men are ably editing literary journals, publishing respectable newspapers, issuing from the press volumes of sermons, writing scientific disquisitions, venturing abstruse "Theories of Comets," and sending forth profound "vital statistics," vexatious alike to opposing statesmen and divines, they so far vindicate their mental power and ability as to make it manifest that, under better circumstances, in a clear field, they could
—"Move and act
In all the correspondence of nature,"
with force, and skill, and effect.
But Dr. Wilson knows nothing of this particular class of black men. lie and hundreds like him know nothing of them. And this is one of the signal signs of the deadly power of caste. It victimizes the white as well as the black man. Here is mind—active, struggling mind—developing itself under most interesting circumstances; rising above the depression of centuries; breaking away from ancestral benightedness and hereditary night; gradually gathering strength, and emerging into light; and at length securing respectability and attracting attention; and yet of this phenomenon, which excited the admiration of Dr. Channing, and arrested the attention of Lord Carlyle and Dr. Playfair, passing travellers. Dr. Wilson apparently knows nothing, but actually speaks slightingly of.
Dr. Wilson rejects the idea of your being capable of exerting a remote and extensive influence. I beg to point out his error by a reference again to the "African Methodist Church." in the United States.
