GOULD.

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RECOMMENDATORY.

ROCHESTER, JULY 1, 1856.

A. STEWARD, ESQ.,

Dear Sir:--In reply to your letter upon the propriety of publishing your
life, I answer, that there is not only no objection to it, but it will be
timely, and is demanded by every consideration of humanity and justice.
Every tongue which speaks for Freedom, which has once been held by the
awful gag of Slavery, is trumpet-tongued--and he who pleads against this
monstrous oppression, if he can say, "here are the scars," can do much.

It is a great pleasure to me to run back to my boyhood, and stop at that
spot where I first met you. I recollect the story of your wrongs, and your
joy in the supposition that all were now ended in your freedom; of your
thirst for knowledge, as you gathered up from the rudimental books--not
then very plenty--a few snatches of the elements of the language; of
playing the school-master to you, in "setting copies" for your writing--
book; of guiding your mind and pen. I remember your commencement in
business, and the outrage and indignity offered you in Rochester, by white
competitors on no other ground than that of color.[1] I saw your bitter
tears, and recollect assuring you--what afterwards proved true--that
justice would overtake the offenders, and that you would live to see
these enemies bite the dust! I remember your unsullied character, and your
prosperity, and when your word or endorsement was equal to that of any
other citizen. I remember too, when yourself, and others of your kind,
sunk all the gatherings of years of toil, in an unsuccessful attempt to
establish an asylum for your enslaved and oppressed brethren--and, not to
enumerate, which I might do much farther, I remember when your "old
master," finding you had been successful, while he himself had lost in the
changes on fortune's wheel--came here and set up a claim to yourself and
your property--a claim which might have held both, had not a higher power
suddenly summoned him to a tribunal, where both master and slave shall one
day answer each for himself!

But to the book. Let its plain, unvarnished tale be sent out, and the
story of Slavery and its abominations, again be told by one who has felt
in his own person its scorpion lash, and the weight of its grinding heel.
I think it will do good service, and could not have been sent forth at a
more auspicious period. The downfall of the hateful system of Slavery is