Martin Delany's writing skills first appeared and developed in writing for his own newspaper in Pittsburgh, "The Mystery," These reports and editorials caught the eye of many journalists, since "The Mystery" was, for several years in the 1840s, the only newspaper published by African Americans. Often cited as a source of columns and opinion in newspapers including other mainstream newspapers and in William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, "The Liberator," it was only a matter of time that Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany would meet and germinate together the idea of a new "black voice" newspaper, "The North Star."
James K. Polk
"Will President Polk accept one or more regiments of colored soldiers for the great Southern War? Surely, according to Southern doctrine, they are the only persons adapted to that climate? We should like to have an answer from some of the President's friends, we care not of what politics.
'The Mystery, 1845, on the annexation of Texas and war with Mexico, addresing the slave expansionist policy. (Ullman, p. 72)
"The wide field of usefulness which he beheld before him when he looked upon his brethren both nominally and bond, induced him with all his might to hasten the accomplishment of his qualification.
"To this end he endeavored to embrace within the scope of his studies all the sciences both ancient and modern, and to this great, uncommon exertion do we mainly lay the untimely decline of his body and eventful end of his existence.
MRD's eulogy, August 1847, reprinted privately afterwards. (Ullman, p. 75)
