For Frederick Douglass' Paper.

HOWARD CLARKSON BLISS.

“In his infancy, we dedicated our little boy to the cause of the Slave, and he has given early promise that our hopes concurring him shall not be disappointed.” Letter of C.P. Bliss, of Providence, Ill., to Frederick Douglass' Paper.

Tender mother, touched with the deep suffering of God's poor: stalwart father, the successful tiller of hundreds of broad acres, the sagacious planter of trees, where trees alone are needed to make earth a paradise; both plentifully endowed with this worlds' goods, the best of which is an improvable future, room for earnests toil, with toils' sweetest rewards then have a man-child born unto them!
There beckon on in this babe's rosy future, hundreds, perhaps thousands more of broad acres, the cattle upon a thousand rolling hillocks, and a horizon-scope of fields on which wave the golden corn; there also beckon on so dear to the American heart county Clerkships, Lieutenant Governorship, the Governorship, Congress the Senate, and crowing the Gorgeous Vision, the PRESDIENCY: all white parents in the land may dream this dram of their newborn white male children.
But, tender mother, touched with the deep sufferings of God's poor, and stalwart father away out in the golden fields of Illinois, “In his infancy dedicate their little boy to the cause of the slave,” in a way whose simplicity is worthy of the Primeval Time, and in words that have awakened a dawn of hope in at least one weary heart.
There is no need to conceal the fact that nearly all the strong men, of true Anti-Slavery faith, have entered or passed the age of the greatest intellectual energy. Goodell, and Garrison, Gerrit Smith, and the Tappans,

Par nobile fratrum,

and Jocelyn, and Purvis, and Remond, and Francis Jackson, and Macfarland, must, in the course of nature, soon cease form that strife to which they have nobly devoted the best years of their lives, and go to that place where

“SLAVERY IS NO MORE.”

Yet, with one or two noble exceptions, there are non of the young men of the land rising up to fill their places: young men, who, taking no thought of the morrow and gazing forever, on the huge evil, the monstrous sin of the land, fling themselves body and soul to the rescue of the poor slave. The young Anti-Slavery sentiment, or rather the Anti-Slavery sentiment of the young men is muddled with dirty considerations of policy, or darkened with the damnable sin of selfishness. Young women, in getting up fairs, bazaars, and occasionally (till matrimony overtakes them) speeches, are, rather then a young men, the hope of the future. Still, even these have not the one-ness of purpose which distinguished the pristine Anti-Slavery Movement. In shouting for Freedom to the back slave they have discovered the tinkling of silver gyves around their own fair wrists - the golden armlets are armlets still, and, naturally enough, they have a word to say for their own rights as well as against the wrongs of the down-trodden slave.

Now, why is this so? Is the Anti-Slavery movement merely an impulse that will die away with the departure of those who gave it? Is it not intrinsically worthy of handling down from sire to son? What effort has been made in this direction by Anti-Slavery fathers and mothers, and the other and the larger parents of Anti-Slavery stamp, who essay to teach children through School Books and “American First Class Books?” Some four years ago, I picked up a school-book, a Reader, by Joshua Leavitt: running over the Table of Contents, there appeared, “A Speech by George Thompson;” my soul shrank within me when I found “SPEECH ON THE CORN LAWS.” The noble and eloquent Savior of the Slave of the West Indies, the daring and devoted advocate of the down-trodden in the east, the faithful advocate of American Anti-Slavery, embalmed and handed down to the young the hope of the slave in a speech on the “CORN LAWS.”

I have before me at this moment the American First Class Book, by JOHN PIERPONT, dated 1836; in it I find, the eloquent burst of Webster on the Slave Trade, uttered at Plymouth Rock, and Cowper's Immortal lines on Slavery. But in the editions of this very book used by the same compiler PIERPONT, in the present year, even these anti-slavery pieces are LEFT OUT, EXPURGATED in order to win a Southern Market for the Book. “We are all born not al buried.” And I would tearfully pity the sorrows of the poor old man, among which may be biting poverty. Yet, I cannot overlook this deepest infamy for a Poet man: he might have won deathless renown, and yet not died in beggary, had he told the wicked Publishers, “I cannot do this thing,” and then called upon parents of the north to aid him in the work begun out in the prairies of Illinois, by “tender mother” who dedicated her boy in his infancy to the cause of the Slave.

A word of “application,” in reference to these views.

1st. How many of you, parents, “have dedicated your children in infancy to the cause of the slave?” This dedication, earnestly and prayerfully made, excels in beauty of holiness, all solemn ritual and golden device whereby the noblest Minster on the earth is set apart to worship excels these just as much as one human soul excels in value the universe of matter.
Have you done your duty to the slave until you make such dedication of your newborn? Have you done your duty by that child? Would you have him become Garrison or Frank Pierce? Gerrit Smith or Marcy? Which of the Douglasses? The black, or the white?
We know not indeed, in the history of our individual life when thought begins, whence impulse take origin: we do know that ventrem sequitur partus, is a profound physiological truth, and the bent of most children is established at their birth: the wild and absorbing whirlpool of American Politics, dates back to the impulses and hopes of parents a generation or more ago, when the whole people said, Politics is God: and women bare children to be Presidents and Governors. The chains were fastened on our Southern slaves a generation ago, when the People said, white men are Gods Negroes are not men: and women bare children and dedicated them to terrible LIE, if not in formal words, yet in unquestioning assent to prevailing sentiment.

2nd. But what a preposterous idea! Wait a whole twenty years before this dedication yields fruit? Softly, my fat friend. The nursing mother, filled with the gospel “Metanoia,” or change of soul, no longer hating, but rather loving God's poor black man, will give this sweet humanity with her God-provided nourishment to her nursing: nurses will be taught to eschew all stories about black bugaboos and incontinently abandon bugaboos in general. “You ugly back nidder,” will not soil lips formed for words of love and praise. Twenty years forsooth why little HOWARD CLARKSON BLISS is only five years old, yet he feels impelled by proper nurture to already begin the preaching of the Gospel of Abolition.
Children naturally love each other, and caste hate would not require to be untaught.
Then we come to the school going age: - Wendell Phillips, in one of those eloquent passages with which he is wont to adorn his orations, described “the droppings of the New England pulpit” as a mammoth power in chaining down Anti-Slavery sentiment. But what are the droppings of the New England pulpit, as “a power” for pro-slavery evil, compared with pro-slavery New England Primers, and Northern, Class Books, and Recitation Books? Has the South any ally in the North, which approaches, in power, the pro-slavery or non-anti-slavery teachings of children's school books?
A necessary sequence of a faithful dedication of our children to the cause of the slave, would be an issue from the Press of Anti-Slavery School Books. Beginning with an << Anti-Slavery Alphabet>> and ending with an Abolition Catechism of the Constitution of the United States.
Before closing I must say a word to

HOWARD CLARKSON BLISS.

My dear little boy: I have read your letter which you sent to Frederick Douglass' Paper. You will remember that letter as long as you live; you would do well to learn it by heart, and then, when you grow older, and may be when God spares you to become a big man, you will always remember the words, the good words in your letter. Whether you become rich or poor, whether you become a great man, or remain a plain common man, always love your black neighbor, and your white neighbor as yourself; never be afraid to say that God made little back boys just as good as he made you; and, above all, love God who is the Mater of us all, and love father and mother who have done so much to teach you to be a good boy.

I am your friend and colored brother,

CAPTAIN JACOB.
NEW YORK, No. 2 Congress St., Dec. 7, 1855.