[Manuscript Letter from George Whipple to Almira Barnes, Regarding the Activities of Escaped Slave and Educator William P. Newman]

New York: March 2, 1847. Very good plus.. Autograph letter, signed, [2]pp., on blue paper. Original mailing folds, very light toning along fold lines. An important manuscript letter by professor and abolitionist George Whipple regarding the activities of escaped slave and educator William P. Newman. Whipple wrote the present letter just after he left his professorship at Oberlin College, and began serving as the Corresponding Secretary of the American Missionary Society (AMS), a position he would hold until his death in 1876. Whipple signs the present letter, "Geo. Whipple Cor. Sec." His letter focuses on the activities of African-American abolitionist and fugitive slave William P. Newman, a former student of Whipple's at Oberlin, who was then working as an educator among escaped African Americans in Canada. The letter is addressed to Almira Barnes, a fellow abolitionist who herself had close ties to Oberlin College, who had recently sent a donation for Newman to Whipple. The letter focuses not only on Newman's work as an educator but also on the conflict between Newman and Hiram Wilson about whether to devote resources to education or to anti-slavery campaigning. Whipple's substantial content on Newman, which covers the first page-and-a-half of the present letter, practically qualifies his correspondence as a short biography of the important escaped slave and educator.

The letter reads, in large part: "Ten dollars for Rev. Wm. P. Newman reached me this morning and I shall this day forward the money to him. Mr. Newman is a worthy man and truly deserving of aid. His future wants may be supplied, and will be if he enters the Anti Slavery field as a lecturer, as he is advised to do by some of the Oberlin professors. We may possibly give him a commission from our association, to collect funds, to be disposed of by this also for the support of coloured schools in Canada. Mr. Newman is as you perhaps know a coloured man, has been a slave and never has been legally emancipated, though his mistress for many years has exerted no control over him. As an Anti Slavery lecturer, if he would consent to speak of what he and his family have experienced of slavery, he would do good. He is however very sensitive and exceedingly loth to speak of his connection with slavery. It is in his heart to live and die laboring directly with his coloured brethren, and on this account he would prefer our agency. I think the Ex. Com. will give him a commission to collect funds as above referred to. The only objection that occurs to me is that this course will bring us into conflict (apparently so) with bro Wilson. The great mass of the coloured people in Canada do not approve of his (Wilsons) efforts at Dawn, as they think that it is swallowing up funds which may be or might be better appropriated to common schools; and on this account they have requested Mr. Newman to act for them. I believe Mr. Wilson has the best welfare of the coloured people at heart, but I must say that I think the funds he is expending might better be expended at present for the support of common schools, and their Missionary teachers. Mr. Newman has been laboring in Canada, inadequately supported and has thus run in debt. On this account I avail myself of your permission to direct this sum and shall forward it to him."

Whipple concludes with a paragraph on the challenges of funding so far during his tenure at AMS, namely "for the improvement of the Mission premises in Jamaica." William P. Newman (d. 1866) escaped from slavery in Virginia and was educated at Oberlin College, arriving there in 1839, followed by training as a Baptist minister in the northern United States before the Fugitive Slave Act led to his move to Canada. The conflict with Hiram Wilson referenced here has to do with the British-American Institute of Science and Industry at the Dawn Settlement in Upper Canada, which Wilson co-founded with Josiah Henson to educate and settle those who had escaped from slavery in the United States. The present letter is a unique and informative primary source, from one abolitionist to another, on an important African American figure who lived a substantial portion of his adult life as a fugitive slave.