ss, in
conversation with me, has expressed very favorable views. Hoping
you may be very successful, I remain in expectation of receiving
more detailed accounts of the plan, its prospects and progress,

Your friend and well-wisher,
ROBERT DOUGLASS

_661, N. Thirteenth St., Phil._

Up to this time, I had never before known or heard of Mr. Campbell, who
is a West India gentleman, native bred in Jamaica, but the
recommendation of Mr. Douglass, an old acquaintance and gentleman of
unsullied integrity, accompanied as it was by the following note from
Dr. Wilson, also an accomplished gentleman of equal integrity, a
physician, surgeon, and chemist, who, being selected by me as Surgeon
and Naturalist of the party, also recommended Mr. Campbell in a detached
note which has been mislaid, was sufficient at the time:

DR. DELANY:--PHILADELPHIA, June 7th, 1858

DEAR SIR--I received your note of May 25th, through the kindness of
R. Douglass, Jr., and can truly say, I am highly gratified to learn
of so laudable an enterprise and expedition; and would be happy and
proud to be numbered with the noble hearts and brilliant minds,
identified with it. Yet, whilst I acknowledge (and feel myself
flattered by) the honor conferred upon me in being selected for so
important and honorable position, I regret to inform you, that it
will be wholly out of my power to accept.

Very respectfully,
JAMES H. WILSON

_838, Lombard Street._

I have been the more induced to give the letters of Mr. Douglass and Dr.
Wilson in favor of Mr. Campbell, because some of my friends were
disposed to think that I "went out of the way to make choice of an
entire stranger, unknown to us, instead of old and tried acquaintances,"
as they were pleased to express it. I had but one object in view--the
Moral, Social, and Political Elevation of Ourselves, and the
Regeneration of Africa, for which I desired, as a _preference_, and
indeed the only _adequate_ and _essential_ means by which it is to be
accomplished, men of African descent, properly qualified and of pure and
fixed principles. These I endeavored to select by corresponding only
with such of my acquaintances.

At the Council which appointed me Commissioner to Africa, having
presented the names of Messrs. Douglass and Campbell, asking that they
also might be chosen; at a subsequent meeting the f