FREDERICK DOUGLASS, ESQ: DEAR SIR: —I "throw in" this note, between the three letters which I promised you in regular succession.

  It is now certain, that the Rev. JOSIAH HENSON, of Dawn, Canada West, is the real Uncle Tom, the Christian hero, in Mrs. Stowe's far-famed book of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Mr. Henson is well known to both you and I, and what is said of him in Mrs. S.'s "Key," as far as we are acquainted with the man, and even the opinion we might form of him from our knowledge of his character, we know, or at least believe, to be true to the letter.

  Now, what I simply wish to suggest to you, is this: Since Mrs. Stowe and Messrs. Jewett & Co., Publishers, have realized so great an amount of money from the sale of a work founded upon this good old man, whose living testimony has to be brought to sustain this great book—and believing that the publishers have realized five dollars to the authoress' one—would it be expecting too much to suggest, that they—the publishers—present Father Henson—for by that name we all know him—with at least five thous.—no, I won't name any particular sum—but a portion of the profits? I do not know what you may think about it; but it strikes me that this would be but just and right.

  I have always thought that George and Eliza were Mr. Henry Bibb and his first wife, with the character of Mr. Lewis Hayden, his wife Harriet and little son, who also effected their escape from Kentucky, under the auspices of Delia Webster, and that martyr philanthropist, Calvin Fairbanks, now incarcerated in a Kentucky States' prison dungeon. I say the person of Bibb with the character of Hayden; because, in personal appearance of stature and color, as well as circumstances, Bibb answers precisely to George; while he stood quietly by, as he tells us in his own great narrative—and it is a great book—with a hoe in his hand, begging his master to desist, while he stripped his wife's clothes off (!!!) and lacerated her flesh, until the blood flowed in pools at her feet! To the contrary, had this been Hayden—who, by the way, is not like Bibb nearly white, but black—he would have buried the hoe deep in the master's skull, laying him lifeless at his feet.

  I am of the opinion, that Mrs. Stowe has draughted largely on all of the best fugitive slave narratives—at least on Douglass', Brown's, Bibb's, and perhaps Clark's, as well as the living Household of old Father Henson; but of this I am not competent to judge, not having as yet read "Uncle Tom's Cabin," my wife having told me the most I know about it. But these draughts on your narratives, clothed in Mrs. Stowe's own language, only makes her work the more valuable, as it is the more truthful.

  The "negro language," attributed to Uncle Tom by the authoress, makes the character more natural for a slave; but I would barely state, that Father Josiah Henson makes use of as good language, as any one in a thousand Americans.

  The probability is, that either to make the story the more effecting, or to conceal the facts of the old man's still being alive, Mrs. Stowe closed his earthly career in New Orleans; but a fact which the publishers may not know: Father Henson is still a slave by the laws of the United States—a fugitive slave in Canada. It may be but justice to him to say, that I have neither seen nor heard directly or indirectly from Father Henson since September, 1851—then, I was in Toronto, Canada.

  The person of Father Henson will increase the valuation of Mrs. Stowe's work very much in England, as he is well known, and highly respected there. His son, Josiah Henson, Jr., is still in England, having accompanied his father there in the winter of 1850.

  I may perhaps have made freer use of your and the other names herein mentioned, than what was altogether consonant with your feelings; but I didn't ask you—that's all. Yours for God and Humanity.

M. R. DELANY.

  PITTSBURGH, April 15th, 1853.