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Medieval
Ethiopian Kingship,
Craft, and Diplomacy
with Latin Europe

Verena Krebs
Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy
with Latin Europe
 Verena Krebs

Medieval Ethiopian
Kingship, Craft, and
Diplomacy with Latin
Europe
Verena Krebs
Institute of History
Ruhr University Bochum
Bochum, Germany

ISBN 978-3-030-64933-3    ISBN 978-3-030-64934-0 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64934-0

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Detail from a manuscript made for aṣe Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl, ca. 1520, Tädbabä
Maryam Monastery, Ethiopia. Photograph by Diana Spencer, courtesy of the DEEDS
Project.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 To my parents, and to H.

Ich hab’ euch doch immer ein Boot versprochen.

Map 1 Late medieval Solomonic Ethiopia and its environs
Map 2 Ethiopian presence and diplomatic travel routes in Europe (1402–1535)
 Acknowledgements

I first encountered the sources that form the bedrock of this book as a
master’s student at the University of Konstanz, Germany, well over a
decade ago. Reflections on these materials have taken many forms over the
intervening years: a MA thesis, a PhD dissertation, an early and massive
book draft that looked at both Solomonic diplomacy and court collecting
practices. Each iteration, though ultimately discarded, re-shaped my views
on these texts, and their place in, and meaning for, the cultural history of
Ethiopia.
The long genesis process of this book has led me to accrue many debts.
My sincere thanks are owed to those institutions whose funding and sup-
port enabled me to conduct my writing and fieldwork research in the first
place: the Exzellenzcluster ‘Kulturelle Grundlagen von Integration’ at the
University of Konstanz, the Ethiopian Ministry of Education, the Institute
of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University and, finally, the Department
of History and Heritage Management at Mekelle University. The Martin
Buber Society of Fellows in Jerusalem and the Historical Institute at
Ruhr University Bochum graciously tolerated my continued research on a
project I was supposed to have long concluded.
The hypotheses laid out in this book have evolved through conversa-
tion with friends and colleagues in Europe, North America, Jerusalem and
Ethiopia. In particular, I wish to thank Dorothea Weltecke, Wolbert
Smidt, Alexandra Cuffel, Adam Knobler, Sahar Amer, Erin
MacLeod, Manfred Kropp, Rainer Voigt, Christof Rolker, Felix Girke,
Margit Mersch, Bar Kribus, Zara Pogossian, Yonatan Moss, Carlo Taviani,
Kate Lowe, Samantha Kelly, Wendy Belcher, Kristen Windmuller-Luna,

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Meseret Oldjira, Michael Gervers (who also kindly gave his permission for
the cover image of this book), Dorothea McEwan, Adam Simmons,
Solomon Gebreyes, Felege-Selam Yirga, Julien Loiseau, Martina Ambu,
Mitiku Gabrehiwot, Hagos Abrha, Semira Seid, Bahru Zewde, Shiferaw
Bekele and Lev Kapitaikin, who asked a very important question at a talk
I gave in Jerusalem in 2019. At the Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian and
Eritrean Studies in Hamburg, I especially wish to thank Alessandro Bausi,
Denis Nosnitsin and Sophia Dege-Müller for their expertise and advice,
and for reading parts of the manuscript. For their expertise and advice
regarding the Arabic sources, I similarly wish to thank Barbara Roggema,
Shahid Jamal and especially Julien Loiseau, whose gracious sharing of his
unpublished research on al-Tabrı̄zı̄ made my own investigation into the
matter possible in the first place.
This book also could not have been written in the way it was without
the translation help and invaluable philological expertise of Maria Bulakh,
Jonathan Brent and Kari North in Gǝʿǝz, Latin and Catalan, respectively.
Jan Brandejs was of superb help in creating the maps. I am moreover par-
ticularly grateful to Friederike Pfister, Daphna Oren-­Magidor, Solomon
Gebreyes, David Spielman, Jonathan Brent and Maria Bulakh, who all
read the manuscript in its entirety despite my looming deadlines, provid-
ing invaluable feedback and catching more than a few typos and translit-
eration mistakes. Thanks also go to Jona Ratering, Jil Löbbecke, Merve
Battal and Ayse Nur Özdemir, indefatigable checkers of proofs and end-
notes. My greatest debt is owed to Gabriel Stoukalov-­Pogodin, medieval-
ist, journalist, TV producer and childhood friend extraordinaire, who
wielded his unique skillset like a fine scalpel to conduct major editorial
surgery on the manuscript, refining, advancing and ensuring the cogency
of my arguments.
Finally, there are not enough words in the world to express my love and
gratitude to my parents, Otto and Heidrun, my sister Helena—and my
husband, Jan. I could never have gotten here without you, and you are
everything to me.
 Note to Reader

Transliterations from Ethiopian languages overwhelmingly follow those

established by the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, unless terms have entered
common English usage; transliterations from Arabic follow the imperfect
system of a German native-­speaker writing in English who learnt Arabic
both late in life and outside of the academy. A glossary provides brief
explanations on historical personnel and the most commonly used Gǝʿǝz
and Arabic terms.
Medieval Ethiopian kings could be known to their subjects by several
names, some of which were evocative composites (e.g. king Lǝbnä
Dǝngǝl’s name means ‘Incense of the Virgin’, but he was also known as
Dawit III and Wänag Sägäd). Each king is referred to by the name most
commonly employed in scholarship; moreover, to denote a ruler’s king-
ship, his name is preceded by the local honorific term of address of aṣe
(thus aṣe Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl instead of ‘king Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl’) in this book. I
also employ the Gǝʿǝz terms nǝgus ́ (meaning ‘king’) and its plural nägäs ́t
(‘kings’) as a shorthand specifically denoting the Christian rulers of
Solomonic Ethiopia (vis-à-vis their counterparts in Europe or elsewhere)
throughout this study.
Personal names, particularly those of individuals involved in Ethiopian-
European diplomacy, have not been modernised or rendered into an
English equivalent unless specifically noted. Instead, they are given as they
appear in the primary source material (e.g. ‘Petrus’ instead of ‘Peter’,
‘Johanne Baptista’ instead of ‘Giovanni Battista’). The common English
form is used for names of Latin Christian popes, and for personages of
comparative historical fame that are of secondary importance (e.g. Pope

xi
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xii Note to Reader

Sixtus IV and count Girolamo Riario). In bibliographic references,

Ethiopian names are given as usual, listing the personal name and the
name of the father and grandfather (when customarily used by the author)
with no reversal in bibliographic entries.
As has become commonplace in the field, all dates are identified as CE
(Common Era) with regard to the modern Western calendar; in a few
cases, AH for the Islamic calendar is used. The centuries under investiga-
tion here are familiar to Ethiopian Studies specialists as belonging to the
latter part of the so-called Early Solomonic Period (1270–1529) of
Ethiopian history. The applicability of the terms ‘medieval’ or ‘Middle
Ages’ to non-European regions has engaged many discussions within the
field of Medieval Studies in recent years. And yet, leading Ethiopian schol-
ars of the twentieth century (from Taddesse Tamrat and Sergew Hable
Selassie to Getatchew Haile) have—when writing in English about the
time period—long and freely employed both these terms. The use of ‘late
medieval’ and ‘late Middle Ages’ in this book is thus a nod to the great
Ethiopian historians in whose footsteps I walk. It is also a conscious choice
to highlight the deep history of entanglement between the North-East
African highlands and the extended Mediterranean, which is at the heart
of this study.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
Historiography, Sources and the Spectre of Prester John   3
Structure   7

2 All the King’s Treasures 17

Relics, Garments and Craftsmen—Ethiopian Missions to Italy at
the Turn of the Fifteenth Century  18
Strangers in Ethiopia, ca. 1398/1399–1401  18
A Venetian Summer, 1402  20
King Dawit’s Treasures, 1402–1403  23
Fact and Fiction in Rome, 1403–1404  25
Roads, Merchants and ‘the Good Wine’: Venetians in Ethiopia in
the Early Fifteenth Century  29
Lost in Translation at the Council of Constance, 1416–1418  34
Chapter Conclusion  38

3 The Sons of Dawit 61

First Contacts with the Kingdom of Aragon  62
An Interfaith Embassy to Valencia, 1427–1428  62
Spending a Fortune to Request Aid from Ethiopia, May 1428  63
Fear and Intrigue in Cairo, Early 1429  65
Five Ethiopian Pilgrims Walk Into a War, Summer 1430  73
Swapping Allegiances from France to Ethiopia, 1432/1433  74
The Abbot, the nəguś and the Council of Florence, 1439–1444  77

xiii
xiv CONTENTS

Ethiopia, Rome and Aragon—And the Fall of Constantinople  83

Chapter Conclusion  90

4 The Rule of the Regents121

Rome, Ethiopia, Jerusalem, and Two Very Different Men from
Imola, 1478–1484 122
An Ethiopian Mission to Cairo and a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem,
Mid-1480–Spring 1481 123
An Ethiopian Mission to the Heart of Latin Christendom,
1481–1482 126
A Minuscule Franciscan Mission in Ethiopia, 1480–1484/85 133
The Lord and the Letter-Carrier 136
Ethiopian Performative Diplomacy and Latin Missionary Zeal
in the Early 1480s 139
Ethiopia and Portugal, 1487–1527 142
Early Portuguese Emissaries to Ethiopia 142
Ǝleni’s Mission to Portugal, 1508–1509 143
Ethiopian Delegates to Portugal (1509–1515) 146
The Portuguese Embassy to Ethiopia and aṣe Lǝbnä Dǝngǝl’s
Last Peacetime Mission (1520–1527) 149
Chapter Conclusion 153

5 King Solomon’s Heirs185

Technologists, Arms, and Alliances? Dismantling a Scholarship
Narrative 185
A Christian Ethiopian Empire? The Realm of the ‘Builder Kings’  189
Monasticism and Solomonic Rule 190
Royal Foundations Proclaiming a Christian Dominion 192
Ethiopian Churches of Italian Appearance? 194
Through a Glass, Darkly: Textual Evidence and Archaeological
Remains 196
Diplomatic Requests Re-examined 203
Builders, Carpenters, Stonemasons, Metalworkers and Painters 204
The Dazzling Splendour of the World: Religious Material
Culture 206
Foreign Craftsmanship, Royal Foundations, and Diplomacy 211
The Power of Distance and Solomonic Emulation 215
Chapter Afterword: The Builder Kings’ Realm in Turbulent
Times 220
 Contents  xv

6 Conclusion263

A Brief Glossary of Terms Relating to Ethiopian History267

Bibliography273

Index295
 Abbreviations

ACA Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona

ASV Archivio di Stato di Venezia
BAP Biblioteca Comunale Augusta di Perugia
BAV Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
BMN Bibliothèque Municipale de Nancy
BNCF Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze
BNF Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
BNM Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice
EAe Encylopaedia Aethiopica. Vols. 1–3, ed. Siegbert Uhlig; vol. 4, ed.
Siegbert Uhlig and Alessandro Bausi; vol. 5, ed. Alessandro Bausi and
Siegbert Uhlig. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003–2014.
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica
TTNA Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon
UH Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg

xvii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In early 1429, a Persian merchant called al-Tabrı ̄zı ̄ was condemned to

death by one of the four supreme justices of Mamlūk Egypt. The Egyptian
authorities carried out the sentence quickly and with great spectacle: as
February turned into March, al-Tabrı ̄zı ̄ was publicly beheaded under the
window of the al-Ṣāliḥiyya madrasa, the formal site for public execution in
late medieval Cairo. The Persian declared his innocence until his head was
struck from his neck. He also quoted passages from the Quran and pro-
claimed the Islamic profession of faith.
Officially, al-Tabrı ̄zı ̄ was accused of ‘importing weapons into an enemy
country’ and ‘playing with two religions’.1 From a Mamlūk standpoint, he
was certainly guilty of both: the merchant had previously been repri-
manded for his export of arms and horses from Muslim Egypt to Solomonic
Ethiopia, a Christian kingdom located in the highlands of the Horn of
Africa. Beyond his role as incidental quartermaster supplying a foreign
army to the south of Egypt, al-Tabrı ̄zı ̄ was also known to acquire ‘trea-
sures’ such as bejewelled crosses for aṣe Yǝsḥaq, the ruler of Christian
Ethiopia.
The evidence recovered with the Persian upon his arrest together with
some Ethiopian monks in 1429 indicates that the group had been sent out
to acquire the rare and beautiful things in life. While some weapons were
found among their possessions, they were of little interest to the Mamlūk
authorities. Primarily recovered were great amounts of ‘Frankish’

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
V. Krebs, Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with
Latin Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64934-0_1
2 V. KREBS

clothing, richly embroidered in gold with Christian symbols, as well as two

golden church bells and a letter written ‘in the Ethiopian language’. In it,
the Ethiopian sovereign supposedly ordered al-Tabrı ̄zı ̄ to acquire items of
gold-smithery, crosses, bells and a holy Christian relic—one of the nails
with which Jesus had been crucified.2
Meanwhile, Spanish archival material indicates that the Persian mer-
chant and the Ethiopian monks had visited the kingdom of Aragon before
attempting to return to Ethiopia via Egypt. They had arrived in Valencia
in late 1427, spending several months in the city and asking the Aragonese
king, Alfonso V, to despatch artisans and craftsmen to the court of their
master, the nǝgus—thé Ethiopian king.
All this inter-faith contact and collaboration—with an African Christian
ruler approaching an Iberian court employing a Persian Muslim in the
company of Ethiopian ecclesiastics—provoked the suspicion of genera-
tions of Mamlūk Egyptian historians, who subsequently speculated that
the nǝgus ́ must have been calling for a crusade against the Islamic powers
of the Mediterranean.3 There was simply no way an Ethiopian king would
have sent out emissaries to travel halfway across the known world to
acquire ecclesiastical garments, liturgical objects and a relic as well as arti-
sans and craftsmen. Or was there?
In fact, diplomatic endeavours like the one that took such a fatal turn
for the Persian merchant al-Tabrı ̄zı ̄ seem to have been rather common at
the time. The fifteenth and early sixteenth century, the timeframe under
consideration in this book, coincides with an early golden age of Solomonic
Ethiopian sovereignty in the Horn of Africa. The origins of Christianity in
the region date back to the first half of the fourth century, when the
Aksumite king ʿEzana converted to the religion together with his court,
and Ethiopia became a bishopric of the Coptic Church.4 In 1270, the so-­
called Solomonic dynasty came to power in the central Ethiopian high-
lands. Throughout the fourteenth century, successive Solomonic
nägäs ́t—to use the plural of nǝgus ́as shorthand for these kings of Christian
Ethiopia—extended and consolidated their realm, seizing and submitting
new regions from non-Christian principalities under their suzerainty.5 At
the turn of the fifteenth century, Solomonic Ethiopia was the largest geo-
political entity in the late medieval Horn of Africa. The territory the
Christian nägäs ́t claimed as their own stretched nearly 700 miles in
length and several hundred miles in breadth. It formed a heterogeneous
realm that extended over most of the central highland plateau, from the
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

Eritrean coastal regions to the south of modern-day Addis Ababa (com-

pare Map 1).6
Between 1400 and the late 1520s, successive Ethiopian sovereigns are
recorded as dispatching at least a dozen diplomatic missions to various
princely and ecclesiastical courts in Latin Europe. The vast majority of
embassies were sent out within the first 50 years of contacts. In the fif-
teenth century alone, Solomonic envoys arrived at places as varied as
Venice, Rome, Valencia, Naples and Lisbon. Ethiopian pilgrims, some-
times cast into the role of inadvertent ambassadors, are concurrently
attested from Lake Constance in modern-day Germany to Santiago de
Compostela in the very west of the Iberian Peninsula.
Continuous and lasting contacts between distant medieval royal courts
are far from surprising. Often, objects rather than written sources bear
lasting witness to remote connections between realms. As art historian
Finbarr Flood once put it, ‘people and things have been mixed up for a
very long time, rarely conforming to the boundaries imposed on them by
modern anthropologists and historians.’7 In this specific case, however,
the people and things mixing up between the Christian Horn of Africa and
the Latin West traversed thousands of miles. They needed to cross moun-
tain ranges, deserts and two large bodies of water, as well as territories
adhering to different faiths. Even at the best of times, a single journey was
bound to take at least half a year. And yet, nearly all rulers and regents of
the fifteenth and early sixteenth century sent out envoys in some way or
other—in the very early 1400s, up to three embassies were dispatched
from the North-East African highland court within just five years.
Examining late medieval Solomonic Ethiopian missions to the Latin West,
this book above all seeks to answer a simple question: why did generations
of nägäs ́t initiate diplomatic contacts with different princely and ecclesias-
tical courts in Europe in the fifteenth and early sixteenth century?

Historiography, Sources and the Spectre

of Prester John

Modern historians and philologists working on the history and literature

of Europe and Ethiopia alike have studied these diplomatic encounters for
more than a century.8 Dating back to the very early 1900s, researchers
working on materials examined in this book have noted an Ethiopian
interest in craftsmen, and occasionally relics.9 The mid-twentieth-century
4 V. KREBS

Italian historian Renato Lefèvre concerned himself with the topic of

Ethiopian-European exchanges throughout his long career, unearthing
more archival material than any other scholar.10 In a major 1945 article, he
suggested that the nägäs ́t first approached medieval Italy out of a need for
its artistically and technologically superior workforce, ostensibly caused by
a lack of skilled indigenous African labour.11 Two decades later, he opined
somewhat less bluntly that Solomonic rulers dispatched their missions out
of a desire to obtain ‘masters of art and industry’ to raise the civil and
technical level of the Ethiopian kingdom, driven by a need to enhance its
military efficiency.12
Lefèvre’s views were undoubtedly steeped in the colonialist political
climate of his time, not unusual amongst Italian scholars writing in the
1930s and 1940s and thus shortly before, during, and after the fascist
Italian occupation of the Horn of Africa.13 His particular conclusions on
Ethiopia’s supposedly desperate cry for military, political and artistic aid
were, however, also influenced by the way the material has been studied.
While Ethiopia was often perceived as exceptional within pre-colonial
African historiography, its history has often been examined from the per-
spective of European imagination and exploration, which was often itself
steeped in a crusading spirit in the later Middle Ages.14 Historical men-
tions of Prester John and his realm, a formidable yet wholly fictitious
Christian ruler of extraordinary military power who enjoyed particular
popularity in late medieval Europe, have long been examined alongside
sources on Solomonic Ethiopia.15 Until now, the spectre of Prester John—
despite its origin as a wholly exogenous, proto-orientalist European fan-
tasy—persists in scholarly writing on the actual geopolitical entity of
pre-modern Solomonic Ethiopia.16 Finally, the rather martial interests of
an ostensible early-fourteenth-century ‘Ethiopian’ embassy—whose histo-
ricity and connection to the realm of the nägäs ́t has been under ques-
tion—have also been projected onto later Solomonic missions. Incidentally,
Latin Christian sources narrate this mission as offering a military alliance
to a ‘king of the Spains’.17 Over the course of the century, research has
thus often read late medieval Ethiopia and its connections to the larger
world as cast in a very particular light: we find a largely established scholar-
ship view where the nägäs ́t are understood as primarily looking for crafts-
men to ‘develop’ the Christian highland realm and especially its military,
and as hoping to acquire arms and even guns from Europe. Sometimes,
these ostensible interests were tied to another rather martial desire—the
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

nägäs ́t were also narrated as primarily looking for military alliances with
various courts in Latin Europe.18
It is the core idea of this book to argue that the available source mate-
rial on Solomonic diplomatic outreach to the late medieval Latin West tells
quite a different story: while some first-hand expressions of diplomatic
interests written by Ethiopian rulers from the early sixteenth century do
indeed contain—among many other things—a tangible interest in military
matters, alliances and arms, these are utterly absent in sources dating prior
to the early 1500s.19 Yet, Solomonic embassies to Europe date back to the
very early 1400s. What drove the nägäs ́t to send their missions through-
out the fifteenth century? Research has thus far failed to offer up a compel-
ling explanation for the first 100 years of persistent Solomonic diplomatic
outreach.
No first-hand letters written by Ethiopian rulers have come down to us
for this lengthy, early phase of contacts. However, a multitude of other
texts from Ethiopia, Egypt and Latin Europe have survived. These texts
contain a wealth of circumstantial evidence and provide a view on the
desires and interests of these African Christian rulers. Most of our sources
have been preserved in European archives, ranging from administrative
notes and copies of official letters to treasury records, city annals and
chronicles, itineraries, diary entries, personal letter collections and even
cartouche legends on maps. Many are written in the languages of the
Latin West: medieval Latin, of course, but also Italian, Catalan, German,
French and Portuguese, with the occasional indistinct local mix of a few of
the above thrown in for good measure. Ethiopian texts written in Gǝʿǝz,
the ancient literary and liturgical language of the country, provide an addi-
tional perspective. They contain important nuggets of historical informa-
tion, as do Arabic records from Mamlūk Egypt, Ethiopia’s northern
neighbour.
Combining all these sources—some of which have been known for
more than a century, others having come to light more recently—makes
visible several golden threads running through each and every late medi-
eval Solomonic embassy to Latin Europe: as we will see, not a single source
relating to the first 100 years of Ethiopian diplomacy portrays a clear
Solomonic interest in obtaining military craftsmen-technologists or alli-
ances, arms or guns from the Latin West. Instead, we find an immense
desire to acquire foreign religious material culture, especially relics, eccle-
siastical fabrics and liturgical objects, but also artisans and craftsmen skilled
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Exploring the Variety of Random
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 For years we have been studiously and jealously observing the
course of political events and policy on the part of this country, both
in a national and individual state capacity, as pursued towards the
colored people. And he who, in the midst of them, can live without
observation, is either excusably ignorant, or reprehensibly
deceptious and untrustworthy.
We deem it entirely unnecessary to tax you with anything like the
history of even one chapter of the unequalled infamies perpetrated
on the part of the various states, and national decrees, by
legislation, against us. But we shall call your particular attention to
the more recent acts of the United States; because, whatever
privileges we may enjoy in any individual state, will avail nothing
when not recognized as such by the United States.
When the condition of the inhabitants of any country is fixed by
legal grades of distinction, this condition can never be changed
except by express legislation. And it is the height of folly to expect
such express legislation, except by the inevitable force of some
irresistible internal political pressure. The force necessary to this
imperative demand on our part we never can obtain, because of our
numerical feebleness.
Were the interests of the common people identical with ours, we,
in this, might succeed, because we, as a class, would then be
numerically the superior. But this is not a question of the rich against
the poor, nor the common people against the higher classes, but a
question of white against black—every white person, by legal right,
being held superior to a black or colored person.
In Russia, the common people might obtain an equality with the
aristocracy, because, of the sixty-five millions of her population,
forty-five millions are serfs or peasants; leaving but twenty millions
of the higher classes—royalty, nobility, and all included.
The rights of no oppressed people have ever yet been obtained by
a voluntary act of justice on the part of the oppressors. Christians,
philanthropists, and moralists may preach, argue, and philosophize
as they may to the contrary: facts are against them. Voluntary acts,
it is true, which are in themselves just, may sometimes take place on
the part of the oppressor; but these are always actuated by the
force of some outward circumstances of self-interest equal to a
compulsion.
The boasted liberties of the American people were established by
a constitution, borrowed from and modelled after the British magna
charta. And this great charter of British liberty, so much boasted of
and vaunted as a model bill of rights, was obtained only by force and
compulsion.
The barons, an order of noblemen, under the reign of King John,
becoming dissatisfied at the terms submitted to by their sovereign,
which necessarily brought degradation upon themselves,—terms
prescribed by the insolent Pope Innocent III., the haughty sovereign
Pontiff of Rome,—summoned his majesty to meet them on the plains
of the memorable meadow of Runnymede, where, presenting to him
their own Bill of Rights—a bill dictated by themselves, and drawn up
by their own hands—at the unsheathed points of a thousand
glittering swords, they commanded him, against his will, to sign the
extraordinary document. There was no alternative: he must either
do or die. With a puerile timidity, he leaned forward his rather
commanding but imbecile person, and with a trembling hand and
single dash of the pen, the name KING JOHN stood forth in bold
relief sending more terror throughout the world than the mystic
handwriting of Heaven throughout the dominions of
Nebuchadnezzar, blazing on the walls of Babylon. A consternation,
not because of the name of the king, but because of the rights of
others, which that name acknowledged.
The king, however, soon became dissatisfied, and determining on
a revocation of the act,—an act done entirely contrary to his will,—at
the head of a formidable army spread fire and sword throughout the
kingdom.
But the barons, though compelled to leave their castles, their
houses and homes, and fly for their lives, could not be induced to
undo that which they had so nobly done—the achievement of their
rights and privileges. Hence the act has stood throughout all
succeeding time, because never annulled by those who willed it.
It will be seen that the first great modern Bill of Rights was
obtained only by a force of arms: a resistance of the people against
the injustice and intolerance of their rulers. We say the people—
because that which the barons demanded for themselves, was
afterwards extended to the common people. Their only hope was
based on their superiority of numbers.
But can we, in this country, hope for as much? Certainly not. Our
case is a hopeless one. There was but one John, with his few sprigs
of adhering royalty; and but one heart, at which the threatening
points of their swords were directed by a thousand barons; while in
our case, there is but a handful of the oppressed, without a sword to
point, and twenty millions of Johns or Jonathans—as you please—
with as many hearts, tenfold more relentless than that of Prince
John Lackland, and as deceptious and hypocritical as the Italian
heart of Innocent III.
Where, then, is our hope of success in this country? Upon what is
it based? Upon what principle of political policy and sagacious
discernment do our political leaders and acknowledged great men—
colored men we mean—justify themselves by telling us, and insisting
that we shall believe them, and submit to what they say—to be
patient, remain where we are; that there is a “bright prospect and
glorious future” before us in this country! May Heaven open our eyes
from their Bartimean obscurity.
But we call your attention to another point of our political
degradation—the acts of state and general governments.
In a few of the states, as in New York, the colored inhabitants
have a partial privilege of voting a white man into office. This
privilege is based on a property qualification of two hundred and fifty
dollars worth of real estate. In others, as in Ohio, in the absence of
organic provision, the privilege is granted by judicial decision, based
on a ratio of blood, of an admixture of more than one half white;
while in many of the states there is no privilege allowed, either
partial or unrestricted.
The policy of the above-named states will be seen and detected at
a glance, which, while seeming to extend immunities, is intended
especially for the object of degradation.
In the State of New York, for instance, there is a constitutional
distinction created among colored men,—almost necessarily
compelling one part to feel superior to the other,—while among the
whites no such distinctions dare be known. Also, in Ohio, there is a
legal distinction set up by an upstart judiciary, creating among the
colored people a privileged class by birth! All this must necessarily
sever the cords of union among us, creating almost insurmountable
prejudices of the most stupid and fatal kind, paralyzing the last
bracing nerve which promised to give us strength.
It is upon this same principle, and for the self-same object, that
the general government has long been endeavoring, and is at
present knowingly designing to effect a recognition of the
independence of the Dominican Republic, while disparagingly
refusing to recognize the independence of the Haytien nation—a
people four fold greater in numbers, wealth, and power. The
Haytiens, it is pretended, are refused because they are negroes;
while the Dominicans, as is well known to all who are familiar with
the geography, history, and political relations of that people, are
identical—except in language, they speaking the Spanish tongue—
with those of the Haytiens; being composed of negroes and a mixed
race. The government may shield itself by the plea that it is not
familiar with the origin of those people. To this we have but to reply,
that if the government is thus ignorant of the relations of its near
neighbors, it is the height of presumption, and no small degree of
assurance, for it to set up itself as capable of prescribing terms to
the one, or conditions to the other.
Should they accomplish their object, they then will have
succeeded in forever establishing a barrier of impassable separation,
by the creation of a political distinction between those peoples, of
superiority and inferiority of origin or national existence. Here, then,
is another stratagem of this most determined and untiring enemy of
our race—the government of the United States.
We come now to the crowning act of infamy on the part of the
general government towards the colored inhabitants of the United
States—an act so vile in its nature, that rebellion against its
demands should be promptly made in every attempt to enforce its
infernal provisions.
In the history of national existence, there is not to be found a
parallel to the tantalizing insult and aggravating despotism of the
provisions of Millard Fillmore’s Fugitive Slave Bill, passed by the
Thirty-third Congress of the United States, with the approbation of a
majority of the American people, in the year of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ eighteen hundred and fifty.
This bill had but one object in its provisions, which was fully
accomplished in its passage, that is, the reduction of every colored
person in the United States—save those who carry free papers of
emancipation, or bills of sale from former claimants or owners—to a
state of relative slavery; placing each and every one of us at the
disposal of any and every white who might choose to claim us, and
the caprice of any and every upstart knave bearing the title of
“commissioner.”
Did any of you, fellow-countrymen, reside in a country, the
provisions of whose laws were such that any person of a certain
class, who, whenever he, she, or they pleased, might come forward,
lay a claim to, make oath before (it might be) some stupid and
heartless person, authorized to decide in such cases, and take, at
their option, your horse, cow, sheep, house and lot, or any other
property, bought and paid for by your own earnings,—the result of
your personal toil and labor,—would you be willing, or could you be
induced by any reasoning, however great the source from which it
came, to remain in that country? We pause, fellow-countrymen, for a
reply.
 If there be not one yea, of how much more importance, then, is
your own personal safety than that of property? Of how much more
concern is the safety of a wife or husband, than that of a cow or
horse; a child, than a sheep; the destiny of your family, to that of a
house and lot?
And yet this is precisely our condition. Any one of us, at any
moment, is liable to be claimed, seized, and taken into custody by
any white, as his or her property—to be enslaved for life—and there
is no remedy, because it is the law of the land! And we dare predict,
and take this favorable opportunity to forewarn you, fellow-
countrymen, that the time is not far distant, when there will be
carried on by the white men of this nation an extensive commerce in
the persons of what now compose the free colored people of the
North. We forewarn you, that the general enslavement of the whole
of this class of people is now being contemplated by the whites.
At present, we are liable to enslavement at any moment, provided
we are taken away from our homes. But we dare venture further to
forewarn you, that the scheme is in mature contemplation, and has
even been mooted in high places, of harmonizing the two discordant
political divisions in the country by again reducing the free to slave
states.
The completion of this atrocious scheme only becomes necessary
for each and every one of us to find an owner and master at our
own doors. Let the general government but pass such a law, and the
states will comply as an act of harmony. Let the South but demand
it, and the North will comply as a duty of compromise.
If Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts can be found
arming their sons as watch-dogs for Southern slave hunters; if the
United States may, with impunity, garrison with troops the court-
house of the freest city in America; blockade the streets; station
armed ruffians of dragoons, and spiked artillery in hostile awe of the
people; if free, white, high-born and bred gentlemen of Boston and
New York are smitten down to the earth,[10] refused an entrance on
professional business into the court-houses, until inspected by a
slave hunter and his counsel, all to put down the liberty of the black
man, then, indeed, is there no hope for us in this country!
It is, fellow-countrymen, a fixed fact, as indelible as the covenant
of God in the heavens, that the colored people of these United
States are the slaves of any white person who may choose to claim
them!
What safety or guarantee have we for ourselves or families? Let
us, for a moment, examine this point.
Supposing some hired spy of the slave power residing in Illinois,
whom, for illustration, we shall call Stephen A., Counsellor B., a
mercenary hireling of New York, and Commissioner C., a slave
catcher of Pennsylvania, should take umbrage at the acts or doings
of any colored person or persons in a free state; they may, with
impunity, send or go on their knight errantry to the South (as did a
hireling of the slave power in New York—a lawyer by profession),
give a description of such person or persons, and an agent with
warrants may be immediately despatched to swear them into slavery
forever.
We tell you, fellow-countrymen, any one of you here assembled—
your humble committee who report to you this paper—may, by the
laws of this land, be seized, whatever the circumstances of his birth,
whether he descends from free or slave parents—whether born
north or south of Mason and Dixon’s line—and ere the setting of
another sun, be speeding his way to that living sepulchre and death-
chamber of our race—the curse and scourge of this country—the
southern part of the United States. This is not idle speculation, but
living, naked, undisguised truth.
A member of your committee has received a letter from a
gentleman of respectability and standing in the South, who writes to
the following effect. We copy his own words:—

“There are, at this moment, as I was to-day

informed by Colonel W., one of our first magistrates in
 this city, a gang of from twenty-five to thirty
vagabonds of poor white men, who, for twenty-five
dollars a head, clear of all expenses, are ready and
willing to go to the North, make acquaintance with the
blacks in various places, send their descriptions to
unprincipled slaveholders here,—for there are many of
this kind to be found among the poorer class of
masters,—and swear them into bondage. So the free
blacks, as well as fugitive slaves, will have to keep a
sharp watch over themselves to get clear of this
scheme to enslave them.”

Here, then, you have but a paragraph in the great volume of this
political crusade and legislative pirating by the American people over
the rights and privileges of the colored inhabitants of the country. If
this be but a paragraph,—for such it is in truth,—what must be the
contents when the whole history is divulged! Never will the contents
of this dreadful record of crime, corruption, and oppression be fully
revealed, until the trump of God shall proclaim the universal
summons to judgment. Then, and then alone, shall the whole truth
be acknowledged, when the doom of the criminal shall be forever
sealed.
We desire not to be sentimental, but rather would be political; and
therefore call your attention to another point—a point already
referred to.
In giving the statistics of various countries, and preferences to
many places herein mentioned, as points of destination in
emigration, we have said little or nothing concerning the present
governments, the various state departments, nor the condition of
society among the people.
This is not the province of your committee, but the legitimate
office of a Board of Foreign Commissioners, whom there is no doubt
will be created by the convention, with provisions and instructions to
report thereon, in due season, of their mission.
 With a few additional remarks on the subject of the British
Provinces of North America, we shall have done our duty, and
completed, for the time being, the arduous, important, and
momentous task assigned to us.
The British Provinces of North America, especially Canada West,—
formerly called Upper Canada,—in climate, soil, productions, and the
usual prospects for internal improvements, are equal, if not superior,
to any northern part of the continent. And for these very reasons,
aside from their contiguity to the northern part of the United States,
—and consequent facility for the escape of the slaves from the
South,—we certainly should prefer them as a place of destination.
We love the Canadas, and admire their laws, because, as British
Provinces, there is no difference known among the people—no
distinction of race. And we deem it a duty to recommend, that for
the present, as a temporary asylum, it is certainly advisable for every
colored person, who, desiring to emigrate, and is not prepared for
any other destination, to locate in Canada West.
Every advantage on our part should be now taken of the
opportunity of obtaining LANDS, while they are to be had cheap, and
on the most easy conditions, from the government.
Even those who never contemplate a removal from this country of
chains, it will be their best interest and greatest advantage to
procure lands in the Canadian Provinces. It will be an easy,
profitable, and safe investment, even should they never occupy nor
yet see them. We shall then be but doing what the whites in the
United States have for years been engaged in—securing unsettled
lands in the territories, previous to their enhancement in value, by
the force of settlement and progressive neighboring improvements.
There are also at present great openings for colored people to enter
into the various industrial departments of business operations:
laborers, mechanics, teachers, merchants, and shop-keepers, and
professional men of every kind. These places are now open, as much
to the colored as the white man, in Canada, with little or no
opposition to his progress; at least in the character of prejudicial
preferences on account of race. And all of these, without any
hesitancy, do we most cheerfully recommend to the colored
inhabitants of the United States.
But our preference to other places over the Canadas has been
cursorily stated in the foregoing part of this paper; and since the
writing of that part, it would seem that the predictions or
apprehensions concerning the Provinces are about to be verified by
the British Parliament and Home Government themselves. They have
virtually conceded, and openly expressed it—Lord Brougham in the
lead—that the British Provinces of North America must, ere long,
cease to be a part of the British domain, and become annexed to the
United States.
It is needless—however much we may regret the necessity of its
acknowledgment—for us to stop our ears, shut our eyes, and stultify
our senses against the truth in this matter; since, by so doing, it
does not alter the case. Every political movement, both in England
and the United States, favors such an issue, and the sooner we
acknowledge it, the better it will be for our cause, ourselves
individually, and the destiny of our people in this country.
These Provinces have long been burdensome to the British nation,
and her statesmen have long since discovered and decided as an
indisputable predicate in political economy, that any province as an
independent state, is more profitable in a commercial consideration
to a country than when depending as one of its colonies. As a child
to the parent, or an apprentice to his master, so is a colony to a
state. And as the man who enters into business is to the
manufacturer and importer, so is the colony which becomes an
independent state to the country from which it recedes.
Great Britain is decidedly a commercial and money-making nation,
and counts closely on her commercial relations with any country.
That nation or people which puts the largest amount of money into
her coffers, are the people who may expect to obtain her greatest
favors. This the Americans do; consequently—and we candidly ask
you to mark the prediction—the British will interpose little or no
obstructions to the Canadas, Cuba, or any other province or colony
contiguous to this country, falling into the American Union; except
only in such cases where there would be a compromise of her honor.
And in the event of a seizure of any of these, there would be no
necessity for such a sacrifice; it could readily be avoided by
diplomacy.
Then there is little hope for us on this continent, short of those
places where, by reason of their numbers, there is the greatest
combination of strength and interests on the part of the colored
race.
We have ventured to predict a reduction of the now nominally free
into slave states. Already has this “reign of terror” and dreadful work
of destruction commenced. We give you the quotation from a
Mississippi paper, which will readily be admitted as authority in this
case:—

“Two years ago a law was passed by the California

legislature, granting one year to the owners of slaves
carried into the territory previous to the adoption of
the constitution, to remove them beyond the limits of
the state. Last year the provision of this law was
extended twelve months longer. We learn by the late
California papers that a bill has just passed the
Assembly, by a vote of 33 to 21, continuing the same
law in force until 1855. The provisions of this bill
embraces slaves who have been carried to California
since the adoption of her constitution, as well as those
who were there previously. The large majority by
which it passed, and the opinions advanced during the
discussion, indicates a more favorable state of
sentiment in regard to the rights of slaveholders in
California than we supposed existed.”—Mississippian.
 No one who is a general and intelligent observer of the politics of
this country, will after reading this, doubt for a moment the final
result.
At present there is a proposition under consideration in California
to authorize the holding of a convention to amend the constitution of
that state, which doubtless will be carried into effect; when there is
no doubt that a clause will be inserted, granting the right to hold
slaves at discretion in the state. This being done, it will meet with
general favor throughout the country by the American people, and
the policy be adopted on the state’s rights principle. This alone is
necessary, in addition to the insufferable Fugitive Slave Law, and the
recent nefarious Nebraska Bill,—which is based upon this very
boasted American policy of the state’s rights principle,—to reduce
the free to slave states, without a murmur from the people. And did
not the Nebraska Bill disrespect the feelings and infringe upon the
political rights of Northern white people, its adoption would be hailed
with loud shouts of approbation, from Portland, Maine, to San
Francisco.
That, then, which is left for us to do, is to secure our liberty; a
position which shall fully warrant us against the liability of such
monstrous political crusades and riotous invasions of our rights.
Nothing less than a national indemnity, indelibly fixed by virtue of
our own sovereign potency, will satisfy us as a redress of grievances
for the unparalleled wrongs, undisguised impositions, and
unmitigated oppression which we have suffered at the hands of this
American people.
And what wise politician would otherwise conclude and
determine? None, we dare say. And a people who are incapable of
this discernment and precaution are incapable of self-government,
and incompetent to direct their own political destiny. For our own
part, we spurn to treat for liberty on any other terms or conditions.
It may not be inapplicable, in this particular place, to quote, from
high authority, language which has fallen under our notice since this
report has been under our consideration. The quotation is worth
nothing, except to show that the position assumed by us is a natural
one, which constitutes the essential basis of self-protection.
Said Earl Aberdeen recently, in the British House of Lords, when
referring to the great question which is now agitating Europe, “One
thing alone is certain, that the only way to obtain a sure and
honorable peace, is to acquire a position which may command it;
and to gain such a position, every nerve and sinew of the empire
should be strained. The pickpocket who robs us is not to be let off
because he offers to restore our purse;” and his lordship might have
justly added, “should never thereafter be intrusted or confided in.”
The plea, doubtless, will be, as it already frequently has been
raised, that to remove from the United States, our slave brethren
would be left without a hope. They already find their way in large
companies to the Canadas, and they have only to be made sensible
that there is as much freedom for them South as there is North; as
much protection in Mexico as in Canada; and the fugitive slave will
find it a much pleasanter journey and more easy of access, to wend
his way from Louisiana and Arkansas to Mexico, than thousands of
miles through the slaveholders of the South and slave-catchers of
the North to Canada. Once into Mexico, and his farther exit to
Central and South America and the West Indies would be certain.
There would be no obstructions whatever. No miserable, half-
starved, servile Northern slave-catchers by the way, waiting, cap in
hand, ready and willing to do the bidding of their contemptible
Southern masters.
No prisons nor court-houses, as slave-pens and garrisons, to
secure the fugitive and rendezvous the mercenary gangs, who are
bought as military on such occasions. No perjured marshals, bribed
commissioners, nor hireling counsel, who, spaniel-like, crouch at the
feet of Southern slaveholders, and cringingly tremble at the crack of
their whip. No, not as may be encountered throughout his northern
flight, there are none of these to be found or met with in his travels
from the Bravo del Norte to the dashing Orinoco—from the borders
of Texas to the boundaries of Peru.
 Should anything occur to prevent a successful emigration to the
south—Central, South America, and the West Indies—we have no
hesitancy, rather than remain in the United States, the merest
subordinates and serviles of the whites, should the Canadas still
continue separate in their political relations from this country, to
recommend to the great body of our people to remove to Canada
West, where, being politically equal to the whites, physically united
with each other by a concentration of strength; when worse comes
to worse, we may be found, not as a scattered, weak, and impotent
people, as we now are separated from each other throughout the
Union, but a united and powerful body of freemen, mighty in
politics, and terrible in any conflict which might ensue, in the event
of an attempt at the disturbance of our political relations, domestic
repose, and peaceful firesides.
Now, fellow-countrymen, we have done. Into your ears have we
recounted your own sorrows; before your own eyes have we
exhibited your wrongs; into your own hands have we committed
your own cause. If these should prove inadequate to remedy this
dreadful evil, to assuage this terrible curse which has come upon us,
the fault will be yours and not ours; since we have offered you a
healing balm for every sorely aggravated wound.
Martin R. Delany, Pa.
William Webb, Pa.
Augustus R. Green, Ohio.
Edward Butler, Mo.
H. S. Douglas, La.
A. Dudley, Wis.
Conaway Barbour, Ky.
Wm. J. Fuller, R. I.
Wm. Lambert, Mich.
J. Theodore Holly, N. Y.
T. A. White, Ind.
John A. Warren, Canada.
 FOOTNOTES
[1] This paper will be found on p. 327.
[2] This sword was a relic of the revolutionary war, presented
by Frederick the Great to General Washington, and was kept in
the Washington family until that time.
[3] Extract from the report of the proceedings of the fourth
session of the International Statistical Congress, held in London,
July 16, 1860, and the five following days:—

“Opening Meeting of the Congress.

“At four o’clock His Royal Highness, the Prince
Consort, arrived at Somerset House, attended by the
Earl Spencer, the Lord Waterpark, Major General
Hon. C. Grey, Colonel F. Seymour, C. B., and
Lieutenant Colonel Ponsonby. His Royal Highness
was received in the outer hall of King’s College by
the Right Hon. the President of the Board of Trade
and the Right Hon. W. Cowper, M. P., Vice-President
of the Congress, the Earl of Shaftesbury, the Earl
Stanhope, Sir James Clark, Bart., Rev. Dr. Jeff,
Principal of King’s College, and Dr. Guy, and the
Secretaries, Dr. Farr, Mr. Valpy, and Mr. Hammack. A
guard of honor of the Queen’s (Westminster) Rifle
Volunteers, with the band of the corps, was in
attendance to receive his Royal Highness.
“Amongst the noblemen and gentlemen present
were the Honorary Vice-President, including the
official delegates, His Excellency the Count de
Persigny, Ambassador of France; His Excellency
Monsieur Musurus, Ambassador Extraordinary and
Plenipotentiary of Turkey; Monsieur Sylvain Van de
Weyer, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister
Plenipotentiary of Belgium; the Baron de Cetto,
Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of
Bavaria; the Count de Bernstorff, Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of
Prussia; the Commander de Carvalho Moreira, Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Brazil;
George Mifflin Dallas, Esq., Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of
America; the Count Apponyi, Envoy Extraordinary
and Minister Plenipotentiary of Austria; the Count de
Vitzthum, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister
Plenipotentiary of Saxony; Monsieur de La Rive,
Envoy Extraordinary of Switzerland; Lord Brougham,
the Earl of Shaftesbury, Earl Stanhope, Lord John
Russell, M. P., Viscount Ebrington, Lord Monteagle,
Lord Wriothesley, Lord Harry Vane, M. P., the Lord
Mayor, Mr. Bouverie, M. P., Mr. Slaney, M. P., Sir John
Bowring, Major General Sir C. Paisley, Rear Admiral
Fitz Roy, Colonel Sykes, M. P., Right Hon. Joseph
Napier, Right Hon. W. Hutt, M. P., Mr. Monckton
Milnes, M. P., Sir Roderick I. Murchison, Mr. Nassau,
Senior, Mr. Pollard Urquhart, M. P., Sir F. H.
Goldsmid, Bart., M. P., the Registrar General of
England, the Registrar General of Ireland, Sir R. M.
Bromley, K. C. B., Mr. Caird, M. P., Mr. Fonblanque,
Mr. Crawfurd, Mr. Newmarch, Mr. Edwin Chadwick,
Mr. L. J. Leslie, Mr. S. Gaskell, Mr. J. Heywood, Mr.
Babbage, Alderman Salomans, M. P., Mr. Mowbray
Morris, Mr. T. Chambers, Mr. Lumley, Colonel
Dawson, Dr. Babington, Mr. J. Glaisher, Dr. Balfour,
Dr. Sutherland, Mr. Hodge, Mr. Edgar, Mr. Hastings,
Mr. T. Webster, Mr. S. Redgrave, Mr. A. Redgrave,
Professor Leone Levi, Dr. R. D. Thomson, Mr. H. G.
Bohn, Mr. Hendricks, Sir Ranald Martin, C. B., Dr.
Letheby, Dr. McWilliam, C. B., Mr. Simon, Mr. Horace
Mann, Mr. Hill Williams, Mr. Panizzi, Mr. Tidd Pratt,
Dr. Varrentrapp of Frankfort, Dr. Neumann of Berlin,
Dr. Mühry of Hanover, Lieutenant-Colonel Kennedy,
Mr. F. Purdy, Dr. Norton Shaw, Mr. A. Bonham Carter,
Mr. R. Hunt, Mr. W. Clode, Chevalier Hebeler, M.
Koulomzine and M. Von Bouchen of Russia, M.
Chatelain of Paris, M. Carr van der Maeren, Le
Chevalier Debrang, Mr. Peter Hardy, Captain
Sierakowski and Professor Kapoustine of Russia, Dr.
Otto Hübner, M. Coquerel, Professor Chicherin of
 Moscow, Dr. Bialloblotzki, Mr. J. G. Cogswell, Mr. D.
V. McLean, Dr. Schwabe of Berlin, M. Villemsens of
Paris, Dr. Delany of Canada, Mr. H. Ayres, Mr. T.
Michell, M. Grigorieff of St. Petersburg, the President
of the College of Physicians, the President of the
College of Surgeons, Dr. Bryson, Mr. S. Brown, Mr.
Jellicoe, Mr. Yates, Mr. Holland, Dr. Greenhill, Captain
D. Galton, Mr. Thwaites, and a large body of
gentlemen who had been specially invited to take
part in the proceedings of the Congress.”
[4] Here, as elsewhere mentioned, Judge Longstreet is again in
error, he not having remained long enough to make himself
acquainted with the Congress. Mr. Dallas was not a
“complimentary visitor,” abstractly considered, as the judge’s
reference would infer, but, by general rule, an ex-officio member
of the Congress,—a vice president,—as was every envoy
extraordinary, or minister plenipotentiary to her majesty’s court,
and consequently had taken his seat as one of the high officials
of an International (the World’s) Congress, and not Great
Britain’s, much less England’s Congress. The Congress belonged
as much to Mr. Dallas as to his lordship, and, may it be permitted,
even his royal highness. The great assembly simply sat by turn of
appointment in Great Britain, and doubtless in time will come to
the United States, especially now that they have reached the
point of consummate of national justice.
[5] As to the insulting allusion on page 114, presented for the
consideration of the British public, that the American slaveholders
could “beatify them with precisely four millions such as myself,”
alluding to their degraded, uneducated slaves, I am admonished
against retaliating in a manner which would otherwise be
justifiable in view of the great changes brought about by the
mistaken cherished ideas of such gentlemen as Judge Longstreet,
and the consequent effects everywhere throughout the South,
imploringly staring us in the face.
And in reply to the inquiry, page 114, “To what section does he
belong? I do not find him allotted to either,” a reply will be found
in the Transactions of the International Statistical Congress,
London, 1860; and had he remained to “belong to a section” at
all, he would have been clear of the historical blunder which he is
found to have made.
 And finally, regarding the singular inquiry, page 114, “To how
many of the entertainments has he been invited?” were I capable
of either weakness or vanity in that direction, I might allude to
them, as does the learned judge, page 115, but would rather
refer him to those to whom he appeals, as having been
complimented by, and simply conclude by the allusion that had he
himself been at all the entertainments, he could not have failed to
see Dr. Delany at many. The uncalled-for allusion to the reception
given by his royal highness has been previously replied to.
[6] His lordship is in error in regard to the birthplace, as
elsewhere shown.
[7] See page 327.
[8] Mr. Shadd was elected Vice-President in the place of Mr.
Bailey, who left the Province for New Caledonia.
[9] Elihu Burritt.
[10] John Jay, Esq., of New York, son of the late distinguished
jurist, Hon. William Jay, was, in 1852, as the counsel of a fugitive
slave, brutally assaulted and struck in the face by the slave-
catching agent and counsel, Busteed.
Also, Mr. Dana, an honorable gentleman, counsel for the
fugitive Burns, one of the first literary men of Boston, was
arrested on his entrance into the court-house, and not permitted
to pass the guard of slave-catchers, till the slave agent and
counsel, Loring, together with the overseer, Suttle, inspected him,
and ordered that he might be allowed to pass in! After which, in
passing along the street, Mr. Dana was ruffianly assaulted and
murderously felled to the earth by the minions of the dastardly
Southern overseer.
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