In 1837 the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society recommended The Colored American to its members, and at the annual meeting of the society the following year slips of paper were circulated to obtain the names of those who wished to become subscribers. Local organizations took up collections for the weekly, among them the New York State Anti-Slavery Society and the Massachusetts Female Emancipation Society. "I must occasionally send you a few dollars toward sustaining your excellent paper," wrote Gerrit Smith on August 22, 1837, to Samuel Cornish, editor of The Colored American, enclosing $10, and adding, "The Lord bless you." The Northern Star and Freeman's Advocate, a small, short-lived sheet published in Albany, had 213 white subscribers in January 1843, making up at least half of the total.
Abolitionist newspapers carried addresses made by Negroes, a long speech often appearing in installments. The Liberator carried an address by Robert Bridges Forten, son of James, to the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia in November 1834. The Herald of Freedom gave three-quarters of a front page to an address by J. McCune Smith at the an- nual meeting of the national society in 1838. Then twenty-four, Smith held three degrees from the University of Glasgow, bachelor and master of arts and doctor of medicine. At the annual meeting the next year the speech given by Andrew Harris, an 1838 graduate of the University of Vermont, was carried in The Herald of Freedom. Similarly a year later The Anti-Slavery Standard printed in full the address given by Henry Highland Garnet, which "drew tears from almost every eye," although Garnet was still a student at Oneida Institute at Whiteboro, New York.
The speeches by Negroes at the conventions illustrate an- other service provided by the white abolitionists—that of providing a sounding board. Negro speakers could air the grievances of their black fellows; they could advise well-wishers who were seeking ways of helping them, and they could, like one speaker, call attention to "the numerous falsifications of history for the purpose of concealing the merits of his people." In similar vein the mulatto schoolteacher, C. V. Caples, gave his fellow reformers a terse reading of the ancient past: "What built up Athens? What extended Rome? The learning and the arts which came from colored men. Who built the Pyramids? Colored men. Who humbled Rome itself? Hannibal, a colored man."
Spurred by the convention speeches of black participants, the editors of the abolitionist press began to look afresh at the Negro, offering a counterpoise to the daily papers which seldom included him except in the crime columns. Abolitionist weeklies carried original poems by Negroes, some of them signed anonymously, "by a colored lady," or "by a colored girl ten years of age." Two abolitionist weeklies carried the fine piece, "Orators and Orations," an address by William G. Allen at Central College, McGrawville, New York, where he was professor of rhetoric and belles lettres.
Emerging Abolitionist Leaders
