ALEXANDER CRUMMELL, D. D.
Among the many bright examples of the black man which we present, one of the foremost is Alexander Crummell. Blood unadulterated, a tall and manly figure, commanding in appearance, a full and musical voice, fluent in speech, a graduate of Cambridge University, England, a mind stored with the richness of English literature, competently acquainted with the classical authors of Greece and Rome, from the grave Thucydides to the rhapsodical Lycophron, gentlemanly in all his movements, language chaste and refined, Dr. Crummell may well be put forward as one of the best and most favorable representatives of his race. He is a clergyman of the Episcopal denomination, and deeply versed in theology. His sermons are always written, but he reads them as few persons can.
In 1848, Dr. Crummell visited England, and delivered a well-conceived address before the Anti-slavery Society in London, where his eloquence and splendid abilities were at once acknowledged and appreciated. The year before his departure for the Old World, he delivered an “Eulogy on the Life and Character of Thomas Clarkson,” which was a splendid, yet just tribute to the life-long labors of that great man.
Dr. Crummell is one of our ablest speakers. His style is polished, graceful, and even elegant, though never merely ornate or rhetorical. He has the happy faculty of using the expressions best suited to the occasion, and bringing in allusions which give a popular sympathy to the best cultivated style. He is, we think, rather too sensitive, and somewhat punctillious.
Dr. Crummell is a gentleman by nature, and could not be anything else, if he should try. Some ten years since, he wrote a very interesting work on Africa, to which country he emigrated in 1852.
We have had a number of our public men to represent us in Europe within the past twenty-five years; and none have done it more honorably or with better success to the character and cause of the black man, than Alexander Crummell. We met him there again and again, and followed in his track wherever he preached or spoke before public assemblies, and we know whereof we affirm. Devotedly attached to the interest of the colored man, and having the moral, social, and intellectual elevation of the natives of Africa at heart, we do not regret that he considers it his duty to labor in his fatherland. Warmly interested in the Republic, and so capable of filling the highest position that he can be called to, we shall not be surprised, some day, to hear that Alexander Crummell is president of Liberia.
Avery College has just done itself the honor of conferring the degree of Doctor of Divinity upon this able man; and sure we are that a title was never better bestowed than in the present instance.
Since writing the above sketch, we learn that Dr. Crummell has returned, and taken up his residence in the City of New York, where he is now pastor of a church.