmed the stoutest ships. Two of our passengers bargained with the pilot for a conveyance to shore; a slight breeze carried them about three miles from the ship; but at sunset it became calm, and the last glimpse we had of her left her in the same spot, and about ten miles from the shore. None of us envied those gentlemen their quarters for the night. The Pilot boat had scarcely left us, when another craft―a fishing boat―from the Emerald Isle, hauled along side. She looked as if she might have been tender to Noah’s Ark. Her ribs seemed to hand together by a miracle. The crew consisted of two men―capital recruits for Falstaff’s ragged regiment.^[17] Their stock of fish amounted to a few stale “fish herrin,”^[18] at which our steward turned up his nose. An Irish steerage passenger, however, offered a shilling, sterling for them, which was agreed to, the fish sent up in a bucket, and afterwards a shilling, Spanish, let down, which set the fishermen so busily at swearing, that they suffered their boat to drift round under our bows, in which her mast became entangled. Every pitch of our vessel sunk the frail little thing to the gunwale, and threatened to sink her. Then came a wild cry for help. “O, Captain! swate Captain, for the love of God, send out a man to save us!” “Ah, mate! jewell, darling, can ye stand there and see us kilt!”^[19]

The Captain and Mate were inexorable. It would have been madness to have sent a man to their aid; for even had he succeed in disengaging the mast from our bow-sprit, the next pitch of our ship would have transfixed him with the same. The cries of the poor fellows had become quite heart-rending, when a lucky lurch of our ship set them free; and the same moment they resumed their cursing with tenfold vigor. Had it not been horrible, it would have been amusing to see them leave their shallop to the will of the waves, whilst they leant over her sides, invoking every saint of the Calendar to sink our ship; and as the distance increased, applying their hands by way of speaking trumpets, to aid the air in conveying to us so precious a freight of oaths. And these men, not a moment before, had been on the brink of a watery grave!

^[1] Several years after he wrote them in 1832, James McCune Smith published edited extracts from the travel journal describing his journey from New York City to Britain en route to Glasgow – where he spent five years pursuing his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees at the University of Glasgow – in the Colored American. See ‘Extracts’, The Colored American (New York, NY), 11 November 1837. The original journal has been lost, and only extracts pertaining to McCune Smith’s transatlantic crossing and sojourn in Liverpool were published.

^[2] For another edited version of this and McCune Smith’s other travel journal entries published in the Colored American, see The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, ed. John Stauffer (Oxford University Press, 2006), 8–24.

^[3] In ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ Mercutio called out, ‘A sail, a sail, a sail!’ when he saw Juliet’s nurse and servant approaching. See William Shakespeare, The Plays of William Shakspeare, with George Steevens et al. (J. Johnson [and others], 1803), 20:114 (In Internet Archive).

^[4] The Caledonia (see text below for her name) was a fast ship indeed. Three years and a few months before McCune Smith wrote this, she broke the record for the trip from Liverpool to New York under captain James Rogers – also of New York – completing the journey in only 15 days, 22 hours. (See Carl C. Cutler, Greyhounds Of The Sea (1930; 3rd edn, United States Naval Institute, 1984), 73; Thomas Longworth, Longworth’s American Almanac, New-York Register, and City Directory (Thomas Longworth, 1829), 484. It took the Caledonia 24 days and 8 hours to carry McCune Smith from New York to Liverpool. As for her appellation, ‘Caledonia’ is a poetic name for Scotland. See, for example, Robert Burns, The Works Of Robert Burns, II, ed. Allan Cunningham (Billiard, Gray, and Company, 1834), 166, 272.

^[5] Spelled ‘enterprize’ in the original printing.

^[6] Latin for ‘out of many, one.’ According to Encyclopaedia Brittanica, ‘It was first selected for placement on the Great Seal of the United States by a committee made up of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams.’ See M. Kenny, “E Pluribus Unum,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, November 1, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/E-pluribus-unum-United-States-motto. McCune Smith would go on to use the phrase to illustrate what I call his indigeneity theory of African Americans: that African Americans were a new, indigenous American people that arose from mixed ancestry, mostly African and European peoples that had come together in America. See James Macdonald and James McCune Smith, ‘Colored Orphan’s Asylum: Physician’s Report [and Reply]’, The Colored American, 26 January 1839 (In The World of James McCune Smith).

^[7] Micah 4:2: ‘And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the house of the Lord…’ See The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments [King James Version] (William W. Woodward, 1813) (In Internet Archive).

^[8] Spelled ‘moulded’ in the original printing.

^[9] From Byron’s ‘The Corsair,’ Canto I: III: ‘She walks the waters like a thing of life.’ See George Gordon Byron, Works, II (John Murray, 1829), 226 (In Internet Archive).

^[10] From Byron’s ‘The Corsair,’ Canto I: III: ‘Who would not brave the battle-fire — the wreck —/ To move the monarch of her peopled deck?’ See Byron, Works, II, 226 (In Internet Archive).

^[11] See the second stanza of ‘Invocation’: ‘Oh! many-toned and chainless wind! / Thou art a wanderer free; / Tell me if thou its place canst find, / Far over mount and sea?’ In Felicia Hemans, Records of Woman: With Other Poems (William Blackwood, 1828), 243 (In Internet Archive).

^[12] McCune Smith may have become familiar with the myth of Pandora in Works and Days by the ancient Greek poet Hesiod (ca. 750-650 BC) when studying Latin and Greek under John Frederick Schroeder. See Hesiod, Hesiodi Opera et Dies (Libraria Weidmannia, 1819), 13–14 (In Internet Archive) and Philip White quoted in ‘Colored Men as Physicians’, Nemaha County Republican, 19 March 1885.

^[13] Meaning ‘tiny.’ Spelled ‘weany’ (less common), ‘weeny,’ or weenie’, the word had only recently become a widely used colloquialism when McCune Smith wrote this. See Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1937), 942, 943.

^[14] A pilot boat of a type built in Cork, Ireland; see also text below and Walter Pollock, Hot Bulb Oil Engines and Suitable Vessels (D. Van Nostrand, 1919), 337–38; Basil Lubbock, The Western Ocean Packets (Charles E. Lauriat, 1925), 54.

^[15] This likely refers to London-born Charles Brownne, who died the year before McCune Smith wrote this. As a historian of shipbuilders in old New York writes – echoing McCune Smith’s sentiments about the benefits of employing knowledge gained from various parts of the world – ‘[Brownne’s] employment in Great Britain and then in this country, under different principles of construction, must certainly have broadened his knowledge of the “art of shipbuilding.”’ Brownne had been a renowned shipbuilder for decades but left the trade in 1822. Yet his reputation as one of New York’s great shipbuilders would have lived on, especially given his key role in building the Clermont, the first successful commercial steamboat. See John H. Morrison, History of New York Ship Yards (Press of W.F. Sametz & Co., 1909), 23–25, 31–33, 38–39. See also George William Sheldon, ‘The Old Ship-Builders of New York’, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, July 1882, 228–29. McCune Smith’s footnote does not refer to the builder(s) of the Caledonia: she was constructed in 1828 by the firm Brown & Bell for the famous Black Ball Line of packet ships that served the New York-Liverpool trade. David Brown and Jacob Bell were both from Connecticut and leaned their trade in New York. See Sheldon, ‘The Old Ship-Builders of New York’, 230–31; Richard C. McKay, South Street: A Maritime History of New York, (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1934), 175–76; Cutler, Greyhounds Of The Sea, 56–59, 518.

^[16] Probably from ‘We skimmers of the sea’ in James Fenimore Cooper, The Water Witch; Or, The Skimmer of the Seas (Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830), 1:235 (In Internet Archive). ‘Skimmers of the sea’ was likely inspired by ‘En mer, les hardis écumeurs!,’ the fifth line in ‘Chanson de Pirates’ in Victor Hugo, Les Orientales, Oeuvres complètes de Victor Hugo (J. Hetzel, 1829), 73 (In Internet Archive).

^[17] See ‘King Henry IV, Part II’ in William Shakespeare, The Plays of William Shakspeare, with George Steevens et al. (J. Johnson [and others], 1803), 12:110–11, 137, 140–42 (In Internet Archive).

^[18] i.e., herring.

^[19] McCune Smith’s approximation of the fishermen’s dialect.

Several years after he wrote them in 1832, James McCune Smith published edited extracts from the travel journal describing his journey from New York City to Britain en route to Glasgow – where he spent five years pursuing his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees at the University of Glasgow – in the Colored American. This is the first instalment. (See the next one here) The original journal is lost, but these extracts provide valuable and fascinating insights into McCune Smith’s early thought and outlook on the world.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Dr. Smith’s Journal

Date: 16-19 August 1832

Source: The Colored American, 11 November 1837, p. 2

Text:

For the Colored American.^[1]

DR. SMITH’S JOURNAL^[2]

–––––––––

August 16, 1832.―At 2 o’clock, P.M., when we were half way across the lower bay, the steamer^[3] hove loose, and the wind being favorable, we dismissed the pilot, and in a few hours doubled Sandy Hook. Whoever, bound on a long voyage for the first time beholds those tall prim whitewashed light houses gradually lessen in the distance, will never forget the proportionate concentration upon them of his fondest associations, nor the blank that fell upon his heart when the last little specks were obliterated by the remorseless waves.

It is impossible to describe the new class of emotions that rush upon the mind, when sea and sky become the sole and sublime objects that meet one’s ardent gaze. The best attempts of the ablest writers signally fail when they essay to describe the magnificent mirror where

“The Almighty glasses himself in storm.”^[4]

It will be an easier task to say something of my fellow voyagers.^[5] There were ninety-one souls on board. The captain^[6] was an able and skillful seaman, but exceedingly taciturn. The chief mate was a fair specimen of his class. Young, tall and athletic, with a voice like a trumpet call, he seemed in his element when the symptoms of a storm, or when an ill done order yielded him an opportunity to lord it over the sailors with his fearful catalogue of imprecations. Really a good seaman, he seemed aware of it, and supported his pretensions by many a long yarn of storms safely weathered by the vessel which he commanded, whilst many others were wrecked around him. His sentiments on religion were expressed in scoffs at revivals, his notions of the unenfranchised of these States, were derived from the Five Points!^[7]

The only passenger remarkable, was an Englishman. Of diminutive stature, and extremely emaciated; a fine blue eye gave great expression to his countenance. He was exceedingly fond of hearing himself talk. Logwood, Ivory, Coast of Africa, and some exceedingly Munchausen-like feats of daring, and of suffering by flood and field, were the hobbies on which he perpetually harped. He had been engaged in nobody knew what sort of traffic in the neighborhood of Liberia, where, according to his own account, he had made a fortune and lost his health. Immediately on his arrival in Liverpool, he was placed in “durance vile.”^[8] One day he sat before his escritoire, pen in hand, nearly an hour; a passenger happened to enter the cabin to whom he read aloud the fruit of his labor; it was the following sentence: “Of all poverty; that of mind is the most deplorable.”^[9]

Aug. 18th.―We are now many hundred miles from land. An incident occurred to-day, which for a few hours created the most painful sensations. One of the seamen was suddenly seized with the symptoms of Asiatic Cholera.^[10] The report spread like lightening through the ship, and faces that a moment before were ruddy and cheerful in the favorable breeze, instantly blanched with fear. Hurrying on deck, I shall never forget the spectacle which presented itself to my view! The helmsman seemed the only man on duty; the passengers were huddled into the bows of clung to the rigging of the ship, watching with the intensest anxiety, the group of seamen who surrounded the patient, chafing his limbs and administering huge doses of brandy and pepper.^[11]

The captain stood by, and gave directions with calmness; My own feelings were not marvelously heroic. The patient seemed a basilisk―it was impossible to avoid gazing upon him. The shining pallor of his countenance gave terrible distinctness to its cramped muscles, each convulsion of which sent home to the imagination fearful visions of the “plague ship.”^[12] I stood almost rooted to the spot―but at length rushed to my state-room, and found the efficacy of prayer in restoring tranquility to the mind, even under such circumstances. In a few hours the man recovered.

On the morning of the 19th, I arose with peculiarly solemn feelings. It was our first Sabbath at sea, and how great the thanksgiving due to Him who had safely conducted as thus far on our solitary way! And such a day for thanksgiving and prayer! Often when amid rural scenery; I have thought that nature helped to solemnize the Lord’s day, but never, until this morning, did I feel and hear the song of thanksgiving which His works can render their Creator.

A fine breeze sent our vessel joyfully on her way, and curled the tops of the dark blue waves with beautiful foam-crests. The whole scene was simple―grand. The circled plane of ocean seemed the floor, the cloudless sky the dome, and the glorious sun the ministering high-priest of Nature’s temple and of Nature’s Sabbath. At the hour when the services of the church began, I read the liturgy with a mind that seemed newly awakened to devotional exercises―hitherto highly valued, but now valued the more, because the better understood. Literally feeling each succeeding moment of existence dependent^[13] on His mercy, and buoyed upon that element which represents to moral man the noblest idea of His attributes, who would not feel a new zest, a loftier devotion in the sublimity and patter in which the rubrics of the church abounds? There is an eloquence, too, in the rushing of the mighty waters―“deep calling unto deep.”^[14]―which responds to and harmonizes with the very spirit of devotion. The evening, like the day, was delightful in the extreme. The bosom of ocean [sic] was

“Gently heaving,

Like an infant’s, asleep.”^[15]

The pure sea-breeze blew bravely over our quarter; the phosphoric gleam of our wake, and the deep, blue vault above, studded with the bright stars, that

“Are the poetry of Heaven,”^[16]

called up emotions which cannot be described.―It was a beautiful creation that of old, which peopled ocean with a race of intellectual beings.―It does seem strange, that scenes which yield the highest delight to our minds, should be suffered to waste their brilliance, for the most part, unseen and unappreciated.

(See the next instalment here)

^[1] Several years after he wrote them in 1832, James McCune Smith published edited extracts from the travel journal describing his journey from New York City to Britain en route to Glasgow – where he spent five years pursuing his bachelor’s, master’s, and medical degrees at the University of Glasgow – in the Colored American. This first instalment was accompanied by two editorials. In one, editor Samuel E. Cornish announced that readers could expect ‘a series of letters [by McCune Smith], embracing the most important events of his five years residence in Europe.’ See ‘Remarks’, The Colored American, 11 November 1837. Though these letters never materialized, extracts from the journal continued to be published periodically in the Colored American from 1837-1839, in line with the second editorial. Cornish wrote that McCune Smith’s journal ‘was written during his five years residence in Europe, and membership of the University of Glasgow. The Dr. visited London and Paris, availing himself of the institutions of those renowned cities, and mingling in their best circles.’ See ‘Extracts’, The Colored American, 11 November 1837. The original journal has been lost, and only extracts pertaining to McCune Smith’s transatlantic crossing and sojourn in Liverpool were published.

^[2] For another edited version of this and McCune Smith’s other journal entries published in the Colored American, see The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, ed. John Stauffer (Oxford University Press, 2006), 8–24.

^[3] This was the Caledonia, the ‘old line ship’ for New York-Liverpool. See ‘For Liverpool’, Commercial Advertiser, 8 August 1832; ‘Extracts from Dr. Smith’s Journal [23 August - 3 September 1832]’, The Colored American, 2 December 1837. For more about the Caledonia, see ‘Extracts from Dr. Smith’s Journal [23 Aug - 3 Sep 1832],’ CA, 2 Dec 1837 and associated footnotes in The World of James McCune Smith.

^[4] An adaptation of lines from Lord Byron’s ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,’ Canto IV, CLXXXIII: “Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s form / Glasses itself in tempests…” See George Gordon Byron, Works, II (John Murray, 1829), 70 (In Internet Archive).

^[5] A partial list of the Caledonia’s passengers was published in a New York paper: ‘Mr. Dufour, of Leipsie; Miss Sarah W West and Master Thomas West, of New-York; Mr Wm Boog, of Edinburg; Mr R T Shephard, lady, child and servant, of Boston; Mr J N Tweedy and Wm Thompson, of the West Indies; and 60 in the steerage.’ See ‘Passengers’, New-York American, 17 August 1832.

^[6] The Caledonia’s captain (who McCune Smith never named) was Hugh Graham. He was an Irish-born former British naval officer whose many adventures in a long maritime career included surviving a shipwreck. (See Commercial Advertiser, ‘For Liverpool,’ NYCA, 8 Aug 1832; Seraphina Gardner Smith, ed., Recollections of the Pioneers of Lee County [Illinois] (Inez A. Kennedy, 1893), 473. Graham later became a leading figure in the Illinois pioneer community he joined following the financial panic of 1837. The chief mate has not been identified.

^[7] McCune Smith grew up in the Five Points neighborhood of New York City and attended school there. Named for the five-cornered intersection where Anthony, Cross, and Orange Streets met, it had a reputation as one of the most deprived, depraved, dirty, and ramshackle parts of the city. Yet McCune Smith had many fond memories of his years in that working-class neighborhood and defended it against detractors in his writings. See, for example, ‘Heads of the Colored People - No. 5: The Steward’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 24 December 1852. For more about the Five Points and its reputation in McCune Smith’s time, see Tyler Anbinder, Five Points: The 19th-Century New York Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum (Free Press, 2010), 14–37.

^[8] In prison, or otherwise detained. For example, see William Somervile’s Fable XIV, Canto III, in Samuel Johnson, ed., The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper, XI (J. Johnson, J. Nichols and Sons [and others], 1810), 220 (In Hathi Trust).

^[9] John Stauffer writes that this quote is ‘a variation of a line from Michel de Montaigne, Essays (1588).’ See McCune Smith, Works of JMS, 66, n8. The line reads – in the original – ‘La pauvreté des biens, est aisée à guerir, la pauvreté de l’ame impossible.’ See Michel de Montaigne, Essais de Michel Seigneur de Montaigne, 5th edn (Chez Abel l’Angelier, 1588), 446–47. (The pages are misnumbered: the line is near the top of the unnumbered page between those numbered 446 and 447.) (In Internet Archive.)

^[10] John Pintard, New York merchant, philanthropist, and co-founder of the New-York Historical Society, wrote to his daughter of the emerging outbreak of ‘Asiatic Cholera’ in the city in summer of 1832. See John Pintard, Letters from John Pintard to His Daughter, Eliza Noel Pintard Davidson, 1816-1833, IV: 1832-1833 (Printed for the New-York Historical Society, 1941), 67, 74. ‘Asiatic cholera’ – also known as ‘Cholera morbus’ – originated in India, spreading from there to Europe in the 1810s and ‘20s before it reached North America, resulting in the 1832 pandemic there. See John B. Osborne, ‘Preparing for the Pandemic: City Boards of Health and the Arrival of Cholera in Montreal, New York, and Philadelphia in 1832’, Urban History Review / Revue d’histoire Urbaine 36, no. 2 (2008): 29–42.

^[11] For brandy and pepper as treatments for cholera at this time, see Charles E. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 (The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 66, 69.

^[12] A common term for a vessel that carried contagious disease from one place to another, used in many literary and scientific works.

^[13] Spelled ‘dependant’ in the original printing.

^[14] Adapted from Psalm 42:7: ‘Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts.’ See The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments [King James Version] (William W. Woodward, 1813) (In Internet Archive).

^[15] Excerpted and adapted from lines in Lord Byron’s second ‘Stanzas for Music’, which read: ‘The charmed ocean’s pausing…/ Her bright chain o’er the deep; / Whose breast is gently heaving, / As an infant’s asleep.’ In George Gordon Byron, Poems (John Murray, 1816), 19 (In Internet Archive).

^[16] From ‘Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!’ in ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,’ Canto III, LXXXVIII, in George Gordon Byron, Works, I (John Murray, 1829), 210 (In Internet Archive).

James McCune Smith’s editorial for the Anglo-African, written when his increasingly precarious health indicated to him that death might be imminent – as it turned out, he lived for nearly another year – serves as a sort of Rosetta Stone for piecing together his long journalistic history in the early black press. Following a longstanding journalist tradition, most of the papers McCune Smith wrote for didn’t include bylines in their editorials. And since most of those papers had multiple editors and/or a rotating cast of them, it takes a great deal of time and care to work out who wrote what. This reflective, sometimes droll, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes defensive (on his own and others’ behalf), and consistently witty editorial was an exciting find, providing a wealth of invaluable clues and avenues for research for the otherwise much more daunting detective work of hunting down McCune Smith’s full corpus of journalistic writing.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: Our Faults―Remedies

Date: ca. December 1864

Source: The Anglo-African, Vol. 4, No. 20, 10 December 1864, p. 3 (At Duke University Libraries)

Text:

OUR FAULTS―REMEDIES

–––•–––

WE^[1] are about to make a clean breast of it. We shall repeat, as well as we can remember, the many faults which people find with our paper, and will try to point out how they can be remedied. We would like to give the names of the fault-finders, and call upon them for suggestions of amendment; but we don’t like to surprise people, even in print.^[2]

“The ANGLO-AFRICAN is a mere intelligence office^[3] for the soldiers” (meaning colored soldiers), says a very learned and accomplished gentleman. Our remedy for this fault, is that we shall try and become “more so.” And we feel encouraged in this direction by the advice of a brilliant contemporary, an editor of the Sunday Mercury.^[4] We shall be glad to print all the thoughts of our soldiers, because they are evidently, from their novel position, the recipients of new ideas, thoughts, and emotions, to a greater extent than any other class. We do not think that there can be gathered from any other source than this,^[5] matter so important to the future historian of our land and nation.

2. “The correspondence (editorial) of the Anglo is filled up with how Mrs. A was dressed, Mrs. B sang, Mrs. C set up a superb table, etc., etc., those ladies looking particularly angelic who subscribed for our paper cash down.” This fault was found by a priest, young in years but old in―craft.^[6] It doubtless made him feel very bad to see an emissary of the press received and treated in a way which he regarded as exclusively belonging to the cloth, away from which he had gradually driven himself by the frightful (to respectable ladies) habit of masticating tobacco, until his mouth is a perpetual fountain of a certain kind. We don’t know that we shall try to remedy this fault, especially as our senior^[7] (see his last week’s letter^[8]) has his eyes about him, not without dashes of a brilliant imagination. Why are not the excellencies of colored ladies as fit subjects for pen-painting^[9] as the excellencies of white ladies? And when a man, humbly seeking to elevate his people, travels all day and far into the night,^[10] undergoing the malignant scowls of Copperheads^[11] and other foes, the inclemencies of railroad or steamboat travelling, worn, wet, hungry and exhausted, is welcomed into the quiet and comfortable home of a colored family, with good things steaming up from a bountiful table―would not this man be less than human if he failed to express his gratitude for this home by the wayside?

               “Breathes there a man with soul so dead,

               Who never to himself hath said,

               As home he comes from foreign strand,

               ‘This is my own―my native land.’

               “If such there be, go mark him well,

               No minstrel song his footsteps tell;

               Living, he forfeits fair renown,

               And, doubly dying, shall go down

               To the vile dust whence he sprung,

               Unwept, unhonored, and unsung!”[12]

3d. A great deal of fault is found, and, we think, justly, with the wishy-washy, uncertain, unsatisfying lucubrations^[13] to be found in the editorial columns proper of the ANGLO-AFRICAN. We plead guilty to this fault, and would respectfully suggest that the only remedy is, for those who feel aggrieved to sit down and write editorials, and send them along, and we will print them. We are too old now to mend. We have labored longer at this oar than any live black man. In 1830 we began, as a correspondent to the Liberator;^[14] from 1832 to ’37, we were a constant correspondent of a foreign paper;^[15] in 1837 became co-editor of the Colored American,^[16] with the late Rev. Samuel E. Cornish^[17] and dear old Phylbel^[18]; in 1859 edited a paper with Rev. Dr. Pennington, under the proprietorship of the now venerable Stephen Myers,^[19] when we had the honor of being hauled over the coals by the Hon. Gerrit Smith, for our pitching into Rev. Joshua Leavitt;^[20] about the same time became editor of the People’s Press, published by Mr. Thomas Hamilton,^[21] when we had the honor of being hauled over the coals by Frederick Douglass, Esq., for pitching into “old organization”;^[22] a few years later, became a regular contributor to Frederick Douglass’ paper,^[23] over what we thought to be a Dutch signature,^[24] possibly remembered by the readers of that paper, and especially by one Ethiop, now happily lying near Abraham’s bosom.^[25] With the commencement of the ANGLO-AFRICAN Magazine and Weekly, we returned to our early love, Thos. Hamilton, Esq.,^[26] and we have jogged along thus far happily together, and will do so, we hope, until the catastrophe mentioned in a certain ceremony shall occur.^[27]

Our readers will see that we are rather old hand at the bellows editorial―too old, we fear, to mend. It has been to us, throughout, a labor of love. We look back at it, not without a certain degree of complacency; for however imperfectly we have performed, we meant to do well. Our faults, such as they are, however, will not trouble our readers for long. A few more scribblings and the old pen will be shelved.^[28] It is not without pleasing hopes that we find ourselves steadily drawing―

               “–––Nearer to the wayside inn

               Where toil must cease[29] and rest begin.”[30]

What a glorious time to live in! what a glorious hour to die in! The fond, bright light of Freedom illumining even the valley and the shadow,^[31] and the hosannahs of the free cheering the adit^[32] to another and a better world.

S.

[1] This leading editorial is signed ‘S,’ the only editorial that James McCune Smith signed thusly for the Anglo-African newspaper. This indicates that he was especially concerned that no one would attribute the remarks within it to its proprietor and lead editor Robert Hamilton – just in case the reader was unaware of McCune Smith’s widely known role as editorial writer in Hamilton’s absence – or misunderstand the sentence

‘A great deal of fault is found, and, we think, justly, with the wishy-washy, uncertain, unsatisfying lucubrations to be found in the editorial columns proper of the ANGLO-AFRICAN’ as anything other than McCune Smith’s self-deprecating humour directed towards himself and his own editorial writings. McCune Smith’s authorship of this and other editorials is supported by his letter to Gerrit Smith of 17 February 1865 – ‘In regard to the Anglo-African, I must plead guilty to scribbling the leading editorial of almost every number’ – and by Hamilton’s ongoing absence from New York City (NYC), confirmed in his ‘What We’ve Seen While Drifting’ column (referred to as ‘correspondence (editorial)’ further on in this editorial) in this, previous, and subsequent issues of the Anglo-African. McCune Smith served as the lead editorial writer – and in this and other examples, of second and third editorials – of the paper while Hamilton was away on reporting and promotional tours. For more evidence for McCune Smith’s stints as writer of anonymous editorials and other works (mostly book reviews) for the Anglo-African publications, see footnotes 1 and 3 for McCune Smith’s ‘Apology (Introductory)’ for the Magazine’s first issue (In The World of James McCune Smith).

[2] This suggests that none of the complaining letters were published in the Anglo-African.

[3] According to a contemporary edition of Webster’s Dictionary of English, an intelligence office refers to ‘An office or place where information may be obtained, particularly respecting servants to be hired.’ See Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language, Revised and Enlarged, ed. Chauncey A. Goodrich (George and Charles Merriam, 1854), 613.

[4] This likely refers to William Cauldwell, lead editor of the Sunday Mercury. William B. Styple, editor of a published collection of Civil War soldiers’ letters to the nationally popular New York City weekly, writes that ‘this paper published more military correspondence than most, with some issues containing nearly twenty letters apiece.’ At the time McCune Smith wrote this editorial, the editors of the Mercury were Cauldwell, Sylvester Southworth, and Horace P. Whitney. When the Civil War broke out, the paper was cut off from the majority of its readers, who were in the South and Southwest. Cauldwell had the idea that helped avert catastrophe: to get news from the battlefront by recruiting soldiers as correspondent-journalists. Thus, ‘the Sunday Mercury became the public oracle of the Union soldier and sailor.’ See William B. Styple, ed., Writing and Fighting the Civil War: Soldier Correspondence to the New York Sunday Mercury (Belle Grove Publishing Company, 2000), 7, 9–10.

[5] Cauldwell thought likewise; as Styple writes, ‘war correspondents did not come cheap, and with limited resources it seemed impossible for the paper to provide interesting coverage from the war zone.’ So, Cauldwell ‘broaden[ed] the definition of a war correspondent,’ realizing that soldiers’ letters recording and reflecting on their experiences served as a form of journalism. See Styple, Writing and Fighting the Civil War, 10.

[6] A play on ‘priestcraft,’ a disparaging term referring to the ‘stratagems and frauds of priests.’ See Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language, 867.

[7] McCune Smith identified ‘our senior’ – meaning his senior editor – as Robert Hamilton in ‘A Pleasant Re-Union’, The Anglo-African, 5 March 1864 (In Duke University Libraries).

[8] In his editorial correspondence from Michigan for the Anglo-African’s previous issue, Hamilton described the people, professions, homes, schools, churches, other organizations, hospitality, entertainments, and other ways and doings of the black Michiganders of Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Jackson. See Robert Hamilton, ‘Among the Michiganders’, The Anglo-African, 3 December 1864.

[9] McCune Smith used the imagery of ‘pen-painting’ or word portraits in other works, especially in his ‘Heads of the Colored People’ essays for Frederick Douglass’ Paper. See ‘“Heads of the Colored People,” Done with a Whitewash Brush: The Black News-Vender’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 25 March 1852; ‘A Flagrant Prostitute’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 6 August 1852; ‘Heads of the Colored People - No. VI: The Editor’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 18 February 1853; ‘A Card’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 1 April 1853; ‘Heads of the Colored People - No. VIII: The Whitewasher’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 30 September 1853.

[10] This man was Robert Hamilton, who was on one of his promotional and reporting tours for the Anglo-African at the time McCune Smith wrote this editorial. For a discussion of another of Hamilton’s tours and his accounts of them as ‘Editorial Correspondence’ for the Anglo-African, see Debra Jackson, ‘A Black Journalist in Civil War Virginia: Robert Hamilton and the “Anglo-African”’, The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 116, no. 1 (2008): 42–72.

[11] A disparaging term coined by Republicans for Northern anti-war Democrats who opposed the abolitionist cause and favoured making peace with the South. See James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The American Civil War (Penguin Books, 1990), 493–94.

[12] These stanzas are approximations of the first two from Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ Canto Sixth. The abbreviations of the original octaves and the rephrasing and rearranging of the original passages here suggest that McCune Smith had committed them to memory many years previously but had not refreshed his memory through re-reading for some time. See Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel: A Poem (Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1805), 161–62 (In Internet Archive).

[13] I.e., writings ‘produced by meditation in retirement.’ See Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language, 507. McCune Smith’s editorials for the Anglo-African regularly tended towards nostalgia and recounting the past. ‘Our Faults’ is a prime example.

[14] McCune Smith misremembered the timing at least somewhat: William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper The Liberator was launched on 1 January 1831. See John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison, a Biography (Little, Brown and Company, 1963), 127–28. Close scrutiny of issues of the Liberator from its first year or so has thus far failed to uncover contributions that can be confidently attributed to McCune Smith. (Most issues of the Liberator can be accessed at https://fair-use.org/the-liberator/.) He was only eighteen years old when the Liberator was launched and was still developing his writing style. McCune Smith’s career as a newspaper contributor appears to have begun years earlier: compelling circumstantial evidence suggests that he wrote several works published in Freedom’s Journal starting in 1827, when he was only fourteen years old. See footnotes 1 and 5 for ‘African Genealogy [Part 1]’ (In The World of James McCune Smith). McCune Smith may have omitted these youthful contributions from his account here to focus on his journalistic history as an adult.

[15] This unnamed paper is likely the Glasgow Chronicle. One surviving letter to the editor by McCune Smith, signed ‘A Young American’, has been identified; see ‘To the Editor of the Glasgow Chronicle [15 January 1833]’, Glasgow Chronicle (Glasgow), 18 January 1833, National Library of Scotland (In The World of James McCune Smith). Notably, McCune Smith also included the quote ‘his own, his native land’ from ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’ in that letter to the Glasgow Chronicle’s editor. Whether this is a coincidence or McCune Smith deliberately dropping a little clue to his authorship of both is unknown.

[16] McCune Smith misremembered the year here. The Colored American announced in late 1838 that ‘We have engaged as assistant Editor, Dr. JAMES M’CUNE SMITH, whose superior abilities, in connexion with the experience of our present able Editor, will give additional interest to our publication.’ See Philip A. Bell, ‘Our Next Volume’, The Colored American, 8 December 1838. Though McCune Smith’s name wouldn’t join editor Samuel E. Cornish’s on the masthead until the first issue of January 1839, McCune Smith evidently began contributing editorially in December; see ‘Dr. Macdonald’s Report’, The Colored American, 22 December 1838 (In The World of James McCune Smith). We can know McCune Smith authored this editorial because the author promised to ‘professionally say more on this subject.’ McCune Smith was the only physician who was both a contributor and co-editor for the paper.

[17] Samuel E. Cornish, about eighteen years McCune Smith’s senior, was a close friends and frequent collaborator. Cornish had moved from his native Delaware to New York City after studying for the ministry and working as a missionary in Philadelphia. He founded the First Colored Presbyterian Church in 1821 and became co-editor (alongside John Russwurm) of Freedom’s Journal, the first newspaper owned and conducted by African Americans, upon its founding in 1827. Cornish became head editor of the recently founded Colored American in 1837 and served in that post – except for McCune Smith’s three-month tenure at the paper, when he and Cornish were officially equal co-editors – for about two years. See Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, ‘Cornish, Samuel E[Li] (1795-1858)’, in Dictionary of American Negro Biography (Norton, 1982); Jacqueline Bacon, Freedom’s Journal: The First African-American Newspaper (Lexington Books, 2007), 30–31.

[18] ‘Phylbel’ (most often spelled ‘Fylbel’) was McCune Smith’s pseudonym for Philip A. Bell, McCune Smith’s close lifelong friend, journalist, and founder and editor – and later, co-proprietor and/or co-editor – of the Colored American. Originating in McCune Smith’s correspondence for Frederick Douglass’ Paper (FDP), it’s a phonetic spelling of ‘Phil Bell.’ ‘Cosmopolite’ was the pseudonym Bell used for his own correspondence for FDP and in other works. See John Stauffer in James McCune Smith, The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, ed. John Stauffer (Oxford University Press, 2006), xxxi, 108.

[19] The year is given as ‘1859’ in error, and was perhaps originally rendered ‘1839.’ Even so, the year should read ‘1844’ because McCune Smith joined James W. C. Pennington around the beginning of May 1844 as co-editor of the Northern Star and Clarksonian, a paper born of the merger of Pennington’s Clarksonian (Hartford, CT) with the Northern Star and Freeman’s Advocate (Albany, NY), for which Stephen Myers was general agent. See ‘Anti-Slavery Items: New Papers’, National Anti-Slavery Standard, 10 February 1842; ‘The General Agent of the Northern Star, Stephen Myers...’, New-York Daily Tribune, 3 September 1842; ‘The Clarksonian’, Christian Freeman, 2 May 1844, 1; ‘Northern Star’, New York Journal of Commerce, 16 May 1844; ‘Notice - Stephen Myers’, Hartford Courant, 20 June 1844. McCune Smith’s and Pennington’s editorial tenures at the paper were rather short, lasting about six months or less; both had left the paper by mid-November. See James McCune Smith, ‘The Liberty Party - No. IV (From the Northern Star and Clarksonian)’, National Anti-Slavery Standard, 14 November 1844; Henry Highland Garnet, ‘The Sweet Cake Party’, National Anti-Slavery Standard, 14 November 1844., and the following footnote.

[20] No issues of the Northern Star and Clarksonian apparently survive, though some articles do because they were re-published in other newspapers. This includes two articles by McCune Smith, the first written during his editorial tenure and the second as a letter to the editor after he left the paper. Both are among a longer series in which he laid out in detail why he didn’t support the new Liberty Party. McCune Smith, still a committed Whig, didn’t believe the still-fledgling party – which called for using existing law and political processes to end slavery nationally, as opposed to American Anti-Slavery Society members’ support for dissolving the union between free and slave states – could be effective in national politics. The disagreement between McCune Smith, Joshua Leavitt, and Gerrit Smith was in the context of the fierce debate over the Liberty Party waged in the Northern Star’s pages and beyond; Leavitt and Smith were leading members of the party. The text in which McCune Smith ‘pitched into’ Leavitt doesn’t survive, though Leavitt’s response does. McCune Smith’s and Myer’s opposition to the Liberty Party caused much consternation, including among the editorial staff – Pennington, too, was a staunch supporter of the party – and leading readers and party members such as Henry Highland Garnet. By spring 1848, McCune Smith had changed his mind and joined the party, in part because he was persuaded by his Liberty Party friends’ arguments and in part from observing Whigs’ lacklustre record when it came to opposing slavery and supporting equal rights for black Americans. See Garnet, ‘Sweet Cake,’ NASS, 14 Nov 1844; Joshua Leavitt, ‘Will the Northern Star...’, Emancipator and Weekly Chronicle, 29 April 1845; Henry Highland Garnet, ‘James McCune Smith, M. D. - Number II [From the National Watchman]’, Emancipator, 15 September 1847; ‘Letter of Rev. Theodore S. Wright’, Emancipator and Weekly Chronicle, 19 October 1844; James McCune Smith to Gerrit Smith, 12 May 1848, Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University Libraries; Philip A. Bell, ‘The Cowardice of Republicanism’, The Elevator, 8 May 1868; Reinhard O. Johnson, The Liberty Party, 1840-1848: Antislavery Third-Party Politics in the United States, Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World (Louisiana State University Press, 2009), 82–83, 142, 371.

[21] The People’s Press was a newspaper – now little known – founded in October 1841 by Thomas Hamilton, younger brother of McCune Smith’s close friend and fellow African Free School alumnus Robert Hamilton, when Thomas was only eighteen years old. The Colored American described the Press as a ‘spicey little sheet,’ and the Liberty Party’s Tocsin of Liberty described it as ‘spirited.’ See ‘The People’s Press’, The Colored American, 30 October 1841; ‘And Yet Another (From the Tocsin of Liberty)’, Emancipator and Free American, 24 December 1841. The Press appears to have stopped publication by early 1843. See ‘By the By...’, Northern Star and Freeman’s Advocate, 2 January 1843., which reads: ‘By the by, what has become of the People’s Press? Some say it has gone up Salt River. You must ask the Doctor.’ (To row or go ‘up Salt River’ was a metaphor for political defeat. See John Russell Bartlett, Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States, 3rd edn (Little, Brown and Company, 1860), 372–73. As used here, it’s an apparent reference to the Press’s failure due to its proprietor’s and/or editor(s)’s controversial political opinions.) ‘The Doctor’ is an apparent allusion to McCune Smith, who likely served his editorial tenure closer to the end of the Press’s existence, probably starting sometime in 1842, since this would more closely coincide with his editorial tenure at the Northern Star and Clarksonian (see preceding footnote). As with the Northern Star, no issues of the Press are known to survive, but a few of its articles (dating between March and May 1842) have because they were published in other papers. See next footnote for discussion of one of these, likely written by McCune Smith.

[22] The last of the known republished selections from the People’s Press, a short editorial or an excerpt from one, was republished in the National Anti-Slavery Standard alongside editorial remarks from the Liberator, effectively ‘pitch[es] into “old organization”’ (as the American Anti-Slavery Society was commonly referred to) because some of its members – most notably, its co-founder William Lloyd Garrison – supported the disunion of free states from slave states. (Both the NASS and the Liberator served as mouthpieces for and/or defenders of the AASS.) Since McCune Smith served as the Press’s editor around this time and the editorial’s stance on disunionism reflects his consistent views, he likely wrote it. See ‘The Union (From the Liberator)’, National Anti-Slavery Standard, 26 May 1842; ‘Dissolution of the Union (From the People’s Press)’, National Anti-Slavery Standard, 26 May 1842. Disunionism had been a major topic of debate at the AASS’s anniversary and annual meeting, held in New York City from 10-12 May 1842, and continued to rage in the abolitionist press. See also ‘Another Amalgamation Meeting - Adjourned Meeting of the Abolitionists at Concert Hall - The Question of the Dissolution of the Union Again Discussed’, The New York Herald, 14 May 1842; ‘Another Amalgamation Meeting - Conclusion of the Meetings of the Abolitionists’, The New York Herald, 14 May 1842; ‘Ninth Annual Meeting of the A.S. Society’, The Liberator, 13 May 1842; various articles on disunion in The Liberator for 20 May 1842; ‘Proceedings at the Annual Meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society’, The Liberator, 27 May 1842.

McCune Smith’s allusion to Frederick Douglass ‘haul[ing him] over the coals’ is an apparent reference to his and Douglass’s disagreement at 10 May’s afternoon session of the AASS’s annual meeting; the two men likely first met at this event. Douglass opposed McCune Smith’s proposal to appropriate $2,000 for creating a test case to go to the US Supreme Court regarding equal rights for black Americans. According to the New York Herald, Douglass’s remarks went well beyond his opposition to McCune Smith’s proposal: among other things, Douglass accused black New Yorkers in general of being prejudiced against the AASS. See The New York Herald, ‘Another Amalgamation Meeting - Conclusion,’ NYH, 14 May 1842; ‘Proceedings at the Annual Meeting of the AASS,’ Liberator, 27 May 1842. (The Herald was staunchly opposed to the abolitionist movement but constantly reported on it.)

McCune Smith had started ‘pitch[ing] into’ the AASS in print at least three years before, starting with his editorial tenure at the Colored American; in that case, he criticized the AASS for focusing too exclusively on ending slavery in the South while ‘half overlook[ing] slavery in the North.’ See ‘It Is a Fact, in Morals as Well as Physics...’, The Colored American, 18 May 1839.

[23] In October 1851, McCune Smith proposed a plan to increase Frederick Douglass’ Paper’s circulation and make it more financially secure, which Douglass endorsed. Among McCune Smith’s suggestions was the addition of a New York City correspondent to increase readership there. By late December, McCune Smith began contributing regular letters to the editor conveying news and views from NYC under a pseudonym (see next footnote). Starting with the 18 March 1852 issue, McCune Smith continued to do so as FDP’s officially designated NYC correspondent. See ‘Letter from Dr. James M’Cune Smith’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 16 October 1851; Frederick Douglass, ‘The Colored People and Our Paper’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 27 November 1851; ‘Messrs. Editors’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 25 December 1851; James McCune Smith, ‘Letter from Communipaw’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 18 March 1852.

[24] This supposed ‘Dutch signature’ was ‘Communipaw,’ a pseudonym inspired by a New Jersey community featured in Washington Irving’s satirical history of New York. Irving wrote that Communipaw was an Indian name for ‘a place, which was the egg from whence was hatched the mighty city of New York!... [now] a small village, pleasantly situated among rural scenery, on that beauteous part of the Jersey shore which was known in ancient legends by the name of Pavonia, and commands a grand prospect of the superb bay of New York.’ McCune Smith adopted Communipaw as his pseudonym as New York City correspondent for Frederick Douglass’ Paper starting in 1851. See Washington Irving, A History of New York: From the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (Inskeep & Bradford, 1809), 1:82; McCune Smith, ‘Messrs. Editors,’ FDP, 25 Dec 1851.

[25] McCune Smith’s close friend William J. Wilson, under the pseudonym ‘Ethiop,’ became the official Brooklyn correspondent for Frederick Douglass Paper starting in December 1851, less than three months after McCune Smith first recommended enlisting one for New York City. McCune Smith and Wilson conducted vigorous debates and discussions with one another in their correspondence for FDP over the years. Wilson later became the ‘sub rosa’ (as McCune Smith put it, meaning anonymous) editorial writer for the Anglo-African Weekly while McCune Smith was serving in the same role for the Anglo-African Magazine, for which Wilson, both as Ethiop and under his own name, also wrote essays and poetry. While ‘happily lying near Abraham’s bosom’ could suggest to the unknowledgeable reader (many if not most regular readers knew who the anonymous editorial writers were) that Wilson had since died, this wasn’t the case. Rather, this is apparently McCune Smith’s tongue-in-cheek way of saying that the persona ‘Ethiop’ was no longer active, as in, Wilson had stopped writing for the black press under that pseudonym. See James McCune Smith to Gerrit Smith, 20 September 1859, Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University Libraries; Thomas Hamilton, ed., The Anglo-African Magazine, vol. 1 (Thomas Hamilton, 1859; repr., Arno Press and the New York Times, 1968), 52, 58, 87, 150, 173, 216, 243, 283, 321; Thomas Hamilton, ed., The Anglo-African Magazine, Jan, vol. 2, with T. D. Woolsey (T. Hamilton, 1860), lists of contributors; John Stauffer in McCune Smith, Works of JMS, xxxi, 123; Amy M. Cools, ‘The Life and Work of Dr. James McCune Smith (1813-1865)’ (PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2021), 159–60, 228 fn 772, https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/38333.

[26] The Anglo-African was first founded as a literary magazine by Thomas Hamilton in January 1859. He added a newspaper, the Weekly Anglo-African, first published on 23 July 1859. The Magazine’s final issue was for March 1860. In March 1861, Thomas sold the Weekly due to financial pressures. Its new proprietors quickly turned it into a pro-emigrationist paper and changed its name to the Pine and Palm. Thomas’s brother Robert Hamilton re-founded the Weekly Anglo-African in July 1861, changed its name to the Anglo-African in 1862 (reflecting his short-lived effort to publish multiple issues per week), and published it through the end of December 1865. Thomas’s son William G. Hamilton helped Robert run the paper in final years, and Thomas remained closely involved with the Anglo-African until his death in May 1865. See James McCune Smith, ‘Apology (Introductory)’, The Anglo-African Magazine, January 1859 and footnotes (In The World of James McCune Smith).

[27] It was Thomas Hamilton who died first, suddenly, of typhoid fever on 29 May 1865, aged only 42. McCune Smith wrote Hamilton’s obituary for the Anglo-African, praising him for his unparalleled success in founding and sustaining a black newspaper, building it up to a circulation of five thousand in just a few years and keeping out of all but minimal debt. Though Hamilton’s extensive experience in publishing, his skills in accounting and financing, and his penchant for hard work were key, McCune Smith argued that the most important element for the paper’s success was that Hamilton ‘thoroughly understood the colored people,’ with his ‘massive, splendidly-balanced brain’ and descendance from great leaders like his father – and, McCune Smith claimed, Founding Father Alexander Hamilton himself. See 1860 United States Census, New York, Kings County, Brooklyn, digital image s.v. “Thomas Hamilton,” Ancestry.com; ‘Obituary [Thomas Hamilton]’, The Anglo-African, 10 June 1865; ‘Hamilton [Notice of Thomas Hamilton’s Death]’, The Anglo-African, 10 June 1865; ‘Died [Thomas Hamilton]’, The Elevator, 14 July 1865.

[28] McCune Smith didn’t expect to live much longer, due to his increasingly regular and more severe flare-ups of cardiopulmonary disease. He certainly didn’t expect to live longer than Hamilton, who was almost exactly ten years his junior. For McCune Smith’s previous musings on his ‘old [gold] pen,’ see ‘From Our New York Correspondent’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 3 August 1855; ‘From Our New York Correspondent’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 5 September 1856.

[29] Misspelled ‘case’ in the original.

[30] From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem ‘Weariness’ – ‘I, nearer to the wayside inn / Where toil shall cease and rest begin, / Am weary, thinking of your road!’ See Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn (Ticknor and Fields, 1863), 224 (In Internet Archive).

[31] These passages in the final paragraph reveal McCune Smith’s enduring belief that the Civil War, unambiguously transformed into a war against slavery by Preesident Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1 January 1863, would succeed in its purpose, and slavery would finally be abolished throughout the United States. McCune Smith believed that by issuing the Proclamation, Lincoln irrevocably linked the preservation of the Union to the destruction of slavery, and set the country firmly on the path to its national abolition – so decisively, McCune Smith argued in the Anglo-African, that even Lincoln himself couldn’t change the inevitable outcome: ‘[I]n regard to our emancipation: neither Mr. Lincoln, nor any other man or set of men, can hasten nor procrastinate it; its crucial hour is passed; the storm which brought it about is over, and we can only stand and witness its majestic roll upon the shores of time.’ See ‘The President’s Message’, The Anglo-African, 19 December 1863.

[32] A passage into a mine, usually cut through a hillside. See Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language, 18.

Soon after his arrival back home in the United States from his five years in Glasgow and beyond, newly minted physician James McCune Smith delivered a series of lectures in New York City and Philadelphia opposing phrenology. While these lectures are among McCune Smith’s most-cited public presentations, the texts of the originals are lost. However, two fairly detailed reviews and a series of notices and other contemporary allusions to them survive. While it’s often assumed that McCune Smith opposed phrenology on the grounds that it was a racist theory, this doesn’t appear to be the case. For one, phrenology wasn’t as routinely used by scientific racists and paternalists and pro-slavery apologists to ‘prove’ the mental inferiority of people of African descent as it would be later. In fact, many abolitionists and reformers around the time McCune Smith delivered these lectures, black and white alike, believed that phrenology was a progressive science that would scientifically prove what they believed was true – that black and white people were intellectually equal. Rather, McCune Smith opposed phrenology on scientific and religious grounds. And he was well-prepared to give these well-researched, well-reviewed lectures so soon after his return home because he had written an essay on that very subject for his final year of medical school.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: On the Fallacies of Phrenology [lecture series, no longer extant]

Date: Delivered on 18 September 1837, 19 October 1837, and 30 November 1837

Sources:

For 18 September 1837 lecture in New York City: ‘Anti-Phrenology’, The Colored American, 16 September 1837; William Leete Stone, ‘On Monday Evening, We Had the Pleasure...’, Commercial Advertiser, 20 September 1837; Samuel E. Cornish, ‘Phrenology’, The Colored American, 23 September 1837

For 19 October 1837 lecture in New York City: ‘Anti Phrenology’, The Colored American, 14 October 1837; ‘Anti-Phrenology’, Commercial Advertiser, 19 October 1837

For 30 November 1837 lecture in Philadelphia: ‘Anti-Phrenology’, The National Gazette and Literary Register, 30 November 1837

Text:

For the lecture delivered on 18 September 1837 in New York City:

Announcement of lecture: ‘Anti-Phrenology,’ The Colored American, 16 September 1837:

ANTI-PHRENOLOGY.^[1]

JAS. M’CUNE SMITH, M.D., M.A., respectfully informs his friends and fellow citizens that he will deliver a lecture, shewing the fallacy of the pretensions upon which Phrenology^[2] is founded,^[3] on Monday evening, Sept. 18th in the Philomathean Hall, Duane, near Hudson-street.^[4]

Admittance 25 cents. Tickets for sale at the Colored American; at the Anti-Slavery Office,^[5] Nassau-street;^[6] and at 148 Church-street.^[7]

Review of lecture: ‘On Monday evening, we had the pleasure...’ Commercial Advertiser, 20 September 1837:^[8]

On Monday evening, we had the pleasure of attending a lecture on the “fallacy of phrenology” by Dr. James McCune Smith, at the Philomathean Hall, in Duane street. Dr. Smith is a “Colored American,”^[9] who has lately returned from Glasgow, whither he repaired, a few years since, and where he has received the bachelor’s and master’s degree in the arts, and since graduated in medicine. He has now returned to this city, and is about to settle here, as a practitioner of physic and surgery.^[10] The testimonials he brings from Scotland afford ample evidence of his qualifications, by professional education as well as by literary and moral character.

As a lecturer, Dr. S. possesses many points of excellence. His modest demeanor, the ease of his address, the absence of all pedantry, and the facility of his elocution, were all calculated to bespeak the favor of his audience, among whom were a number of gentlemen belonging to the several learned professions, all of whom appeared to be interested, and indeed highly gratified.^[11] The arguments he advanced against the “science so called” denominated phrenology, were, some of them, entirely new, and all of them pertinent and forcible. By the aid of skulls,^[12] and extemporaneous drawings, upon the black board, he demonstrated the fallacy of the attempt to designate the developments of the brain, by external convexities upon the skull, when no corresponding concavities are discoverable on its internal surface. He showed the arbitrary character of the divisions of the organs, from the fact that the convolutions of the brain are in no case conformable to these divisions, and that the natural divisions of the cerebrum, by a membrane which descends between its convolutions, are altogether at variance with the artificial and imaginary separations into distinct organs which phrenology supposes. He proved by numerous physiological analogies, that there is no foundation for the science, either in human or comparative anatomy, and that boasted “facts” of phrenology, are built wholly upon assumptions, each of which he denied, and refuted, in a manner that showed him familiar with the subject.

Having thus attempted to demonstrated the false philosophy of the system, and its inconsistency with the organic and functional laws of the animal economy, Dr. S. glanced in conclusion at the obvious and important fact, that the dogmas of phrenology have a tendency to lead the mind into skepticism, in relation to the doctrines of Christianity, by their incapacity of agreement with the peculiarities of revealed religion; and referred to the fact every where apparent in Europe and America, that so many of its votaries and advocates are free thinkers. That this tendency to infidelity and irreligion was legitimately the consequence of a cultivation of phrenology, he had seen exemplified among his fellow students in the University of Glasgow, many of whom had become unsettled in their religious belief,^[13] most obviously by this instrumentality.

With the single exception, that the doctor in his zeal to overthrow phrenology, attempted to show that the brain is not the organ by which the mind acts,^[14] or at least that it is not proved to be such, there was nothing in the lecture, either in matter or manner, to which the most fastidious critic could take exception.

We are sure that all good men must rejoice in the improvement and elevation of individuals among our colored fellow citizens, of which Dr. Smith is an illustrious example; and we do but wish to express the wish of many of the audience, when we call for a repetition of the lecture in some more eligible place.^[15] And should Clinton Hall or some similar building be procured for the purpose, there can be little doubt that hundreds of our fellow citizens would avail themselves of the opportunity and privilege of hearing it. If there be any who still doubt the competency or capacity of a man of color, because he is such, they will have ocular and auricular demonstration that there is one at least, who has just claims to the character of a scholar and a gentleman.

Review of lecture: ‘Phrenology,’ The Colored American, 23 September 1837:^[16]

PHRENOLOGY.

–––––––

Last Evening, we had the high gratification of hearing our young and learned friend, Dr. JAMES M’CUNE SMITH, deliver a lecture of an hour’s length, in opposition to the pretensions of Phrenologists. And whatever be the supposed facts upon which these high pretensions (we are not yet prepared to say principles) of the system are founded, we must say our friend completely uprooted them all. We will not accuse Phrenologists of legendary, but certainly there are no principles in philosophy, reason, nor revelation, upon which they can found their theory―it is based on assumptions. Their pretensions, to us, savour too much of witchcraft, to have in them any reality.

Our friend had a difficult task. He had not merely defective principles to combat, but fictitious pretensions, which have not tangibility to take hold of. He furthermore than the high wrought superstition of his audience against him; yet with this fearful odds, as far as reason and philosophy weight any thing, he carried strong convictions, and made conclusive demonstrations.

We are not, as an individual, concerned about the truth or fallacy of Phrenology, but in its influence upon an unthinking community we feel interested. We think it a system tending to infidelity and ruin.^[17] If God has given a man the Bumpification of Destructiveness,^[18] he must be destructive and wicked, according to the system: and if on the other hand, he have the contrary Bumpification, of necessity he must be the contrary―otherwise there is no reality in Phrenology.

However unpopular^[19] the side of the question taken by our young friend, he sustained himself with honor to his talent and acquirements. Our soul feasted upon the exhibition of thought and learning; his chaste language and discriminating arguments would have done credit to three times his number of years. We commend the whole history of Dr. Smith’s life to the colored youth of our country. At the age of 23, we find him in possession of a good mechanical trade, with all the honors of one of the first Literary Institutions of Europe, and an honorable profession, in which, by judgment and skill, he has already proved himself eminent.

The whole secret of Dr. Smith’s success, under GOD, has consisted in his good character and persevering industry. Never did he waste his hours in idleness, nor his thought in pursuit of vanity―but his strong mind and industrious hands were early devoted to such pursuits as honor GOD, and adorn humanity. His whole life has commended him to the favor of GOD and of man, in which favor he has progressed and prospered. Children and youth, follow his example.

We humbly hope our friends and brethren will give their patronage to Dr. Smith. But give him a chance, and with good health, under GOD, he will make the Moral, Literary, and Physiological world ALL HIS OWN!

For the lecture delivered on 19 October 1837 in New York City:

Announcement of lecture: ‘Anti Phrenology,’ The Colored American, 14 October 1837:

Anti Phrenology.

We are happy to inform our readers that at the earnest solicitation of several scientific gentlemen present at his last lecture, as well as of many friends who could not then gain admission, Dr. James McCune Smith will repeat his lecture against Phrenology, on Thursday evening next, 19th inst. in Broadway Hall. For further particulars we must refer our readers to the daily papers of next week.^[20]

Announcement of lecture: ‘Anti Phrenology,’ Commercial Advertiser, 19 October 1837:

ANTI-PHRENOLOGY―The public are respectfully informed that at the solicitation of several scientific gentlemen, and of numerous friends who could not gain admission at his last Lecture on the FALLACY OF PHRENOLOGY, on Thursday evening 19^th inst. at half past seven o’clock, in Broadway Hall, near Howard street.

JAMES M’CUNE SMITH, M.D. M.A. late Vice President of the Glasgow Medical Society.^[21]

Tickets of admission 25 cents. For sale at Hopper’s Pharmacy,^[22] corner of Broadway and Franklin street; at Henderson Greene’s Bookstore, corner of Broadway and Howard street,^[23] at Dr. Smith’s office, 93 West Broadway,^[24] and at the door.

For the lecture delivered on 30 November 1837 in Philadelphia:

Announcement of lecture: ‘Anti-Phrenology,’ The Philadelphia Inquirer, 29 November 1837 (also in the National Gazette and Literary Register for 30 November 1837, nearly same text but missing Thomas Butler’s name):

ANTI-PHRENOLOGY.

DR. JAMES M’CUNE SMITH, of New York, a Colored Gentleman of eminent talents, and a Graduate of the University of Glasgow, Scotland, will expose the errors of Phrenology in a Scientific Lecture, on THURSDAY Evening next, 30th inst., at half past 7 o’clock, in the Adelphi Hall, South Fifth street.^[25]

Tickets of Admission, 25 cents, to be had at the following places^[26]―F. A. Hinton,^[27] 119 Chesnut street; J. C. White,^[28] 100 Old York Road; J. Needham,^[29] 25 Elizabeth street; R C. Gordon, Jr.,^[30] 57 Pine street; J. C. Bowers,^[31] 71 south Second street; Thos. Butler, ^[32] 8 south Eighth street; J. J. G. Bies,^[33] [sic] Acorn Alley near Locust street; J. W. Bowers,^[34] N. E. corner of Chesnut and Fourth; S. H. Gloucester,^[35] 137 Lombard street; and at the door.

nov 29 2t

Announcement of lecture: ‘Anti-Phrenology,’ Public Ledger (Philadelphia), 30 November 1837:

ANTI-PHRENOLOGY ― Doct. JAMES McCLURE [sic] SMITH, of New York, a colored gentleman of eminent talent, and a graduate of the University of Glasgow, Scotland, will expose the errors of Phrenology, in a Scientific Lecture, THIS EVENING, the 30th inst at 7½ o’clock, in the ADELPHI HALL, S. FIFTH street, below Walnut.

Tickets of Admission, 25 cents, and to be had at the following places:―F. A. Hinton, 119 Chesnut street; J. C. White, 100 Old York Road; J. Needham, 25 Elizabeth street; R C. Gordon, Jr., 57 Pine street; J. C. Bowers, 71 south 2d street; J. J. G Bias, Acorn Alley, near Lombard street; J. W. Bowers, N. E. corner Chesnut and 4th streets; S. H. Gloucester, 137 Lombard street. n20-[?]t*

No text, review, or excerpts of the 30 November 1837 Philadelphia lecture has been found; however, surviving sources refer to it:

‘Dr. Smith in Philadelphia,’ The Colored American, 23 December 1837:

Dr. Smith in Philadelphia.

–––––––––

IT will be seen by the following Preamble and Resolutions, that our^[36] friend Dr. Smith has been politely invited to visit our sister city, and spend a few days with the brethren there. This is as it should be; every means should be used by the virtuous and intelligent of our brethren throughout the country, to unite and cement together, our best men and best talents.

We constitute one great brotherhood. We are emphatically, in persecution and in interests, ONE. All strife, and selfishness, and jealousy, that ever existed among our fathers or ourselves, should be buried, and the best feelings of our hearts, and the most efficient doings of our heads and our hands, in all and every place, should be brought to bear on the great cause of emancipation and of human rights.

We honor the spirit and applaud the motives, which induced our young brethren of Philadelphia to invite our learned fellow citizen, Dr. Smith, to visit them. His visit has done good―and we hope he will be invited, and will visit, many more places. Dr. Smith is a young man of improved advantages; his visits and lectures will do much good in exciting and encouraging the virtuous ambition of colored young men, throughout the country.

We consider Dr. Smith, and all other educated, talented young men among us, common property. It is our privilege and our duty to sustain them in their professions and callings, and it is their duty to give us the benefit of their superior abilities and attainments.

We are pleased to understand that the Library Company of colored people, have elected the Dr. an HONORARY MEMBER.

–––––––

Philadelphia, Nov. 20th, 1837.

At a Special Meeting of the Philadelphia Library Company of C. P., held at the Hains-St. Hall, J. C. Bowers, President in the chair, and J.C. White, Secretary pro tem. The object of the meeting being stated by the President to be the sending of an invitation to Dr. J. Mc Cune Smith of New York, to visit Philadelphia, and deliver two lectures before the citizens of that place, one on the fallacy of Phrenology, and the other on Education.

The Meeting was addressed by Mr. F. A. Hinton; after which, Mr. Cornish gave a very interesting account of the life of Dr. Smith, whereupon it was Resolved, That an invitation be tendered to Dr. Smith to visit Philadelphia, and lecture on Anti-Phrenology, &c; and that there be a Committee of ten appointed, to tender such invitation, and make all necessary arrangements.

Resolved, That the following gentlemen be the Committee, viz: J. C. Bowers, Jas. Cornish,^[37] F. A. Hinton, J. G. Bias, S. H. Gloucester, R. C. Gordon Jr., Jas. Needham, Wm. Reynolds,^[38] Thos. Butler, and Jeremiah Bowers.

Resolved, That the Company now adjourn.

J. C. BOWERS, President.

J. C. WHITE, Sec. pro tem.

James McCune Smith in ‘Letter from Communipaw [12 January 1859]’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 21 January 1859:

[excerpt:] … my next visit [to Philadelphia] was in the year of grace 1837, when, fresh from college, and considering myself “some pumpkins,” I strove to enlighten the Philadelphians on the subject of Phrenology and the study of the classics….

[1] James McCune Smith was not the only one lecturing against phrenology in the United States around that time, despite the theory’s current popularity (see also footnote 19). For example, Thomas Sewall, Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Columbian College (later George Washington University), had delivered two lectures opposing phrenology to his students in February 1837, published not long afterward. See ‘Anti-Phrenology’, The Age (Augusta, ME), 19 April 1837.

[2] Phrenology was a mental science developed by German physician Franz Joseph Gall in the late eighteenth century. It purported to show that elements of thought and psychology originated in discrete brain organs, whose relative size and influence could be detected by examining the shape of the skull. See James Poskett, Materials of the Mind: Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815–1920 (University of Chicago Press, 2019), 1–2, 6.

[3] McCune Smith’s lecture was probably based on a paper he wrote as a medical student at the University of Glasgow. The school had assigned an essay on the topic to all medical students the 1836-37 academic year, in competition for an academic prize. See ‘University Prizes’, Glasgow Argus, 2 May 1836, Mitchell Library, Glasgow. McCune Smith did not win it; the prize was awarded to John Crawford of Glasgow. See ‘University Prizes’, Glasgow Argus, 4 May 1837, Mitchell Library, Glasgow. This was almost certainly McCune Smith’s friend and fellow student of the same name who presided over McCune Smith’s farewell dinner at Glasgow’s Tontine Hotel. See ‘Farewell Dinner to Dr. James M’Cune Smith, A.M. (From the Glasgow Chronicle of June 21st)’, The Colored American, 9 September 1837. (In The World of James McCune Smith.)

[4] Philomathean Hall at 161 Duane Street was, as Philip A. Bell described it, a ‘small room’ of such modest dimensions that an audience of around 200 people would ‘[crowd it] to its utmost.’ (See Philip A. Bell, ‘The Great Meeting’, The Liberator, 10 May 1844.) But as Carla Peterson writes, it was a ‘mecca of civic activism for black youth and “old heads” alike, beckoning them to take part in the community’s many flourishing institutions.’ (See Carla L. Peterson, Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City (Yale University Press, 2011), 117.)

[5] Though phrenology would later be regularly used to support race-based slavery and racial discrimination by purporting to show that people of African descent were mentally inferior – some had already used phrenology this way – this was almost certainly not why the American Anti-Slavery Society promoted McCune Smith’s anti-phrenology lecture. Abolitionists and reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison (co-founder of the Society), Sarah Grimké, Theodore Dwight Weld, Lucretia Mott, Horace Mann, and Abbey Kelley Foster enthusiastically embraced phrenology, believing that it was an enlightened, progressive science that would prove that people of African descent were as intellectually capable as white people. See Richard H. Colfax, Evidence Against the Views of the Abolitionists, Consisting of Physical and Moral Proofs, of the Natural Inferiority of the Negroes (James T.M. Bleakley, Publisher, 1833), 24–26; Theodore Dwight Weld et al., Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld and Sarah Grimké, 1822-1844, vol. 2, ed. Gilbert Hobbs Barnes and Dwight Lowell Dumond, with American Historical Association (Peter Smith, 1965), 527–30, 809–12; David De Giustino, ‘Phrenology in Britain, 1815-1855: A Study of George Combe and His Circle’ (PhD diss., The University of Wisconsin, 1969), 90–91; Cynthia S. Hamilton, ‘“Am I Not a Man and a Brother?” Phrenology and Anti-Slavery’, Slavery & Abolition 29, no. 2 (2008): 173–74, 177–79; Poskett, Materials of the Mind, 214–128, 416, 420; Rachel E. Walker, Beauty and the Brain: The Science of Human Nature in Early America (University of Chicago Press, 2022), 51–52. This would explain why the surviving reviews of McCune Smith’s lectures (see below) do not mention him making any arguments against phrenology on anti-slavery and black equality grounds. Instead, McCune Smith’s objections were scientific and religious. See also footnote 17 below.

[6] Office of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 143 Nassau Street. Its officers that year included president Arthur Tappan; vice presidents Beriah Green, Gerrit Smith, and James G. Birney, among many others (from various states); foreign secretary William Jay; and domestic secretary Elizur Wright. The executive committee conducted the AASS’s business from its New York City headquarters, and published the weekly Emancipator, the monthly Human Rights and Anti-Slavery Record, and the quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine. See Edwin Williams, ed., New-York As It Is, in 1837 (J. Disturnell, 1837), 99–100.

[7] McCune Smith’s friend Patrick H. Reason was advertised as a ‘Historical, Portrait and Landscape Engraver, Draughtsman and Lithographer’ at this address. Reason would later engrave the best-known non-photographic portrait of McCune Smith. See ‘Patrick H. Reason’, The Colored American, 12 April 1838; Patrick H. Reason, James McCune Smith, ca 1865, Engraving, New-York Historical Society Digital Collections, https://images.prismic.io/nyhs-prod/rediscovering-a-forgotten-abolitionist-and-pioneering-physician-james-mccune-smith-1.jpg.

[8] This review was almost certainly written by the New York Commercial Advertiser’s editor William Leete Stone. Commonly known as Colonel Stone, he was also a member of the New York Manumission Society, which founded the African Free Schools. (See Charles C. Andrews, The History of the New-York African Free-Schools: From Their Establishment in 1787, to the Present Time (Mahlon Day, 1830), 128.) This review apparently wasn’t the first time Stone commented on a McCune Smith performance. Decades later, McCune Smith recounted Stone’s reaction to his and Isaiah DeGrasse’s stellar performance in their public graduation exam for their collegiate school. According to McCune Smith, Stone said: ‘These lads have done very well, but—cui bono? [who benefits?] What possible good can a classical education yield them? Will we feel any better because the man who waits on our table can read Virgil and Horace?’ See James McCune Smith, ‘Sketch of the Life and Labors of Rev. Henry Highland Garnet’, in A Memorial Discourse; by Henry Highland Garnet, Delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives, Washington City, D.C. on Sabbath, February 12, 1865 (Joseph M. Wilson, 1865), 28; ‘On Tuesday... [From the Daily Advertiser]’, Commercial Advertiser, 7 June 1832. Though Stone was an abolitionist, he also believed – like many other members of the Manumission Society – that the United States and African Americans alike would benefit if the latter were expatriated to Africa. In their editorial remarks on Stone’s review of McCune Smith’s lecture, the Philanthropist stressed the tension between Stone’s words here and his pro-colonization views: ‘The testimony of Col. Stone is scarce inferior in value, to that of a prosecuting attorney, for the prisoner at the bar. How he can reconcile it, or the fact it goes to prove, with the doctrine he has so long and so strenuously maintained, that the colored man must go to Africa, to be elevated and improved, we leave for shrewed [sic] minds than ours to discover. For our part, we can imagine no good reason that a colored man cannot be educated and prepared for usefulness, in America, as well as in Europe. The only reason assignable, is the unwillingness of white Americans to give their darker countrymen a fair chance. “If there be any who still doubt the competency and capacity of a man of color” to win by his own meritorious exertions, “the character of a scholar and a gentleman” in the midst of an enlightened white community, they may “have ocular and auricular demonstration that there is at least one who” can do so. Are Americans so much better, or so much worse than the people of Scotland―that what is possible in one country should be impossible in the other?’ See ‘Dr. James McCune Smith (From the New York Commercial Advertiser)’, The Philanthropist 2, no. 36 (1837): 4.

[9] Stone may have used the phrase ‘Colored American’ this way, capitalised and in quotes, with the Colored American newspaper in mind. He would have known that the paper, published under that name since its first March 1837 issue, served as a mouthpiece for African Americans and was edited by McCune Smith’s friend Samuel E. Cornish. (See Cornish’s review of this lecture below.)

[10] McCune Smith would open a medical office and pharmacy by mid-October 1837. See entry for his 19 October 1837 delivery of his lecture below; tickets were sold at his office.

[11] The ‘learned gentlemen’ who attended were probably not only drawn by interest in the subject – phrenology was a very popular topic for popular scientific lectures at the time – but by McCune Smith’s distinguished British credentials. Stone’s language appears to imply that many if not all of these ‘gentlemen’ were white, since higher education and the ‘learned professions’ were largely closed to people of African descent at that time.

[12] It’s possible that these skulls were provided by Dr Richard S. Kissam, member of an old and distinguished family of New York physicians long connected with the Jay family. One of the abolitionist Jays may, in turn, have connected Kissam to McCune Smith. Several years after this phrenology lecture, Kissam chaired a public debate between McCune Smith and Robert Grant over the latter’s claims of the inferiority of non-white people, and provided McCune Smith with anatomical specimens for his demonstrations. See ‘Discussion Between Robert Grant and Dr. McCune Smith, a Colored Physician (From the New York Express)’, Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, 24 February 1845; Philip A. Bell, ‘A Question of Races’, The Elevator, 10 January 1868.

[13] During McCune Smith’s stint as co-editor in 1839, the Colored American re-published an article about irreligiosity among students at the University of Glasgow, written by someone who had attended or visited the University. Though the article had been published and/or re-published in many American newspapers since at least 1827, McCune Smith may have chosen it for re-publication in the Colored American due to his own similar observations at Glasgow. See ‘Recent Anecdote’, The Colored American, 2 March 1839.

[14] The argument that the brain might not the organ of the mind would have indeed been unconvincing to many in an audience in McCune Smith’s time. Influential thinkers had other ideas in times past: for example, Aristotle theorized that the mind originated or operated in the heart and the brain served as its radiator. But scientific thinkers had widely accepted that the brain was the primary organ of thought since the seventeenth century. See Andrew P. Wickens, A History of the Brain: From Stone Age Surgery to Modern Neuroscience (Psychology Press, 2015), 18, 20–21, 92–99.

[15] McCune Smith repeated his lecture on 19 October in a much larger venue; see below.

[16] This review was written by the Colored American’s editor and McCune Smith’s friend Samuel E. Cornish. McCune Smith’s friend, occasional press interlocutor, and fellow prominent black abolitionist William Whipper would go on to critique and ridicule phrenology in the press, likely influenced by McCune Smith and Cornish. See Joan L. Bryant, Reluctant Race Men: Black Challenges to the Practice of Race in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 2024), 118.

[17] Some religious abolitionists – black and white – would not have agreed with Cornish’s and McCune Smith’s fears that phrenology promoted irreligion. Some believed that phrenology was a progressive science which uncovered more aspects of God’s creation and enabled people to better understand and improve themselves. Some also believed it could help reveal the intellectual and psychological damage wrought on both black and white people by the brutalizing practice of slavery. For example, James J. G. Bias, a formerly enslaved black Philadelphian abolitionist and activist, was an author and practitioner of phrenology. Joan L. Bryant writes that ‘Profits from lucrative practices [of phrenology] helped finance colored conventions.’ And Sarah Grimké wrote to fellow abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld ‘Hast thou heard J. McCune Smiths lectures against Phrenology? I saw a synopsis of one, but the reasoning was to me very unsatisfactory. I am sorry he has come out [against it] because it appears to me so perfectly consistent with the other works of God and with enlightened reason and religion.’ See Sarah M. Grimké, ‘Sarah M. Grimké to Theodore Dwight Weld, 1 February 1838’, in Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld and Sarah Grimké, 1822-1844, vol. 2, ed. Gilbert Hobbs Barnes and Dwight Lowell Dumond (Peter Smith, 1965); De Giustino, ‘Phrenology in Britain’, 91; Joseph Willson and Julie Winch, The Elite of Our People: Joseph Willson’s Sketches of Black Upper-Class Life in Antebellum Philadelphia (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 21, 23, 127 n19; Hamilton, ‘‘Am I Not a Man and a Brother?’’, 179–82; Bryant, Reluctant Race Men, 118.

[18] What Cornish mockingly called a ‘Bumpification’ is what phrenologist George Combe described as an ‘elevation’ (protrusion) on the skull corresponding to the size of a ‘cerebral organ.’ According to phrenology, the various ‘affective’ and ‘intellectual’ properties of the mind emanate from these brain organs. ‘Destructiveness’ was one of the affective ‘propensities’ which arose from the organ located at the part of the brain under the area above and behind the ear. See George Combe, A System of Phrenology, Third (John Anderson, 1830), i, 84–85, 111. McCune Smith would respond to Combe’s attempts to convince him of the truth of phrenology in the Colored American about a year and a half later; see George Combe, Notes on the United States of North America, During a Phrenological Visit in 1838-39-40 (MacLachlan, Stewart, & Company, 1841), 2:190; James McCune Smith, ‘Mr. George Combe’s Lectures’, The Colored American, 18 May 1839..

[19] As Andrew P. Wickens writes, phrenology had become one of the most popular among popular sciences, ‘capturing the imagination of many who saw it as a means of self-improvement and a vehicle for social and educational reform.’ See Wickens, History of the Brain, 134.

[20] Several searches in surviving New York daily papers have failed to turn up any reviews of or reporting on McCune Smith’s lecture of 19 October.

[21] The Glasgow Medical Society McCune Smith referred to in this ad wasn’t the exclusive, professional society composed of prominent, well-established Glasgow physicians founded in 1814 under that name. Rather, McCune Smith was speaking of the Glasgow University Medico-Chirurgical Society, a student medical society originally founded in 1801. It had gone dormant and was re-reformed as the Glasgow Medical Society in 1821. It was renamed in 1826, perhaps to avoid confusion with the professional society. No membership records of the student society survive for the years McCune Smith attended medical school. See Glasgow University Medico-Chirurgical Society, ‘Minute Book, 1812-1829’, Glasgow, 1829, 43–91, 109, 123, 137, 143, 154, University of Glasgow Library: Archives and Special Collections; J. Walker Downie, The Medico-Chirurgical Society of Glasgow, 1814-1907 (Alex Macdougall, 1908), 2–3, 6; Glasgow Medical Society, ‘Minute Book, 1814-51’, Glasgow, 1851, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow Archives; ‘Thomas M. McNie to Archibald Young, 19 November 1928 (with Enclosures)’, Papers of the Young Family, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow Archives; Alexander Duncan, Memorials of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 1599-1850 (James Maclehose & Sons, 1896), 187–89.

[22] John and Josiah Hopper advertised their drugstore in the Colored American. It was at 364 Broadway. It was a compounding pharmacy, and sold ready-made remedies as well. See ‘Drugs and Medicines: Josiah and John Hopper’, The Colored American, 6 May 1837; Williams, NY As It Is 1837, 51.

[23] Henderson Greene’s bookstore was at 435 Broadway. See Williams, NY As It Is 1837, 24. Little is known about Greene other than that he was a bookseller and publisher and that he regularly sold tickets to lectures at his establishment.

[24] By this time, McCune Smith had opened his own medical practice and pharmacy. See ‘Medical Consultations’, The Colored American, 11 November 1837; ‘Drugs and Medicines For Sale’, The Colored American, 11 November 1837.

[25] Adelphi Hall was a new public venue at 5^th and Walnut with a large ‘saloon’ roomy enough to conduct balls in. See ‘To Clubs and Private Parties’, Public Ledger, 9 December 1837; A. M’Elroy’s Philadelphia Directory, for 1839 (A. McElroy, 1839), 300.

[26] These were the names and addresses of members of the Philadelphia Library Company of Colored Persons (PLCCP). See entry for Samuel E. Cornish’s editorial about this lecture, ‘Dr. Smith in Philadelphia,’ below. He

[27] Frederick Augustus Hinton was a well-to-do black barber at 119 Chesnut Street. Originally from Raleigh, North Carolina, he was an ardent abolitionist and agent for William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator. See A. M’Elroy’s Philadelphia Directory, for 1837 (A. McElroy, 1837), 100; Willson and Winch, Elite of Our People, 20, 58–60. The PLCCP was founded in 1833 as part of a movement to increase opportunities for self-improvement for African Americans. See Carla L. Peterson, ‘Antebellum Literary Societies, Polite Learning, and Traditions of Modernity’, in African American Literature in Transition: 1830-1850, ed. Benjamin Fagan, African American Literature in Transition (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 13–14, 17–18.

[28] Jacob C. White was another successful black barber in Philadelphia. He had apparently moved to this address on Old York Road recently; a Philadelphia directory for 1837 still lists him at 174 N. 4^th Street. White was also a bleeder, dentists, shop owner, and eventually, proprietor of a cemetery for African Americans. He was very active in efforts to improve opportunities for African Americans and a well-regarded public speaker, and, along with his wife Elizabeth Miller White, aided fugitives from slavery. See M’Elroy’s Philadelphia Directory 1837, 241; M’Elroy’s Philadelphia Directory 1839, 272; Willson and Winch, Elite of Our People, 20, 23, 163-164 n111.

[29] James Needham, like White, was also a barber and had recently relocated his business, from 12 4^th Street to the Merchant’s Exchange at 25 Elizabeth Street. He also helped fugitives from slavery and was active in many abolitionist and African American literary and beneficial societies. See M’Elroy’s Philadelphia Directory 1837, 162; M’Elroy’s Philadelphia Directory 1839, 185; Willson and Winch, Elite of Our People, 152-153 n73.

[30] Abolitionist Robert C. Gordon was a bottler who, before long, would become a shoemaker. Like Needham, Gordon was a leading member of St Thomas’s African Episcopal Church. See M’Elroy’s Philadelphia Directory 1837, 83; M’Elroy’s Philadelphia Directory 1839, 96; Willson and Winch, Elite of Our People, 153 n75.

[31] Son of former Bostonian sailor and Philadelphia community leader John Bowers, John C. Bowers followed his father into clothes dealing, then became a tailor. A dedicated abolitionist and anti-colonizationist, Bowers was a talented musician and public speaker. See M’Elroy’s Philadelphia Directory 1839, 25; Willson and Winch, Elite of Our People, 18, 21, 153-154 n78.

[32] Thomas Butler was a barber who also offered bleeding treatment at his establishment, and was very prosperous. He was a leading member of Philadelphia’s African American community and active in the early Colored Convention movement. See M’Elroy’s Philadelphia Directory 1837, 30, 100, 150,; Julie Winch, Philadelphia’s Black Elite: Activism, Accommodation, and the Struggle for Autonomy, 1787-1848 (Temple University Press, 1988), 94, 102, 105, 110, 115; Willson and Winch, Elite of Our People, 122 n7, 127 n19.

[33] James J. G. Bias, a phrenological practitioner and author, must have had confidence in the science he practiced and promoted, since he sold tickets to this lecture at his cup-making business at 1 Acorn Alley. Bias, active in many movements to increase wellbeing and opportunities for African Americans, also became a dentist and a temperance activist. See M’Elroy’s Philadelphia Directory 1839, 19; Winch, Philadelphia’s Black Elite, 107, 117, 122, 123, 129, 141, 148, 155–56; Willson and Winch, Elite of Our People, 21, 23, 127 n19.

[34] J. W. Bowers may be Jeremiah W. Bowers, though he is not listed in Philadelphia directories for the time. Little is known of Bowers, though he was in McCune Smith’s circle of friends. After settling in New York by the mid-1840’s, where he worked as a barber, Bowers became an Odd Fellow and a delegate for St Philip’s to the Diocesan Convention, and was a founding member of the African Civilization Society and the Anglo-African Savings Bank in 1863. See John Doggett, Doggett’s New-York City Directory, for 1846 and 1847 (John Doggett, Jr., 1846), 49, New York City Public Library Digital Collections; State of New York, Laws of the State of New York, Passed at the Eighty-Sixth Session of the Legislature, Begun January Sixth, and Ended April Twenty-Fifth, 1863, in the City of Albany (Weed, Parsons and Company, Printers, 1863), 758, 848; Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighty-Second Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New York, Which Assembled in St. John’s Chapel in the City of New York, on Wednesday, September 27, A.D. 1865 (James Pott, 1865), 30; ‘Funeral of Mr J. W. Bowers’, New York Globe, 20 January 1883; ‘Philip A. Bell and His Co-Workers’, The New York Age, 18 May 1889; Charles H. Brooks, The Official History and Manual of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows in America: A Chronological Treatise... (Odd Fellows Journal Print, 1902), 52.

[35] Stephen H. Gloucester was a clothes dealer at 45 Chesnut and lived at Lombard and Fifth. Gloucester would become co-proprietor and co-editor of the Colored American in 1838 (publishing the Philadelphia version) and pastor of Philadelphia’s First Colored Presbyterian Church. A committed abolitionist and reformer, he eventually turned against the Garrisonians and excluded anti-slavery activism separate from his church to protect his congregation from violence, and was excoriated by many for both. Gloucester died in 1850. See M’Elroy’s Philadelphia Directory 1837, 82; Stephen H. Gloucester, ‘To My Philadelphia Friends’, The Colored American, 9 June 1838; Winch, Philadelphia’s Black Elite, 82–83, 105, 117, 149–51, 157–58, 165.

[36] This editorial introduction would have been written by Samuel E. Cornish.

[37] James Cornish was Samuel E. Cornish’s younger brother. A successful sailmaker, James Cornish was very active in the early Colored Convention movement and many other initiatives to improve African American wellbeing and opportunities. See Willson and Winch, Elite of Our People, 134-135 n48.

[38] Nothing is known of William Reynolds besides the name, and he does not appear in histories of black Philadelphia elites and community leaders. Three men of that name are listed in a Philadelphia directory for that year: a hairdresser, a merchant, and a grocer. See M’Elroy’s Philadelphia Directory 1837, 183.

This letter to the editor of the Glasgow Chronicle is the first known work of James McCune Smith’s to be published in a British or European periodical. Nineteen-year-old McCune Smith had arrived in Britain in September 1832 to begin his studies at the University of Glasgow. In the nearly four months between disembarking in Liverpool and writing this letter, McCune Smith had become immersed in the British abolitionist movement, which welcomed his unique insights as the son of a formerly enslaved woman and African American expatriate driven to pursue his higher education abroad after academic exclusion in his home country on account of race.

Previously, The World of James McCune Smith featured an article about this editorial and its contexts, as well as images of the article as originally published. This is a full annotated transcript.

~ This entry is part of my project of identifying, compiling, and editing the complete written and spoken works of James McCune Smith (1813-1865) in association with Northumbria University and funded by the British Academy. ~

Title: To the Editor of the Glasgow Chronicle

Co-author(s): James Cropper

Date: 15 January 1833

Source: Glasgow Chronicle, 18 January 1833

Text:

To the Editor^[1] of the Glasgow Chronicle.^[2]

SIR,

In the Chronicle of the 11^th inst. was an interesting article, headed “Edinburgh Public Meeting,”^[3] &c., giving an account of a meeting held in that city, for the purpose of aiding the funds of the American Colonization Society. As an interest in behalf of the injured negro must have led you to insert so long an article in your well conducted paper, I hope that the same benevolent feeling will open your columns to a few more statements regarding the said Society, which may serve to exhibit it in a truer, though a different, light. The following letter^[4] contains a just exposition of the real principles and end [sic] of the American Colonization Society. It has been published before; is addressed to the highly distinguished philanthropist, Thomas Clarkson, Esq.,^[5] and is written by that excellent individual and genuine friend to the blacks, James Cropper, Esq., merchant, Liverpool, whose long residence in that city,^[6] and frequent communications with America, give him a decided advantage in judging of the true nature of the subject in question:―

Liverpool, 10^th month, 2d, 1832

My Dear Friend,―It has caused me deep regret to see thy name^[7] amongst those of many long-tried friends of humanity as supporters of the American Colonization Society. Though I am not surprised that many under the mask of a voluntary and prosperous settlement of free blacks on the coast of Africa,―a measure in which every friend of humanity must rejoice―have been led to support a scheme the nature and effects of which are of a very different character.

In judging of this scheme we ought never to lose sight of two facts with respect to the enslaved Africans in the United States, in which the enormities of that free country have exceeded those of any other. The first is, that slaves are regularly bred for sale. The second, that in many of the States the laws affecting free blacks are of so violently persecuting a character as to compel those who obtain their liberty to leave those States. From the former of these causes, instances must often occur (from the state of morals in slave countries) of fathers selling their own children!! From the latter has originated the Colonization Society; it arose out of these prejudices against colour, and is a direct attempt to extend the same principle to transportation.

Why are slave-holders so anxious to send away free people of colour? Because their slave institutions would be endangered by the competition of respectable free black laborours;^[8] and they dread still more their education and advancement in science. If they were desirous to serve the free blacks they would instruct them at home, (not a few of them, but every one they send) and not send them in ignorance, to a barbarous country.

To this real scheme of transporting the people of colour a professed one is attached, for the ultimate extinction of slavery, by the transportation of the whole black population to the coast of Africa; and we are gravely told that one hundred thousand slaves are ready to be given up, if means can be found for sending them to Africa! A most extraordinary statement, and one for which I believe there is no foundation, in either fact or probability. Can it be believed that the slave-holders of the United States are ready to give up their property, worth at least Five Millions Sterling?―a liberality unheard of since the foundation of the world. In all the rest of the United States, enough to pay the expense of their emigration cannot be raised, and hence it is sought for in England. If there was any truth to this wonderful statement, we must all of us have been sadly deceived about the debasing effects of slave-holding on the minds of those engaged in it. No other occupation ever produced such extraordinary liberality.

It would be interesting to know to what class these men belong. Is it the practice of selling their own children which has produced this extraordinary effect? Or are these men amongst the slave buyers, who purchase them for no other reason, than to give them their freedom as soon as the means of sending them to Liberia can be found? Is it not strange indeed, that any man can be bold enough to make assertions so obviously at variance with truth?

To whatever extent this transportation of slaves was carried, the slave-holders know that the price of those slaves which remained, would be enhanced, and their condition embittered, by the removal of all hopes of liberty, so precious to the human soul. The free colored people being kept few and poor, will be prevented from rising, by fair competition, to the equal rank and honour to which that competition naturally conducts, when not marred in its progress by some such scheme as the American Colonization Society. No wonder that with the exception of some who do not understand the plan, the planters are friendly to the colonization scheme. But the free people of color are opposed to this scheme. They have committed no crime, and do not like to be transported and suffer the highest penalty of law^[9] next to death.

To whatever extent the United States expatriate their cotton cultivators, they destroy one of the chief sinews of their own prosperity, and increase the temptation to other states to renew the slave trade by fresh importations. The whole revenue of the United States, for fully thirty years to come, would be required to purchase the slaves and transport them and the free blacks to Africa. Such as idea as the extinction of slavery by means of the Colonization Society can never have been seriously contemplated. No! perpetuation, and not extinction of slavery, is its object.

The first command ever given to man was “Be fruitful and multiply.” Who can doubt that it is for his interest to obey this and every other command of God? but in no case is it so manifest as when in a state of slavery. The value of men, as of every other commodity, is governed by their plenty or scarcity; where they are so abundant that parishes are willing to pay the expenses of emigration to get rid of them, there must be an end of slavery. Every increase of numbers tends, whilst it is a proof of better treatment, to promote the mitigation and final extinction of slavery; and it must be admitted that the Americans evince this proof of good treatment.

The slaves in the United States have rapidly increased, and this increase has been highly beneficial to the cause of humanity. It is estimated that they have increased since 1808, (the time of both our and their abolition,) from 1,130,000 to 2,010,000, and they have more than trebled the growth of cotton since that peace in 1814, and have reduced its price to one-third of what it then was, though the Brazils, [sic] with all their slave trading have only added one-fourth part to their growth of cotton in the same time ―Hence it is plain, that if there has been any increase in the cotton cultivators of Brazils, [sic] few or no slaves can have been imported for its cultivation. May we not then say that the increase of the slave population of the United States has done more than all our enormous expenditure for the suppression of the African slave trade?

It cannot but be interesting to thee to know what would have been the effect of a similar increase in the English West Indian slaves. Had they increased in the same proportion as those of the United States (since the abolition of the slave trade) there [sic] numbers would have been 928,317 more than they now are which, if employed in the cultivation of sugar, would have been sufficient to have produced an increase of 240,000 tons annually, whilst all the slave trading of the Brazils [sic] and Cuba and the French colonies have only added 115,000 tons of their growth. Such an increase in sugar would have greatly reduced its price, and consequently the price of slaves, and thereby have destroyed the slave trade for the growth of sugar, as it has long since extinguished that for the cultivation of indigo, and more recently, for the growth of cotton.^[10]

The disguise is now removing, and the real tendency of the society is becoming apparent. A bill was reported to the House of Delegates of Virginia for sending the free blacks away by force; but though this compulsory clause was rejected, it is added that several other motions were made, and decided by majorities which amply proved the determination of the House, to adopt some measure for the removal of the free blacks. These legislators admit that the free blacks will not leave the land without some sort of force; which may either be absolute, or by rendering their situation absolutely intolerable.

Great Injury has been done to the cause of negro emancipation by the encouragement which the agent of this most diabolical scheme has received from the sanction of thy name. The term diabolical is not too severe; for never did Satan, with more success, transform himself into an angel of light than in the gloss which has covered its deformities.

These persecuted free blacks view the whole plan with the abhorrence which is justly due to it, and with which we should view a plan of general transportation from the land of our nativity. The slave-owners are its advocates and supporters. Surely the name of Clarkson will be withdrawn from the ranks of the oppressors, and will be found, as it has ever yet been, amongst the friends of the oppressed African race.

Let us repair the injury which has been done on both sides of the water by this unholy connexion between slave-holders and philanthropist; for since this scheme has been on foot its deadening influence on the energies of the friends of humanity in the United States has been most manifest.

Let there no longer be any doubt which side it taken by the philanthropists of England. Let them declare their deep feeling of sympathy with those sorely persecuted and oppressed people; and such an example will be followed in the United States, where the friends of humanity will hasten to leave the ranks of the oppressors, and the cause of justice will again flourish.

May I particularly request thy attentive perusal of the following twenty pages, written by my friend Charles Stuart,^[11] one of the most devoted Christians I have ever known, and an unwearied advocate of the oppressed Africans.

I am, with great regard,

Thy sincere friend,

JAMES CROPPER.

The pages alluded to contain a more detailed exposition of the Colonization scheme. They prove from the published reports of the said Society, and from the published speeches of its supporters in America, “that the said Society is pledged not to oppose the system of Slavery; that it regards slaves as Property; increases the value of Slaves as Slaves; that it has not abolished the Slave Trade to anything like the extent represented;” and they also establish several other facts equally derogative to its character as a benevolent institution. They conclude with a pathetic and Christian-like appeal to the people of Great Britain, entreating them not to aid this scheme of oppression.

Far be it from me, Mr. Editor, to impugn the name of the learned Judge^[12] who presided at the Edinburgh meeting, or if that highly gifted individual―distinguished as nobly in the ranks of literature as that of philanthropy―who offered the first resolution.^[13] If their Lordships advocated the Colonization Society, they did so (I say it with all deference) misguidedly, believing it to be a benevolent institution, and not an ignis fatuus^[14] of philanthropy; or, what is worse, a scheme of oppression.

I am confident, that when their Lordships shall know the whole truth of the matter they will withdraw from this Society their distinguished patronage.

I feel it my duty, Mr. Editor, to give additional publicity to the above letter, being myself one of those free people of colour, natives of the United States, towards whom the American Colonization Society would extend its unwished-for benevolence. In common with my brethren, I detest many of the principles of that Society as unjust and unholy in the extreme. In common with my brethren, I have felt the oppression generated by those principles―an oppression which has driven me to seek in this country those literary advantages with which the colleges of my own are teeming, but which are haughtily withheld from the free man of colour.^[15] In common with my brethren, I deem every farthing given to the Colonization Scheme as added to a sum which heaps oppression upon our already bowed heads; and which would tear our unwilling hearts from the fond associations which every man feels towards “his own, his native land.”^[16] We feel, with all Christians, a deep interest in the Evangelizing of benighted Africa. But we do not regard that as our land any more than England is the land of the American descendants of Wm. Penn, or that of the Puritans. We look with suspicion and disgust upon a scheme which aims at Christianizing the African continent by means of ignorant Slaves, or of nominal freemen, to whom have been denied the advantages of a good education.^[17] Finally, we think it would better become the American Colonization Society, as a benevolent body, did it devote its mighty energies to the Emancipation of the Slaves, and to the leading of them, as well as the free blacks, into the highest walks of civil and religious life in the United States, their native land. Then would that glory of the Western world shine forth in true splendour: not a paradoxical but a real Republic.^[18]―Then would the cause of her present dissensions―the clashing of slave interests with free―cease to exist. The foul blot of slavery would be wiped from her escutcheon, and her Slave trade would end, for it would have no market. Then would the grateful hymns of “the redeemed,” the “disenthralled” blacks resound along the hills and vales of the beautiful Carolinas.^[19] And finally, there would the enlightened coloured population of the United States view with all Christians in sending forth their Missionaries―not rude or illiterate from the cotton or tobacco field, but well instructed from Colleges and Seminaries―to Evangelize injured, ill-treated, and benighted Africa.

A YOUNG AMERICAN

Glasgow, 15 Jan., 1833.

[1] Editor David Prentice founded the Glasgow Chronicle in 1811. According to one report on the Chronicle’s ‘demise’ in 1857, it was ‘the oldest Liberal newspaper in the metropolis of the west.’ The Chronicle was staunchly anti-slavery and supported many progressive causes. See ‘Demise of the “Glasgow Chronicle”’, The Caledonian Mercury, 31 December 1857.

[2] Though McCune Smith signed this letter, from Glasgow, as ‘A YOUNG AMERICAN’ rather than with his name, his authorship is clear given his description of himself as an African American forced to seek his college education abroad because of racial discrimination in his own country – a description known to be true of only one African American in Glasgow at the time – as well as his close familiarity with James Cropper, whom McCune Smith had recently come to know personally in Liverpool. In 1864, McCune Smith also wrote (in an anonymous editorial) that ‘from 1832 to ’37, we were a constant correspondent of a foreign paper.’ (See ‘Our Faults – Remedies’, The Anglo-African, 10 December 1864.) The years correspond exactly with McCune Smith’s years in Glasgow but may not reflect the exact years he contributed to ‘a foreign paper.’ I carefully combed through every available surviving issue of papers such as the Glasgow Chronicle and the Glasgow Argus (papers with abolitionist sympathies) that McCune Smith would have most likely contributed to, and sure enough, I found this letter to the editor in the Chronicle. While a copy of most issues of the Argus from 1833 to 1837 have survived (preserved at Glasgow’s Mitchell Library), this is not true of the Chronicle. Only full runs from 1832 and 1833 are known to survive (at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.) Since, as this letter to the editor indicates, the Chronicle was the ‘foreign paper’ that McCune Smith regularly corresponded to, all except this one letter is apparently now lost.

[3] The Glasgow Chronicle published detailed reporting on a meeting at St. Andrew’s Church in Edinburgh on 8 January 1833, at which Elliott Cresson portrayed the American Colonization Society’s colony of Liberia as an institution that could help end American slavery (indirectly) and the transatlantic slave trade (directly) while providing people of the African diaspora a place to live freely in the land of their ancestors. The meeting was hosted by such luminaries as Lord Moncreiff (James Wellwood Moncreiff, judge of the Court of Sessions, see below), Lord Advocate Francis Jeffrey (see below), and John Archibald Murray, Member of Parliament for Leith (near Edinburgh), all progressive Whigs. See ‘Edinburgh Public Meeting - Civilization of Africa - Slavery’, Glasgow Chronicle, 11 January 1833, National Library of Scotland; George W. T. Omond, ‘John Archibald Murray’, in The Lord Advocates of Scotland, Second Series: 1834-1880 (Andrew Melrose, 1914), 15–18.

[4] This letter was also published as ‘Another Voice from England. A Letter from James Cropper to Thomas Clarkson’, The Liberator, 16 February 1833; and ‘A Letter to Thomas Clarkson. By James Cropper’, The Emancipator, 22 June 1833.

[5] Though Clarkson was a supporter of the American Colonization Society at this time, McCune Smith admired him and continued to do so.

[6] Cropper would have observed Liverpool’s change from a city almost unanimous in its support for the transatlantic slave trade which had contributed so much to its wealth, and where its small community of anti-slavery critics such as William Rathbone Sr and Jr, Jonathon Binns, William Wallace, James Currie, and others often felt compelled to conduct their opposition quietly, to one with a vibrant antislavery movement which contributed significantly to national efforts to end slavery and the slave trade. See Anonymous, Recollections of Old Liverpool, by a Nonagenarian (J. F. Hughes, 1863), 132, 252; Brian Howman, ‘Abolitionism in Liverpool’, in Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery, ed. David Richardson et al. (University Press, 2007).

[7] Clarkson had written a letter to Cresson expressing his support for the Society, as had William Wilberforce. See American Colonization Society, The Fifteenth Annual Report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Colour of the United States (American Colonization Society, 1832), 15–16 (In Internet Archive).

[8] Cropper was a disciple of Adam Smith and believed that free trade and free labour were necessary for ending slavery. See Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor vs. Slavery in British Emancipation (Oxford University Press, 2002), 116.

[9] I.e., exile. See Romeo’s lines ‘Ha! banishment? be merciful, say—death: / For exile hath more terror in his look, / Much more than death: do not say—banishment’ in Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare, The Plays of William Shakspeare, with George Steevens et al. (J. Johnson [and others], 1803), 20:157.

[10] Cropper’s and other British abolitionists’ use of statistical information to buttress their anti-slavery arguments influenced McCune Smith. He went on to employ ever-more sophisticated statistical analysis to help make the case for abolition and to combat negative claims about people of African descent throughout his years of writing. For other examples that influenced McCune Smith in this period, see First Annual Report of the Glasgow Emancipation Society: With an Appendix, and a List of Subscribers (Glasgow, 1835), 5, 9, 39–41, William Smeal Collection, Mitchell Library, Glasgow (In Internet Archive).

[11] See the twenty-page pamphlet Charles Stuart, Remarks on the Colony of Liberia and the American Colonization Society: With Some Account of the Settlement of Coloured People, at Wilberforce, Upper Canada (J. Messeder (printer), 1832) (In Internet Archive).

[12] ‘[T]he learned Judge’ refers to Sir James Wellwood Moncreiff, 9th Baronet (1776-1851). Moncreiff, a progressive Whig and Evangelical nonconformist, ascended to the title of Lord Moncreiff when he was appointed a judge to the Court of Sessions. See Thomas Thomson, ‘Moncreiff, Sir James Wellwood, Bart., of Tullibole’, in A Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen, V, Part II, ed. Robert Chambers (Blackie and Son, 1857).

[13] ‘Lord Advocate’ refers to the famed author, literary critic, and judge Francis Jeffrey. In 1813, he travelled to the United States, where he met President James Madison and Secretary of State James Monroe. Jeffrey was editor of the Edinburgh Review from 1803-1829 and served as Rector of the University of Glasgow in the early 1820’s. Politically, he was a moderate Whig. See George W. T. Omond, ‘Jeffrey and the Reform Bill’, in The Lord Advocates of Scotland, II, From the Close of the Fifteenth Century to the Passing of the Reform Bill (David Douglas, 1883); Michael Fry, ‘Jeffrey, Francis, Lord Jeffrey (1773-1850)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 29, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004).

[14] Fool’s light or fool’s fire, such as the will-o-the-wisp. See Robert Ainsworth, Ainsworth’s Latin Dictionary: Reprinted from the Folio Edition of 1752, ed. B. W. Beatson and William Ellis (Joseph Ogle Robinson, 1830), 19, 22, 116, 140, 144, 178, 402 (In Internet Archive). McCune Smith may have become familiar with this term and phenomenon in Daniel Jaudon’s Short System of Polite Learning, which Charles Andrews listed among the books read by African Free School students. See Charles C. Andrews, The History of the New-York African Free-Schools: From Their Establishment in 1787, to the Present Time (Mahlon Day, 1830), 72. For Jaudon’s discussion ‘of the ignis fatuus’, see Daniel Jaudon, Short System of Polite Learning: Being an Epitome of the Arts and Sciences, for the Use of Schools, 7th edn (Benjamin Warner, 1820), 25–26 (In Internet Archive).

[15] Peter Williams, Jr. applied to Columbia and Geneva colleges in New York on McCune Smith’s behalf, but he was denied entry on account of race. See Samuel Ringgold Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada & England (John Snow, 1855), 282; Robert Hamilton, ‘Dr. James McCune Smith [Obituary]’, The Anglo-African, 9 December 1865; Philip A. Bell, ‘Death of Dr. Jas. McCune Smith’, The Elevator, 22 December 1865. When John Pintard, New York merchant, co-founder of the New-York Historical Society, and friend of Peter Williams, Jr.’s heard of this, he fumed: ‘Our people here being too fastidious to admit them into our Colleges… It sickens me that in a state where slavery does not exist, that vulgar prejudice sh[oul]d exclude Freemen, of a darker shade, to enjoy those privileges w[hic]h ought to be common to all.’ See John Pintard, Letters from John Pintard to His Daughter, Eliza Noel Pintard Davidson, 1816-1833, IV: 1832-1833 (Printed for the New-York Historical Society, 1941), 85.

[16] From Sir Walter Scott’s ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’, Canto Sixth: ‘Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, / Who never to himself hath said, / This is my own, my native land!’ See Walter Scott, The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., I (Arch. Constable and Co., 1822), 173 (In Hathi Trust). Notably, McCune Smith quoted this poem again nearly 32 years later in the same article in which he revealed that he had been a ‘constant correspondent of a foreign paper’ from 1832-1837 (the same years he was in Glasgow). See ‘Our Faults – Remedies’, The Anglo-African, 10 December 1864. This inspired the hunt for that unnamed paper which led to the discovery of this letter.

[17] McCune Smith would continue to criticize the idea of spreading Christianity in Africa by expatriating African Americans there, but not for the reasons he cites here (ignorance or lack of education). See, for example, ‘African Colonisation - The Other Side [With Prefatory Note]’, National Anti-Slavery Standard, 28 August 1851 (in The World of James McCune Smith); ‘African Colonisation - The Other Side, No. II’, The National Anti-Slavery Standard, 11 September 1851 (in The World of James McCune Smith).

[18] McCune Smith would return to the theme of a true versus a purported but unrealized Republic many times in his writings, most notably in The Destiny of the People of Color: A Lecture, Delivered Before the Philomathean Society and Hamilton Lyceum in January, 1841 (Published by Request, 1843), 4, 9–10.

[19] McCune Smith’s mother Lavinia was born into slavery in South Carolina. See James McCune Smith, ‘From Our New York Correspondent [1, 8, and 9 December 1854]’, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 15 December 1854; ‘1855 New York State Census, New York County, New York, digital image s.v. “James McCune Smith,”’ FamilySearch.org; James McCune Smith, ‘Introduction’, in My Bondage and My Freedom, by Frederick Douglass (Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855), xxxi; Philip A. Bell, ‘Underground Railroad in New York: No. 2’, The Elevator, 29 March 1873; Robert Hamilton, ‘Died: Smith’, The Anglo-African, 18 November 1865.