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I feel as much and am willing to do as much for the slave in Africa as for the slave in the United States I am as ready to labor for the overthrow of despotism in the Eastern hemisphere as in the western. Liberty and humanity to me have no particular location no Color no Country.” Summary: Discussing his recent imprisonment and trial for his part in the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, thanking Coates for his donation, which he hopes to use for publishing his court speech in pamphlet form (Coates emphasizes a Southern-focused distribution), and analyzing the dedication that the two men have to ending slavery: but with a difference in geographic focus. Charles Henry Langston (1817-1892), Abolitionist and grandfather of poet Langston Hughes. Autograph Letter Signed, June 8, 1859, Oberlin, Ohio, to Benjamin Coates, a Philadelphia Quaker and fellow abolitionist. 4 pages. Inventory# 20765 $4,500
Transcript: Oberlin June 8th 1859.
Benj. Coates Esq.. Dear Sir: Your kind and approving letter with its contents came duly to hand. Please accept my thanks for the timely donation. I am happy to learn that you approved my course before the United States Court when about to receive my sentence for aiding to brake the bonds of oppression and letting a brother go free. I am also glad to know that you fully endorse the position I took in <p.2> in my remarks before the court. Many are desirous of having my speech revised and published in pamphlet form and as you are pleased to think, that a more extensive circulation of the speech would promote the cause of humanity, I have thought that with your permission I would use your generous donation in that way – I think that those of our party who are still in jail and who have not been tryed, have received sufficient means to pay their necessary expenses up to this time saying nothing about their loss of time and suffering in confinement. I should think and hope the most of them will [inserted: be] released from prison in a day or two and will <p.3> perhaps not be tryed before the November term of the Court. If I should publish the speech in pamphlet form I will be enabled by it to make some of my own expenses in these incurred in these trials, which have been by no means small. You speak of Circulating the speech at the south how shall that be done? Write soon and give me your views fully on the matter.
I have served out my twenty days in Cuyahoga County jail and is now at Liberty, but have not paid my fine which with the cost of the court amounts to about a thousand dollars. I shall return to Cleveland in a few days and resume my <p.4> duties as secretary and business agent of the Ohio State Anti-Slavery Society. I will not admit that my anti-slavery is less ardent less extensive or less comprehensive than your own. I feel as much and am willing to do as much for the slave in Africa as for the slave in the United States I am as ready to labor for the overthrow of despotism in the Eastern hemisphere as in the western. Liberty and humanity to me have no particular location no Color no Country. Your attention has in the Providence of God been called more particularly to Africa mine to the United States. I rejoice that you have labored so much for that benighted country. Our object is the same <continued on bottom of p.1> We will not disagree. I with all my heart congratulate you on your successful labors for Africa. Yours C. H. Langston Historical Background: Charles and his siblings were the children of Ralph Quarles, a wealthy white planter and slaveholder, and Lucy Langston, an emancipated slave of Indian and Black ancestry. Both parents died in 1834 after brief, unrelated illnesses, leaving the Langston children a sizable inheritance. Charles and his brother, John Mercer Langston (perhaps the first African American elected to public office in the United States), attended Oberlin College, the first college in the U.S. to accept Black students. Before he was 16, he was already teaching, and subsequently became a dentist. Involved in the rescue of an apprehended fugitive slave, John Price, in what became known as the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, Charles was jailed, and visited by John Brown on his way to Harpers Ferry (Brown’s raid took place in October of that year). Langston’s work in the abolitionist movement led him from Oberlin, a center for the Underground Railroad, to Kansas, where his activities included help for the contrabands, recruitment of Black soldiers for the Union, establishment of a food store, and Black Suffrage. Benjamin Coates, the recipient, a Quaker businessman, and officer of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, was one of the best-known white supporters of African colonization in nineteenth-century America. (see the recent book Back To Africa: Benjamin Coates And The Colonization Movement In America, 1848-1880). A further historical background, including the text of Langston’s speech before the court is available on request
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