4

calumniator should not interrupt him[.] The lordly and bombastic air of ‘Brother Purvis,’ excited laughter in De Wolf, to which ‘Brother Purvis,’ answered ‘Laugh! Oh laugh, but it is the forced laugh of conscious dishonesty &c.’ Emboldened by his triumph over a non-resistant, he was proceeding to traduce Mr. R. Douglass, when Mr. D. quietly arose and told ‘Purvis’ that he had called a man whom he knew to be a non-resistant, a liar, and had vilified absent men and dead men, but he could not throw an insult in his (Mr. D’s) teeth without meeting the consequences right on the spot. He might think of it as he chose but he could very easily tell whether he (Mr. D.) was in earnest or not. This effectually cured Purvis of personalities. Very likely this brave man, who is so good at attacking non-resistants, absent men and dead men, might have called to mind an episode a few years ago in Wesley church^{19Several black churches in antebellum Philadelphia had “Wesley” in their names. The one referred to here is probably the Wesley A.M.E. Zion Church, founded in 1820 and located at the corner of Lombard and Fifth Street. This congregation was one of the oldest in the A.M.E. Zion Church. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899; New York, 1967), 200, 211–12.} and another in Heims st.Hall.^{20Probably the Odd Fellows Hall on the corner of Sixth and Haines Street in Philadelphia. Thefour-story building, erected in 1846 to great fanfare, housed the Grand Lodge offices for Pennsylvania. In addition to several Odd Fellows Lodges, the hall housed the Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania. The Odd Fellows erected their building on the same lot where abolitionists had built Pennsylvania Hall, which was burned in 1838. McElroy’s Philadelphia Directory for 1857 (Philadelphia, 1857), 900; [New York] The Golden Rule, and Odd Fellows’ Family Companion, 5:201–02(September 1846).} We know nothing about it. He quits his personalities quick enough, when he found he had a man to deal with, that we know.

A lively young man, (whom we know to be a reporter of Forney’s^{21A prominent Democratic party journalist from Pennsylvania, John Weiss Forney (1817–81) was a close ally of James Buchanan. After losing a race for a seat in the U.S. Senate to the Republican Simeon Cameron, Forney launched a newspaper, the Press, in Philadelphia in August 1857. After quarreling with Buchanan over his efforts to make Kansas a slave state, Forney shifted his allegiance to the Republicans. By 1876, Forney had changed the name of his newspaper from the Press to the Philadelphia Press. North American and United States Gazette, 14 July 1857; Centennial Newspaper Exhibition 1876 (New York, 1876), 277–79; NCAB, 3:267–68; DAB, 6:526–27.} paper) whose name we could not learn, now rose and took the house by storm in an eloquent vindication of Frederick Douglass and of George Washington's^{22In his will, George Washington (1732–99), first president of the United States, provided that all the slaves that he held in his own right be emancipated upon the death of his wife. In 1802, according to the estate inventory, 124 slaves were eventually freed. Fritz Hirschfeld, George Washington and Slavery: A Documentary Portrayal (Columbia, Mo., 1997), 209–12; Douglas Southall Freeman,
Washington: A Biography (New York, 1968), 741.} memory. You profess sympathy for the blackman of the South, but you have suffered yourself within the last hour, shamefully to abuse one of the noblest living men, Frederick Doug[l]ass. He had heard every discourse that Mr. Douglass has delivered in this city, and he strained no point when he said, that he was not only the ablest and most eloquent of American orators. But he would redeem his whole race from the charge of inferiority. Shame on you who can suffer that he should be wantonly abused on your platform, which should rather try to strengthen him and hold up his noble hand. Could his noble and manly form but enter the room at this moment, his cowardly calumniators would wilt away before him like the house-vine before the sun! And then General Washington, what is there to be gained by everlastingly traducing the memory of so great and good a man? The American people would not give audience to their doctrines if they embodied such gross calumniations of him who was first in war &c. Every sentiment of Washington was for liberty. Then he went on in the most eloquent and impressive manner. His speech acted like a rocket, (we regret that we could not [learn] the name of this young man.) Remond undertook to reply to it by calling to an account the audience for applauding. Sore yet about his defeat in the Wears^{23Isaiah C. Weir.} discussion last spring, he singled out Prof. R. Cambell,^{24Born in Jamaica to a free black mother and a Scottish-born planter, Robert Campbell (1829–84) worked as a printer and a teacher before migrating to Brooklyn, New York, in 1852. Three years later, he accepted an instructor’s post at the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia. He was soon drawn into antislavery and Underground Railroad work in that city’s black community. In 1859, Campbell joined Martin Delany’s Niger Valley Exploring Party. After fund-raising on behalf of the expedition in Great Britain, he accompanied Delany to West Africa in 1860. After returning to the United States, he continued to promote African migration in speeches and in writing. In February 1862, Campbell permanently relocated his family to Lagos, Nigeria, where he worked at journalistic and commercial ventures. Blackett, Beating against the Barriers, 139–82.} (took him to task for applauding the [l]ast speaker) and charged him with lack of ability to understand the Constitution and laws of the Country, and advised him to go back to the Antilles^{25The main island group of the West Indies, the Antilles span 2,500 miles from Florida to the Venezuela coast. The archipelago is composed of the Greater Antilles (the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica) and the Lesser Antilles (the Windward Islands, the Leeward Islands, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago). These islands separate the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer of the World, 79; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer of the World, 3441.} and try to comprehend the genius of American institutions before returning.—This was exceedingly smart in Remond, especially as he knew perfectly well that the Prof. would not have an opportunity to reply. We can tell Mr. Remond, that Prof. Campbell’s Scientific and Literary attainments have given him the audience and friendships of some of the most distinguished men of letters, not only in Philadelphia, but in the Country. Remond had better try his hand with him sometime before an impartial audience, and we guess he would come out worse excoriated than he did with Wear last spring.

NORMAL.

PLSr: FDP, 1 January 1858.