such a vote be cast at the approaching presidential election? Will the Republican party (a party which is entitled to credit for the service it has rendered to the cause of freedom) put in nomination, in 1860, a man for whom we can, with some degree of consistency, cast our ballots? It has such men in its ranks—prominent men of the party—men who are available.
"I would have it noted, that we cannot vote for a man who subscribes to the doctrine that, in struggling for freedom in a presidential or any other election, he ignores the rights of the colored man.
"There is an increased as well as an increasing respect for us in community. This is not simply because we have friends (all praise to them) who speak out boldly and uncompromisingly for the right,—in fact, the most of their efforts have been directed towards relieving the country of the blight and of the injustice of slavery,—but it is because our character, as a class, is, better understood."
Mr. Downing is a native of New York, but spends his summers at Newport, where he has an excellent retreat for those seeking that fashionable watering-place, and where he stands high with the better class of the community.
ROBERT PURVIS.
Few private gentlemen are better known than Robert Purvis. Born in Charleston, S. C., a son of the late venerable William Purvis, Esq., educated in New England, and early associated with William Lloyd
