i\

T TrI E

VOL. I. JANUARY,1859. NO.l.

ipfllff g J.(iNTEODUCTOE Y.)

The publisher of this Magazine was' brought up ' among Newspapers,Magazines, &c. Tlie training of hisboyhood and the employ men t of hismanhood have been in the arts andmysteries which pertain to the neigh-borhood of Spruce and Nassau streetsin the city of New York. Of coursethe top of the strata, the upper-crustof the lamiiiEe in his geologic regionis—the Publisher. . . . To be-come a Publisher, was the dream ofhis youth (not altogether a dream, for,while yet a boy he published, for sev-eral months, the People's Press, a notunnoticed weekly paper,) and the aimof his manhood. lie understands thebusiness thoroughly, and intends, ifthe requisite editorial matter can befurnished, to make this Magazine 'oneof the institutions of the country.'

Pie would seem t,o be the right manin the right place; for the class ofwhom he is the representative inPrinting House Square, sorely needan independent voice in the 'fourthestateFrederick .Douglass has said

that ' the twelve millions of blacks inthe United States and its environsmust occupy the notice and the careof the Almighty:' these millions, in.order to assert and maintain theirrank as men among men, must speakfor themselves ; no outside tongue,however gifted with eloquence, cantell their story ; no outside e_ye, how-ever penetrating, can see their wants ;no outside organization, however be-nevolently intended, nor howevercunningly contrived, can developethe energies and aspirations whichmake up their mission.

The wealth, the intellect, the Legis-lation, (State and Federal.) the pul-pit, and the science of America, haveconcentrated on no one point so hear-tily as in the endeavor to write downthe negro as something less than aman: yet at the very moment of thetriumph of this effort, there runsthrough the marrow of those whomake it, an unaccountable conscious-ness, an aching dread, that this noirfaineant, this great black sluggard, issomehow endowed with forces whichare felt rather than seen, and whichmay in < some grim revel,'

' Shake the pillars of the commonweal I' j

2 The Anglo-African Magazine.

And there is indeed reason for this' aching dread.' The negro is some-thing more than mere endurance ; heis a force. And when the energieswhich now imbrute him exhaust them-selves—as they inevitably must—theforce which he now expends in resist-ance will cause him to rise : his forcecan hardly he measured to-day ; theopinions regarding him are excessive ;his foes estimate him too low—hisfriends, perhaps, too high : besides,there is not a-wanting among theselatter, in spite of their own good feel-ings, that 'tribe idolatry' which re-gards him as ' not quite us Twenty-live years ago, in the heat of the con-flict which terminated in the Emanci-pation Act of Great Britain, there washeld an anti-slavery meeting in thecity of Glasgow, at which a youngblack made a speech of such fashion,that it 'brought down the house.' Hewas followed by the eccentric butearnest and eloquent William Ander-son, a minister of the Relief denomin-ation : Dr. Wardlaw, with silvertongue, had spoken, and GeorgeThompson had revelled in his impet-uous eloquence. Rev. Mr. Ander-son's subject was a minor one in theprogramme, a sort of side dish ; yethe began, continued, and ended in oneof the most extraordinary bursts ofeloquence, wit and sarcasm ever heardin Dr. Wardlaw's chapel; peoplewere carried away : at the end of themeeting a friend congratulated Mr.An-derson, and casually asked how it wasthat he had got off such a grand speech?' Hecli mon !' said Mr. Anderson,' d'ye think I was gaen to be beatenby a black V

But although we cannot fairly esti-mate the forces of the negro, we mayapproximate them. A handful of En-glish subdued Ireland, and Englishrule rather than English arms have soimpenetrated the Celtic mind withoppression, that the only resistance totliis oppression in the middle of the19tli century culminates in SmithO'Brien, Thomas F. Meagher, andJohn Mitciiel ! Compare these with

Sam Ward, Frederick Douglass, orthose who fought in Christiana, or theman who suffered himself to be scour-ged to death in Tennessee rather thanbetray his associate insurrectionists.

The negro under the yoke of slaveryhas increased, without additions madeby immigration, as rapidly during thelast forty years, as have the whites inthe whole country, aided by an im-mense immigration and the increaseof the immigrants ; and this increaseof the negro in America, unlike thatof the Irish in Ireland, is of a strong,healthy, durable stock. Now let theEuropean immigration diminish, andthe African slave trade revjve—bothwhich events are in esse—and the nextforty years will present us with theslave States containing ten millions ofwhites, and nearly fifteen millions ofslaves: and the proportion of theblacks to the whites in the UnitedStates, which is now one-seventh, willbe nearly one-half. In that event, itrequires no prophet to foresee that theUnderground Railroad, and the Chris-tian Religion—the two great safety-valves for the restless and energeticamong the slaves—will be utterly in-competent to put off that event whichwas brought about by bloodshed inIiaytl, and by timely legislation in theBritish West Indies.

In 1S50, a black, man insulted by awhite boy in the streets of Sacramen-to, mildly resented by pushing theboy away : a white man passing bywith a saw in his hand, caught theblack by the wrist and sawed his handoff. The black went before a magis-trate to complain, when the ministerof justice declined receiving the com-plaint, on the ground that no redresscould be obtained. In 1858, we finda magistrate in California, in defianceof statute law, admitting testimonyof black men, and iu.the same year abill to prevent further immigration ofblacks, was defeated in the legislatureof that State. In the debate on thesubject, a member stated that ' the sixthousand free blacks in California werean industrious people, with six millions I

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Apology. 3

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of dollars in personal and real estate.'This is about one thousand dollars per 1individual—a sum three times as great ]as the census of 1850 gives to the in- idividuals composing the farming pop- <ulation of Vermont. :

In a school exhibition in the city of'

New York, in December 1858, therewere productions from twenty white,and one colored, "Ward Schools ; of <

the thirty prizes awarded, three weregained by the colored school; whichmay be thus formularized for the useof that distinguished archaeologist,cra-niologist and ethnologist, Dr. JSTott, ofAlabama :—: -jL: : black children'sintellect : white children's intellect.

In the Concours of the colleges ofFrance in 1858, the laurels once wornby Abelard, fell upon the brows of ablack youth from Ilayti, M. Faubert,who won the highest prize, two otheryoung Haytiens winning other prizes.It is well-known that not a few whiteAmericans are among the students ofthe French colleges; as none of thesehave yet won this distinguished honor,we must again formularize for Dr.ISTott—£ : 1 :: white American stu-dents in Paris : black Haytien studentsin Paris.

Here, then, we have the vital force,the physical force, and some slight ink-lings of the yet undeveloped mentalpower of the negro. The negro is aconstant quantity ; other races may be,and are, variables; he is positive andreliable, and seems tixed so. The panicof 1857 was arrested by the cottoncrop, and even at this moment, whenthe West is bankrupt, with its 'en-chanted' free laborers, and ' enchanted'stores of grain, the vitality of trade ismaintained by the products of blacklabor, which it is the ambition of theso-called republican party to sweepfrom the land. "What a glorious des-tiny awaits the negro when soil now fer-tilized by his agony and bloody sweat,shall teem under his energies, renewedand developed by freedom! for

" Freedom hand in hand with labor,Walketh strong and brave,

On the forehead of his neighborNo man writeth slave !"

The negro is the 'coming man,heralded by Dr. Arnold. The Euro-pean race would seem to have reachedits destined development—of Arts inGreece, of Jurisprudence in Rome,and of Industrial Economies in Eng-land and the United States. To ad-vance still further, the tide of civiliza-tion requires what the great commonerof England prescribed for Ireland-new blood. And whence can this beprocured, unless from a race hithertounmixed in the current of civilization \

In addition to an expose of the con-dition of the blacks, this Magazinewill have the aim to uphold and en-courage the now depressed hopes ofthinking black men, in the UnitedStates—the men who, for twenty yearsand more have been active in conven-tions, in public meetings, in societies,in the pulpit, and through the press,cheering on and laboring on to promoteemancipation, affranchisementand ed-ucation ; some of them in, and someof them past the prime of life, yet see, asthe apparent result of their work andtheir sacrifices, only Fugitive Slavelaws and Compromise bills, and thedenial of citizenship on the part of theFederal and State Governments, and,saddest of all, such men as Seward andPreston King insulting the rights oftheir black constituents by voting to ad-mit Oregon as a state with a constitu-tion denying to black men even an en-trance within its borders.

It is not astonishing that the faith ofsuch should grow weak, or that theyshould set up a breast-work in distantregions; yet it is clear that they arewrong to despond, wrong to change thescene of the contest. The sterner and

: fiercer the conflict, the sterner and: steadier should be the soldiers engaged> in it,

" Be sure, no earnest workOf any honest creature, liowbeit weak,Imperfect, ill-adapted, fails so muchIt is not gathered as a grain of saLdFor carrying out God's end. No creature workBSo ill observed, that there he's cashiered.The honest, earnest man must stand and woik."

Neither can it aid our cause to foundan empire in Yoruba; they might as

4 The Anglo-African Magazine.

well have built a battery at Gibraltarto destroy Sevastopol. The guns won'!reach. Our cause is something higher,something holier than the founding ofstates. Any five hundred men withthews and sinews, and a moderateshare of prudence, can found a state ; itis nothing new or wonderful to do.And after we had founded such a state,our work in the United States wouldremain to be done by other hands.Our work here, is, to purify the State,and purify Christianity from the foulblot which here rests upon them.

All articles in the Magazine, nototherwise designated, will be the pro-ducts of the pens of colored men andwomen, from whom we earnestly so-licit contributions, which, when used,will be paid for, according to the meansof the Publisher.

We hope from these sources, articlesgrave and gay, things serious, and asthe Rev. Mr. Hudson quaintly says,'things juicy.' 'The Tales of theFugitives,' to be initiated in our nextnumber, will leave the heart and theimagination not untouched. This oneis ' got up in rather a hurry, and webeg pardon for its many deficiencies.

ALLEXANDRE DUMAS.

Whatever claims the AmericanSchool of Ethnology may lay to Sap-pho, Euclid, St. Cyprian, or Terentius,they must yield to the negro an un-doubted share in Pushkin, the Ne-gro-Russian poet, in Placido the Ne-gro-Spanish poet, and in Dumas theNegro-Celtic Historian, Dramatist andRomancer.

The grand parents of M. Dumaswere the Marquis de la Pailleterie, awealthy planter of St. Domingo, anda negress of that island ; his fatherwas a famous cavalry officer underNapoleon. The death of his fatherleaving him destitute, yonng Dumasrepaired to Paris, with letters to Gen-eral Foi (an old companion in arms ofGen. Dumas,) seeking employment: af-

r ter questioning him of lii's attainments,t Gen. Foi was about to give up in des-, pair, when he accidentally discovered

that Voting Dumas wrote a neat andi rapid hand : he procured him a' clerk-i ship in the office of the Secretary of; the Duke of Orleans (afterward Louis

Philippe.) The leisure of Dumas wasoccupied in satiating that prodigiousthirst for knowledge whjch has dis-tinguished the youth of energetic menpreparing to make their mark. Arepresentationof Hamlet first touchedhis latent genius for dramatic compo-sition, and Dumas' earliest play,Henry III, et sa Gvur, was the result:it was a great success ; and the brainand pen of Dumas have been steadily,marvellously at work ever since. Andnot only his own pen and brain, butthe pen and brains of dozens of scribes,and as many authors in the employor under the auspices of this greatbook-wright.

A captious and pitiful criticism, onthe part ot British and American wri-ters, has objected to Dumas, that, verymany of his plays and nouvellettes arethe products of the brains of otherssimply altered and retouched by hisown hand. A generous objection,truly, on the part of those who wor-ship Shakespeare, and sing praises tothe hosts of those, down to Scott,Moore and Byron, who bear the samerelation to Shakespeare, that the oldpainter represented subsequent poetsto bear to Homer. Take from Shakes-peare, all his borrowed stories, andwhat of invention-have we left?

We beg pardon—we do not meanto compare Dumas with Shakspeare—there is time enough, these twohundred years, for a negro drama-tist to rise in rivalry with the bard ofAvon ; perhaps Scott might be mem-tioned in comparison with Dumas ; asnovelists, as limners of the manners,language and customs of the middleages, there is a strong parallelism be-tween them; in descriptive writing,Scott, who revelled in the outdoor lifeof the

' Land of the mountain and the flood,'

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