Condition and Elevation has always been a neglected source of information in the study of the American Negro. The reason may be because it violates the American illusion of democratic equality. It sets forth quite clearly and in detail the genesis of one of today's unmentionables—that the American brand of apartheid differs little in white attitudes from those of South Africa and Rhodesia.

Delany can be accused—and was—of poor writing in portions of Condition and Elevation but never of superficial thinking or compromise with his innate honesty. He declared in his preface that his “sole object has been to place before the public in general, and the colored people of the United States in particular, great truths concerning this class of citizens, which appears to have been heretofore avoided, as well by friends and enemies to their elevation.”

Had he too avoided these “great truths,” which both white and black abolitionists disregarded in schizophrenic unity, the strange storm that arose among abolitionists after the book's publication would never have occurred. But, then, Delany would merely have written just another recital of wrongs, horror over violation of democratic principles, and appeal to the whites. That had been the formula for twenty years. But Delany had met the free Negroes of Canada and had gained a broader perspective to buttress his studies of ancient black civilizations.

To all but a handful of the abolitionists, Delany's cardinal sin in Condition and Elevation was the acceptance of emigration as not only worthy of serious consideration but also of investigation and planning. He stated it without reservation, though he knew full well that emigration and treason were synonymous in the abolitionists' minds.

EMIGRATION OF THE COLORED PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES

That there have been people in all ages under certain circumstances that may be benefited by emigration, will be admitted; and that there are circumstances under which emigration is absolutely necessary to their political elevation, cannot be disputed.

This we see in the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt to the land of Judea; in the expedition of Dido and her followers from Tyre to Mauritania; and not to dwell upon the hundreds of modern European examples—also in the ever memorable emigration of the Puritans, in 1620, from Great Britain, the land of their birth, to the wilderness of the New World, at which may be fixed the beginning of emigration to this continent as a permanent residence.

This may be acknowledged; but to advocate the emigration of the colored people of the United States from their native homes, is a new feature in our history, and at first view, may be considered objectionable, as pernicious to our interests. This objection is at once removed, when reflecting on our condition as incontrovertibly shown in a foregoing part of this work. And we shall proceed at once to give the advantages to be derived from emigration, to us as a people, in preference to any other policy that we may adopt. This granted, the question will then be, where shall we go? This we conceive to be all‐important—of paramount consideration, and shall endeavor to show the most advantageous locality; and premise the recommendation with the strictest advice against any countenance whatever, to the emigration scheme of the so called Republic of Liberia.

Delany's exposition of the conditions under which blacks, both slave and free, lived in America in 1850, and his long listing of Negro accomplishments in all of man's activities despite these handicaps is worthy of separate study. More important in his book are the details of his pioneering efforts to change American abolitionism from a sterile debating society to an activist group. The contrast between the two sections of the book is startling. The first is a realistic evaluation of the Negro hopes, or lack of them; the second concludes that not until the blacks of all the world unite will the American Negro be free. As for achievement of all the rights and dreams of a democracy, Delany asserted without equivocation that the black man could only succeed in this ultimate of citizenship by creating his own democracy.

This he proposed in his Appendix entitled “A Project for an Expedition of Adventure, to the Eastern Coast of Africa,” which followed the chapters exploring all other parts of the world as a site for black refuge and republicanism. Delany revealed that he reached the concept in 1836, when he was 24 years old. If so, he was discussing a “Black Israel” long before the birth of the founder of Jewish Zionism. His proposal for a “Black Israel” was published 46 years before the great Theodor Herzl wrote Der Judenstat. Their reasoning was almost identical.

Every people should be the originators of their own designs, the projector of their own schemes, and creators of the events that lead to their destiny—the consummation of their desires. … We have native hearts and virtues, just as other nations; which in their pristine purity are noble, potent and worthy of example. We are a nation within a nation;—as are the Poles in Russia, the Hungarians in Austria, the Welsh, Irish and Scotch in the British dominions.

But we have been, by our oppressors, despoiled of our purity, and corrupted in our native characteristics, so that we have inherited their vices, and but few of their virtues; leaving us in character, really a broken people.

Being distinguished by complexion, we are still singled out—although having merged in the habits and customs of our oppressors—as a distinct nation of people; as the Poles, Hungarians, Irish and others, who still retain their native peculiarities, of language, habits and various other traits. The claims of no people, according to established policy and usage, are respected by any nation, until they are presented in a national capacity (author's emphasis).

Therefore, declared this Black Zionist, there should be a gathering of the colored people of the United States, “Not what is termed a National Convention … but a true representation of the intelligence and wisdom of the colored freemen.” He then presented detailed plans for the formation of a National Confidential Council as an executive arm to explore and organize a Black Israel in East Africa.

The National Council shall appoint one or two Special Commissioners to England and France, to solicit, in the name of Representatives of a Broken Nation, of four‐and‐a‐half‐millions, the necessary outfit and support, for any period not exceeding three years, of such an expedition. Certainly, what England and France would do, for a little nation—mere nominal nation, of five thousand civilized Liberians, they would be willing and ready to do for five millions; if they be but authentically represented, in a national capacity. What was due to Greece, enveloped by Turkey, should be due to US, enveloped by the United States; and we believe would be respected, if properly presented. To England and France, we should look for sustenance, and the people of those two nations—as they would have everything to gain from such an adventure and eventual settlement on the Eastern Coast of Africa—the opening of an immense trade being the consequence. … The Eastern Coast of Africa has long been neglected, and never but little known, even to the ancients; but has ever been our choice part of the Continent. … The land is ours—there it lies with inexhaustible resources; let us go and possess it. In Eastern Africa must rise up a nation, to whom all the world must pay commercial tribute.

The condemnation of Delany for his proposals by both blacks and whites was similar to the condemnation of Herzl by both Jews and non‐Jews. But none condemned Delany more than he condemned himself years later for the faults of the book, faults not as apparent to the reader of today. True, were Delany intent on seeking support for a Black Israel among sympathizers predisposed to help the Negroes, he could have been more tactful. His trouble was honesty. He alienated the sincere, if ineffectual, white antislavery churchmen with one remark during discussion of Central and South America as one of the few ideal havens for people of color. The American Protestant syndrome allowed no considerations of these countries because they were so predominantly Catholic as well as antislavery. Delany dismissed this with “Talk not about religious biases—we have but one reply to make. We had rather be a Heathen freeman, than a Christian slave.”

Such heresy was matched by Delany in other directions. In effect, he denied the doxology of abolitionism, as it had appeared in the antislavery catechism for so many years. No matter how the various abolitionist splinter groups disagreed with each other, they shared the same book of the genesis of antislavery—that the Israelites must remain in Egypt and attack the Pharaoh and not listen to any Moses like Delany who proposed that his people search out a land of Canaan.

The criticism was inevitable and could have been predicted. What remains puzzling is Delany's own reaction to that criticism. For the first and only time in his life Delany was uncertain, unhappy with his own conclusions because, for a time, he felt isolated from the thinking of men he had always respected. Frederick Douglass ignored his book and did not attack Delany himself until the proposals written in it were implemented in 1853.

On July 10, 1852, Delany wrote a bitter letter to Douglass, complaining that he had sent a copy of Condition and Elevation to him in May and it “has never been raised in the columns of your paper. … You could have given it a supplemental notice, by saying that such a work had been written by me (saying anything else about or against it that you pleased) and let those who read it pass their own opinion also. But you heaped upon it a cold and deathly silence. …”

Perhaps this disregard should not have surprised Delany, for he knew better than most black abolitionists that Frederick Douglass heard only the agreement of the thousands in his audiences and not the deadly hatred of the millions of Americans outside the antislavery halls. Douglass was later to summarize his belief:

The question is: Can the white and colored people of this country be blended into a common nationality, and enjoy together, in the same country, under the same flag, the inestimable blessings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as neighborly citizens of a common country? I answer most unhesitatingly, I believe they can.

A hundred years later it appears that, for a lifetime, Douglass had been living off “pie in the sky.” His beliefs have not been confirmed; Delany's doubts have been.

William Lloyd Garrison, in a lengthy review of Condition and Elevation in The Liberator expresses kind regard for Delany as a person and a self‐sacrificing leader of his people. He even approved of some of the book.

He is a vigorous writer, an eloquent speaker, and full of energy and enterprise. The sketches he has made of several literary and professional colored men and women are not only authentic and highly interesting but will greatly surprise those who, having been taught to consider the colored population as a very inferior race, are profoundly ignorant as to all such instances of intellectual power, moral worth and scientific attainment. Indeed, says Dr. D. “the colored people are not yet known, even to their most devoted friends among the white Americans”—a remark substantially true, beyond a doubt.

But—Garrison found that Delany was wrong in his criticism of the lack of numbers and zeal among abolitionists; wrong in his history and therefore his conclusions concerning emigration, and absolutely in the gravest error concerning separation of black and white as either permanent or justifiable, for “it would only prove that the people of the United States were past repentance.”

We are sorry to see a tone of despondency, and an exhibition of the spirit of caste, in the concluding portions of this otherwise instructive and encouraging work. Take for example:—“We love our country, dearly love her, but she don't love us. She despises us and bids us begone, driving us from her embraces. But we shall not go where she desires us; but when we do go, whatever love we have for her, we shall love the country nonetheless that receives us as her adopted children”. The idea of separatism is not only admitted, but strongly urged, and in a very plausible manner.

Delany replied to Garrison's review on May 14 and he acknowledged the faults of his book, expressed his gratitude to Garrison for being honest in writing of them. However, he disagreed with the criticism in one fundamental respect.

I am not in favor of caste, nor a separation of the brotherhood of mankind, and would as willingly live among white men as black, if I had an equal possession and enjoyment of privileges; but shall never be reconciled to live among them, subservient to their will—existing by mere sufferance, as we, the colored people, do in this country. The majority of white men cannot see why colored men cannot be satisfied with their condition in Massachusetts—what they desire more than the granted right of citizenship. Blind selfishness on the one hand, and deep prejudice on the other, will not permit them to understand that we desire the exercise and enjoyment of these rights, as well as the name of their possession. If there were any probability of this, I should be willing to remain in the country, fighting and struggling on, the good fight of faith. But I must admit, that I have no hopes in this country—no confidence in the American people—with a few excellent exceptions—therefore, I have written as I have done. Heathenism and Liberty, before Christianity and Slavery.

Delany deplored any differences with Douglass and Garrison, but there was another old friend, Oliver Johnson, editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman who appears to have destroyed his customary restraint. Johnson, being white and part of a white antislavery organization, its spokesman in fact, understandably opposed the information and proposals of Delany's book. His one‐paragraph criticism, appearing in the April 29, 1852, issue, was somewhat snide. He cites Delany's introductory apology for the haste in which the volume was written and then:

This will probably strike our readers, as it did us, as a very singular reason for publishing a book; but if any better exists, we have not been able to discover it in the book itself. It embodies many facts which are in themselves interesting and valuable, which, if they were less bunglingly and egotistically presented and not mixed up with much that is of questionable propriety and utility, might be available to the reader; but the manner in which the author has used his materials deprives the work of all value. We could wish that, for his own credit and that of the colored people, it had never been published.

This was the total of Johnson's remarks on the book. Obviously, it was not intended as a review of the contents but only as condemnation without critical justification. In the trade of literary criticism this is known as a “knife job.”

Delany lost his restraint and pride the next day. In a letter to Johnson dated April 30, he angrily replied.

That there are a number of palpable errors in this book, is true; which occurred by a neglect to furnish me with a revision proof‐sheet—the whole of the present edition being struck off, before I got to revise it—all of which has been ordered to be corrected in the plates, and will stand corrected in the next issue.

But the object of your remarks evidently has been to disparage me, and endeavor to injure the sale of the book, especially among the colored people—upon whose ignorance you presume and take advantage by your position—which but furnishes a striking proof of your Negro‐hate, in common with many of your less pretending fellows. There is not an intelligent colored man nor woman in the country—except the most miserable, servile and tool—but will indignantly repel this bare‐faced insult.

You also charge me with egotism, which is but a prejudicial sneer at a black man, for daring to do anything upon his own responsibility; and is in keeping with Mrs. Stowe's ridicule of Hayti, which you very adroitly avoid in your apology for the objectionable portion of her work, in reply to the manly note of that fearless advocate of his race, Robert Purvis. There is not one word, which to an unprejudiced mind, will be tortured into egotism.

As to your judgment upon my style and taste in composition, I utterly disregard; but under the circumstances, the attack was cowardly. I therefore despise your sneers and defy your influence.

M. R. Delany

Philadelphia, April 30, 1852

Johnson printed this letter verbatim of course, and followed it with lengthy comment of his own, none of it amelioratory. These former friends in a single cause now were enemies in all causes, one of the casualties of slavery never computed.

William Lloyd Garrison recognized this as the real loss of the entire dispute, not the merits or demerits of the book. In his gentle and sincere manner, he chided Delany in the Liberator.

CONDITION OF THE COLORED PEOPLE

Looking at the general merits of the recent work on this subject by Dr. Delany and overlooking what, in its pages seemed like a querulous or censorious spirit, we gave it a friendly notice in a recent number of our paper. Our estimable coadjutor, the editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman, not being so favorably impressed by a perusal of it, expressed himself accordingly. This has elicited a letter from Dr. Delany, written in bad taste and an irritated state of mind, which we are sorry to see from his pen. The Freeman and its editor have been too long in the antislavery field to be suspected of being inimical to anyone wearing a sable complexion. Dr. D. should remember the proverb, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend”; and if he has been wounded by the criticism of the Freeman let him not attribute it to an enemy, but endeavor to profit by the blow, as one not meant in the spirit of unkindness, but rather from a sense of duty and with an honest fidelity, though hard to bear.

It was evident that not even Garrison recognized that the squabble between Johnson and Delany was an inevitable detail in what had happened. Something new had been injected into the “antislavery” field. He, and Frederick Douglass too, misjudged the potency of the emigration consideration among the unhappy free blacks. They considered the book just another evidence of Delany's vaunting ambitions, which it was, though not exclusively so. Consideration of emigration proved to be a new fertilizer for the arid “antislavery field.”

Delany's final public word on the entire squabble was expressed in a letter to Frederick Douglass dated July 23, 1852. After it, he occupied himself with implementation of the proposals contained in the book itself.

I desire that our people have light and information upon the available means of bettering their condition; this they must and shall have. We never have, as heretofore, had any settled and established policy of our own—we have always adopted the policies that white men established for themselves, without considering their applicability … to us. No people can go on this way. We must have a position, independent of anything pertaining to white men and nations. I weary of our miserable condition, and am heartily sick of whining and sniveling at the feet of white men, begging for their refuse and often existing by mere sufferance.”

The next few months were a low ebb for Delany's self‐esteem and reliance on his own convictions. He returned to Pittsburgh once more to resume his medical practice and to care for his family. What other choice did he have? Once more he had failed his people. He was alone with his store of knowledge, the product of his studies, even his dreams for his people. The leaders and the spokesmen of the free Negroes scorned him for proposing any change at all in the pattern of the emancipation fight.

Then an amazing development took place. As Oliver Johnson wrote, as Frederick Douglass spoke, as William Lloyd Garrison deplored the straying by Delany from the true path, other free blacks, some of them of local prominence and others totally unknown and inarticulate, read the Delany book. They found a new spirit in it, a new evaluation of their black skins which they could examine. Was it actually a misfortune to be born black—except in America? Delany revealed so much—ancient and modern, and even in America—that men and women of black skin had accomplished. Was there a limit to their capacities? Were they actually a part of America colored black and living only on white sufferance, or were they part of the world majority colored black who ruled countries and fortunes?

Very soon, in Pittsburgh, Delany found that he was far from alone. His book had been a bugle call among his people—heard by the unheard and unknown—and there emerged during 1853 and 1854 new names, new voices, new attitudes, and new leaders among the free blacks.

In 1853 Frederick Douglass was still the actual and acknowledged spokesman for the black abolitionists of America. By the following year, though Douglass continued his beautiful speeches and stirring writing, he remained the Negro spokesman to the whites. The black abolitionists were now working with Martin R. Delany in a new and exciting program.

Other events, as well as Delany, contributed to the disruption of unity among the black abolitionists. Uncle Tom's Cabin was published, and millions of Americans wept their way to antislavery attitudes momentarily and prayed for poor Uncle Tom in their lily‐white churches. In New York they even left the anti‐abolitionist riots to attend dramatized productions of Uncle Tom. The famous book itself contributed absolutely nothing toward changing American actions toward the blacks—slave or free. It had been expected to.

That is why Delany and other blacks were so puzzled by the presidential elections of that year. Both the Democrats and the Whigs adopted almost identical platform planks concerning the Compromise of 1850—confirmation of its validity, including the Fugitive Slave Act, and opposition to any further antislavery agitation. Franklin Pierce was elected, of course, and this Democrat's inaugural address was largely a pledge to the South that the Fugitive Slave Act would be enforced.

The only political party fielding an antislavery, anti‐Fugitive Slave Act candidate was the Free Soil party, and John P. Hale, the New Hampshire Free Soil candidate, received more than 100,000 fewer votes than the antislavery candidate of four years before.

Meanwhile, in Washington the political bargains were being struck whereby slavery was assured and the Missouri Compromise of 1820 legislatively buried by the Kansas‐Nebraska Act of 1854. In Boston, Rev. Theodore Parker's brave words regarding the Anthony Burns fugitive slave prosecution did not in the least assist any of the whites and blacks being imprisoned and fined in other cities for assisting fugitive slaves.

In February 1852 Frederick Douglass visited Harriet Beecher Stowe in her home in Andover, Mass., and he came away with the earnest belief that she would one day produce a “plan for improving the condition of the free colored people” but that meanwhile Uncle Tom's Cabin would cause a moral conversion among Americans because it stripped the slaveholder of all defenses.

To Delany that was the height of wish expression. Only two months later, on April 18, 1852, he was given proof that the prospect of moral change in America had no basis in reality. The State of Pennsylvania had before its legislature a bill appropriating funds and authorizing the state not only to pay passage of free Negroes willing to colonize in Liberia but also to exile undesirable free Negroes to Africa. Delany was asked to go to Philadelphia and head a movement against this legislation. He was chairman of the meeting and also its envoy to Harrisburg to present the opposition to the bill before the legislature. This was the fact opposed to Douglass' fiction.

Early in 1853 Douglass was able to say: “We have grown up with this Republic and I see nothing in her character or find nothing in the character of the American people as yet which compels the belief that we must leave the United States.”

At about that same time Delany was busy in Pittsburgh fighting for the freedom of a colored boy named Alexander Hendrickure who had been kidnaped by a Nashville, Tenn., man from Kingston, Jamaica, B.W.I., and at the same time exposing a new and apparently fertile activity of the slave catchers.

In our minds there is no doubt but there is now being carried on by unprincipled Americans—Southerners it may be—a regular system of decoying, kidnapping and selling into hopeless bondage in the United States, the free subjects of Great Britain.

Delany, with John Peck, Rev. William Webb, and Thomas Burrows, all of Pittsburgh, prosecuted the kidnaper and brought this new slave trade to the attention of the British authorities. This case did not indicate a moral change among the American people either.

Perhaps Delany was closer to the problems of his people. Perhaps his experience with whites had been totally different from those of Frederick Douglass, and therefore he was incapable of the latter's belief and dependence upon them. This does not imply any criticism of Douglass. He was one of the most brilliant romanticists of his race, and his faith in the inevitable conquest of right over wrong was an inspiration to many. He clung to that faith all of his life and it was not shaken even by the storm that rose upon his marriage to a white woman late in life. He still maintained that one day the whites would accept even the dread “amalgamation.”

Delany began to lose his illusions concerning freedom by 1838, the year that Douglass escaped from slavery. By 1852 he was an iconoclast, and his search for a solution for his people had left the bounds of standard abolitionism, so long limited in its horizons by hope that America could achieve democracy. Nothing could be clearer than the following:

Every other than we, have at various periods of necessity, been a migratory people; and all when oppressed, shown a greater abhorrence of oppression, if not a greater love of liberty, than we. We cling to our oppressors as the objects of our love. It is true that our enslaved brethren are here, and we have been led to believe that it is necessary for us to remain, on that account. Is it true, that all should remain in degradation, because a part are degraded? We believe no such thing. We believe it to be the duty of the Free, to elevate themselves in the most speedy and effective manner possible; as the redemption of the bondsman depends entirely upon the elevation of the freeman; therefore, to elevate the free colored people of America, anywhere upon this continent, forbodes the speedy redemption of the slaves. We shall hope to hear no more of so fallacious a doctrine—the necessity of the free remaining in degradation for the sake of the oppressed. Let us apply, first, the lever to ourselves; and the force that elevates us to the position of manhood's consideration and honors, will cleft the manacles of every slave in the land.

In this statement by Delany and in Douglass' affirmation of faith in a future America shared alike by black and white are the seeds of the events following publication of Condition and Elevation.

Douglass immediately set about preparations for the last great convention of colored people in the United States after the pattern begun in 1830, which was held in Rochester, N.Y., in July 1853.

Delany immediately set about preparations for an entirely new type of gathering of free colored people in the United States, held in Cleveland, Ohio, in August 1854.

Delany did not attend Douglass' convention, and the latter refused to attend the former's. Both were being honest by refusing to participate in an effort they believed totally wrong. It was not petty rivalry that separated them but rather a forthright difference of conviction. Some of the delegates attended both conventions, and a good many Negro leaders cried for a plague on both houses. Douglass and Delany, however, held to the iron of their convictions.

Students of American history have seldom seen mention of the National Emigration Convention held in Cleveland on August 24, 25, and 26, 1854. All serious students have read the glorious speeches of the Rochester Colored Convention on July 6‐8, 1853.

Historians have neglected the Cleveland meetings because they constituted a violation of our national pride. It was frankly announced as a meeting by a minority of Americans in search of escape from oppression. Yet our national ego was even then being fattened on the humanity displayed by a free people in inviting minorities from Europe to flee oppression in their native lands. How could such a contradiction be justified?

Another reason for historical neglect is in the very essence of the Cleveland meetings and fully explained there by Delany himself. Few white Americans are even today willing to face a change of apartheid as a solution to the race problem.

The two meetings marked the most important division of thought, personnel, and action in the black history of America; those in Cleveland have been ignored. The Rochester meetings assumed the function of a wake over the prostrate body of the emancipation movement, a happy celebration that the black spirit still lived enough to fight its way while within the gates of purgatory. The Cleveland meetings gave birth to a new concept of black nationalism never before allowed expression in America. By the time Southerners overreached themselves by firing on Fort Sumter, the spirit of the Rochester meetings had disappeared, and the repercussions from the Cleveland meetings were being felt in Congress and by President Lincoln. Delany's lusty infant had achieved maturity in a few short years.

A comparison between the two meetings would not be fair but in one respect it would be valid to judge them, and that is in the one action each shared—their declaration of principles, intent, or call it sentiment. In the Rochester convention it was titled “Claims of Our Common Cause” and was written by a committee headed by Douglass. Others on this committee included two of Delany's close friends and colleagues, his own Pittsburgh protégé George B. Vashon and the poet James M. Whitfield.

The “common causes” are familiar enough, having been defined in every colored convention since the Negro awakening. In the 1854 Cleveland convention they were named “Declaration of Sentiments and Platform of this Convention.” While some statements are identical in content, the Rochester resolutions plead, beg, reason, pray. The Cleveland resolutions demand. Compare the expression in relation to the Fugitive Slave Act.

(Rochester 1853): We ask that the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, that legislative monster of modern times, by whose atrocious provisions the writ of “habeas corpus”, the “right to trial by jury” have been virtually abolished, shall be repealed.

(Cleveland 1854): That the Act of Congress of 1850, known as the Fugitive Bill, we declare to be a general law, tending to the virtual enslavement of every colored person in the United States; and consequently we abhor its existence, dispute its authority, refuse submission to its provisions, and hold it in a state of the most contemptuous abrogation.

Another resolution concerns political rights.

(Rochester 1853): We ask that (inasmuch as we are, in common with other American citizens, supporters of the State, subject to its laws, interested in its welfare, liable to be called upon to defend it in time of war, contributors to its wealth in time of peace) the complete and unrestricted right of suffrage which is essential to the dignity even of the white man, be extended to the Free Colored man also.

(Cleveland 1854): That, as men and equals, we demand every political right, privilege and position to which the whites are eligible in the United States, and we will either attain to these, or accept of nothing.

Such comparisons could be continued point by point, and all they would prove would be the servility expressed at the Rochester convention and the militancy of the Cleveland meetings. But the omissions are equally important. It is impossible to explain why Frederick Douglass' expressions of beliefs and complaints, why among all the “we asks” there is no mention of opposition to slavery. This was the address “to the people of the United States.” Surely there was no doubt of the delegates' condemnation of American slavery. Then was the omission of such expression a further evidence of a basic timidity? In Cleveland, the following year, Delany's statement of principles began:

We acknowledge the natural equality of the Human Race … That man is by nature free, and cannot be enslaved, except by injustice and oppression. … That whatever interferes with the natural rights of man, should meet from him with adequate resistance … That, under no circumstances, let the consequences be as they may, will we ever submit to enslavement, let the power that attempts it, emanate from whatever source it will.

Yet, even to this day historians consider the Rochester convention of 1853 the most successful in antebellum Negro history. That could be because its representation was the largest in the history of the Negro awakening. In attendance were 114 delegates from eight states. They set up a permanent organization consisting of a National Council which would prosecute a program of cooperative purchasing among blacks, an employment office for blacks, a publications committee which would record all statistical information about blacks, and the establishment of a manual labor school. All were laudable.

This program, too, had a familiar ring, and so did the aftermath of the Rochester convention. The first meeting of the National Council, set for January 1854, failed to attract a quorum. The second meeting, six months later, produced eleven delegates, a quorum by just one vote. The third and final meeting scheduled for Philadelphia in 1855 was a total failure. There were no more antebellum meetings of councils, committees, or colored conventions—except Delany's.

During the last half of America's darkest decade, the abolitionists of both colors were whipped. The Dred Scott decision of 1857, affirming juridically what existed in fact, the denial of the right of blacks to citizenship, was without real significance to the free blacks. Its only influence was to drive more Negro intellectuals to Delany's world views and to his emigration plans. A pertinent example was William Howard Day, the brilliant Negro journalist from Cleveland, who declared at the Ohio convention in 1851:

Coming up as I do, in the midst of three millions of men in chains and five hundred thousand only half free, I consider every instrument precious which guarantees to me liberty. I consider the Constitution the foundation of American liberties, and wrapping myself in the flag of the nation, I would plant myself upon that Constitution and using the weapons they have given me, I would appeal to the American people for the rights thus guaranteed.

Day was a vice‐president at Douglass' Rochester convention in 1853 and only a few years later it was he who, from the black abolitionist headquarters in Chatham, Canada West (Ontario), issued the orders as head of the organization resulting from the Cleveland convention of 1854. For Day, too, the Constitution of the United States had proved to be “just a scrap of paper.” Many others like him reached that same conclusion by 1854, and they joined Delany in the new black abolitionism.

Another prominent participant in the Rochester convention was the adventurous barber‐poet from Buffalo, James M. Whitfield. Immediately after the convention he published his first book of poems, America and Other Poems, which he dedicated to Delany with the following words: “To Martin R. Delany, M.D., This volume is inscribed as a small tribute of respect for his character, admiration for his talents, and love of his principles by the Author.”

Whitfield too was to receive orders from William Howard Day for, like the others who joined Delany, he had lost patience with the past. One of his poems begins with the weariness that brought on the new black nationalism.

How long, O gracious God! how long
          Shall power lord it over right?
The feeble, trampled by the strong,
          Remain in slavery's gloomy night?

The development of Delany's Cleveland emigration convention was marked by a year of dispute, with Delany versus the field. There were old friends against him, men with whom he had worked and would again—Dr. J. McCune Smith of New York, John Jones of Chicago, Robert Purvis of Philadelphia, John I. Gaines of Cincinnati (who had so praised Delany some years before), and many others including Charles Lenox Remond, and his first Pittsburgh friend, John B. Vashon.

In fact, along with his medical practice and many other activities, 1853 was one of Delany's busiest and stormiest years. Somehow he found the time before June 24 to prepare and deliver his treatise on Negro Freemasonry in the United States that became a classic as the first printed historical treatment on the subject in the country. It is a prized document today, and was delivered before his own St. Cyprian Lodge No. 13 by “M. R. Delany, K.M., D.D.G.H.P.” Delany assented to its publication, refusing to dodge the furious controversy then going on in Negro Freemasonry.

We have for years been fraternally outraged, simply for the want of a proper and judicious course being pursued on the part of our Masonic authorities, and the present loudly calls upon us for action in this matter. We are either Masons or not Masons, legitimate or illegitimate; if the affirmative, then we must be so acknowledged and accepted—if the negative, we should be rejected. We never will relinquish a claim to an everlasting inheritance but by the force of stern necessity; and there is not that Masonic power in existence, with the exception of the Grand Lodge in England, to which we will yield in a decision on this point. Our rights are equal to those of other American Masons, if not better than some; and it comes not with the best grace for them to deny us.

The substance of the study was to prove the founding of Freemasonry in the earliest dynasties of the Egyptian and Ethiopian civilizations and its purpose: “Masonry was originally intended for the better government of man—for the purpose of restraining him from a breach of the established ordinances.” It was entirely natural that Delany should take to Freemasonry so completely as to become immersed in the study of its ancient and modern history.

Moses, as before mentioned, of whom the highest encomium given, is said to have been learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, was not only the descendant of those who had been slaves, but of slave parents; and himself, at the time that he was so taught and instructed in this Wisdom, was a slave! Will it be denied that the man who appeared before the Pharaoh, and was able to perform mystically all that the wisest among the wise men of that mysteriously wise nation were capable of doing, was a Mason? Was not the man who became the Prime Minister and High Priest of Ceremonies among the wise men of Africa, a Mason? If so, will it be disputed that he was legitimately such? Are not we as Masons, and the world of mankind, to him, the Egyptian slave—may I not add, the fugitive slave—indebted for a transmission to us of the Masonic Records—the Holy Bible, the Word of God?

The pamphlet contains some of Delany's most exceptional writing, for it too is based on his early studies of the ancients, and is controversial and philosophical. He declares, for instance, “But to deny to black men the privilege of Masonry, is to deny to a child the lineage of its own parentage. From whence sprung Masonry but from Ethiopia, Egypt and Assyria—as settled and peopled by the children of Ham?”

On the other hand, he does not miss an opportunity of talking to his fellows of the need of the black man—self‐elevation.

To convince man of the importance of his own being, and to impress him with a proper sense of his duty to his Creator, were what was desired, and to effect this, would also impress him with a sense of his duty and obligations to society and the laws intended for government. For this purpose, was the beautiful fabric of Masonry established and illustrated in the structure of man's person.

Man, scientifically developed, is a moral, intellectual and physical being—composed of an osseous, muscular and vital structure; of solid, flexible and liquid parts. With an intellect—a mind, the constituent principles of which he is incapable of analyzing or comprehending which rises superior to its earthly tenement; with the velocity of lightning, soars to the summit of altitude, descends to the depths of profundity, and flies to the widespread expanse of eternal space. What can be more God‐like than this, to understand which is to give man a proper sense of his own importance. and consequently his duty to his fellows, by which alone, he fulfills the mighty mission for which he was sent on his temporary pilgrimage.

But the treatise on Freemasonry was a labor of love during that eventful year 1853. The call to duty—service to his people—was to consume his time and abundant energy from July 1853 through the next ten years. It took him to Canada, Africa, England, and throughout the United States. Eventually, it took him to the White House, too.

Delany began his bold and forthright campaign for the National Emigration Convention in July, even before the minutes of the Rochester convention were printed in Frederick Douglass' shop. It was not the ordinary call issued for colored conventions. It was an announcement that an emigration convention will take place. It placed limitations on those eligible to attend. They must agree beforehand to restrict discussion to emigration and to discussion of emigration within the western hemisphere, not “Asia, Africa or Europe.” It declared that the convention would be held “specifically by and for the friends of emigration and None Others—and no opposition to them will be entertained.”

The few blacks who were active in Liberian colonization were warned to stay away, “as we have no sympathy with the enemies of our race.” All wishing to attend the convention were first to be approved by Delany and Rev. William Webb as eligible to apply, but would be seated as delegates only by the duly elected credentials committee at the initial meeting.

There was no lofty adornment in Delany's call beyond the statement that

The time has now fully come, when we, as an oppressed people, should do something effectively, and use those means adequate to the attainment of the great and long desired end—to do something to meet the actual demands of the present and prospective necessities of the rising generation of our people in this country.

In other words, it was time for action of any kind, and he was proposing emigration as one course.

The furor of opposition began at once, and naturally it was led by Frederick Douglass, who protested the undemocratic nature of the proposed emigration convention. His editorial in Frederick Douglass' Paper added a prediction:

We have no sympathy for the call for this convention which we publish in another column. Whatever may be the motives for sending forth such a call (and we say nothing as to these) we deem it uncalled for, unwise, unfortunate and premature; and we venture to predict that this will be the judgment pronounced upon it by a majority of intelligent thinking colored men. Our enemies will see in this movement a cause for rejoicing; such as they could hardly have anticipated so soon, after the manly position assumed by the Colored National Convention held in this city (Rochester). They will discover in this movement a division of opinion amongst us upon a vital point, and will look upon this Cleveland Convention as opposed in spirit and purpose to the Rochester Convention. Looked at from any point the movement is to be deprecated.

Others joined in the protest against the Cleveland convention. There were anonymous as well as signed letters in all of the Negro press. Delany himself protested to the Canadian Provincial Freeman that Frederick Douglass was misleading the colored people by changing the “call” in his paper, “… being incorrect in many particulars, even parts of sentences and paragraphs omitted.” The only correct version, he wrote, was printed in William Howard Day's Cleveland weekly, The Aliened American.

In October 1853 the wealthy merchant of Chicago with whom Delany was to become a close friend, John Jones, introduced in the Illinois State Colored Convention the following resolution: “Resolved, That we are opposed to the call for a National Emigration Convention, as put forth by M. R. Delany and we discover in it a spirit of disunion, which, if encouraged, will prove fatal to our hopes and aspirations as a people in this country.”

Delany disputed this resolution in a long and intemperate letter which Frederick Douglass printed. Apparently, Delany had been stung by the charge of creating “disunion.” “I can submit to any other wrong—as I have been doing all my life—from colored men, except that of charging me with a design of injury to my race; and this I never shall submit to with indifference from any source, except one too contemptible to merit a notice.” The lengthy letter continues a complaint against the “one course laid out by the superiors among us” who allow no diversion from that course, and concludes, “But we have no quarrel with those who love to live among the whites better than the blacks …,” and other vitriolic implications.

The controversy continued almost to the opening day of the Cleveland convention and wandered from principles to personalities and back again. A reading of the Negro press of that period would indicate that an emigration convention of any import in attendance or performance was absolutely impossible.

Yet, on Tuesday, August 24, there gathered in the Congregational Church on Prospect Street in Cleveland well over one hundred men and women from ten states and Canada. The representation was almost that of the famous Rochester convention of 1853.

Today all the bickering and divisions resulting from Delany's Cleveland emigration convention of 1854 fade into insignificance when one realizes the new concept he brought to the blacks of America. He preceded by some 115 years the convictions, plans, ideas, hopes, and dreams which divide the black people today and have created the Black Panthers, SNCC, the Muslims, the non‐violent, and violent groupings, and the status quo blacks, derisively called “Uncle Toms” by the militants.

What Martin R. Delany initiated in Cleveland in 1854 requires examination. When the delegates gathered on the first day, their first official act was to elect a credentials committee composed of Rev. William Webb of Pittsburgh; James Theodore Holly, then living in New York; Rev. Augustus R. Green, pastor of the Bethel AME Church in Cincinnati; H. Ford Douglass of Louisiana (not related to Frederick Douglass); and William M. Lambert of Michigan.

The committee asked each aspiring delegate two questions and required a yes reply to each before the delegate was approved.

1. Are you in favor of Emigration?

2. Do you subscribe to the objects and sentiments contained in the Call for a National Emigration Convention, and will you do all in your power to carry out the same?

There were 106 delegates from ten states and Canada who qualified, which possibly indicates the extent to which some of the free blacks had “given up” on America. It also indicates the extent of Frederick Douglass' influence, for 145 people had signified their intention of attending despite all the dire warnings printed in Frederick Douglass' Paper. The additional representation unable to attend qualified within a month after the meetings. In fact, Douglass was flatly spurned by the convention.

The report of the publications committee recommended consideration of utilizing Frederick Douglass' Paper instead of issuing their own periodical, but this was vehemently rejected

… in consequence of the illiberal and supercilious position assumed by him toward the Convention, from the issue of the Call till its assembling, denouncing those concerned as being “unintelligent”, “unwise”, etc. and eventually refusing to publish anything in favor of the Movement, but promptly giving publicity to everything against it.

The convention ordered the chairman of the publications committee, none other than James M. Whitfield, to strike the recommendation from its report.

Another peculiarity of the Cleveland representation was the fact that among them were 29 fully accredited and voting women delegates, including Kate Delany. Black women had never before participated so fully in any meeting except their own organizations and never at a national convention of any kind. Delany's first attempt to obtain equal participation for women had also been in Cleveland, at the National Negro Convention of 1848 presided over by Frederick Douglass. The business committee of that convention first refused to take any action on Delany's resolution that women have the right to vote and hold office. When he offered the resolution on the floor, it was voted by the convention to postpone action, and finally there was a compromise allowing women status as “persons invited to attend.”

But in Delany's convention of 1854 women debated, voted, served on committees, and were elected to office. Mary E. Bibb of Canada West, whose famous husband had died three weeks before, was elected second vice‐president. Four other female delegates were elected to the permanent finance committee.

The three days and evenings of sessions were devoted to business, and there were few speeches. It was an activist convention and its purpose was exclusively to create a permanent organization that would operate daily. In fact, the preface to the minutes of the meetings, written by Delany, declared:

It is hoped and believed that there will be no necessity for more than one convention, held by the friends of this great movement, which will be to hear the reports of the Foreign Commissioners, who shall have returned from their tour; when the colored people of the whole United States, without restriction, will be summoned to hear and deliberate on the great and effective measures for the anxiously desired Restoration of our once fallen, but now gradually rising race.

With Delany at the helm as chairman of the convention's business committee, there was only one incident interrupting the remarkable work accomplished by the delegates. John Mercer Langston, the young Ohio lawyer who had graduated from Oberlin College in 1849, although not a delegate was permitted to speak. He delivered the only anti‐emigrationist speech of the three days, a sincere plea that the delegates persevere in fighting white America. In a way, it was a fortunate incident, for otherwise H. Ford Douglass might never have become as aroused as he was. He demanded the floor in reply to Langston's “bombastic outpouring,” and his speech characterized the spirit of the entire convention.

The time has come when the colored men must cease to build their castles of hope upon the ideal sands of a sickly sentimentality, the effect will only be to hush within us the “Still sad music of Humanity”. The mingled tones of sorrow and woe which come up on every breeze from the deep and damning hell of Negro slavery speaks a common language to each and every individual, no matter how humble he may be, reminding him that he too has a duty to perform in this world as well as the gifted and the great. A truth told by a patrician would be no less the truth when told by a plebeian. Because Mr. (Frederick) Douglass, Mr. (J. McCune) Smith or Mr. (J. Mercer) Langston tell me that the principles of emigration are destructive to the best interests of the colored people in this country, am I to act the part of a “young robin,” and swallow it down without ever looking into the merits of the principles involved? …

I can hate this Government without being disloyal, because it has stricken down my manhood, and treated me as a saleable commodity. I can join a foreign enemy and fight against it, without being a traitor, because it treats me as an Alien and a Stranger, and I am free to avow that should such a contingency arise I should not hesitate to take any advantage in order to procure indemnity for the future. …

When I remember that from Maine to Georgia, from the Atlantic waves to the Pacific shores, I am an alien and an outcast, unprotected by law, proscribed and persecuted by cruel prejudice, I am willing to forget the endearing name of home and country, and as an unwilling exile seek on other shores the freedom which has been denied me in the land of my birth.

After that, there was no further dissent expressed against the purpose of the convention.

Delany had prepared a blueprint for a permanent organization, and it was adopted with only minor changes. The convention:

1. Created a central governing body known as the National Board of Commissioners consisting of nine persons “to be chosen from and located at the place where the President is to reside,” plus two additional members from each state.

With Martin Delany elected the first head of the National Board of Commissioners, all of the executive group chosen were from Allegheny County as well. They were known as central commissioners and were allowed a continuity of activity never before possible among the antislavery societies which were geographically diffuse. Under them operated four permanent departments—a Committee on Domestic Relations, Financial Relations, Foreign Relations, and a special Foreign Secretary.

All ten states were initially represented by election from the convention. They were Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, Missouri, Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, and California.

2. Established as the organ of the National Board of Commissioners, a quarterly periodical named the Africo‐American Repository.

3. Planned and assigned responsibility for exploration of emigration sites. Delany was given Africa; James Theodore Holly, Haiti; and James M. Whitfield, Central America.

Within one month all of these departments were in operation. Within five years the emigrationists had a black‐financed organization sponsoring its periodical and three distinct parties of exploration. In April 1861, when Fort Sumter was fired upon, Martin Delany was awaiting a trained nucleus of the first colony to be created in Abeokuta, on the west coast of Africa.

Meanwhile, the free blacks of America were absorbing what H. Ford Douglass called a “Colored Nationality” as a result of one of the most effective contributions made to the convention by its founder, Martin Delany. His report to the delegates, “Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent,” is a classic document of American history and was reprinted many times in many places, including Congressional reports.

“Political Destiny” is a discourse on the American political economy and the black position in it and is of startling applicability today. Any random page displays a cold logic that opens to the eye deeply hidden secrets as incisively as a surgeon's scalpel. It is the first document of black nationalism not clouded by inexpressible emotion. A dispute with the following extract would be difficult.

It would be duplicity longer to disguise the fact, that the great issue, sooner or later, upon which must be disputed the world's destiny, will be a question of black and white; and every individual will be called upon for his identity with one or the other. The blacks and colored races are four‐sixths of all the population of the world; and these people are fast tending to a common cause with each other. … And it is notorious that the only progress made in territorial domain, in the last three centuries, by the whites, has been a usurpation and encroachment on the rights and native soil of some of the colored races.

Here Delany lists some of the African, Australian, Indonesian, and Asian colonies of white powers, a list much increased since 1854.

We regret the necessity of stating the fact, but duty compels us to the task—that for more than two thousand years, the determined aim of the whites has been to crush the colored races wherever found. With a determined will, they have sought and pursued them in every quarter of the globe. The Anglo‐Saxon has taken the lead in this work of universal subjugation. But the Anglo‐American stands preeminent for deeds of injustice and acts of oppression, unparalleled perhaps in the annals of modern history.

We admit the existence of great and good people in America, England, France, and the rest of Europe, who desire a unity of interests among the whole human family, of whatever origin or race.

But it is neither the moralist, Christian, nor philanthropist whom we now have to meet and combat, but the politician—the civil engineer and skillful economist, who direct and control the machinery which moves forward with mighty impulse, the nations and powers of the earth. We must, therefore, if possible, meet them on vantage ground, or, at least, with adequate means for the conflict.

Should we encounter an enemy with artillery, a prayer will not stay the cannon shot; neither will the kind words nor smiles of philanthropy shield his spear from piercing us through the heart. We must meet mankind, then, as they meet us—prepared for the worst, though we may hope for improvement and progress? Are we willing to admit that we are incapable of self‐government, establishing for ourselves such political privileges, and making such internal improvements as we delight to enjoy, after American white men have made them for themselves?

No! Neither is it true that the United States is the country best adapted to our improvement. But that country is the best in which our manhood—morally, mentally and physically—can be best developed in which we have an untrammeled right to the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty; and the West Indies, Central and South America, present now such advantages, superiorly preferable to all other countries.

In “Political Destiny” Delany continued his fears that Canada would not remain a refuge for his people for long and recommended a southern escape for a permanent home rather than to the North Star. In the course of that argument, he presented one of the most complete and detailed reports on the condition and welfare of blacks in Central and South America yet written.

This report alone, with the 31 defiant points of the convention's platform, constitute the philosophical bedrock on which black nationalism was begun and exists today. It also represents Martin R. Delany's greatest contribution to his people, for the convention itself and all of its consequences were the result of his organizational thinking and the product of his own frustrations in the white world.

He was proud of this accomplishment and spent his next seven years in the prosecution of its program. He drew to the work many of the new leaders of the free blacks, offering them not only a course of action but an individual satisfaction we know now as black pride.

29. That we shall ever cherish our identity of origin and race, as preferable, in our estimation, to any other people.

30. That the relative terms Negro, African, Black, Colored and Mulatto, when applied to us, shall ever be held with the same respect and pride; and synonymous with the terms Caucasian, White, Anglo‐Saxon and European, when applied to that class of people.

He offered his people a realization of their own values, not borrowed from the whites or asserted on a bent knee. He gave them an identity with the past and a power for the future not dependent on the calculated subordination under which they had been born in America.

Delany had but one apology for the National Emigration Convention of 1854 and that was for a fortnight's delay in delivery of the minutes of the meetings to the delegates. It was due to the cholera epidemic in Pittsburgh which, he said, “put nearly all business to a stand.” He did not explain that this epidemic in September 1854 brought him high public honors for his services as a doctor, and again the kind of recognition he sought. He had all of “Hayti” in Pittsburgh to care for during the epidemic, and his mortality record was the lowest of any group in the city. Again he had served his people well.

The events of the next two busy years were not to change Delany's convictions regarding Canada as only a temporary refuge for his people. But he was driven there by his own creation. He too emigrated in 1856.

The work of the National Board of Commissioners required total freedom from both the whites and the blacks who were opposed to emigration. It required the financial support as well as the active participation of well‐to‐do blacks scattered through Canada West. True independence of his organization was possible only in a free country. He achieved it in Canada.