The Frederick Douglass Papers: Series Three: Correspondence, Volume 3: 1866-1880 9780300274493

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations and Sigla
Introduction to Volume Three
Timeline of Douglass’s Life
Illustrations
1866
1867
1868
1869
1870
1871
1872
1873
1874
1875
1876
1877
1878
1879
1880
Index

Citation preview

THE FREDERICK DOUGLASS PAPERS Series Three: Correspondence

VOLUME 3: 1866–1880

Y8204-Douglass.indb i

5/17/23 2:34 PM

Frederick Douglass, 1870. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. [LC-DIG-ppmsca-69249].

Y8204-Douglass.indb ii

5/17/23 2:34 PM

THE FREDERICK DOUGLASS PAPERS Series Three: Correspondence Volume 3: 1866–1880

John R. McKivigan, Editor Associate Editor: Jeffery A. Duvall Assistant Editors: L. Diane Barnes, Claire Christoff, Hannah-Rose Murray, Alex Smith, and Brandon Spaulding Research Assistants: Emily Baker, Dakota Burks, Ethan Chitty, Norman Dann, Jacob Fulghum, Mark Furnish, Patrick Hanlon, James Hanna, Rebecca Pattillo, Lynette Taylor, Hannah Yi, and Lauren Zachary

Yale University Press

Y8204-Douglass.indb iii

New Haven and London

5/17/23 2:34 PM

Published with assistance from The National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Philip Hamilton McMillan of the Class of 1894, Yale College. Copyright © 2023 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Times Roman type by Newgen North America. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2022943352 ISBN 978-0-300-25792-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9

00-Y8204-FM.indd iv

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

5/31/23 12:00 PM

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

Mary F. Berry Richard J. M. Blackett David W. Blight Robert Hall Stanley Harrold Nancy A. Hewett Robert S. Levine John Stauffer

Y8204-Douglass.indb v

5/17/23 2:34 PM

This page intentionally left blank

Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations and Sigla Introduction to Volume Three Timeline of Douglass’s Life Illustrations

xv xvii xxi xxvii xxxv

1866 George T. Downing to Frederick Douglass, 18 January 1866 Frederick Douglass et al. to Andrew Johnson, 7 February 1866 Frederick Douglass to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 16 February 1866 Frederick Douglass to John T. Sargent, June 1866 Frederick Douglass to James D. Lynch, 13 August 1866 Henry O. Wagoner to Frederick Douglass, 27 August 1866 Frederick Douglass to John Van Voorhis, 30 August 1866 Frederick Douglass to Anna E. Dickinson, 10 September 1866 Frederick Douglass to Henry Wilson, 12 September 1866 Frederick Douglass to William Davis Tichnor and James Field, 22 October 1866 Frederick Douglass to John C. Underwood, 14 November 1866 Susan B. Anthony to Frederick Douglass, 15 December 1866 1867 Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Frederick Douglass, 8 January 1867 Frederick Douglass to Horatio C. Newcomb, 18 January 1867 Perry Downs to Frederick Douglass, 21 February 1867 Frederick Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 31 March 1867 Rosetta Douglass Sprague to Frederick Douglass, 11 April 1867 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 19 April 1867 Mary Browne Carpenter to Frederick Douglass, 22 April 1867 Frederick Douglass to Anna E. Dickinson, 21 May 1867 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 6 June 1867 Frederick Douglass to Gentlemen of Easton, Maryland, 23 June 1867 Frederick Douglass to James J. Spelman, 11 July 1867 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 18 July 1867

1 5 8 9 15 16 20 21 22 24 25 28 30 31 32 35 39 43 46 51 55 57 58 59

vii

Y8204-Douglass.indb vii

5/17/23 2:34 PM

viii

CONTENTS

William Slade to Frederick Douglass, 29 July 1867 Frederick Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 9 August 1867 Frederick Douglass to William Slade, 12 August 1867 William Slade to Frederick Douglass, 18 August 1867 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 21 August 1867 Frederick Douglass to Theodore Tilton, 2 September 1867 Frederick Douglass to Elizabeth Keckley, 18 October 1867 Frederick Douglass to Elizabeth Keckley, 10 November 1867 1868 Frederick Douglass to Amy Post, 26 January 1868 Rosetta Douglass Sprague to Frederick Douglass, 4 February 1868 Russell Lant Carpenter to Frederick Douglass, 5 March 1868 Nathan Sprague to Frederick Douglass, 10 March 1868 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 27 March 1868 James E. Downey and Charles W. Brouse to Frederick Douglass, 31 March 1868 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 28 April 1868 Frederick Douglass to Philip A. Bell, 28 April 1868 Frederick Douglass to Sylvester R. Koëhler, 1 May 1868 Frederick Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 24 August 1868 Frederick Douglass to Harriet Tubman, 29 August 1868 Frederick Douglass to Josephine S. W. Griffing, 27 September 1868 Julia Griffiths Crofts to Frederick Douglass, 26 November 1868 1869 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 2 January 1869 Clara Barton to Frederick Douglass, 26 January 1869 Rosetta Douglass Sprague to Frederick Douglass, 18 February 1869 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 26 February 1869 Rosetta Douglass Sprague to Frederick Douglass, 10 March 1869 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 21 March 1869 J. Sella Martin to Frederick Douglass, 29 March 1869 Frederick Douglass to J. Sella Martin, 5 April 1869 Frederick Douglass to A. H. Balsley, 14 April 1869 Frederick Douglass to Theodore Tilton, 17 April 1869 Theodore Tilton to Frederick Douglass, 20 April 1869

Y8204-Douglass.indb viii

61 61 64 66 66 68 70 72 74 75 79 83 84 87 88 89 93 96 97 98 100 104 105 107 110 112 114 116 118 121 125 126

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CONTENTS

Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, c. 22 April 1869 J. Sella Martin to Frederick Douglass, 24 April 1869 Frederick Douglass to Theodore Tilton, 24 April 1869 Frederick Douglass to George T. Downing, 26 April 1869 George T. Downing to Frederick Douglass, 28 April 1869 Frederick Douglass to Charles Sumner, 29 April 1869 Frederick Douglass to William Purcell, 29 April 1869 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, c. April 1869 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 25 May 1869 Frederick Douglass to Charles Wesley Slack, c. May 1869 Frederick Douglass to Henry Clay Naill, 8 July 1869 Frederick Douglass to John H. Hawes, July 1869 Frederick Douglass to Charles Carroll Fulton, 20 August 1869 J. Sella Martin to Frederick Douglass, 24 August 1869 William U. Saunders to Frederick Douglass, 12 October 1869 Frederick Douglass to Theodore Tilton, 2 December 1869 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 22 December 1869 1870 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 26 February 1870 Ottilie Assing to Frederick Douglass, 14 April 1870 Frederick Douglass to William Whipper, 9 June 1870 Frederick Douglass to Sylvester R. Koëhler, 14 June 1870 Frederick Douglass to John Weiss Forney, 21 June 1870 Frederick Douglass to Charles Sumner, 6 July 1870 Oliver Otis Howard to Frederick Douglass, 10 July 1870 Frederick Douglass to Oliver Otis Howard, 13 July 1870 Louis W. Stevenson to Frederick Douglass, 15 September 1870 Henry O. Wagoner to Frederick Douglass, 17 September 1870 Frederick Douglass to Aaron M. Powell, 7 October 1870 Frederick Douglass et al. to the American Woman Suffrage Association, November 1870 Frederick Douglass to Charles Sumner, 12 December 1870 1871 Frederick Douglass to Charles Sumner, 5 January 1871 Frederick Douglass to Hamilton Fish, 3 April 1871 Frederick Douglass to Theodore Tilton, 10 April 1871 Frederick Douglass to Ulysses S. Grant, 6 June 1871

Y8204-Douglass.indb ix

ix

127 129 132 134 135 136 137 138 139 141 142 143 144 146 147 149 150 153 157 160 162 163 167 169 171 174 176 178 180 183 184 187 188 189

5/17/23 2:35 PM

x

CONTENTS

Frederick Douglass to Samuel Gridley Howe, 21 June 1871 Cassius M. Clay to Frederick Douglass, 15 July 1871 Frederick Douglass to Cassius M. Clay, 26 July 1871 Cassius M. Clay to Frederick Douglass, 28 July 1871 Frederick Douglass to James Redpath, 29 July 1871 Gerrit Smith to Frederick Douglass, 26 August 1871 Frederick Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 2 September 1871 1872 Charles H. Howard to Frederick Douglass, 9 January 1872 Joseph Warner to Frederick Douglass, 9 January 1872 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 20 January 1872 Frederick Douglass to Frederick Douglass, Jr., 25 January 1872 Charles Sumner to Frederick Douglass, May 1872 Frederick Douglass to Amy Post, 18 July 1872 Frederick Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 15 August 1872 Frederick Douglass to Charles J. Langdon, 15 August 1872 Frederick Douglass to Rosetta Douglass Sprague, 4 November 1872 William G. Brown to Frederick Douglass, 19 December 1872 Frederick Douglass to Samuel D. Porter, 1872 Charles Sumner to Frederick Douglass, 1872

190 191 196 198 200 202 202 205 207 209 213 216 217 219 219 220 223 230 231

1873 Susan B. Anthony to Frederick Douglass, 13 January 1873 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 16 January 1873 Frederick Douglass to John Greenleaf Whittier, 15 March 1873 Frederick Douglass to Amy Post, 17 March 1873 Frederick Douglass to Samuel R. Scottron, 29 March 1873 Henry O. Wagoner to Frederick Douglass, 29 April 1873 Frederick Douglass to George Washington Griffiths, 3 May 1873 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 13 May 1873 Frederick Douglass to Samuel D. Porter, 18 June 1873 Frederick Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 26 September 1873 Gerrit Smith to Frederick Douglass, 30 September 1873 Henry O. Wagoner to Frederick Douglass, 10 December 1873

232 233 236 238 239 241 243 245 249 250 252 253

1874 Robert McCorkell to Frederick Douglass, 1 January 1874 Alice Louisa Sprague to Frederick Douglass, 22 January 1874

255 256

Y8204-Douglass.indb x

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CONTENTS

Henry O. Wagoner to Frederick Douglass, 28 February 1874 Henry O. Wagoner, Jr., to Frederick Douglass, 2 April 1874 Thomas. P. Saunders to Frederick Douglass, 3 April 1874 Ottilie Assing to Frederick Douglass, 1 May 1874 Frederick Douglass to Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, 23 May 1874 Frederick Douglass to Nathan Sprague, 30 May 1874 Harriet H. Greenough to Frederick Douglass, 3 June 1874 Russell Lant Carpenter to Frederick Douglass, 4 June 1874 Gerrit Smith to Frederick Douglass, 27 June 1874 Frederick Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 3 July 1874 Frederick Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 25 August 1874 Frederick Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 17 September 1874 Frederick Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 24 September 1874 Frederick Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 7 October 1874 Frederick Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 8 October 1874 Frederick Douglass to John J. Freeman, 24 October 1874 Frederick Douglass to John W. Hutchinson, 18 November 1874 Oliver Otis Howard to Frederick Douglass, 12 December 1874

xi

256 257 260 261 264 265 266 268 273 278 280 281 282 283 284 286 287 288

1875 Elizabeth Smith Miller to Frederick Douglass, 14 January 1875 Frederick Douglass to R. C. Hewett, George Follansbee, and Donn Piatt, 11 February 1875 Frederick Douglass to Oliver Otis Howard, 18 February 1875 Frederick Douglass to Daniel C. Forney, 4 March 1875 P. B. S. Pinchback to Frederick Douglass, 20 April 1875 Frederick Douglass to P. B. S. Pinchback, 25 April 1875 Frederick Douglass to Rosetta Douglass Sprague, 2 June 1875 Frederick Douglass to W. Scott Smith, 22 June 1875 Frederick Douglass to Rosetta Douglass Sprague, 30 June 1875 Theodore Bourne to Frederick Douglass, 9 July 1875 Frederick Douglass to P. B. S. Pinchback, 16 July 1875 Frederick Douglass to Rosetta Douglass Sprague, 2 August 1875

291 296 297 306 308 310 311 314 315 319 321

1876 Martha Waldo Greene to Frederick Douglass, 16 March 1876 Russell Lant Carpenter to Frederick Douglass, 10 June 1876 Ottilie Assing to Frederick Douglass, 3 July 1876 Frederick Douglass to Michael E. Strieby, 8 July 1876 Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 5 August 1876

322 324 327 329 331

Y8204-Douglass.indb xi

289

5/17/23 2:35 PM

xii

CONTENTS

Zachariah Chandler to Frederick Douglass, 11 August 1876 Frederick Douglass to Zachariah Chandler, 19 August 1876 William Breck to Frederick Douglass, 15 September 1876 Rosetta Douglass Sprague to Frederick Douglass, 17 September 1876 Martha Waldo Greene to Frederick Douglass, 7 December 1876 1877 Frederick Douglass to Amy Post, 15 January 1877 George T. Downing to Frederick Douglass, 28 February 1877 Frederick Douglass to John Sherman, 13 March 1877 Joseph J. Kirkbride to Frederick Douglass, c. 17 March 1877 Horace Morris to Frederick Douglass, 18 March 1877 George T. Downing to Frederick Douglass, 19 March 1877 Charles A. Hammond to Frederick Douglass, 20 March 1877 David A. Straker to Frederick Douglass, 22 March 1877 Frederick Douglass to Sarah Jane Clarke Lippincott (“Grace Greenwood”), 24 March 1877 Frederick Douglass to James Wormley, 25 March 1877 Archibald Kenyon to Frederick Douglass, 26 March 1877 Julia Griffiths Crofts to Frederick Douglass, 26 March 1877 Mary E. Stearns to Frederick Douglass, 26 March 1877 Frederick Douglass to Charles E. Devens, Jr., 29 March 1877 James H. Mayo to Frederick Douglass, 30 March 1877 Rutherford B. Hayes to Frederick Douglass, March 1877 “Citizen” to Frederick Douglass, 5 April 1877 Frederick Douglass to William Thomas, 9 April 1877 Deborah Webb to Frederick Douglass, 21 April 1877 Henry O. Wagoner, Jr., to Frederick Douglass, 12 May 1877 William Jay Murtagh to Frederick Douglass, 12 May 1877 Frederick Douglass to William Jay Murtagh, 12 May 1877 Frederick Douglass to Crosby Stuart Noyes, 12 May 1877 Frederick Douglass to Sarah Jane Clarke Lippincott (“Grace Greenwood”), 20 May 1877 Sarah Jane Clarke Lippincott (“Grace Greenwood”) to Frederick Douglass, 26 May 1877 Frederick Douglass et al. to Rutherford B. Hayes, May 1877 Charlotte L. Forten to Frederick Douglass, 21 June 1877 Louisa Bruff to Frederick Douglass, June 1877

Y8204-Douglass.indb xii

334 335 336 339 342 344 345 349 349 352 353 355 356 361 363 364 366 368 370 371 374 375 377 380 383 385 387 392 396 398 399 404 408

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CONTENTS

xiii

Ottilie Assing to Frederick Douglass, 12 July 1877 Ernst J. Lowenthal to Frederick Douglass, 20 December 1877 Frederick Douglass to Martha Waldo Greene, 21 December 1877

409 412 413

1878 John L. Sears to Frederick Douglass, 10 January 1878 Martha Waldo Greene to Frederick Douglass, 19 January 1878 John Cochrane to Frederick Douglass, 3 February 1878 John Cochrane to Frederick Douglass, 9 February 1878 John Cochrane to Frederick Douglass, 18 February 1878 John Brown, Jr., to Frederick Douglass, 26 February 1878 John Cochrane to Frederick Douglass, 7 March 1878 Henry O. Wagoner to Frederick Douglass, 23 March 1878 Elizabeth Thompson to Frederick Douglass, 23 April 1878 Frederick Douglass to Rosetta Douglass Sprague, 25 May 1878 Frederick Douglass to Photius Fisk, 15 July 1878 Ottilie Assing to Frederick Douglass, 21 August 1878 Ottilie Assing to Frederick Douglass, 6 September 1878 Ottilie Assing to Frederick Douglass, 18 November 1878 Ottilie Assing to Frederick Douglass, 2 December 1878 Ottilie Assing to Frederick Douglass, 10 December 1878 Ottilie Assing to Frederick Douglass, 18 December 1878

416 417 420 422 424 427 428 433 435 437 438 441 444 447 449 452 455

1879 Frederick Douglass to Richard J. Hinton, 20 February 1879 Ottilie Assing to Frederick Douglass, 19 March 1879 Frederick Douglass to Amy Post, 14 April 1879 Elizabeth Thompson to Frederick Douglass, 14 April 1879 Frederick Douglass to Lee Crandall, 24 May 1879 Frederick Douglass to Samuel D. Porter, 25 June 1879 Frederick Douglass to Samuel D. Porter, 30 June 1879 Frederick Douglass to William Alling, 8 July 1879 Frederick Douglass to Franklin B. Sanborn, 4 September 1879 Frederick Douglass to Franklin B. Sanborn, 9 September 1879 Lola Fuller to Frederick Douglass, 31 December 1879 Elizabeth Thompson to Frederick Douglass, c. 1879

457 458 461 463 464 468 470 472 473 474 474 476

1880 Frederick Douglass to Samuel Mulliken, 7 February 1880 Frederick Douglass to William E. Matthews, 14 February 1880

477 478

Y8204-Douglass.indb xiii

5/17/23 2:35 PM

xiv

CONTENTS

Julia M. Boardman to Frederick Douglass, 16 February 1880 Frederick Douglass to Augustus H. Garland, 19 February 1880 Peter H. Clark to Frederick Douglass, 22 March 1880 Frederick Douglass to Johnson M. Mundy, 23 March 1880 Elizabeth Thompson to Frederick Douglass, 11 June 1880 Frederick Douglass et al. to George F. Hoar, 22 June 1880 Martha Waldo Greene to Frederick Douglass, 3 July 1880 Charles B. Purvis to Frederick Douglass, 5 July 1880 Frederick Douglass to Charles Jervis Langdon, 9 August 1880 Francis E. Leupp to Frederick Douglass, 21 September 1880 Marshall Jewell to Frederick Douglass, 22 September 1880 Frederick Douglass to Samuel D. Porter, 4 October 1880 Frederick Douglass to Theodore Tilton, 5 October 1880 Burton F. Blackall to Frederick Douglass, 16 October 1880 Frederick Douglass to Harriet R. Lloyd, 18 October 1880 Frederick Douglass to Mary R. Clarke, 14 November 1880 Roscoe Conkling to Frederick Douglass, 23 December 1880 Calendar of Correspondence Not Printed

480 482 484 488 488 490 493 495 497 499 501 501 503 504 506 508 510 511

Index

575

Y8204-Douglass.indb xiv

5/17/23 2:35 PM

Acknowledgments

Each volume of the Douglass Papers is the product of cooperative effort over the course of many years by numerous individuals and institutions in addition to the project’s regular staff. Volume 3 of the correspondence of Frederick Douglass is no exception. We apologize if we fail in these brief acknowledgments to thank each of them as fully as they deserve. Work on the collection of the documents reproduced in this volume began at the project’s original institutional home, Yale University, under the direction of our first editor, John W. Blassingame. It continued at our second home, West Virginia University, and culminated at Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI), where the Douglass Papers project relocated in the summer of 1998. The libraries at all three institutions assisted us significantly. Documents for this volume were called to our attention by staff members at repositories and archives acknowledged in individual source notes. Selecting the correspondence to reproduce and edit likewise spanned a considerable number of years. Besides the individuals listed on our title pages, Peter P. Hinks and Ezra Greenspan merit acknowledgment for their participation in this task. Special assistance was supplied by Norman Dann, A. J. Asiéirithe, Kevin Mowrer, and Sydney Sparks in the document transcription and verification process. At IUPUI, the School of Liberal Arts, the Institute of American Thought, and the Departments of History and English deserve thanks for their institutional support. A special debt is owed to the following people at IUPUI for their assistance with the project: Kevin Cramer, Didier Gondola, Ray Haberski, Eric Hamilton, Karen Kovacik, Megan Lizarme, Rob Rebein, Martha Rujuwa, Thomas Upton, and, especially, Edith Millikan. The project team’s gratitude is also owed to a number of specific individuals and organizations. Darrell Meadows and Timothy Connelly from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, along with the staff of the National Endowment for the Humanities, supplied valuable advice to the Douglass Papers project over the years. Ann Gordon, director of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton–Susan B. Anthony Papers, assisted the Douglass Papers staff in locating documents. Richard G. Carlson, a xv

Y8204-Douglass.indb xv

5/17/23 2:35 PM

xvi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

former member of the Douglass Papers staff, helped formulate the editorial procedures for this series. Professor Jonathan R. Eller, senior textual editor at the Institute for American Thought at IUPUI, also helped significantly in finalizing textual-editing procedures. Finally, we would like to thank Adina Popescu Berk, our editor at Yale University Press; Ash Lago, her assistant; and Margaret Otzel, the press production editor, for their advice and encouragement.

Y8204-Douglass.indb xvi

5/17/23 2:35 PM

Abbreviations and Sigla

Abbreviations Whenever possible, these abbreviations follow the standard Library of Congress symbols for libraries and other repositories. Additional abbreviations of other repositories and publications follow the forms established by earlier series of the Douglass Papers, provided they appear three or more times in this volume; all abbreviations for publications appear in earlier series. ACAB ANB BDUSC CtY DAB DANB DHU-MS DLC DM DNA DNB EAAH

FD FDP IaU ICHi JNH JSH Lib.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography American National Biography Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–Present (online) Yale University, Sterling Memorial Library Dictionary of American Biography Dictionary of American Negro Biography a Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University Library of Congress Douglass’ Monthly United States, National Archives and Records Administration The Dictionary of National Biography Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass’ Paper University of Iowa Chicago Historical Society (now the Chicago History Museum) Journal of Negro History Journal of Southern History Liberator xvii

Y8204-Douglass.indb xvii

5/17/23 2:35 PM

xviii

ABBREVIATIONS AND SIGLA

MB MdAA MdTCH MeB MH-H MHiS NASS NAW NCAB NHB NHi NN NNC NNE NNPML NRU NS NSyU ODNB OFH PHC RH

Boston Public Library Hall of Records Commission, Annapolis, Md. Maryland Historical Society Bowdoin College Library Harvard University, Houghton Library Massachusetts Historical Society National Anti-Slavery Standard Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary National Cyclopaedia of American Biography Negro History Bulletin New-York Historical Society New York Public Library Columbia University New National Era J. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, N.Y. University of Rochester North Star Syracuse University Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online) Rutherford B. Hayes Library, Fremont, Ohio Haverford College Rochester History Sigla Used to Describe Letters

The following sigla are used to describe the handwriting, form, and signature of each letter published in this volume or entered into the volume’s comprehensive calendar of correspondence. The first two capital letters describe the written form of the document: AL: autograph letter (in author’s hand) HL: handwritten letter by someone other than the author PL: printed letter (typeset for a newspaper, pamphlet, journal, or book) TL: typed letter (typewritten on a machine) The lowercase letter, when pertinent, describes the state of the letter: d: draft (a letter composed, but not sent to the intended recipient) f: fragment (an incomplete letter, with either lost or destroyed components)

Y8204-Douglass.indb xviii

5/17/23 2:35 PM

ABBREVIATIONS AND SIGLA

xix

e: excerpt (a partially reprinted letter from either an autograph letter or a previously published source) The omission of incidental material in newspaper reprints, such as an insignificant postscript in a reprinted letter, does not render the reprinted letter an excerpt. The third capital letter describes the signature: S: signed by author Sr: signed with a representation of the author’s signature I: initialed by the author Ir: initialed with a representation of the author’s initials The absence of a third capital letter indicates no signature or representation. Common examples would thus read ALS (autograph letter signed by the author) or PLSr (printed letter, signed, with a representation).

Y8204-Douglass.indb xix

5/17/23 2:35 PM

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction to Volume Three John R. McKivigan and Jeffery A. Duvall In this collection, the third of five contemplated volumes of Frederick Douglass’s correspondence, the editors have followed the selection principles laid out in the editorial method published in volume 1. The current volume covers correspondence to and from Douglass in the years 1866 to 1880. The Douglass Papers staff located 817 letters for this time period and selected 242, or just under 30 percent, of them for publication. The remaining 575 letters are summarized in the volume’s calendar. Of the 817 letters, 727 were autograph letters, written in the author’s hand. These letters were recovered by the project from sixty-eight repositories in the United States and Great Britain. Five hundred seventy-five of the autograph letters, or approximately 80 percent of them, were found in the Library of Congress. For this volume, the project selected and reproduced 204 of these autograph letters, from twenty-six repositories. Of the remaining 90 letters, the closest known source to the original manuscript letter for 45 of them is a text printed in a newspaper or other publication from the era. Douglass’s letters were discovered in twenty-one newspapers of the period, but only 9 (or just under 20 percent) were first published in a newspaper edited by Douglass himself, the New National Era; in earlier volumes in this series, the percentage of letters that first appeared in a Douglass-edited publication was much higher. The project reproduced 29, or 64 percent, of these letters that have survived only in an earlier printed form. The remaining 45 letters survived in other contemporary publications, of which we have published 9, or 20 percent. Of the 242 letters selected for publication in this volume, 117 were written by Douglass and 125 were written to him. Although this ratio of letters to and from Douglass is almost even, 66 percent (544/817) of all surviving letters from this time period were written to him. Thus, the letters chosen for inclusion here represent not quite 43 percent (117/273) of those written by Douglass, compared to just under 23 percent (125/544) of those written to him. The imbalance in the volume between the percentage of letters written by Douglass and the percentage of those that were written to him is lower than in the earlier volumes in this series. This difference is due in large part to the fact that Douglass was a newspaper xxi

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxi

5/17/23 2:35 PM

xxii

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME THREE

editor for a much briefer span of time during these years than he was before the Civil War. As a result, many fewer letters written to Douglass were preserved solely as print texts, and the overall percentage of manuscript letters is higher than in earlier volumes. Further analysis of the 817 letters that have survived from this period indicate that Douglass’s most frequent correspondents were members of his family. One hundred and twenty-eight letters to or from family members have survived, accounting for almost 16 percent of the total. Indeed, letters to and from Douglass’s youngest surviving child, Charles R. Douglass, make up 11 percent of the entire collection. Not surprisingly, however, by the mid-1870s the flow of family letters rapidly declined after Douglass, his four children, and their families took up residence in Washington, D.C. Between 1866 and 1880 the number of women corresponding with Douglass appears to have risen. In fact, the letters from just six women (Rosine Amé-Droz, Martha Waldo Greene, Elizabeth Thompson, Ottilie Assing, Julia Griffiths Crofts, and Mary Browne Carpenter) account for almost 15 percent of the surviving letters, and letters to and from his daughter Rosetta Douglass Sprague make up another 4 percent. Likewise, it is worth noting that almost 5 percent of the surviving letters are to or from Douglass’s longtime benefactor and friend Gerrit Smith, and just under 3 percent are to or from members of the Post and Porter families, his closest friends in Rochester. Additionally, Douglass’s burgeoning business interests are reflected in the fact that 4 percent of the surviving letters from this period are to or from James Redpath, who handled his bookings on the lecture circuit for several years, and Burton F. Blackall, who managed his rental properties in Rochester. Douglass’s career changed dramatically with the end of the Civil War and the long-sought-after emancipation of American slaves; the subsequent transformation in his public activities is reflected in his surviving correspondence. While Douglass continued to correspond with leading names in antislavery and other reform movements on both sides of the Atlantic, political figures began to make up an ever-larger share of his correspondents. The letters from the immediate postwar years in this volume disclose Douglass’s enduring association with fellow veterans of the abolitionist campaign. These letters also document disagreements between veteran abolitionists about the role of their societies in the newly evolving campaign to guarantee freedmen and freedwomen political and civil rights

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxii

5/17/23 2:35 PM

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME THREE

xxiii

as well as economic and educational opportunities. His surviving correspondence shows that Douglass remained estranged from most followers of William Lloyd Garrison, from whose ranks he had been expelled in the early 1850s. Significant exceptions were the extended family of the Rochester radicals Amy and Isaac Post, as well as the Rhode Island abolitionist Martha Waldo Greene, whose letters demonstrate a deep friendship with Douglass. At the same time, Douglass sustained a cordial working relationship with many political abolitionists who had also broken with Garrison over antislavery tactics, like the aforementioned Gerrit Smith. As in the previous volume, numerous letters between Douglass and his former patron document an evolving friendship that was no longer tied to financial dependence. After the Civil War, Douglass continued corresponding with friends he had made in Great Britain during his two antislavery tours there in 1845–47 and 1860. He retained a very amicable relationship through mail with the British abolitionist Julia Griffiths Crofts, who had worked with him on several journalistic projects while residing in Rochester. Among other postbellum British correspondents, the married reformers Mary Browne and Russell Lant Carpenter emerged as important sources of advice and emotional reassurance for Douglass. Another continuity amply documented in Douglass’s correspondence is the intense lecturing schedule he maintained in the first decade after the Civil War. In this new era, Douglass alternated between speaking on behalf of reform causes and lecturing on a wide range of subjects before paying lyceum audiences. Douglass’s correspondence clearly attests to his status as one of the nation’s most sought-after and well-compensated lecturers, regardless of race. Nonetheless, his family and friends regularly wrote to him expressing worries about the dangers posed by the nation’s inadequate transportation system and his frequent encounters with racial discrimination. Douglass maintained such an exhausting pace because of his unflagging commitment to obtaining equal rights for African Americans. His correspondence provides important details about his prominent participation in conventions and public meetings across the nation, advocating for greater protections for the rights of southern freedpeople and northern African Americans. Douglass maintained regular correspondence with such veteran black leaders as George T. Downing and J. Sella Martin as well as with members of a rising younger generation, including the southerners

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxiii

5/17/23 2:35 PM

xxiv

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME THREE

Blanche K. Bruce and P. B. S. Pinchback. His letters also reveal close friendships with recent white recruits to the civil rights cause such as Theodore Tilton, Anna E. Dickinson, and Oliver Otis Howard. Other letters provide insight into Douglass’s attitudes toward causes like woman suffrage, temperance, and Spiritualism. Leaders of the first campaign, especially Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, regularly wrote Douglass to recruit his presence at their conventions. When an acrimonious division occurred in reformist ranks over ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, which enfranchised African American males but not women, Douglass’s correspondence reveals him to be among those who unsuccessfully attempted to restore cooperation among reformists. While personally a teetotaler, Douglass’s correspondence shows his repeated rejection of entreaties to enlist in the cause of prohibition. Similarly, while Douglass corresponded regularly with the era’s religious freethinkers and Spiritualists, he never embraced their causes. In 1870, Douglass relocated to Washington, D.C., to take over a financially struggling African American weekly newspaper that he subsequently renamed the New National Era. Surviving correspondence reveals that Douglass was an active editor as well as proprietor. For over two years he loyally supported the policies of Ulysses S. Grant’s Republican administration. In his private letters, Douglass defended his editorial opposition to the growing “Liberal Republican” faction, which included some former antislavery allies. In late 1872, Douglass turned over control of the New National Era to his sons Lewis and Frederick Jr., who eventually closed it. Douglass confided in letters to friends that his last journalistic venture had cost him thousands of dollars. A recurring theme in Douglass’s correspondence after the Civil War is his unswerving support for the Republican party. He regularly exchanged letters with leading Republican congressmen to promote legislation to advance his race. National and state party leaders, in turn, wrote Douglass to recruit him to stump in election campaigns across the country for Republican candidates. Letters also record Douglass’s painful break with Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner, a forthright advocate for African American rights, over the question of supporting Republican president Ulysses S. Grant for reelection in 1872. As was characteristic of Gilded Age politics, Douglass’s faithful service to his party was rewarded by a series of government appointments. Letters document his service as assistant secretary to a presidential commission sent to the Dominican Republic to investigate sentiment regarding

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxiv

5/17/23 2:35 PM

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME THREE

xxv

possible annexation by the United States. Upon his return home, Douglass accepted an appointment to serve in the upper council of the legislature of the District of Columbia. As Douglass gained influence with Republican leaders, he received numerous letters beseeching his assistance in obtaining patronage for others. In 1874, Douglass accepted an invitation to become president of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company. With branches in over thirty cities across the nation, the Freedmen’s Bank was the most prominent African American enterprise of the Reconstruction era. In his correspondence with friends, Douglass discloses that before joining the bank, he was unaware of the serious mismanagement that had brought the institution to the brink of insolvency. Despite his considerable political skills and a sizable investment of his own funds, Douglass was unable to save the institution from bankruptcy and closure. In 1876, Douglass supported the abortive effort to nominate Grant for a third term, but then campaigned vigorously for the Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes. After Hayes’s victory, African Americans lobbied the incoming administration for a cabinet or equally prominent appointment for Douglass. Hayes responded by selecting Douglass to become the U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia, making him the first African American to hold a federal post requiring Senate confirmation. Douglass’s correspondence contains dozens of letters of congratulations from Americans of all races and social classes. These letters also reveal that Douglass had to fend off efforts from many District whites to remove him from office as an “unqualified appointee.” As a resident of the nation’s capital, Douglass was well positioned to lobby the federal legislative and executive branches, and he played an active role in the city’s cultural and political life. His correspondence displays his respected stature among the District’s African American community; Douglass maintained cordial relations with the city’s African American ministers, educators, and federal bureaucrats. In particular, surviving letters show Douglass working diligently as a trustee to promote the interests of Howard University. Douglass’s correspondence with his four adult children is an interesting feature of this volume. All eventually followed him to Washington and established themselves there with varying degrees of economic success. Their letters recount the obstacles of racism that confronted ambitious African Americans in the decade and a half after emancipation. Even as his children’s families expanded, they often remained financially reliant

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxv

5/17/23 2:35 PM

xxvi

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME THREE

on the elder Douglass, and their correspondence with their father sheds important light on the era’s socioeconomic dynamics within an aspiring African American clan. Insight into Douglass’s other close relationships can be gleaned from his correspondence. For example, he continued his decades-long friendship with the African American entrepreneur Henry O. Wagoner. Another native Marylander, Wagoner ran successful businesses, first in Chicago and then in Denver. Their correspondence reveals that each man assisted the other’s sons in establishing careers and offered solace when the other endured a personal or professional loss. Douglass maintained a very different type of intimacy with Ottilie Assing, the German immigrant journalist who became his confidant, frequent travel companion, and, perhaps, lover. While only a portion of Assing’s letters to Douglass have survived, they reveal that few, if any, other people got to know the private Douglass as well. The third volume of the Correspondence Series exhibits Douglass at the peak of his political influence. It chronicles his struggle to persuade the nation to fulfill its promises to the former slaves and all African Americans in the tempestuous years of Reconstruction. Future volumes will document Douglass’s desperate battles to prevent a retrogression of the African American political and civil rights that he had long struggled to secure.

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxvi

5/17/23 2:35 PM

Timeline of Douglass’s Life

1866 January 31 January

1 February

7 February

mid-February– late September 4–6 September

20–21 November 18 December

Lectures on behalf of African American suffrage at numerous cities in New England and New York. Delivers a speech in New York, N.Y., at the Cooper Institute at the Thirteenth Amendment Ratification meeting. Attends the National Equal Suffrage Convention at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. Part of a black delegation that has a contentious interview with President Andrew Johnson at the Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C. Lectures on Reconstruction in tours in New York and Pennsylvania and in Illinois. Joins Theodore Tilton and Anna E. Dickinson in lobbying the Southern Loyalist Convention in Philadelphia to endorse African American suffrage. Addresses a meeting of the American Equal Rights Association in Albany, N.Y. Debuts his “Sources of Danger to the Republic” lecture at the Parker Fraternity Lecture in Boston, Mass. 1867

1 January 3 January– 2 April 7 March

Delivers address at the Emancipation Proclamation celebration at Tremont Temple in Boston, Mass. Undertakes a speaking tour across Pennsylvania and the Midwest, delivering his “Sources of Danger to the Republic,” attacking Andrew Johnson. Congress authorizes the creation of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company (the Freedmen’s

xxvii

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxvii

5/17/23 2:35 PM

xxviii

4 July July–August July July

late November– late December

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

Savings Bank) to meet the financial needs of the emancipated slaves. Delivers a Fourth of July oration at the courthouse in Portsmouth, Va. Rejects an informal solicitation to accept an appointment to head the Freedmen’s Bureau. Reunites with his sibling Perry Downs. Deposed in Gerrit Smith’s suit against the Chicago Tribune concerning the Harpers Ferry raid plot. Approached by Elizabeth Keckley to assist in raising money for Mary Todd Lincoln. Embarks on a speaking tour through Pennsylvania and New England, frequently delivering his “SelfMade Men” lecture. 1868

1 January– 7 April April–May May

3–5 June 9 July 26 August August 22 September

19 November

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxviii

Continues his extended speaking tour through New Jersey and the Midwest. Congress deliberates over the unsuccessful impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. Delivers the speech “Equal Rights for All” in New York, N.Y., at the Cooper Institute for a meeting of the American Equal Rights Association. Speaks at the Friends of Human Progress anniversary meeting held in Junius, N.Y. Fourteenth Amendment ratified. Addresses the National Convention of Spiritualists held in Corinthian Hall in Rochester, N.Y. Publicly endorses the Republican ticket of Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax. Speaks in Springfield, Ill., at the tomb of Abraham Lincoln for the sixth anniversary of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Addresses convention of the New England Woman Suffrage Association in Boston, Mass.

5/17/23 2:35 PM

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

xxix

1869 5 January– 2 April 13–14 January February–April

March–May

11 May

12–13 May 3 August

20 August 5 November– 31 December

Returns to the lecture circuit in mid-Atlantic and midwestern states, often delivering a new lyceum lecture, “William the Silent.” Presides at the National Convention of Colored Men in Washington, D.C. Joins African Americans from Washington, D.C., in planning to create a newspaper, but declines to become the editor. African American and abolitionist friends unsuccessfully lobby the Grant administration for a diplomatic post for Douglass. Delivers the speech “Let the Negro Alone” at the American Anti-Slavery Society anniversary meeting in New York, N.Y. Participates in the American Equal Rights Association anniversary meeting New York, N.Y. Delivers a speech critical of race relations in the United States, “We Are Not Yet Quite Free,” at the West Indian Emancipation Day celebration in Medina, N.Y. Addresses the Colored State Labor Union meeting in Baltimore, Md. Tours Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and New England, usually delivering the lecture “Our Composite Nationality.” 1870

5 January– 31 March 3 February 9 April

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxix

Continues lecture tour in the Northeast, Midwest, Kentucky, and Washington, D.C. Fifteenth Amendment ratified. Speaks at the American Anti-Slavery Society’s Fifteenth Amendment Ratification celebration in New York, N.Y., and stays for the commemorative social reunion.

5/17/23 2:35 PM

xxx

26 April

31 May Summer

November

December

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

Speaks at Horticultural Hall in Philadelphia, criticizing the cautious role of many African American clergymen in the abolitionist movement, igniting a public controversy that persisted through the summer. The First Force Act is enacted to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment. Relocates to the District of Columbia and begins editing the New National Era to advance black civil rights as well as other reforms. Joins Theodore Tilton and others in a failed attempt to reunite the feuding factions of the woman suffrage movement. Becomes the sole owner and publisher of the New National Era. 1871

9–13 January 12 January 17 January

26 March

20 April

30 May May–June 18 October

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxx

Speaks at the National Labor Union’s annual convention in Washington, D.C. Granted an interview with President Ulysses S. Grant at the Executive Mansion. Appointed assistant secretary to the Santo Domingo Commission; left New York City for the Dominican Republic. Members of the Santo Domingo Commission, including Douglass, arrive back in Washington, D.C. Controversy ensues when Grant does not invite Douglass to a dinner for the commission. Congress passes the Third Force Act, known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, which authorizes President Ulysses S. Grant to declare martial law and use military force to suppress the Klan. Speaks at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Decoration Day services in Arlington, Va. Serves as a member of the Legislative Council of the District of Columbia. Addresses the National Labor Union’s annual meeting in Columbia, S.C.

5/17/23 2:35 PM

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

xxxi

1872 19 January– 30 January 13 April

2 June 6 June

24–27 July 19 August– 2 October 18 November 28 November

Tours the Midwest, lecturing on Santo Domingo. Addresses the National Convention of the Colored People of the United States in New Orleans, La., and endorses Grant’s reelection. Home on South Avenue in Rochester, N.Y., burns down, most likely from arson. Nominated by Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president, to run as vice president on the Equal Rights party presidential ticket. Douglass neither acknowledges nor accepts the nomination. Stumps for Grant’s reelection in Virginia and North Carolina. Campaigns on behalf of the Republican party in Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. Speaks at a benefit for Osborne P. Anderson in Washington, D.C. Turns over editorship of the New National Era to his sons. 1873

13 January– 7 February 27 February 13 April 21–22 April

18 September

December

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxxi

Tours the Midwest, usually delivering the lecture “Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict.” Addresses the Howard University law department’s annual commencement, Washington, D.C. Massacre of African Americans in Colfax, La. Speaks in Louisville, Ky., for the anniversary celebration of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. Delivers address at the Tennessee Colored Agricultural and Mechanical Association’s annual fair in Nashville. Tours New England, lecturing on John Brown and other topics.

5/17/23 2:35 PM

xxxii

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

1874 26 January 11 March mid-March

late March 29 June

July 22 October 28 December

Lectures on John Brown at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, N.Y. Charles Sumner dies. Major General Oliver Otis Howard faces courtmartial, having been charged with misappropriation of government funds. Appointed president of the Freedmen’s Savings Bank and campaigns to keep public trust in the institution. Believing that the Freedmen’s Savings Bank is no longer solvent, Douglass and the bank’s board of trustees vote to close it. The Freedmen’s Savings Bank closes. Final edition of the New National Era published. Gerrit Smith dies. 1875

24 February– 8 March February 1–31 December

Makes campaign tour for the Republican party in New Hampshire. Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, which had long been proposed by the deceased Charles Sumner. Conducts a lecture tour of New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and the Midwest. 1876

2–29 February 14 April

May 14 June Summer

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxxii

Lectures across the Midwest. Delivers the speech “The Freedmen’s Monument to Abraham Lincoln” at the dedication ceremony of the monument, along with John Mercer Langston, in Washington, D.C. Tours the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in the company of Ottilie Assing. Addresses the National Republican Convention, held in the Exposition Building in Cincinnati, Ohio. Engages in a public controversy with white clergymen over the leadership of Howard University.

5/17/23 2:35 PM

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

25 September– 9 October

xxxiii

Campaigns for the Republican party in Indiana. 1877

5 January– 1 March March

8 May

17 June

Conducts a lecture tour of Pennsylvania, New York, and the Midwest. Appointed U.S. marshal of the District of Columbia by President Rutherford B. Hayes. Douglass becomes the first African American to receive a federal appointment requiring Senate approval. Delivers the address “Our National Capital” in Baltimore, provoking demands from Washington whites for his removal as marshal. Visits his former master, Thomas Auld, on his deathbed; delivers a speech in St. Michaels, Md. 1878

30 May Summer

23–25 November

Speaks at the Decoration Day celebration in New York, N.Y. Purchases a fifteen-acre estate that he and Anna name Cedar Hill, in the Anacostia neighborhood of the District of Columbia. Speaks in Easton, Md. 1879

January–March

21 April

24 May 16 June

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxxiii

The “Exoduster” movement begins as thousands of African Americans from the former Confederate states flee into Kansas for safety and economic opportunity. Delivers the address “Recollections of the AntiSlavery Conflict” in Louisville, Ky., for the anniversary celebration of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. William Lloyd Garrison dies. Statue of Douglass by Johnson M. Mundy unveiled on the University of Rochester campus.

5/17/23 2:35 PM

xxxiv

12 September

TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

His essay “The Negro Exodus from the Gulf States” is read at a meeting of the American Social Science Association in Saratoga, N.Y. 1880

14–19 February 3 August 1 October October

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxxiv

Testifies before the Senate Select Committee to Investigate the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company. Speaks at the West Indian Emancipation Day celebration in Elmira, N.Y. Addresses the Annual Exposition of the Colored People of North Carolina in Raleigh, N.C. Stumps for the Republican party in New York.

5/17/23 2:35 PM

Theodore Tilton, c. 1860. Photograph by Napoleon Savony. Albumen silver print. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Charles R. Douglass, n.d. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. [LC-USZ62-51530].

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxxv

5/17/23 2:35 PM

Elizabeth Keckley, n.d. Courtesy of the Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana. Charles Sumner, n.d. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. [LC-USZ62-66840].

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxxvi

5/17/23 2:35 PM

Cassius Marcellus Clay, 1860–1870. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. [LC-USZ62-103163]. Freedman’s Savings Bank, Pennsylvania Avenue and Madison Place, N.W., Washington, D.C., ca. 1890. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. [LC-DIG-ds-00966].

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxxvii

5/17/23 2:35 PM

Oliver Otis Howard, c. 1860–1870. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. [LC-DIG-cwpb-0698] Sarah Jane Lippincott Clark (“Grace Greenwood”), c. 1860–1870. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. [LC-USZ62-125488].

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxxviii

5/17/23 2:35 PM

Elizabeth Rowell Thompson, n.d. Courtesy of the Longmont Museum, Longmont, Colorado. Gerrit Smith, n.d. Photograph by George Gardner Rockwood. Courtesy of the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Ind. [LN-1253].

Y8204-Douglass.indb xxxix

5/17/23 2:35 PM

This page intentionally left blank

THE FREDERICK DOUGLASS PAPERS Series Three: Correspondence

VOLUME 3: 1866–1880

Y8204-Douglass.indb xli

5/17/23 2:35 PM

This page intentionally left blank

GEORGE T. DOWNING1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, [D.C.]2 18 Jan[uary] 1866.

Dear Douglass, We are at work and doing service, you will learn by the accompanying slip from the Chronical of this morning, who is here:3 We want you very much.4 Your presence [illegible] [illegible] worth many lectures, Gen Howard5 of the Freedmans Bureau6 sent word to us last evening that he would like to have an interview with the delegation, and appointed this morning at 10 o,c; for certain reasons which I cannot at present stop to explain I think it best to postpone the same,7 and shall work to that end this morning (it is now 6 o,c A M, writing by candle light) I will say that I want you and Whipper8 present, we will get the Representation hall9 for you and Martin10 to speak in, I have spoken to Colfax11 and others about the Same. Let me urge you to be present as soon as possible say when you will certainly be in Washington. Yours & c GEORGE T. DOWNING ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 180–81, FD Papers, DLC. 1. George T. Downing (1819–1903) was the eldest son of Thomas Downing, a well-known black restaurateur in New York City. After receiving an education at the city’s segregated Mulberry Street School and at Hamilton College, he worked in his father’s business until 1855, when he opened a hotel in Newport, Rhode Island. Downing was active in the Underground Railroad and led a successful effort to integrate Rhode Island public schools. He supported Douglass in the public controversy with Henry H. Garnet over the merits of the latter’s African Civilization Society. In 1859, Downing presided over a convention of New England blacks that gave a qualified endorsement to the Republican party. During the Civil War, Downing moved to Washington, D.C., and became manager of the House of Representatives’ restaurant. In February 1866, he was the chairman of a committee of blacks, including Douglass, who held an interview with President Andrew Johnson during which the chief executive urged his audience to abandon their advocacy of black suffrage. Lib., 20 July 1855; New York Weekly Anglo-African, 19 September 1859, 21 April 1860; NASS, 24 February 1866; Cleveland Gazette, 12 September 1885; New York Times, 22 July 1903; William J. Simmons, Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive, and Rising (1887; Chicago 1970), 1003–06; James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton, N.J., 1964), 343–46; Guichard Parris, “George T. Downing,” NHB, 5:42 (November 1941); Rhoda G. Freeman, “The Free Negro in New York City in the Era before the Civil War” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1966), 46, 49–56; Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, eds., Dictionary of American Negro Biography (New York, 1982), 187–88. 2. Downing added that his address was “Davis Hotel, 212 1st St.” Downing is probably referring to the old Davis Hotel in Washington, D.C. John Davis opened his hotel in the early 1800s on the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue between 6th and 7th streets northwest. In 1815 the hotel was briefly known as McKeown’s; in 1820 the manager, Jesse Brown, expanded the building, renaming it the Indian Queen Hotel. Occasionally it was known as Brown’s Hotel. In 1851 the hotel was again enlarged and was renamed Brown’s Marble Hotel. In 1865 the hotel was sold by the Brown family and 1

Y8204-Douglass.indb 1

5/17/23 2:35 PM

2

GEORGE T. DOWNING TO DOUGLASS, 18 JANUARY 1866

given the name Metropolitan Hotel. Judah Delano, The Washington Directory Showing the Name, Occupation, and Residence, of Each Head of Family and Person in Business: The Names of the Members of Congress, and Where They Board: Together with Other Useful Information (Washington, D.C., 1822), 20; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 2 August, 7 November 1820; Henry Clay, The Papers of Henry Clay, ed. James F. Hopkins, 10 vols. (Lexington, Ky., 1963) 3:69n, 531n; U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, The Pennsylvania Avenue District in United States History: A Report on the National Significance of Pennsylvania Avenue and Historically Related Environs, Washington, D.C. (Washington, D.C., 1965), 28; Thomas J. Carrier, Washington, D.C.: A Historical Walking Tour (Chicago, 1999), 47. 3. Downing perhaps sent Douglass a “card” he had gotten published in the Washington Daily Chronicle on 17 January 1866. The seven signatories, including Downing and Lewis H. Douglass, called on Congress to enfranchise the African American citizens of the District of Columbia. They declared: “[T]hat in seeking this right we ask for no curtailment of the rights of others, but an extension of a right which every American citizen should enjoy for his protection and due respect.” 4. Downing is referring to the planned National Convention of Colored Men, which was ultimately held at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., at the end of January 1866. Douglass attended the convention and delivered a speech on 1 February. Delegates from thirteen states and the District of Columbia gathered to discuss the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, colonization, and enfranchisement. At its conclusion, the convention sent a group of delegates—including Douglass, his son Lewis, and Downing—to meet with President Johnson on 7 February to lobby for the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and implore his aid in the fight for black equality. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxi; Montpelier (Vt.) Watchman and State Journal, 2 February 1866; Savannah (Ga.) Daily Herald, 8 February 1866; Martin R. Delany, Martin R. Delany: A Documentary Reader, ed. Robert S. Levine (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2003), 403; Douglas R. Egerton, The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America’s Most Progressive Era (New York, 2014), 192. 5. Oliver Otis Howard (1830–1909), soldier, teacher, and government official, was born in Leeds, Maine. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1850 and then entered the U.S. Military Academy. Howard graduated in 1854, ranked fourth in his class. He first served at federal arsenals in New York and Maine and then was sent to Florida to fight in the Seminole War in 1856. He returned to West Point the following year to teach mathematics, remaining there until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. Howard became colonel of a volunteer regiment, the Third Maine, and following the First Battle at Bull Run in July 1861, he was promoted to brigadier general. In the spring of 1862, most of his right arm was amputated after it was injured at the Battle at Fair Oaks. Howard returned to service in August 1862. Despite subpar performances during battles such as Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, Sherman selected him to lead the Army of the Tennessee following the death of James McPherson. President Johnson appointed Howard head of the newly formed Freedmen’s Bureau, a federal agency designed to aid freedmen from the former Confederacy. While Howard did not earn this position based on any outstanding efforts in the cause of emancipation, his well-known Christian beliefs appealed to those in other freedmen’s aid societies who believed he would do all in his power to help the emancipated slaves. In 1867 he cofounded Howard University in Washington, D.C., serving as its president from 1869 to 1874. In the 1870s, he traveled west to support the federal government in its relations with the Native Americans. In 1872 he negotiated an end to Apache raiding, and in 1873 he took command of the Department of the Columbia, which included Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and portions of Idaho. In the following years, he was ordered to capture Native American groups that refused to stay on government reservations, which included Chief Joseph’s Nez Percé. After returning east, he served as superintendent of West Point (1881–82). He was promoted to major general in 1886 and had several more commands in the peacetime army before retiring in 1894. Howard settled in Burlington, Vermont, where he published volumes of his memoirs as well as biographies of Zachary Taylor and Queen Isabella. His last act of service was an effort to educate the population of southern Appalachia, which led to the establishment of Lincoln Memorial Univer-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 2

5/17/23 2:35 PM

GEORGE T. DOWNING TO DOUGLASS, 18 JANUARY 1866

3

sity in Harrogate, Tennessee. O. O. Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, Major General, United States Army, 2 vols. (New York, 1907); John A. Carpenter, Sword and Olive Branch: Oliver Otis Howard (1964; New York, 1999), 2, 6, 18, 23, 32–33; William S. McFeely, Yankee Stepfather: General O. O. Howard and the Freedmen (New York, 1968), 27–39; ANB (online). 6. Legislation suggested by President Lincoln to create the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, popularly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, passed Congress in March 1865. Although originally authorized for only a single year after the conclusion of military hostilities, the bureau remained in operation until 1872. It originally supplied displaced southerners, white as well as black, with temporary rations, shelter, health care, and other essential services. Most whites soon ceased taking assistance from the Freedmen’s Bureau, and Andrew Johnson unsuccessfully attempted to block legislation to extend its mandate. Under the leadership of General O. O. Howard, the bureau expanded its mission into establishing schools and arbitrating labor disputes concerning freedmen. These moves engendered vociferous opposition from whites in the South, and Grant allowed financial appropriations for bureau operations to dwindle. He terminated the agency in 1872 after reassigning Howard to deal with Indian problems in the West. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York, 1988), 68–70, 82–88, 144–51; William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass (New York, 1991), 257–58. 7. There is conflicting information regarding this meeting. Contemporary newspapers claim that on 23 January 1866 the delegation, led by George Downing, “had an interview today by invitation with General Howard, at which they made known their views.” But in his autobiography, Howard refers to a meeting with “some delegates from the colored people” sometime after 21 February 1866, when he returned to Washington, D.C., following a trip to New York. Sources confirm that Howard went on a speaking tour of New England in February 1866 and returned to Washington on 19 February. The fact that he met with President Johnson regarding the Freedmen’s Bureau on 24 February is further evidence he was indeed in Washington at this time. It is possible these conflicting sources point to two different meetings, one in January and one in February, between black leaders and Howard. Douglass, who did not arrive in Washington, D.C., until late January 1866, would not have been at a meeting on 23 January, but, according to Howard, did meet with him at this alleged February 1866 meeting. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxi; Boston Daily Advertiser, 24 January 1866; Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig & Courier, 24 January 1866, 14 February 1866; Savannah (Ga.) Daily Herald, 8 February 1866; Cleveland Daily Cleveland Herald, 24 February 1866; Howard, Autobiography, 2:309, 317–18; McFeely, Yankee Stepfather, 243, 245. 8. William Whipper (1804–76) first became known for his “free labor and temperance” grocery in Philadelphia. During the 1830s, he attended the annual National Negro Conventions regularly, and in 1835 he helped found the American Moral Reform Society and served as the editor of its journal, the National Reformer. That same year, Whipper moved to Pennsylvania’s interior, where he became involved in the lumber business and the Underground Railroad. Initially, Whipper rejected the idea of racially based reform movements, but late in life he came to accept African American organizations as necessary for the advancement of racial equality. Because he desired the “moral elevation” of African Americans within American society, he often agreed with Douglass’s approach to political and social reform. During the 1850s, Whipper supported the emigrationist movement, but the outbreak of the Civil War prevented him from moving himself and his family to Canada. Instead, he returned to Philadelphia after the war and worked as a cashier for the Freedmen’s Savings Bank, which failed in 1873. Richard P. McCormick, “William Whipper: Moral Reformer,” Pennsylvania History, 43:23–48 (January 1976); Jack Salzman, David L. Smith, and Cornel West, eds., Encyclopedia of AfricanAmerican Culture and History, 5 vols. (New York, 1996), 5:2817–18; DANB, 643. 9. It is possible that Downing is referring to the hall of the House of Representatives. During this time, Downing served as the manager of the House of Representatives dining room and might have referred to the chamber hall as “Representation Hall.” Following his speech on 1 February 1866 at the National Equal Suffrage Convention, Douglass gave a lecture titled “Assassination and Its

Y8204-Douglass.indb 3

5/17/23 2:35 PM

4

GEORGE T. DOWNING TO DOUGLASS, 18 JANUARY 1866

Lessons” on the 13th at the First Presbyterian Church. According to reports, many members of Congress attended the event, as did Chief Justice Salmon Chase and George Downing. Perhaps Downing initially scheduled this speaking event for the House of Representatives but later moved it to the First Presbyterian Church. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxi; Boston Daily Advertiser, 14 February 1866; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 10 March 1866; Lowell (Mass.) Daily Citizen and News, 13 March 1866; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 247. 10. Downing probably alludes to John Sella Martin (1832–76), minister, abolitionist, and poet, who was born a slave in Charlotte, North Carolina, and served masters in several southern states. In December 1855 he escaped from his master in New Orleans on a steamboat heading north. Selfeducated while in slavery, Martin studied for the Baptist ministry in Detroit and later led churches in Buffalo, New York; London, England; and elsewhere, most notably the Joy Street Baptist Church in Boston, Shiloh Presbyterian Church in New York City, and the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. An effective antislavery crusader at home and abroad, open to various strategies, including emigration, he also worked with the English Freedmen’s Aid Society and the American Missionary Association to raise funds to assist ex-slaves. After the Civil War, Martin was active in the Colored National Labor Union, which he represented at the World’s Labor Congress in Paris in 1870, and edited the Washington New Era from January to June 1870, when the newspaper was reorganized and Douglass became principal owner and editor. After moving to Louisiana, he served as both a postmaster and district school superintendent. FDP, 20 April 1860; Washington New Era, 14 April 1870; William Wells Brown, The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (New York, 1863), 242–45; Philip S. Foner and Ronald L. Lewis, eds., The Black Worker: A Documentary History from Colonial Times to the Present, 8 vols. (Philadelphia, 197884), 2:42, 59, 71; Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, They Who Would Be Free: Blacks’ Search for Freedom, 1830–1861 (New York, 1974), 249, 271–72, 287–90; John W. Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies (Baton Rouge, La., 1977), 2–35; C. Peter Ripley, ed., The Black Abolitionist Papers, 5 vols. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1985–92), 1:504–05; DANB, 427–28. 11. Schuyler Colfax (1823–85), a congressman and vice president of the United States, was born in New York City. In 1834 his mother married George W. Matthews, and the family moved to New Carlisle, Indiana. He worked as a clerk in his stepfather’s store, and when Matthews was elected county auditor on the Whig ticket, he moved with Matthews to South Bend and served as his deputy until 1849. Colfax read law, but his passion was politics. In 1844 he married Evelyn Clark, and shortly after, he bought a half interest in a local paper, which he renamed the St. Joseph Valley Register. For nearly two decades, he served as editor, and the paper became a major Whig, and, later, Republican, newspaper in Indiana. In 1854 he opposed the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act while simultaneously supporting temperance and nativism, which led him to join the Know Nothing party in Indiana. He then successfully ran for Congress as a representative of the “People’s party,” an early Indiana version of the Republican party. He served in Congress from 1855 to 1869, and was elected Speaker of the House in 1863, serving until his departure from Congress in 1869. Although not an early supporter of Lincoln, he championed the Republican party and advised the president on Indiana politics throughout the war. Regarded as conservative, competent, and loyal, he was nominated by the Republicans to run as Ulysses S. Grant’s vice presidential candidate in the 1868 election. During his time in office, he was plagued by scandals: he accepted contributions from a government contractor, often requested railroad passes, and became involved in the Crédit Mobilier scandal. In the 1872 election, the Republicans did not retain Colfax on the ticket, and he left politics the following March. Despite these ethical problems that surrounded him, many of his supporters argued he had been treated unfairly, and he remained popular. He became a successful orator, traveling throughout the country to speak on temperance, Lincoln, and the American West. He collapsed on a lecture tour and died in Mankato, Minnesota, in 1885. Edward Winslow Martin, The Life and Public Services of Schuyler Colfax: Together with His Most Important Speeches (New York, 1868), 12–14, 19–20, 153–56, 237–244; ANB, 5:230–31.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 4

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS ET AL. TO ANDREW JOHNSON, 7 FEBRUARY 1866

5

FREDERICK DOUGLASS ET AL. TO ANDREW JOHNSON1 Washington, [D.C.] 7 February 1866[.]

Mr. President— In consideration of a delicate sense of propriety, as well as your own repeated intimations of indisposition to discuss or to listen to a reply to the views and opinions you were pleased to express to us in your elaborate speech to-day,2 the undersigned would respectfully take this method of replying thereto. Believing, as we do, that the views and opinions you expressed in that address are entirely unsound and prejudicial to the highest interests of our race as well as our country at large, we cannot do other than expose the same, and, as far as may be in our power, arrest their dangerous influences. It is not necessary at this time to call attention to more than two or three features of your remarkable address: 1. The first point to which we feel especially bound to take exception is your attempt to found a policy opposed to our enfranchisement, upon the alleged ground of an existing hostility on the part of the former slaves toward the poor white people of the South.3 We admit the existence of this hostility, and hold that it is entirely reciprocal. But you obviously commit an error by drawing an argument from an incident of a state of slavery, and making it a basis for a policy adapted to a state of freedom. The hostility between the whites and blacks of the South is easily explained. It has its root and sap in the relation of slavery, and was incited on both sides by the cunning of the slave masters. Those masters secured their ascendancy over the poor whites and the blacks by putting enmity between them. They divided both to conquer each.4 There was no earthly reason why the blacks should not hate and dread the poor whites when in a state of slavery, for it was from this class that their masters received their slavecatchers, slave-drivers and overseers. They were the men called in upon all occasions by the masters when any fiendish outrage was to be committed upon the slave. Now, sir, you cannot but perceive that, the cause of this hatred removed, the effect must be removed also. Slavery is abolished. The cause of antagonism is removed, and you must see that it is altogether illogical (and “putting new wine into old bottles,” “mending new garments with old cloth”)5 to legislate from slave-holding and slave-driving premises for a people whom you have repeatedly declared your purpose to maintain in freedom. 2. Besides, even if it were true, as you allege, that the hostility of the blacks toward the poor whites must necessarily project itself into a state of

Y8204-Douglass.indb 5

5/17/23 2:35 PM

6

DOUGLASS ET AL. TO ANDREW JOHNSON, 7 FEBRUARY 1866

freedom, and that this enmity between the two races is even more intense in a state of freedom than in a state of slavery, in the name of Heaven, we reverently ask, how can you, in view of your professed desire to promote the welfare of the black man, deprive him of all means of defence, and clothe him whom you regard as his enemy in the panoply of political power? Can it be that you would recommend a policy which would arm the strong and cast down the defenceless? Can you, by any possibility of reasoning, regard this as just, fair or wise? Experience proves that those are oftenest abused who can be abused with the greatest impunity. Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest. Peace between races is not to be secured by degrading one race and exalting another, by giving power to one race and withholding it from another, but by maintaining a state of equal justice between all classes. First pure, then peaceable. 3. On the colonization theory you were pleased to broach very much could be said.6 It is impossible to suppose, in view of the usefulness of the black man in time of peace as a laborer in the South, and in time of war as a soldier at the North, and the growing respect for his rights among the people, and his increasing adaptation to a high state of civilization in this his native land, there can ever come a time when he can be removed from this country without a terrible shock to its prosperity and peace. Besides, the worst enemy of the nation could not cast upon its fair name a greater infamy than to suppose that negroes could be tolerated among them in a state of the most degrading slavery and oppression, and must be cast away, driven into exile, for no other cause then having been freed from their chains. GEORGE T. DOWNING, JOHN JONES,7 WILLIAM WHIPPER, FREDERICK DOUG LASS, LEWIS H. DOUG LASS, 8 AND OTHERS. PLSr: Washington Chronicle, 8 February 1866. Other texts in New York Tribune, 9 February 1866; Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser, 10 February 1866. 1. Andrew Johnson (1808–75) assumed the presidency on 15 April 1865 following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, the self-educated Johnson served in the Tennessee legislature (1834–37, 1839–43) before being elected a Democratic congressman (1843–53), governor (1853–57), and U.S. senator (1857–62). In 1862, Lincoln appointed Johnson, a Unionist, military governor of Tennessee, and two years later Johnson was elected as Lincoln’s vice president. Radical Republicans opposed Johnson’s Reconstruction policies, and in 1867, after the president had attempted to oust Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in defiance of the Tenure of

Y8204-Douglass.indb 6

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS ET AL. TO ANDREW JOHNSON, 7 FEBRUARY 1866

7

Office Act, succeeded in impeaching him. At the Senate trial in 1868, conviction failed by one vote. After his presidential term, Johnson returned to Tennessee, which elected him to the U.S. Senate in 1874. Robert W. Winston, Andrew Johnson: Plebeian and Patriot (New York, 1928); James E. Sefton, Andrew Johnson and the Uses of Constitutional Power (Boston, 1980). 2. On the morning of 7 February 1866, President Andrew Johnson received a delegation appointed by the National Convention of Colored Men, an organization of black men from thirteen states that was then meeting in Washington. Douglass, his son Lewis, and George T. Downing were among the thirteen men (including one white man) escorted into the president’s office at the Executive Mansion. Downing opened the interview, and Douglass then stated the purpose of the visit. Johnson’s reply was courteous, but he sidestepped the concerns of the group, most of which centered on the Thirteenth Amendment and its enforcement in the southern states. After the meeting, the delegates met briefly with Radical Republicans opposed to Johnson’s policies. Later that day, Douglass composed a written reply to the president, signed by all the delegates, which appeared in the next day’s edition of the Washington Daily Morning Chronicle. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:96–106; Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:299–301; Washington Evening Star, 7 February 1866; Washington Daily Morning Chronicle, 8 February 1866; Benjamin Quarles, Frederick Douglass (Washington, D.C., 1948), 226–28. 3. In his impromptu reply to the black delegation, Johnson observed: “The query comes up, whether these two races, situated as they were before, without preparation, without time for passion and excitement to be appeased, and without time for the slightest improvement, whether the one should be turned loose upon the other and be thrown together at the ballot-box, with this enmity and hate existing between them. The query come up if right there we don’t commence a war of races. I think I understand this thing—and especially in this case when you force it upon a people without their consent.” Johnson’s solution was to allow the people of each state to resolve the question of black enfranchisement. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:102. 4. The phrase is often attributed to Italian political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli (1469– 1527), who in turn indicated its ancient classical origin. John Bartlett, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 16th ed. (Boston, 1992), 118. 5. Matt. 9:14–17; Mark 2:18–22; Luke 5:33–39. 6. Near the end of the interview, following attempts by Douglass and Downing to respond to some of Johnson’s arguments against black enfranchisement, the annoyed president countered: “I think you will find, so far as the South is concerned, that if you all inculcate there the idea in connection with the one you urge, that the colored people can live and advance in civilization to better advantage elsewhere than crowded right down there in the South, it would be better for them.” Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:105. 7. John Jones (1816–79), often referred to by contemporaries and the press as the “most prominent colored citizen of Chicago,” was the freeborn son of a free mulatto mother and a German named Bromfield. A native of Greene County, North Carolina, Jones was later apprenticed to a Tennessee tailor. Jones worked until he could save $100, then moved in 1841 to Alton, Illinois, and married Mary Richardson, whom he had met in Tennessee. In 1845 the couple moved to Chicago, where Jones taught himself to read and write and where he set up a tailor shop that catered primarily to whites. A successful businessman, Jones owned property worth an estimated $85,000 before the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. He lectured throughout Illinois, stressing economic success and social integration as fundamental goals for black advancement. He was vice president of the 1853 Colored National Convention held in Rochester, New York, and participated in the Illinois Colored Convention of 1856. Jones’s speaking took on added fervor in 1853, when he fought laws discouraging black migration to Illinois, and again in 1864, when he led the successful fight for the repeal of the state’s Black Laws. Jones’s home was a way station for the Underground Railroad and a meeting place and guest home for fellow abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass and John Brown. Lib., 18 May 1860; Chicago Tribune, 12 March 1875, 22 May 1879; Allen H. Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 7

5/17/23 2:35 PM

8

DOUGLASS TO ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, 16 FEBRUARY 1866

1890–1920 (Chicago, 1967), 6, 55, 77, 107, 111; Harold F. Gosnell, Negro Politicians: The Rise of Negro Politics in Chicago (1935; Chicago, 1967), 81–82, 111; Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy, They Seek a City (Garden City, N.Y., 1945), 28–36; DANB, 366–67. 8. Lewis Henry Douglass (1840–1908) was the eldest of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass’s three sons. Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Lewis attended school in Rochester. He also worked in his father’s newspaper office, where he learned the printer’s trade. During the Civil War, Lewis enlisted in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry and rose to the rank of sergeant major. After the war, he spent several years working in Denver, Colorado, as a secretary for the Red, White, and Blue Mining Company. While there, he also learned typography. In 1869 he moved to Washington, D.C., where he found employment at the Government Printing Office, largely through his father’s connections. That same year, he married Helen Amelia Loguen, daughter of Jermain Wesley Loguen. In 1873 he joined his father’s staff at the New National Era and was placed in charge of the paper’s editorials. During the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, Lewis served two years as a member of the council of legislation and another two years as a special agent for the post office. During the Hayes administration, he served under his father as an assistant marshal for the District of Columbia. Upon leaving that post, he pursued a career in the real estate business. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:860; Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:126; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 248, 271–72; Paul Finkelman et al., eds., Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass, 3 vols. (New York, 2006), 1:423–25.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ELIZABETH CADY STANTON1 Washington, D.C. 16 February 1866.

Dear Mrs Stanton: Thank you for your letter giving me an account of the launching of the good ship “Equal Rights Association” and the names and Character of her officers.2 No vessel like her has been given to the sea since Noah’s Ark3— Without the presence of woman the Ark would have been a failure. I have about made up my mind that if you can forgive me for being a negro—I cannot do less than to forgive you for being a woman. Very Truly yours FREDK DOUG LASS ALS: Theodore Stanton Manuscripts, Rutgers University. 1. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) was the best-known feminist of her day. Born in Johnstown, New York, and educated at Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminary, Stanton developed an interest in abolition and other reforms during visits to the home of her cousin Gerrit Smith. Stanton became determined to work to advance the status of women when she and other female delegates were barred from the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. Eight years later, Stanton, along with Lucretia Mott, organized the first-ever women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, where Stanton had settled with her husband, the antislavery politician Henry B. Stanton. During Reconstruction, she opposed the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, since they granted equal rights and suffrage to black males but ignored all females. She held to this position in the Revolution, the woman suffrage weekly she edited with Parker Pillsbury, and in the

Y8204-Douglass.indb 8

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO JOHN T. SARGENT, JUNE 1866

9

platform of the National Woman Suffrage Association, which she and Susan B. Anthony founded in 1869. Besides presiding over that organization for more than two decades, Stanton wrote numerous articles and several books, including the multivolume History of Woman Suffrage in collaboration with Anthony and Matilda Gage. Alma Lutz, Created Equal: A Biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815–1902 (New York, 1940); Lois W. Banner, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Radical for Woman’s Rights (Boston, 1980); Edward T. James et al., eds., Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 3:342–47. 2. During the Civil War, leaders of the antebellum women’s rights movement largely rechanneled their energies into groups like the Women’s Loyal National League, which campaigned for a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery. After that goal was achieved in 1865 and discussions arose about another amendment to ensure equal citizenship for the freedpeople, early feminists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone protested any wording of the new amendment that would restrict it to “males.” In December 1866, Wendell Phillips, the president of the American Anti-Slavery Society, rebuffed proposals from Stanton to merge the campaigns for black and woman suffrage. The following month, Phillips helped delay debate on Stephen Foster’s proposal to remake the abolitionist organization into an “equal rights” organization until the society’s May anniversary-week meeting. Stanton and Anthony then organized the New York State Equal Rights Association, with Douglass as its vice president, to pressure Phillips. They also issued a call for the Eleventh National Women’s Rights Convention to meet in New York City during the 1866 anniversary week. When Phillips outmaneuvered the efforts of Stanton and Anthony to reorient the American Anti-Slavery Society’s goals, the women used their own convention to launch the American Equal Rights Association the following day. Its purpose was to battle for “equal rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color, or sex.” Douglass was selected as one of its vice presidents. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., History of Woman Suffrage, 6 vols. (Rochester, 1881–1922), 2:152–53; Faye E. Dudden, Fighting Chance: The Struggle over Woman Suffrage and Black Suffrage in Reconstruction America (New York, 2011), 70–87. 3. In Genesis, God ordered Noah to construct a gigantic ark in which to save his family and a remnant of all the world’s animals from a great flood to be inflicted on the earth as punishment for humanity’s sins. Gen. 6–9.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JOHN T. SARGENT1 Boston, [Mass.] June 1866.2

Rev. John T. Sargent, President Mass., Anti-Slavery Society.3 My Dear Sir: I regret exceedingly that other duties and engagements will prevent my being present and assisting in your forthcoming annual Anti-Slavery celebration of the Fourth July at Framingham, Massachusetts.4 It gives me pleasure, however, to assure you and the earnest men and women who have this celebration in hand, that I most fully accord with you as to the wisdom and propriety of continuing your work for the full and complete emancipation of my race, and doing so in your own well-earned

Y8204-Douglass.indb 9

5/17/23 2:35 PM

10

DOUGLASS TO JOHN T. SARGENT, JUNE 1866

and long established character of Abolitionists, and by the use of your old and well-approved methods and instrumentalities. In that character you have wrought wonders; demonstrated the divinity of your mission, and strikingly illustrated the truth that in a righteous cause “one may chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight.”5 Though bodily absent I shall be present in that higher and more universal sense,—the sense in which the friends of justice and equality are one the world over! I shall be with you in earnest sympathy and sincere appreciation, and in all grateful sentiments for your many labors and services. It is a very great privilege to be accounted worthy to be with you in this sense, for I see no workers in the cause of Reform exercising a wiser foresight, a steadier purpose, a sterner integrity, a heartier zeal, or a more sublime faith in the ultimate triumph of truth than yourselves. The complaint against you, at the present hour, is that you persist in thinking that your work as Abolitionists is not completed. This I take to be your highest praise. Names are of less importance than things, and you have chosen to look at things as they are, and have refused to be cheated by professions and appearances. Slavery has nominally received its death blow a great many times, and has, as often, required still another blow to kill it! No doubt when the declaration went forth that “all men are created equal”6 sanguine men regarded it as the death blow to slavery in America, but they were mistaken. When the “slave trade” was abolished7 and slavery in the Territories prohibited,8 slavery received its death blow, but that old abomination did, after all, manage to live and wax strong, till, towering aloft in its marvelous pride and power, it has dragged the nation through four years of bloody war, and entailed upon the country indescribable calamities and sorrows. But it is now said that it has not only received its death blow, but that it is dead,—that the war has killed it; that the “Emancipation proclamation”9 has killed it; that the “Amendment to the Constitution,” declaring that there shall be “no slavery in any of the States but for crime”10 has killed it; that the “Civil Rights bill”11 has killed it; in a word, slavery is now unconstitutional,—unlawful, and therefore dead,—has ceased to exist. Well, in theory, this is quite true; but in practice the case is far otherwise. To my thinking there has been no time, these fifteen years past, when I could not prove that slavery is unconstitutional,—but the ugly fact of its existence was dreadfully palpable for all that. I value the “Proclamation” of ’63,—the Amendment to the Constitution, the Civil Rights bill, and I rejoice in the “Freedmen’s Bureau,” but I see plainly that until the negro has the ballot at the South

Y8204-Douglass.indb 10

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO JOHN T. SARGENT, JUNE 1866

11

he is still at the mercy of his old masters, and, though nominally free, he will be practically a slave. The power that keeps him from the ballot-box and the jury-box will take from him the musket with which he helped to put down the rebellion; will drive out from the South his friendly teachers and missionaries; will put down free speech, and a free press, and will make the negro’s freedom a mockery! Laws are valuable only when justly administered. The best laws on the Statute Book amount to nothing unless the injured party has the power to claim their protection. Of what value is the law where you cannot get into court; where no lawyer will undertake your cause, and where, if you did succeed in getting into court, you shold find the whole bar, judge, and jury holding the doctrine of the “Dread Scott Decision,”12 that you have “no rights which white men are bound to respect!” This atrocious sentiment is as rampant to-day at the South as before the war, and it only needs the withdrawal of loyal troops to display its demoniacal crimes everywhere as it has already done in Memphis, and Alexandria, and other parts of the South.13 But why not melt away into the mass of our fellow-citizens, and leave the negro to the care of politics, and religion, the government, and people? Alas for the negro if these are to be his only protectors and advocates! With politics availability is the ruling principle, and, unhappily, our religion sets out with a curse upon the negro, and only blesses him when he has the power to bless himself. The government and people will have very little to do with looking after the administration of justice in the slave States when once those States shall be fully restored to their former standing in the Union. Abundant proof of this is furnished in the history of the last thirty years. Slavery was above the Constitution,—above the law—and above the government. It could shoot, hang, or imprison without consulting Constitution, law, or government, and will do it again unless the negro is enfranchised, and made, thereby, a man among men, a citizen among citizens. Until this is done the negro is not safe;—his freedom is but a name. Your country will be in danger, and your work as Abolitionists will not be complete. In vain are all schemes of reconstruction, restoration, and reconciliation that practically leave the negro in the legislative power of his master. They are destined, like all previous compromises, to mock and torment their inventors. The plan of reconstruction now commended to the people for their adoption,—by omitting the one essential principle of impartial suffrage,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 11

5/17/23 2:35 PM

12

DOUGLASS TO JOHN T. SARGENT, JUNE 1866

has defeated the benevolent intentions of its framers, disappointed the just hopes of the loyal colored people all over the country, robbed American citizenship of its most valuable property, and left it an empty name. For, to tell me that I am an equal American citizen, and, in the same breath, tell me that my right to vote may be constitutionally taken from me by some other equal citizen or citizens, is to tell me that my citizenship is but an empty name. To say that I am a citizen to pay taxes, work on the roads, obey the laws, support the government, and fight the battles of the country, but, in all that respects voting and representation, I am but as so much inert matter, is to insult my manhood, and stamp the country which permits the monstrous injustice, with the crime of ingratitude. You are right in availing yourselves of the ideas and assoclations that cluster gloriously about the fourth of July; for the demand, to-day, is the same old demand of 1776, and there can be no solid peace to the country, no rest to the public mind, no perfect union between the States till the government of all the States shall stand upon the principle that “all men are created equal.” Yours truly, FREDERICK DOUG LASS. PLSr: NASS, 7 July 186 1. John Turner Sargent (1807–77) was a liberal Unitarian minister whose life was marked by activism in benevolent and social reform causes, including poor relief, temperance, women’s rights, and abolitionism. The scion of an affluent Boston merchant-shipping family, Sargent graduated from Harvard in 1827 and the Divinity School at Cambridge in 1830. His defense of his theologically controversial friend Theodore Parker led to Sargent’s break with the Unitarian establishment in 1844— an estrangement that allowed him greater engagement in the abolitionist movement. In 1845 he coauthored the statement “Protest Against American Slavery, by One Hundred and Seventy Unitarian Ministers”; in 1850 he became a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, which assisted fugitive slaves; and from 1852 until 1871, he was a member of the executive committees of both the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, serving several terms as president of the latter organization. He was a correspondent of nearly all prominent northeastern abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass. Lib., 10 October 1845, 1 June 1860; New York Times, 26 January 1866, 26 January 1868, 28 January 1870; Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography (online). 2. Sargent supplied his street address when sending this letter as “13 Chestnut St.” 3. Sargent appended the following prefatory note when he sent Douglass’s letter to be printed: To the Editor of the Standard: My Dear Friend: Foreseeing that a full Report of our Fourth July meeting at Framingham next Wednesday would not be in season for your next issue of The Standard, I so far anticipate as to send you the following copy of a very good letter from Frederick Douglass, which I shall be reading probably at Framingham at about the same time you are having it set in type at New York. Yours, very truly, JOHN T. SARGENT.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 12

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO JOHN T. SARGENT, JUNE 1866

13

4. From the mid-1840s until at least 1866, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society held a Fourth of July picnic at Harmony Grove in Framingham, Massachusetts, roughly sixteen miles west of Boston. Over the years, many prominent eastern abolitionists spoke at this annual affair. Undoubtedly, the most notable of these occasions was in 1854, when William Lloyd Garrison publicly burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution, branding it “a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell.” According to the report in the New York Times, the 1866 event appeared only slightly less radical: the main speaker, Wendell Phillips, called on Congress to “admit no rebel State . . ., until land, education, and the ballot, under the sanction of Federal authority, are the secure inheritance of every man born on its soil!” Lib., 7, 14, 21 July 1854; New York Times, 9 July 1866; Donald Yacovone, “A Covenant with Death and an Agreement with Hell,” Masshist.org. 5. Deut. 2:30. 6. Douglass quotes from the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence. 7. Anglo-American antislavery activists took action in the spring of 1807 to restrict the international trade in African slaves with the hope of facilitating the demise of slavery throughout the Atlantic world. Led by William Wilberforce, Parliament overwhelmingly passed the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade on 23 February 1807, which outlawed the slave trade throughout the British Empire. It went into effect upon receiving royal assent on 1 May 1807. That same year, on 2 March, northern members of Congress headed passage of the Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves, which went into effect on 1 January 1808. Notably, this act did not restrict the interstate slave trade. Abolitionists in both Britain and America had high hopes these laws would gradually but progressively bring slavery to an end within a generation or two. The obvious insufficiency of these laws to restrain, let alone end, Atlantic slavery significantly contributed to the rise of immediate abolitionism in Britain and America in the early 1830s. Matthew Mason, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006), 14–16, 132; EAAH, 3:128–30. 8. Douglass is apparently referring generally to the two major legislative initiatives to prohibit slavery in the federal territories. The Northwest Ordinance, passed by Congress in 1787, restricted slavery from the territories north and west of the Ohio River, and the Missouri Compromise of 1820 prohibited slavery from expanding north of 36° 30´ north latitude between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. Despite lamentable breakdowns in enforcement, these acts successfully facilitated the creation of seven free states. Nevertheless, slavery became entrenched south of these demarcated territories, and with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, all federal territories were opened to slavery. Douglass, like nearly all supporters of the Republican party before the Civil War, considered the passage of this bill to be the work of an insatiable “slave power” bent on legalizing slavery throughout the entire nation. Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery (New York, 2001), 253–79; John Craig Hammond, Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West (Charlottesville, Va., 2007), 1–8, 96–123, 150–68. 9. It was on this date that the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order that freed most black slaves in the states in secession, went into effect. The proclamation was the political and social outgrowth of the reality of the Civil War. Initially, President Abraham Lincoln could not emancipate slaves without losing conservative Democratic support in the northern and border states; later, he could not do so because issuing an act of emancipation while the Union lacked a major military victory would make the Union look weak. The platform for emancipation began when General Benjamin Butler defined captured slaves as contraband, i.e, spoils of war, prompting congressional Republicans to pass the First and Second Confiscation Acts. Using his war powers as president, following a military victory at Antietam on 17 September 1862, Lincoln announced the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all slaves held in rebel states on 1 January 1863 to be free. On said date, he signed the permanent Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln did not believe that his war powers extended to border states not in open rebellion or to portions of rebel states then under Union control. Therefore, slaves in many counties in Tennessee, Virginia, and Louisiana, as well as in the border

Y8204-Douglass.indb 13

5/17/23 2:35 PM

14

DOUGLASS TO JOHN T. SARGENT, JUNE 1866

states, were unaffected by the proclamation, which made the crafting of a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery vital. Despite the limits presented by states in open rebellion, historians note that the conservative application of Lincoln’s war powers in this matter successfully avoided the legal problems of emancipation created by the Confiscation Acts, began to shift the Union’s focus of the war from a legal battle against rebellion to a moral battle against slavery, and started a gradual change within the country regarding race relations. John Hope Franklin, The Emancipation Proclamation (Garden City, N.Y., 1963), 50–56, 61; Roy P. Basler, ed., Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1953–55), 5:433–36; David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds., Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History, 5 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2000), 2:650–52. 10. Douglass alludes to the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in December 1865. 11. Douglass is referring to legislation recently passed by Congress that thereafter would be known as the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Immediately after the Civil War, southern states established Black Codes, which so restricted the activities of freedmen as to essentially reestablish slavery in a slightly milder form. In response, Congress passed a bill in early March 1866 that made it a crime to deprive any person of his or her federal civil rights, giving the federal government the power to enforce these rights. The law declared that all persons born in the United States were citizens, thereby overturning Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), in which the Supreme Court had ruled that blacks could never be citizens of the United States. Furthermore, the bill stated that all citizens, regardless of race, had the right “to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property.” President Andrew Johnson vetoed this act on 27 March, but Congress overrode his veto on 9 April. Since even some of the Republican supporters of the act doubted its constitutional legitimacy, they immediately crafted the Fourteenth Amendment, which incorporated most of the bill’s content. Douglass was correct in placing little faith in the efficacy of this law to end the oppression of African Americans, since it was always feebly applied by the federal judiciary. By the 1880s, it was a dead letter, largely ignored until the mid-twentieth century. “An Act to protect all Persons in the United States in their Civil Rights, and furnish the Means of their Vindication,” 14 Stat. 27–30; Foner, Reconstruction, 243–46, 250–51; EAAH, 1:284–85. 12. Dred Scott (c. 1795–1858), a Missouri slave, was taken by his master in the 1830s into Illinois and Wisconsin, where slavery had been prohibited by either the Northwest Ordinance or the Missouri Compromise. In 1846, Scott sued for his liberty, arguing that his four-year stay on free soil had given him freedom. When the Missouri Supreme Court overturned a lower-court ruling in favor of Scott, the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. After much bargaining among the justices and controversial outside meddling by president-elect James Buchanan, the Court handed down a complicated decision on 6 March 1857. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, held that as a black, Scott was not a citizen and was therefore not entitled to sue in federal court; Scott’s previous residence in free territory had not made him free upon his return to Missouri, since his status was determined by the laws of the state in which he resided when the case was raised; and the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, since it violated the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition against Congress’s depriving persons of their property without due process of law. Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (New York, 1978), 242–47, 252–53, 261–65, 279–80, 305–24; Carl B. Swisher, Roger B. Taney (1935; Hamden, Conn., 1961), 35, 121–26, 139–40, 158–59, 234, 317; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 6 vols. (New York, 1888–89), 6:28–31; Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928–36), 18:289–94; DANB, 548–49. 13. Douglass is referring to two recent attacks on African Americans in the South. On 1 May 1866, the collision of two buggies driven by a black and a white man sparked three days of vicious

Y8204-Douglass.indb 14

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO JAMES D. LYNCH, 13 AUGUST 1866

15

rioting in Memphis, Tennessee. In the end, forty-eight persons—all but two of them black—had been killed, and most of the African American section of the city destroyed. Earlier, on Christmas Day 1865, black revelers were attacked on the streets of Alexandria, Virginia, by Confederate veterans, some still wearing their army uniforms. Thanks to the rapid intervention of U.S. military forces to quell this disturbance, only one black person (among many wounded) was killed, dozens of white attackers were arrested, and at least five of them were convicted and served time in prison. These were but two of innumerable violent assaults upon southern blacks in 1866, with the worst occurring in New Orleans on July 30, when thirty-four blacks and three white Republicans were killed, and over one hundred persons injured. Washington Evening Star, 26, 27, 28 December 1865, 7 April 1866; Foner, Reconstruction, 261–63.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JAMES D. LYNCH1 Rochester, N.Y. 13 August 1866.

For the Christian Recorder Rev. James Lynch:— My Dear Sir:— You will, I trust, allow me publically to thank you, and to thank you with some warmth and earnestness, for your Editorial Article on the history of the Colored Men’s Shipyard in Baltimore.2 I send you my heartiest amen to all you say of the importance of industry, enterprise, and perseverance in that admirable article. You have struck the key note. Follow up the work. The success of the ship yard, born as that enterprise was in time of trouble and in deep discouragement, cannot be otherwise than a powerful help morally, to the cause of our people, not only in Maryland and Baltimore, but to the whole country. That shipyard speaks a language that cannot be misunderstood. Every mallet there employed, and breaking into the din of Fell’s Point3 industry, is eloquent. With you, I accord all honor to the brave colored calkers of Baltimore. Other men may be discouraged by hardship, but these never. What a history has been theirs! I have known these men for forty years.4 Their trials and persecutions remain to be written. Heaven grant that now the material for such a history may cease. It is a most shocking thought that men should be mobbed and beaten simply for earning their bread in the sweat of their faces.5 But a better day dawns. Baltimore shall be released of this barbarism. Mad as we have seen her in the past, shaking aloft a bloody hand, and scowling wrath on the unproprotected black mechanic and laborer, we shall yet see her at the feet of Eternal Justice, clothed in her right mind, and rejoicing in the ennobling idea that all rights are for all.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 15

5/17/23 2:35 PM

16

HENRY O. WAGONER TO DOUGLASS, 27 AUGUST 1866

I hope you will follow up the ideas you have forcibly expressed in the Shipyard article. Your friend, FREDERICK DOUG LASS PLSr: Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 25 August 1866. 1. James D. Lynch (1839–1872) was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to a slave mother and a white merchant father. The Reverend Daniel Payne sent him to be educated in Philadelphia and then to schools in New Hampshire and Indiana. He entered the Methodist ministry and preached in Indiana and Illinois before being invited to settle in Philadelphia to edit the Christian Recorder. After missionary work among freedpeople in Georgia in 1864 and 1865, he returned to Philadelphia. In 1867, Lynch settled in Mississippi to resume missionary labors, but he soon entered Republican party politics there. In 1869, he launched a short-lived newspaper, the Jackson Colored Citizen, which adopted a moderate position on Reconstruction issues, hoping to strike a political alliance with some of the state’s whites. Lynch’s faction won control of the state party and elected him secretary of state in the fall of 1869. The Republican party hired Lynch to campaign nationwide for Grant’s reelection in 1872. He died shortly thereafter of complications from Bright’s disease. William C. Harris, “James Lynch: Black Leader in Southern Reconstruction,” Historian, 34:40–61 (November 1971). 2. Douglass probably alludes to an article describing the formation of the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company, a racially integrated cooperative business, founded in Baltimore in February 1866 by Isaac Myers. Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 7 April 1866. 3. Fells Point, first settled by William Fell in 1726, was an enclave east of Baltimore center that was not annexed to Baltimore until 1773. This hooked piece of land, jutting into the outer harbor, was a shipbuilding site since the mid-eighteenth century. After the War of 1812, it was the construction site for the famous Baltimore clipper ships. By the time of Douglass’s arrival, Fells Point was a heavily populated neighborhood whose residents worked in shipbuilding and other maritime pursuits. Shipyards and wharves for unloading cargo lined its waterfront. J. Thomas Scharf, History of Baltimore City and County: From the Earliest Period to the Present Day (Philadelphia, 1881), 54, 59–60, 292–94; Sherry H. Olson, Baltimore (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), 52–53, 85. 4. Douglass was apprenticed as a ship’s caulker in William Gardiner’s Baltimore shipyard in 1836. This employment ended abruptly when Douglass was violently attacked by white shipyard workers at Gardiner’s wharf approximately eight months after he began working there. Hugh Auld then got Douglass a position at the nearby shipyard of Walter Price on the shoreline of Fells Point, where he completed his training. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:140–45; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 58–63. 5. A paraphrase of Gen. 3:19.

HENRY O. WAGONER1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Denver, Colo. 27 Aug[us]t 1866.

Fredk Douglass, Esqr., Rochester, N. Y., My dear friend,— I am doing most of my manual labor, in my Establishment, and, therefore, I am not in condition to write letters, nevertheless, I cannot resist

Y8204-Douglass.indb 16

5/17/23 2:35 PM

HENRY O. WAGONER TO DOUGLASS, 27 AUGUST 1866

17

the temptation to write you a brief letter, after having had the privilege & pleasure of seeing two letters from you, received by your son Frederick2 and our mutual friend, A. H. Richardson.3—In both of those letters you have been pleased to Express grateful sentiments toward me, for the very little it has been in my power to do for your two sons, Lewis4 and Frederick, just previous to, and since their arrival in this Territory. What I have done for your boys, is but a feeble Expression of my constitional disposition to help my race in particular, and Mankind in general. As you have well said to Frederick, that he and his brother have “a future,” but you and I have very little more left than “a past,” and, therefore, what I do, in the way of bettering my physical Condition, and that of my beloved family,5 must be done quickly. I am very anxious to get through here and get back to my dear wife & children. Well, the boys have taken hold in good Earnest, the particulars of which, they, doubtless, have written you. Lewis, I take to be a young man of strong, clear good sense. He seems to drive right a head at the object aimed at. Frederick, however, seems to be more Cautious, reflecting, hesitative, And, as you say, “practical.” I Can Easily discover that they are both very desirous of succeeding in their undertaking, whatever they may finally verge into; and, the will to do, is almost success. Well, whatever of Counsel & tangible assistance it may, from time to time, be in my power to render the boys, I will most cheerfully and gladly do; so, also, will our mutual friend, Richardson. He is a different Man, in that direction, to his brother-in law, J. J.6 As the great Pacific R R is progressing so rapidly,7 I have several times Expressed, to Richardson and Hardin,8 the probability of our hearing you Speak, at no distant day9, in the fine Hall of Dr McClellen is just Erecting in this city.10 Well, by the last of the Coming Autumn, the time between Denver and Chicago will only be 4 or 5 days, by RR and Coaches—At the present time, business is very dull in Denver, which is always the Case in the month of August. From the first of September, clear up to January, business, in former years, has been good in Denver— Well, a simple reference to the political aspect of the Country. Notwithstanding the “clouds” which have arisen in high places, and seem to darken the political horizon, yet I am as firm as ever in the belief that bad men, or devils, can do a very little here than Cause a sort of Vibration to the Car of progress, in its onward March; for, “onward is the language of creation,” and no Man or set of men Can long withstand, or throw back

Y8204-Douglass.indb 17

5/17/23 2:35 PM

18

HENRY O. WAGONER TO DOUGLASS, 27 AUGUST 1866

God’s rolling Elements of truth and progress—“As well might they tell the grass not to grow, or the winds not to blow,” as to attempt to stop the Onward March of these elements—From planet to planet, from ocean to ocean, from the Smallest rivulet to the unfathomable Sea”—and from the Smallest hamlet to the most populous city, all is onward.11 But I have forgotten myself, & have written more than I intended. Regards to your dear family, & best wishes for yourself— Your friend & brother H. O. WAGONER ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 197–98, FD Papers, DLC. 1. One of Douglass’s most enduring friendships was with Henry O. Wagoner, Sr. (1816–1901). Born in Hagerstown, Maryland, to a formerly enslaved mother and a German father, Wagoner learned to read and write despite a lack of formal education. He spent most of his youth working on western Maryland farms, but fled to Ohio in 1838 for fear that his Underground Railroad activities had roused suspicion. The following year he moved to Galena, Illinois, where he found employment as a newspaper typesetter and bill collector. He next worked for a newspaper and taught at a school in Chatham, Canada West, from 1843 until he relocated to Chicago in 1846, where he ran a profitable milling business. Wagoner met Douglass during one of the latter’s lecture tours in Illinois in the late 1840s and became an occasional correspondent for Douglass’s newspaper. Wagoner participated in abolitionist activities and aided John Brown in March 1858 by offering his mill as a hiding place for escaping Missouri slaves en route to Canada. During the Civil War, Wagoner recruited black troops for regiments in Illinois and Massachusetts. In 1865, he settled in Denver, Colorado, where he established a barbering business and quickly became a leader in the African American community. An active Republican, Wagoner campaigned for male suffrage as Colorado applied for statehood in the 1860s; served as deputy sheriff of Arapaho County, Colorado, between 1865 and 1875; and received an appointment as clerk of the Colorado state legislature in 1876. With years of friendship between them, Wagoner and Douglass aided each other’s adult sons. In 1866, Wagoner hosted Frederick Jr. and Lewis in Denver, teaching them typography. Eight years later, Douglass returned the favor by helping Henry O. Wagoner, Jr., secure a position as consular clerk in Paris, France. The younger Wagoner died while in Lyons, France, and upon the elder Wagoner’s request, Douglass looked for the grave during his 1886 European tour. Henry O. Wagoner to Douglass, 27 August 1866, 10 December 1873, 23 March 1878, 13 July, 13 October 1885, 19 August 1886, 1 September 1890, 17 August 1893, Henry O. Wagoner, Jr., to Douglass, 2 April 1874, 12 May 1877, Douglass to Lewis Douglass, 24 January 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 197–98, 700–703, 733–36, reel 3, frames 122–26, 241–43, reel 4, frames 193, 217–19, 380–81, reel 5, frames 783–84, reel 32, frames 250–51, FD Papers, DLC; NS, 18 February 1848, 24 August 1849; FDP, 11 December 1851; Denver Rocky Mountain News, 28 December 1901; Simmons, Men of Mark, 679–84; Benjamin Quarles, Allies for Freedom: Blacks and John Brown (New York, 1974), 39, 59; Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990 (New York, 1998), 123. 2. Frederick Douglass, Jr. (1842–92), was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, the second son of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass. Throughout his adult life, Frederick Jr. struggled to achieve success within the same industries as his famous father. For years he tried unsuccessfully to obtain membership in the typographical union; however, he did work with several newspapers, including the New National Era. He was also a frequent contributor to other newspapers, such as the Detroit Plaindealer, the New York Times, and Baltimore’s National Leader, where he worked until his death. He was the only of Douglass’s sons not to enlist in the Union army. Henry O. Wagoner, a close friend of his father’s, took Frederick Jr. and his brother Lewis to Denver in 1866 to help them establish their

Y8204-Douglass.indb 18

5/17/23 2:35 PM

HENRY O. WAGONER TO DOUGLASS, 27 AUGUST 1866

19

careers. Ultimately, their attempts failed, and the two returned east. During an outbreak of influenza in 1890, Frederick Jr.’s wife, Virginia, died. Their son Frederick, Frederick Douglass III, as well as several other of the couple’s children, died at a young age. Frederick Jr. succumbed to a prolonged and painful illness in July 1892. New York Times, 24 September 1876; Washington Bee, 30 July 1892; Detroit Plaindealer, 12 August 1892; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 97, 145, 248–49, 258, 272, 342, 365. 3. This is most likely a reference to the A. H. Richardson who is listed as a blacksmith in the 1866 Denver City Directory. It is also probable that this is the same A. H. Richardson who died and was buried there in 1888. “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995,” Ancestry.com; Find a Grave (online). 4. Lewis H. Douglass. 5. During the course of their marriage, Henry and Susan Wagoner (1819–70) had eight children. Out of those eight, only the oldest and youngest daughters outlived Wagoner, who died in 1901. In late 1865, his four children, one son and three daughters, were living in Chicago with Susan. During the summer of 1866, Wagoner’s family joined him in Denver. Ulysses S. Grant, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, ed. John Y. Simon, 32 vols. (Carbondale, Ill., 2000), 24:112n; Richard Junger, “ ‘Thinking Men and Women Who Desire to Improve Our Condition’: Henry O. Wagoner, Civil Rights, and Black Economic Opportunity in Frontier Chicago and Denver, 1846–1887,” in Voices from within the Veil: African Americans and the Experience of Democracy, edited by William H. Alexander, Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander, and Charles H. Ford (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Eng., 2008), 157, 160. 6. Possibly either J. J. Gangloff, who is listed as a clerk in the 1866 city directory, or J. J. Hayman, who is described in the same directory as having committed suicide “through remorse at his unwarranted treatment of his wife and family.” “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” 7. In August 1866, the tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad had extended 150 miles west of Omaha, Nebraska. By the end of the month, regular trains began running the full 197 miles from Omaha to Fort Kearney in central Nebraska Territory. Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig & Courier, 27 August 1866; Henry Tanner, Directory & Shippers’ Guide of Kansas & Nebraska: Containing Full and Complete Descriptions of the Cities, Towns and Villages, with the Names and Addresses of the Merchants, Manufacturers, Professional Men, etc., Together with a Record of the Government and Institutions of the States, and a Variety of Useful Information (Leavenworth City, Kans., 1866), 158, 197; David Howard Bain, Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (New York, 1999), 286; Edward J. Renehan, Jr., The Transcontinental Railroad: The Gateway to the West (New York, 2007), 106. 8. Born near Russellville, Kentucky, William Jefferson Hardin (1831–89) was the son of a free biracial mother and a white father, who, he claimed, was a close relative of the Kentucky congressman Benjamin Hardin. In 1839, Hardin was taken in by the South Union Shaker Community near Bowling Green, Kentucky, where he remained for the next eleven years. In 1849, he left the community and accepted a job teaching free African American children in Bowling Green. That same year, he married an enslaved woman named Caroline, with whom he had two children: a son who died in infancy and a daughter. Unable to save enough money from his teaching position to purchase his wife and child’s freedom, Hardin left Kentucky sometime in 1850 to seek his fortune in the California gold rush. After five years of failure, he left California and spent several years traveling across the American West and Canada. In 1862, however, he settled in New Orleans, where he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Third Regiment of Louisiana’s Native Guard. Although Hardin was one of the few African Americans to become a commissioned officer in the Union army during the Civil War, his service lasted only a few months. To protest the increasingly racist policies enacted by the new commander of the Native Guard, and in solidarity with his fellow black troops, Hardin joined their mass resignation in February 1863. Later that same year, he returned to the West, settling in Denver, Colorado. There Hardin established a successful business as a barber and gained fame as a public speaker, becoming known by the locals as the “Colored Orator of Denver.” In 1872 he was named a delegate-at-large from the Colorado Territory to the Republican National Convention. In early 1873, he married a white milliner named Nellie Davidson and accepted a position with the U.S. Mint. Later in the year, however, Hardin’s first wife (and daughter) arrived in Denver and

Y8204-Douglass.indb 19

5/17/23 2:35 PM

20

DOUGLASS TO JOHN VAN VOORHIS, 30 AUGUST 1866

immediately charged him with bigamy. Hardin succeeded in having the charges dismissed, successfully arguing that since he had been a minor and she had been a slave at the time of the marriage, it was not legal in the first place. The scandal, however, damaged his reputation (he was fired from the mint), and by the end of 1873, Hardin and his wife had sold their holdings in Denver and moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he opened another successful barbershop. In 1879, Hardin was elected to the first of two terms in the Wyoming Territorial Legislature, becoming the only African American to serve in that body. However, in August 1882, following the failure of his marriage, and over a year before the end of his second term in the legislature, he sold his property in Cheyenne and moved to Park City, Utah. In failing health, Hardin committed suicide in Park City in 1889. 1870 U.S. Census, Territory of Colorado, Arapahoe County, 46; Gary Kimball, “William Jefferson Hardin: A Grand but Forgotten Park City African American,” Utah Historical Quarterly, 78:23–38 (Winter 2010); Lori Van Pelt, “William Jefferson Hardin: Wyoming’s First Black Legislator,” WyoHistory.org. 9. No record exists of Frederick Douglass ever visiting or speaking in Denver, Colorado. 10. Probably Dr. William F. McClelland (c. 1822–1901), one of the first physicians to settle in Denver. He was one of the organizers of both the Denver and Colorado medical societies. McClelland published research on the effect of climatic conditions found in mountainous regions on pulmonary illnesses. Philadelphia Medical Journal, 7:751 (20 April 1901); Wilbur Fiske Stone, History of Colorado, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1918), 1:767–70. 11. George Linnaeus Banks, “Onward” An Inaugural Address Delivered to the Directors & Members of the Institute, and to the Inhabitants of the Town, in the Victoria Room, Harrogate, on Tuesday Evening, November 14th, 1848, on the Occasion of Re-establishing the Harrogate Mechanics’ and Literary Institute (London, 1848).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JOHN VAN VOORHIS1 Rochester, [N.Y.] 30 Aug[ust] 1866.

Dear Sir: Sensible of the unexpected honor generously conferred upon me by the Republican Convention of this city, in appointing me one of its delegates to meet with the true Southern Unionists about to convene in Philadelphia,2 I beg to state that I cheerfully and gratefully accept the appointment, and will certainly attend that true National Convention, provided I am timely put in possession of the proper credentials for that purpose. If this Convention shall receive me, the event will certainly be somewhat significant of progress. If they reject me, they will only identify themselves with another Convention, which, from mean motives, turned its back upon its friends.3 Yours, very truly, FREDERICK DOUG LASS. PLSr: Rochester Union & Advertiser, 1 September 1866. 1, A New York Republican and political ally of Douglass, John Van Voorhis (1826–1905) practiced law in Elmira. After holding several minor offices, he was elected to Congress for two terms

Y8204-Douglass.indb 20

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO ANNA E. DICKINSON, 10 SEPTEMBER 1866

21

(1879–83). He then practiced law in Rochester, from which he was elected to a final term in Congress (1893–95). BDUSC (online). 2. One pro-Democrat Rochester newspaper reported that the city’s “Radicals” had chosen Douglass as a delegate to the Southern Loyalist Convention in Philadelphia because of his strong opposition to Andrew Johnson. The New York Tribune, however, praised his selection and recommended that the convention elect him one of its officers as “a fitting recognition of the claims of his people, not to speak of his own services.” Rochester Union and Advertiser, 25, 27 August, 1 September 1866; New York Tribune, 31 August 1866; Eric McKittrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1960), 394–420. 3. The Southern Loyalist Convention, held in Philadelphia on 3–7 September, was in reality an ad hoc political extravaganza carried out by those opposed to President Johnson’s reconstruction policies. Structured around separate conventions for southern and northern delegates, the event included a constellation of private and public enclaves, formal banquets, torchlight processions, and street rallies lasting late into the night. The presence of Douglass, the only African American delegate, at the convention, polarized the media, convention goers, and the population at large. While on his way to the convention, the train he was riding in derailed, and a mob attempted to board the train and attack Douglass. Many newspapers acknowledged Douglass’s popularity and lamented that northern representatives were not officially taking part in the convention, whereas others questioned Douglass’s right to attend it at all. New York Daily Tribune, 3 September 1866; New York Herald, 3 September 1866; Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 4 September 1866; New York Times, 5 September 1866.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ANNA E. DICKINSON1 Rochester, [N.Y.] 10 Sept[ember] 1866.

Dear Anna: My heart is full to overflowing. I am grateful to you and Dear Mr Tilton.2 To you belong the honor of rescuing the great Convention of the unreconstructed States3 from Moral and political destruction, and of whirling, by your your eloquence, its powerful ranks, into the great Army of Equal rights. God bless you both for it. You have no time to read long letters— and I have no time to write them. Remember me gratefully to your Mother and your witty Sister Susan.4 Yours to the end— FREDERICK DOUG LASS— ALS: Anna E. Dickinson Papers, box 7, DLC. 1. Philadelphia-born and Quaker-educated, Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842–1932) worked first as a copyist, then as a schoolteacher, and finally as an employee of the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. At the age of eighteen, she first appeared on lecture platforms as a feminist and antislavery crusader. After losing her job at the mint in December 1861 for accusing General George B. McClellan of treason, she became a full-time lecturer. Throughout the Civil War, Dickinson delivered Republican campaign speeches in New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, and on 16 January 1864 she spoke before a distinguished audience of statesmen and military officials, including President Lincoln, in the hall of the House of Representatives. At the end of the war she joined

Y8204-Douglass.indb 21

5/17/23 2:35 PM

22

DOUGLASS TO HENRY WILSON, 12 SEPTEMBER 1866

the lyceum lecture circuit, speaking on behalf of Radical Republican Reconstruction measures and women’s rights, and against Mormonism, large corporations, and craft unions. In the early 1870s, Dickinson’s popularity as an orator waned, and her attempts at comebacks, first as a playwright and actress in the late 1870s and early 1880s and then as a political orator during the 1888 election, proved unsuccessful. She spent the last forty years of her life in obscurity. Giraud Chester, Embattled Maiden: The Life of Anna Dickinson (New York, 1951); J. Matthew Gallman, America’s Joan of Arc: The Life of Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (New York, 2006), 34–35; National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 63 vols. (New York, 1898–1984), 3:109; DAB, 21:244–45; NAW, 1:475–76. 2. Theodore Tilton (1835–1907), journalist, poet, and public lecturer, was born in New York City, where he attended the Free Academy (today, City University of New York). As a reporter for the New York Observer he made the acquaintance of the Reverends Henry Ward Beecher and George B. Cheever, who were instrumental in his becoming, in 1856, the managing editor of the New York Independent, a popular religious journal. In the early 1860s Tilton tried to recruit Douglass as a regular contributor to the Independent, and the two became friends. Tilton succeeded Beecher as editor of the Independent in 1862 and continued in that position until 1871. After the Civil War, he also became a popular speaker on the topics of Radical Reconstruction and women’s rights. However, Tilton’s public career never recovered from the notoriety he attracted in 1874 as a result of an unsuccessful lawsuit that charged Beecher with committing adultery with his wife. Subsequent journalistic efforts failed, and Tilton left the United States for Europe in 1883. He eventually settled in Paris, where he wrote essays and poetry to support himself. When Douglass visited Paris in 1886, Tilton served as his guide. On Douglass’s death, Tilton published Sonnets to the Memory of Frederick Douglass (Paris, 1895). Douglass to Theodore Tilton, 22 November 1860, 2 December 1869, FD Papers, NRU; Douglass to Theodore Tilton, 2 September 1867, FD Papers, NHi; Theodore Tilton to Douglass, 30 April, 22 October 1862, 20 April 1869, 5 September 1882, General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 718–19, 745–47, reel 2, frames 464–66, and reel 3, frames 627–31, FD Papers, DLC; Chicago Open Court, 28 April 1887; New York Times, 26 May 1907; New York Independent, 10 December 1908; Robert Shaplen, Free Love and Heavenly Sinners: The Story of the Great Henry Ward Beecher Scandal (New York, 1954); Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 6 vols. (New York, 1888–89), 6:120; DAB, 2:129–35. 3. The Southern Loyalist Convention. 4. Mary Edmondson Dickinson (1806–95) was a devout Quaker who married the merchant John Dickinson after a thirteen-year courtship. When her husband died, in 1845, she never remarried, raising her five children, including the youngest, Anna, while running a school and boardinghouse. Anna supported her invalid mother and her elder sister Susan (1833–1915) financially in later years with proceeds from lecturing and stage performances. While the Dickinsons initially lived in relative luxury in a Philadelphia townhouse, they relocated in 1877 to a humbler residence in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, where family relations became strained. Susan had Anna briefly committed to an insane asylum in 1891, and the two never reconciled. Susan, who had been a teacher in her youth, subsequently supported herself as a journalist. Chester, Embattled Maiden, 12–14, 22–23, 108–09, 153–54, 203, 231, 292; Gallman, America’s Joan of Arc, 9–10, 149, 152, 181–84, 191–94, 196.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO HENRY WILSON1 Rochester, [N.Y.] 12 Sept[ember] 1866.

My dear Senator Wilson: Your letter just received, alleging that I did you injustice in my speech, (you do not say in which speech, for I made several in Philadelphia) 2 is a

Y8204-Douglass.indb 22

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO HENRY WILSON, 12 SEPTEMBER 1866

23

somewhat painful surprise to me. Nevertheless I am obliged to you for it, as it affords me an opportunity to remove an impression alike painful to you and unjust to me. Extravagant statements concerning men or things are not common to me. I would not consciously do wrong to an enemy, much less to a friend. As a man, a statesman and a philanthropist your reputation has been highly prized by me, and I would be the last to cast a doubt upon it, or to allow another to do it unreproved. As to my speech in Philadelphia, or speeches, I wish to say distinctly—and I do it without the least fear of contradiction, that you are wholly misinformed. In no speech made by me, either before the Southern Convention or the NewYork Delegation did I mention your name or by inference allude to it.3 Ignorant entirely as to whether you were exerting your influence to secure or avert an indorsement of equal suffrage by the Southern delegates, I neither commended nor criticized your course. It is quite true however; and frankness requires me to state it, that the rumor did reach me on the second day of the Convention that you counseled Southern men against any declaration on the subject of equal suffrage, and your speech, made before the New-York delegation,4 to which I was an attentive listener, being entirely silent on the subject,5 disposed me to think there might be some truth in the story, but neither the rumor alluded to, nor the omission on that occasion to commit yourself to equal suffrage was considered by me sufficient ground for publically classifying you with the enemies of that wise, just and necessary measure. Your great services rendered to the cause of Emancipation to say nothing of your personal kindness to me, would make me hesitate to arraign you before any audience without the most ample evidence, not only merely of a difference of opinion about measures, but of real moral defection. I am exceedingly glad to have your contradiction of the statement that you endeavored to present the assertion of equal suffrage by the Convention. Hoping that hereafter as heretofore your voice and vote will be found with right to all and wrong to none. FREDERICK DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 202–04L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts by a coalition of Free Soilers, Know-Nothings, and Democrats in 1855, Henry Wilson (1812–75) strongly advocated the abolition of slavery as a political goal. In 1862, Wilson introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and as a Radical Republican, he was one of the strongest voices denouncing the Black Codes enacted under Presidential Reconstruction. In 1865 he introduced a bill aimed at nullifying all laws and ordinances discriminating against freedmen and former slaves. Wilson replaced Schuyler Colfax as vice president for Ulysses S. Grant’s second term, but died in office. Ernest McKay, Henry Wilson: Practical Radical (London, 1971), 94–95, 197–98.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 23

5/17/23 2:35 PM

24

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM DAVIS TICHNOR AND JAMES FIELD, 22 OCTOBER 1866

2. At the Southern Loyalist Convention, prominent men such as Douglass spoke numerous times throughout the week, though most of these addresses went unrecorded in the press. Excerpts of at least three addresses by Douglass, however, were reported, including those presented before the New York delegation and the Northern Convention on 4 September and before the Southern Convention on 6 September. In each case, Douglass argued the need for Negro suffrage and made no specific allusions to Henry Wilson or any other contemporary politician. Philadelphia Daily Evening Telegraph, 5 September 1866; New York Herald, 5, 7 September 1866; The Southern Loyalists Convention (New York, 1866), 62; Richard H. Abbott, The Republican Party and the South, 1855–1877: The First Southern Strategy (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986), 66–71. 3. On 4 September 1866, Douglass addressed the New York delegation but made no mention of Henry Wilson. Philadelphia Daily Evening Telegraph, 5 September 1866. 4. Henry Wilson probably did address the New York delegation, but no record of it could be found in New York or Philadelphia newspapers. The one address by Wilson reported in the press was given at a street rally on the evening of Wednesday, 5 September, where he strongly castigated Andrew Johnson and his policies. Philadelphia Daily Evening Telegraph, 6 September 1866. 5. It is not clear when Henry Wilson embraced the position of universal black manhood suffrage, but by the spring of 1865 he was advocating the view in speeches and correspondence. That said, Wilson was famously the good-natured “practical radical” who always sought to build political unity and comity among men of diverse interests, avoiding controversy whenever possible. Throughout 1865 and 1866, Wilson commonly trumpeted black suffrage in New England, but he avoided the topic when giving speeches in the lower North, where the issue might have cost Republicans votes. It appears that Wilson, like many other prominent northern Republican politicians present at the Southern Loyalist Convention, did not consider it politically expedient to emphasize black suffrage with crucial congressional elections looming only a few weeks away. Once Republicans held veto-proof majorities in Congress, Wilson was at the forefront of all Radical-led initiatives, including passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted African American men the right to vote. McKay, Henry Wilson; John L. Myers, Henry Wilson and the Era of Reconstruction (Lanham, Md., 2009), 3, 5, 7, 48, 49, 53, 56, 110–12.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM DAVIS TICHNOR AND JAMES FIELD1 Rochester, N.Y. 22 Oct[ober 1866.]

Messrs Tichnor & Field: I fear you will think you have drawn an elephant this time. Still I hope you will find some use for my manuscript.2 If you cannot get it into the Atlantic, you may possibly find it convenient to print it in phamphlet. At any rate I must protest, after the labor it has cost me, against its being flung into a waste paper basket. You see that I send it in time and will easily infer from that fact that I am quite in earnest about appearing, once in my life, in your justly celebrated magazine. You need not send me your December number—for I shall of the first news boy I meet and will tell my friends to do likewise.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 24

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO JOHN C. UNDERWOOD, 14 NOVEMBER 1866

25

I have not given my article a title—Why would not this be a good one: An appeal to Congress For Impartial Suffrage. Please acknowledge the receipt of the enclosed—The manuscript is sent in two envelopes— Respectfully yours FREDERICK DOUG LASS— ALS: Norcross Manuscripts, MHiS. 1. The publishing firm Ticknor and Fields was begun in Boston by William Davis Ticknor and went through many name changes as partners came and departed. It operated under the name Ticknor and Fields from 1854 to 1868, with James Fields serving as managing partner alongside Ticknor. In addition to an impressive array of books by American and British authors, the fi rm published the North American Review and the Atlantic Monthly. In 1861, Ticknor and Fields purchased the literary magazine Atlantic Monthly, founded in 1857, and added more coverage of contemporary politics. After the deaths of both founders, the firm was absorbed by Houghton, Mifflin and Company in 1889. Theodora Mills, “Ticknor and Fields,” American Literary Publishing Houses, 1900–1980, ed. Peter Dzwonkoski (Detroit, Mich, 1986), 357; Ellery Sedgwick, A History of the Atlantic Monthly, 1857– 1909: Yankee Humanism at High Tide and Ebb (Amherst, Mass., 1994), 3, 75, 104; ANB (online). 2. Douglass published articles in the Atlantic Monthly magazine in December 1866 and January 1867. The second piece carries the title that Douglass suggested in this letter. Fields, the editor, likely divided Douglass’s original lengthy submission and published it in separate articles. The December 1866 article carried the title “Reconstruction.” Ticknor & Fields to Douglass, 11 November 1866, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 224R, FD Papers, DLC; Atlantic Monthly, 18:761–65 (December 1866), 19:112–17 (January 1867).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JOHN C. UNDERWOOD 1 Rochester, N.Y. 14 November 1866.

Hon: John C. Underwood: My Dear Sir: My good opinion of my abilities is strengthened by the fact that both yourself and Chief Justice Chase2 should think me a proper person to establish a press on the soil of Virginia in the interest of Equal Rights.3 I have thought much of the idea since you suggested it in Philadelphia; but I am not yet persuaded to attempt the enterprize. There are but twelve hours in a day for any of us and the most we can do is to work, and work with all our might while the day lasts and this I am doing already. For some time yet to come, the future of the colored race, will depend more upon the sentiments and opinions of the people of the North and West than then upon those of the South. The sceptre has passed from

Y8204-Douglass.indb 25

5/17/23 2:35 PM

26

DOUGLASS TO JOHN C. UNDERWOOD, 14 NOVEMBER 1866

Virginia and the law from between her feet. The loyal North and West must now and for some time to control not only the destiny of the negro but that of the nation. I now act upon the mind of the country from Maine to the Mississippi—and am probably doing as much to disseminate sound views of human rights in this way as I could were I to place Baltimore between me and the North and West. I should be more enclined to come to Alexandria but that I fear my doing so would be taken as a defiance by the old residents of the city. My long and well known radical abolitionism will render me an object of unusual hostility and will render me less likely to gain their attention than almost any other colored man. It is not my duty to court violence or martyrdom or to act in any manner which can be construed into a spirit of bravado. I have now an ample field in which I can work and work effectively, and with my present light I think it wise to remain where I am, at least until the public mind of the South shall attain a more healthy tone than at present. When the Liberty to utter my opinions in Virginia shall depend upon a more reliable man than our present Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy,4 it may be safe for me to attempt to establish a press in Virginia. Now, my dear sir, I leave this matter with you. I should on very many accounts be happy to be near you, and disposing of my time and talents in a manner to command your approval, and though I have stated my self some what strongly I do not by any means wish to close the door against any further facts and suggestions from you. I intend visiting Washington in the month of January5 and will then, if you please, have a further interview with you on this subject. With great and sincere Respect I am, Dear Sir, your most Obent. Servant FREDERICK DOUG LASS— ALS: John C. Underwood Papers, DLC. 1. John Curtis Underwood (1809–73) was an abolitionist with a national reputation gained from many years of residence and activity in Virginia. Born in Herkimer County, New York, and educated at Hamilton College, he conducted a successful legal practice despite losing local and congressional elections as a Liberty party candidate. Throughout the 1850s, Underwood promoted and participated in several schemes to establish “free labor colonies” across northern and western Virginia, which were designed to demonstrate the superiority of free-labor economic principles. Populated mostly by New Yorkers and European immigrants, all these settlements had failed by 1860 because of local opposition. More enduring were Underwood’s efforts to establish the Republican party in Virginia, which proved crucial to the creation of the state of West Virginia during the Civil War and the implementation of Reconstruction policies afterward. Appointed judge of the federal court for the Eastern

Y8204-Douglass.indb 26

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO JOHN C. UNDERWOOD, 14 NOVEMBER 1866

27

District of Virginia by Lincoln in 1863, Underwood led Republican efforts in the state to overthrow the entrenched power of the slaveholder class and establish equal legal rights for African Americans and poor whites, until his death in 1873. By the early twentieth century, Underwood had largely disappeared from public memory except in Virginia, where he was reviled as a Yankee carpetbagger. Stanley Harrold, The Abolitionists and the South, 1831–1861 (Lexington, Ky., 1995), 107–20; Richard Lowe, Republicans and Reconstruction in Virginia, 1856–70 (Charlottesville, Va., 1991), 34–35, 40, 48, 62–63, 129–41, 144–46, 185; Patricia Hicklin, “John C. Underwood and the Antislavery Movement in Virginia, 1847–60,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 73:156–68 (April 1965). 2. Salmon Portland Chase (1808–73) served as a U.S. senator, cabinet officer, and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He taught school briefly in Washington, D.C., before settling in Cincinnati and beginning a legal career. There he defended a number of fugitive slaves and acted as legal counsel for the abolitionist James G. Birney. Initially a Whig, Chase joined the Liberty party in 1840 and presided at the Buffalo Convention of the Free Soil party in 1848. A coalition of Free Soilers and Democrats in the Ohio legislature sent Chase to the U.S. Senate in 1849, where he remained until 1854. He strongly opposed the Compromise of 1850 and favored the restriction of slavery by federal law. In the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Chase joined the Republican party and won the governorship of Ohio in 1855. After returning to the U.S. Senate in 1861, he resigned to become Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of the treasury. Closely aligned with Radical Republicans in Congress, Chase became the focus of opposition to Lincoln within the Republican party. Although he resigned his cabinet post and challenged Lincoln for the 1864 presidential nomination, Lincoln appointed him chief justice of the Supreme Court. Throughout his political career, Chase was a strong proponent of black suffrage and the Radical program of Reconstruction. Chase sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1868, but attracted little support. Frederick J. Blue, Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics (Kent, Ohio, 1987); James Brewer Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings and the Tactics of Radical Politics (Cleveland, 1970), 116–18, 153–54; Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837–1860 (New York, 1976), 90; Reinhard H. Luthin, “Salmon P. Chase’s Political Career before the Civil War,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 29:517–40 (March 1943); DAB, 4:27–34. 3. It appears that this letter, located in the John C. Underwood Papers in the Library of Congress, is the only documentary evidence that Underwood asked Douglass to establish a newspaper in Alexandria, Virginia. Although Underwood and Douglass were prominent participants in the Southern Loyalist Convention held in early September 1866, many events and private conversations that occurred there were not reported in the press. Underwood, a key figure in founding the Republican party in antebellum Virginia, was particularly notable for establishing party newspapers in the western part of the state. In fact, Underwood attempted to launch such a party paper in Richmond, in eastern Virginia, during late 1865, but failed to attract enough subscribers or advertising revenue. Knowing the difficulties of starting and maintaining a Republican newspaper in the South, Underwood apparently hoped that a luminary like Douglass would attract enough funding from northern sources to make the venture successful. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase did not attend the Southern Loyalist Convention, so his suggestion to Douglass obviously occurred elsewhere. No diary entries or correspondence concerning this topic can be found in the published papers of Chase. It should be noted that Underwood and Chase were friends and political allies, so it is likely they conceived the idea together but broached it to Douglass separately. John Niven, ed., The Salmon P. Chase Papers, 5 vols. (Kent, Ohio, 1993–98); Lowe, Republicans and Reconstruction, 34, 41, 57, 66, 141, 209. 4. Andrew Johnson. 5. Nothing in Douglass’s correspondence or in reports by major New York or District of Columbia newspapers suggests that he visited Washington, D.C., in January 1867.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 27

5/17/23 2:35 PM

28

SUSAN B. ANTHONY TO DOUGLASS, 15 DECEMBER 1866

SUSAN B. ANTHONY1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Syracuse, [N.Y.] 15 Dec[ember] 1866.

Dear Douglass Not one line from you since you suddenly and mysteriously disappeared at Albany2—but to the work. Douglass, Stanton & Anthony were appointed a Committee to go before our N. Y. State Legislature, to urge that body not to adopt—or ratify the proposed Constitutional Amendment3—also to provide that all the people—the disenfranchised as well as the enfranchised shall vote for delegates to the Constitutional Convention— 4 Will you go the first week in January—if so, which department will you take;—we all think the appeals & arguments we may make there, may, if we can only make them the right grand utterances, be made the most powerful means of agitation of any possible thing we can do—to prepare this bomb shell—Mrs. Stanton, Parker Pillsbury5 and myself will spend the last week of this month in Rochester, where we hope you will be also—and sacredly devote the last of the old and the first of the new year to the work— What are your engagements, and will give yourself to strike this mighty blow upon our Legislature— You will see our resolution—the Lawyers say, there is no escape from it— Direct to Auburn—Care Martha B. Wright6 —Decide soon— Truly yours— S. B. A. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 227–29, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Best known for her partnership with Elizabeth Cady Stanton during the late nineteenthcentury woman suffrage campaign, Susan Brownell Anthony (1820–1906) first became an activist through the temperance and abolitionist movements in Canajoharie and Rochester, New York. She spent her childhood in eastern Massachusetts, where she attended Quaker schools and became a teacher. In 1845 she followed her family to western New York, where they had fled to escape financial difficulties and to join a radical branch of Hicksite Quakers that included the Posts, Hallowells, and Porters. Debates with Abigail Mott, whom she had met sometime before 1845, led Anthony to join the Unitarian Church shortly after her arrival in Rochester. Anthony continued to teach for another four years, but her involvement in the Daughters of Temperance and the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society soon occupied most of her time. By 1851 she also became interested in the women’s rights movement, and a mutual friend, Amelia Bloomer, introduced Anthony to Stanton. For the next half century, Anthony and Stanton tirelessly devoted themselves to the struggle for women’s access to education, professional careers, and politics. Between 1856 and 1866, however, Anthony continued to work for the end of slavery, serving as an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, organizing antislavery conventions in Rochester, and publishing a newspaper that endorsed suffrage for blacks and women. Ida Husted Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, 3 vols. (Indianapolis, Ind.,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 28

5/17/23 2:35 PM

SUSAN B. ANTHONY TO DOUGLASS, 15 DECEMBER 1866

29

1898–1908); Ann D. Gordon, ed., The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, 6 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1997–2013), 1:xxvi–xxviii; Blake McKelvey, “Susan B. Anthony,” RH, 7:1–24 (April 1945); ANB (online). 2. Douglass had attended the convention of the American Equal Rights Association in Albany’s Tweddle Hall on 20–21 November 1866. NASS, 3, 10, 17 November, 1 December 1866; New York Herald, 21, 22, November 1866. 3. The American Equal Rights Association organized the Albany convention “to consider the question of so amending the Constitution as to secure the right of suffrage to all citizens, without distinction of race or sex.” The meeting brought together leading abolitionists such as Parker Pillsbury, Charles Remond, and Douglass, as well as prominent suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony. Douglass participated actively in the convention, but was reported as departing early on its second day for a speaking tour of western cities. The press reported that a committee comprising Stanton, Douglass, and Anthony was to be created “to protest against the adoption by the Legislature of the pending Constitutional Amendment.” The Fourteenth Amendment, passed by Congress on 18 June 1866 and sent to the states for ratification, was opposed by a coalition of abolitionists because it failed to enfranchise women and black males. In December 1866, Douglass, along with other officers of the American Equal Rights Association, issued a memorial against ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment as written. The Republican-controlled New York legislature, however, ratified the amendment on 10 January 1867. New York Herald, 22 November 1866; NASS, 3 November, 1, 22 December 1866; Dudden, Fighting Chance, 60–90. 4. The New York State Constitution, adopted in 1846, required, beginning in 1866, a referendum by voters in order to call a new convention to revise or replace the existing constitution. The election held on 6 November 1866 resoundingly endorsed a new convention. The American Equal Rights Association organized chapters around the state and gathered petitions to the constitutional convention. Efforts to elect women and blacks to the convention, however, failed. Stanton made an address on 23 January 1867 to the judiciary committee of the New York State Constitutional Convention, and Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, and Stanton, for a second time, testified in June and July on behalf of universal adult suffrage. Douglass did not play an active role in this effort, since he was traveling the nation and delivering his “Sources of Danger to the Republic” lecture, attacking Andrew Johnson. Opposition from Horace Greeley, head of the convention’s suffrage committee, saw the rejection of woman suffrage by a lopsided 19–125 vote. A provision to end the property qualification of black male suffrage was included in the proposed constitution, but the legislature allowed this issue to be voted upon separately from the new constitution. In the end, both black suffrage and the new constitution were rejected by the voters in the 1869 New York state election. Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, 2:269–309; Phyllis F. Field, The Politics of Race in New York: The Struggle for Black Suffrage in the Civil War (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982), 169–77, 205; Dudden, Fighting Chance, 76, 101–03. 5. Parker Pillsbury (1809–98), an outspoken abolitionist orator, editor, and author, proved more demanding than Garrison himself regarding the need to rid abolitionism of tendencies toward compromise and expediency. An interest in theology and temperance led this onetime farmer to study at New Hampshire’s Gilmanton Theological Seminary. During an additional year of study at Andover, Pillsbury made the acquaintance of John A. Collins, who exposed him to the abolitionist movement. By 1840, Pillsbury’s sharp attacks on churches’ complicity with slavery had led to the revocation of his license to preach. For the next two decades, he lectured for the New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and American Anti-Slavery societies. He edited the Concord (N.H.) Herald of Freedom during the late 1840s and the National Anti-Slavery Standard in 1866. During the Civil War, Pillsbury criticized Union war aims, especially before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1865 he broke with Garrison over the necessity for continued activity by the American Anti-Slavery Society. After the war, Pillsbury became active in the woman suffrage movement and the Free Religious Association. Stacey M. Robertson, Parker Pillsbury: Radical Abolitionist, Male Feminist (Ithaca, N.Y.,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 29

5/17/23 2:35 PM

30

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON TO DOUGLASS, 8 JANUARY 1867

2000); Carleton Mabee, Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 through the Civil War (London, 1970), 112, 221–23, 329; McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 59–60, 100–102, 305–07; Louis Filler, “Parker Pillsbury: An Anti-Slavery Apostle,” New England Quarterly, 19:315–37 (September 1946); DAB, 14:608–09. 6. Martha Coffin Pelham Wright (1806–75), women’s rights advocate, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Thomas and Anna (Folger) Coffin. Following her father’s death in 1815, she was educated in Quaker boarding schools in Philadelphia. In 1824 she married Peter Pelham, an army captain, and the couple moved to Florida. Two years later, she moved back to Philadelphia, widowed with an infant daughter. In 1829 she married a lawyer named David Wright. Over the next several years, she devoted her time and energy to giving birth and raising her seven children. In July 1848, Wright’s better-known abolitionist sister, Lucretia Coffin Mott, was visiting at her Auburn, New York, home when the two were invited to tea at a local Quaker woman’s home. The abolitionist Elizabeth Cady Stanton also attended the gathering, and this particular group of women essentially started the women’s rights movement. The famous Seneca Falls Convention, led by these women, was held six days after this initial meeting; at the time, Wright was forty-one years old and six months pregnant with her last child. During the 1850s, Wright devoted herself to women’s rights and abolitionism. Following the Civil War, she opposed any constitutional amendment that would support black male suffrage while keeping this right from women. In 1869, she joined Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in forming the National Woman Suffrage Association, which opposed the Fifteenth Amendment. In 1874 she served as the association’s president. She died the following year. Sherry H. Penney and James D. Livingston, A Very Dangerous Woman: Martha Wright and Women’s Rights (Amherst, Mass., 2004); ANB (online).

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS [New York, N.Y.] 8 Jan[uary] 1867.

464. West 34th. Dear Douglass, Do you intend to go with me before the Legislature the middle of this month[?] I should like to know as soon as possible[.] If we go together of course I should make a shorter speech & cover less ground than if I go alone, & I should like to have some talk with you about the whole matter. I was so sorry not to see you when in the city. I hope if it is possible you will be in Albany, for both our claims should be set off in the strongest way & you can attack the property qualification with all the force of your sarcasm far better than I could, who am a long stride behind even that. Please answer immediately & do say you will be there. Have you seen in the Daily Globe all the discussion on the District of Colombia bill!1 grand! Good night your friend E CADY STANTON

P.S. I have just received a letter from Louise De Mortie2 she is to be here this week

Y8204-Douglass.indb 30

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO HORATIO C. NEWCOMB, 18 JANUARY 1867

31

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 213–15, FD Papers, DLC. Other text in Gordon, Selected Papers of Stanton and Anthony, 2:11–13. 1. Stanton alludes to newspaper reports in the Washington Daily Globe of the final congressional deliberation over the bill to enfranchise residents of the District of Columbia. Unfortunately, the January 1867 copies of the Globe have not survived. The bill was passed in December 1866, but President Johnson vetoed it on 5 January 1867. The Senate and House overrode that veto on 7 and 8 January 1867, respectively. Robert Harrison, Washington during Civil War and Reconstruction: Race and Radicalism (Cambridge, Eng., 2011), 120–33. 2. Born to free black parents in Norfolk, Virginia, Louise De Mortie (c. 1833–67) moved to Boston in 1853, where she received an education. She married the African American abolitionist John Oliver and joined the antislavery ranks as a lecturer and singer. After divorcing Oliver, De Mortie moved to New Orleans in 1863, where she established an orphanage for African American children. She became the manager of the city’s Colored Orphan Home and traveled in the North periodically to raise funds for its operation. Jessie Carney Smith, ed., Notable Black American Women, 3 vols. (1991–2002), 2:173–76; Gordon, Selected Papers of Stanton and Anthony, 2:345.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO HORATIO C. NEWCOMB1 Ypsilanti, Mich. 18 January 1867.

Mr. Editor: Speaking of Frederick Douglass, in your paper of the 16th, you say: “He forced an association of whites and blacks, to which neither had any inclination.”2 Pardon me; is this a fair statement? Is not the opposite of this the simple truth? Was not force the very thing to which I objected? Did I do anything more than ask the committee to allow “whites and blacks” to follow their own inclinations? Were there not more colored people in the gallery at my second lecture than at my first? Does not the fact that such was the case prove that “blacks and whites” may be trusted to manage such matters without the intervention of force either way? I object to your reflections upon my part in this matter on another ground. You represent me as demanding social equality for the negro. I must also ask is this quite fair? What is social equality? Does it consist of being in the same hall, and on the same floor, listening to the same lecture? Do you regard every man as socially equal with you because you are on the same floor at church, market, hall or elsewhere? Do not character, wealth and intelligence control the matter of social relations? When we meet in a public hall do not we meet as citizens, as the public, rich and poor, noble and ignoble, standing upon a common footing? And is not this well? But is it not quite another thing to force me into association with all I meet as equal citizens in street or hall? My parlor, and my table, and my hand are my own, and I can choose my own friends and associates, and

Y8204-Douglass.indb 31

5/17/23 2:35 PM

32

PERRY DOWNS TO DOUGLASS, 21 FEBRUARY 1867

you have the same right; but when you go into a public hall you venture beyond your parlor limits, and your right ends where that of another man begins. I am obliged to your criticisms of my style, and hope to profit by them. Respectfully yours, FREDERICK DOUG LASS. PLSr: Indianapolis Daily Journal, 23 January 1867. 1. The Indianapolis Daily Journal was a periodical founded by 1825 by John Douglas. The paper changed hands several times over the years, and in the winter of 1866 it was sold to John’s sons, Samuel and James, along with Alexander Connor. During this period, Horatio C. Newcomb (1821– 82) was editor of the Journal. Newcomb, a former Republican mayor of Indianapolis and representative in the Indiana General Assembly, later served as a state senator, judge, and commissioner of the Indiana Supreme Court. William R. Holloway, Indianapolis: A Historical and Statistical Sketch of the Railroad City (Indianapolis, Ind., 1870); Indiana Legislator Database (online). 2. The lecture was one of two that Douglas gave on 14 and 15 January 1867 to an integrated audience of members of the local Young Men’s Christian Association at Morrison’s Opera Hall. These speeches, “Sources of Danger to the Republic” and “An Appeal for Impartial Suffrage,” were delivered repeatedly and eventually published. The Daily Journal complained in an editorial about Douglass’s insistence that his audience be integrated. Indianapolis Daily Journal, 8, 9, 15, 16 January 1867.

PERRY DOWNS1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Millican,2 Brazos Co., Texas. 21 February 1867.

Fred Douglass Rochester N. York Perry Downs knowing that he is a brother of yours endeavoring to inform you where I am at. I am also a son of Harriet Baileys,3 Grandson of Elisabeth & Isaac Bailey, Talbort Co. Maryland, Lea(s’e) mill Hill near Hilsborough4 & to show you, farther we all used to belong to R.5 & A. Emteney6 who was a clerk for Col. Lloyd.7 I want to see a letter which you wrote to sister Alice8 since that John P. Emteney9 has sold my wife10 and for that reason I am in that State. I have found my wife and am still living with her. I am doing pretty well here and get treated pretty well also & I am getting $15[.]00 gold wages a month. I have a great desire to see you if it is possible to make arrangements to bring me to you. I am 55 years of age now. Do you recollect the time I brought uncle Harry Downs11 which was the last time I seen you. I remain your truly Brother PERRY DOWNS.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 32

5/17/23 2:35 PM

PERRY DOWNS TO DOUGLASS, 21 FEBRUARY 1867

33

ALS: FD Collection, DHU-MS 1. Perry [Bailey] Downs (1813–80), Frederick Douglass’s brother and the oldest of seven children born to Harriet Bailey, was the slave of Aaron Anthony. The reason for his adoption of the surname Downs is unknown, but there were several men named Downs living near his family both before and after his birth: a free black man named Daniel Downs, who rented property from Aaron Anthony between 1810 and 1816, as well as Charles and Ben Downs (also free black men), and a white man named Henry Downs. So it is possible that one of them may have inspired its use. In 1826, Aaron Anthony died, and his oldest son, Andrew Skinner Anthony, inherited Downs. The younger Anthony died in 1833, and in the redistribution of his slaves that followed, Downs, his and Douglass’s sisters Kitty and Arianna, and their grandmother Betsey Bailey were among the eight slaves awarded to his three year-old son, John Planner Anthony, and placed in the care of his guardian, Thomas C. Martin. Five other slaves came under the control of White Barwick of Caroline County after he married Andrew Skinner Anthony’s widow in 1835. At some point between 1850 and the outbreak of the Civil War, John Planner Anthony sold Down’s wife, Maria, to a slave owner in Brazos County, Texas. Subsequently, Downs followed his wife to Texas, where a postemancipation labor shortage allowed him to earn “fifteen dollars gold wages a month.” In 1867, Downs, his wife, and their four children traveled to Rochester to reunite with Douglass. Elated by this reunion, Douglass built a cottage for them on his Rochester estate, where the family stayed for two years. In 1869, Downs and his wife returned to Maryland’s Eastern Shore. On a visit to Talbot County, Maryland, in 1878, Douglass found the widowed Downs in poor health and brought him, along with several other relatives, to Cedar Hill, where he died in 1880. Douglass to J. J. Spellman, 11 July 1867, reprinted in the New York Independent, 25 July 1867; Douglass to Theodore Tilton, 2 September 1867, FD Papers, NHi; Anna Downs to Douglass, 5 October 1869, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 497–99, FD Papers, DLC; Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58–59, MdTCH; 1850 U.S. Census, Slave Schedule, Maryland, Talbot County, 1, 4; 1860 U.S. Census, Slave Schedule, Maryland, Talbot County, 557; 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 143; Leigh Fought, Women in the World of Frederick Douglass (New York, 2017), 24; Dickson J. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass: The Maryland Years (Baltimore, 1985), 175–77, 206, 225; “Maryland Marriages, 1666-1970,” FamilySearch.org. 2. In 1824, Robert Millican and his sons founded the first permanent settlement in Brazos County, Texas, and named it Millican. Initially, the settlement consisted of little more than members of the extended Millican family, but by 1849 the town’s population had grown enough to warrant the establishment of a stagecoach depot, restaurant, post office, and hotel. Around 1860, the town became the northernmost stop on the Houston and Central Railroad and experienced both an economic and a population boom. When the Civil War began there were 118 slave owners in Brazos County and slightly over 1,000 enslaved men, women, and children. During the war, Camp Speight, which was located near Millican, served as a training and recruitment center for Confederate soldiers. In June 1865, Union troops were stationed at the camp in order to maintain the peace. In 1867, the completion of the railroad, combined with a deadly outbreak of yellow fever, which killed hundreds of local residents, led to a precipitous decline in Millican’s regional economic significance. Increasing racial tensions erupted into open warfare during the summer of 1868 following a confrontation between local members of the Ku Klux Klan and heavily armed black residents on the streets of Millican. Federal troops were eventually able to restore order, but only after at least 5 men were killed (some accounts put the death toll at 100) and dozens more injured. But the restoration of peace did not slow Millican’s decline, and by the end of the decade it was once again little more than a village. Bob Alexander, Bad Company and Burnt Powder: Justice and Injustice in the Old Southwest (Denton, Tex., 2014), 57–61; Robert C. Borden, Historic Brazos County: An Illustrated History (San Antonio, Tex., 2005), 5–10. 3. Douglass and Downs’s mother was the Maryland slave Harriet Bailey (1792–1825). She died on the Holme Hill Farm after a long illness in late 1825 or early 1826. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 64.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 33

5/17/23 2:35 PM

34

PERRY DOWNS TO DOUGLASS, 21 FEBRUARY 1867

4. Douglass’s grandmother Betsy Bailey raised him on a farm owned by their master, Aaron Anthony, along the banks of Tuckahoe Creek near Hillsborough, Talbot County, Maryland. Tuckahoe Creek is a tributary of the Choptank River, which forms part of the eastern boundary of Talbot County. “Tuckahoe” is an Algonquin term for “root” or “mushroom.” Dickson J. Preston and Norman Harrington, Talbot County: A History (Centreville, Md., 1983), 140, 191, 256; Paul Wilstach, Tidewater Maryland (Indianapolis, Ind., 1931), 104–05; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 3, 9–10. 5. Richard Lee Anthony (1800–28), the second eldest of three children born to Aaron and Ann Catherine Skinner Anthony, trained as a blacksmith for five years before inheriting land, money, and slaves after his father’s death in November 1826. He remained unmarried and childless, and so his property, including members of Douglass’s family, was redistributed among the surviving heirs of Aaron Anthony after his death in May 1828. Harriet L. Anthony, annotated copy of Bondage and Freedom, folders 93, 173–74, Dodge Collection, MdAA; Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58–59, MdTCH; Fought, Women, 319n, 322n; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 27–29, 52, 91, 218. 6. Possibly a reference to Aaron Anthony, but more likely to Andrew Skinner Anthony (1797– 1833), the eldest child of Aaron and Ann Catherine Skinner Anthony. As a young man, he was apprenticed to James Neall, a cabinetmaker, in Easton, Maryland. After completing his apprenticeship, Anthony moved to Indiana, where he married Ann Wingate, of Martin County, in 1823. He and his bride returned to Talbot County shortly thereafter. In 1826, upon the death of Aaron Anthony, Andrew inherited a third of his estate, including eight slaves. He increased his estate and owned twenty slaves by 1830, but suffered from alcoholism and operated a tavern in his final years. In his Narrative, Douglass offers the following assessment of Anthony’s character: “He was known to us all as being a most cruel wretch.—a common drunkard, who had, by his reckless mismanagement and profligate dissipation, already wasted a large portion of his father’s property.” Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 1:39; John Manross to Douglass, 14 January 1856, General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 654–56, FD Papers, DLC; Harriet L. Anthony, annotated copy of Bondage and Freedom, folders 93, 176, Dodge Collection, MdAA; 1830 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 51; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 26, 29, 218, 224. 7. The patriarch of the wealthy Lloyd family was Edward Lloyd V (1779–1834), of Wye house, one of Maryland’s largest landowners and slaveholders. He was also the most successful wheat grower and cattle raiser in the state. As a charter member of the Maryland Agricultural Society, a founder of at least two banks, and a speculator in coal lands, he became the wealthiest of a long line of Lloyds that reached back to colonial Maryland. In slaves alone, his huge holdings increased from 420 in 1810 to 545 in 1830. An eager student of politics as an adolescent and a frequent auditor of political debate at the Annapolis State House, Edward V became a Republican delegate to the state legislature as soon as he reached the age of majority in 1800. The following year, he was active in securing passage of a bill removing all restrictions to white male suffrage. From 1806 to 1808 he was a U.S. congressman, voting in 1807 against a bill to end the African slave trade. For the next two years he was governor of Maryland, and from 1811 to 1816 he returned to the state legislature. In 1819 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, from which he resigned in 1826 to return to the Maryland senate, where he presided until 1831. Edward V married Sally Scott Murray on 30 November 1797 and had six children with her. 1810 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 342; Oswald Tilghman, History of Talbot County, Maryland, 1661–1861, 2 vols. (Baltimore, 1915), 1:184–210; Hulbert Footner, Rivers of the Eastern Shore: Seventeen Maryland Rivers (Cambridge, Md., 1944), 283–90; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 26, 30, 48–54, 57–58, 74, 82; BDUSC (online). 8. “Sister Alice” cannot be identified; no one by that name is currently among the known members of Douglass’s extended family. But “Alice” may have been a transcription error, and Downs may have been referring to one of his and Douglass’s known sisters, Sarah, Eliza, Kitty, or Arianna. Or Alice may have been a “fictive” relative, known to the family as a sister, but not necessarily a biological relative. Leigh Fought, “Brother Perry in Texas,” 26 April 2012, leighfought.blogspot.com.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 34

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 31 MARCH 1867

35

9. John Planner Anthony (1830–71) was the only child of Andrew Skinner Anthony and his wife, Ann Wingate. In 1835, his father’s estate was divided between Anthony and his mother, with five slaves being given to his mother’s new husband, White Barwick, and eight, including Douglass’s brother Perry, their sisters Kitty and Arianna, and their grandmother Betsey Bailey, being placed in the hands of John’s guardian, Thomas C. Martin. In 1850, John’s occupation was listed as sailor in the census, and he had apparently been allowed direct ownership of a single seven-year-old boy. In 1855, he married Sarah Tharp Maston, of Delaware, with whom he had at least six children, including Harriet Lucretia Anthony, who owned and annotated a copy of Douglass’s second autobiography. In 1860, census records indicated that John (now identified as a farmer) had gained full control of his father’s estate and owned twenty-three slaves as well as real estate valued at $8,000. In the 1870 census, however, Anthony’s real estate was worth only half as much, and the estimated value of his personal property had fallen to just $500. He died the following year. 1850 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 155; 1850 U.S. Census, Slave Schedule, Maryland, Talbot County, 1, 4; 1860 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 31; 1860 U.S. Census, Slave Schedule, Maryland, Talbot County, 557; 1870 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 41; Fought, Women, 309, 322n; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 175, 190, 224, 225; “Delaware Marriages, 1806–1933,” Ancestry.com; Find a Grave (online). 10. Presumably Downs is referring to his wife, Maria, who accompanied him when he moved to Rochester, at his brother’s request, in 1867. Maria Downs died sometime between 1869, when she, her husband, and at least some of their children returned to Talbot County, Maryland, and 1878, when her widower (Perry Downs) was invited by Douglass to make his home at Cedar Hill. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 176–77; Fought, Women, 206–07, 224. 11. Possibly a reference to Douglass and Downs’s uncle Henry, who was their grandmother Betsey Bailey’s youngest son. Fought, Women, 24.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH1 Rochester, [N.Y.] 31 Mar[ch] 1867.

My Dear Sir: I am just home from a three months tour in the west and am to leave again on Monday to be absent for five or six weeks longer when I shall, if all be well, return home for a little quiet.2 You do not know how much your kind word about my St Louis Speech3 did for me. I have just folded it in a letter to my friend Julia4 and sent it to England—I am sure it will give her pleasure to read it. In passing through Chicago last week—I find I am to be summoned as a witness by the Tribune folks5—to tell all I know of the John Brown6 Affair—They are evidently a good deal disturbed—and are moving in all directions for defense. I infer this from talking with one of the Editors. I fear, however, that you will not get justice in Chicago—They will try to make out that the words employed are not libellous—and in Chicago they may succeed in getting such a decision—but they are evidently uneasy, I think even now that they would be willing to make an ample

Y8204-Douglass.indb 35

5/17/23 2:35 PM

36

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 31 MARCH 1867

retractation. Is this too late?—The plain inference from their words is an accusation of the most damaging kind; and they ought to retract or suffer— I am, dear friend, Always yours truly FREDERICK DOUG LASS

[P.S.] The Tribune folks have been to Boston: To Mayor Sternes:7 Mr Garrison8—and others—We shall all look funny appearing in Court against Gerrit Smith! ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. 1. Gerrit Smith (1797–1874), a New York businessman and land speculator, became best known for his philanthropic work for such reform causes as temperance and abolition. Between 1828 and 1835, he donated large sums of money to the American Colonization Society, but abandoned that movement in 1835 when his sympathies shifted to the immediate abolitionists. In the 1840s, he gave approximately 140,000 acres of land in upstate New York to three thousand black settlers, thus qualifying them to vote. Smith was a founder and frequent candidate of the Liberty party, running for governor of New York on that ticket in 1840 and winning a seat in Congress in 1852. When the Free Soil merger with moderate antislavery Democrats and Whigs lured away many Liberty party supporters, Smith helped bankroll that organization until 1860. Smith befriended Douglass when the latter moved to Rochester, and Smith frequently helped finance Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Like Douglass, Smith supported John Brown, but psychological stress caused by the failure at Harpers Ferry brought on the first of a series of bipolar episodes that greatly reduced his subsequent reform activities. Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer (1939; New York, 1972); Gerald Sorin, The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn., 1971), 269–87; Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), 170–80; John R. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, “The ‘Black Dream’ of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist,” Syracuse University Library Associates Courier, 20:61–76 (Fall 1985); NCAB, 2:322–23; DAB, 17:270–71. 2. During the winter lyceum season of 1866–67, Douglass combined his criticism of President Andrew Johnson and his views on the constitutional powers granted to presidents in a lecture entitled “Sources of Danger to the Republic,” which he apparently first delivered in Brooklyn, New York, on 17 December 1866. He then took his message to audiences in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Douglass lectured to generally receptive listeners as far west as Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota before returning home to Rochester in March 1867. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:1xxii–xxiii, 149, 593–94. 3. On the evening of 7 February 1867, Douglass delivered “Sources of Danger to the Republic” before an overflow audience at Turner’s Hall in St. Louis, Missouri. According to the Daily Missouri Democrat, the audience’s frequent applause and cheering proved that the speaker had met “the highest expectations of his numerous warm friends in St. Louis.” St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, 8, 11 February 1867. 4. Julia Griffiths (1812–95) first met Douglass during the latter half of 1846, when he lectured in her hometown of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Her father had been a friend of William Wilberforce, who had advocated the abolition of slavery in England, and she was active in the British antislavery movement. Charmed by the American, Griffiths followed Douglass back to the United States with her younger sister Eliza in 1848. In 1850, Eliza married John Dick, one of Douglass’s printers for the North Star, and the couple moved to Toronto. Julia became a constant companion and partner

Y8204-Douglass.indb 36

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 31 MARCH 1867

37

to Douglass and a leading antislavery organizer in Rochester for the next five years. She contributed to the North Star as a copy editor and a journalist, also saving the paper from financial ruin by organizing its books and by aggressively pursuing subscribers and donations. She helped found the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, acting as its secretary, and organized the Rochester AntiSlavery Fair. Initially, she lived with the Douglass family, which led to tension in the household and to unsubstantiated rumors that Douglass and Griffiths shared more than a business relationship. In 1853, the vicious attacks on her in abolitionist newspapers drove her from the Douglass home and finally forced her in 1855 to return to England, ostensibly to raise funds for the North Star. In 1859, she married a Methodist minister from Halifax, Henry O. Crofts (?–1880), who acted as an agent for Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Through the Civil War, she continued to organize and revitalize women’s antislavery societies and lecture against slavery. After the war and her husband’s death, she ran a boarding school and worked as a governess. Her friendship with Douglass continued in frequent correspondence, and she welcomed him and his second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass, when they visited England in 1886. Maria Diedrich, Love across Color Lines: Ottilie Assing and Frederick Douglass (New York, 1999), 179–84; Waldo E. Martin, Jr., The Mind of Frederick Douglass (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1984), 40–41; Erwin Palmer, “A Partnership in the Abolition Movement,” University of Rochester Library Bulletin, 26:1–17 (Autumn/Winter 1970–71). 5. In June 1865, Gerrit Smith joined Horace Greeley and other northerners in suggesting leniency for the captured Confederate president, Jefferson Davis. This caused a backlash against Smith in some of the Republican press, none stronger than that coming from the Chicago Tribune’s editor, Horace White. The Tribune called Smith “a feeble intellect” and repeated the account of his treatment for insanity following the Harpers Ferry raid. Subsequent stories implied that Smith had feigned insanity in order to avoid arrest and prosecution for his support of John Brown. Smith demanded an apology from the Tribune for its “numerous gross, and cruel falsehoods.” When White refused, Smith filed suit in December 1865 for $50,000 in damages. The lawsuit dragged on for over a year and brought the issue of Smith’s connection with John Brown back to public attention, with the Tribune publishing new evidence that Smith had been a knowing accomplice of Brown’s. The Tribune settled the suit in July 1867 with the public admission that Smith had been genuinely insane in the immediate aftermath of the raid. Smith used the opportunity to issue a blanket denial of his having advance knowledge of Brown’s violent intentions. This caused Smith’s biographer Octavius B. Frothingham to charge that Smith was thereby denying his attendance at several key planning meetings for the Harpers Ferry raid. Smith’s family later forced a new edition of that biography to be published, omitting Frothingham’s evidence of Smith’s complicity. Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith: A Biography (New York, 1878), 238–66; Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 450–54. 6. Born in Torrington, Connecticut, John Brown (1790–1859) grew up in Hudson, Ohio. After receiving a rudimentary education, he attempted but failed at earning a living as a tanner, a wool dealer, and a farmer. A longtime supporter of emancipation, Brown became more militant in his antislavery activities after passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. In 1855, Brown followed four of his sons to Kansas, where he became a leader of the armed opposition to the admission of the territory as a slave state. His participation in the massacre of proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek in May 1856 made him a nationally known figure. In 1857, Brown secretly began to recruit men and raise funds for a plan to establish a base in the southern Appalachian Mountains from which they could raid plantations and free slaves. Brown’s plotting culminated in the unsuccessful attack by a small band on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859. Captured and tried for treason under Virginia law, he was executed on 2 December 1859; he immediately became a martyr to many northerners. Stephen Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown, 2d. ed. (New York, 1984); Richard O. Boyer, The Legend of John Brown: A Biography and a History (New York, 1973); ACAB, 1:404–07; NCAB, 2:307–08; DAB, 3:131–34. 7. A leading financial supporter of John Brown, George Luther Stearns (1809–67) was the son of a teacher from Medford, Massachusetts. Stearns earned progressively larger fortunes as a ship

Y8204-Douglass.indb 37

5/17/23 2:35 PM

38

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 31 MARCH 1867

chandler, a linseed oil processor, and a lead pipe manufacturer. He joined the antislavery movement in the early 1840s as a Liberty party activist and later as an important organizer of the Massachusetts Free Soil and Republican parties. While chairman of a committee to raise funds to arm freestate settlers in the Kansas Territory, Stearns met John Brown and became a convert to his plan for inciting a slave insurrection. Stearns fled to Canada after Harpers Ferry but soon returned to the United States. He testified before congressional investigators that he had had no advance knowledge of Brown’s plans and now condemned the attack. During the Civil War, Massachusetts governor John A. Andrew engaged Stearns to enlist troops for the first black regiment raised in the North, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry. Establishing recruiting offices across the North and Canada and hiring agents, including Frederick Douglass, Stearns quickly enlisted enough blacks to fill two regiments for Massachusetts. Impressed by his success, the federal government commissioned Stearns a major and placed him in charge of recruiting blacks for federal army units. By January 1864, Stearns had brought substantial order to these efforts, but then resigned, in part, to protest the unequal pay and treatment of black soldiers. He remained a friend of equal rights for blacks, and in the 1860s he helped found such periodicals as the Nation and the Right Way in order to champion that cause. Frank Preston Stearns, The Life and Public Services of George Luther Stearns (Philadelphia, 1907); Dudley Taylor Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861–1865 (New York, 1956), 235–38, 242–43; Jeffery Rossbach, Ambivalent Conspirators: John Brown, the Secret Six, and a Theory of Slave Violence (Philadelphia, 1982), 56–63, 83–85, 221–23, 239–40, 254–57. 8. William Lloyd Garrison (1805–79) was so closely identified with the abolitionist movement in the United States that his name became almost synonymous with the cause. He began his career as an apprentice printer on the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald at the age of thirteen. Garrison became editor of the Newburyport Free Press in 1826, but the paper closed within a year. He was then associated with a series of periodicals in Boston that advocated reforms such as temperance and sabbatarianism. After Benjamin Lundy introduced him to the antislavery cause, the two edited the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland, from 1829 to 1830, when a libel suit against them forced the paper to close and landed Garrison in jail. After his release, he courted wealthy merchants in New York and Boston in order to finance the Liberator (1831–65), a weekly Boston-based journal in which he advocated an immediate end to slavery. Garrison’s brand of abolition condemned any institution that tolerated the existence of slavery, including churches, political parties, and even the United States itself, along with any scheme aimed at removing black people from the United States. Instead, Garrison hoped to raise the public’s awareness that slavery was morally wrong, thereby forcing its end in an almost millennial moment of emancipation. His approach appealed to both white and black antislavery advocates, but earned him many enemies among those only moderately opposed to slavery and slaveholders alike. Seeing the need for greater action and organization beyond the pages of the Liberator, Garrison joined with other abolitionists to form the New England AntiSlavery Society in 1831. Two years later, he helped form the larger American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 he established ties with English abolitionists after a trip to Great Britain, and he later brought the noted and notorious speaker George Thompson to the United States for a tour. Ever the radical, Garrison expanded his interests to include women’s rights after female delegates were excluded from the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. The issue of women’s participation in the antislavery movement and Garrison’s absolute refusal to turn to politics to end slavery caused a division in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Those who opposed women acting as speakers and who hoped to use politics to advance abolition formed the “New Organization.” Garrison’s ideas were so closely associated with the “Old Organization” that the group became known more frequently as the “Garrisonians.” With the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Garrison believed that he had accomplished his life’s work and that of the antislavery movement. He then resigned from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and closed the Liberator. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (New York, 1885-89); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and

Y8204-Douglass.indb 38

5/17/23 2:35 PM

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO DOUGLASS, 11 APRIL 1867

39

the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998); James Brewer Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1992); John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1963); DAB, 7:168–72.

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Rochester, [N.Y.] 2 11 April 1867.3

My Dear Father I presume you looked for a letter from me at Pittsburg and again at Zanesville.4 I should have written to you at Pittsburg but I desired to tell you all I could about Nathan’s5 hack. He took out his license Monday and has been on the stand every day. His hack is the finest that can be found on either stand and he has a handsome span of greys: the whole establishment is very nice and grand and attracts much attention. I had the first ride in the hack last saturday when Nathan brought it home. N. has some trouble among the hackmen they insult him and threaten his hack. A policeman came up to him on the stand by the Osburn house6 and told him that he had better go to the other stand in front of the Court house7 that there were too many hacks already on the Osburn house stand. Nathan refused as the Mayor8 told him he could stand at any place where hacks were allowed. The Policeman said I shall have to move it for you then, N. says there they are move them, he walked off. Another policeman came to him and said Mr Sprague if there is any trouble from any quarter let it be known and all will be righted. Nathan does not know either one of them but the last one knew Nathan and his name too. The first day he made three dollars and every day besides a dollar. The weather is now cold and damp. He bought the hack of Mr Cunningham9 for $640, paying $200 down and the rest in $40 instalments monthly with eighteen months to pay it in and six months out of the eighteen he is not to pay the installment, that is to allow him time. Nathan said Mr Cunningham asked him many questions and after finding out who he was sold him the hack on such easy terms. Mr C. told him he knew you. Father I cannot thank you too much for your kindness to Nathan and myself, and I can assure you Nathan is grateful and proud of your good opinion of him. I ran up to the house yesterday to see mother10 she was not well at all. I found her lying down she complained of dizziness in the head I gave her some pills and tomorrow I am going up again. Annie11 and Harriet12 are well. Annie is full of fun and getting quite noisy. She walked out

Y8204-Douglass.indb 39

5/17/23 2:35 PM

40

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO DOUGLASS, 11 APRIL 1867

with me a few days ago down to Nagles13 which was quite a little step for her. Nathan and I went to hear Anna E. Dickinson a week ago Tuesday. Subject Something to Do: It was a Womans’ Rights lecture14 and failed to make the same impression that some of her former efforts have done, and there she had it committed to memory and spoke too fast and indistinctly so that much was lost which may be one reason that the audience failed to be as appreciative as it might have been. I have not seen a paper containing a notice of the lecture yet. I was up to Miss Porters15 last saturday and got some things that I left there some time ago. She wished me to tell you she felt quite slighted at your not coming to see and said she had not scratched you off her books but presumed you had scratched her off yours and requested me to say she should like to see you on your return. Mother and Nathan send much love. Affectionately Your Daughter ROSETTA D. SPRAGUE ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 250R–52, FD Papers, LC. 1. Rosetta Douglass Sprague (1839–1906), the first child of Anna and Frederick Douglass, was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on 24 June 1839. In her childhood, Rosetta wrote and read letters for her mother, whom she assisted with housework and with piecework for the shoe factories in Lynn, Massachusetts. Her father sent Rosetta to school at age seven in Albany, New York, where she lived with Abigail and Lydia Mott. When the Douglass family moved to Rochester, Rosetta began attending the Seward Seminary, where her presence offended the parents of one of the white students and led to her segregation from the other pupils. Her father, in a fury, removed Rosetta from the school and hired a private tutor for his daughter. Rosetta, along with her three brothers, then led other students in the efforts to desegregate Rochester’s public school system. From 1854 to 1855, Rosetta attended Oberlin College preparatory school, one of the first institutions of higher education to accept African Americans and women. She became a teacher in Philadelphia and Salem, Massachusetts, until her marriage in 1863 to Nathan Sprague, with whom she had seven children. Before her death in 1906, she wrote a memoir of her mother that remains one of the most complete documents of Anna Murray Douglass’s life. Rosetta Douglass Sprague, My Mother as I Recall Her: A Paper Read before the Anna Murray Douglass Union, W.C.T.U., May 10, 1900 (1900; Washington, D.C., 1923); Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1984), 132–45; Ellen N. Lawson and Marlene Merrill, “The Antebellum ‘Talented Thousandth’: Black College Students at Oberlin before the Civil War,” Journal of Negro Education, 52:145 (Spring 1983); Miriam DeCosta-Willis, “Smoothing the Tucks in Father’s Linen: The Women of Cedar Hill,” Sage, 4:30–33 (Fall 1987); Sylvia Lyons Render, “Afro-American Women: The Outstanding and the Obscure,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 32:306–10 (October 1975), 307–10. 2. Following her signature, Sprague supplied additional address information: “62 Pearl St.” 3. Here the latter stated: “Wednesday Afternoon”. 4. Although the editors cannot confi rm that Douglass spoke in Zanesville during this trip, it is quite plausible that he might have done so, since he spent at least a week traveling across Ohio at the beginning of April 1867. Douglass had been invited to deliver the ninth lecture in a series of eleven sponsored by Marietta College at the Marietta Baptist Church in 1866–67. According to his itinerary,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 40

5/17/23 2:35 PM

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO DOUGLASS, 11 APRIL 1867

41

he spoke in Cincinnati on 2 April and delivered his lecture “Sources of Danger to the Republic” for the Marietta College series on 6 April, leaving several days in which he could easily have found time to stop and speak in Zanesville. On 7 April, Douglass delivered a second lecture, “The Assassination and Its Lessons,” at the Athenaeum Hall in Marietta before traveling to Wheeling, West Virginia, where he spoke on 8 April. His final lecture of the tour took place on 9 April in Pittsburgh. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxiii; St. Louis Daily Missouri Democrat, 8 February 1867; Chicago Tribune, 23 March 1867; NASS, 9 March 1867; New York World, 26 April 1867; Owen Hawley, “The Marietta Lecture Series of 1866–1867: Emerson, Douglass, and Others,” Studies in the American Renaissance (Boston, 1980), 436–38, 444n. 5. Born a slave in Prince George’s County, Maryland, Nathan Sprague (1840–1907) married Rosetta Douglass on 24 December 1863 in Rochester, New York. On 3 September 1864 he enlisted in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry in Rochester, listing his occupation as gardener. After spending his entire military career as a private with that regiment’s Company D, Sprague mustered out of the service in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, on 20 August 1865. Lacking either a trade or an education, he found it very difficult to obtain steady employment after the war. Relying upon his father-in-law’s influence and resources, Sprague returned to Rochester in 1865 and spent the next decade pursuing one failed career after another. Between 1865 and 1876, he tried his hand at farming, driving a hack, selling chickens, and working as a gardener. At one point, he left his family and moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where he hoped to succeed as a baker. Failing once again, he returned penniless to Rochester several months later. Following that, Frederick Douglass arranged for his son-in-law to get a job with the post office in Rochester. In 1877, however, Sprague was sentenced to spend a year in the Monroe County jail after being convicted of opening the mail and stealing valuables from it. That same year, Rosetta and the children joined her parents in Washington, D.C., after being evicted from their home in Rochester by Sprague’s creditors. Following his release from jail, he followed his family to Washington, D.C., where he once again failed to find steady employment. Among his various jobs, Sprague worked for a time as a stable hand at the home of Salmon P. Chase’s daughter, Kate Chase Sprague (no relation). For much of their time in Washington, D.C., however, Rosetta Douglass Sprague supported the family by clerking in governmental offices. Before his death in 1907, Sprague was working as a real estate agent. 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 70; 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 52; 1900 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 4B; Luis F. Emilio, History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1863–1865 (Boston, 1894), 358; David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (Baton Rouge, La., 1989), 205; Christopher B. Booker, “I Will Wear No Chain!”: A Social History of African-American Males (Westport, Conn., 2000), 100–01; Rose O’Keefe, Frederick and Anna Douglass in Rochester, New York: Their Home Was Open to All (Charleston, S.C., 2013), 70, 90; L. Diane Barnes, Frederick Douglass: Reformer and Statesman (New York, 2013), 101, 107, 114, 117; Sterling, We Are Your Sisters, 418–23; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 222–23, 248, 287. 6. Built by Nehemiah Osburn in 1857, the original Osburn House Hotel was considered the finest hotel in Rochester. The five-story building on the corner of Main and St. Paul streets housed shops and restaurants on the ground level, and 150 guest rooms on the top four floors. In 1880, the owners of Sibley’s Department Store purchased the property. In 1959, the building was taken down and replaced by the Granite Building. William Farley Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, New York from the Earliest Time to 1907, 2 vols. (Rochester, 1908), 1:159, 694–95; Andrew D. Wolfe, 1868–1968, Bold Century: 100 Adventurous and Happy Years Merchandising; The Story of Sibley, Lindsay and Curr Company of Rochester, Monroe County, New York (Rochester, 1968), 14–15. 7. Located at the corner of Main and Fitzhugh streets, the second Monroe County Courthouse was built at a cost of $72,000 in 1850–51. In 1896 the county built its third courthouse, on the same site, at a cost of just under $900,000. In 1964, the courts were moved to the newly constructed Hall

Y8204-Douglass.indb 41

5/17/23 2:35 PM

42

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO DOUGLASS, 11 APRIL 1867

of Justice, and the former (1896) courthouse was converted into the Monroe County Office Building. Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, 1:55–56; “History,” MonroeCounty.gov. 8. A lifelong Democrat, Henry L. Fish (1815–95) served two consecutive terms as mayor of Rochester (1867–69). Fish was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, but spent most of his early life in Wayne County, New York. In 1840 he settled in Rochester, where he made a fortune running both the Albany & Rochester Packet Line and the Rochester Transportation Company, which hauled goods and merchandise between Buffalo and New York City. Before becoming mayor, Fish spent nine years as a member of the Rochester Common Council. In 1873 he served one term representing Monroe County and the Second District in the New York General Assembly. The Biographical Record of the City of Rochester and Monroe County, New York (New York, 1902), 162–63; Find a Grave (online). 9. In all likelihood Rosetta is referring to James Cunningham (1815–86), a native of County Down, Ireland, whose family immigrated to Coburg, Canada, when he was a child. In 1834, Cunningham settled in Rochester, and in 1836 he became co-owner of a buggy and hackney (carriage) repair business, Kerr, Cunningham & Company. In 1847 he founded James Cunningham Son & Company, which became an extremely successful manufacturer of carriages and other types of vehicles, including automobiles in the early twentieth century. Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, 2:800–03; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” 10. Anna Murray Douglass (c. 1813–82), Douglass’s first wife, was born free in Denton, Maryland. She was the eighth child of Bambarra and Mary Murray, slaves who had been manumitted shortly before her birth. At seventeen she moved to Baltimore, where she worked as a domestic and met Douglass at meetings of the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society. In 1838, Murray helped Douglass finance his escape and then joined him in New York City, where they were married on 15 September. During Douglass’s first tour of the British Isles (1845–47), she remained in Lynn, Massachusetts, where she supported the family by binding shoes. There she gained a reputation for frugality and skillful household management, qualities that would contribute greatly to her family’s financial prosperity over the years. A member of the Lynn Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society and a regular participant in the annual antislavery bazaars in Boston, she continued her antislavery activities after moving to Rochester in 1847. Unlettered, reserved, and, according to her husband, never completely at ease in white company, she seldom appeared at public functions with Douglass. She was nevertheless affectionately remembered by her husband’s associates as a “warm” and “hospitable” hostess at their home. On 9 July 1882, Anna Douglass suffered an attack of paralysis in Washington, D.C. She died there on 4 August. Lib., 18 November, 2 December 1853; Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 20 July 1882; Washington Post, 5 August 1882; Sprague, My Mother as I Recall Her; Jane Marsh Parker, “Reminiscences of Frederick Douglass,” Outlook, 51:552–53 (6 April 1895); Sterling, We Are Your Sisters, 132–37; Julie R. Nelson, “The Best of Intentions: Anna Murray Douglass, Helen Pitts Douglass, and the Challenge of Social Equality,” Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, 12:39–42 (Spring 1995). 11. Annie Rosine Sprague (1864–93) was the eldest of Nathan and Rosetta Douglass Sprague’s six children and the first grandchild of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass. Born in November 1864 in Rochester, New York, eleven months after her parents’ marriage, she was named after the Douglasses’ youngest child, Annie, who had died in 1859. Annie Sprague spent most of her childhood living in her maternal grandparents’ homes in Rochester and Washington, D.C. After Anna Murray Douglass’s death in 1882, Annie Sprague assisted her aunt Louisa Sprague in managing her grandfather’s home at Cedar Hill. On 6 April 1893 in Washington, D.C., she married her grandfather’s former secretary Charles Satchell Morris (1865–1931). She then joined her husband in Ann Arbor, where he was a law student at the University of Michigan. That November, Annie, who was pregnant, fell ill and died. 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 70; 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 143; Herbert Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery (Amherst, Mass., 1988), 483; Genna Rae McNeil et. al., Witness: Two Hundred Years of African-American Faith and Practice at the Abyssinian Baptist Church of Harlem, New York (Grand

Y8204-Douglass.indb 42

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 19 APRIL 1867

43

Rapids, Mich., 2013), 61–68; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 222, 248, 312–13, 372–73; “District of Columbia Marriages, 1830–192,” FamilySearch.org. 12. Harriet “Hattie” Bailey Sprague (1866–1940) was the second child of Nathan and Rosetta Douglass Sprague. When she was a child, her grandfather expressed delight in her intelligence, and like her mother and several of her sisters, Harriet trained to be a schoolteacher. In 1891 she accepted her first professional teaching job, in Jacksonville, Florida, where she taught at the Florida Baptist Academy. In early 1894, however, illness forced her to return to her family in Washington, D.C. Unmarried, she lived with her parents until their deaths in 1906 and 1907, after which she taught in the Conroe Normal School in Conroe, Texas, from 1907 to 1916. She spent 1917 and 1918 serving as the secretary to the principal of the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. She also spent time teaching in the Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Missouri. In 1920 she joined her sisters Fredericka and Rosabelle in Kansas City, where she lived until her death in 1940. Fought, Women, 206, 267, 272, 275–76, 376n; Find a Grave (online). 13. She is probably referring to the meat market owned by John Nagles, which was located on the corner of South Avenue and Alexander Street. “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” 14. Anna Dickinson spent a couple of weeks, in late March and early April 1867, delivering her “Something to Do, or Work for Women” lecture, among several others, on a lecture tour of western New York. During the last week of March, she seems to have used the home of Mark Twain’s wealthy in-laws, Jervis and Olivia Lewis Langdon, in Elmira, New York, as her base of operations, before traveling to Rochester at the beginning of April. Dickinson’s correspondence indicates that she was recovering from some sort of illness during much of this period, which may explain Rosetta’s comments about her uninspired performance. Laura E. Skandera-Trombley, Mark Twain in the Company of Women (Philadelphia, 1994), 145; Laura E. Skandera-Trombley, “ ‘I Am Woman’s Rights’: Olivia Langdon Clemens and Her Feminist Circle,” Mark Twain Journal, 34: 19–20 (Fall 1996). 15. Rosetta is referring to either Maria G. Porter (1805–96), who operated a high-end boardinghouse in Rochester, or her younger sister, Almira B. Porter (1825–79), who ran a school for young ladies. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 2:294n, 3:785n; Mary Ellen Snodgrass, ed., The Underground Railroad: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations, 2 vols. (2008; New York, 2015), 2:421.3

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Rochester, [N.Y.] 19 Ap[ri]l [18]67.

Dear Father I have just rec[eive]d. your letter from Layfaette Ind. I am sorry you failed to connect at Mechanicsville2 for I wrote to you at that place telling you of my appointment as clerk in the Freedman’s Bureau.3 I wrote to you for a little money but I shall have to leave without it as I don’t want to lose my situation by waiting after having been sent for. The gravel has been drawn on the road in front by Mr. Crocker4 whose charge will be $20 the amount you subscribed provided the road should be graveled to the city line. In addition to this he will draw about ten loads inside the lot for the road leading from the gate, and will also plow the lot. I have left everything as well as I could under the circumstances[.] I don’t want to stay here too

Y8204-Douglass.indb 43

5/17/23 2:35 PM

44

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 19 APRIL 1867

long for fear of losing my situation. Mother5 is sick[.] She had a billious attack to day and had to take her bed and summon a doctor[.] She is some better now and says for me not to delay on her account. Libbie6 will stay with her until you return, she will then go and board with Rosetta7 until I can find accommodations for her in Washington. William8 is home now and is having his spring vacation of two weeks during that time and until you come home he will work the garden. I will leave the care of your letters with Rosetta with the same instructions that you gave me. If you are to stay away longer than you expected it would be well to send Nathan9 enough money to provide for the cow and horse until you come. I am all in a bristle, owing to my appointment coming so unexpectedly and just at the time I was making every preparation to stay here. I sent the money from Mrs. Crofts10 to Mr M. V. Dutcher11 and have rec[eive]d. an acknowledgement of the same and forwarded it on to Mrs. Crofts. I will write again from Washington[.] CHAS. R. DOUG LASS12

P.S. I have rented the house at two dollars per week to the carpenter Mcnara13 ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 253–54, FD Papers, DL 1. Charles Remond Douglass (1844–1920), named after the abolitionist Charles Remond, was the youngest of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass’s sons. He was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, and, like his brothers, was both educated in Rochester and trained by his father in the newspaper office. Like Lewis H. Douglass, Charles enlisted in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War, but mainly served with the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment, where he was promoted to the rank of first sergeant. After the war, Charles settled in Washington, D.C., and found employment first as a clerk in the Freedmen’s Bureau (1867–69) and later in the Treasury Department (1869–75). After his father purchased the New National Era in 1870, Charles acted as a correspondent for the newspaper. In 1871 he served as a clerk to the Santo Domingo Commission, and President Ulysses S. Grant later appointed him consul to Puerto Plata, Santo Domingo. From 1875 to 1879 he was a clerk in the U.S. consulate in Santo Domingo. Returning to the United States in 1879, he entered the West Indies import-export business while living in Corona, New York. In 1882, Charles moved back to Washington, D.C., and took a job as an examiner in the Pension Bureau. He remained there until 1892, when he entered the real estate business. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:860; Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:126; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 239, 257–58, 272; EAAH, 1:407–08. 2. Douglass spent most of the winter of 1866–67 on an extended lecture tour that took him as far west as Iowa, with stops in major cities such as Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Chicago, and Indianapolis, before returning home near the end of March. Within days of his arrival in Rochester, however, he wrote Gerrit Smith that he was preparing to leave for another five- to six-week lecture tour of the same region. Correspondence with his daughter indicates that Douglass was expected to pass through Pittsburgh and Zanesville, Ohio, before 11 April, and newspaper accounts place Douglass in Michigan on 26 April, so while the editors cannot confirm that Douglass either spoke at, or even passed through, Lafayette, Indiana, and Mechanicsville, Iowa, his known schedule certainly left room for

Y8204-Douglass.indb 44

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 19 APRIL 1867

45

him to have done so. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxii–xxiii, 149; Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 31 March 1867, Gerrit Smith Mss., NSyU; Rosetta D. Sprague to Douglass, 11 April 1867, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 250–52; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 256–57. 3. Although Charles indicates that he had informed his father in an earlier letter of his new job as a clerk in the Freedmen’s Bureau, the first public notice of the appointment appeared in the New York City press in May. New York World, 1 May 1867. 4. In the 1860s, several men named Crocker were living in Rochester (including a tailor, a store clerk, and a photographer), but the likelier candidates for the man Charles mentioned can probably be found among the four men named Crocker who lived elsewhere in Monroe County, any of whom would have been more likely to have access to gravel. Alpheus Crocker (1787–1873) was a farmer living near Webster, and his younger cousin Nathaniel Scudder Prince Crocker (1814–89) was a produce dealer based in Ogden. Newall Crocker (1836–1917) was a laborer living in Perinton, and Joseph Crocker (c. 1847–?) was employed as a farm laborer by Nathaniel S.P. Crocker’s brother-inlaw, George P. Hodges (1807–73). While it is impossible to know for certain who was responsible for the gravel delivered to the Douglass residence, there is a high probability that he was one of these four men. 1860 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 56; 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 2, 28, 39, 374; William Farley Peck, Landmarks of Monroe County, New York (Boston, 1895), 103; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; Find a Grave (online). 5. Anna Murray Douglass. 6. Charles R. Douglass’s first wife, Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Murphy (c. 1848–78), was born into a free mixed-race family in Pennsylvania. Her parents, Joseph and Sarah Ann Freeman Murphy, who were also natives of Pennsylvania, lived in Bucks County, where Joseph Murphy was listed as a laborer in the 1850 census. The family, which eventually included seven children, moved to Rochester, New York, around 1858, and in the 1860 census, Joseph Murphy’s occupation was recorded as whitewasher. By 1865, however, Murphy was deceased, and over the following decades, his widow supported the family first as a laundress and later as a domestic servant. Charles R. Douglass and Libbie Murphy were married in Rochester, New York, on 19 September 1866. Libbie Murphy Douglass appears to have received at least a basic education, but as her husband complained to his father in a letter written in 1873, both her social background and her lack of a more advanced level of education seem to have created conflict with both of her sisters-in-law. In addition, the letter exposed long-standing tensions in the couple’s relationship—Libbie Murphy Douglass accused her husband of infidelity, while he, in turn, accused her of unfounded and unreasonable jealousy. The marriage, however, continued until her death at age thirty from tuberculosis on 21 September 1878 in Washington, D.C. Charles R. Douglass to Douglass, 29 October 1865, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 161–62, FD Papers, DLC; Charles R. Douglass to Douglass, 13 May 1873, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 678R–81, FD Papers, DLC; 1850 U.S. Census, Pennsylvania, Bucks County, 378; 1860 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 20; 1865 New York State Census, Monroe County, 34; 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 80; 1870 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 96; 1880 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 26; Celeste-Marie Bernier and Andrew Taylor, If I Survive: Frederick Douglass and Family in the Walter O. Evans Collection: A 200 Year Anniversary (Edinburgh, Scotland, 2018), 35; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 256, 286–87; Fought, Women, 223, 310, 358–59; Find a Grave (online). 7. Rosetta Douglass Sprague. 8. No known members of the extended Douglass family were named William. But Douglass did employ a series of young men and boys as apprentices for his newspapers, including William Oliver, William A. Atkinson, William Winston, and a fourth William who may have been the brother of an apprentice named Jeremiah Perkins. Most of these apprentices also lived, for varying lengths of time, with Douglass and his family. While the precise identity of this particular William remains a mystery, it is likely that he either was or had been one of Douglass’s apprentices. Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 2:253; Fought, Women, 125–25, 128, 344n.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 45

5/17/23 2:35 PM

46

MARY BROWNE CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 22 APRIL 1867

9. Nathan Sprague. 10. Julia Griffiths Crofts. 11. Although the identity of M. V. Dutcher remains elusive, several families with that surname lived in Rochester and in Monroe County, New York, during the years when Julia Griffiths Crofts resided there, so the recipient of the money may have belonged to one of them. 1850 U.S Census, New York, Monroe County, 91, 161, 170, 382–83, 394, 424; 1855 New York State Census, Monroe County, 4, 8A, 34; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” 12. Charles placed the following mailing instructions after his signature but before the letter’s postscript: “Direct in care / Jas. T. Wormley / Fer. bet. 15th 16th st. / Wash. D.C.” The son of the Washington, D.C., free black hotelier James Wormley, James Thompson Wormley (1844–?) enlisted as a private in the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry on 17 March 1864. After seeing action in Virginia, Wormley’s unit was shipped to Texas, where he was discharged in July 1865 as a sergeant. In 1870, Wormley became the first graduate of the medical school at the newly founded Howard University. He soon operated the first black-owned pharmacy in the District, near his father’s boardinghouse. After his father’s death in 1884, Wormley operated the hotel into the 1890s. Carol Gelderman, A Free Man of Color and His Hotel: Race, Reconstruction, and the Role of the Federal Government (Washington, D.C., 2012), 12, 17–19; Robert Benedetto, Jane Donovan, and Kathleen DuVall, eds., Historical Dictionary of Washington, D.C. (Lanham, Md., 2003), 247. 13. Rochester city directories from the 1860s show no one by that name living there. Two men named McNamara (Charles and Michael) were listed as carpenters in the 1867 Rochester city directory, but Charles is probably referring to John M. McNary (1837–80), a native of Allegany County, New York, who was working as a carpenter in Rochester by at least 1865. In 1870, he was identified as a builder. 1865 New York State Census, Monroe County, 3; 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 16; Find a Gave (online); “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.”

MARY BROWNE CARPENTER1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Bridport, [Eng.] 22 April [1867].

My dear Sir Douglass I really cannot remember when I last wrote to you. I know it was an ago, & that you have very often been in our thoughts since. I doubt whether I have heard from you since June 1866, when, on our return from Italy I found one of your delightful & ever welcome letters2 waiting for me at my sister Lucy’s,3 at Woodcote near Bristol.—I dont think I can have been so ungrateful as not to have thanked you for that letter, for I am sure it gave me great pleasure to receive it,—that it was not at all pleasant to hear of the terrible danger from which you narrowly escaped at Baltimore a short time before.4 Our friend Miss Amé-Draz5 is spending two or three days with us—you will not be far wrong if you conclude that we are often talking of you, & wondering when we shall see you in England again.— We think that you ought to come to the Anti-Slavery Congress at Paris in Aug.6 Cant you make your people (ie friends white or colored) understand

Y8204-Douglass.indb 46

5/17/23 2:35 PM

MARY BROWNE CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 22 APRIL 1867

47

that “the Cause,”— to say nothing of your own health,—would benefit by your coming over, and “looking up” those whose zeal has cooled, & inspiring new people with zeal & knowledge on the Condition & needs of the colored people in America? I am sure that you have been working very hard for many years, and that you have well earned a holiday and ought to take one—now will not this Paris Congress give you a motive for coming at a certain fixed time? When people are so fully occupied as you always are, & seem so necessary to many important objects, it is always difficult to break away, & take a rest; & I am afraid you will never do it unless you can persuade yourself that your absence for a time will really serve the great object of your life at home. But surely the overstrained mind & body must relax their tension & enjoy occasional repose, if only to enable them to labor again & more abundantly. Our sister Miss Carpenter7 of Bristol felt a complete change to be very needful to her, at the same time she did not care to go any where simply for her own pleasure, for example to Italy or Switzerland so, as perhaps you have heard, she went to India about six months ago.—She has taken great interest in the Hindoos, particularly their women, who are so sadly neglected— & ignorant, & one of her chief objects has been to stimulate the government and people to establish Normal Schools for training female Teachers—we hope that good will result from her visit. As all events—I trust that she has herself [illegible] been fit, for she has just returned in excellent health & spirits having thoroughly enjoyed the expedition[.] She has only been in England for a week or ten days, so we have not yet seen her, but are glad to hear such famous accounts of her. I hope that you will do as she has done, tear yourself away from home engagements for a time, & come to England to see all your old friends.—We shall so rejoice to welcome you to Bridport—I am sure you would like the country round us, for it is really pretty; without any grandeur (excepting a fine sea which is the grandest thing in [illegible] I think) the neighbourhood is charming in fine weather, & there are some lovely walks that I should like to introduce you to. I dont know whether I told you that Mr Carpenter 8 has decided to engage an assistant, as since his illness he has not been able without undue fatigue to preach twice on a Sunday.—A gentleman is now come to settle at Bridport who takes half of the pulpit duty—& this is a great relief to my husband, & with this relief I am thankful to say that he keeps very tolerably well. You will see the grand Exhibition at Paris9 if you come to the

Y8204-Douglass.indb 47

5/17/23 2:35 PM

48

MARY BROWNE CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 22 APRIL 1867

Congress—which most people now are running over to look at Monday April 23rd. When Mr Carpenter returned from the service last July he and Miss Amé-Draz got into an interesting talk about various matters, certain difficult chapters in St Paul’s Epistles,10 & so forth, & I found that I could not write & listen at the same time so my letter was put aside. Two of Mr C’s nephews, grown up sons of Dr Carpenter of London,11 will be with us for a few days this week;—the younger of the two, Lorhis, has just arrived,—he has a situation as clerk at the [illegible], & is generally obliged to keep closely to business at which he works very steadily.—The other brother, Estlin, will come from Bristol this July—he is the minister of a new & beautiful church lately built by the Unitarians at Clifton.12 I wonder whether you know a Dr. Massie,13 an Independent Minister & a most earnest anti-slavery man; he has lately spent a few weeks at Bridport, during which he gave two lectures on his visits to America. He was there while the war was going on, & had an interesting interview with President Lincoln.14 [I] have not heard from Mrs Crofts for more than three months, but hope that I shall soon, she seemed full of energy as ever,—but had been a good deal tried by illness in her family. Miss Amé-Draz has told me a little of your daughter Rosetta, or rather I should say Mrs Sprague, which I have liked very much to hear, you have now two little grandchildren,15—& I am sure they must be a source of pleasure & interest to you,—it is pleasant both for you & for her that your daughter has settled near you. I dare say you often find time to have a game of play with the little ones, inspite of all your pressing engagements, & that must refresh your spirit. I hope that they are healthy children & do not cause their mother much anxiety. I am sorry to send you so dull a letter—but it shall go—for I want you to know that you are often in our thoughts. When I proposed to Mr Carpenter that he s[hou]ld write a few lines to go with this he said “Oh, no, Douglass knows that I am steadfast to him without my writing”—so you must excuse his idleness & believe in his affection all the same! I am sorry to say that we have done nothing for a long time for the freed-people—if you want us to do any thing you must write & remind us of our duty & stimulate us to do it!—& write so that I might by means of your letter stir up other people & get a little help out of our rich friends.— We have some here who are kindness itself whenever they see the duty of giving help, but they have never entered much into American affairs, or the subject of slavery, so they do not move spontaneously in that direction. You

Y8204-Douglass.indb 48

5/17/23 2:35 PM

MARY BROWNE CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 22 APRIL 1867

49

will be quite tired of deciphering my scrawl—so goodbye—with Mr Carpenter’s kindest remembrances I remain sincerely & affectionately[.] Your friend MARY CARPENTER ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 637–40, FD Papers, LC. 1. Mary Browne Carpenter (c. 1824–98) was the wife of the prominent Unitarian minister Russell Lant Carpenter (1819–92). They were married in Bridgwater, Somersetshire, in 1853. She was one of four daughters born to William Browne, a wealthy Unitarian merchant, and his wife, Mary. William Browne served as mayor of Bridgwater in 1854. In addition to her support of the antislavery effort, Mary Browne Carpenter was also deeply involved in the woman suffrage movement, belonging to one of the more radical suffrage societies in Bridport. She also supported the animal rights and temperance movements. 1841 England Census, Gloucestershire, Bristol, 22; “England and Wales, Christening Records, 1530–1906,” FamilySearch.org; “England and Wales, Death Index, 1837–1915,” FamilySearch.org; “England and Wales, Marriage Index, 1837–1915,” FamilySearch. org; “England and Wales, Non-Conformist Records Indexes, 1588–1977,” FamilySearch.org; Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: A Regional Survey (New York, 2006), 161, 169. 2. This letter has not been located. 3. The third daughter of Mary and William Browne, Lucy Browne (1825–1909) married Charles Thomas of Bristol in May 1850. 1851, 1871, 1901 England Census, Gloucestershire, Bristol, FamilySearch.org; “England and Wales, Death Index, 1837–1915”; London Christian Reformer, 6:452 (July 1850). 4. Douglass began visiting Baltimore again in 1864, usually speaking at black churches in the community. There is no reported incidence of violence against Douglass at these appearances. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xix–xxi. 5. A Swiss national, Rosine Ami-Draz (c. 1816–?) first arrived in England on 11 July 1838, listing her profession as teacher. In 1841 she was teaching and living in the parish of Egg Buckland, Devonshire. After spending an undetermined length of time back in Switzerland, she returned to England in July 1848, this time listing her profession as governess. According to the 1861 English Census (where she was recorded as “Rosine Ann Davy,” a native of Neufchatel, Switzerland), she was staying in the home of Mrs. Elizabeth Read of Ecclesfield, Yorkshire. By 1871 she was serving as governess to the children of George S. Kemp, a wealthy Lancashire manufacturer. 1841 England Census, Devonshire, Egg Buckland, 11; 1861 England Census, Yorkshire, Ecclesfield, 56; 1871 England Census, Lancashire, Castleton, 1; “England, Alien Arrivals, 1810–1811, 1826–1869,” Ancestry.com. 6. The Anti-Slavery Conference, held in Paris on 26–27 August 1867, was organized by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, the Comité Français d’Émancipation, and the Sociedad Abolicionista Española. The chair was taken by the secretaries of each national society, and the meeting passed resolutions calling for the immediate abolition of the slave trade and slavery in countries such as Brazil and Cuba. Many transatlantic abolitionists attended the conference, including J. Sella Martin, William Allen, William Lloyd Garrison, Levi Coffin, and the Reverend James William Massie. Garrison lectured as a representative of the American Freedman’s Union Commission, and Martin followed as a representative of the American Missionary Association. Douglass did not attend. Special Report of the Anti-Slavery Conference, Held in Paris (London, 1868). 7. Mary Carpenter (1807–77), Russell Lant Carpenter’s sister, was inspired to visit India as a result of her father’s friendship with Rammohun Roy, a Bengalese teacher and religious educator who established the Brahmo Samaj, a brotherhood made up of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus. Roy visited Mary’s father, Lant Carpenter, at the Lewis Mead Unitarian Church in Bristol, but died shortly afterward from meningitis in 1833. Mary visited India four times, where she established a school for Hindu girls and became active in social reform. Mary Carpenter, Six Months in India (London, 1868).

Y8204-Douglass.indb 49

5/17/23 2:35 PM

50

MARY BROWNE CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 22 APRIL 1867

8. The Reverend Russell Lant Carpenter (1816–92), a Unitarian minister, spent his childhood in Bristol, England. He attended Bristol College in preparation for a life of ministry, continued his studies at Manchester and York Colleges, and in 1840 became one of the first to graduate from London University. Carpenter became intensely involved in the temperance movement and subsequently quit his pastorate at Bridgwater, England, since part of the church’s endowment came from taverns. In August 1849 he journeyed to the United States, where he spent a full year preaching in an area stretching from Montreal to St. Louis to Boston. His father, Dr. Lant Carpenter, was a well-known teacher whose Unitarian writings were recognized by the antislavery men of the day. Thus, Carpenter became acquainted with Garrison, Douglass, and others. On his return to England, he married in 1853 and continued his ministerial work there until his death. His works include Memoirs of Lant Carpenter (1842), Discourses and Devotional Services (1849), A Monotessaron (1851), and a biography of his brother, Philip, Memoirs of the Life and Work of Philip Pearsall Carpenter (1880). Carpenter also contributed frequently to the Inquirer and other periodicals. London Inquirer, 30 January 1892. 9. The Exposition Universelle (world’s fair) opened in April 1867 and closed in November, the second such fair held in Paris. In 1864, Napoleon III had issued a decree that an international fair should be held to display Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s renovation of Paris. The exposition occupied the Champ de Mars, a military parade ground. The main building was a vast domed pavilion, and exhibitions were held in around one hundred smaller buildings as well. Of the 50,226 exhibitors, around 15,000 came from France and its imperial territories; over 700 came from the United States. By the end of October, nearly 9 million people from around the world had visited the exposition. Pauline de Tholozany, “The Expositions Universelles in Nineteenth Century Paris,” Brown University (2011) (online). 10. The Pauline epistles of the New Testament offer ethical suggestions on household roles and duties, including those of the father or husband, advising Christian husbands to love their wives as they love themselves and for husbands to avoid provoking their children to anger. Eph. 5:23–33; Col. 3:19–21; 1 Cor. 7:3. 11. Joseph Estlin Carpenter (1844–1927) was an English Unitarian minister, grandson of Lant Carpenter, and son of William Benjamin Carpenter. Estlin studied moral philosophy at University College, London, and then moved to Manchester for training in the Unitarian ministry at New College. Beginning in 1866, he was the minister of the Oakfield Road Unitarian Church in Clifton, Bristol, for three years, and then preached at Mill Hill Chapel in Leeds from 1869 to 1875. Carpenter was forced to change his career from preaching to academia after he developed a speech defect. After an extended trip to Switzerland, Egypt, and Palestine did not improve his impairment, he became professor of ecclesiastical history at Manchester College in Oxford and studied Sanskrit, Pali, and Hebrew. A prolific author, he wrote a book about his aunt Mary Carpenter in 1879 and numerous religious works, including Life in Palestine When Jesus Lived (1884), The First Three Gospels (1890), James Martineau, Theologian and Teacher: A Study of His Life and Thought (1905), The Historical Jesus and the Theological Christ (1911), and Theism in Medieval India (1921). ODNB (online). 12. Carpenter refers to a Unitarian church built in Oakfield Road, Clifton, in 1864. Designed in an Anglican style by the local Bristol architects Pope and Bindon, the church could hold four hundred people. The overall cost for the building was £6,000; it was erected for the wealthier Unitarians of Clifton. Its grand opening was on 10 November 1864, and the Reverend James Martineau, from London, preached. According to a local newspaper report, the “church consists of nave, aisle, chancel, organ chamber, and singers’ gallery, and minister’s and deacons’ vestries . . . [T]he style is that of the 14th century, and the materials used are native stone from the Pembroke-road with freestone dressings.” Bristol Western Daily Press, 11 November 1864; Bristol Times and Mirror, 12 November 1864. 13. This reference is to the Reverend James William Massie (1799–1869), an Independent minister, missionary, abolitionist, and ardent supporter of the Union cause. Ordained in 1822, he worked as a missionary for the London Missionary Society in India, living in Madras (1823–25) and Bangalore (1825–27). He preached in Dublin, Ireland, and Perth, Scotland, before moving to Salford in the late

Y8204-Douglass.indb 50

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO ANNA E. DICKINSON, 21 MAY 1867

51

1840s. Massie became secretary of the London-based Home Missionary Society and was a member of several Union and emancipation societies on both sides of the Atlantic. He published numerous pamphlets and sermons, including those related to his travels in India and his views on American slavery. Massie spoke alongside Douglass at meetings of the Anti-Slavery League in London in 1846 and attended the Evangelical Alliance in the summer of that year. He traveled to America several times. In 1863 he presented an address to American ministers, signed by over 4,000 religious men from England and France, against American slavery. Entitled “An Address to Ministers and Pastors of all Christian Denominations throughout the States of America,” the address was adopted by the Anti-Slavery Conference of Ministers of Religion at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, on 3 June 1863. He gave several lectures in the North, traveling as far as Portland, Maine, and as far west as St. Louis and Louisville. While in Washington, he was introduced to President Lincoln by Secretary of State William H. Seward. On his return to England, Massie spoke with the black abolitionist J. Sella Martin in London to champion the Union cause. New York Times, 28 September 1863; Edinburgh Caledonian Mercury, 14 December 1863; Evangelical Alliance, Report of the Proceedings of the Conference Held at Freemasons’ Hall (1847); ODNB (online). 14. Abraham Lincoln (1809–65), a Whig turned Republican from Illinois, was sworn in as the sixteenth president of the United States on 4 March 1861. Douglass met Lincoln at the White House in 1863 and was charmed by the president’s earnest political considerations of emancipation. A year later, Lincoln granted Douglass’s request that his son Charles be discharged from the army because of illness. In a private meeting on 19 August 1864, Douglass and Lincoln discussed stepping up efforts to recruit slaves to the Union’s cause. Lincoln was elected to a second term in November 1864, and Douglass attended his inauguration festivities. James M. McPherson, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (New York, 1990), 109, 134–35, 139; Phillip Shaw Paludan, The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (Lawrence, Kan., 1994), 4–5, 15–16, 183, 285–87; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 229–35. 15. Annie Rosine Sprague and Harriet “Hattie” Bailey Sprague.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ANNA E. DICKINSON Rochester, [N.Y.] 21 May 1867.

My Dear Friend Anna. I was delighted to find your note1 on arriving home a few days ago. I got home quite too late to comply with your kind request to speak for our friend Mr. Pugh2—for whom you say so many warm and characteristic words. I will know full what to do if ever that Gentleman shall call upon me at a time when I can come. The thought of being cared for at 17103 does me good at this distance. Your bright sister—and blessed mother 4 are among my constant companions—and yourself the world would not allow me to forget if I wanted to. How gloriously—and beautifully Phillips5— Carried us around the past winter. I believe he put us into every Lecture!6 Dear Tilton too—bright and young—brave and true, has left a shining record from St Paul—to Cincinnati7—He enters now upon the stormiest period of his life.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 51

5/17/23 2:35 PM

52

DOUGLASS TO ANNA E. DICKINSON, 21 MAY 1867

I have come anything than well—The strain upon me has been pretty heavy all winter, and I shall require some weeks of quiet home life before I shall be quite myself— I am much pressed with invitations South—but I am not sure of the wisdom of my going. Yet if the Republican Party shall see fit to send me there as a it sends others I will go.8 Judge Kelly9 and Wilson10 are both doing important Service. Its nothing against their speaking there that they are only able to do so—under National bayonets—To have the truth spoken there at all is great gain. How I wish that Richmond and New Orleans—and Mobile could hear your own eloquent voice—You have a mission—South as well as myself. I was still lecturing while you were attending the Equal Rights meeting in New York.11 Are you to be in Boston on the 29th?12 I want to, but fear I shall not be able to go—I don’t think our Friends Horace Greeley13 and Gerrit Smith did well to hurry forward to serve Jefferson Davis14 —He should have been left in the hands of his friends—I would not hang him—or continue him in prison—but he should not have the characters of such men to stand between him and the stormy accusations of his own guilty conscience.15 Belle Isle and Andersonville16 —with there horrible associations should fling their ghastly Shadows full upon the head and heart of the cold blooded rebel chief—and not to be broken—by the commanding figures of Smith and Greeley. I hope to see you sometime time during the Summer or early Autumn—but whether I meet you or not—you may depend upon this—I am, always & every where—true to the great Cause of humanity to which you are devoting your life—and that I am the Sincere & earnest friend—of Anna E. Dickinson—Please remember me most kindly to your precious Mother—and to your Dear Sister “Sue”—You have no reason to be other than the shining orb you are said to be, while you live in the affection of such a Mother and Sister. The best blessings attend you—Yours &c. FREDERICK DOUG LASS ALS: Anna E. Dickinson Papers, box 7,DLC. 1. This letter has not been located. 2. Thomas B. Pugh (1829–84), who served as Anna Dickinson’s lecture manager in this period, complained to the press that his client “has no idea of the value of money.” Pugh oversaw a “Star Course” of lectures at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music, which regularly featured Dickinson. He also booked lectures for her around the nation, but the two often quarreled over schedules and fees. Dickinson later moved to James Redpath’s Boston Lyceum Bureau, but had difficulties with her new

Y8204-Douglass.indb 52

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO ANNA E. DICKINSON, 21 MAY 1867

53

agents over financial arrangements. Douglass refused to speak at the Philadelphia Academy of Music because of its discriminatory policies toward African Americans. In a letter to Pugh, Douglass complained that the academy and the city of Philadelphia stood “almost alone in the intensity of its wolfish hate and snobbish pride of race.” Douglass to Thomas B. Pugh, 17 November 1870, Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC01954; Philadelphia Inquirer, 10 June 1884; Gallman, America’s Joan of Arc, 66–68; Chester, Embattled Maiden, 109. 3. Dickinson’s Philadelphia residence at this time was at 1710 Locust Street, an expensive rented townhouse. Chester, Embattled Maiden, 66. 4. Mary Edmundson Dickinson and Susan Dickinson. 5. Born and raised in Boston and educated at Harvard, Wendell Phillips (1811–84) was one of the most prominent advocates of reform in the nineteenth century. In 1837 the young Phillips distinguished himself by denouncing the murder of the abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy. Active in the American Anti-Slavery Society, Phillips tended to support, but did not completely adhere to, William Lloyd Garrison’s brand of nonpolitical, disunionist abolitionism. For example, as a delegate to the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840, Phillips agreed with Garrison that female delegates should be seated, but disagreed with him on nonresistance to slavery. Following the Civil War, Phillips became devoted to a number of reforms, including prohibition, penal reform, concessions to Native Americans, woman suffrage, and the labor movement. Irving H. Bartlett, Wendell Phillips: Brahmin Radical (Boston, 1961); Oscar Sherwin, Prophet of Liberty: The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips (New York, 1958); James Brewer Stewart, Wendell Phillips: Liberty’s Hero (Baton Rouge, La., 1986); DAB, 24:546–47. 6. During the 1866–67 winter lyceum season, Wendell Phillips traveled extensively, delivering a lecture entitled “The Swindling Congress” in which he attacked the Thirty-ninth U.S. Congress for its inaction in protecting freedpeople’s rights. In his lecturing, Phillips also suggested that New York should replace Republican U.S. senator Ira Harris with Frederick Douglass. New York Times, 7 November 1866; Burlington (Vt.) Daily Hawk-Eye, 20 December 1866; William Carlos Martyn, Wendell Phillips: The Agitator (New York, 1890), 355–57. 7. Although then the editor of the New York Independent, Theodore Tilton lectured strenuously throughout the United States in the winter of 1866–67 as part of the nation’s large cadre of lyceum speakers. For example, Douglass, Tilton, Phillips, and Ralph Waldo Emerson all took part in the “Young Men’s Library Association Course of Lectures” in Winona, Minnesota, in early 1867. Douglass, Dickinson, Tilton, and Emerson spoke in the St. Paul Library Association course that same season. Evansville (Ind.) Journal, 17 January 1867; Janesville (Wisc.) Daily Gazette, 15 February 1867; Hubert E. Hoeltje, “Ralph Waldo Emerson in Minnesota,” Minnesota History, 11:146, 156–57 (June 1930). 8. There was a press report in March 1867 that Republicans had invited Douglass to canvass black voters in Tennessee, but his only speech in a former slave state that year was delivered on the Fourth of July at Norfolk, Virginia. Boston Commonwealth, 30 March 1867; Norfolk (Va.) Journal, 5, 8 July 1867; New York Times, 17 July 1867. 9. Born in Philadelphia, William Darrah Kelley (1814–90) entered his father’s craft as a jeweler’s apprentice after a childhood education at a local Presbyterian school. Following a brief career in Boston as an enameler, Kelley returned to his hometown to study law and was admitted to the bar in 1841. Between 1846 and 1856 he served as a judge on Philadelphia’s court of common pleas. In 1860, Kelley, a staunch Republican and fi rm opponent of slavery, was elected to the first of fifteen consecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. During the Civil War, Kelley adamantly supported the abolition of slavery and the employment of black troops; during Reconstruction, he advocated the enfranchisement of blacks and the implementation of harsh, punitive measures regarding the readmission of the Confederate states. Significantly influenced both by labor conditions in England and by the Panic of 1857, Kelley abandoned a free-trade philosophy and became such an outspoken proponent of high tariffs, especially regarding iron and steel, that he earned the

Y8204-Douglass.indb 53

5/17/23 2:35 PM

54

DOUGLASS TO ANNA E. DICKINSON, 21 MAY 1867

nickname “Pig Iron.” Believing that high tariffs were necessary to foster a strong, diverse economy independent of Europe, Kelley spent two decades writing, speaking, and lobbying in favor of protection of American industries. Ira V. Brown, “William D. Kelley and Radical Reconstruction,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 85:316–29 (July 1961); ACAB, 3:505; DAB, 10:299–300. 10. Henry Wilson. 11. Neither Douglass nor Dickinson were reported to be in attendance at the convention of the American Equal Rights Association held at the Church of the Puritans in New York City on 9–10 May 1867. On its first day, the meeting passed a resolution appointing Douglass, Henry Ward Beecher, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to a committee to lobby the upcoming New York state constitutional convention, and elected Douglass one of the association’s six vice presidents. Henry Ward Beecher attracted much press attention for suggesting Douglass should be elected to Congress. The convention featured an acrimonious exchange between the black leader George T. Downing and Stanton on whether the latter would oppose African American male suffrage if not coupled with woman suffrage. New York World, 11 May 1867; New York Tribune, 11 May 1867; New York Times, 11 May 1867; Dudden, Fighting Chance, 96–99. 12. Douglass probably refers to the New England Anti-Slavery Convention scheduled for Boston on 29 May 1867. Neither Douglass nor Dickinson attended. Without leading woman suffragists present, the convention followed the lead of its presiding officer, Wendell Philips, in making black rights the abolitionists’ primary focus. New York Times, 30 May 1867; NASS, 8, 15 June 1867; Dudden, Fighting Chance, 100. 13. Horace Greeley (1811–72), journalist, reformer, and Republican politician, was the founder and lifelong editor of the New York Tribune. Born in Amherst, New Hampshire, Greeley moved to New York City in 1831 and became coeditor of a small literary periodical in 1834. With the sponsorship of William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed, Greeley soon entered the field of political journalism, editing Whig campaign weeklies in 1838 and again in 1840. The next year, he launched the Tribune, which quickly outstripped its local competitors and attained a large circulation throughout the North. In addition to promoting a panoply of social causes ranging from Fourierism to the abolition of capital punishment, the Tribune under Greeley became the leading editorial voice of the Republican party during the 1850s. Openly hostile to abolitionism during the early 1840s, Greeley grew steadily more radical on the slavery issue, but his racial attitudes mirrored the ambivalence of many northern free-labor spokesmen. Greeley felt that blacks deserved legal equality and a fair chance to compete in the marketplace, but he doubted that African Americans as a group were capable of taking full advantage of such opportunities. Thus, during the 1840s and 1850s, Greeley worked to extend equal suffrage to New York blacks while nonetheless considering them an “indolent, improvident, servile, and licentious” race incapable of achieving social equality with whites. In his Recollections, Greeley claims to have rejected sending American blacks to Africa during the mid-1830s, but he in fact gave periodic support to emigrationist schemes throughout the antebellum era, clashing repeatedly with Frederick Douglass, James McCune Smith, and other black leaders over the issue. Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (New York, 1868); Glyndon G. Van Deusen, Horace Greeley: Nineteenth-Century Crusader (Philadelphia, 1953); Ralph Ray Fahrney, Horace Greeley and the “Tribune” in the Civil War (Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1936); Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York, 1995), 262–63, 297–300; DAB, 7:528–34. 14. Jefferson Davis (1808–89), president of the Confederate States of America (1861–65), was born in Christian (Todd) County, Kentucky, raised on a plantation in Mississippi, and educated at Transylvania University and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. After serving at several frontier military posts, he returned to Mississippi and devoted himself to the life of a planter. A Democrat, Davis briefly served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1845–46) before resigning to participate in the Mexican War. He later sat in the U.S. Senate (1847–51, 1857–61) and, as secretary of war, in the

Y8204-Douglass.indb 54

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 6 JUNE 1867

55

cabinet of President Franklin Pierce (1853–57). Resigning his Senate seat on 21 January 1861, when he announced Mississippi’s secession, Davis was inaugurated provisional president of the Confederacy on 18 February 1861 at Montgomery, Alabama. He was formally elected president in October 1861. Although never tried for treason, he was a federal prisoner at Fortress Monroe for two years following the Civil War. After his release, Davis wrote an account of his career, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, 2 vols. (New York, 1881). Clement Eaton, Jefferson Davis (New York, 1977); ACAB, 2:98–102; DAB, 5:123–31. 15. In August 1866, Gerrit Smith and Horace Greeley signed a petition to President Andrew Johnson, requesting that the imprisoned Jefferson Davis either be given a trial or be released on bail. Smith had also stated that Davis’s “very long confinement in prison without a trial [was] an insult to the South, a very deep injustice to himself, and a no less deep dishonor to the government and the country.” Greeley argued that the release of Davis would be highly useful in restoring cordial relations between the nation’s sections. The bond for Davis’s release, dated 8 November 1867, was signed by Smith, Greeley, and the New York financier Cornelius Vanderbilt. A heated barrage of criticism from northerners was directed against the three men. Davis was never tried for his part in leading the rebellion. Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 442–44; Foner, Reconstruction, 190. 16. An allusion to the poor conditions at two camps established for Union army prisoners of war by the Confederates. Built on a small island in the James River at Richmond, Virginia, Belle Isle was operated as an internment camp for Union army prisoners from June 1862 to October 1864. Housed only in tents, as many as 6,000–8,000 captured Union troops filled the facility at one time. At the overcrowded and unsanitary stockade in Andersonville, Georgia, over 13,000 prisoners—ill fed, poorly clothed, and lacking proper medical attention—died between its opening in February 1864 and the war’s conclusion. Ovid L. Futch, History of Andersonville Prison (Gainesville, Fla., 1968), 37, 43; William Best Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons: A Study in War Psychology (1930; New York, 1958), 115–24, 137–38, 147–50.

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C. 1 6 June 1867.

D. Father Having a few leisure moments, I know of no better way of informing them than by writing you and all a few lines. I received your letter2 a few days ago finding me well and in pretty good spirits. The colored population here are jubilant over their recent success at the polls,3 and to night are to have a torchlight procession. The rebels have resorted to every kind of unfair means to frustrate the election of the radical nominees but to no effect. Everything passed off quietly on the part of the colored voters. The only disturbance I noticed was two white men fighting over a black man, one said the black man had voted the Democrat ticket and the other said he did not believe it and they went together. I enjoyed it much. Mr. Wormley4 wants very much for you to come down here and spend a few weeks making his house your home. He has made considerable money off of the Japanese and he proposes to have a little rest and enjoyment. My love to

Y8204-Douglass.indb 55

5/17/23 2:35 PM

56

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 6 JUNE 1867

Libbie5 and Mother.6 I hope you may take a trip down here and spend a week or so. Affectionately Yr. Son CHARLES R. DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 279–80, FD Papers, DLC. 1. On the line following his signature, Charles added “264 G. M.” 2. This letter has not been located. 3. On 8 January 1867, Congress granted voting rights to all adult male citizens of Washington, D.C. The first time African American men were able to exercise this right was an election in Georgetown, which took place the following month. What Charles Douglass is referring to, however, is the citywide municipal election held on 3 June 1867. At the time, African Americans made up one-third of the city’s total population, but surviving records indicate that by Election Day there were 8,212 black men registered to vote, compared with just 9,792 white voters. On the day of the election, city officials were clearly concerned that problems might arise—local papers reported that telegraph operators were on duty in every polling place in case the police needed to be summoned—but, as the New York Times reported, the most remarkable aspect of the election was that it turned out to be “just like any other.” Due in no small part to the heavy African American turn out, the Republican slate swept the city as well as most of the wards. Washington National Republican, 4 June 1867; New York Times, 4 June 1867; Harrison, Washington during Civil War, 187; Joan Talbert Thornell, Governance of the Nation’s Capital: A Summary History of the Forms and Powers of Local Government for the District of Columbia, 1790 to 1973 (Washington, D.C., 1990), n.p. 4. In the 1850s, James Wormley, a free black, opened a hotel and restaurant in two houses he owned on I Street in the heart of Washington, D.C. In 1859, Wormley’s establishment became the regular meeting place of the Washington Club, whose members included most of the city’s political and military elites. On the recommendation of members of the club, the Buchanan administration hired Wormley to cater for the members of the first Japanese Commission, sent to the United States in May 1860, as it sailed up the coast from Norfolk, Virginia, to Washington, D.C., and then on to its final destination, Philadelphia. In 1867, the Johnson administration engaged Wormley to host and cater the second Japanese Commission during its stay in the nation’s capital, which began on 1 May. Led by the mathematician Ono Tomogoro, who was a member of the shogun’s Western Literature Research Institute, the second Japanese Commission was tasked primarily with acquiring ships for the nascent Japanese navy, and spent weeks negotiating the purchase of a former Confederate steam-powered ironclad ram (the Stonewall) from the U.S. Navy for $400,000. Charles Douglass’s belief that Wormley had “made considerable money off of the Japanese” may be related to an item that appeared in the National Republican a few days after this letter was written, which indicated that on the day they left (4 June 1867), members of the commission had asked their host to divide a parting gift of $210 among the waiters who had cared for them during their stay at his hotel. Washington National Republican, 1 May 1867; Washington National Intelligencer, 4 May 1867; Washington Evening Star, 5 June 1867; Washington National Republican, 10 June 1867; Andrew Johnson, The Papers of Andrew Johnson, ed. LeRoy P. Graf, Ralph W. Haskins, and Paul H. Bergeron, 16 vols. (Knoxville, Tenn., 1967–2000), 12:252–53; Brian Niiya, ed., Japanese American History: An A to Z Reference from 1868 to the Present (New York, 1993), 26; “The Wormley Hotel,” WhiteHouseHistory.org. 5. Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Murphy Douglass. 6. Anna Murray Douglass.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 56

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO GENTLEMEN OF EASTON, MARYLAND, 23 JUNE 1867

57

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GENTLEMEN OF EASTON, MARYLAND Rochester, [N.Y.] 23 June 1867.

Gentlemen: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of the 17th June. I have received many invitations in my life, but I never received one by any persons or citizens, however distinguished, from any quarter of the Country however populous and important, to be pressed upon any occasion however grand and imposing which I could more cheerfully accept than the one with which you have honored me, to be present in Easton and to assist in the Celebration of the Eighty Second Anniversary of American Independence.1 Nevertheless I shall have to decline your invitation. A previous appointment for that day, in a neighboring State makes it impossible for me to be present with you.2 Having this, I might thank you for the invitation and for the kind sentiments with which you were pleased to accompany it, and close my letter, but some thing more would seem lawful and proper under the circumstances. Your letter comes from Easton, Talbot County Maryland. This gives it a peculiar interest for me. I know Easton and know it well—(not the Easton of to day perhaps, unless like other towns to the South of us, it has successfully resisted the Spirit of material improvement which has distinguished our Northern towns and cities)—at any rate, I know it as it was—five and thirty years ago. Whatever may be its appearance to day I well remember both its appearance and character thus. Easton, forty years ago—(for then I had not seen it) a vision of human greatness—a grand seat of commerce, a center of law and learning, remarkable for wealth and refinement. When only eight or nine years old I had already learned to think that any slave who had visited Easton was vastly superior any who had not been there. But I have unpleasant memories of Easton. The longest time I ever passed in the place was in a building which with its locks heavy locks, thick walls, iron gratings and unwholesome atmosphere made a gloomy impression upon me3—although, I must say, I was about as well off there as a man could be expected to be under the circumstances. I liked the Gentleman who kept the house4 much better than some of his his company of which he had altogether too much to suit my taste. There [illegible] were slave traders from Kentucky—slave traders from Alabama—slave traders

Y8204-Douglass.indb 57

5/17/23 2:35 PM

58

DOUGLASS TO JAMES J. SPELMAN, 11 JULY 1867

from Georgia—and they all seemed to have a hankering after me—which but for the long whips they carried might have and the sinister expression of their faces might have been ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 281–82, FD Papers, DLC. 1. The membership of the committee that invited Douglass to deliver a Fourth of July address in Easton, Maryland, in 1867, cannot be determined. Their letter to Douglass has not survived. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 178, 231n. 2. Rather than speaking in Easton, Douglass delivered a Fourth of July address in Portsmouth, Virginia. Norfolk (Va.) Journal, 5, 8 July 1867; New York Times, 17 July 1867. 3. Douglass and three other slaves hired out to William Freeman were arrested on 2 April 1836 by local constables on suspicion of plotting to escape from slavery. The constables marched the men to St. Michael’s to allow Captain Thomas Auld, Douglass’s owner, to determine their fate. After an interrogation by Auld, the constables marched the would-be fugitives twelve more miles to Easton, the county seat, to be put in jail. Douglass and the others were held in the Talbot County Jail for several days, during which time slave traders examined them as potential purchases, but all were soon released to their owner. Douglass was soon sent back to Baltimore to live in Hugh Auld’s household. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:130–38; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 136–38. 4. Joseph Graham (c. 1797–?) was the sheriff of Talbot County and the keeper of its jail in 1836. By 1830, Graham was married and the father of two young daughters. He was still alive in 1878 when Douglass returned to visit Talbot County. 1830 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 36; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 135, 348.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JAMES J. SPELMAN1 Rochester, [N.Y.] 11 July 1867.

My Dear Sir: On my arrival here from Virginia two days ago,2 I found my lost brother Perry3 and his family safely arrived at my house, and send this merely to express my thanks to you for your kind offices towards him and them. The meeting of my brother after nearly forty years separation is an event altogether too affecting for words to describe. How unutterably accursed is slavery, and unspeakably joyful are the results of its overthrow! The search now being made and the happy reunions now taking place all over the South after years of separation and sorrow, furnish a subject of the deepest pathos. Truly yours, FRED. DOUG LASS. PLSr: New York Independent, 25 July 1867. 1. Douglass acknowledges the assistance of James J. Spelman (1841–94) in reuniting him with his brother Perry. Born in Norwich, Connecticut, to a black Baptist minister, Spelman grew up in New York City, where his father preached for many decades. He supported himself as a journalist

Y8204-Douglass.indb 58

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 18 JULY 1867

59

and theatrical producer and recruited black soldiers during the Civil War for the Union army. Spelman met Perry Downs in New York City and paid for his passage to Rochester to be reunited with his brother. In 1868 he moved to Mississippi, where he taught for the Freedmen’s Bureau and was elected to the state legislature. He became a political ally of Mississippi governors James Alcorn and Adelbert Ames and was a delegate to the 1872 and 1876 Republican National Conventions. Spelman also continued to work as a journalist and aided James Lynch in founding the Jackson Colored Citizen. He was given numerous minor patronage positions over the years and served as a trustee of Alcorn College. Simmons, Men of Mark, 928-32. 2. Douglass delivered an address on the Fourth of July in Portsmouth, Virginia. A large parade of local blacks had escorted Douglass to the county courthouse there. A local white reporter praised Douglass as “a powerful speaker, and no doubt a natural born orator.” According to that reporter, Douglass advised his largely black audience that in order “to live right they must be honest, be industrious, be virtuous, obliging and polite, and show to the world that they could be good citizens as well as the white man.” After an hour’s speech, Douglass reportedly boarded a steamer heading north. Norfolk (Va.) Journal, 5 July 1867. 3. Perry Downs.

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C.118 July 1867.

Dear Father I was called upon early this morning by Mr Carter Stewart2 who stated to me that Mr. Lannon (Ex-Marshall of this Dist. under President Lincoln’s administration,)3 called upon him yesterday and requested him to write you immediately and assertain in a quiet way whether you would accept the position as Chief of the Freedman’s Bureau4 (the place that Genl. Howard5 now occupies) if tendered to you. If you would, an immediate reply is requested, either by telegraph to me or letter. If you should not accept, the Marshall will drop the matter not wishing it to become public; but it is his wish with many others to know whether you would accept, before any movement is taken in the matter. I would like to see you at the head of this Bureau. You posess more than the necessary qualifications for the management of it. It does not require military knowledge, and the work is easier than lecturing and travelling. My hope is, that you wont refuse the position if tendered. Love to all at home. An immediate reply to this is earnestly requested. I am further authorized to state that, should you consent to accept the position it will not be made public, until it is certain that the position is really tendered, of course if not, then have to be made public. Aff. Yr. Son CHARLES R. DOUG LASS

Y8204-Douglass.indb 59

5/17/23 2:35 PM

60

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 18 JULY 1867

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 287–88, FD Papers, DLC. 1. On the line following his signature, Charles Douglass added: “264. G. M.” 2. Born in Virginia, Carter A. Stewart (c. 1828–91) was a successful mixed-race barber, prominent in the black community of Washington, D.C. In 1868 he was elected to the city’s common council, and in 1869 he was appointed to the board of aldermen. 1860 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 12; 1870 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 14; 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 32–33; Scott E. Casper, Sarah Johnson’s Mount Vernon: The Forgotten History of an American Shrine (New York, 2008), 122; Kate Masur, An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2010), 153–54, 162. 3. Ward Hill Lamon (1828–93) was born near Winchester, Virginia, in what is now Berkeley County, West Virginia. In the late 1840s, after studying medicine for two years, he moved to Kentucky to study law at the University of Louisville. In 1851, Lamon settled in Danville, Illinois, and opened his first law office. Within a few years, he and Abraham Lincoln, with whom he became friends while riding central Illinois’s Eighth Judicial Circuit, formed an informal law partnership. An early supporter of the future president’s political aspirations, Lamon helped organize Lincoln’s famous but failed senatorial campaign (against Stephen Douglas) in 1858 and worked on his presidential campaign in 1860. After receiving what were perceived as credible death threats, Lincoln asked Lamon to accompany him as his personal bodyguard when he traveled to Washington, D.C., for his inauguration in early 1861. In April of that same year, Lincoln appointed Lamon U.S. marshal for Washington, D.C., with the primary responsibility of continuing to ensure the president’s safety. On the day Lincoln was killed, Lamon was on assignment in Richmond, Virginia. For the rest of his life, Lamon maintained that if he had been present, he could have prevented the assassination. Following Lincoln’s death, Lamon resigned as U.S. marshal and returned to the practice of law, forming a partnership with former attorney general and secretary of state Jeremiah Black. Around 1870, he began work on a planned two-volume biography of Lincoln, but soon tired of the project and turned it over to a ghostwriter—his partner’s son, Chauncey F. Black. In 1872, when the first volume of the biography (The Life of Abraham Lincoln from His Birth to His Inauguration as President) was published, both the critics and the public were offended by its sometimes less than flattering portrayal of the late president, and it proved to be a financial disaster. As a result, any thought of a second volume was abandoned. Lamon ended his partnership with Black in 1879 and moved to Colorado, where he practiced law on his own until 1883. At one point during that period, he was seriously considered a candidate for the position of postmaster of Denver, but Robert Todd Lincoln, who had been greatly offended by Lamon’s biography of his father, blocked his nomination. After closing his practice in Denver, he traveled widely before settling in Berkeley County, West Virginia. Harold Holzer, Lincoln President Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secessionist Winter, 1860–1861 (New York, 2008), 287, 404, 480; Spencer C. Tucker, ed., American Civil War: The Defi nitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection, 6 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2013), 1:1095; ANB (online). 4. Based on the content of several letters published in this volume, it seems unlikely that Douglass was ever officially offered the job of heading the Freedmen’s Bureau. According to a letter (dated 18 August 1867) from William Slade, the White House steward who seems to have played a pivotal role in trying to engineer Douglass’s appointment, it is not even certain that Johnson ever seriously considered Douglass as a candidate for the job. In fact, Slade indicates that having heard from one of the president’s secretaries that Johnson was thinking of appointing an African American to head the bureau, he contacted Douglass on his own to see whether he would be interested in the position. Had Douglass said yes, Slade would have tried to convince the president to select Douglass, but since Douglass tacitly declined the job, Slade wrote that he never brought the matter to Johnson’s attention. Given these circumstances, it seems doubtful that Douglass received a formal offer from Johnson to take charge of the Freedmen’s Bureau. William Slade to Douglass, 18 August 1867, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 305–306, FD Papers, DLC; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 259–61. 5. Oliver Otis Howard.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 60

5/17/23 2:35 PM

WILLIAM SLADE TO DOUGLASS, 29 JULY 1867

61

WILLIAM SLADE1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C. 29 July 1867.

Mr Frederick Douglass My Dear Sir I hope you will be surprised at this proposition, I make to you—in a Private and confidential manner Their are great many Persons that are of the opinion that the Freedman’s Bureau, (its affairs) are not Conducted as they ought to be, and the object of this note is to know if I secure the appointment of you at the head of the Bureau will you accept (in the place of Genl Howard)2 Now with regard to Genl Howard, he is a good man, yet at the same time he is timid and lacks moral courage and I must confess I know of no man—white or colored would be better adapted to the Place than your Humble Self. Hoping this will find you and yours in good Health I am truly Your Friend MR SLADE

P.S. Let me hear from you at your ealiest Convenience [P.P.S.] Keep this Private & Confidential ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 290–91, FD Papers, DLC. 1. William Slade (1815–68) was a senior White House servant, a Washington, D.C., African American community leader, and a correspondent with Frederick Douglass during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. He served as usher and valet in the Lincoln White House and was promoted to steward, responsible for the Executive Mansion’s finances, by Andrew Johnson in August 1865. John E. Washington, They Knew Lincoln (New York, 1942), 114–18; Natalie Sweet, “A Representative ‘of Our People’: The Agency of William Slade, Leader in the African American Community and Usher to Abraham Lincoln,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, 34:21–41 (2013). 2. Oliver Otis Howard.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH Rochester, [N.Y.] 9 Aug[ust] 1867.

Hon Gerrit Smith My dear Sir, You were neither present nor represented at the taking of my deposition, last month, in your Suit with the Chicago Tribune.1 Hence the tenor of some parts of it may be somewhat different from what it would have been

Y8204-Douglass.indb 61

5/17/23 2:35 PM

62

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 9 AUGUST 1867

had I been cross questioned. In saying so I impute blame to no one. There was nothing unfair nor unpleasant in the taking of my Deposition. I wish to say distinctly that John Brown never declared nor intimated to me that he was about to embark in a grand or unqualif[ied] Insurrection, that the only Insurrection he proposed was the escaping of slaves and their standing for their lives against any who should [pursue] them[.] For years before Captain Brown’s long entertained plan was to go the mountains in the slave States and invite the slaves to flee there and stand for Their freedom. His object was to make slave property unprofitable by making it insecure. He told me he had given to you a general idea of this plan, but that he had not given you the full particulars less that you might turn from him as a visionary and dangerous man. These or four weeks previous to his invasion of Harpers Ferry, Captain Brown requested me to have an interview with him at Chambersburg Pa—I did it; and in that interview he informed me that he had determined upon that invasion instead of carrying out his old plan of going into the mountains.2 He did not tell me that you knew anything of this new plan. I do not suppose that any of his friends outside of his own family, at the not North knew of it. Captain Brown never told me that you knew anything of his guns or other weapons. You are at full Liberty to make use of this Statement in any way you may deem proper. As ever, yours very truly FREDK DOUG LASS.

P. S. This would have been mailed to Peterboro immediately after you left Rochester had I not supposed you at the white mountains.3 I have left out a line or two which I deemed covered sufficiently by that I have already written. Your visit here was a most pleasant surprise— not less to Mrs Douglass4 and Miss Assing5 than to myself. My friend Remond6 who I was looking for has not yet reached me. Tomorrow I leave home to speak in Penn Yan7—Thence I shall go to Addison Steuben County,8 and thence home on Saturday— Your note sent by the Colored lad from the Hotel came safely— F. D. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 294–96, FD Papers, DLC; Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 62

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 9 AUGUST 1867

63

1. In a letter dated 31 March 1867, Douglass told Smith, “In passing through Chicago last week—I find I am to be summoned as a witness by the Tribune folks—to tell all I know of the John Brown Affair.” Smith allowed the letter of 9 August 1867 from Douglass to be made public, but omitted the first paragraph. Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 31 March 1867, Smith Papers, NSyU; Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, 255–56. 2. Two months before the Harpers Ferry raid in October 1859, John Brown requested Douglass to meet him near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. In mid-August, Douglass and Shields Green, a fellow former slave from Rochester, met with Brown and John Kagi, Brown’s secretary, in an old stone quarry on the Conococheague River. The group met over the course of a weekend, and their conversations consisted mostly of Brown and Douglass debating whether to proceed with the original plan of establishing a base in the Blue Ridge Mountains to assist escaping slaves or to commit to a raid on the Harpers Ferry Armory. Ultimately, Douglass realized that Brown was committed to the Harpers Ferry plan and that there was no changing his mind. Douglass declined to join Brown, believing the mission to be “a trap of steel.” Shields Green, who participated in the abortive raid, was executed on 19 December 1859. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 5:31–32, ser. 2, 3:248; Oates, To Purge This Land, 282–83. 3. Probably a reference to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, part of the Appalachian Mountain system. There is no record confirming that Gerrit Smith traveled to either Rochester or the White Mountains in 1867. Leon E. Seltzer, ed., The Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer of the World (1952; New York, 1970), 2087. 4. Anna Murray Douglass. 5. Probably Ottilie Assing (1819–84), who was born to Rosa Maria Antoinette Pauline Assing, a Christian, and Assur David Assing, a Jew, in Hamburg, Germany. Assing received an accelerated education from her mother, and was generally described as bright and vivacious. After the death of her mother in 1840 and father in 1842, Ottilie and her younger sister Ludmilla spent time with relatives, but she grew despondent and attempted suicide in 1843. After returning to Hamburg, Assing began writing reviews of local culture. In 1851 she became a correspondent for the German periodical Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser. Assing first met Frederick Douglass when she came to America in 1855, supposedly inspired to make his acquaintance after reading My Bondage and My Freedom. In Rochester, she interviewed him for an article that subsequently appeared in the Morgenblatt. In succeeding years, Assing published numerous articles about Douglass for her German readers, and also translated My Bondage and My Freedom into German, contributing an introduction. In 1856, the two began an intimate relationship that lasted twenty-eight years. During that time, Douglass and Assing corresponded regularly. When in the United States, Assing was a regular visitor at the Douglass home in Rochester, including during the summer of 1858, when she probably accompanied Douglass to the West Indian Emancipation celebrations in Poughkeepsie. She was friendly with his children, although his wife, Anna Murray, did not approve of her husband’s relationship. Douglass and Assing often appeared in public together, but contemporary public speculation did not question the propriety of their relationship. Following Anna Murray Douglass’s death in 1882, Assing hoped that she might become Mrs. Frederick Douglass. But in January 1884, while Assing was in Europe, Douglass married his secretary, Helen Pitts. Increasingly ill, possibly from cancer, and despondent over Douglass’s rejection, Assing committed suicide in a Paris park on 21 August 1884. She left her entire estate to Douglass. Christoph K. Lohmann, ed., Radical Passion: Ottilie Assing’s Reports from America and Letters to Frederick Douglass (New York, 1999), 69, 329–62; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 7, 23, 38, 56, 184, 203, 368, 371. 6. Charles Lenox Remond (1810–73), the first black lecturer hired by any antislavery society, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, to the daughter of a black hero of the American Revolution and a former slave from Curaçao. In his youth, he learned about the horrors of slavery from his father and experienced segregation and discrimination from northern whites. In the late 1820s and early 1830s, Remond read David Walker’s Appeal and became acquainted with William Lloyd Garrison, which

Y8204-Douglass.indb 63

5/17/23 2:35 PM

64

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM SLADE, 12 AUGUST 1867

led him to dedicate his life to abolitionism. He became an agent for the Liberator and joined the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society shortly thereafter. In 1838, he began lecturing for the American Anti-Slavery Society. Both his color and his ability made him a very popular speaker in both the United States and Great Britain, where he attended the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention as a delegate in 1840. Remond was the sole black lecturer for antislavery societies until Frederick Douglass began speaking publicly in 1842. For a time, Remond and Douglass worked the lecture circuit together, and Douglass admired Remond, the more experienced speaker, even naming a son for him. Through the 1840s, however, Remond remained a steadfast Garrisonian, while Douglass moved toward political action to end slavery, and their friendship suffered. Their goals remained the same, and like Douglass, Remond recruited black soldiers for the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War. After the war, just before his death, Remond urged abolitionists to continue their fight by combating the racial prejudice that persisted in both the North and South after the end of slavery. Remond joined Douglass and Perry Downs in an address at Watkins, New York, on 1 August 1867. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxiii; Les Wallace, “Charles Lenox Remond: The Lost Prince of Abolitionism,” NHB, 40:696–701 (May–June 1977); William E. Ward, “Charles Lenox Remond: Black Abolitionist, 1838–1873” (Ph.D. diss., Clark University, 1977); NCAB, 2:303; DAB, 15:499–500. 7. The Penn Yan Yates County Chronicle reported that Douglass spoke at Bush’s Hall in that community on 14 August 1867. Douglass was reported as criticizing President Andrew Johnson for using the power of the presidency to block efforts to protect the rights of the freed slaves. The newspaper disagreed with the tenor of Douglass’s remarks, arguing that “there is already hate and prejudice enough, and that magnanimity toward captured foes, so far as it can be safely exercised, is better than hate.” Penn Yan (N.Y.) Yates County Chronicle, 22 August 1867. 8. Douglass tells Smith that he will speak in Addison, a small farming community in Steuben County nine miles southwest of Corning, New York, and fifty miles south of Penn Yan. No report of Douglass’s address in Addison has survived. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 11.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM SLADE Rochester, [N.Y.] 12 Aug[ust] 1867.

My dear Sir: I duly estimate the importance of the office that you in your kindness would procure for me. It would furnish me instrumentalities and opportunities which—I doubt not—I should have the heart and the head to employ greatly to the advantage of our newly emancipated people, especially if I should be assisted—I I undoubtedly should be—by President Johnson, if appointed by him.1 Nevertheless, my dear Sir, without pronouncing at all upon the character and fitness of the present incumbent of the Bureau, with my present views of duty I could not accept that office if it were tendered me. You will please accept my thanks for your kind offices in this matter. I shall always be glad to hear from you. Your position gives you decided advantages in the way of information and I should be very glad at any time to learn the direction of events. Should President Johnson place

Y8204-Douglass.indb 64

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM SLADE, 12 AUGUST 1867

65

a colored man at the head of the Bureau, it would more than all other acts of his demonstrate his purpose of being the Moses of the colored race in the United States.2 My kindest regards to Mrs. Slade.3 FREDERICK DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 299–300, FD Papers, DLC. 1. The act of 3 March 1865 creating the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands placed it under the control of the War Department within the executive branch. The president, as commander in chief, held the authority to appoint or relieve from command all high-ranking military officers, though such decisions were executed through the secretary of war and the chief of the army. The bureau’s first commissioner, Major General Oliver Otis Howard, was selected by President Lincoln, but appointed by Andrew Johnson in May 1865. Prompted by the complaints of white southerners, Johnson quickly grew to detest the Freedmen’s Bureau and attempted to abolish it by vetoing legislation to extend its life in February 1866. When Congress overrode that veto, Johnson limited the bureau’s power and scope throughout the last two years of his administration. Inevitably, Johnson came to loathe General Howard and spoke openly about replacing him during 1867. Since Johnson habitually expressed, both privately and publicly, his desires to dismiss many subordinates (including key cabinet members) throughout his tenure, it is difficult to determine the seriousness of his intentions to either relieve Howard or replace him with a prominent African American such as Frederick Douglass or John Mercer Langston, as was reported in the press. Alexandria (Va.) Gazette, 10 September 1867; Washington Evening Star, 12 September 1867; George R. Bentley, A History of the Freedmen’s Bureau (Philadelphia, 1955), 196; Paul H. Bergeron, Andrew Johnson’s Civil War and Reconstruction (Knoxville, 2011), 145–79; John Cox and LaWanda Cox, “General O. O. Howard and the ‘Misrepresented Bureau,’ ” JSH, 19:427–56 (November 1953); Sweet, “Representative,” 34:38–39. 2. Andrew Johnson made his controversial “Moses of the colored men” speech on 24 October 1864 while military governor of Tennessee and vice presidential candidate of the Union party under Abraham Lincoln. Called upon to address a predominantly African American Union party campaign rally in Nashville, Johnson stated that the sight of “this vast crowd of colored people” made him wish that “a Moses might arise who should lead them safely to their promised land of freedom and happiness.” In response, some in the enthusiastic crowd shouted, “You are our Moses!” Notoriously bombastic on the political stump, Johnson declared, “Well, then, humble and unworthy as I am, if no other better shall be found, I will indeed be your Moses, and lead you through the Red Sea of war and bondage to a fairer future of liberty and peace.” The speech raised African Americans’ hopes that Johnson might be their political champion, but these expectations were quickly dashed once he became president and failed to act in defense of freedmen. Johnson, Papers of Andrew Johnson, 7:251–53; David Warren Bowen, Andrew Johnson and the Negro (Knoxville, Tenn., 1989), 80–82; Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein and Richard Zuczek, Andrew Johnson: A Biographical Companion (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2001), 201. 3. Josephine Slade was the wife of William Slade, who served as usher and valet in the Lincoln White House and as steward, responsible for the Executive Mansion’s finances, during Andrew Johnson’s presidency. Since three of the Slade children were regular playmates of Tad Lincoln, both in the White House and at the Slade residence, Josephine and Mary Lincoln became warm friends. After Lincoln’s assassination, Mary gave the bloodstained dress she wore to Ford’s Theater to Josephine, who in later years cut it into pieces that she presented to family members as heirlooms. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (New York, 1868), 202, 310; Washington, They Knew Lincoln, 108–10; Sweet, “Representative,” 34:29–30.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 65

5/17/23 2:35 PM

66

WILLIAM SLADE TO DOUGLASS, 18 AUGUST 1867

WILLIAM SLADE TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C. 18 Aug[ust] 1867.

Mr Frederick Douglass My Dear Friend I received your very kind letter,1 and I was sorry that you could not accept the position, that I feel allmost certain that I could procure. Although I have had no talk with the—President on the subject, But I have learned though one of his Secretary, (privately) that he would appoint a colored man, if he could find one suitable for the Place.—hence I wrote to you and I hope—yet—you will give the Subject more Consideration, and let me hear from you at your Earliest Convenience, I would like to see you at the—head of that Bureau, hoping this will find you and family in good health with my kind regards to Mrs Douglass—2 I remain truly Your Friend WM SLADE ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 305–06, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Possibly Douglass’s letter to William Slade of 12 August 1867, appearing immediately before this one. 2. Anna Murray Douglass.

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington[,] D.C. 21 Aug[ust] 1867.

Dear Father Your letter of the 19th inst.1 came to hand this morning. Libbie2 the baby and myself are well. It is understood here that General Howard will be relieved monday next.3 What my fate will be I cant say. Johnson seems determined to make good use of the rest of his term to play the mischief in all quarters. My position here will depend on the Policy of the successor of General Howard. With regard to the chairs and other articles, I can only say let them go at what they will bring. You told me some time ago that you would not charge Libbie for board, and my letter had no reference to that at all. I have learned since writing this, that you have been tendered the Position that Genl. Howard now occupies, it came direct from the White House and is now being talked about in my presence.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 66

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 21 AUGUST 1867

67

John M. Langston4 is also mentioned, rumors are rife in all quarters. I have heard enough here from reporters of the press coming and going that if you would accept the position as Comm. of this Bureau, it would be at once given to you. It seems very strange to me that such a thing should even be mooted in the quarter it has emanated from. There is some deep scheming going on at Head Quarters, and I shall await the result in good spirits Love to Mother Aff. Yr. Son CHARLES R. DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 307–08, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Douglass’s letter to Charles has not survived. 2. Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Murphy Douglass. 3. Charles is repeating a rumor circulating in Washington that President Andrew Johnson was seeking an African American as a replacement for General Oliver Otis Howard as commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau. By the fall, the story had made it into national publications such as the New York Independent and the New York National Anti-Slavery Standard. Johnson’s intention was to remove Howard and replace him with a politically weaker commissioner as part of the president’s plan to subvert the bureau. The maneuver ultimately came to naught, since neither Douglass nor Langston would cooperate with Johnson. NASS, 21 September 1867; McFeely, Yankee Stepfather, 241–43, 247, 307. 4. John Mercer Langston (1829–97) was born in Louisa County, Virginia, to a planter and his mistress, an emancipated slave of black and American Indian ancestry. Orphaned at an early age but possessed of a substantial inheritance, Langston grew up in Ohio, graduated from Oberlin College (1849), and in 1854 gained admission to the Ohio bar under a precedent allowing certain rights to “a colored man who is nearer white than mulatto or half-breed.” He won elected office in Oberlin and campaigned for black suffrage and education. Langston spoke at temperance and antislavery meetings and helped found the black Ohio State Anti-Slavery Society, of which he was president from 1858 to 1861. During the Civil War, he recruited African American troops, opposed discrimination in the army, headed the National Equal Rights League, and successfully defended Edmonia Lewis— later a noted black sculptor—in an infamous poisoning case at Oberlin College. Langston was inspector general of the Freedmen’s Bureau and was, as Charles reports, approached by the Johnson administration about replacing O. O. Howard as its head. From 1869 until 1876, he was a professor of law and dean at Howard University. President Grant appointed him to the Board of Health of the District of Columbia in 1871, and he served until 1877. Appointed minister to Haiti in 1877, Langston held diplomatic posts until 1885, when he returned to Virginia as president of the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute in Petersburg. In 1888 he won a disputed congressional election in Virginia’s Fourth District, defeating a white Democrat and a white Republican in a race that was ultimately decided by the House of Representatives. Douglass opposed Langston’s candidacy for tending to split the Republican ranks. FDP, 13 May 1852; John Mercer Langston, From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol (Hartford, Conn., 1894); William Cheek and Aimee Lee Cheek, John Mercer Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1829–65 (Urbana, Ill., 1989); Geoffrey Blodgett, “John Mercer Langston and the Case of Edmonia Lewis: Oberlin, 1862,” JNH, 53:201–18 (July 1968).

Y8204-Douglass.indb 67

5/17/23 2:35 PM

68

DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON, 2 SEPTEMBER 1867

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON Rochester, [N.Y.] 2 Sept[ember] 1867.

My dear Tilton: Thanks for your kind note: I am glad to be thought of by such a friend. You have heard little of me this summer—yet I have not been passing life in the elegant leisure you picture me. Besides making many Speeches in the Rural districts and paying a flying visit to old Virginia in July1—I have been keeping a kind of Hotel all summer—and have just now been released from this latter vocation. My Poor Brother Perry2—after a bondage of fifty six years deeply marked by the hardships and sorrows of that hateful condition—and after a Separation from me during forty years, as complete, as if he had lived on another planet—Came to me two months ago with his family of six and took up his abode with me3—To him, Dear old fellow! one who has carried me on his shoulders a many time for he is older than I—Though my head seems to contradict it, one who defended from the assaults of bigger boys—When I needed defense, I have been mainly devoting myself—and gladly so. I have now completed for him and his family a snug little cottage, on my own groud—where where My dear old slavery scarred—and long lost Brother may spend in peace— with his family remainder of his days—Though no longer young, he is no sluggard. Slavery got the best of his life—but he is still strong and hopeful—I wish his old master 4 could see him now—Cheerful—helpful and taking “Care of himself ”—If slavery were not dead—and I did not in some sort wish to forget its terrible hardships—blighting curses, and shocking horrors—I would try to write some a narrative of Brother Perry’s bondage—but let the old system go. I would not call its guilty Ghost from the depths into which its crimes have hurled it—I turn gladly from it to the new a better despensation now dawning. Yes! I do—in this eventful and perilous times want to speak and yet why should I want to speak? My thought is spoken more skillfully, wisely, forcibly—and more effectively by others—“The Independent,”5 among the number than I could speak it. I have something to tell you. Among the strange things which have come to me this summer—has been a proposition from the “White House”, for me to take charge of the Bureau!—This came in July. Of course I refused at once to facilitate the “Removal”—of a man so just and good as General Howard —and especially to place myself under any oblegations

Y8204-Douglass.indb 68

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON, 2 SEPTEMBER 1867

69

to keep the peace with it. Have we [illegible] the end of Johnson’s wrath or may we look for more? Remember me to your Dear wife and to those bright eyed and blessed little Tiltons— 6 Your sincere friend FREDERICK DOUG LASS

[P.S.] I am glad to see your name in the east— ALS: Frederick Douglass Manuscripts, NHi. Another text in PLSr: New York Independent, 12 September 1867. 1. Douglass delivered a Fourth of July address in Portsmouth, Virginia. There are scattered reports of him lecturing in Penn Yan and Addison, New York, in August 1867. No record of other speeches given that summer have survived. Norfolk (Va.) Journal, 5, 8 July 1867; New York Times, 17 July 1867; Penn Yan (N.Y.) Yates County Chronicle, 22 August 1867. 2. Perry Downs. 3. Douglass’s brother Perry Downs and his family arrived in Rochester in the summer of 1867. They lived with the Douglass family for several months before moving into a cottage that Douglass had built for them on the grounds of his property. David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (New York, 2018), 495–96. 4. Douglass likely refers to his brother’s final owner in Maryland, John Planner Anthony. Perry Downs to Douglass, 21 February 1867, FD Collection, DHU-MS; Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58–59, MdTCH; 1850 U.S. Census, Slave Schedule, Maryland, Talbot County, 1, 4; 1860 U.S. Census, Slave Schedule, Maryland, Talbot County, 557; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 175–77, 206, 225. 5. The Independent (1848–1928) was a weekly newspaper published in New York City. Originally a religious newspaper, the Independent was dedicated to the survival of the Congregationalist Church after several Presbyterian and Congregationalist leaders adopted a “Plan of Union” for missionary efforts in the western territories. In 1854, the Independent’s format was changed in an attempt to broaden the newspaper’s appeal to non-Congregationalist readers. Theodore Tilton, who joined the newspaper that year, placed a stronger emphasis on antislavery, temperance, and woman suffrage. An early contributor, the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, served as editor from 1861 through 1863, when Tilton became the official editor in chief. In 1867, Tilton changed the Independent’s format to a weekly political magazine, and its religious emphasis was slowly abandoned. Tilton recruited Douglass to write articles for the Independent during and after the Civil War. Lib., 8 December 1848; New York Independent, 27 August 1868; Louis Filler, “Liberalism, Anti-Slavery, and the Founders of the Independent,” New England Quarterly, 27:291–306 (September 1954); ACAB, 6:120. 6. Elizabeth Richards Tilton (c. 1834–97) attended the Packer Institute before marrying Theodore Tilton in the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Church in Brooklyn in 1855. The Tiltons had five living children: Florence (1857–?), Alice (1859–?), Carroll (1863–1904), Paul (1867–68), and Ralph (1870–1907). An additional child, Mattie, died in infancy, during the Civil War. Elizabeth confessed to her husband that she had sought spiritual consolation from Beecher in fall 1868, shortly after the death of her young son Paul, but she later recanted this statement in court. According to Theodore, Elizabeth confessed that an affair between herself and Beecher, lasting a year and a half, ensued shortly thereafter. The Tiltons attempted to reconcile, but rumors of the affair eventually circulated in their tight-knit Brooklyn community. The press got wind of these charges and publicized them widely. The resulting 1875 civil trial, brought by Tilton against Beecher for adultery, became

Y8204-Douglass.indb 69

5/17/23 2:35 PM

70

DOUGLASS TO ELIZABETH KECKLEY, 18 OCTOBER 1867

one of the great sensations of the Gilded Age. The trial resulted in a hung jury, and the Tiltons then divorced. Beecher weathered the scandal, but Tilton’s reputation was damaged, and he eventually moved to Paris. Elizabeth Tilton remained a member of Beecher’s congregation but avoided the public limelight for the remainder of her life. Richard Wightman Fox, Trials of Intimacy: Love and Loss in the Beecher-Tilton Scandal (Chicago, 1999), 11, 15–17, 80–82, 89–131, 202–04, 222, 247–49, 316–17; Shaplen, Free Love and Heavenly Sinners, 3–6, 34–35, 46, 215–55.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ELIZABETH KECKLEY1 Rochester, [N.Y.] 18 Oct[ober] 1867.

My dear Mrs. Keckley:— You judge me rightly—I am willing to do what I can to place the widow of our martyr President2 in the affluent position which her relation to that good man and to the country entitles her to. But I doubt the wisdom of getting up a series of lectures for that purpose; that is just the last thing that should be done.3 Still, if the thing is done, it should be done on a grand scale. The best speakers in the country should be secured for the purpose. You should not place me at the head nor at the foot of the list, but sandwich me between, for thus out of the way, it would not give color to the idea. I am to speak in Newark on Wednesday evening next,4 and will endeavor to see you on the subject. Of course, if it would not be too much to ask, I would gladly see Mrs. Lincoln,5 if this could be done in a quiet way without the reporters getting hold of it, and using it in some way to the prejudice of that already much abused lady. As I shall see you soon, there is less reason to write you at length. I am, dear madam, With high respect, Very truly yours, FREDERICK DOUG LASS. PLSr: Keckley, Behind the Scenes, 316–17. 1. Elizabeth Keckley (1818–1907) was born to a slave mother in Dinwiddie, Virginia, just south of Petersburg. Her father was likely her master, Armistead Burwell. She was given as a wedding present to Burwell’s son and new bride, who resided in Petersburg, where she endured physical and sexual abuse. Keckley then moved with a new slave owner to St. Louis, Missouri, where she developed considerable skills as a seamstress. By 1855 she had earned enough money to purchase her own and her son’s freedom. In 1860 she left a brief marriage to James Keckley and moved first to Baltimore and then to Washington, D.C., to attempt to support herself as a seamstress. Her skills at dressmaking brought her many referrals in the capital, and the new First Lady, Mary Todd Lincoln, hired her as her dresser. Keckley became a confidant as well as a servant to Lincoln. In August 1862, Keckley organized forty other women and fellow members of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church to form the Contraband Relief Association. After Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, Keckley escorted his widow to Chicago to resettle, but then returned to Washington. The two corresponded frequently, and Lincoln related her growing financial distress. Under an alias, Lincoln traveled to New York

Y8204-Douglass.indb 70

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO ELIZABETH KECKLEY, 18 OCTOBER 1867

71

City in September 1867, and the two women undertook to raise money by secretly selling household items and many of the dresses that Keckley had made at the White House. Keckley then wrote about her life and relationship with the Lincolns in an autobiography, Behind the Scenes; Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (1868), which generated controversy because of its descriptions of the widowed Lincoln’s desperate efforts to remain solvent. Keckley claimed that some embarrassing letters from Lincoln had been included in the book without her consent, but Lincoln nevertheless cut off further communication. In later years, Keckley moved often but taught sewing for a time at Wilberforce University. Some of her dresses were displayed at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 5:248–52; Becky Rutberg, Mary Lincoln’s Dressmaker: Elizabeth Keckley’s Remarkable Rise from Slave to White House Confidante (New York, 1995); Lynda Jones, Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker: The Unlikely Friendship of Elizabeth Keckley and Mary Todd Lincoln (Washington, D.C., 2009). 2. Born in Lexington, Kentucky, Mary Todd Lincoln (1818–82) married the future president of the United States in 1842. During the Civil War, gossip circulated regarding her extravagance and thoughtlessness, and antiadministration newspapers reported on her alleged willingness to accept gifts and then ask the donors for favors for her husband. In 1861, Mrs. Lincoln naively befriended Henry Wickoff, a New York Herald reporter who secretly recorded details of the Lincolns’ family life. When the Herald published part of Lincoln’s first annual message to Congress before its delivery, a congressional investigation found Wickoff guilty of procuring the text; Mrs. Lincoln’s reputation was thenceforth stained by an aura of political indiscretion. Charges of treason, however, soon overshadowed all others. With six siblings and nine half brothers and half sisters, Mrs. Lincoln was, like many natives of the border states, closely related to men fighting in the Confederate army, as well as a comforter of their wives. She advocated on their behalf to her husband, although the president refused to grant substantive favors in the absence of Union loyalty. Besides general rumors of transmitting information to the enemy, Mrs. Lincoln was specifically accused of using her half sister Martha Todd White to send information to the Confederates. Both the Lincolns, in fact, had refused Mrs. White’s requests for an exemption from the requirements on transporting goods across Union lines, and both refused to see her at the Executive Mansion. The White House secretary Noah Brooks firmly defended Mrs. Lincoln’s loyalty. When the Committee on the Conduct of the War proposed an investigation of the rumors, President Lincoln allegedly appeared before it without announcement and gravely stated his certainty that no such relations with the enemy existed. During and after the war, Douglass unswervingly defended Mrs. Lincoln’s reputation. Ruth Painter Randall, Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage (Boston, 1953); Ishbel Ross, The President’s Wife: Mary Todd Lincoln (New York, 1973); NAW, 2:404–06. 3. In her autobiography, Keckley implied that Douglass and the Reverend Henry Highland Garnet had proposed a lecture series whose financial proceeds would go to support Mary Todd Lincoln. Keckley related that when she informed Lincoln of the plan, the former First Lady declined “to receive aid from the colored people.” According to Keckley, Lincoln later reversed her decision, “but as the services of Messrs. Douglass, Garnet, and others had been refused when first offered, they declined to take an active part in the scheme; so nothing was ever done.” Keckley, Behind the Scenes, 314; Rutberg, Mary Lincoln’s Dressmaker, 136–38. 4. Newspaper reports confirm that Douglass lectured at the Central Methodist Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey, on the evening of 23 October 1867. The announced title of the speech was “Republican Government vs. The One Man Power.” The New York World, a pro–Johnson administration newspaper, reported that Douglass had advocated African American suffrage and constitutional changes to curb abuses by the executive branch. The World rebuked Douglass’s temerity: “Has it ever occurred to this excellent darkey that even all these reforms might fail to perfect the scheme of earthly governments, or to reconstruct human nature?” Newark (N.J.) Daily Advertiser, 23 October 1867; New York World, 25 October 1867. 5. Neither Douglass, nor Keckley, nor Lincoln reported such a meeting occurring at that time or later.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 71

5/17/23 2:35 PM

72

DOUGLASS TO ELIZABETH KECKLEY, 10 NOVEMBER 1867

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ELIZABETH KECKLEY Rochester, [N.Y.] 10 Nov[ember] 1867.

My dear Mrs. Keckley: I very easily read your handwriting. With practice you will not only write legibly but elegantly; so no more apologies for bad writing. Penmanship has always been one of my own deficiencies, and I know how to sympathize with you. I am just home, and find your letter awaiting me. You should have received an earlier answer but for this absence. I am sorry it will be impossible for me to see you before I go to Washington. I am leaving home this week for Ohio, and shall go from Ohio to Washington.1 I shall be in New York a day or two after my visit to Washington, and will see you there. Any public demonstration in which it will be desirable for me to take part, ought to come off the last of this month or the first of next. I thank you sincerely for the note containing a published letter of dear Mrs. Lincoln; both letters do credit to the excellent lady.2 I prize her beautiful letter to me very highly. It is the letter of a refined and spirited lady, let the world say what it will of her. I would write her a word of acknowledgment but for fear to burden her with correspondence. I am glad that Mr. Garnet3 and yourself saw Mr. Greeley,4 and that he takes the right view of the matter; but we want more than right views, and delay is death to the movement. What you now want is action and co-operation. If Mr. Brady5 does not for any reason find himself able to move the machinery, somebody else should be found to take his place; he made a good impression on me when I saw him, but I have not seen the promised simultaneous movement of which we spoke when together. This whole thing should be in the hands of some recognized solid man in New York. No man would be better than Mr. Greeley; no man in the State is more laughed at, and yet no man in more respected and trusted; a dollar placed in his hands would be as safe for the purpose as in the burglar-proof safe, and what is better still, everybody believes this. This testimonial must be more than a negro testimonial. It is a great national duty. Mr. Lincoln did everything for the black man, but he did it not for the black man’s sake, but for the nation’s sake. His life was given for the nation; but for being President, Mr. Lincoln would have been alive, and Mrs. Lincoln would have been a wife, and not a widow as now. Do all you can, dear Mrs. Keckley—nobody can do more than you in removing

Y8204-Douglass.indb 72

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO ELIZABETH KECKLEY, 10 NOVEMBER 1867

73

the mountains of prejudice towards that good lady, and opening the way of success in the plan. I am, dear madam, very truly yours, FREDERICK DOUG LASS. PLSr: Keckley, Behind the Scenes, 320–23. 1. In November 1867, Douglass delivered the lecture “Self-Made Men” at several locations in Ohio and western Pennsylvania, including Doebler’s Hall in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, on 14– 15 November 1867; Turner’s Opera House in Dayton, Ohio, on 19 November 1867; and Farrar Hall in Erie, Pennsylvania, on 22 November 1867. He then traveled to New England, where he lectured in such cities as Lynn, Chicopee, and Reading, Massachusetts, and Hartford and New London, Connecticut, in December 1867. Dayton (Ohio) Daily Journal, 6, 11, 15, 19 November 1867; Erie (Pa.) Observer, 14 November 1867; Williamsport (Pa.) West Branch Bulletin, 16 November 1867; Dayton (Ohio) Daily Ledger, 19, 20 November 1867; Erie (Pa.) Weekly Gazette, 21, 28 November, 5, 12 December 1867; Lynn (Mass.) Recorder, 7 December 1867; Hartford (Conn.) Daily Courant, 13, 18 December 1867; New York World, 18, 30 December 1867. 2. On 29 October 1867, Mary Todd Lincoln wrote Elizabeth Keckley and enclosed a letter to Frederick Douglass, along with an unidentified “printed letter” to be forwarded to him. On 9 November, Lincoln wrote Keckley to check whether both items had been sent to Douglass. Mary Todd Lincoln to Elizabeth Keckley, 29 October, 7 November 1867, in Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York, 1972), 447–49. 3. Born a slave in Kent County, Maryland, Henry Highland Garnet (1815–82) fled north with his parents in 1824. He attended the African Free School in New York City, the Noyes Academy in Canaan, New Hampshire, and the Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, New York. Garnet was one of the founders of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and a stump speaker for the Liberty party. Licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Troy in 1842, Garnet went to Jamaica in 1852 as a missionary of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland. An early proponent of black immigration to Africa and founder of the African Civilization Society, Garnet, in a speech to the National Negro Convention in Buffalo, New York, in August 1843, sanctioned slave uprisings and praised Madison Washington, leader of the 1842 slave rebellion aboard the Creole. After the Civil War, Garnet was president of Avery College in Pittsburgh and U.S. minister to Liberia (1881–82). Joel Schor, Henry Highland Garnet: A Voice of Black Radicalism in the Nineteenth Century (Westport, Conn., 1977); Dorothy Sterling, ed., Speak Out in Thunder Tones: Letters and Other Writings by Black Northerners, 1787–1865 (Garden City, N.Y., 1973), 376; Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists (New York, 1969), 68, 185, 216–17, 226–27; ANB, 8:735–36. 4. No other source than Keckley corroborates this meeting between Keckley, Henry H. Garnet, and Horace Greeley. Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 210; Schor, Henry Highland Garnet, 210. 5. Not J. H. Brady, but William H. Brady, who was the head of a secondhand jewelry firm, located at 606 Broadway Avenue in New York City, that was assisting Mary Todd Lincoln to raise money by selling some of her valuables. Brady published several letters he had solicited from Lincoln to assist the sale, but this resulted in what was widely dubbed the “Old Clothes Scandal.” Betty Boles Ellison, The True Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (n.p., 2014), 194–95; Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York, 1987), 273, 275, 280; Jones, Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, 66–67.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 73

5/17/23 2:35 PM

74

DOUGLASS TO AMY POST, 26 JANUARY 1868

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO AMY POST1 Akron, [Ohio.] 26 Jan[uary] 1868.

My dear Friend: You manifested so much of your old time interest in me when I called at your house to say farewell, that I cannot do less than to send you a line at this my first opportunity.2 I had not travelled far from the sunshine of your home, before I met the chilling frost of that prejudice which has been the bane of my life. I was positively refused a berth in the sleeping car from Buffalo to Cleveland—and threatened with an old fashoned “drag out” if I refused to go out peaceably. High and angry words passed over me—and for a time, I was preparing my body for the brusing in store for me. The loud talk between the conductor and myself brought to the scene a number of the passengers—most of whom stood up manfully for my right—and this with my own firmness, brought the conductor to his senses. He at last gave me a bed—and I slept about as well as a man can when his temper has been sorely tried—You will not regret, my dear friend, when you review your past, that your life has been a constant and an earnest protest against this vile spirit of caste—I am speaking every night and travelling every day—I have but little time for letter writing—Kind Regards to my friend Isaac—This is a selfish little note: All about myself— Truly yours FREDERICK DOUG LASS. ALS: Post Family Papers, Rush Rhees Library, NRU. 1. Amy Post (1802-89) was born Amy Kirby in Jericho, New York. In 1828 she married Isaac Post, a druggist and the husband of her deceased sister. The Posts became involved with Garrisonian abolitionism and the Underground Railroad after they moved to Rochester in 1835. Amy also acted as a vice president of the American Anti-Slavery Society in the 1850s and 1860s. Douglass first met the couple when he stayed at their home during a lecture tour in 1842, and their friendship influenced his choice of Rochester as the base for his newspaper, the North Star. In addition to abolitionism, Amy Post participated in a broad range of reforms, including the women’s movement, which began at the convention that she helped to organize in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Hewitt, Radical Friend; Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 116–17, 119–20, 140, 143, 184, 230–31; Blake McKelvey, “Civic Medals Awarded Posthumously,” RH, 22:10 (April 1960). 2. Douglass spoke in Marysville, Ohio, on 23 January 1868, and then in Akron on both 25 and 26 January at the start of a two-month speaking tour of the Midwest. He had spoken in Bath, New York, on 17 January 1868, so the visit to the Post house in Rochester must have occurred between 18 and 22 January. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxiv.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 74

5/17/23 2:35 PM

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO DOUGLASS, 4 FEBRUARY 1868

75

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Rochester[, N.Y.] 4 Feb[ruary] 1868.

My Dear Father I received your letter some days from and at your request send the reply to Chicago.1 There are as yet no important letters, one from Jamestown being the most that needs attention. L. O. Smith, Jamestown, says it will be quite as convenient for them to arrange for your lectures on the 31st of March and 1st of April as later2—I am rather puzzled about replying to letters as I have no stamps, or am I only to notice those who send stamps? We are a great deal concerned about Lewis not having had a word since you left and cannot imagine where he is.3 There are a number of letters awaiting him here, one also from Fred. to you.4 Nathan left home last Thursday and is doubtless at his journeys’ end,[.]5 I am fully aware and appreciate every act of kindness and affection bestowed upon Nathan and myself and no one is more grateful than is Nathan himself. I am sorry you have been obliged to form any opinion and hope you will not lose any of the confidence you have been pleased to keep of him for I believe & know that it is Nathan’s desire to act honorably. Lizzie Peirson6 has sent you a present in the shape of two books one Ecce Homo7 and the other Kathrina by Dr Holland.8 As to Louisa I know it will cost quite a little to take care of her.9 Emma10 wanted her and Louisa did not wish to go. The morning after you left she had one of chills and the fever and seemed to suffer considerably she laid on the lounge in the kitchen all day Thursday and at night Nathan brought her over home, and Friday she had her chill followed by fever and quite sick. Saturday morning Emma came over Louisa was not able to get up but she came and made her get up put on her clothes to follow her home Louisa protesting that she did not wish to go. Nathan went up and put a stop to the proceedings expressed himself quite warmly. It was a bitter cold morning and Nathan said Louisa should not be dragged out in that condition, that Monday morning he would take her home and if she was contented he had nothing to say. So he took her Monday morning I lending her my shawl Tuesday Emma sent the shawl home, and in the evening Louisa came in great distress and wished to be allowed to remain. So here she is, she says it is so different and that if she remained she could not be contented, that Nathan never speaks harshly to her that she never was treated as kind in her life. The family are not decided about remaining North and Louisa does not wish to go South again. Nathan said send her to school regularly, she goes and likes it. The children and are seated on the floor together enjoying themselves. Annie11 is improving every day and is perfectly delighted with her new home. The bonds have come I gave them to mother to put away and $2.37 in cash the difference on the exchange. I hope when I write again to hear from Lewis. I will write to Ripon.12 Mother13 is well and seems delighted to have me near, she sits with me every day after she is through the little she has to do. I am certainly am very thankful for the change. Mother desires her love. Affectionately Your Daughter R. D. S. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 343R–45L, FD Papers, DL. 1. Douglass’s letter to his daughter Rosetta, sent from Akron while he lectured there on 25 and 26 January, has not been located. He was scheduled to speak at Library Hall in Chicago for the Young Men’s Christian Association on 7 February 1868. Charles Douglass reported that he had received a letter from his father on 9 February 1868. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxiv; Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 14 February 1868, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 345R–346, DLC. 2. Possibly Louisa Olive Smith (1813–74), daughter of Clark and Rhoda Adams Smith of Connecticut. Louisa was married to Hiram Smith (1814–88), a carpenter turned architect. They initially lived in Busti and Ellicott, New York, but were based in Jamestown for most of the 1860s. By 1870, the family was living in Titusville, Pennsylvania, where their son, Eugene L. Smith (1842–1909), launched a successful career as a merchant. Although it has proved impossible to determine what position Louisa O. Smith held that would have led to her making the arrangements for a visit from Douglass, it is known that Douglass spent two days in Jamestown (31 March and 1 April) in 1868, lecturing on the first day at Institute Hall in a benefit for the Union School Fund, and at a local Methodist Episcopal church on the second day. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxiv; 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Chautauqua County, 40; 1860 U.S. Census, New York, Chautauqua County, 161; 1870 U.S. Census, Pennsylvania, Crawford County, 19; John W. Jordan et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania Biography, 32 vols. (New York, 1914–67), 5:1759–60; Andrew W. Adams, A Genealogical History of Robert Adams of Newbury, Mass., and His Descendants, 1635–1900 (Rutland, Vt., 1900), 193. 3. Lewis had returned east from Colorado in December 1867. He stayed briefly with family friends in New York and New Jersey. In early February, he wrote to his brother Charles from Philadelphia. Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 14 February 1868, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 345R–346, DLC; Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 19–20. 4. By his own account, Frederick Douglass, Jr., moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1867 to work as a clerk for the Union Pacific Railroad, but moved back to Rochester for a short period of time in 1868 before taking up permanent residence in Washington, D.C., later that same year. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 27, 633. 5. Early in 1868, Nathan Sprague moved to Omaha, Nebraska, in search of work, leaving his pregnant wife Rosetta and two small children (Annie and Harriet) in the care of her parents in Rochester. He unsuccessfully attempted once again to drive a hack; after that, he tried his hand at running

Y8204-Douglass.indb 76

5/17/23 2:35 PM

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO DOUGLASS, 4 FEBRUARY 1868

77

a boarding house, only to fail at that as well. Finally, after months of trying and failing to establish a successful business in Omaha, he returned to Rochester in time for the birth of his third daughter, Alice, in mid-October. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 500, 829n; Fought, Women, 208–09; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 297. 6. A native of Yorkshire, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Pierson (1826–aft. 1900) was the eldest of ten children born to the English Quakers Thomas and Hannah Smith Pierson. The Piersons left England in 1849, and by 1850 were living in Lockport, New York. Charles Douglass lived with the Pierson family for a period of time after John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, and both Elizabeth and her younger sister Mary Ann seem to have maintained close, lifelong friendships with Frederick Douglass and other members of his family. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Niagara County, 121; 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Niagara County, 73; 1900 U.S. Census, New York, Niagara County, 163; Fought, Women, 170–71, 179, 241, 270; “England and Wales, Quaker Birth, Marriage, and Death Registers, 1578–1837,” Ancestry.com; “New York, Alien Depositions of Intent to Become U.S. Citizens, 1825–1871,” Ancestry.com. 7. Originally published anonymously, Ecce Homo: A Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ (1865) was a religious treatise written by Sir John Robert Seeley (1834–95), a fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and later Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. Alexander Hamilton Thompson, A History of English Literature, and of the Chief English Writers, Founded Upon the Manual of Thomas B. Shaw (London, 1901), 746. 8. The poet, novelist, and journalist Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819–81) was born in Belchertown, Massachusetts, but spent most of his first fifty years living in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1844, Holland graduated from Berkshire Medical College, and he went into private practice with a former classmate in Springfield in 1845. By 1848, however, Holland’s medical practice had failed, and he was forced to take a teaching post in Richmond, Virginia. Three months later, he accepted the job of superintendent of public schools in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he remained until April 1849, when he returned to Massachusetts and began working as assistant editor of the Springfield Republican newspaper. In 1855, Holland published his first book, the well-received History of Western Massachusetts, and in 1858 he published his first work of fiction, the novel Bay Path, which was inspired by the research for his first book. After taking over as co-owner and editor of the Republican, Holland launched a humorous series titled “Letters to Young People, Married and Single,” in the paper under the pseudonym “Timothy Titcomb.” The column proved to be so popular that it caught the attention of the publisher Charles Scribner, who published the complete series as a book in 1859. The book was a commercial and critical success, eventually selling over 62,000 copies. Indeed, between 1859 and Holland’s death in 1881, Scribner’s sold over 500,000 copies of his works, including biographies, volumes of poetry, and novels. Among his most popular publications were his biography of Abraham Lincoln (1866) and the novels Arthur Bonicastle (1873), Sevenoaks (1875), and Nicholas Minturn (1877). His most successful volume of poetry was Katharina: Her Life and Mine, in a Poem (1867), whose sales were surpassed only by Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha (1855). In 1869, in partnership with Charles Scribner and Roswell Smith, he cofounded Scribner’s Monthly magazine, serving as the publication’s first editor. In 1871 he moved his family to New York City, where he spent a number of years serving as both the president of the city’s board of education and chairman of the board of trustees of the College of the City of New York. 1870 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Hampden County, 9; 1880 U.S. Census, New York, New York County, 418 C–D; H. Clay Williams, ed., Biographical Encyclopedia of Massachusetts of the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. (Boston, 1883), 2:181–88; ACAB, 3:234–35; Find a Grave (online). 9. Helen Louise “Louisa” Sprague (c. 1853–91) was the younger sister of Nathan Sprague and, like all of her siblings, was born into slavery on a plantation belonging to the Sprigg family in Prince George’s County, Maryland. By 1863, all the Sprague siblings were free and living in Washington, D.C., except Nathan, who had already settled in Rochester, New York. In early 1868, Louisa

Y8204-Douglass.indb 77

5/17/23 2:35 PM

78

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO DOUGLASS, 4 FEBRUARY 1868

accompanied her older brother Lewis Sprague (1838–1900) and his family when they moved to Rochester. Shortly thereafter, Lewis moved his family, including Louisa, to a farm in nearby Henrietta, New York. Complaining that she was treated more like a servant than a member of the family, Louisa eventually moved out of her brother Lewis’s home and joined her brother Nathan’s family in Frederick Douglass’s home. While living in the Douglass household, she was permitted to go to school and encouraged in her efforts to learn to read and write. In February 1869, however, she accompanied her brother and his family when they left the Douglass residence and settled in a house on Pearl Street. She accompanied her brother and his family when they again moved back in with Rosetta’s parents sometime before the birth of Nathan and Rosetta Douglass Sprague’s fourth child, Estelle, in August 1870. Welcomed by both Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass and treated like a member of the family, Louisa Sprague continued to reside with the Douglasses for most of the next fifteen years. Over time, as Anna Murray Douglass’s health deteriorated, Louisa took over most of the day-to-day management of the Douglass household, and following Mrs. Douglass’s death in July 1882, she essentially took on the role of housekeeper for Douglass until his marriage to Helen Pitts in January 1884. After Douglass’s remarriage, Louisa once again moved in with her brother Nathan and his family. In the months that followed, Nathan Sprague sued Douglass on his sister’s behalf for unpaid wages dating back to October 1872, when Douglass first moved his household to Washington, D.C. Claiming that Douglass had verbally promised Louisa a monthly salary of $25, Sprague sued his father-in-law for $2,640 and tried to arouse public sympathy for Louisa by claiming that while Douglass was earning over $200,000 a year, the only recompense he had ever provided Louisa had been an annual clothing allowance of approximately $40 a year. Douglass responded to his son-in-law’s allegations by denying that his income had ever been anything remotely close to the figure Sprague cited; furthermore, he stated that he had never considered Louisa an employee, and that while he would have been willing to employ her if she had ever expressed such a desire, he would not have been willing or able to pay her a salary that high. The lawsuit was settled out of court, with Douglass agreeing to pay Louisa $645 in exchange for her dropping the case. Afterward, Louisa, who found steady employment in a confectioner’s shop, refused to return to Cedar Hill. She died of cancer in March 1891, without reconciling with Douglass, and was buried in the (Nathan and Rosetta Douglass) Sprague family plot in Mount Hope Cemetery, in Rochester, New York. 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 70; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 655–56; Fought, Women, 190, 208–11, 214–15, 247–50, 267, 310. 10. Emma Brown Sprague (c. 1835–91), a mixed-race native of Maryland, was married to Nathan and Louisa Sprague’s oldest sibling, Lewis. It is unclear whether she was born a slave or free. She and her husband, along with their five oldest children (there would eventually be eight), settled in Monroe County, New York, where Lewis found employment as a coachman sometime in 1868. Emma Brown Sprague died in October 1891 and was buried in Rochester’s Mount Hope Cemetery. 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 191; 1880 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 236B; Fought, Women, 208. 11. Annie Rosine Sprague. 12. No information has survived regarding Douglass lecturing between engagements in Detroit, Michigan, on 9 February 1868 and in Alton, Illinois, on 7 March 1868. 13. Anna Murray Douglass.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 78

5/17/23 2:35 PM

RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 5 MARCH 1868

79

RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Bristol, [Eng.] 5 March 1868.

My dear Mr Douglass, I am very sorry to find that our letters have failed to reach you. It is probable that they have been mislaid, while you were on your journey; as was the case with one containing a remittance from Halifax, some years ago, which was afterwards found. I have not written for some time in the Inquirer, on American affairs; partly because I had to avoid unnecessary work, for th but also because I hardly know what to say. Since Christmas, the Editor1 of the Inqr.2 has sent me the Antislavery Standard,3 and it informs my connection—that the friends of true freedom have still a great work before them. I expected a reaction after the completion of the war. After the passing of our first Reform bill,4 and the first enthusiasm which for a time it awakened, there was such a reaction; still we are making progress in many ways, and so I have no doubt you are, in the U.S.; not-withstanding many rebuffs and discouragements. When I was in the U.S., some 18 years ago,5 I cheered my antislavery friends by saying that in England we are accustomed to colossal defeats; but also accustomed to expect final success. When I remember the way in which Catholics & Dissenters were injured and insulted by law in my boyish days, and the great isolation between rich and poor, I know rejoice in the great progress I have witnessed, though still we are very far indeed from what we desire. The North has made remarkable progress; though no doubt the scorn and contempt toward the negro is still too prevalent, and justifies the South in refusing to believe in the sincerity of the North, in its legislation for the South. I suppose that there is great diversity in the condition of the freedmen in the South. We hear a great deal of their measures, but I hope that there are large classes who, like the people of the Sea Islands,6 are far better off than they were in the old days. I have no fear that they will sink to the condition of the worst class in the West Indies, because there is far more stimulus to exertion in the U.S. and more interest will be taken in them. I am very glad to see the zeal of some of our Northern friends for the Freedmen’s Schools. We have been called on to do something to help, in the establishment of Normal Schools, for negro teachers in the South, which seemed a good object, though what I propose is such institutions as the Oberlin College, Ohio,7 where persons incur a good education without

Y8204-Douglass.indb 79

5/17/23 2:35 PM

80

RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 5 MARCH 1868

distinction of colour or sex. It is no doubt of the first importance to have a number of well educated negro gentlemen, scattered thru the South, who will be something more than mere teachers of children, as they may be leaders among their brethren in various ways. Our Unitarian friends in New England are helping one of the Methodist (Coloured) Churches: These good men no doubt differ from us in doctrine; but they do not seem much afraid of a denomination which has shown itself (of late at least) so desirous to elevate & instruct their people.8 They will preach what they think the truth, but they are quite ready to diffuse the tracts of our Aso Association. I see that there has been quite a schism in our church at Washington, because some are demanding that the building should be used for a coloured school.9 At Baltimore, Mr Ware10 seems to fraternize very well with the coloured people. Do you ever write for the papers? If you are too busy to send us a letter, please, now and then, do send us some of your published letters, or speeches but your letters are especially welcome, and I am very glad that you so kindly & warmly cherish our friendship. Is Mr Montgomery11 still the Universalist minister at Rochester? He wrote an excellent little book some 25 years ago—“The Laws of Kindness.” Is he kind to your people? I have read with great interest Mr. S. J. Mays12 [illegible] discourse, and his antislavery recollections. Ever faithfully yours RUSSELL L. CARPENTER.

[P.S.] I have been writing while my baby nephew13 has been playing in the room, so excuse a dull note. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 349–52, FD Papers, DL. 1. Between 1855 and 1888, the Reverend Thomas Lethbridge Marshall (1825–1915) edited the Inquirer. Marshall also was the minister at London’s Stamford Street Chapel. As editor, he tried to mediate between the frequent doctrinal feuds between scripturally rooted Unitarians and others who looked to nature and other nonsupernatural sources. The Unitarian: A Monthly Magazine of Liberal Christianity (May 1888) 3:234; John Stevens, Keshab: Bengal’s Forgotten Prophet (Oxford, Eng, 2018), 48–49. 2. The Inquirer is a Nonconformist, Unitarian Christian newspaper. Founded by Edward Hill, it was first published on 9 July 1842. Religious ministers from both sides of the Atlantic contributed articles, many of them antislavery in nature. The Inquirer is still published every fortnight. 3. The National Anti-Slavery Standard, published in New York City from 11 June 1840 to December 1872, was the official organ of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Early editors included Lydia Maria Child, Sydney Howard Gay, and Maria Weston Chapman. Oliver Johnson and Edmund Quincy, editors during the Civil War, resigned when Wendell Phillips replaced William Lloyd Garrison as president of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Parker Pillsbury assumed the editorship and supported Phillips’s position that abolitionists should continue to work for the full rights of the freed-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 80

5/17/23 2:35 PM

RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 5 MARCH 1868

81

men. John W. Blassingame, ed., Antislavery Newspapers and Periodicals, 5 vols. (Boston, 1980–84), 4:7–8; McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 305, 368, 428. 4. In March 1831 the prominent Whig Lord John Russell introduced a wide-ranging parliamentary reform bill. The bill, which became law in July 1832, heralded a new series of Whig reforms, including the abolition of slavery and a Factory Act that alleviated harsh working conditions and child labor. Despite these successes, the Whig party steadily unraveled in the late 1830s, mainly by splitting into smaller factions. This process culminated in the 1859 alliance between Whigs, radicals, and former Peelites under the leadership of the former foreign secretary Lord Henry John Temple Palmerston, a union that marked the foundation of the modern Liberal party. Juliet Gardiner and Neil Wenborn, eds., The Columbia Companion to British History (New York, 1997), 804–05; Sally Mitchell, ed., Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia (New York, 1988), 856–58. 5. Carpenter visited the United States in 1850 and traveled (by his count) roughly 13,000 miles through New York, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. He stopped at Rochester, but Douglass was not home; instead, Anna invited him to tea, and Carpenter wrote that there was “much to converse about.” By chance, he met Douglass on a train in New England; Douglass, according to Carpenter, was “afraid lest his English friends should be set against him by his desire to occupy a position independent of the Garrisonians.” Douglass also regretted that Carpenter “could not employ that unqualified denunciation of slaveholders . . . but he knew my views on this point” when he stayed with the family in Bridgwater in 1846. Carpenter published a book about his travels, Observations on American Slavery after a Year’s Tour in the United States (London, 1852). Russell Lant Carpenter to Samuel May, 14 February 1850, digitalcommonwealth.org. 6. Carpenter alludes to the widely reported activities of the Union army, agents of freedmen aid societies, and northern missionaries who worked with the slave population on the coastal islands of South Carolina and Georgia. As the Union military began amphibious operations to secure control of this area in 1862 and 1863, most planters fled, and their slaves, numbering around ten thousand, experienced de facto emancipation. Some tension occurred as African Americans sought to assert their autonomy on small farm plots, whereas federal officials desired to restore the plantations to productivity. Programs to educate the black population were generally well received, and religious and secular groups dispatched teachers to the sea islands. Andrew Johnson’s policy of pardoning former Confederates and then restoring their land to them wiped out some economic progress made by freedpeople, but the Freedmen’s Bureau helped the northern philanthropists continue their educational work in the region. Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (Indianapolis, Ind., 1964), 39–40, 154, 310, 332–56; Kevin Dougherty, The Port Royal Experiment: A Case Study in Development (Jackson, Miss., 2014), 8–17, 40–51, 56–57, 110–17. 7. Located in the northeastern Ohio community of the same name, Oberlin College was founded in 1833 by New School Presbyterians and Congregationalists to help spread their evangelical theology into the West. Presided over initially by the progressive ministers Asa Mahan and then Charles G. Finney, Oberlin was the nation’s first college to admit African Americans (in 1835) and the first to admit women (in 1837). Robert Samuel Fletcher, A History of Oberlin College: From Its Foundation through the Civil War, 2 vols. (New York, 1971), 120, 170–81, 191–92, 373–85. 8. Carpenter’s appraisal of the freedpeople’s response to Unitarianism probably was influenced by reports sent by South Carolina missionaries such as William Channing Gannett and Joseph W. Parker, who found emotional (rather than intellectual) preaching most effective in reaching former slaves. Carpenter notes that the southern wing of the Methodist Episcopal Church had staunchly defended slavery and was slow to adjust to the emancipated slaves’ new status. Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction, 74–75, 90, 92, 365; John R. McKivigan, The War against Proslavery Religion: Abolitionism and the Northern Churches, 1830–1865 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984), 170–71, 187. 9. The First Unitarian Church of Washington, D.C., founded in 1820, numbered many prominent political leaders among its members in the antebellum era. During the Civil War, the church building was taken over by the federal government and operated as a hospital, which left the congregation, in

Y8204-Douglass.indb 81

5/17/23 2:35 PM

82

RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 5 MARCH 1868

the words of one scholar, “exhausted, divided, and scattered.” From 1865 to 1877, it lacked a permanent minster and had to make do with a series of “temporary supplies.” One of these was the Reverend William Sharman, a visiting Unitarian minister from England, who led the church from 1868 to 1870. Sharman was a disciple of the social reformer William Morris, and when he returned home worked for the causes of laborers. During this period, a schism led to two congregations meeting separately, for reasons not clear. A reconciliation was achieved in 1877. Boston Christian Register, 91:403–04 (25 April 1912); Jennie W. Scudder, A Century of Unitarianism in the National Capital, 1821–1921 (Boston, 1922), 72–77. 10. A third-generation Unitarian minister, John F. W. Ware (1818–81) graduated from Harvard University and then Harvard Divinity School. After serving churches in Fall River and Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, he preached in Baltimore from 1865 to 1872. Ware then returned to Massachusetts to a pastorate at the Arlington Street Unitarian Church in Boston until his death. A strong antislavery voice, Ware frequently visited army camps and hospitals during the war and was thereafter a popular Memorial Day orator. He also was a prolific author of Unitarian tracts and published a short memoir, Home Life, in 1867. Ware’s racial views were not as enlightened as Carpenter implies; he warned white Baltimoreans that they should educate the freedpeople or else “the horde of ignorant, unrestrained men, women, and children will be upon you—your city will be the charnel house of vagabondism, vice, and crime.” New York Times, 28 February 1881; The Year-Book of the Unitarian Congregation Churches, for 1867 (Boston, 1867), 67; Richard Paul Fuke, Imperfect Equality: African Americans and the Confi nes of White Racial Attitudes in Post-Emancipation Maryland (New York, 1999), 233. 11. Born in Portland, Cumberland County, Maine, George Washington Montgomery (1810–98) organized the First Universalist Society in Rochester in 1845 and presided there until 1853. Montgomery’s Illustrations of the Law of Kindness was first published in 1841 and reprinted in three more editions. Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, 1:334. 12. Samuel Joseph May (1797–1871) mixed abolitionism with other humanitarian concerns during his long career as a Unitarian clergyman. Boston-born and Harvard-educated, May studied theology at Harvard Divinity School and was ordained in 1822. In the course of his forty-year ministry, he championed such causes as temperance, women’s rights, pacifism, universal education, and abolitionism. Originally a supporter of African colonization, May joined the abolitionist ranks in 1830, supported Prudence Crandall’s efforts to establish a school for black youths in 1833, and enjoyed a long tenure as an agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. During the 1840s and 1850s he aided many fugitive slaves in reaching Canada and helped rescue Jerry McHenry from slave catchers in Syracuse, New York, in 1851. After the Civil War, he worked with black colleagues such as Jermain W. Loguen and Douglass to fight racial segregation in New York schools. Carpenter alludes to May’s Discourse on Slavery in the United States (1831) and his autobiographical articles originally published in the Boston Christian Recorder in 1867 and 1868 and later collected in his Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict (Boston, 1869). Donald Yacovone, Samuel Joseph May and the Dilemmas of the Liberal Persuasion, 1797–1871 (Philadelphia, 1991); Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, Bound with Them in Chains: A Biographical History of the Antislavery Movement (Westport, Conn., 1972), 276–307; NCAB, 2:313; DAB, 12:447–48. 13. In all likelihood this is a reference to Herbert William Russell Thomas (1867–1960), the youngest surviving child of Carpenter’s brother and sister-in-law, Charles and Lucy Browne Thomas. By 1891, Thomas was a successful soap manufacturer, married to a well-connected member of the Anglo-Irish gentry, Kate Lucy Thompson, and living in Westbury-on-Trym, Gloucestershire, England. In 1901 he served as one of the justices of the peace for Gloucestershire. From at least 1911 through 1928, Thomas resided in Thornbury, also in Gloucestershire, where he owned and operated an even more successful soap and candle manufacturing business. “England and Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916–2007,” Ancestry.com; “England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, 1858–1960,” Ancestry.com; “England and Wales, Non-Conformist Record Indexes, 1588–1977”;

Y8204-Douglass.indb 82

5/17/23 2:35 PM

NATHAN SPRAGUE TO DOUGLASS, 10 MARCH 1868

83

“1891 England and Wales Census”; “1901 England and Wales Census”; “1911 England and Wales Census”; Wright, Ussher Memoirs, 204; Rose, Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography, 2:19–23.

NATHAN SPRAGUE TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Omaha, [Neb.] 10 March 1868.

My Dear Father I would have written to you befor, but did not know how to get a letter to you. I got a letter from Rosa1 to day, saying that you had been quite sick.2 I have got work and I am glad to have it to day. I hope to make way here befor I come home[.] I have got much to think of, my pay is not much. I am getting 48 dollars a month[.] I have paid for board here 8 dollars a week. I think I will stop here and see what I can do I think I can make money here I hope for if I donot I am gone up.3 [So is] This is quite a city it is made up [illegible] fast men and women, they have the money in hand. I canot cannot make any thing here working buy the day. I cannot get any more here working buy the day then I can home. I think I will go in to keeping a boarding house. They have nothing of that kind here for a back man. I think it will pay. father forget you for your kinness to me[.] if I donot make it is not becose you have not did all could to hilp me. I cannot for get it. I come here to make money and I will have it be for I come home[.] a man can make money here if he save it, and that I will do I will let you know soon what I am doing. This is just such a town as Lockport.4 I think it will be a good place to live but not yet. I have not sent any money home yet. I will soon. I have been here five weeks to day. I [illegible] saw a man this morning that saw fred5 in Denver[.] he say that he is brock. I hope that will not be my case after being from home tow years. Father I hope write better then this sum day. I will write soon again Yours [NATHA] NATHAN SPRAGUE

[P.S.] I will be glad to hare from you soon ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 353–54, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Rosetta Douglass Sprague. 2. The editors can neither confirm nor deny that Douglass had recently been ill. In a letter to his father dated 24 February 1868, Charles R. Douglass mentions that he has read his sister Rosetta’s recent letter to their brother Lewis, in which she indicated that all the family back in Rochester

Y8204-Douglass.indb 83

5/17/23 2:35 PM

84

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 27 MARCH 1868

were well. But Douglass’s known itinerary indicates that he had no public speaking engagements between 10 February and 6 March 1868, so it is also possible that ill health might have played some role in Douglass’s somewhat lengthy absence from the public forum. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxiv; Charles R. Douglass to Douglass, 24 February 1868, General Correspondence, reel 2, frames 347– 48, FD Papers, DLC. 3. Early in 1868, Nathan Sprague moved to Omaha, Nebraska, in search of work, leaving his pregnant wife Rosetta and two small children (Annie and Harriet) in the care of her parents in Rochester. He unsuccessfully attempted once again to drive a hack; after that, he tried his hand at running a boardinghouse, only to fail at that as well. Finally, after months of trying and failing to establish a successful business in Omaha, he returned to Rochester in time for the birth of his third daughter, Alice, in mid-October. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 500, 829n; Fought, Women, 208–09; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 297. 4. Settled in 1821 and incorporated in 1865, Lockport, in Niagara County, New York, was built on the Erie Canal around a series of locks. Lockport served as a significant manufacturing center, and the area was also rich in fruit and dairy production in the early nineteenth century. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1072. 5. Sprague appears to be a little out of touch with his brother-in-law’s activities. Frederick Douglass, Jr., along with his brother Lewis, moved to Denver, Colorado, in August 1866. The Douglass brothers were aided in their efforts to find employment by their father’s old friend Henry O. Wagoner, and within a short time, both were working for the Red, White, and Blue Mining Company. While living in Denver, Frederick Douglass, Jr., participated in efforts to desegregate the Denver public school system; in 1867 he moved to Cheyenne, in the Wyoming Territory, to take a job with the Union Pacific Railroad. In 1868 he briefly returned to Rochester, New York, before permanently moving to Washington, D.C. While it is possible that Frederick Douglass, Jr., might have been out of work or between jobs in March 1868, he had long since moved from Denver. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 27, 633; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 497–98; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 248–49.

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C. 27 March 1868.

Dear Father, I have just finished reading your letter, dated at Sturgis Michigan.1 We are all well here. We have no doubt here, that Johnson will be convicted. The trial will surely go on next monday.2 Mr. Slade is dead, he died one week ago last monday. The President, his family, and the Mayor of Washington attended the funeral.3 I did not go, but Libbie did. Lewis is still here, and has some encouragement to remain in view of his chances to get employment.4 Republicans in this quarter seem to be a little shy of Chf. Justice Chase. He has favord the attempt to delay the trial of Johnson, and his course looks as though he is not well pleased with the turn of affairs in regard to the nomination for the Presidency.5 General Howard is desirous of obtaining your services for a lecture this Spring. His congregation have about completed a new Church that

Y8204-Douglass.indb 84

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 27 MARCH 1868

85

will seat two thousand easily.6 The Genl. spoke to me, and desired me to ascertain at what time you could come. You have learned, I suppose that the Bill to continue the Bureau another year has passed the House, and we have no doubt that it will pass the Senate.7 Our little boy is cutting teeth, he has already two in sight.8 I hope you will have a warm reception at the home of Gov. Fenton.9 In case the Bureau is continued, I shall endeavor to make a visit home in May or April. I hope you will speak here for Genl. Howard. All send love. Aff. Yr. Son, CHAS R. DOUG LASS

P. S. Fred. has gone to Cheyenne Colorado10 C. R. D. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 355–56, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Douglass had lectured in Sturgis, Michigan, on 23 March 1868, while on a speaking tour of the Midwest. Indianapolis Journal, 23, 24, 27 March 1868. 2. The impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson commenced on Monday, 30 March 1868, as Charles Douglass stated. This was five weeks after Johnson had removed Edwin M. Stanton as secretary of war, thereby violating the Tenure of Office Act and provoking the House of Representatives to pass an impeachment resolution on 24 February. The Senate had originally summoned the president to answer the House’s charges on 13 March, but a coalition of Democratic and moderate Republican senators twice approved appeals for delay presented by Johnson’s defense counsel. Radical Republicans had hoped for a quick trial before public outrage against the president subsided, but moderate Republicans, with the assistance of Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, insisted on a deliberate pace to ensure the appearance of a fair trial. The slow speed of the trial, which lasted until 26 May, allowed a conservative reaction to coalesce within the Republican party, contributing to Johnson’s acquittal. Michael Les Benedict, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (New York, 1968), 122–24; Hans L. Trefousse, Impeachment of a President: Andrew Johnson, the Blacks, and Reconstruction (Knoxville, 1975; New York, 1999), 151–53, 170–71. 3. William Slade died of heart disease on 16 March 1868. His funeral, two days later, was attended by the elite of Washington society of both races, including President Johnson, Johnson’s two daughters, and Washington’s mayor, Richard Wallach. The service was officiated by the Reverend Byron Sunderland—pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Washington, former chaplain of the U.S. Senate, and sitting president of Howard University—as well as the Reverend Leonard A. Grimes, pastor of the Twelfth Baptist Church of Boston, an African American institution of national prominence. Slade had both black and white pallbearers and was buried in the Columbian Harmony Society Cemetery, the final resting place for several black White House servants of the nineteenth century. Washington Evening Star, 18 March 1868; Washington, They Knew Lincoln, 114–18; Sweet, “Representative,” 34:21–41. 4. Lewis Douglass, who was also employed by the Red, White, and Blue Mining Company, traveled from Denver, Colorado, to the East in December 1867 to try to promote the company’s interests by lining up new investors. His trip, however, was not a success, since he managed only to convince his father to purchase ten shares, and he seems to have resigned in early 1868. By February he had moved to New York City, where he was living with Sylvester Rosa Koëhler and his family. During that period, he also spent two weeks with his father’s intimate friend Ottilie Assing in Hoboken, New Jersey. In early March, he appears to have moved on to Washington, D.C., but he did not settle there permanently until 1869. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 19–20.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 85

5/17/23 2:35 PM

86

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 27 MARCH 1868

5. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase played a significant and controversial role in the impeachment proceedings against President Andrew Johnson in the spring of 1868. Chase insisted that the nature of the Senate when trying an impeachment was fundamentally judicial, bound by the rules of legal evidence and procedure, rather than political, guided only by its own legislative rules of order. Viewing the Senate as a true “high court of impeachment,” Chase asserted his right, as the presiding judge of the proceedings, to rule on points of law and the submission of evidence. Although his views were castigated by the Radical faction leading the effort to remove Johnson from office, Chase’s stance was affirmed by a majority within the Republican-dominated Senate. Inevitably, the impeachment managers blamed Chase for their failure to convince the required two-thirds majority of senators to convict Johnson. Even those who agreed with Chase’s administration of the trial and Johnson’s ultimate acquittal suspected that the chief justice’s behavior was driven by his hatred of Senate president pro tempore Benjamin Wade and by his own persistent presidential ambitions. Most modern historians commend Chase’s actions during the impeachment trial, though they recognize that a wide range of political calculations influenced the Senate. Washington National Republican, 19 March 1868; John Niven, Salmon P. Chase: A Biography (New York, 1995), 419–26; Benedict, Impeachment and Trial, 115–22; Trefousse, Impeachment of a President, 149, 152, 177. 6. The First Congregational Church of Washington, D.C., was established in 1865 at the corner of Tenth and G streets. Major General Oliver Otis Howard was a prominent member of this church during his tenure as commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Because of his military fame and political clout, Howard was elected to the new church’s corporate board, which by May 1868 had raised enough money to construct one of the most notable church edifices in the city. Unfortunately, Howard’s personal zeal, national prominence, and racial egalitarianism threatened the church’s pastor, the Reverend Charles B. Boynton. After a year of very public acrimony between the men and their followers, Boynton and one-half of the membership resigned in April 1869. Worse still for Howard, the Boynton faction’s public charges of financial irregularities within the Freedmen’s Bureau led to investigations of the general by Congress in 1870 and by the War Department in 1874. It appears that the controversy surrounding Howard and the First Congregational Church kept Frederick Douglass away from the church until late May 1871, when he lectured there on his support for the proposed U.S. annexation of the Dominican Republic. Subsequently, Douglass formed close ties with the church, since it espoused progressive views on race and supported Howard University. Washington Evening Star, 11 May 1868; Washington National Republican, 19 November 1868, 19 January 1869; Washington New National Era, 25 May 1871; Everett O. Alldredge, Centennial History of First Congregational Church 1865–1965 (Washington, D.C., 1965), 8–13, 20–26, 29, 30. 7. A congressional bill entitled “An Act to continue the Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees, and for other purposes” was submitted to President Andrew Johnson on 24 July 1868. This legislation, which extended the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau for one year, recognized that the bureau would be discontinued in any southern state fully restored to the Union (with the exception of the Educational Division, which would continue until such states had established education systems). The president did not sign the bill, but since he did not veto it within ten days, it became law. Curiously, Congress soon amended the law with “An Act relating to the Freedmen’s Bureau, and providing for its discontinuance,” submitted to Johnson on 25 July 1868. This legislation directed Commissioner Oliver Otis Howard to discontinue the Freedmen’s Bureau on 1 January 1869, making exceptions for educational activities and assistance to black soldiers in recovering bounties due them for wartime service. This bill was vetoed by President Johnson, but both chambers of Congress quickly passed it over his veto, thus making it law. Congressional Globe Appendix, 40th Congress, 2d sess., 513, 551; Howard, Autobiography, 2:358–60. 8. Charles Frederick Douglass (1867–87) was born on 21 January 1867. He was the third of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass’s twenty-one grandchildren, and their oldest grandson. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, xlix; Fought, Women, 310. 9. Reuben E. Fenton was a leading Radical Republican in New York. His tenure as governor, 1865–69, was marked by one of the most significant bursts of activist legislation in the state’s history. Intending to simultaneously address social problems produced by industrialization and urbanization

Y8204-Douglass.indb 86

5/17/23 2:35 PM

JAMES E. DOWNEY AND CHARLES W. BROUSE TO DOUGLASS, 31 MARCH 1868

87

and to undercut New York City institutions controlled by Democrats, Radical Republicans pushed through laws that centralized, in Albany, the power to regulate municipal fire departments, public health services, tenement housing, and public education. Although much of this legislation was popular statewide, the Radicals’ attempt in early 1867 to revise the state constitution to give universal suffrage to black men provoked a vicious racist campaign by Democrats that produced widespread Republican defeats that fall. At the peak of his career, in 1868, Fenton was discussed as a possible running mate for Ulysses S. Grant, and in 1869 he was selected by the New York Assembly to serve in the U.S. Senate. At the end of his term in 1875, he retired to his native Chautauqua County, where he died in 1885. Douglass lectured in Fenton’s hometown of Jamestown, New York, on 31 March and 1 April, and presumably visited him at that time. Jamestown (N.Y.) Journal, 20, 27 March, 3 April 1868; James C. Mohr, “New York: The De-Politicization of Reform,” in Radical Republicans in the North: State Politics during Reconstruction, ed. James C. Mohr (Baltimore, 1976), 66–81. 10. In 1867, Frederick Douglass, Jr., left his job in Denver and moved to Cheyenne, in the Wyoming Territory, to work as a clerk for the Union Pacific Railroad’s superintendent of construction. In 1868, he briefly returned to Rochester, New York, before moving to Washington, D.C., where he opened a grocery store. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 27, 633.

JAMES E. DOWNEY AND CHARLES W. BROUSE1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Indianapolis, [Ind.] 2 31 March 1868.

Frederick Douglass. Rochester, N.Y. Dear sir We sent the agreements of which we spoke when you were here last week,3 and to which we verbally agreed. When you return your agreement to us we would like to have the outline sketches of four or five of the most eventful scenes of your life in order that we may have them engraved for the work.4 We would suggest that you give us some of the main points on the disgraceful attack made upon you at Pendleton.5 We think it would make an interesting picture. We should also like to have a fine engraving of yourself for a frontispiece. These things will add greatly to the sale of the work. We are satisfied that by liberal and judicious advertising the work will have an immense sale, especially through the West and South, and the masses are very fond of pictures. Hoping that the work in which we are about to engage will not only be fruitful in its returns to both parties but that it will also aid in the great cause of human freedom and justice we are Very truly yours, DOWNEY & BROUSE

Y8204-Douglass.indb 87

5/17/23 2:35 PM

88

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 28 APRIL 1868

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 357–58L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Downey & Brouse was an Indianapolis publishing firm that specialized in printing business records and manuals. It printed materials for groups such as the Grand Army of the Republic and the Society of Odd Fellows. Charles W. Brouse (1839–1904), a recipient of the Medal of Honor, was the brother-in-law of James E. Downey (1832–1909); both were influential in the development of Irvington, a neighborhood on Indianapolis’s east side. Their company was later known as Downey, Brouse, Butler & Co. Indianapolis City Directory (Indianapolis, Ind., 1868), 54; David J. Bodenhamer and Robert G. Barrows, eds., The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis (Bloomington, Ind., 1994, 470). 2. This letter was written on stationery with the printed letterhead: “Office of DOWNEY & BROUSE / Job Printing and Book Publishing House / Corner Meridian and Circle Streets. 3. Douglas spoke on the evening of 25 March 1868 at a benefit for the African Methodist Episcopal Church hosted by Morrison’s Opera House in Indianapolis. Daily Wabash Express, 25 March 1868. 4. No record has been found to suggest this publication was ever created. 5. A mob attacked Douglass in Pendleton, Madison County, Indiana, on the morning of 16 September 1843. The previous day, Douglass and his two white abolitionist traveling companions, William A. White and George Bradburn, had spoken in Pendleton’s Baptist church despite rumors and threats from an excited “mob of thirty or more people,” many of whom were “very much intoxicated.” The next morning, with law-and-order resolutions posted prominently throughout the town, Douglass and his colleagues addressed an outdoor meeting on the wooded banks of nearby Fall Creek, where local Quakers had set up makeshift seats and stands. Menacing hecklers set upon the abolitionist trio, demolishing the speakers’ platform and attacking its occupants. The mob then focused its wrath on Douglass, pursuing and severely beating him. The bleeding and unconscious Douglass was taken to the farm of Mr. and Mrs. Neal Hardy, a Quaker couple, who treated Douglass’s broken right hand and other injuries. Because the bones were not properly set, the hand never regained its “natural strength and dexterity.” NASS, 18 September, 19 October 1832; Lib., 13 October 1843; Mary Howitt, “Memoir of Frederick Douglass,” People’s Journal, 2:302–05 (November 1846); Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (New York, 1885–89), 3:101; Samuel Harden, comp., History of Madison County, Indiana: From 1820 to 1874 (Markleville, Ind., 1874), 203–03; J. J. Netterville, Centennial History of Madison County, Indiana, 2 vols. (Anderson, Ind., 1925), 1:131–22; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 3:422n.

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C. 28 April 1868.

Dear Father Yesterday Morning General Howard1 came to me and said: have you sent your father my report, or rather Mr. Eliots2 report? I answered no when he replied that he would send one immediately, because: said he your father wants the negro “let alone”, “the Bureau to be done away with &c.” he say’s I dont understand him, and I hope he will read this report and look over the statistics. This morning Mr. Langston3 wants to know of me what you mean by your “Philadelphia speech” as reported by the Press. The Genl. says to me, “you must write to your father and give him the facts as to the condition of the freedmen in the South,[”] he said also that he agreed with you

Y8204-Douglass.indb 88

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO PHILIP A. BELL, 28 APRIL 1868

89

in letting them alone, but there are a great many old and infirm colored people that would perish if let alone.4 The Genl. was very pleasant, but thought that you could not understand the condition of the freed people. You will see that the Genl. sends his report to you with his compliments. The Impeachment trial is drawing gradually to a close. We here are confident of a conviction.5 Love to all Aff. Your Son CHARLES R. DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 369R–70, FD Papers, DLC. 1. O. O. Howard. 2. Thomas Dawes Eliot (1808–70) was born in Boston and graduated from Columbian College (now George Washington University), in Washington, D.C., in 1825. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1825 and represented New Bedford, Massachusetts, as a Whig in the state’s house and senate in the 1830s and 1840s. After serving one year in Congress (1854–55) to fill a vacancy, he declined renomination. An early Republican, Eliot returned to Congress for five terms (1859–69) and was a leading radical on Reconstruction issues. He worked with abolitionists in drafting the initial legislation to create the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Land, later chairing the House committee overseeing the bureau. His committee issued a report on 10 March 1868 that gave a favorable appraisal of the bureau’s accomplishments and called for its legislative reauthorization. After retiring from Congress, Eliot returned to his law practice in New Bedford. McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 187–89, 308; BDUSC (online). 3. At this period, John Mercer Langston worked as the inspector of schools for the Freedmen’s Bureau in its Washington headquarters. Foner, Reconstruction, 143. 4. While Langston and General Howard were probably alluding to newspaper reports of a speech delivered at Concert Hall in Philadelphia on 14 April 1868, Douglass used this phrase frequently in speeches during this era, such as on 11 May 1869 at the anniversary meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York City, when he declared: “My politics in regard to the negro is simply this: Give him fair play and let him alone, but be sure that you give him fair play.” Douglass’s Philadelphia speech was covered by the Philadelphia Press, a Republican newspaper owned by the veteran journalist John W. Forney. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:202; Philadelphia Press, 15 April 1868; McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 188–89; NCAB, 3:267–68; DAB, 6:526–27. 5. The impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson in the U.S. Senate did not conclude until the final, unsuccessful vote on 26 May 1868. Foner, Reconstruction, 333–37; McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 384–85.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO PHILIP A. BELL1 Rochester, N[.]Y. 28 April 1868.

Phillip A. Bell, Esq. My Dear Sir:— I have just read in The Elevator2 your remarks on the close of your third volume. Your three years history calls to mind my own trying experiene of

Y8204-Douglass.indb 89

5/17/23 2:35 PM

90

DOUGLASS TO PHILIP A. BELL, 28 APRIL 1868

sixteen years.3 For this length of time, sustained mainly by a few friends, I, like yourself, endeavored to serve the cause of my people through the agency of the Press. I cannot boast that I served them with any great ability, but I can say I served them faithfully, and could have served them more ably and effectually had they supplied the needful money to keep my paper free from debt, and my mind free from the grinding anxiety incident to being in debt. I regret to see that you, away off in the Golden State,4 are suffering in the same way. You have enough who will praise you, but few who will pay you. I don’t know what you think of this matter, but I think there is little hope for us in this country or in any other, no matter how favorable may be the conditions, while we, as a people, fail to appreciate the power of the Press, and to stand by our advocates. When we have once educated our people to this duty and privilege, we have already achieved success. I am glad to see you still battling bravely and hopefully to this end. I remember, with pleasure, my first knowledge of you. It was gained from the Colored American,5 thirty years ago—the first publication by colored men I ever saw—and you were one of its editors. I cannot tell—no living man can tell—what of joy and hope I felt when, newly from slavery, I looked for the first time upon the Colored American. “Can this be true?” thought I. “Is this really the work of colored men?” Slavery and slander had done their work. They had made me doubt the ability of my race. I could not wholly believe, at first, that the articles I found in the paper were written by colored men. Meeting with such men as Dr. David Ruggles,6 Dr. Brown,7 William P. Johnson,8 Samuel Cornish,9 Theodore S. Wright,10 Dr. James McCune Smith,11 and hearing their conversation, brushed the scales from my eyes, and opened a new world of possibilities to my view. Since that time I have never entirely lost sight of Philip A. Bell, nor lost faith in the future of our people. Tried and true friend of our common cause, among the first of our race to assail with your pen (mightier than the sword) the malignant ramparts of slavery and caste, having survived so many of your early associates, and witnessed the overthrow of slavery, may it also be yours to see the blackman made equal before the law, and our people enfranchised, from the Lakes to the Gulf and from sea to sea! If any word of mine can avail anything, I earnestly exhort your readers and friends to stand by you and your paper till this great work is accomplished. I know your proud spirit, and your unwillingness to ask anything for your own sake, but upon reading your reflections upon the close of your third volume, I could not well help sending you a word of cheer in

Y8204-Douglass.indb 90

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO PHILIP A. BELL, 28 APRIL 1868

91

the good work to which you are devoting your talents. Our cause is one the country over, and a victory over the forces marshaled against us in California is a victory for our cause in our whole country, and everywhere else. Yours truly, FREDERICK DOUG LASS. PLSr: San Francisco Elevator, 5 June 1868. 1. Philip A. Bell (1808–89) was educated at the New York City Free School and worked as an agent for the Liberator and at a variety of other occupations in his youth. He was secretary of a January 1831 public meeting of New York blacks that protested against the colonization movement. In 1837, Bell helped found and edit the Weekly Advocate, later renamed the New York Colored American, which was an important forum for black opinion until ceasing publication in 1842. In the 1850s he operated an employment agency for New York City blacks and was active in literary, temperance, and mutual relief societies as well as in the antislavery movement. Bell attended many of the antebellum National Negro Conventions and lectured for equal suffrage for blacks. After moving to California in 1860, Bell briefly ran a real estate agency before returning to journalism, first as associate editor of the San Francisco Pacific Appeal and later as owner and editor of the San Francisco Elevator. In the 1870s, Bell was president of the Equal Rights League of California, a politically independent group that lobbied Republican politicians for better treatment of blacks. New York Colored American, 8 December 1838; San Francisco Elevator, 12 June 1868, 11 January, 15 November 1873; William Lloyd Garrison, Thoughts on African Colonization; or, an Impartial Exhibition of the Doctrines, Principles and Purposes of the American Colonization Society (New York, 1832), 13–17; I. Garland Penn, The Afro-American Press and Its Editors (1891; Salem, N.H., 1988), 32–34, 94–98; Robert C. Dick, Black Protest: Issues and Tactics (Westport, Conn., 1974), 84, 173–77, 267; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 20, 31, 95; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 113–14, 175, 195, 210; James A. Fisher, “A History of the Political and Social Development of the Black Community in California, 1850–1950” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1971), 72–75, 97–100, 140–46; Freeman, “Free Negro in New York City,” 35, 46, 128, 175–76, 237, 299. 2. The Elevator was an African American newspaper edited from San Francisco by Philip A. Bell, beginning 18 April 1865. The newspaper, priced at fifteen cents an issue, consisted of four seven-column pages and was published every Friday. Established for the promotion of blacks, it advocated inclusion in—not separation from—American civic and social life. In addition to civil liberties and political discussion, the Elevator was widely known for covering science, drama, and literature. Bell had twenty-five years of editorial experience at the time he founded the Elevator, including stints at the Colored American and the Pacific Appeal. By the 1880s, the Elevator had become the longest-running black newspaper of the nineteenth century. It ceased with Bell’s death on 24 April 1889. Penn, Afro-American Press, 94, 95; EAAH, 1:123–24. 3. Douglass edited a series of newspapers in Rochester, New York: the North Star (1847–51), Frederick Douglass’ Paper (1851–61), and Douglass’ Monthly (1859–63). All struggled financially, since paying subscribers proved hard to recruit and retain. Patrick S. Washburn, The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom (Evanston, Ill., 2006), 34–36. 4. By the 1860s, California was being widely referred to as the “Golden State,” which became the state’s official nickname in 1968 (appearing also on license plates). The nickname derives from the discovery of gold there in 1848, which spurred California’s modern development. George Earlie Shankle, State Names, Flags, Seals, Songs, Birds, Flowers, and Other Symbols, rev. ed. (New York, 1941), 103–04. 5. Begun as the Weekly Advocate in January 1837 by Philip A. Bell and Robert Sear, a white printer, this New York City newspaper focused on abolitionism and moral reform subjects. Samuel Cornish became its editor in March 1837, renaming it the Colored American and emphasizing the

Y8204-Douglass.indb 91

5/17/23 2:35 PM

92

DOUGLASS TO PHILIP A. BELL, 28 APRIL 1868

concerns of northern free blacks. The paper frequently changed owners and editors over its short life, finally ceasing operations in December 1841. Donald M. Jacobs, Antebellum Black Newspapers (Westport, Conn., 1976), 207, 229–30, 451–54; C. Peter Ripley, ed., The Black Abolitionist Papers, 5 vols. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1985–92), 3:217–18. 6. David Ruggles (1810–49), a free black man, was born and educated in Norwich, Connecticut. In 1827 he moved to New York, where he worked as a grocer. In 1834 he opened a print shop and bookstore that specialized in abolitionist literature. Ruggles became active in the New York antislavery movement, serving as a writer, lecturer, and traveling agent for the reform publication Emancipator and Journal of Public Morals. He was also a conductor on the Underground Railroad; editor of two abolitionist newspapers, the Genius of Freedom and the Mirror of Liberty; and secretary of the New York Vigilance Committee. His career in the antislavery movement ended abruptly in 1842 when temporary blindness, an illness that would plague him for the remainder of his life, forced him to curtail his activities and seek medical attention. At the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Florence, Massachusetts, he underwent hydrotherapy, which temporarily relieved his blindness. Soon thereafter, he began a new career as a hydrotherapist in Northampton, Massachusetts, treating such celebrated individuals as Sojourner Truth and William Lloyd Garrison. His reputation as a hydrotherapist gave him a prominence that rivaled his stature as an abolitionist. NASS, 20 December 1849; Lib., 21 December 1849; New York Evangelist, 27 December 1849; Salem, Ohio, Anti-Slavery Bugle, 29 December 1849; NS, 1 February 1850; Penn, Afro-American Press, 118; DANB, 536–38. 7. William Wells Brown (c. 1814–84) was born a slave in Lexington, Kentucky, but escaped to freedom in Ohio in 1834. After settling in Cleveland, he worked on a Lake Erie steamboat, which enabled him to help many fugitive slaves escape to Canada. In the 1840s he and his family moved to New York state, where he began lecturing for the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (1843–49). In 1847, Brown published his first book, Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, and moved to Boston. From 1849 to 1854 he traveled as a lecturer in Europe, meeting many prominent figures and continuing his career as an author with Three Years in Europe; Or, Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met (1852) and Clotel; Or, The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853), the first novel known to be published by an African American. After friends in England purchased his freedom in 1854, he returned to the United States to continue his work in the abolitionist, temperance, woman suffrage, and prison reform movements. He also wrote four books about African American history. During the Civil War, Brown joined Douglass in recruiting blacks for the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. Lib., 12 January 1855; London Lancet, 6 December 1884; DAB, 3:161; DANB, 71–73. 8. An elder in New York City’s First Colored Presbyterian Church and a shoemaker by trade, William P. Johnson wrote frequently for the Colored American, often describing visits to free black communities in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. He was active in local and state black conventions in the 1840s and helped David Ruggles with vigilance committee work. Henry H. Garnet, A Memorial Discourse (Philadelphia, 1865), 42; Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker, Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1840–1865, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1979), 1:5–6, 33–34; Jacobs, Antebellum Black Newspapers, 401–02. 9. Samuel E. Cornish (c. 1795–1859), a black Presbyterian minister, helped found the First Colored Presbyterian Church of New York in 1822. In 1827, Cornish was coeditor, with John Russwurm, of Freedom’s Journal, the first black newspaper in the United States. Resigning the editorship after only six months, Cornish then served as an agent for the New York Manumission Society’s African Free Schools. In 1829 he started his own abolitionist newspaper, Rights of All, which failed in less than a year. Between 1837 and 1839, Cornish edited the Colored American and later served as pastor of the black Presbyterian church in Newark, New Jersey. Walter M. Merrill and Louis Ruchames, eds., The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 6 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1971–81), 6:328n; Frankie Hutton, The Early Black Press in America, 1827 to 1860 (Westport, Conn., 1993), 6–9.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 92

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO SYLVESTER R. KOËHLER, 1 MAY 1868

93

10. Theodore Sedgwick Wright (1797–1847)—clergyman, abolitionist, and reformer—worked tirelessly to aid fellow African Americans. He was a founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 and the anti-Garrisonian American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1840. In the 1830s, Wright lectured for the New England Anti-Slavery Society, delivering important speeches against prejudice and colonization in front of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society in 1837. Wright also served on the executive committees of the Union Missionary Association and the American Missionary Association, organizations that sent missionaries to Africa. In 1844, Wright supported the Liberty party and served on the committee to choose its presidential and vice presidential candidates. A dedicated reformer, Wright pursued temperance, sought voting rights for African Americans in New York, supported education for blacks, and chaired the New York Vigilance Committee, a group organized to aid fugitive slaves and protect free blacks from kidnapping. New York Evangelist, 1 April 1847; Washington National Era, 8 April 1848; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 45–46, 68, 80, 171–72, 184–85; DANB, 675–76. 11. The son of a slave father and a self-emancipated bondswoman, James McCune Smith (1813– 65) was born in New York City, where he attended the New York African Free School. Denied admission to American medical schools, Smith sailed to Scotland in 1832, receiving his B.A. (1835), M.A. (1836), and M.D. (1837) from the University of Glasgow. Upon his return to New York City, Smith set up a medical practice and pharmacy that catered to blacks and whites. He also devoted himself to abolitionist concerns. Smith briefly served as an associate editor of the Colored American in 1839 and contributed regularly to the Anglo-African Magazine and, under the pseudonym “Communipaw,” to the North Star and Frederick Douglass’ Paper. A longtime opponent of black colonization and emigration, he helped finance the revival of the Weekly Anglo-African as an antiemigrationist organ in 1861. In 1863, Smith was appointed professor of anthropology at Wilberforce College, but illness kept him from his post. Lib., 1 June 1838; FDP, 18 May 1855; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 115, 134; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 90–92, 103, 110; David W. Blight, “In Search of Learning, Liberty, and Self-Definition: James McCune Smith and the Ordeal of the Antebellum Black Intellectual,” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, 9:7–25 (July 1985); Freeman, “Free Negro in New York City,” 40–42, 177, 186, 195, 200, 247, 276, 286, 325, 353, 393; DAB, 27:288–89.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SYLVESTER R. KOËHLER1 Rochester[, N.Y.] 1 May 1868.

My dear Mr Koëhler: I am really honored and pleased that among your many occupations (some of them new to you and therefore perhaps, perplexing and wearing) you have thus early found twice to send me a letter so full and friendly. I had been fully informed by our kind friend Miss Assing2 of your serious illness—She stated the matter in her peculiarly strong and forcible way, and left me in a state of alarm for your safety.3 It was too bad to be thus struck down thus in the midst of your new hopes, plans and purposes. I am very glad know that you fell into hands so free and friendly—It was a serious blow to Miss Assing, your leaving Hoboken:4 but she is not only a reasoner she is reasonable, and bears her misfortune with fortitude and without a murmer. I confess I felt the shock very seriously. Still, I rejoice that you find yourself in a more congenial field of work5—So far as friendships

Y8204-Douglass.indb 93

5/17/23 2:35 PM

94

DOUGLASS TO SYLVESTER R. KOËHLER, 1 MAY 1868

and associations are concerned, you need not look for any which will seem to you like those about you in Hoboken. You were a peculiar people zealous in good works, rejoicing in the truth which can alone make men free. You see that my methodist forms of speech cling to me spite of all the teachings of Miss Assing.6 I am just now quite busy with my garden. The season is very backward. December is about as pleasant as may here. The birds are making a feeble effort to sing—but the frogs—are still silent. The weather effects me very much. One side of my head seems to be partly frozen and the other only about half thawed. The snow storms and zeros of Minnesota are just coming out of me.7 But the weather is so cold under this chalk and charcoal sky that I almost despair of getting free of my ailments. You may depend upon me to look you up when I come to Boston—I shall be delighted to see you where you belong, among works of art. Your eye, your taste, your judgement, and the thought and study you have given to the subject makes this your appropriate place. With all the vigor which can attach to a wish—do I wish you and Mr Prang8 success—I have seen many of his pictures. They are among the refiners of the age. At the beginning of this week I sent my friend Miss Assing my small photo graph for you. She will see that you get it. Please remember very kindly to dear Miss Koehler and to all your kind household9 should business or pleasure bring you here at any time[.] Please remember that I have a special claim upon you. Your friend FREDERICK DOUG LASS ALS: Frederick Douglass Papers, NRU. 1. Born in Leipzig, Germany, Sylvester Rosa Koëhler (1837–1900) immigrated to the United States with his family and settled in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1849. Koëhler married Amalie Jaeger in 1859, and they soon had three children. He made a meager living by working as a clerk in Hoboken, New Jersey, so the family took in boarders. In 1868 the Koëhlers resettled in Boston, where Sylvester worked as a manager for the engraving firm of Louis Prang. Koëhler wrote regularly on graphic arts and eventually became a curator of the engraving collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Smithsonian Institution. Koëhler was a close friend of Douglass and the German émigré Ottilie Assing. Assing sometimes boarded with the Koëhler family, and Douglass probably became a friend of theirs on his visits with her. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 126, 263, 275–88, 307; DAB, 2:485–86; ACAB, 3:570. 2. Ottilie Assing. 3. Ottilie Assing’s letter has not survived, and the editors have not been able to find any other mention of Koëhler’s illness in the rest of Douglass’s surviving correspondence. 4. Sometime in March 1868, Koëhler moved to Boston, Massachusetts, after accepting a job with the publishing firm L. Prang & Company. His wife and children followed him to Boston in

Y8204-Douglass.indb 94

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO SYLVESTER R. KOËHLER, 1 MAY 1868

95

May after arranging to rent their home in Hoboken, New Jersey. Charles G. Loring, “Sylvester R. Koëhler,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 36:556–58 (1901); Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 279. 5. L. Prang & Company hired Koëhler to be its technical manager. Sometime over the summer of 1878, he quit his position in anticipation of lining up a backer to establish an art journal, of which he would be the “chief editor.” But in late August, and again in mid-September, Ottilie Assing wrote Douglass that Koëhler’s plans had fallen through and that he was having trouble finding a new job. Ottilie Assing to Douglass, 14 September 1878, General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 274R– 276L; Loring, “Koëhler,” 556. 6. Ottilie Assing’s efforts to convince Douglass to adopt atheism can be traced back to at least 1859 when she gave him an English translation of Ludwig Feuerbach’s treatise The Essence of Christianity (1841). Contrary to her belief, there is no real evidence that Douglass, for all his criticism of organized religion and religious hypocrisy, ever abandoned Christianity and became an atheist. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 514–16. 7. Douglass’s last known trip to Minnesota was over a year before. He spoke at the request of the Young Men’s Library Association at the Philharmonic Hall in Winona, Minnesota, on 16 March 1867. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxiii–iv. 8. Louis Prang (1824–1909) was born in the city of Breslau, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia. The son of a printer of calico textiles, Prang spent his early years training in the arts of dyeing, engraving, and printing before apprenticing as a chemist in a paper mill. As a young man, he became involved in the revolutionary movement that swept Europe in 1848; he was forced to flee the Continent in the reactionary aftermath. Prang arrived in New York City in 1850, but within a few years had settled permanently in Boston. In 1856, in partnership with Julius Mayer, he established a lithographic printing company called Prang & Mayer. After buying out Mayer in 1860, Prang renamed the firm L. Prang & Company and gained enormous success during the Civil War by partnering with the painter Winslow Homer to commercially mass-produce black-and-white copies of his wartime illustrations. In 1864, Prang returned to Europe to study continental methods of printing color lithographs, and after his return to Boston, his company began producing high-quality color prints. By 1867, Prang’s business had become so successful that he opened a second factory, in Roxbury, Massachusetts. In the 1870s, L. Prang & Company entered the greeting-card market, quickly becoming one of the nation’s leading printers of Christmas cards. That same decade, the firm branched out into publishing art education textbooks. By the time Prang sold his business, in 1897, L. Prang & Company had offices in Chicago, New York City, and San Francisco, as well as agents in London, Berlin, and Melbourne, Australia. After retiring, Prang spent his final years traveling the world and promoting the company’s art education textbooks and a line of art supplies. He died while visiting California in 1909. Barry Shank, A Token of My Affection: Greeting Cards and American Business Culture (New York, 2004), 68–70; “Louis Prang and Chromolithography: Artist, Innovator, Collaborator,” AmericanAntiquarian.org. 9. Koëhler’s wife, Amalia Susanna Jaeger Koëhler (1825–92), was a fellow German immigrant whom he married in the United States on 9 April 1859. The couple had three children, Walter Jaeger, Hedwig Jaeger, and Hans Jaeger Koëhler, all born in Hoboken, New Jersey. The eldest son, Walter (c. 1861–1901), graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1881. He worked for a series of mining companies in the United States and Mexico before moving in 1887 to Beaconsfield, Australia, where he rose to be chief metallurgist and assistant general manager of the Broken Hill Proprietary Mine. Koëhler’s daughter, Hedwig (c. 1862–aft. 1912), was an assistant in the print department in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The Koëhler’s third child, Hans (1866–c. 1940), became a landscape architect. He spent a number of years working in Connecticut, and later in Berks County, Pennsylvania, before retiring to Middlesex County, Massachusetts. 1880 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Suffolk County, 332A; 1920 U.S. Census, Pennsylvania, Berks County, 12B; 1930 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Middlesex County, 10B; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Thirty-Fifth

Y8204-Douglass.indb 95

5/17/23 2:35 PM

96

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 24 AUGUST 1868

Annual Catalogue of the Officers and Students with a Statement of Courses of Instruction and a Register of the Alumni: 1899–1900, 238; Launceston (Tasmania) Examiner, 29 April 1901; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 275, 281; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; “United States Passenger Arrival Lists, Ellis Island, 1892–1924,” FamilySearch.org; “United States Passport Applications, 1795–1925,” Familysearch.org; Find a Grave (online).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH Rochester[, N.Y.] 24 Aug[ust] 1868.

Hon: Gerrit Smith: My dear Sir: I am very glad again to see your hand writing. Though under the weight of seventy one years,1 it remains strong, clear, and characteristic. I am glad you like my article on Mr Seymour’s2 letter—Your old affection for Chief Justice Chase, easily explains your tenderness towards him. I continued to trust him till I found him willing to abandon negro suffrage to make himself the nominee of the Democratic Party. I must then drop him or drop the cause.3 Your voice for Grant4 and Colfax5 will be potent in this State. It will be grand if at your age—you can address the multitude without detriment to your health. I am this summer endeavoring to make myself a little more familiar with history. My ignorance of the past has long been a trouble to me. Always your grateful friend FREDERICK DOUG LASS. ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. 1. Gerrit Smith was born in Utica, New York, on 6 March 1797. Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 3. 2. Horatio Seymour (1810–86) began his career as a New York Democrat in the 1840s. He was elected to the state legislature in 1841, became mayor of Utica in 1842, and returned to the legislature in 1844, where he was a strong advocate for improving the Erie Canal. Seymour was a member of the Hunker faction of the New York Democratic party, opposed to Martin Van Buren. Along with the other Hunkers, Seymour supported James K. Polk’s policy to extend slavery. When the Hunkers gained control of the Democratic party after 1848, Seymour was their candidate for governor. During his term as governor, his opposition to nativism and his veto of the antiliquor Maine Law cost him his bid for reelection. In 1862, after a decade of retirement, Seymour was again elected governor of New York, and once in office he worked to delay and limit implementation of the Civil War draft. He was defeated in the 1864 gubernatorial election but remained politically active. In 1868 he was the reluctant and unsuccessful Democratic presidential nominee. Steward Mitchell, Horatio Seymour of New York (Cambridge, Mass., 1938); ACAB, 5:470–73; DAB, 16:615–21; ANB, 19:687–88. 3. Douglass seems to conflate two recently published pieces that he wrote on the political situation in 1868. He endorsed the Republican presidential ticket of Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax

Y8204-Douglass.indb 96

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO HARRIET TUBMAN, 29 AUGUST 1868

97

over the Democrats Horatio Seymour and Frank P. Blair in an article for the New York Independent. He condemned Seymour for resisting the draft and courting the support of former Confederates. In an article published in the New York National Anti-Slavery Standard, Douglass rebuked Salmon P. Chase for attempting to win the Democratic presidential nomination. In that article, Douglass observed that Gerrit Smith had issued a printed circular encouraging the Democrats to select Chase. In the Standard piece, Douglass professed a belief that Smith must have changed his mind after Chase made a speech to the Democratic National Convention that attempted to portray his views as being in line with those of the party. NASS, 18 July 1868; New York Independent, 27 August 1868. 4. Ulysses Simpson Grant (1822–85) was raised in Hiram, Ohio, and apprenticed under his father as a tanner. An appointment to the U.S. Military Academy changed Grant’s life. After graduating in 1854, he served with distinction in the Mexican War, but problems with alcohol caused him to resign his commission in 1854. He rejoined the army after the attack on Fort Sumter and rose through the ranks rapidly, becoming general in chief of all Union armies in the final year of the Civil War and personally directing Union forces in Virginia in 1864–65. President Johnson appointed him acting secretary of war upon the removal of Edwin Stanton, but Grant resigned the post rather than become embroiled in the president’s feud with Radical Republicans in Congress. The Republican party nominated Grant as its presidential candidate in May 1868, and he won election over the Democrat Horatio Seymour that fall. Politically inexperienced, Grant served two terms (1869–77) in the White House, struggling to enforce Reconstruction policies and battling charges of nepotism and corruption within his administration. Efforts to win a third Republican nomination in 1876 and 1880 failed. Dismissed by many contemporaries and later scholars as a failed president, modern assessments of his administration have been more positive. Charles W. Calhoun, The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant (Lawrence, Kans., 2017); William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography (New York, 1981); ACAB, 2:709–25; DAB, 7:492–501. 5. Schuyler Colfax.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO HARRIET TUBMAN1 Rochester, [N.Y.] 29 August 1868.

Dear Harriet: I am glad to know that the story of your eventful life has been written by a kind lady, and that the same is soon to be published.2 You ask for what you do not need when you call upon me for a word of commendation.3 I need such words from you far more than you can need them from me, especially where your superior labors and devotion to the cause of the lately enslaved of our land are known as I know them. The difference between us is very marked. Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You on the other hand have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day—you in the night. I have had the applause of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes of being approved by the multitude, while the most that you have done has been witnessed by a few trembling, scarred, and foot-sore bondmen and women, whom you have

Y8204-Douglass.indb 97

5/17/23 2:35 PM

98

DOUGLASS TO JOSEPHINE S. W. GRIFFING, 27 SEPTEMBER 1868

led out of the house of bondage, and whose heartfelt “God bless you” has been your only reward. The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism. Excepting John Brown—of sacred memory—I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than you have. Much that you have done would seem improbable to those who do not know you as I know you. It is to me a great pleasure and a great privilege to bear testimony to your character and your works, and to say to those to whom you may come, that I regard you in every way truthful and trustworthy. Your friend, FREDERICK DOUG LASS. PLSr: Sarah Hopkins Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (Auburn, N.Y., 1869), 6–8. 1. Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) was born into slavery as Arminta Ross to the slave owners Harriet Greene and Benjamin Ross, residing near Bucktown in Dorchester County, Maryland. She escaped bondage in 1849, and the following year she returned to Maryland as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, initially to rescue her family members. Following the successful relocation of most of her family to St. Catherine’s, Canada, Tubman focused her efforts on rescuing as many enslaved brethren as possible, eventually directing approximately 120 men, women, and children to freedom. During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union army, first as a cook and nurse and then as a scout and spy in South Carolina. Jean M. Humez, Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories, (Madison, Wisc., 2003), 32–35; EAAH, 3:247–58; EAA, 2:683–84. 2. The writer and historian Sarah Hopkins Bradford (1818–1915) interviewed Tubman many times in Auburn, New York, in the years following the Civil War. Bradford used that research to compose the first of two biographies on the black abolitionist, which was written to assist Tubman and her philanthropic endeavors. Douglass alludes to Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (Auburn, N.Y., 1869). Bradford’s second work was Harriet Tubman: Moses of Her People (New York, 1886). 3. This letter was published in the preface to Bradford’s work on Tubman. Bradford, Scenes, 6–7.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JOSEPHINE S. W. GRIFFING 1 Rochester[, N.Y.] 27 Sept[ember] 1868.

My dear Friend: I am impelled by no lack of generosity in refusing to come to Washington to speak in behalf of woman’s suffrage.2 The right of woman to vote is as sacred in my judgment as that of man, and I am quite willing at any time to hold up both hands in favor of this right. It does not however follow that I can come to Washington or go elsewhere to deliver lectures upon this special subject. I am now devoting myself to a cause not more sacred, certainly more urgent, because it is one of life and death to the long en-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 98

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO JOSEPHINE S. W. GRIFFING, 27 SEPTEMBER 1868

99

slaved people of this country, and this is: Negro suffrage. While the negro is mobbed, beaten, shot, stabbed, hanged, burnt and is the target of all that is malignant in the North and all that is murderous in the South, his claims may be preferred by me without exposing in any wise myself to the imputation of narrowness or meanness towards the cause of woman. As you very well know, woman has a thousand ways to attach herself to the governing power of the land and already exerts an honorable influence on the course of legislation. She is the victim of abuses to be sure, but it cannot be pretended I think that her cause is as urgent as that of ours. I never suspected you of sympathizing with Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton in their cause. Their principle is: that no negro shall be enfranchised while woman is not.3 Now, considering that white men have been enfranchised always and colored men have not, the conduct of these white women, whose husbands, fathers and brothers are voters, does not seem generous. Very truly yours FREDK DOUG LASS ALS: S. W. Griffing Manuscripts, NNC. Another text in PLSr: JNH, 33:469–70. 1. Josephine Sophia White Griffing (1814–72), abolitionist and advocate for women’s rights, was born to a farm family in Hebron, Connecticut. She married Charles Stockman Spooner Griffing in 1835. In 1842 the couple moved to Litchfield, Ohio, where they became involved in the antislavery movement. They joined the Western Anti-Slavery Society, and their home served as a stopping point on the Underground Railroad. In 1850, Josephine Griffing began her career as an antislavery lecturer, traveling through Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana for several years. During the Civil War, she joined the Loyal League, an organization of women who continuously petitioned Congress to emancipate the slaves. In 1863 she moved to Washington, D.C., with her three daughters and joined the National Freedmen’s Relief Association. In June 1865, Griffing served as an assistant in the Freedmen’s Bureau in Washington, D.C., but her appointment was terminated in November. She stayed in the city and continued working with freedmen, aiding in the distribution of clothing and food as well as running an industrial school for freedwomen. In recognition of her work, the Freedmen’s Bureau eventually rehired her as an employment agent. Griffing was also active in the women’s rights movement. In 1869 she served as corresponding secretary for the National Woman Suffrage Association, and the following year, she organized the association’s convention in Washington, D.C. Stacey M. Robertson, Hearts Beating for Liberty: Women Abolitionists in the Old Northwest (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2010), 151–54; NAW, 2:92–94; ANB (online); DAB, 7:622–23. 2. In the fall of 1868, the Universal Franchise Association called for a convention in Washington, D.C. The meeting—which would be the first-ever woman suffrage convention held in the capital—was set for 19 and 20 January 1869. As president of the association’s Washington branch, Josephine Griffing organized the convention and sent invitations to desired speakers, including Douglass. Gordon, Selected Papers of Stanton and Anthony, 2:345; Kate Masur, An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2010), 181; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 268. 3. During 1867 and 1868, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony grew increasingly hostile to the idea of enfranchisement for black men if women were not simultaneously given the right to vote. Their arguments for woman suffrage became outright racist, and their opposition to the

Y8204-Douglass.indb 99

5/17/23 2:35 PM

100

JULIA GRIFFITHS CROFTS TO DOUGLASS, 26 NOVEMBER 1868

proposed Fifteenth Amendment alienated many former abolitionists, black leaders, and some fellow women’s rights advocates. Josephine Griffing was not only a former abolitionist but also worked closely with the Freedmen’s Bureau after the Civil War. She did not view black men’s enfranchisement as a threat to woman suffrage and took a more universalistic approach to voting rights, believing that any debate about equality would help bring about suffrage for all. But when Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869, Griffing joined. While she worked closely with the NWSA—even when the organization completely rejected the idea of black male suffrage— she did not share its leaders’ racism. Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass on Woman’s Rights, ed. Philip S. Foner (Westport, Conn., 1976), 152n; Carol Faulkner, Women’s Radical Reconstruction: The Freedmen’s Aid Movement (Philadelphia, 2004), 6, 91; Masur, Example for All the Land, 174–75, 180; Nell Irvin Painter, “Voices of Suffrage: Sojourner Truth, Frances Watkins Harper, and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage,” in Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited, ed. Jean H. Baker (New York, 2002), 74–78.

JULIA GRIFFITHS CROFTS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Gateshead-on-Tyne[, Eng.] 26 Nov[ember 1868].

My very dear Friend, I was so glad to receive your last letter & to find from its contents that you are pretty well in health & active in lecturing, as well. Oh: how I thought of the old times, when you named your proposed Lecture on “William the Silent”!1—Pray, send it here: in some way— next to hearing it, reading it will be a treat—I am longing to know when it is to be delivered? & how it succeeds?—so prithee dear fd write soon, & tell me all about it—It strikes me you are at home this very day, (Thursday 26th) eating your “Thanksgiving Turkey”—How utterly vain all wishes are! So, I will not say what I wish; (yet—but—or though will come) I should like to see all the wee grandchildren toddling around grandpa’s knee2—I sh[oul]d think grandma3 too will be very fond of the little ones—Is Fred’s intended a nice, bright girl?4 — I am sending this via good Miss Porter5—to be born in aid of the Rochester A. S. Society, I am forwarding £5— —This host also takes £5—to Loguen6 — —& in the packet to Syracuse I am enclosing a small note to Mr. Fogg7—re-enclosed to Rev: S. J. May—Whom I, have requested to read it before forwarding it to that graceless individual!! To Mr Fogg I say, “I now write again to request that you will oblige me by either sending the money entire or in instalments to me direct or by way of my friend Mr Frederick Douglass, who will furnish you with the necessary receipts on payment of the whole”—Perhaps Mr May’s8 “moral suasion” may stir him life!—

Y8204-Douglass.indb 100

5/17/23 2:35 PM

JULIA GRIFFITHS CROFTS TO DOUGLASS, 26 NOVEMBER 1868

101

Well my dear fd what of Grant”s election? will he prove a true man, think you? I have just been horrified by two paragraphs from American papers—one headed “Ku Klux outrages in Ohio”—and another “The Reign of terror in Georgia”—Pray, don’t go South—but be satisfied with lecturing in your own extensive State of New York—& the New England States—a Paper addressed by your own well known hand wd prove so acceptable now & then—assuring us more frequently of your welfare—Dear Frederick, this time 20 years sister Ely’a9 & I were beginning to prepare for our American visit!!—Time does fly—& yet how very very long that seems ago—Every thing about us material has greatly changed since then—but mind & soul change not—& defy time—being immortal— —I pray that our Heavenly Father will permit us to meet once again in this mortal life!— & if it is best for us He will—The future is wisely hidden from us all—to “act—act in the living present” is what we have to do.— — The Doctor10 & the girls all desire kind love to you—We never forget you—& I never cease to pray that your wonderful & valuable life may be preserved—God bless you! my very dear fd Remember me kindly to Mrs. Douglass & Rose11 & the boys—I wish Rose wd send me her likeness, tell her—Pray send me one of yourself like that for Miss Truth12 —Ever your faithful friend JULIA G. CROFTS. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 352R–54, FD Papers, DLC. 1. In 1868 and 1869, Douglass frequently delivered a lecture entitled “William the Silent” on the lyceum circuit. The topic of the address was the life of William of Nassau (1533–84), the sixteenthcentury leader of the Dutch revolt against Spanish suzerainty. In preparing the written text for the lecture, Douglass relied largely on the multivolume Rise of the Dutch Republic by John Lothrop Motley. That work applauded William and the Dutch people for their courageous uprising against foreign domination and religious persecution, portraying them as the direct precursors of George Washington and the American revolutionaries. Newspapers recorded widely disparate audience reactions to the lecture and described Douglass’s manner of delivery in sharply contrasting ways—he could be characterized as unanimated or engrossing; audiences were merely polite and turnout was very low, or audiences’ size and financial returns were unprecedentedly large for a given location or lecture series. Although he occasionally delivered “William the Silent” in later years, Douglass regarded the lecture as a failure. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:186–99; John Lothrop Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic: A History, 5 vols. (1856; New York, 1900); John R. McKivigan, “ ‘A New Vocation before Me’: Frederick Douglass’s Post-Civil War Lyceum Career,” Howard Journal of Communications, 29:268–81 (2018). 2. Douglass had four grandchildren at the time. Three of the four were the children of his daughter Rosetta Douglass Sprague: Annie Rosine, born on 27 November 1864; Harriet Bailey, born on 27 November 1866; and Alice Louise, who had just been born on 14 October 1868. The fourth grandchild was Charles’s son Charles Frederick, born on 21 June 1867. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, xlix; Fought, Women, 310. 3. Anna Murray Douglass.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 101

5/17/23 2:35 PM

102

JULIA GRIFFITHS CROFTS TO DOUGLASS, 26 NOVEMBER 1868

4. Although the precise date of Frederick Douglass, Jr.’s engagement remains uncertain, the identity of his fiancée is clear. The daughter of Aaron Molyneaux Hewlett and Virginia Josephine Lewis Hewlett, Virginia L. Molyneaux Hewlett (1849–89) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her father was the first African American faculty member of Harvard University, where he served as the director of the Harvard Gymnasium, and her siblings included the famous Shakespearean actor Paul Molyneaux Hewlett and the prominent African American attorney Emanuel Molyneaux Hewlett. Virginia and Frederick Douglass, Jr., were married at her family home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 4 August 1869. The first of their seven children, Frederick Aaron Douglass (1870–86), was born in Cambridge in June 1870. By the end of that summer, the family had taken up permanent residence in Washington, D.C. Having received an excellent education (she graduated from Cambridge High School with honors in 1868), Virginia Douglass spent a number of years working in the Washington, D.C., public school system. In 1870, she became the first African American appointed to teach school in the District, and in 1871 she was appointed principal of the Hillsdale School. In 1873 she was appointed principal of a public school located next to the campus of Howard University. Virginia Douglass was also active in the woman suffrage movement. At the time of Virginia’s death, from tuberculosis, in December 1889, only two of her children were still alive: Charles Paul (1879– 95) and Robert Smalls (1886–1910). Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 678, 700, 720; Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, lxxxviii–lxxxix, 26–30, 625–26, 637; Fought, Women, 212, 266, 268, 271, 308, 310. 5. Maria G. Porter (1805–96) was born in Bristol, Maine. At age twenty, she moved with her family to Rochester, New York, where she remained until her death. Maria helped found the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Sewing Society and served as its treasurer for many years. Maria helped many fugitive slaves escape to freedom via the boardinghouse she ran in Rochester, which was a stop on the Underground Railroad. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 57; The Rochester Directory, Containing a General Directory of the Citizens, a Business Directory, and the City and County Register for the Year Beginning July, 1 1880 (Rochester, 1880), 58; FDP, 26 February 1852; Rochester Herald, 14 December 1896; New York Times, 15 December 1896; Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig & Courier, 17 December 1896; Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, 1:243. 6. Jermain Wesley Loguen (1813–72), a black abolitionist and minister, was born into slavery in Davidson County, Tennessee. Originally named Jarm Logue, he was the son of an enslaved woman and her white owner, David Logue. In 1835, after his father sold his mother and sister, Loguen escaped. He first fled to Upper Canada, but relocated to Rochester in 1837. He opened schools for black children in Utica and Syracuse before his ordination as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in 1842. Loguen originally supported the antislavery principles of William Lloyd Garrison, believing in nonpolitical action and nonviolence, but in the 1840s he began to endorse political means in the struggle against slavery. By 1844, Loguen had become a regular lecturer on the antislavery circuit, working closely with the western New York abolitionist circle that included Douglass, Samuel J. May, and Gerrit Smith. His house in Syracuse was an important stop for slaves bound for Canada on the Underground Railroad, and he devoted much time to the Syracuse Fugitive Aid Society. Fear of prosecution for his role in the rescue of the fugitive William “Jerry” McHenry led him to flee temporarily to Canada West, but he returned to Syracuse early in 1852 to resume his work on behalf of fugitives. He later recruited black troops for the Union army during the Civil War and established African Methodist Episcopal Zionist congregations in the South during Reconstruction. J[ermain] W[esley] Loguen, The Rev. J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman: A Narrative of Real Life (Syracuse, N.Y., 1859), 425–33; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 67; ANB, 13:848–49. 7. This is most likely a reference to Samuel C. Fogg (1836–1912), a native of Doncaster, Yorkshire, England, who lived and worked as a printer in Rochester, New York, from around 1860 until around 1880. By the time the 1880 U.S. Census was recorded, Fogg and his family were living in Chicago, where he spent the remainder of his life. Within a few years of settling in Chicago, Fogg left the printing trade. He became an electrician and remained so until his retirement, sometime between 1900 and 1910. 1860 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 38; 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 80; 1880 U.S. Census, Illinois, Cook County, 28; 1900 U.S. Census, Illinois,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 102

5/17/23 2:35 PM

JULIA GRIFFITHS CROFTS TO DOUGLASS, 26 NOVEMBER 1868

103

Cook County, 20A; “Cook County, Illinois, Death Index, 1878–1922,” Ancestry.com; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” 8. Samuel J. May. 9. Elizabeth “Eliza” Griffiths Dick (1822–90) became a staunch abolitionist while growing up in England. Eliza and Julia Griffiths first met Douglass when he was in London for a farewell soiree in 1847, and according to Douglass, the sisters showed him around the city “to see and enjoy sights curious in works of art, as well as natural beauty” and were “to me devoted friends in a strange land.” Eliza helped her sister raise funds for the antislavery cause, particularly Douglass’s newspapers North Star and Frederick Douglass’ Paper, as well as for the bazaars in Rochester. In 1849, Julia and Eliza traveled to the United States, sailing on the S.S. Sarah Sands from Liverpool and arriving in New York on 2 May 1849. (Both are listed in the ship’s manifest as spinsters from England.) Soon after their arrival in New York, Douglass and the Griffiths sisters were attacked while walking along the Battery. The incident was reported on both sides of the Atlantic. Julia and Eliza traveled with Douglass to several antislavery meetings and boarded the steamship Alida in New York together, where Julia publicly protested against the racism directed toward Douglass by Captain Frederick W. Stone. The sisters stayed in Douglass’s home in Rochester until Eliza moved to Toronto, Canada, in 1850 with John Dick, her new husband and the North Star’s printer. The Dicks eventually immigrated to New Zealand. Some historians have argued that it was Eliza who first purchased the mortgage on Douglass’s house in 1849, after which she transferred it to Julia in April 1851. Fought, Women,  341; “Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild (passenger manifest),” ImmigrantShips.net; “1851 Canada  Census,” FamilySearch.org; “New Zealand, Cemetery Transcriptions, 1840–1981,” FamilySearch.org. 10. Henry Only Crofts (1814–1880) was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and became an ordained Methodist minister in 1835. He was a member of the New Connexion Conference from 1840 to 1842 and traveled to Montreal, Canada, in 1843. While abroad, he was stationed in Montreal and Toronto, serving four times as superintendent of missions and president of the Canadian Conference. He left Canada in 1852 and settled in Halifax, where he married Julia Griffiths in 1859. Later that year, the couple organized several meetings at the Mechanics Hall in Halifax for Douglass when he arrived for his second visit to Britain; they also opened their home to him while he stayed in the town. Crofts supported his wife’s antislavery activism, and both worked to increase subscribers to Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Henry died in St. Neots in January 1880. “England and Wales, Civil Registration Marriage and Death Indexes,” Ancestry.com; Fought, Women, 145, 173; University of Manchester Library Index of Methodist Ministers, library.manchester.ac.uk.; Hilary M. Carey, God’s Empire: Religion and Colonialism in the British World c. 1801–1908 (Cambridge, Eng., 2011), 187–89. 11. Rosetta Douglass Sprague. 12. Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) was born a slave in Ulster County, New York. Named Isabella at birth, she passed through a number of owners before achieving freedom in 1827 and acquiring the surname Wagener from a Quaker family. A deeply religious woman who claimed to see visions and hear the voice of God, she renamed herself “Sojourner Truth” after receiving a vision to evangelize in the eastern states. Her involvement with the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a communal farm in Massachusetts run by George W. Benson, William Lloyd Garrison’s brotherin-law, first brought her into contact with Frederick Douglass. Over the years, the two frequently shared the speaker’s platform at antislavery and women’s rights meetings. With Olive Gilbert, a white woman, as her amanuensis, Truth produced an autobiography in 1850. That book, her association with such prominent people as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Abraham Lincoln, and her sometimes flamboyant speeches and behavior gave rise to many apocryphal stories about her. From 1850 until her death, she lived in Battle Creek, Michigan. Sojourner Truth, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave, ed. Olive Gilbert (Boston, 1850); Arthur Huff Fauset, Sojourner Truth: God’s Faithful Pilgrim (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1938); Hertha Pauli, Her Name Was Sojourner Truth (New York, 1962); Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol (New York, 1996), 160–63; NAW, 3:2.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 103

5/17/23 2:35 PM

104

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 2 JANUARY 1869

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C.1 2 January 1869.

Dear Father: I wish you a “Happy New Year,” and a long and prosperous life. The holidays are over without anything remarkable transpiring in my family other than sickness. I have never before experienced such a dull Christmas and New Years. Libbie2 has been sick for nearly a month with a poisoned face, but now she is fast recovering. The Bureau is supposed to be closed3 but such is not the case as the Educational Department will be continued perhaps for two or three years, and I am happy to say that the Gen[era]l. Supt. recommends no reduction of clerical force in this office. I have worked pretty hard during the last six months both in and out of the office, and should I live to see the beginning of another new year I hope to be able to spend it happier than the past. Will you be here on the 13th inst to attend the Natl. Colored Convention? 4 The best men we have are expected here on that occasion. I have a copy of your list of appointments for the West,5 and I will occasionally drop you a line. I have strong hopes of securing a position for Fred as soon as Grant is inaugurated. I have begun to teach night school at my house for adults, and have eight or ten students at 50¢ per month. As soon as I can secure 30 or 40 pupils Gen[era]l. Howard6 will allow me free use of the Bureau school-house which is only a short distance from my house. Little Chas. Fredk7 grows finely, and is very fond of music. He will listen to anything he hears sung, and then will hum the tune as correctly as any body. He will also try to repeat some of the words. He is altogether a bright boy & promises to be very smart. Hoping this finds you well, and with love to mother, and the family[.] I am affectionately, Your Son. CHAS. R. DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 422–23, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Charles’s letter was written on stationery with the following printed letterhead: “war department / bureau refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands / office general superintendent schools.”

Y8204-Douglass.indb 104

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CLARA BARTON TO DOUGLASS, 26 JANUARY 1869

105

2. Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Murphy Douglass. 3. From a peak of 901 employees in 1868, the Freedmen’s Bureau shrank to 158 employees the following year. Despite reduced federal appropriations, Commissioner O. O. Howard managed to keep the organization in operation until it was officially disbanded on 1 July 1872. EAAH, 2:65–69. 4. The National Convention of Colored Men was held at the Union League Hall and Israel Church in Washington, D.C., on 13–14 January 1869. This was the first truly national black convention; strong delegations from southern and border states were among the 160 attendees. Douglass was selected the gathering’s president, George T. Downing chaired its business committee, and George B. Vashon wrote the meeting’s public address. The primary goal of the convention was to lobby Congress and the incoming president, Ulysses S. Grant, to pass the Fifteenth Amendment, which would grant suffrage to African American men in all states. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxvi; Washington Daily Morning Chronicle, 14–16, 18 January 1869; NASS, 23, 30 January 1869; Hugh Davis, “We Will Be Satisfied with Nothing Less”: The African American Struggle for Equal Rights in the North during Reconstruction (Ithaca, N.Y., 2011), 63–64. 5. Among the stops on Douglass’s lecture tour of the Midwest in the late winter of 1869 were Mozart Hall in Cincinnati, 8 February; Lincoln Hall in Danville, Illinois, 16 February; Rouse’s Hall in Peoria, Illinois, 22 February; the Athenaeum, Dubuque, Iowa, 1 March 1869; the Opera House in St. Paul, Minnesota, 13 March; and the Opera House in Minneapolis, 13 March. Douglass usually delivered his lecture “William the Silent,” which received very mixed reviews in the press. Danville (Ill.) Commercial, 11 February 1869; Detroit Advertiser and Tribune, 11 February 1869; Alton (Ill.) Daily Democrat, 12 February 1869; Peoria (Ill.) Daily Transcript, 17 February 1869; Danville (Ill.) Times, 20 February 1869; Dubuque (Iowa) Daily Times, 2 March 1869; St. Paul (Minn.) Daily Pioneer, 9, 10, 12 March 1869; Minneapolis Tribune, 11, 14 March 1869; Fremont (Ohio) Weekly Journal, 9 April 1869. 6. O. O. Howard. 7. Charles Frederick Douglass.

CLARA BARTON1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C. 26 Jan[uar]y 1869.

Frederick Douglass Esq My Most Esteemed friend Although my tired hand has swung its pen into the “wee sma hours” I cannot let it rest till it has fulfilled the promise to let you hear of my interview with Genl Butler,2 which I was only able to gain today. The Genl is favorably impressed, and offers any assistance in his power, and desires me to ascertain what property or facilities may be had here for the commencement of the work, and he will institute such a Bill, or resolution as will secure the same from Congress—And Mr Brown3 the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate has taken it upon himself to look up the property, if it is to be found—Commencing with Genl Howard 4 —and ending with Genl Grant5—if need be—

Y8204-Douglass.indb 105

5/17/23 2:35 PM

106

CLARA BARTON TO DOUGLASS, 26 JANUARY 1869

This has been the work of today—rather a day of promises it must be confessed, but if it lead to performances in the future, not all loss perhaps— My imagination points to you making the final arrangements for that long Western War, and my very soul sympathyses with you, and yet it is pleasant, with all its weariness.— I have between 500 & 800 applications this season from the Posts of the Grand Army over the entire United States, a lack of my customary sound health has thus far prevented me from speaking this winter but I had intended using the months of February & March as my strength returns,—but if this field of home labor opens favorably before me—I shall not feel justified in leaving it for a day—and I should count my pecuniary loss no sacrifice if thereby I add to the well being of others— 6 Please give me your good wishes and your prayers, as you have thus of Your most sincere friend CLARA BARTON. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 425R–26L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Clarissa “Clara” Harlowe Barton (1821–1912) was an educator, battlefield nurse, public lecturer, founder and first president of the American Red Cross, and, arguably, one of the most famous women in the world at the time of her death. Born in Massachusetts, she demonstrated throughout her life an iron will, a true empathy for sufferers, and the efficacy of political lobbying in accomplishing her goals. She first gained public attention during the Civil War with her valuable efforts to raise, organize, and distribute donated medical supplies and provisions to wounded Union soldiers on battlefields of the eastern theater. In the closing months of the war, Barton received approval from President Abraham Lincoln to establish an office that served as a clearinghouse for information on missing soldiers. Despite stiff resistance from the military bureaucracy, she worked effectively at this task through 1869 and was reimbursed $15,000 by Congress in recognition of her efforts. This letter to Douglass reveals Barton’s attempts in early 1869, as her missing-soldier project was drawing to a close, to convince Congress to purchase suitable Washington property and establish an industrial school for freedmen, with her as its head. Her efforts proved ineffectual, and so in September 1869 she left on a European vacation. During this time, she learned that the International Committee of the Red Cross had been formed in Geneva in 1863, and that the U.S. State Department was firmly against American participation in its activities. Barton vigorously lobbied Washington for more than a decade; the United States finally signed and ratified the Geneva Treaty in 1882. From then until 1904, Barton served as the first president of the American Red Cross, the organization with which she is still commonly associated. Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Clara Barton: Professional Angel (Philadelphia, 1987), 153–54; NAW, 1:103–07. 2. Benjamin Franklin Butler (1818–93) was a five-term member of Congress, the most notorious of President Lincoln’s political generals, and a long-term political patron of Clara Barton. The two natives of Massachusetts liked each other upon their first meeting, in June 1864, when Barton arrived at Butler’s Army of the James headquarters at Bermuda Hundred, south of Petersburg, Virginia. Butler staunchly supported Barton’s work in his army hospitals for the remaining six months that he served as its commander; afterward, he repeatedly brought her concerns before Congress, cabinet members, and even President Johnson as a member of the House of Representatives after the war.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 106

5/17/23 2:35 PM

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO DOUGLASS, 18 FEBRUARY 1869

107

Although Butler was loyal to Barton, his stormy relationship with the Republican party meant that his power in Washington waxed and waned considerably. In truth, Barton’s most powerful, consistent, and trusted ally in Washington was always Massachusetts senator Henry Wilson, who served from 1855 to 1873. Stephen B. Oates, A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War (New York, 1994), 249–50, 289, 353–54, 365, 367; Pryor, Clara Barton, 75–76, 110–11, 126–27, 130–33, 144–45, 178, 191, 222–23. 3. George T. Brown (1820–80) was sergeant at arms of the U.S. Senate from 1861 to 1869, spanning almost exactly the presidential administrations of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. Born in Scotland, he moved with his family to Alton, Illinois, in the early 1830s, where as a young man he studied law and entered local and state politics under the tutelage of Lyman Trumbull. Along with Trumbull and Abraham Lincoln, Brown played a prominent role at Illinois’s first Republican state convention, in 1856. Trumbull served as U.S. senator for Illinois from 1855 to 1873, using his clout as chairman of the Judiciary Committee to ensure that Brown was elected the first Republican sergeant at arms on 6 July 1861. Though always concerned with the security and good order of the Senate, the sergeant at arms’ official duties were heavily entwined with partisan interests during this era; thus, Brown often performed special tasks for Lincoln, Republican senators, and their patrons. Brown’s efforts to assist Clara Barton to find property for a freedmen’s industrial school seemed to fit that pattern. For reasons now unclear, Brown was not reelected by the Senate in March 1869. He returned to  Alton, where he died in relative obscurity. “George T. Brown, Sergeant at Arms, 1861–1869,” Senate.gov. 4. O. O. Howard. 5. Ulysses S. Grant. 6. Clara Barton’s primary means of financial support between 1866 and 1868 came from delivering a public lecture titled “Work and Incidents in Army Life.” Encompassing hundreds of communities throughout the North and the West, these speaking tours taxed Barton’s health almost as much as her wartime experiences did—thus her reference to “that long Western War.” Members of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) proved to be the most enthusiastic supporters of Barton’s lecture tours. The GAR was the largest and most influential fraternal postwar organization of Union veterans. Established in Decatur, Illinois, in April 1866, the organization was initially little more than another Republican party campaign club. As the northern population wearied of Reconstruction in the 1870s, the GAR floundered somewhat, but rebounded in the 1880s when its focus shifted to attaining veterans’ pensions, lobbying for “loyal” history in school textbooks, and promoting American nationalism. The GAR reached its apogee in 1890, when it consisted of 490,000 members organized into hundreds of local posts located in every state. The organization formally dissolved upon the death of its last member in 1956. Stuart McConnell, Glorious Contentment: The Grand Army of the Republic, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1992), xiii–xiv, 24–25, 237; Oates, Woman of Valor, 374–75.

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Rochester[, N.Y.] 18 Feb[ruary] 1869.

My Dear Father Your letters have filled me with sadness although I certainly appreciate the advice contained in them and feel sure that Nathan1 does also. There is no place that if left entirely to my desires and all parties be thoroughly satisfied as on the hill. I know full well that it is for you to choose who you

Y8204-Douglass.indb 107

5/17/23 2:35 PM

108

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO DOUGLASS, 18 FEBRUARY 1869

shall have around you and I could stand all the grumbling and faultfinding that might arise by our remaining here but Nathan is different knowing that it has been said that he cannot just unthank you and he took exception to what you said in your letter that it was “all mouth and no hands,” that you included him with the rest as being a burden, and he gave me as a reason for moving that he could not make it pay the first year as he had to make something the first year to be successful the second that he was starting it money to back him and he did not feel like incurring another debt and on a years trial and that he thought it better for him to seek some employment as soon as he could and try and save money than to make a beginning by borrowing money and that he thought you and the rest would respect him more and he would feel better himself. I could only say do as you think best. I do not think Nathan was angry or offended but desired to take a step that would prevent him from becoming further indebted to you so far as money is concerned for he knows as well as myself the many demands for money from you by all of the family.2 I would not have you think for a moment that your advice to us is not appreciated[.] I not only appreciate as I have always done but covet advice from you, but with all the advice you and after my great desire for it I fail to give evidence that I am profiting by it I cannot feel entirely happy as I am certain you must misapprehend me. The sewing machine has worried me to think I have not been able to use it more advantageously, but when you write as if sorry you gave it to me I cannot but wonder why you fail to see the many reasons for my not having made [illegible] profit by it. I am not certain that we can move before you get home, for many reasons I am sorry Nathan made such a hasty decision and yet again I knew if he failed in this undertaking and become entirely discouraged he in his dispondency would be as unpleasant as he was on coming home last summer. I know nothing pleases him better than to be successful in what he undertakes and please all hands and no one more than yourself. It is not ingratitude father. I shall look after the correspondence just the same and better as I shall be compelled to keep Louisa3 from School if she ever learns to read and write she can do so at home. I can do nothing with two babies.4 I have sufficient energy but lack strength. I only hope you are not angry with Nathan and myself for what may seem a back of regard for your desires. I cannot see how we could remain here without in a measure depending upon you as Nathan failed to find employment in the winter to enable us to live in the summer also. Nathan owes Fred.5 nearly $50, that he promised him this spring and for which he is constantly reminding him

Y8204-Douglass.indb 108

5/17/23 2:35 PM

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO DOUGLASS, 18 FEBRUARY 1869

109

as he will need all that is coming to him against he is married. He could do no more than he had da coming home as late in the season as he did that is, make enough to keep us comfortably this winter so far as fuel and food was concerned. Nathan has found employment as Gardener for Mumford6 for $50. a month beginning now the middle of this month for the season ending in November making in that time $475—more he thinks than he could do here as it would be clear gain and no debt further than he has already hanging over him. What do you think of it. He says he knows he could make gardening pay here but he would need to have money in hand. I wrote you a line this morning for Peoria7 in which I told you that John Jones sent $249 that he had collected from Mr Fogg.8 I hold it as also the money for John until you say what is to be done with it whether I shall hand it to mother. I hope your fur cape has proved sufficient covering for you. I have often wondered if you have suffered with the cold as we are doing here. We have had Spring weather until the past Mother9 sends love— Your Affectionate Daughter— R. D. SPRAGUE. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 426R–29L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Nathan Sprague. 2. After failing in his efforts to establish a successful business in Omaha, Nebraska, Nathan Sprague returned to Rochester in October 1868 and rejoined his wife and children, who were living with her parents. Unable to find steady employment, Sprague remained with his family under Douglass’s roof for several months, all the while borrowing money from both his father-in-law and at least two of his brothers-in-law, Charles and Frederick Jr. At the time this letter was written, Sprague had recently moved his family into a home on Pearl Street. The move was likely precipitated by Douglass’s complaints, echoed by his son Charles, about Sprague’s inability to support his family and his continued dependence on Douglass for substantial financial assistance. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 500–503; Fought, Women, 210–11. 3. Helen Louise “Louisa” Sprague. 4. Nathan and Rosetta Douglass Sprague were the parents of three children by this date: Annie Rosine (age four), Harriet Bailey (age two), and Alice Louise, who turned four months old on 14 February. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, xlix; Fought, Women, 310. 5. Frederick Douglass, Jr. 6. George Huntington Mumford (1805–71) was a wealthy retired lawyer who owned an estate in Rochester’s Twelfth Ward, located not far from Douglass’s farm. Mumford, whose household at this time included his wife and three of his children, employed a number of servants, one of whom was Nathan Sprague’s younger brother Alfred. In 1870, Alfred Sprague (c. 1850–1916) resided in the Mumford home as a live-in servant, and Lewis Sprague, another of Nathan’s siblings and a coachman, lived next door to the Mumfords with his wife and six children. 1860 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 429; 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 14–15; Find a Grave (online).

Y8204-Douglass.indb 109

5/17/23 2:35 PM

110

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 26 FEBRUARY 1869

7. Douglass spoke at Rouse Hall in Peoria, Illinois, on 22 February 1869. The event was part of the Mercantile Library Association Course. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxvi. 8. Samuel C. Fogg. 9. Anna Murray Douglass.

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington. D.C.1 26 February 1869.

Dear Father Yours of the 19th inst. came today. I have been unwell for several days, but am again at my desk. I am sorry to hear of your ill health;2 knowing that it must be more disagreeable to be unwell while traveling & lecturing than when at home. We have had grand weather here ever since you left, and several of my neighbors have sown peas, and are preparing their ground for other produce. I have had a large quantity of manure hauled, and have engaged a man to plough my lot next monday. Since you wrote me in regard to the Bust, I have been anxiously awaiting its arrival, but as yet it has not come.3 General Howard is just home, and reports seeing you announced in several places where he has been.4 I had an introduction to a daughter of Hon J. R. Giddings5 (Mrs. Juliane)6 a few days ago, and was invited to her house. Her husband is a member of Congress.7 I bought me a good substantial cooking stove a few days ago, the first new one I ever had, and it cost me $25.00 the price was $30. I am gradually getting my house furnished, and one of these days hope to be able to give you comfortable lodgings when you come this way. If you have an extra violin to dispose of I should be very happy to have it. Great preparations are being made for the coming Inagural, and a grand time is anticipated by all.8 I dont think Nathan9 leaves the hill because some of the family dislike him, he may use that as an excuse, but if that was the real cause he would have left long ago. I have no friendship for Sprague, but I have never tried to have him leave your place, although he has tried by mispresentations to have me, and the other boys sent away. He should not complain now, and if he leaves when you wish him to stay he shows his ingratitude to you for all you have done for him. I am sure now that none of us boys are at home

Y8204-Douglass.indb 110

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 26 FEBRUARY 1869

111

he has no serious opposition in anything he chooses to do. When I worked the place he boasted that he could make a living thus and intimated that I didn’t half work; now he has more ground than I had, with a house on the place; horse, wagon, & carriage at his disposal, and talks of leaving. Sprague has the advantage of mother, he writes, and if mother wants a letter written she has to go to Rosetta,10 and there it goes, and you only get one side of what transpires. I cant hear from home when you are absent because mother11 cant write, and I suppose Rosetta wont write to me for her. I write once in a while but never receive any reply. William12 wrote once in a while, but now he has stopped. Little Freddie learns to talk quite rapidly.13 All send love, Aff. Yr. Son CHAS. R. DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 432R–36L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Charles’s letter was written on stationery with the following printed letterhead: “war department / bureau refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands / office general superintendent schools.” 2. The first noted reference to Douglass feeling ill was in a 21 January 1869 letter written to him by his daughter, Rosetta Douglass Sprague. At the end her letter, she wrote, “I trust your throat is improving if not I do not see how you can fill your appointments west.” Rosetta evidently became increasingly concerned; she followed up in later letters, inquiring whether he had an adequate cloak to keep him warm, since snow had been falling well into late February. Rosetta Douglass Sprague to FD, 21 January, 18, 25 February 1869, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 424–425L, 426R–429L, 429R–430, 431–432L, FD Papers, DLC. 3. In June 1868, Charles Douglass had written his father to acknowledge receipt of a newspaper clipping describing an effort undertaken in Cincinnati to commission a bust of the senior Douglass. He requested that his father send him the bust or a photograph of it whenever possible. Charles R. Douglass to FD, 9 June 1868, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 379–80, DLC. 4. General Oliver Otis Howard had departed the capital for a lecture tour of midwestern cities in late January and did not return until late February. Carpenter, Sword and Olive Branch, 201. 5. Joshua Reed Giddings (1795–1864), an antislavery congressman from Ohio, was first elected to the House of Representatives as a Whig in 1838. He vigorously opposed the “gag rule,” the annexation of Texas, and the Mexican War. In 1842, Giddings received a congressional sanction for his actions during negotiations with Great Britain over the Creole affair. While negotiations were underway, he introduced resolutions supporting the right of slaves aboard the British ship to mutiny. Giddings immediately resigned his seat, appealed to his constituents, and won reelection by an overwhelming margin. In 1848, Giddings left the Whig party to join the Free Soilers and then allied himself with the Republicans after passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Passed over for renomination in 1858 on account of his antislavery radicalism and declining health, Giddings was a delegate to the 1860 Republican Convention, at which he and his allies forced the adoption of a plank endorsing the principles of the Declaration of Independence. In the last three years of his life, Giddings served as the consul general to Canada. Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings; ACAB, 4:478; DAB, 7:260–61; BDUSC (online). 6. Laura Giddings (1839–84), youngest daughter of the veteran antislavery Ohio political leader Joshua R. Giddings, married the Indiana Republican George W. Julian on 31 December 1863. After

Y8204-Douglass.indb 111

5/17/23 2:35 PM

112

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO DOUGLASS, 10 MARCH 1869

Julian’s congressional career ended in 1871, the couple moved from Washington, D.C., to Irvington, Indiana. Cleveland Daily Leader, 11 January 1864; Find a Grave (online). 7. George Washington Julian (1817–99), born in Centerville, Indiana, had a long career as an antislavery and reform politician. Essentially self-educated, Julian taught elementary school for three years before becoming a lawyer in 1840. Despite a youthful conversion from Quakerism to Unitarianism, Julian retained great sympathy for the slave. He was elected to the Indiana legislature in 1845 as a Whig, but became a Free Soiler in 1848 and served a term in Congress (1849–51). In April 1852, Julian and Douglass were featured speakers at the Cincinnati Anti-Slavery Convention. Later that year, Julian was the unsuccessful Free Soil candidate for vice president. An early Republican, he returned to the House of Representatives in 1860 for five consecutive terms. As a congressman, Julian championed civil rights for the freedmen, woman suffrage, and public land policy reform. Offended by the corruption of the Grant administration, Julian supported the Liberal Republican movement and eventually became a Democrat. Patrick W. Riddleberger, George W. Julian, Radical Republican: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Politics and Reform (Indianapolis, Ind., 1966); ACAB, 3:486. 8. Ulysses S. Grant was inaugurated as the eighteenth president of the United States on 4 March 1869. After extensive preparations, Washington, D.C., welcomed large crowds of enthusiastic Republican supporters. Grant refused to ride with the outgoing president, Andrew Johnson, to the inauguration at the Capitol, and the latter boycotted the ceremony altogether. The parade was heavily decorated, and Grant’s carriage was accompanied by a large number of marching soldiers. After attending Vice President Schuyler Colfax’s swearing-in in the Senate Chamber, Grant went to the inaugural stand on the Capitol’s east front. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase then swore Grant in, and the new president delivered one of the shortest-ever inaugural addresses. His inaugural ball was held later at the Treasury Building. Washington Evening Star, 3, 4, 5 March 1869; Calhoun, Presidency of Grant, 65–68. 9. Nathan Sprague. 10. Rosetta Douglass Sprague. 11. Anna Murray Douglass. 12. Charles is no doubt referring to one of the several young men named William (such as William Oliver and William Winston) who worked on his father’s newspapers as either an apprentice or an assistant in the 1850s and early 1860s. The editors, however, have not been able to determine the exact identity of the William in question. Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 2:253; Fought, Women, 125–25, 128, 344n. 13. Charles Frederick Douglass was twenty months old at the time. Fought, Women, 310.

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Rochester[, N.Y.] 10 March 1869.

My Dear Father It has been sometime since you have heard from home. I endeavored to get a letter to you before you reached Minn. but it failed to reach you and was returned to me. My last letter from you was dated from Monticello.1 I am sorry to think you believe Nathan2 is offended he was hurt supposing you alluded to him as well as the rest for he has been very sensitive all winter because he has laid idle so long and had more than once said to me he believed father thought he could get work. I told him that you know

Y8204-Douglass.indb 112

5/17/23 2:35 PM

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO DOUGLASS, 10 MARCH 1869

113

the difficulty of getting employment in the winter and when your letter came he felt confirmed in his earlier impressions. I know Nathan’s desire to receive or be worthy to receive your approbation and has been willing to take the taunts of the rest of the family so long as he could be worthy of your approval. I do not know that Nathan has ever been seriously offended with me since our marriage only as he has [be]en conscious of the feeling of the family towards him excepting yourself. I do not consider his harshness towards me just but thanks to your good advice I am able to bury it in the past as I know that our happiness mainly depends on me. You say to me Husbands first and fathers second. I know it but I cannot help it my affection for you is of the warmest kind and your words whether of censure or praise remain with me always and affect me accordingly. Nathan knows it and has listened to me so that I have remained in and around home all this time making it appear that we were hangers on for a purpose. I see now that Nathan feels himself in a sort of tight jacket and is uncomfortable because he knows however much you may be satisfied he is the subject for all kinds of unkind remarks from the rest—he thought it best to float free but in so doing has perfect respect and appreciation of yourself and your kindness. You say you are a lonely man no one knows it better than myself and the causes. I have felt it for years for I have been in a measure lonely myself but would not allow myself to analyze my feelings as I was the daughter and had duties to fulfill in that relation. I know where my sympathies were[.] I do not know whether you ever thought much about it having so many things to occupy your mind, but my position at home was any thing but pleasant. You used often to say that we were all glad when you left, something that was so far from what was true as far as I was concerned. I never dared to show much zeal about anything where you were concerned as I could never bare ridicule and as jealousy was one of the leading traits in our family I could very readily bring a storm about my ears if I endorsed any of your sentiments about means pertaining to the household. I do not wish to pain you but I must say I have no pleasant remembrances of my brothers. I had my faults no doubt but none so great that their feelings of dislike should follow me to this day. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 438–40, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Douglass lectured in St. Paul on 11 March 1869 and Minneapolis on 13 March 1869. Monticello, Minnesota, was a small farming community located thirty-five miles northwest of Minneapolis. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1238. 2. Nathan Sprague.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 113

5/17/23 2:35 PM

114

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 21 MARCH 1869

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C. 21 March [1869.]

Dear Father, Yours of the 11th inst. came duly, and found all of us well. Libbie’s sister Liny1 is here. she came to be with and help Libbie during her sickness.2 Since writing to you concerning my being discharged from the Bureau I have learned that it was done through the influence of John M. Langston.3 He has a law class in the Howard University,4 and in order to obtain pupils he has got Genl. Howard5 to turn a number of clerks out of the Bureau in order that students of his may fill our places, and he knowing that I was among the number that he wished to have discharged he was mean enough to laugh and talk with me every day, without giving me any warning of my fate. Had I have joined Langstons class I would have been retained; but he is feeling sore over something and has injured me for spite. I have applied for a clerkship in the Postmaster Generals Office,6 and have been highly recommended by Senator Pomeroy,7 Judge Kelley,8 Genl. Howard, Mr. Alvord9 whom I served under. The General gave me 30 days leave of absence with pay, & told me he would do all in his power for me, and intimated that if he should keep me he would dissatisfy a large number of white clerks that were discharged at the same time. I am now busily engaged in making garden. Fred and Lewis10 have applied for positions, and I think will be successful in getting something to do. Mr. Basset11 is here seeking the position of Minister to Hayti. Your name is also mentioned, and it is said here that should a colored man be selected at all, it will be you. Mr. Downing12 says that Senator Sumner13 is using his influence for your nomination. The position calls for $7,500 in gold besides the honor.14 All join in sending love. Aff. Your Son, CHARLES R. DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 441–42, FD Papers, DC. 1. Malinda “Liny” Murphy (c. 1842) was the eldest child of Joseph and Sarah Ann Freeman Murphy, and the elder sister of Charles R. Douglass’s first wife, Libbie. In 1865 she was employed as a servant in the Rochester home of the Reverend Charles P. Bush. 1860 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 20; 1865 New York State Census, Monroe County, 5.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 114

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 21 MARCH 1869

115

2. This is probably a reference to her pregnancy. Charles and Libbie’s son Joseph Henry Douglass was born on 3 July 1869. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 36; Fought, Women, 310. 3. There is no confirmation for Charles Douglass’s accusation that John Mercer Langston had been responsible for particular clerks being discharged from the Freedmen’s Bureau and those enrolled in the Howard Department of Law being retained. Langston had been appointed a professor of law by the Howard trustees but retained his position at the bureau until September 1869. Howard had warned Charles the preceding year that the bureau was in the process of closing down, but promised to retain him as a clerk for as long as possible. Charles R. Douglass to Douglass, 14 July 1868, reel 2, frames 388–90L, FD Papers, DLC; Langston, Virginia Plantation to the Capitol, 297–98. 4. John M. Langston was appointed professor of law at Howard University and dean of the law department in 1870. Six students were enrolled in the law department when it held its first class, on 6 January 1869, but twenty-two had enrolled by the end of the session on 30 June 1869. Ten of those students graduated from Howard’s two-year law program in February 1871. Rayford W. Logan, Howard University: The First Hundred Years, 1867–1967 (New York, 1969), 48–49. 5. O. O. Howard. 6. A month after losing his job at the Freedmen’s Bureau, Charles R. Douglass began working as a clerk in the Treasury Department on 21 April 1869. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 36. 7. Samuel Clarke Pomeroy (1816–91) was born in Southampton, Massachusetts, and educated at Amherst College. He became active in the Free Soil party and moved to Kansas in 1854 to fight the establishment of slavery there. Kansas Republicans elected him to two terms in the U.S. Senate (1861–73), where he was best known as an advocate of subsidies for western development. Unsubstantiated charges of bribing state legislators caused his defeat for reelection. Pomeroy then settled in Washington, D.C., where he and Douglass remained friends. Douglass to Samuel C. Pomeroy, 12  November 1874, Samuel C. Pomeroy to Douglass, 14 June 1883, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 761–62, reel 3, frames 731–32, FD Papers, DLC; Daniel W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas (Topeka, Kan., 1875), 241, 457, 521, 570; ACAB, 5:60; NCAB, 12:69–70; DAB, 15:54–55. 8. William Darrah Kelly. 9. The supervisor of the education department of the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1869 was the Congregational minister John Watson Alvord (1807–80), a former abolitionist. Born in East Hampton, Connecticut, Alvord was in 1836 a member of the first graduating class of Oberlin College. Ill health forced him to give up plans to do missionary work in Africa. Before the Civil War, he was secretary of the American Tract Society in Boston; during the war, he worked with both the Christian and the Sanitary commissions. In 1865, Alvord helped organize freedmen’s schools in Savannah, Georgia, and then returned north to lobby for the creation of a bank to help black soldiers handle their enlistment bounties and military pay. In 1866, Howard made him one of his chief assistants in the Freedmen’s Bureau. One of the original trustees of the Freedman’s Bank, Alvord was its president from 1868 until his replacement by Douglass in March 1874. Alvord publicly defended the bank’s soundness, although he protested to the trustees about some dubious transactions. He may have profited from compromised transactions—most suspiciously, from those with the Seneca Stone Company, of which he became president after he left the bank. Samuel Morgan Alvord, comp., A Genealogy of the Descendants of Alexander Alvord, an Early Settler of Windsor, Conn. and Northampton, Mass. (Webster, N.Y., 1908), 285–87; Carl R. Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud: A History of the Freedman’s Savings Bank (Urbana, Ill., 1976), 1–5, 12–14, 165; Howard, Autobiography, 2:271. 10. Frederick Douglass, Jr., and Lewis H. Douglass. 11. Born in Litchfield, Connecticut, Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett (1833–1908) studied at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale and became a schoolteacher in New Haven, Connecticut, and Philadelphia. A fervent campaigner for Republican candidates, Bassett was appointed by Ulysses S. Grant in 1869 as minister resident and consul general to Haiti and chargé d’affaires to the Dominican Republic—the first African American to formally represent the United States abroad. Bassett’s term of duty spanned the administration of four Haitian presidents during a volatile political climate. After

Y8204-Douglass.indb 115

5/17/23 2:35 PM

116

J. SELLA MARTIN TO DOUGLASS, 29 MARCH 1869

Rutherford B. Hayes replaced Grant, Bassett resigned his post on 27 November 1877 and returned to New York City, where he acted as Haitian consul from 1879 to 1888. When Frederick Douglass received the Haitian post in 1889, Bassett, a longtime friend of Douglass, agreed to accompany him to Haiti and act as Douglass’s secretary, for $825 per year. Bassett returned to the United States after Douglass’s term and settled in Philadelphia. Robert Debs Heinl, Jr., and Nancy Gordon Heinl, Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People, 1492–1971 (Boston, 1978), 246, 248, 266, 311; EAAH, 1:120–21. 12. George T. Downing. 13. Best remembered as the victim of a vicious attack by a congressional colleague, Charles Sumner (1811–74), a U.S. senator from 1851 to 1874, was dedicated to the cause of emancipation. Born in Boston, Sumner attended and then taught at Harvard College. He engaged in a fairly successful law practice, but was thrust into politics by his outspoken opposition to the U.S. war against Mexico. He was a founder of the Free Soil party in Massachusetts, and a coalition of Free Soilers and Democrats elected him to the Senate in 1850. Immediately embroiling himself in the heated topic of slavery, Sumner became an outspoken advocate of emancipation and repeatedly refuted compromises proposed by Henry Clay and others. After one particularly scathing speech in the Senate against slavery, Sumner was brutally beaten with a cane by a southern congressman; he endured years of recovery before reentering the Senate. Sumner’s lasting legacy was to turn popular sentiment in the North toward emancipation, and after the Civil War, he continued to fight for the individual freedoms of blacks until his sudden death in 1874. Frederick J. Blue, Charles Sumner and the Conscience of the North (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1994); David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (New York, 1960); DAB, 18:208–14. 14. Bassett’s annual salary as minister plenipotentiary to the Republic of Haiti and U.S. consul to Port-au-Prince was $7,500. He did not serve the entire year in those posts in 1869; although appointed in April, he did not arrive in Haiti until at least September. Consequently, Bassett’s salary for 1869 was a mere $618.13. In subsequent years, however, he received the full amount of $7,500. Washington Evening Star, 11 September 1869; Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of the Finances for the Year 1870 (Washington, D.C., 1870), 134; Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of the Finances for the Year 1872 (Washington, D.C., 1872), 198; Mary J. Mycek, Marian K. O’Keefe, and Carolyn B. Ivanoff, Ebenezer D. Bassett (Derby, Conn., 2008), 4, 10.

J. SELLA MARTIN TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C. 29 March 1869.

418 Fourteenth Street My dear Mr Douglass: I was appointed, at a meeting of the share-holders of our Newspaper Enterprise, to make known to you the nature of their action. It was unanimously resolved to invite you to take the Editorial Chair and I was chosen as Associate Editor, of the Newspaper about to be started.1 This action was based upon the twofold consideration that, as you had yourself justly said, the sentiment which is to rule this Nation for the next four years is to be manufactured in the North, and that as you was one of

Y8204-Douglass.indb 116

5/17/23 2:35 PM

J. SELLA MARTIN TO DOUGLASS, 29 MARCH 1869

117

the chief manufacturers we could not ask you to give up that field to reside permanently in this. These considerations called for a resident Editor and your Correspondent was chosen, I doubt not, more because of his willingness than his ability to do what the position requires. The salary of the Editors was not fixed because the chief business required about a week or ten days to ascertain how much help, from white friends and colored shareholders could be procured. I have no doubt, however, that this matter can be arranged to your satisfaction. Your son, Mr Lewis Douglass, was chosen as Chief Compositor and manager of the proposed printing-room with a view not only of securing the advantage of his experience and talent but also because, if practicable, it is desired to have all the work done by colored people. Our confidence in you and our esteem for you will serve as an excuse for the unbusiness practice of inviting you to assume the arduous duties and heavy responsibilities of the Editorial Chair without having fixed the amount of remuneration we are prepared to give. And then too we think that the announcement that you will take the Editorial responsibilities may aid us in securing a sufficient foundation—fund to make the salary somewhat worthy of the genius and reputation of the Editor in Chief. As to the business features I may say it is thought that five thousand dollars ($5000) will run the machinery smoothly for six months; and the confidence is, I think, as well founded as it is strong that by that time we will be able to open other channels of assistance and support. Twenty five hundred dollars ($2,500) is pledged and will be immediately forthcoming from colored people here; and I am credibly informed that this last appeal will bring us much more from the same class and from white friends. If this be true, and Mr Geo. T Downing is now testing the truthfulness of this estimate, it seems likely we may start at an early date. The chief feature of the Paper is to manifest our interest in Reconstruction and our grasp of its problems and it is hoped that a judicious system of agencies in the southern States and an [illegible] collection of facts vitally affecting the interest of the colored people in those States will bring us larger subscription lists, for a well conducted weekly paper. If it were not at once presumptious and useless to urge one of your interest in our race and of your great ability and willingness to serve your people I would try to speak of this matter as it appears to me; but happily

Y8204-Douglass.indb 117

5/17/23 2:35 PM

118

DOUGLASS TO J. SELLA MARTIN, 5 APRIL 1869

both your patriotism and experience in Newspaper enterprises lead me to listen rather than to attempt to persuade. Hoping to hear from you at once and with the mostly kindly remembrances to your family together with the most loving admiration for yourself I am my dear Sir Yours very truly SELLA MARTIN ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 445R–47L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. In February and March 1869, Douglass joined his son Lewis, George T. Downing, and several other black leaders in sending out a circular calling for contributions to a proposed new weekly newspaper for African Americans to be published in Washington, D.C. Blacks in Washington supported this plan with pledges totaling $2,500. They proposed Douglass serve as editor in chief, the Presbyterian minister and experienced journalist J. Sella Martin as associate editor, and Lewis Douglass as chief compositor and print shop manager. Douglass declined the offered position and warned that the enterprise would require much more capital. Investors pushed ahead anyway and offered the editorship to Martin. Martin accepted on the condition that Douglass serve as the newspaper’s contributing editor. The New Era issued its first copy on 13 January 1870, and Douglass’s first article appeared two weeks later. Philip S. Foner, Frederick Douglass: A Biography (New York, 1969), 277–79; James H. Whyte, The Uncivil War: Washington during the Reconstruction, 1865–1878 (New York, 1958), 252–53; Washburn, African American Newspaper, 35; Roland Edgar Wolseley, The Black Press, U.S.A. (Ames, Iowa, 1971), 34–35.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO J. SELLA MARTIN Rochester, N.Y. 5 April 1869.

Rev. J. Sella Martin: My Dear Sir: I am just home from a tour of more than two months in the west,1 and have therefore, only now, received and read your esteemed favor of March 29th inviting me in behalf of the share holders in the paper proposed to be started in Washington, to assume the honorable and highly responsible position of Editor in Chief of said paper. The honor thus conferred upon me is most gratefully appreciated, as is also the cordial and hardy manner in which you have communicated the wishes of the share holders. I hope sir, that you will acquit me of any desire to deal in merely empty compliments. When I tell you that few things would give me more satisfaction than to be associated with one so able, fearless, clear

Y8204-Douglass.indb 118

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO J. SELLA MARTIN, 5 APRIL 1869

119

sighted—and devoted to the highest interest of our newly freed, yet oppressed and slandered people, as yourself. With your vigourous mind— acting with marked precision and almost magical quickness—with my slower and duller vision but I hope equally accurate understanding—we could I am sure, produce a paper, of which we need not be ashamed. I have no fear of any want of talents—skill or purpose in myself or in you. I am however not quite prepared to venture upon this voyage of Journalism—upon so slender a Bark as “five thousand dollars” as a basis—and I will tell you why. I do this with all deference and respect to yourself and to the share holders—and in the fullest confidence that you and, they, even if you cannot accept my views, will respect the sincerity with which they are presented. 1.st The paper in question should be a first class journal—superior in appearance, and in character, to any paper ever published in the U. S. by colored men. It ought not to be less than equal to the Newyork Independent in size and quality of paper and press work—It should be larger than the Antislavery Standard2—at any rate, and fully equal to that paper—in the quality and in typographical neatness. The occasion requires something that will command respect upon the start. The proverb that we should creep before we walk3—applies better to babies than to men and to newspapers. In regard to the latter, it is not only the first step that costs, but is the first step that pays. You should put in hand of the colored man a paper, which will upon first sight go straight to his heart, raise his respect for his race, and kindle his enthusiasm. A small sheet imperfectly printed—upon course paper—on the penny-wise principles, will not answer the purpose: Such a paper would depress rather than elevate the spirits of our people. I need not argue this point. 2dly In the present juncture of our relations with our white fellowcountrymen and to the outside World, when every triumph will pass for its highest value—and every defeat will be magnified beyond measure to our disadvantage, any paper started by the colored people, at the Capital of the nation ought should be based upon conditions, not only favorable to success—but upon such as will make success, almost certain. 3dly If the paper should be discontinued at the end of six months—or if it should prove necessary to write for its columns begging articles to keep it afloat, at that time or later, such a state of facts—would bring more shame and mortification to our already sadly depressed people, than had not the attempt been made at all.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 119

5/17/23 2:35 PM

120

DOUGLASS TO J. SELLA MARTIN, 5 APRIL 1869

4th All the colored newspapers, thus far have failed less for want of literary ability than for business ability. They have died in their infancy and from starvation, I am not disposed to add another to the already long list of failures. Five thousand dollars now are not more than two thousand five hundred were when Dr Baily4 started the National Era, at Washington5—and he had $20,000 to begin with, besides a good subscription list. He succeeded because he could keep his paper up long enough to inspire confidence and respect. The same rules of success apply to white and colored people alike. They who can get up, will be helped up—and they who cannot will be helped down.6 5th Work that is done for nothing is generally worth the price and seldom more. Every man employed on the paper should be made to feel certain of its solvency and of success—and of his pay. 6th Now according to my figuring—it will cost about two hundred dollars per week to publish and an addition of five thousand copies—so that in ten weeks your five thousand dollars would be swallowed up—unless you were aided by prompt subscriptions ALd: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 450–51, FD Papers, DLC. Also printed in Philip S. Foner, ed., The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, 5 vols. (New York, 1950–75), 4:213–15. 1. Douglass toured New York and Pennsylvania in January 1869 and then headed to the Midwest in February and March, speaking as far from home as Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Dubuque, Iowa. His last known address before returning to Rochester was at Birchard Hall in Fremont, Ohio, on 2 April 1869. Fremont (Ohio) Weekly Journal, 9 April 1869. 2. The New York-based National Anti-Slavery Standard. 3. This proverb can be traced back to fourteenth-century Middle English. Jennifer Speake, The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, 6th ed. (Oxford, Eng., 2015), 338. 4. Gamaliel Bailey (1807–59) graduated from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and worked as a doctor, teacher, sailor, and journalist in Cincinnati before a debate at Lane Seminary in 1834 stirred his interest in slavery. In 1835, he served as secretary of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. The following year, he joined James G. Birney in editing the antislavery Cincinnati Philanthropist, a newspaper of which Bailey became the sole editor in 1838. For most of the following two decades, Bailey continued to edit publications opposing slavery or its extension. Under his management (1847– 59), the National Era, based in Washington, D.C., grew to a weekly circulation of over twenty-five thousand and was a leading voice of the Free Soil movement. Bailey’s journalistic career was punctuated by mob attacks on his press in 1836, 1840, 1843, and 1848, but in each case he persisted. Stanley Harrold, Gamaliel Bailey and Antislavery Union (Kent, Ohio, 1887); Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings, 41, 66, 69, 96, 152–54, 169; Sewell, Ballots for Freedom, 45–46, 73–76, 83, 90–93, 152–54; DAB, 1:496–97. 5. Based in Washington, D.C., the National Era was an antislavery newspaper edited by Gamaliel Bailey from 1847 until his death in 1859. As an antislavery newspaper printed on slave soil, the National Era labored under the constant threat of mob violence; despite this, Bailey built a subscription base of over twenty-five thousand readers. Harriet Beecher Stowe helped its popularity when the National Era serialized her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin from late May 1851 through April 1852.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 120

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO A. H. BALSLEY, 14 APRIL 1869

121

Bailey’s moderate editorial style, however, drew severe criticism from abolitionists such as Douglass, who referred to the National Era as “powerless for Good” in 1851. Five years later, when Lewis Tappan suggested to Bailey that he add Douglass as a coeditor of the National Era, Bailey refused, citing his personal differences with Douglass’s radical abolitionism and the potential uproar in Washington over the appointment of a black editor to his paper. Harrold, Gamaliel Bailey, 140–41, 192; Duane Mowry, “The National Era, an Abolition Document,” Publications of the Southern History Association, 8:462–64 (November 1904). 6. Douglass repeats a line from his popular “Self-Made Men” lecture, which he delivered frequently from 1859 until the year of his death. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 5:557.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO A. H. BALSLEY1 Rochester, N.Y. 14 April 1869.2

Sir: I thank you for sending the extract from your paper and for your letter, written in the spirit of fair play, kindly offering me space in your columns for a reply to a criticism made upon my lecture, entitled “William The Silent,”3 by Mr. S. Bower, Pastor of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Fremont, Ohio.4 Though I have failed to perceive anything in that somewhat labored criticism, imperatively demanding or strongly meriting either notice, denial or explanation from me, and though I dislike to depart from my usual course of saying my say, and leaving the newspapers unquestioned for anything they utter in the way of criticism upon my lectures, I will, in this instance, partly because of my respect for Mr. Bower and partly to show my appreciation of your generous offer of space for reply, venture to send you a few lines, in answer to that part of Mr. Bower’s criticism in which he not only attacks my manners but my honesty. 1st: As to good taste: Mr. Bower was displeased—his friends were offended—‘Mixed audience.’ ‘Catholics being listeners.’ ‘Came to pay and honor him.’ But I cannot stay to repeat all the aggravating circumstances. In answer, I make only one general statement. No man at all connversant with the history of Catholic percecution, under Spanish rule, three hundred years ago,5 and who possesses ordinary knowledge of human nature, will deem it strange or surprising that any sincere Catholic, like the pious and learned Pastor of St. Joseph’s should be annoyed and highly displeased, by any effort of mine, however feeble, ‘eulogising William of Nassau,’ ‘making an apotheoses of him,’ &c. I should as soon think of pleasing Henry A. Wise,6 by praising John Brown; pleasing Lee,7 by praising Grant;8 pleasing New Orleans, by praising Butler;9

Y8204-Douglass.indb 121

5/17/23 2:35 PM

122

DOUGLASS TO A. H. BALSLEY, 14 APRIL 1869

or Johnson,10 by praising Congress; as to think of pleasing Catholics by portraying the virtues of William of Orange. With all respect, Mr. Bower demands too much. He might as well ask me to go into the water, without getting wet, as to ask me to unfold the horrors of Catholic persecution, without giving pain to the sensibilities of devoted Catholics, in our day. Time, and the onward march of liberal ideas, have wrought wonders, and the end is not yet. Deeds of glory have been, by these potent agents, converted into deeds of shame. The slavetrader was once a respectable character; we now hang him at the yard arm as a pirate. To burn heretics was once a religious duty, now it is an act of murder. Time, and the growing enlightenment of mankind, have wrought these changes. It is no fault of mine that even Rome—the eternal city11—must tremble, and that the church known by its name, must bend or break down in accordance with the irresistible forces of advancing ideas and the silent mutations of time. After-coming generations will find, in many of the practices now deemed honorable by christian men, the same cause for regret and shame, that the Catholic now feels for the acts of his ancient brethern. In my lecture, my aim was to bring before my hearers the lesson which history teaches, against blind, arrogant, presumptious bigotry. I think I did this with impartiality, if not with ability. I accorded to Catholics sincerity, and fully ascribed their extravagances to the darkness of the age. I condemned intolerance and persecution as practiced by Protestants, as when the same were practiced by Catholics. It is no fault of mine that the record of the latter is blacker and bloodier than that of the former. 2d. But the Pope did not bless the assassins of William of Nassau. Here are Mr. Bower’s words: ‘There is no authentication of such conduct of the Pope.’ ‘No honorable historian writes anything of the kind.’ ‘William fell by the hand of Balthazer Gerard. who was baited on by lucre.’12 ‘So fell the good Lincoln by the hand of Booth.’13 ‘Will not say that Mr. Douglass lied. No; he only babbled after another.’ Well, I will show myself as generous and as gentlemanly as Mr. Bower has shown himself. I will neither say that he ‘lied, nor that he babbled after another,’ for such things are easily said and might imply only the bad temper of those who utter them; but this I will say, that my respected critic has resorted to a very obvious artifice, by which dexterous debaters take advantage of an error of phrase to prove an error of fact and substance, where no error exists. Now, I don’t know that I employed the phrases, ‘Benediction.’ ‘Blessed.’ I do not find them in my written lecture;

Y8204-Douglass.indb 122

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO A. H. BALSLEY, 14 APRIL 1869

123

but admitting that I did use those words, and admitting that they are technically erronious, it is easy to show them in substance correct. For this purpose I will criticize the critic. He tells us that ‘William fell by the hand of Balthaser Gerard,’ ‘as Lincoln fell by the hand of Booth,’ ‘that there are political fantics as well as religious ones,’—all of which is the truth, but not the whole truth. The difference between Gerard and Booth is, that one was an hired assassin, and the other was not. Gerard acted under a public law and in accordance with the command of a soverign, publicly proclaimed. Booth simply played the part of a revengeful murderer, who kills to get the object of his hate out of his way. Mr. Bower tells us that Gerard was ‘baited on by lucre,’ but he does not tell you, as he might have told you, that the man who baited that murderous hook, was a dignitary in the church of Rome, but little lower than the Pope himself. He could have told you, for he is evidently familiar with the ‘filth of historical by-ways,’ that this foul egg of assassination, was hatched under the sacred hat of Cardinal Granville.14 A cardinal who, with all other cardinals, lived under the constant benedictions of the Pope, and not less after than before he procured the murder of William Prince of Orange. FRED. DOUG LASS. PLSr: Fremont (Ohio) Journal, 23 April 1869. 1. After a number of changes in ownership, the Fremont (Ohio) Journal was owned by A. H. Balsley (1828–1904). Born in Pittsburgh, where he learned the printer’s trade, Balsley owned and edited numerous newspapers across Ohio. During the Civil War, he operated the Plymouth Journal in Richland County, Ohio. The Fremont Journal was considered a staunchly Republican party newspaper, regardless of its ownership in this era. History of Sandusky County, Ohio, with Portraits and Biographies of Prominent Citizens (Cleveland, 1882), 231–32; A. A. Graham, History of Richland County, Ohio: Its Past and Present (Mansfield, Ohio, 1880), 562. 2. This letter was printed in the Fremont Journal with the headline “william the silent.” Fremont (Ohio) Weekly Journal, 23 April 1869. 3. Douglass delivered his lecture “William the Silent” at Burchard Hall in Fremont, Ohio, on 2 April 1869. The Fremont Journal reported: “It was the lecturer’s first appearance before an audience in Fremont, and his reception was certainly very flattering, whether it originated through mere curiosity to see the man, or a desire to listen to his oratory.” Fremont (Ohio) Weekly Journal, 9 April 1869. 4. The Fremont Weekly Journal published a hostile rebuttal, by a Roman Catholic priest named Seraphine Bauer (1835–1911), to the opinions Douglass expressed in his “William the Silent” lecture in that city on 2 April 1869. The pastor of St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Fremont, Father Bauer accused Douglass of voicing prejudicial attacks on his denomination. Born in France to a French mother and German émigré father, Bauer migrated to the United States in 1854 and completed his ministerial studies in 1858. After tending to congregations around Toledo, Bauer spent the remainder of his career at St. Joseph’s parish. Fremont (Ohio) Weekly Journal, 9 April 1869; History of Sandusky County, 503, 536–37.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 123

5/17/23 2:35 PM

124

DOUGLASS TO A. H. BALSLEY, 14 APRIL 1869

5. The Inquisition in Spain, which combined civil and religious authority, was an instrument for political and religious unification from 1473, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella obtained papal permission to establish such a court to rid Spain of residual heresy among its Christianized Jews and Moors. The Spanish Inquisition was unusually secretive and brutal, and Pope Pius V protested against its harshness to Philip II. Harold J. Grimm, The Reformation Era, 1500–1650 (New York, 1954), 22, 423. 6. Henry Alexander Wise (1806–76), governor of Virginia from 1856 to 1860, graduated from Washington College in Pennsylvania, studied law under the famed jurist Henry St. George Tucker, and briefly practiced law in Nashville, Tennessee, before entering Virginia politics as a Jacksonian Democrat and opponent of nullification. Serving in Congress from 1833 to 1844, he attracted considerable notoriety for his impassioned defense of slavery and southern rights. Wise switched allegiance for a time to the Whig party, supporting the Harrison-Tyler presidential ticket of 1840, and serving as ambassador to Brazil under the Tyler administration. During the 1850s, Wise, again a Democrat, successfully opposed Know-Nothingism in Virginia, arguing in part that the new party harbored antislavery sentiments. As governor, Wise reacted zealously to John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry and desired particularly to implicate Douglass. He requested that President Buchanan hire two Virginia detectives as special federal agents to capture Douglass and deliver him to Virginia authorities. Even after Douglass left the United States, Wise employed a detective “to find out the whereabouts of the Negro Frederick Douglass and keep an eye on his movements and associates.” The northern press reported that a group of prominent southerners, including Wise, had offered $50,000 for Douglass’s capture. After his term as governor, Wise served as a delegate to the Washington Peace Convention of 1861 and as a general in the Confederate army. Douglass to the editor of the Rochester Democrat [and American], 31 October 1859, reprinted in the Montreal Daily Transcript, 5 November 1859; DM, 2:162–63 (November 1859); Lib., 23 December 1859; FDP, 5 January 1860; Barton H. Wise, The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia, 1806–1876 (New York, 1899); Quarles, Allies for Freedom, 115; Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 180–85; ACAB, 6:579–80; DAB, 20:423–25. 7. Robert Edward Lee (1807–70) was the son of the Revolutionary War hero Henry “LightHorse Harry” Lee and scion of one of Virginia’s most distinguished families. He graduated from West Point in 1829, and throughout his military career, he attracted the praise of superiors, particularly for his service under Winfield Scott in the Mexican War. In 1859 he supervised the capture of John Brown following the failed raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. When Virginia seceded, he followed his beloved state into the Confederacy. Despite lackluster performance early in the war, Lee was given command of the main Confederate force in the Virginia theater in June 1862. From then on, Lee campaigned brilliantly, defeating Union forces often twice the size of his own and staving off Confederate defeat in the East for nearly three years. After his surrender, he returned to Richmond as a paroled prisoner of war. In September 1865 he became president of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia. Lee scrupulously avoided involvement in the political controversies of Reconstruction. Emory M. Thomas, Robert E. Lee: A Biography (New York, 1995); Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography, 4 vols. (New York, 1934–35); Charles Bracelen Flood, Lee: The Last Years (Boston, 1981); Burke Davis, To Appomattox: Nine April Days, 1865 (New York, 1959), 96–101, 379–87; E. B. Long and Barbara Long, The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac, 1861–1865 (Garden City, N.Y., 1971), 663–64, 670–71; DAB, 11:120–29. 8. Ulysses S. Grant. 9. While military governor of New Orleans in 1862, the Union general Benjamin Franklin Butler alienated the conquered population and embarrassed Washington with his “Order No. 28,” which threatened that southern women demonstrating contempt for Union troops would be treated as prostitutes. Howard P. Nash, Jr., Stormy Petrel: The Life and Times of Benjamin F. Butler, 1818–1893 (Rutherford, N.J., 1969), 158–61; Richard S. West, Lincoln’s Scapegoat General: A Life of Benjamin F. Butler, 1818–1893 (Boston, 1965), 147–48. 10. Andrew Johnson.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 124

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON, 17 APRIL 1869

125

11. The sobriquet “Eternal City” has been attached to Rome since the first century B.C.E. William Morris and Mary Morris, Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (New York, 1977), 206. 12. In 1580, Philip II, ruler of Spain, the Netherlands, and Spanish possessions in the New World and Italy, offered a reward of 25,000 ecus, a patent of nobility, and free pardon for past offenses to anyone who would assassinate William of Nassau, ruler of the small principality of Orange in France and a major landholder in the Netherlands. A Calvinist, William opposed Philip’s plans to use military force to impose Roman Catholicism and a centralized administration over the Netherlands. A would-be assassin in 1582 tried to murder William but only wounded him. Pretending to be the son of a French Protestant martyr, Balthasar Gérard, a cabinetmaker’s apprentice and fervent Catholic, established an acquaintance with William in the spring of 1584. On the pretext of needing money for shoes, which would enable him to return to France to serve the Protestant cause, Gérard obtained from William the means to purchase a pair of pistols. On 10 July 1584, he easily gained access to William’s home and shot him at close range. John Lothrop Motley, History of the Dutch Republic, 3 vols. (New York, 1898), 2:725–37; C[icely] V[eronica] Wedgwood, William the Silent: William of Nassau, Prince of Orange (1944; London, 1956), 213–14, 233, 248–51. 13. Abraham Lincoln died at 7:22 A.M. on 15 April 1865. The previous evening, he had attended a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. At approximately ten o’clock, the Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth had entered the president’s unguarded box and shot Lincoln in the head from behind with a derringer. Fatally wounded, Lincoln was carried out of the theater and across the street to the house of William Peterson, where he was placed on a bed in a rear room. The president never regained consciousness and died surrounded by surgeons, cabinet members, congressmen, and other federal officials. Louis J. Weichmann, A True History of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and of the Conspiracy of 1865 (New York, 1975), 147–58; Benjamin P. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln: A Biography (New York, 1952), 520–21; Francis Wilson, John Wilkes Booth: Fact and Fiction of Lincoln’s Assassination (Boston, 1929), 112–17; Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (New York, 1982), 11–13. 14. Scion of an influential Burgundian family, Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517–86) entered the Roman Catholic ministry but made his real mark in the diplomatic service of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. In 1575 he began serving Charles’s son Philip II, who had inherited the Spanish, Dutch, Italian, and New World portions of his father’s extensive holdings. Philip appointed Granvelle head of the Council of State that administered the province of the Netherlands, where his attempt to impose Roman Catholic orthodoxy and centralized administration provoked loud protests from the Dutch. Philip recalled Granvelle, but historians such as John Lothrop Motley contended that he guided the king in the successful plot to assassinate William of Nassau. Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1:216, 238, 320, 323, 491.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON [n.p.] 17 April 1869.1

My dear Friend:— I am just home from my winters work—Have done well—every way—I have learned a lesson. It was a mistake—my taking a historical subject so remote as “William the Silent” shall do better next time. I found as usual—your lectures spoken of whenever I have been on your track with admiration. The Art of using the mind2 is especially liked—

Y8204-Douglass.indb 125

5/17/23 2:35 PM

126

THEODORE TILTON TO DOUGLASS, 20 APRIL 1869

I do not know who descended to the device exposed in the enclosed but let the scamp feel the [illegible] of that lash of yours which knows how to make scoundrels wince. Love to your dear ones at home Your devoted friend always FREDK DOUG LASS ALS: Alexander Gumby Manuscripts, NNC. 1. Douglass wrote the notation “Private” at the top of this letter. 2. Douglass alludes to his friend Theodore Tilton’s very popular lecture “The Art of Using the Mind,” delivered on numerous occasions on the lyceum circuit. Peter Cherches, Star Course: Nineteenth-Century Lecture Tours and the Consolidation of Modern Celebrity (Rotterdam, Neth., 2017), 42.

THEODORE TILTON TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS New York, [N.Y.] 20 Ap[ri]l 1869.

My dear friend, I am right glad to hear of your winter’s prosperity.— The Haytian case1 I have considered diligently, & have just sent to the printer such a statement of it for tomorrows’ Independent as will (I think) properly cover the ground.2 After reflection I determined not to print your letter, but to shoulder the responsibility myself of making an exposé of the disreputable chicanery which prevented you from receiving the nomination. You remember what a flurry Mr. Greeley once created by being supposed to want a public office.3 On my second reading of your letter, I was fearful that its publication would do you the same kind of harm which his letters did him. If you had been a lesser friend of mine than you are, I would simply have printed your letter without note or comment. But, if you will permit me to say so, your public reputation—the growing esteem in which you are held by all classes of your countrymen—has induced me to be more watchful for you than you are for yourself. I felt an Editor’s instinct that the letter would be misconstrued, & that you would be a loser by its publication. Now that you are at home, sit down & write some articles for the Independent’s first page;—for instance, your lecturing reminiscences, or anything else, grave or gay. Affectionately yours, THEODORE TILTON

Y8204-Douglass.indb 126

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, C. 22 APRIL 1869

127

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 464–66L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. During Grant’s first administration, many assumed that the president would appoint a black minister to represent the United States in Haiti. When Grant selected the relatively unknown Ebenezer Bassett, his choice was met with opposition. Some argued that Bassett was not qualified for the position and that Douglass should have the honor of being the nation’s first black foreign minister. An article in the New York Independent claimed that some of Bassett’s friends in Washington, D.C., had deceived the government into believing that Douglass would not accept the Haitian position, or any other ministerial post, if offered. George T. Downing even sent a request to Senator Charles Sumner, who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to urge Grant to withdraw Bassett’s name in favor of Douglass. The Senate confirmed Bassett on 16 April 1869. New York Independent, 22 April 1869; Christopher Teal, Hero of Hispaniola: America’s First Black Diplomat, Ebenezer D. Bassett (Westport, Conn., 2008), 50, 52–54; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 270; Charles E. Wynes, “Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett, America’s First Black Diplomat,” Pennsylvania History 51:235 (July 1984). 2. In the 22 April 1869 edition of the New York Independent, its editor, Theodore Tilton, published an article that intended to explain why Douglass did not receive the ministerial position. It claimed that “the only excuse which the Government can render for not offering him the post was the public announcement made apparently by authority of Mr. Douglass himself, that he would not accept the offer if made.” The Independent also believed that “some of Mr. Bassett’s friends at Washington” deceived Grant into believing that Douglass “would not entertain an offer of the Haytian or any other mission.” While the article explained that the paper bore no ill feelings toward Bassett, it proclaimed that the Independent was strongly against any use of false pretenses to defraud “the nation of the services of one of its ablest, noblest, and greatest men.” New York Independent, 22 April 1869. 3. The specific incident in Horace Greeley’s career to which Tilton alludes cannot be identified. Greeley served one term in Congress in the 1840s, and he lost campaigns as a Republican for state comptroller in 1869 and for the House of Representatives in 1870. In the latter year, President Grant offered Greeley the post of U.S. minister to Santo Domingo, which he declined. In 1872, Greeley ran against Grant as the candidate of the Liberal Republican–Democratic party fusion. Robert C. Williams, Horace Greeley: Champion of American Freedom (New York, 2006), 293–94.

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS [Washington, D.C.1 c. 22 April] 1869.

Dear Father: I am seated at my desk in the Treasury Department of the United States, having received the last official paper necessary to my appointment on yesterday.2 I feel as though I have got something worth being proud of, for it is no easy matter to get in this Dept. and what is more, I am in the highest Bureau in the Department, as all accounts against the Government for settlement receive their last examination in this office, and each clerk is held strictly to an account for all mistakes wherby over issues may be made of Govt. money. We have but little writing to do, most of our work being by figures. I have already been congratulated for my aptness in the routine of business in the office.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 127

5/17/23 2:35 PM

128

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, C. 22 APRIL 1869

The papers have made a mistake in my name making it Robert R. Douglass. Fred. will no doubt receive a position of some kind in this office in a few days, at least Sec’y Boutwell3 has offered it. I intend to stick by Judge Kelley4 & I wish you would be kind enough to write him a line thanking him for the interest he has so kindly taken in my behalf.5 He has been a true friend to me, and he may in a short time be able to render me further assistance. My garden is flourishing. Love from all to all at home. Aff. Yr. Son CHAS. R. DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 516–18, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Charles’s letter was on stationery with the following printed letterhead: “Treasury Department / Third Auditor’s Office.” 2. After the Civil War, Charles settled in Washington, D.C., and found employment as a clerk in the Freedmen’s Bureau (1867–69) and later, in early May 1869, in the Treasury Department. After his father purchased the New National Era in 1870, Charles acted as a correspondent for the newspaper. In 1871, he served as a clerk to the Santo Domingo Commission, and was later appointed consul at Puerto Plata, Santa Domingo, by President Ulysses S. Grant, serving in this position from 1875 to 1879. Returning to the United States in 1879, he entered the import-export business while living in Corona, New York. In 1882, Charles moved back to Washington, D.C., and took a job as an examiner in the Pension Bureau, where he remained until entering the real estate business in 1892. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:860, ser. 3, 1:126; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 239, 257–58, 272; EAAH, 1:407–08. 3. Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, George Sewall Boutwell (1818–1905) served as a Democratic state representative and governor before reaching the age of thirty-five. Vehemently opposed to slavery, Boutwell switched political affiliations in the 1850s and helped found his state’s Republican party in 1855. The first commissioner of internal revenue (1862–63), Boutwell was elected three times as a Radical Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives (1863–69). There he served on the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, helped frame the Fourteenth Amendment, championed the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, and was one of the House managers during the Senate impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson. Appointed secretary of the treasury by Ulysses S. Grant in 1869, Boutwell served for four years before being elected to the U.S. Senate. He later represented the United States as a diplomatic consul in Haiti (1885), Hawaii (1886), and Chile (1893–94). Robert Sobel and John Raimo, eds., Biographical Directory of the Governors of the United States, 1789–1978, 6 vols. (Westport, Conn., 1978), 2:703–04; Robert Sobel, ed., Biographical Directory of the United States Executive Branch, 1774–1977 (Westport, Conn., 1977), 32–33; ACAB, 1:331–32; NCAB, 4:382–83; DAB, 2:489–90; BDUSC (online). 4. William Darrah Kelley. 5. In a letter to his father dated 4 April 1869, Charles stated that he had been promised a clerkship in the Treasury Department and that he expected to receive an official job offer at any time. He explained that although he had received a number of strong recommendations from Republican leaders (including Senators Roscoe Conkling and Samuel C. Pomeroy and Representative George W. Julian), it was Judge William D. Kelley who had been instrumental in arranging the job with Secretary of the Treasury George S. Boutwell. Charles added that in exchange for his assistance, the judge

Y8204-Douglass.indb 128

5/17/23 2:35 PM

J. SELLA MARTIN TO K DOUGLASS, 24 APRIL 1869

129

had simply asked him to do “some extra writing for [him] out of office hours,” which he was more than willing to do. Charles R. Douglass to Douglass, 4 April 1869, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 447R–49, FD Papers, DLC.

J. SELLA MARTIN TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington D.C. 24 April 1869.

My dear Mr Douglass. 418 Fourteenth Street From the time Lewis,1 your son, was kind enough to confide in me to the extent of showing me an extract from one of your letters to him2 respecting the misrepresentation of your wishes about the Haytian Mission I have been at work, cautiously and always entirely in my own name, to spread the knowledge of your true wishes in the matter. I have conferred chiefly with Mr Sumner3 and as this morning I have received his final views I wrote at once to let you know what they are. Perhaps it would be well to begin at the beginning of what I have done. When Lewis showed me the first extract, contradicting the statement that had racked the journals that you had written to your friends here declining the Haytian Mission I went at [once] to see Messrs Sumner & Wilson.4 I learned from the first named gentleman that he was opposed to Bassett5 on the ground of a belief in his unfitness;6 but that it was difficult to move against him, as he had received the endorsement of many true and able men, among whom was yourself. The intimation given was that if Gen. Grant did not withdraw the name it would very likely be confirmed. Believing that all intelligent colored men and knowing all the fair minded men of whatever party among the whites, preferred you to any colored man in America for the position of Minister to Hayti; I requested a good and true member of Congress to convey to Gen. Grant the information that the Nation had been wicked in regard to you. He did so and received from Gen. Grant in reply the statement that “a great many of his nominations would be rejected and he felt unwilling to aid his enemies by withdrawing except for absolute unfitness.” In the meantime Bassett was confirmed—today7 [illegible]—and on Monday last Lewis put in my hands, in the Senate Chamber, the second extract, in which you ask if you “have lost the Haytian Mission by fraud” &c. I left my seat in the gallery to put the Extract into Senator Sumners hand which I did. He was kind enough to write me to see him about it the

Y8204-Douglass.indb 129

5/17/23 2:35 PM

130

J. SELLA MARTIN TO K DOUGLASS, 24 APRIL 1869

next morning. I went and he was so indignant that he proposed at once to move a reconsideration of Bassets appointment; but as I was leaving he remembered it was Tuesday and the constitutional limit of two days, within which alone such a motion could be made, had expired. I then suggested that true consistency required that a colored man should be sent to a white Government if our men found fit and as there was no doubt of your fitness your friends in the Senate could move Grant to nominate you for Brazile or Costarica.8 Mr Sumner thought this a good idea and undertook to make inquiries. I went this morning to hear the result and learned from him that a man named Nelson9 would be nominated in place of Pile,10 rejected for Brazile, and that his recommendations were as strong, his proof of service to the party and fitness for the place so evident that it was too late for even a competitor as distinguished and as much to be desired as yourself to enter the lists. There in now but one vacancy of the class of Hayti-Ecuador. I mentioned this and received this reply from Mr Sumner “If Mr Douglass will do me the honor of consulting me I would recommend that he take no place abroad so far away as to deprive us of the reflex influence of his talents and position at home” Would it not be well to write to him? For though I have acted in my own name and in no respect compromised you as an office seeker and taken pains to say I was not even in communication it would I doubt not set you more fully right to say to him in your own words enough to explain my action and interest in the matter. [Beside] if there is any thing you would take at home we ought to know the fact early enough to get it this time. The Newspaper matter is, I fear, dead.11 Yours lovingly SELLA MARTIN ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 466–68, FD Papers DLC. 1. Lewis H. Douglass. 2. Few letters from Douglass to his sons from this period have survived, including one that meets Martin’s description. 3. Charles Sumner. 4. Henry Wilson. 5. Ebenezer D. Bassett. 6. Charles Sumner, longtime friend of Douglass, most likely agreed with those who argued that Bassett was not qualified for the ministerial position in Haiti. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sumner received requests to persuade Grant against appointing Bassett. George T. Downing specifically urged the senator to promote Douglass for the position. Grant refused to change

Y8204-Douglass.indb 130

5/17/23 2:35 PM

J. SELLA MARTIN TO K DOUGLASS, 24 APRIL 1869

131

his mind, and ultimately Sumner voted in favor of Bassett’s confirmation as minister to Haiti. Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America (Washington, D.C., 1869), 199; Christopher Teal, Hero of Hispaniola: America’s First Black Diplomat, Ebenezer D. Bassett (Westport, Conn., 2008), 54; Stephen McCullough, The Caribbean Policy of the Ulysses S. Grant Administration: Foreshadowing an Informal Empire (Lanham, Md., 2018), 78–79; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 270; Charles E. Wynes, “Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett, America’s First Black Diplomat,” Pennsylvania History, 51:235 (July 1984). 7. President Grant nominated Bassett on 12 April 1869 for minister resident and consul general to Haiti. Four days later, on 16 April, the Senate confirmed his appointment. Boston Daily Advertiser, 13 April 1869; Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, 17 April 1869; Executive Proceedings of the Senate (1869), 123, 199; Teal, Hero of Hispaniola, 53–54. 8. Following Ebenezer Bassett’s confi rmation as minister to Haiti on 16 April 1869, efforts to secure an ambassadorship position for Douglass commenced. Throughout April, newspaper articles reported that friends of Douglass had initiated a petition requesting that Grant appoint him minister to Brazil. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sumner most likely was involved in trying to find a position suitable for Douglass. Lowell (Mass.) Daily Citizen and News, 28 April 1869; Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 29 April 1869; Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, 4 vols. (London, 1893), 4:28. 9. Thomas Henry Nelson (1824–96), lawyer and U.S. diplomat, was born in Mason County, Kentucky. After attending Mayville schools, he moved to Rockville, Indiana, where he studied and practiced law for six years. He then moved to Terre Haute, Indiana, in the early 1850s and continued his law practice, first with Abram Adams Hammond as his partner and, later, with Isaac N. Pierce. Originally a leader in the Whig party, Nelson helped establish the Republican party in the Midwest. In 1860, he ran unsuccessfully for Congress. On 1 June 1861, President Lincoln appointed Nelson minister resident to Chile, and he served in that post until 1866. Nelson desired another ambassadorial posting during Grant’s administration, and it was reported that he would prefer to serve in Spain or Brazil. But the president appointed him minister to Mexico in April 1869. Nelson served in the new position until 1873, afterward returning to Terre Haute and resuming his law practice. Lowell (Mass.) Daily Citizen and News, 14 April 1869; Terre Haute (Ind.) Wabash Express, 17 April 1869; ANB, 16:286–87. 10. William Anderson Pile (1829–89) was a notable politician and diplomat after the Civil War. He was born near Indianapolis, but his family moved soon after to St. Louis, where he grew up. Pile was educated to be a Methodist minister, and when the war broke out, he enlisted as a chaplain in the Union army. But he sought active military experience, rising quickly through the ranks to become a brigadier general commanding volunteer black troops at Benton Barracks in Missouri. Pile participated in many early campaigns in the Western Theater of the war, including Fort Donaldson and Vicksburg. When he left the army, he was elected to Congress as a representative from Missouri (1867–69). After Pile lost his reelection bid, President Grant appointed him minister to Venezuela and Brazil, but his nomination was withdrawn, supposedly for “incompetency,” after it became clear he would not be confirmed. Any rumor of Pile being nominated as minister to Haiti after being rejected for the other post is not extant, and that scenario in fact seems unlikely, since Grant, on the same day he nominated Pile for Venezuela (12 April 1869), nominated Ebenezer Bassett to be minister to Haiti. That latter appointment was confirmed by the Senate on 16 April by a vote of 48–5. Grant then appointed Pile governor of the New Mexico Territory (1869–71). In 1871, Pile was finally confirmed as ambassador to Venezuela. After returning from South America, he worked in Philadelphia as an agent of the Venezuelan government. Pile then moved to Monrovia, California, where he died. Washington Evening Star, 17 April 1869; Stockton (Calif.) Independent, 17 April 1869; Nashville (Tenn.) Union and American, 2 May 1869; Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders (Baton Rouge, La., 1964), 371–72; Stewart Sifakis, Who Was Who in the Civil War (New York, 1988), 508.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 131

5/17/23 2:35 PM

132

DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON, 24 APRIL 1869

11. Despite Douglass’s warnings about the need for sufficient capital to launch an African American newspaper in the capital, Martin, Douglass’s sons Lewis and Frederick Jr., and others launched the New Era on 13 January 1870. The senior Douglass joined the venture as its corresponding editor. J. Sella Martin to Frederick Douglass, 29 March 1869; Frederick Douglass to J. Sella Martin, 5 April 1869, both in this volume; NNE, 13 January 1870.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON Rochester[, N.Y.] 24 April 1869.

My dear friend: I am more than content with the use you deemed it best to make of my note. Two heads are better than one1 especially where yours is the other head! By your statement I am left in a favorable condition before the country and before the Government. Your remarks have already begun their circuit: They were in our paper this morning.2 Greediness for office is not a desirable reputation—but in order to avoid such a reputation I would not affect to despise either the opportunities or honors of official positions. Your statement covers this whole ground—and no other word need be said. My employment just now is that simple and health giving one which first awoke the vigor that slumbered in the arm of Adam: I am a gardener. Parlour—Railroad— platform—life and labors—are anything but healthful to such a body as mine—I have suffered more from the labors of the past winter than usual—and I am now renewing my strength with the spade, rake and hoe. I will think of your kind offer again of a place on that first page. That is a great “page”—and nobody should appear there—but on two conditions: 1st something to say: 2d ability to say it. For the present you had better let me attend to the onions:—and do some very needful reading: Something may come of this, but I had better not promise.3 What shall be said at the annual Meeting of the American Antislavery Society? 4 There really seems not much to be said. Fifteenth Amendment is on its passage and is in a fair way to become a part of the organic Law of the land5—Will it be fair to assail Grant for all the murders which have taken place in the south since the 4th March? 6 Had we better take up the cause of Cuba—and let our war cry be “Cuba Emancipation, Independence”7—and possibly annexation? What will Wendell say?8 My kindest Regards to Mr Johnson9— Truly your friend— FREDK DOUG LASS

Y8204-Douglass.indb 132

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON, 24 APRIL 1869

133

ALS: Historical Manuscripts Collection, NNPML. 1. This saying is first recorded in John Heywood’s collection of proverbs (1546). Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, 141. 2. The pro–Democratic party Rochester Union and Advertiser printed a long article titled “A Mission for Fred. Douglass,” which criticized the Grant administration for not appointing Douglass minister to Haiti. The Rochester newspaper quoted Theodore Tilton’s editorial in the New York Independent, which claimed that Douglass deserved a seat in Grant’s cabinet. The Union and Advertiser berated Radical Republicans’ hypocrisy in proclaiming racial equality but not governing on that principle. Rochester Union and Advertiser, 28 April 1869. 3. After writing frequently for the Independent during and immediately after the Civil War, Douglass did not write again for the periodical until 1892. New York Independent, 21 April 1892. 4. The call for the thirty-sixth annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society to be held at Steinway Hall in New York City on 11 May 1869 was published in the society’s official periodical, the New York National Anti-Slavery Standard, on 24 April 1869. 5. The Fifteenth Amendment, which enfranchised African American men, passed Congress in February 1869 along largely partisan lines. Many suffragists, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, had encouraged state legislatures to refuse to ratify the amendment because it ignored the demands of women for enfranchisement. When Douglass wrote Tilton, New York had just become the thirteenth of the required twenty-eight states to ratify. Opposition to the amendment was strong in many states, and it took another ten months to reach the necessary total. Secretary of State Hamilton Fish certified the amendment on 30 March 1870. William Gillette, The Right to Vote: Politics and the Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment (Baltimore, 1965), 73–76; Foner, Reconstruction, 444–49; James M. McPherson, The Abolitionist Legacy: From Reconstruction to the NAACP (Princeton, N.J., 1975), 13, 35–40, 98–102, 392; McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 301–07, 428. 6. Ulysses S. Grant was inaugurated as president on 4 March 1869. In his address, Grant declared: “The question of suffrage is one which is likely to agitate the public so long as a portion of the citizens of the nation are excluded from its privileges in any State. It seems to me very desirable that this question should be settled now, and I entertain the hope and express the desire that it may be by the ratification of the fifteenth article of amendment to the Constitution.” Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 19:142. 7. In October 1868, Cuban insurgents launched a revolt to free the island of Spanish control. President Grant was sympathetic to the cause of Cuban independence, but Secretary of State Fish opposed formally recognizing the belligerent status of the insurgency, for fear that it would jeopardize the ongoing efforts of Spanish liberals to set up a constitutional monarchy. The situation was complicated by the simultaneous Alabama claims dispute between the United States and Britain. In the latter, Senator Charles Sumner had vociferously denounced the British for recognizing Confederate belligerency, a position comparable to what Grant hoped to do for the Cubans. Grant and Fish were also undertaking negotiations with the Dominican Republic regarding possible annexation of that nation. The Cuban rebels quickly won over American public sentiment, and there were loud calls for Fish’s replacement. In June, the administration publicly declared sympathy for the Cuban cause, a decision that satisfied most Americans. Calhoun, Presidency of Grant, 154–64, 181–96. 8. Wendell Phillips. 9. Vermont-born Oliver Johnson (1809–89), an abolitionist and journalist, published the semimonthly Boston Christian Solider (1832–33) from an office and printing press shared with William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator. In addition to serving as a substitute editor for the latter paper, Johnson lectured for the New England Anti-Slavery Society. From 1837 to 1839 he lectured for the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society and sided with the Garrisonians on the rejection of political and religious means to achieve the end of slavery. In the 1840s, Johnson held several editorial positions outside abolitionist circles. He worked for a time as an assistant to Horace Greeley on the New York Tribune, briefly edited the Philadelphia Republic, and then edited the Practical Christian, the organ of the

Y8204-Douglass.indb 133

5/17/23 2:35 PM

134

DOUGLASS TO GEORGE T. DOWNING, 26 APRIL 1869

utopian Hopedale Community in Milford, Massachusetts. He returned to abolitionist newspapers as editor of the Anti-Slavery Bugle (1849–51) and the Pennsylvania Freeman (1851–53). In 1853 he moved to New York City to accept the post of assistant editor of the American Anti-Slavery Society’s National Anti-Slavery Standard. In 1858, after succeeding Sydney Howard Gay as editor in chief, he guided the paper through secession and the Civil War. At the time of this letter, Johnson was serving as associate editor of the Independent under Tilton. The following year, he went to work for the New York Tribune. Steven M. Raffo, A Biography of Oliver Johnson, Abolitionist and Reformer, 1809– 1889 (Lewiston, N.Y., 2002); Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 2:xxv–xxvi; ANB, 12:107–08; DAB, 5:756–58; NCAB, 2:319.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GEORGE T. DOWNING Rochester[, N.Y.] 26 Apr[il] 1869.

Dear Downing: Let there be no misunderstanding between us. I have neither sought nor desired the Haytian Mission:1 I have neither wanted you nor Mr. Bassett2 to urge my claims to the position. I am glad that Mr. Bassett has proved the successful candidate, but would have been equally glad in case of his failure, to have seen you successful in obtaining the position. Don’t confound my dissatisfaction with what does not belong to it. Let me make you at least understand me. The thing of which I complain stands wholly apart from any supposed desire of mine to fill the position in question. To what then do I object? I answer: to the unauthorized announcement through the newspapers of the country “that Frederick Douglass has written to his friends at Washington, declining to accept the Haytian Mission, stating that he could not afford to accept it, and that he had made up his mind to live and die in his native land” etc. now, why do I object to this statement? I will tell you in detail: 1. Because it was unauthorized. 2. Because it not only places me in a false position, but in a very ridiculous one. I am not so foolish as to publicly decline any office which has not been publicly and officially tendered me. 3. Because it makes me liable to the charge of being incapable of acting in such matters under higher motives than those which grow out of a love of money, and at the same time gives the public an exaggerated idea of the money value of my vocation. 4. Because it represents me as under the control of a sort of sentimental delirium of patriotism; as absurdly and weakly refusing to leave the country for any purpose however high, on any service however important, or for any time however limited. 5. Because its natural effect was, not only to prevent my receiving a call to the Haytian Mission, but to prevent the offer of any

Y8204-Douglass.indb 134

5/17/23 2:35 PM

GEORGE T. DOWNING TO DOUGLASS, 28 APRIL 1869

135

other mission abroad, which the Government might have been disposed to have tendered me, for it represents me as despising and rejecting the offers of Government in advance. 6. Because nobody had right or authority from me to make any such statement of my views and wishes, as those which for several days were sent over the wires and through the newspapers concerning this subject. Though I am not unmindful of the claims of modesty, I have quite enough to answer “yes” or “no” when I am asked to take office, without the help of my friends. Besides I think you have overlooked a distinction which you might have seen upon a moments reflection. There is a wide difference between desiring and seeking office on the one hand, and that even temper and disposition of mind on the other, which might lead a man to accept a post of honor, when he has been adjudged worthy to fill it, by those who are supposed to be capable of forming an intelligent judgment. It is some satisfaction to know that one is deemed worthy of an office, though he does not get or accept it when offered. I acquit you of conscious intentional injustice. You meant to help Bassett, not to hinder me. I do you also the justice to believe that in telling Mr. Sumner3 that I would not take the office, you thought you were correctly representing me. Besides I am bound to believe your disavowal of any agency in sending the telegrams about my refusing the Haytian Mission. Yours truly FREDK DOUG LASS ALS: Miscellaneous Manuscripts, NN. 1. Since March, newspapers had speculated that Grant would appoint some leading African American minister plenipotentiary to Haiti. Douglass was foremost among the potential candidates for the position, but in early April it was reported in the press that he would not accept that post “upon the two-fold ground that he cannot afford to take it, and prefers to dwell in the land of his birth.” NASS, 27 March 1869; Rochester Union and Advertiser, 7 April 1869. 2. Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett. 3. Charles Sumner.

GEORGE T. DOWNING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington[, D.C.] 28 April 1869.

Dear Douglass, “Let there be no misunderstanding between us.” I have never sought or desired the Mission to Hayti or any position whatever under the Government;

Y8204-Douglass.indb 135

5/17/23 2:35 PM

136

DOUGLASS TO CHARLES SUMNER, 29 APRIL 1869

had I have sought any such, I have no doubt but that you would have been glad to have had me succeed. I am (in no way responsible for any) announcement “through the newspapers of the country that Frederick Douglass” had or would decline to accept the Haytian Mission so that the six reasons stated in your letter to me (be they more or less good) for objecting to the newspaper announcements, have no point as effecting me. My conversation with Senator Sumner1 was [illegible], unequivocal, was grounded entirely by honest convictions, I asserted my belief, a belief founded on reasons which I deemed satisfactory. I did not pretend to speak authoratively. I do not know what you wrote to “The Independent”;2 but I do know that the editorial was unjust and open to severe criticism, open to the charge of falsifying. Truly your friend, GEO T DOWNING ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 474–75, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Charles Sumner. 2. Downing refers to an editorial printed in the 22 April 1869 edition of the New York Independent. The article intended to explain why Douglass did not receive the ministerial position to Haiti, claiming that “the only excuse which the Government can render for not offering him the post was the public announcement made apparently by authority of Mr. Douglass himself, that he would not accept the offer if made.” Downing might have thought that the editorial was unjust when it presented the claim that Ebenezer Bassett’s friends in Washington, D.C., purposely deceived Grant into believing that Douglass would not accept the offer of the ambassadorship. New York Independent, 22 April 1869.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO CHARLES SUMNER Rochester[, N.Y.] 29 Apr[il] 1869.

Hon: Chas. Sumner. My dear Sir: Let an old friend mingle his voice with that of the nation. Voices, once heard with wrath and disparagement, are now clear and melodious with praise. You are the same. Only the nation is changed. During nearly twenty years you have been to a few of us the leading statesman of the Republic. Only during the last few days, you have been so acknowledged by the nation. I am glad the recognition has come at last. Grand and masterly as is your speech1 on the “Johnson Clarendon Treaty”2—it is no greater than a

Y8204-Douglass.indb 136

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM PURCELL, 29 APRIL 1869

137

dozen others you have made before. You have so linked your name with the cause of my race that we share in all your triumphs—we are brighter for your glory—but your time is precious—and I must trespass no longer Very truly yours FREDERICK DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 475, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Senator Charles Sumner, then chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, delivered a lengthy speech relaying his committee’s recommendation that the Senate reject the JohnsonClarendon Treaty, an almost unheard-of proposal at that point. In the thirty-page document, Sumner lays out why he believes the agreement would be abhorrent to the members of his committee and, furthermore, to all Americans. Sumner’s complaint equates Britain’s maritime support of the Confederacy—including recognition, shipbuilding (most notoriously the C.S.S. Alabama), the provision of armaments, and the use of safe harbors—to aiding and abetting the creation of a pirate state designed to wage war on the United States. Sumner also argues that Great Britain should remain liable both politically and financially for these actions, and states that any agreement not formally recognizing this culpability would be inappropriate, incomplete, and beneficial to no party. Charles Sumner, Our Claims on England: Speech of the Hon. Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, Delivered in Executive Session of the Senate, April 13, 1869: On the Johnson-Clarendon Treaty for the Settlement of Claims (Washington, D.C., 1869). 2. The Johnson-Clarendon Treaty was a proposed settlement to ease ongoing tensions between the United States and Great Britain resulting from the latter’s support and recognition of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Less than a month after the attack on Fort Sumter, Great Britain issued a formal declaration recognizing the Confederate States of America as a belligerent state on both land and sea, thus allowing it access to materials and equal consideration under international law. The treaty was named for its authors, Reverdy Johnson, the American minister to the United Kingdom, and Lord Clarendon (George William Frederick Villiers), secretary of state for foreign affairs for the United Kingdom. The agreement would have made all lawsuits related to Britain’s support of the South into personal suits subject to arbitration, closed all suits after a certain date, and, most problematically, conferred no responsibility or liability on the United Kingdom for its actions. The treaty was negotiated in haste during the waning days of Andrew Johnson’s administration, and was one of the first treaties primarily negotiated via the new transatlantic cable. James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress: From Lincoln to Garfield; with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860, 2 vols. (Norwich, Conn., 1884–86), 2:496–97.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM PURCELL1 Rochester, N.Y. 29 April 1869.2

To the Editor of the Rochester UNION : My feelings are of little importance to the public, yet if they are made the subject of public remark, you will agree with me that they ought to be correctly described. You will therefore please allow me to say in your columns, that I do not feel slighted by the present Administration at Washington. I have neither sought, desired nor expected the Haytian

Y8204-Douglass.indb 137

5/17/23 2:35 PM

138

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, C. APRIL 1869

mission. No aspirations for the office in question have been disappointed. The thing of which I have complained was a telegram, repeated in various forms, from Washington, stating that Frederick Douglass had written to his friends at Washington that he would not accept the Haytian mission—that he could not afford it—that he had made up his mind never to leave the country, &c. 1. I objected to this because it placed me in a false and ridiculous position. I am not so weak and foolish as to decline publicly an office which had never been tendered me. 2. I objected to it because it placed me before the country as measuring my duties strongly by the one criterion of “dollars and cents,” and gives an exaggerated impression of the pecuniary value of my present vocation. 3. I objected to it because it represented me as being so absurdly patriotic that I would not leave the country for any purpose, however important, and because it was calculated to remove me from the list of colored men who would accept office tendered by President Grant. I am a modest man, but am perfectly competent to decline or accept office, if tendered, without the assistance of officious friends, who have presumed to act for me in this instance. Respectfully yours, FRED’K DOUG LASS. PLSr: New York Times, 3 May 1869. 1. The Union and Advertiser, Rochester’s leading Democratic newspaper, had been edited by William Purcell (1830–1905) since 1864. Born in Covington, New York, Purcell rose from the position of delivery boy to eventually become editor in chief. He was active in local, state, and national Democratic party politics and an advocate of Irish causes. Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, 1:193–94, 2:783; Harvey Strum, “To Feed the Hungry: Rochester and Irish Famine Relief,” RH, 68:3–22 (Summer 2006). 2. This letter was published in the Rochester Union and Advertiser with the headline “Fred. Douglass and the Haytian Mission.” Rochester Union, n.d., reprinted in New York Times, 3 May 1869.

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C. [c. April 1869.]1

Dear Father: I received your two letters day before yesterday. I am now fully installed in my new position. Lewis has an appointment in the Govt Printing Office, and Fred. I believe will succeed in getting a position of some kind.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 138

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 25 MAY 1869

139

Last night I made my first effort in speech making before the 3rd Ward Rep. Club. There were several speakers, and therefore my remarks were brief. The notice in the paper of them this morning was very complimentary.2 The note I enclose corrected. I shall attend to the other matter as soon as possible. I see it announced that a petition is being circulated in your behalf for the Brazillian Mission.3 I hope you may receive the appointment. Love to all at home. This leaves us all pretty well. The weather is very warm. Strawberries and new potatoes are becoming plentiful. This is the place to live. Aff Yr. Son, CHAS R. DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 762–63, FD Paper, DLC. 1. Charles Douglass wrote this letter on printed stationery with the following letterhead: “Third Auditors Office / Treasury Department.” 2. Although the editors have been unable to uncover an account of this speech in any of the surviving local newspapers, it can be dated to sometime toward the end of April 1869. The petition that Charles mentions (see following note) was delivered to the White House sometime in April, and he began his new job as a clerk in the Treasury Department on 21 April 1869. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 36. 3. In April 1869 a group of African Americans submitted a petition to President Grant requesting that his administration appoint blacks to diplomatic posts in Liberia, Haiti, and several Latin American nations. This same petition called for Frederick Douglass to be appointed minister to Brazil. Gerald Horne, The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade (New York, 2007), 245.

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS [Washington, D.C.]1 25 May 1869.

Dear Father, I commenced a letter to you some time ago, but on learning through the papers that you were away from home I did not finish it. Success has crowned all our efforts, and we start out mornings now three abreast instead of one. George Seldon2 called on us last week his father is here looking for a farm. How stands the Rochester Post Office Postmastership?3 are your claims being urged? I would like very much to see a Rochester paper on the subject. I rcd. the one you sent containing report of Natl Convention.4

Y8204-Douglass.indb 139

5/17/23 2:35 PM

140

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 25 MAY 1869

I suppose if all works well with you this summer, you will come to see us. I assure you that I will make your stay a pleasant one. I intend to have a model garden. I have already planted sweet potatoes, water melons, & cantelopes, and have peas, potatoes, onions, cabbage, beets, beans and corn up. The peas are filling very fast, and in two weeks will be fit for use. I have also two splendid shoats, and about 50 chickens now, and six hens are still setting. I have also twelve little ducks for your especial [illegible] when you come, as I am aware that they rank first in your estimation, among fowls. I was in hopes that Mother would come to see us this summer. I would do my utmost best to have her enjoy herself and Libbie would also. Come all when you can, and I will be only to happy to serve you. It is my only desire now, and I am only sorry that I cant do as much as I would like. Lewis is creating a great deal of excitement here among newspapermen and typos,5 and the comments of the press are very interesting. Col. Clapp6 does not propose to be ruled by the Typographical Union and has assured Lew. that he need have no fears of being reviewed. Lewis’ case will be an opening for other young colored men should he be accepted as a member in the Union. All are well & send love Aff. Your Son CHAS. R. DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 481–83, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Charles wrote on stationery with the following printed letterhead: “Treasury Department / Third Auditor’s Office.” 2. Charles Douglass probably refers to George Baldwin Selden (1846–1922) and his father, the New York jurist Henry Rogers Selden (1805–85). The elder Selden had moved from his Connecticut birthplace to Rochester in 1825 and studied law. He opened a practice in Clarkson, in western Monroe County, where he married and had his son George. Antislavery sentiment led Selden to abandon the Democrats for the newly founded Republican party, and he was elected lieutenant governor of New York in 1858. After leaving office, Henry Selden settled in Rochester. He sat as a judge on the state court of appeals (1863–65), but was defeated in his attempt to become chief justice in 1870. He gained fame for defending Susan B. Anthony’s attempt to vote in the election of 1872. The younger Selden served briefly in the Union army and then attended Yale University. He followed his father into the practice of law, but his passion was for engineering. George Selden was granted the first U.S. patent for an internal combustion engine for an automobile in 1895 after a sixteen-year struggle. For a few years, Selden successfully collected royalties from the nation’s principal automobile manufacturers, but Henry Ford won a court case overthrowing Selden’s rights in 1911. W. H. McIntosh, History of Monroe County, New York (Philadelphia, 1877), 38, 45, 88, 107–08, 127–28, 134, 139; William Farley Peck, Semi-Centennial History of the City of Rochester (Syracuse, N.Y., 1884), 729–31; Joseph W. Barnes, “Rochester and the Automobile Industry,” RH, 43:1–39 (April and June 1981). 3. Rumors of Douglass’s possible appointment as the U.S. postmaster in Rochester appeared in New York newspapers beginning in May 1869. Douglass had sought the position, but Grant’s

Y8204-Douglass.indb 140

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO CHARLES WESLEY SLACK, C. MAY 1869

141

postmaster general, John Creswell, rejected the application, relaying to Douglass that it was a “local position” more suited to “small politicians.” William Founders to Douglass, 12 October 1869, in this volume; Rochester Union and Advertiser, 29 May 1869. 4. Probably a reference to newspaper reports of the meeting of the American Equal Rights Association at Brooklyn’s Academy of Music on 14 May 1869. Douglass attended the daylong convention but declined an opportunity to address it during the evening session. New York Times, 15 May 1869; New York World, 15 May 1869; New York Tribune, 15 May 1869. 5. While residing in Denver after the Civil War, Lewis H. Douglass was trained in typography by his father’s longtime friend Henry O. Wagoner. When Lewis returned east, he took a position in Washington with the Government Printing Office. In June 1869 the Columbia Typographical Union No. 161 condemned Lewis as a scab for working for lower wages. At the same time, the union refused to accept him as a member, because it claimed he was inadequately trained. Lewis had support inside the union, and the dispute was referred to the union’s national president. The elder Douglass entered the controversy, arguing that the opposition Lewis faced was solely on account of his color, not his skill as a compositor. Frederick Douglass visited Washington in August 1869 to lobby governmental officials on Lewis’s behalf. Other black leaders and groups likewise spoke out on Lewis’s behalf, but he was never granted membership in the typographer’s union. Chicago Workingman’s Advocate, 5, 19 June 1869; San Francisco Elevator, 11 June 1869; NASS, 12, 19, 26 June, 3, 10 July, 25 September, 30 October 1869; Washington National Republican, 20 August 1869; EAAH, 1:424. 6. During the dispute between Radical Republicans and President Andrew Johnson, Congress took back the power to appoint the head of the Government Printing Office. A Connecticut native named Almon Mason Clapp (1811–99) had been a printer and editor of the Buffalo Express, a Whigturned-Republican newspaper. Lincoln appointed him U.S. postmaster in Buffalo, but Johnson replaced him. Under the Grant administrations, Clapp served as “Congressional Printer” from 1869 until 1876, when Congress returned the appointment power for his position to the executive branch. President Grant then appointed Clapp the “Public Printer of the United States.” When the next president, Rutherford B. Hayes, replaced Clapp in 1877, he bought the Washington National Republican and operated it until 1880. San Francisco Call, 10 April 1899; Ebenezer Clapp, The Clapp Memorial: Record of the Clapp Family in America (Boston, 1876), 188–91; NCAB, 1:359–60.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO CHARLES WESLEY SLACK1 [n.p. c. May 1869.]2

My friends must do as they please, but my impressions are against the statue. I am not dead yet! I am but little over fifty-two, and may live twenty years longer—a space altogether too long for a live man to be looking upon his dead monument, and having other people looking upon it and upon him at the same time! I have no power in the matter, but I want my friends to know, by some means, that I am willing to leave the whole matter of my memory to those who survive me. Let them turn their attention to dear old John Brown, with whom I was not worthy to die at Harper’s Ferry. Let us see the heroic form of this true martyr to liberty on the Lincoln monument!3

Y8204-Douglass.indb 141

5/17/23 2:35 PM

142

DOUGLASS TO HENRY CLAY NAILL, 8 JULY 1869

PLf: NASS, 22 May 1869. 1. All that has survived of this letter is an excerpt printed in the Boston Commonwealth and then reprinted in the New York National Anti-Slavery Standard. The latter is more explicit in stating that the letter was addressed to the Commonwealth’s editor at that time, Charles Wesley Slack (1825–85). A lifelong Bostonian, Slack graduated from the Elliot Grammar School and began work for the Boston Daily Journal at age fifteen. A Republican, he represented Boston for two terms in the state legislature before the Civil War; later, he held a patronage appointment with the Treasury Department. Returning to journalism after the war, he was the proprietor and editor of the Commonwealth, using the publication to further the cause of Radical Reconstruction. Memorial Biographies of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Vol. 8: 1880–1889 (Boston, 1907), 209; Proceedings of the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; Quarterly Communication: June 10, 1885 (Boston, 1885), 72–74; McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 438–39. 2. The Boston Commonwealth reprinted a portion of the letter from Douglass to Slack in an article entitled “minor matters.” The excerpt was prefaced with “the statue to frederick Douglass: Mr. Douglass does not take enthusiastically to the idea of a statue to himself on the Lincoln monument.” Boston Commonwealth, 15 May 1869. 3. Following this excerpt from Douglass’s letter, the Commonwealth briefly stated: “This note is characteristic of the good judgment and disinterested purpose of the eminent orator.” Boston Commonwealth, 15 May 1869.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO HENRY CLAY NAILL1 Rochester, [N.Y.] 8 July 1869.

My Dear Sir— It is hard to say no to any request that reaches me from my native State, and therefore I say yes to your invitation to the Emancipation celebration in Frederick on the 15th August.2 My home is a long way from Frederick, but that can be overcome by ample compensation, say one hundred dollars. If that sum can be raised in advance of my coming, I shall not be subjected to the necessity of taking up a collection when I come, a thing that too often mars the public doings of colored people and results in loss to their public speakers. Respectfully yours, FREDERICK DOUG LASS. PLSr: Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser, 20 August 1869. 1. Henry Clay Naill (c. 1831–1911) worked as a surveyor before serving as a provost marshal for the Union army in western Maryland during the Civil War. Like his father, David W. Naill, he was elected to represent Frederick, Maryland, in the Maryland House of Delegates. Naill supported the Radical Reconstruction program, including the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Douglass endorsed his (unsuccessful) effort to obtain the Republican party’s nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in 1878. Naill was also a longtime member of the board of trustees of the Maryland School for the Deaf and Dumb.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 142

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO JOHN H. HAWES, JULY 1869

143

Seventieth Biennial Report of the President and Visitors of the Maryland School for the Deaf and Dumb to the Legislature of Maryland (Frederick, 1911), 20; Alan Friedlander and Richard Allan Gerber, Welcoming Ruin: The Civil Rights Act of 1875 (Leiden, Neth., 2018), 431. 2. As subsequent documents in this volume explain, Douglass did not speak at the planned Emancipation Day celebration in Frederick, Maryland. He received a telegraph, claiming to be sent from Naill, canceling the widely published event at the last minute. The press reported that many people in Frederick were disappointed by Douglass’s failure to arrive. Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 24 July 1869; Boston Commonwealth, 28 August 1869; NASS, 4 September 1869.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JOHN H. HAWES1 [n.p. July 1869.]

J. H Hawes: My dear sir. I have duly received your letter of July 8th and have considered its contents. Candour is due to all men, and especially to those who are themselves candid. I am greatly obliged to you for the unvarnished story you relate in your letter, of the past and present condition of the “New Era” 2 and in view of that story I am entirely convinced that I ought it would be wholly unwise for me to connect my self with it in the several ways you propose. I have no such faith in my ability to put life and prosperity into an enterprise which is according to your own statement, “already so near death. The very parties to whom you refer as having already hampered the enterprise would exert themselves anew to destroy it if I should be elevated to its editorial management and their past relations to the paper give them power to injure it. I should be very willing to make any reasonable sacrifices in order to the establishment of a powerful paper at Washington but it would be quite unreasonable for me, at my time of life, to give up a certainty for an uncertainty in the matter of making a livelihood. By lecturing I make five or six thousand dollars a year.3 Of course, if I should take hold of the paper, I should abandon my lecturing vocation except upon rare occasions[.] I should have to look to the paper for my entire support as I should certainly give to it my entire time and strength. You will easily see that, I could not be just to myself and to those dependent upon me, if I gave up my present occupation, without the positive guarantee, of an equivalent income from some other source. Yours Truly FREDK DOUG LASS

Y8204-Douglass.indb 143

5/17/23 2:35 PM

144

DOUGLASS TO CHARLES CARROLL FULTON, 20 AUGUST 1869

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 71–72, FD Papers, DLC. 1. John H. Hawes (?–c. 1875) was listed as the business manager on the masthead of the early 1870s issues of the New Era. Born in New York, Hawes moved to Iowa and edited the Lyons Mirror before being appointed the principal clerk of surveys in the Department of the Interior in 1861 by Abraham Lincoln. Hawes wrote a manual on surveying for the U.S. General Land Office. He resigned when Andrew Johnson became president. He then began working with the Union League to organize loyal Republican elements in the southern states. In 1868, Hawes supported Grant’s election by editing a campaign newspaper, the National Radical. In 1871 he was appointed U.S. consul in Hakodadi, Japan, where he died. Des Moines (Iowa) Register, 22 November 1871; New York Times, 7 December 1871; 1870 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 361B; Register of Officers and Agents, Civil. Military, and Naval, in the Service of the United States . . . 1865 (Washington, D.C., 1866), 124; J. H. Hawes, System of Rectangular Surveying Employed in Subdividing the Public Lands of the United States (1868; Philadelphia, 1882); C. Albert White, A History of the Rectangular Survey System (Washington, D.C., n.d.), 144; Papers Related to the Foreign Relations of the United States . . . 1875 (Washington, D.C., 1875), 2:806–07; Patrick B. Wolfe, Wolfe’s History of Clinton County, Iowa, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, Ind., 1911), 240. 2. While the specifics of Hawes’s warning to Douglass have been lost, there was considerable evidence publicly available in the midsummer of 1870 of the failing health of the New Era. Many of the original shareholders had abandoned the newspaper, its editor J. Sella Martin had resigned, and creditors had seized its type and press. Despite its poor condition, Douglass moved to Washington in late August and purchased a half-ownership stake in the Era in an attempt to save it. Foner, Life and Writings, 4:57. 3. Douglass maintained prodigious lecturing schedules in the winter seasons of the late 1860s. The former abolitionist James Redpath, who ran the nation’s leading agency for booking lectures, confirmed that Douglass was the only African American who consistently drew large audiences across the North, usually commanding fees between $50 and $125 a performance. John R. McKivigan, Forgotten Firebrand: James Redpath and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca, N.Y., 2008), 121–22; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 497, 527; Angela G. Ray, “Frederick Douglass on the Lyceum Circuit: Social Assimilation, Social Transformation?” Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 5:627–28 (Winter 2002).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO CHARLES CARROLL FULTON1 Baltimore, [Md.] 20 August 1869.

To the Editors of the Baltimore American: A most shameful fraud has been perpetrated upon the good people of Frederick. The man guilty of it deserves more lashes than I would like to see laid upon the back of a pickpocket, highway robber or horse thief. The mean creature, whoever he may be, should be blistered with execration. Whatever other fault I may be justly chargeable with, those who have known my course for thirty years will acquit me of wantonly breaking my engagements. It is true that my name has often been used without my authority, and that disappointments by that means have been caused, but no sensible person holds me responsible for such disappointments. A man

Y8204-Douglass.indb 144

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO CHARLES CARROLL FULTON, 20 AUGUST 1869

145

with a name in any measure known to the public has no remedy for this evil. Mean and unprincipled sneaks often resort to such tricks to secure an influence for themselves or for others. [But] I [come] to the case in hand: More than a month ago I was invited to deliver an address in Frederick, Maryland, by Mr. H. C. Naill.2 The date for the occasion was the 15th of August, which was subsequently changed by Mr. Naill to the 18th, and still later to the 17th of August. I agreed to every change, and pledged myself to be present. Well now, why was I not present? I will tell you and your respected readers at once. After preparing my speech for the occasion, after working upon it for many days, after thinking and feeling much of the grand occasion upon which I was to meet so many of the citizens of my native State, after much anxiety about the journey and about the impression I should make upon the good people of Frederick; in short, after setting out from home on the 13th of August, determined to be on time and to have a day or two to spare in case of accident; after reaching Washington, and when I was thus just within a few hours of Frederick, lo! I received the following telegram from home, which had reached there just after my departure for Frederick: “Mr Naill telegraphs do no go to Frederick: will write reason.” Now, Mr. Editor, this telegram was the sole cause of the disappointment at Frederick. I had fully intended to fill the appointment; had travelled a night and a day to meet it, had labored hard to prepare for it, had spent my time and my money to get to it, and just as I thought my work all complete, I was disappointed in the shameful manner mentioned. What could I have done in the circumstances? How could I have acted differently? I could not treat this telegram with less respect than I treated all others which had come to me signed H. C. Naill. In a place like Frederick I could not think Mr. Naill so unknown to telegraph operators that his name could be forged, and I therefore treated it as genuine, and waited for the promised explanation. The affair will only make me a little more careful as to where and with whom I make engagements to spend my time, my money and my strength in future, for there is nothing very pleasant in working several weeks in preparing an address and spending thirty or forty dollars in traveling expenses, only to have one’s labor for his pains. Respectfully yours, FREDERICK DOUG LASS. PLSr: Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser, 21 August 1869. 1. The Baltimore American and Daily Advertiser was owned at this time by Charles Carroll Fulton (1815–83). After working as a journalist in Philadelphia and Georgetown, Fulton purchased partial ownership of the American in 1853 and became its editor. A die-hard Whig, Fulton backed

Y8204-Douglass.indb 145

5/17/23 2:35 PM

146

J. SELLA MARTIN TO DOUGLASS, 24 AUGUST 1869

John Bell in the 1860 presidential election. He supported the Union cause in the Civil War and became a loyal Republican, serving eight years on its national committee. Grant appointed Fulton to the same Santo Domingo Commission in 1871 that Douglass served on as assistant secretary. Richard A. Schwarzlose, The Nation’s Newsbrokers: The Formative Years: From Pretelegraph to 1865, 2 vols. (Evanston, Ill., 1989), 1:249; Scharf, History of Baltimore, 610–11. 2. Henry Clay Naill.

J. SELLA MARTIN TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS South Glens Falls[, N.Y.] 24 August 1869.

My dear Mr Douglass I was profoundly surprised, and I may add, disappointed at the intelligence conveyed by your note from Washington of the 17th inst.1 I feel sure you would not recommend me to take hold of an Enterprise of this nature unless the moral conditions were such as would allow you to accept the like responsibility other things being agreeable. I learn from Mr Hawes2 that you do not think other things agreeable Now in all fullness of confidence I am bound, in justice to myself, as well as under considerations of faithfulness to our great, and now somewhat imperiled [illegible] , to ask what are the grounds of your change of purpose in taking the Captaincy of this or a similar Newspaper? Would you not be free? Then neither would I. Is there too little color in the make up? Or too much personal interest in the promoters? These objections well weigh as strongly with me as they do with you. In short I will not go into the matter unless you do also and that in some responsible position. You know my choice as to the character of that position It is that you should be the Helmsman. But if it be really true that it is impossible for you to take the first position then it will be my duty to take that position only as a relief for—your name as corresponding Editor I must have if I touch the Enterprise. I told Haws that I would not touch the affair except upon the following conditions: First you must be at the very least corresponding Editor. 2d that he get out, that I might see it, a specimen Copy of the Journal. 3d that its policy must be left entirely to me and my advisers among colored men. 4th that I should be in no way bound to aid the business manager except as I thought best, and 5th that no Executive Committee should interfere with the distinctive features of the conduct of the Paper which would be to refract and the reflect the sentiments and wants of the Freedmen. In other words, we as Northern people should use the advantages that belong

Y8204-Douglass.indb 146

5/17/23 2:35 PM

WILLIAM U. SAUNDERS TO DOUGLASS, 12 OCTOBER 1869

147

to our position in free Society to lay bare mere party machinations and so draw out the best intelligence of those to whom we speak while at the same time we should fearlessly Express the peculiar grievances of those who might become victims of even the radicals. I insist in short upon our organ being the Radical of the radicals. Haws cheerfully promised compliance with all these things and left as he said the most essential of them to me to carry out—namely to secure your co-operation. Please let me hear from you in full by return Post. Mrs Martin3 wishes to be remembered and to congratulate you upon the joy of such a daughter-in-law as Fred. Jr has just taken to his bosom.4 She wishes to be remembered to Mrs Douglass5 and to express her regrets conjointly with my own that we can not accept Lewis’6 invitation to be round your way in October when he will follow in the recent footsteps of his [illegible] brother Fred.7 Yours faithfully SELLA MARTIN ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 491–92, FD Papers, DLC. 1. No copy of this letter from Douglass to Martin, dated 17 August 1869, has survived. As noted in preceding letters, Douglass did visit Washington, D.C., in mid-August on his way to an abortive lecture engagement in Frederick, Maryland. 2. John H. Hawes. 3. J. Sella Martin had married Sarah Ann Lattimore (?–1891) of Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1858. The couple had one surviving child, Josephine Sarah Martin. Sarah and Josephine later served as witnesses at the wedding of Douglass to Helen Pitts in 1884. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 319. 4. Frederick Douglass, Jr., married Virginia L. M. Hewlett on 4 August 1869 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 5. Anna Murray Douglass. 6. Lewis H. Douglass. 7. After a lengthy engagement, Lewis H. Douglass married Helen Amelia Loguen on 7 October 1869 in Syracuse, New York. Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 2:369n; Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 20; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 222.

WILLIAM U. SAUNDERS1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Baltimore, [Md.] 12 Oct[ober] 1869.

Frederick Douglass Esq Rochester, N. York. Dear friend, Please accept my thanks for the assurances of assistance conveyed in yours of the 4th inst.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 147

5/17/23 2:35 PM

148

WILLIAM U. SAUNDERS TO DOUGLASS, 12 OCTOBER 1869

Mr. Creswell2 regrets very much that the pressure of his public duties prevented a reply to yours in relation to the Rochester P. Office and feels certain that you will appreciate the motive and understand his reasons for not considering your claims for the position He requests me to say that he “considers “that hold a first place among the great men” of the country and that you have worn your “fame by an admirable source of independence that commands his respect and admiration,” “and that he could not think of your name in connection with a local position, which “at best a bone of contention among small politicians.” He fully appreciate your motives in desiring to make the sacrifice and trusts you will consider him a sincere friend He authorizes me to invite you to call on him at your earliest convenience I take the liberty to suggest that you open a correspondence with him. He is a man of broad [learn]ing and the coming man as a “Representative man” of the south I volunteer the remark that your friends could not afford to allow you to accept a position that would invite a contest which could not result favorably to you, and must to some effect injure your [illegible] fame. I trust you will take the interference kindly Very Respectfully WM SAUNDERS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 499–500, FD Papers. DLC. 1. Baltimore-born William U. Saunders was a barber by trade. During the Civil War, he became a quartermaster sergeant in an infantry regiment for the U.S. Colored Troops, for which he later received a pension. After the war, he settled in Florida and became an organizer for the state’s young Republican party. Saunders played a critical role in the Florida state constitutional convention during Reconstruction. Along with Liberty Billings and Daniel Richards, he established the Florida chapter of the National Union League, a semisecret Republican group intended to recruit African Americans. This faction repeatedly clashed with more moderate Republican leaders, which ultimately led to intervention by federal military authorities on the moderates’ behalf. Saunders returned to Baltimore around the end of 1868 and resumed barbering before working for the federal government as an at-large special agent in the Post Office Department. He remained active in the Baltimore social scene, interacting with the likes of Frederick Douglass and Postmaster General John Creswell. In 1870, Saunders served as the chief marshal of a Baltimore parade commemorating the Fifteenth Amendment; several notable figures, including Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, were honored guests. Very little is known about Saunders’s life after the early 1870s. Official Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval, in the Service of the United States, on the Thirtieth September, 1869 (Washington, D.C., 1870), 916; George C. Osborn, “Letters of a Carpetbagger in Florida, 1866–1869,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 36:239–85 (January 1958); Jerrell H. Shofner, “The Constitution of 1868,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 41:356–74 (April 1963); Gordon C. Bond, “The First Negro Politicians of Florida: The Black Delegates to the Constitutional Convention of

Y8204-Douglass.indb 148

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON, 2 DECEMBER 1869

149

1868,” NHB, 38:486–89 (December 1975); Brad Alston, “Baltimore’s 1870 15th Amendment Parade and Celebration,” Baltimore Gaslight 17, 2:1 (Fall 2018). 2. John Andrew Johnson Creswell (1828–91) was born in Creswell’s Ferry (Port Deposit), Maryland. He graduated from Dickinson College in 1848. Creswell’s oratorical skills were considerable. An accomplished politician, he was elected to both the Maryland House of Representatives (1863– 65) and the U.S. Senate (1865–67) before President Grant appointed him the U.S. postmaster general (1869–74). His leading role in supporting congressional passage of the Thirteenth Amendment gained him national attention. Creswell became well known for reforming and greatly improving the U.S. postal service; in doing so, he appointed many African Americans to work for the postal system in every state. John M. Osborne and Christine Bombaro, Forgotten Abolitionist: John A. J. Creswell of Maryland (Carlisle, Pa. 2015); BDUSC (online).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON Rutland, Vt. 2 Dec[ember] 1869.

My dear Mr Tilton: I got home too late to comply with your request to prepare an article for the Independent—which completes its second decade to day—I am on the wing as usual—and am so much a part of my surroundings as to have little or no time for writing—I therefore return the fee—you kindly sent me in advance of the work you wished to have done. I am quite full of engagements—and have thus far had excellent houses. My “Composite Nationality” has you in its composition,1 so that I am not likely to forget that I have such a friend in the world as Theodore Tilton. I shall look for the Independent to day with great interest—The past twenty years afford abundant material for your pen—and I have no doubt you have well improved the occasion. Long live the Independent—and long live its Editor—and all who are dear to him— Yours Truly FREDERICK DOUG LASS ALS: Frederick Douglass Papers, NRU. 1. Douglass delivered his lecture titled “Our Composite Nationality” many times in the winter 1869–70 lyceum season. By the date of this letter, he had delivered it in cities in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. None of the published reports or the two surviving manuscripts of the lecture contain a reference to Tilton. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxvi–xxvii, 240–59, 598–99; Speech File, reel 14, frames 553–95, FD Papers, DLC; Lock Haven (Pa.) Clinton Democrat, 25 November 1869; Youngstown (Ohio) Mahoning Vindicator, 26 November 1869; Burlington (Vt.) Free Press and Times, 30 November 1869.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 149

5/17/23 2:35 PM

150

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 22 DECEMBER 1869

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C. 22 December 1869.

Dear Father, I have just received your letter of the 19th inst., and also received one from you about a week ago.1 I should have written to you often, but did not know your whereabouts. I feel very grateful for your long letter, and shall endeavor to give you all the news, which I think will interest you. The Convention was a decided success and reflects credit on all who were in any way connected with it. The delegates were composed of Colored and white males, and Colored and white females, all classes being represented.2 Lewis was one of the two Secretaries,3 and really performed all the important work in that direction. The Convention was presided over by Hon. Jas. Harris of North Carolina State Senate, a very smart and efficient officer. He presided with dignity and coolness.4 Lewis presented the most important resolution that was offered during the session, and it was so regarded by all. It was for the organization of a National Labor Bureau with Headquarters at Washington D.C., and from which Charters would be granted to State Labor Unions, whereby the colored laboring classes can be brought together and a unity of wages for the different trades agreed upon.5 Hon. A. M. Clapp, Govt. Printer, was invited to address the Convention, and in the course of his remarks, referring to Lewis’ appointment, he said that he must confess that when young Douglass’ was introduced to him, and his name announced there was magic in it. He paid Lewis many very high compliments as a printer which were received with defeaning applause.6 The Convention numbered nearly 200 delegates representing nearly every State in the Union, mostly Southern however. Fred. is pushing his claims and I think is in a fair way to get employment either in the Capitol or Government Printing Office,7 and his wife has been tendered a school in Potomac City at a salary of $35 per month. I have been figuring quite largely in the papers with regard to our school system in Potomac City. We have three schools in our town all of which are being taught by white teachers with salaries ranging from $35 to $75 per month. I had a meeting called of the citizens and drew up a

Y8204-Douglass.indb 150

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 22 DECEMBER 1869

151

series of resolutions to be presented to the Commissioner of our District requesting the appointment of at least one colored teacher in three, and being ignored by him I wrote and published an account of the interview & of his indifference to our claims. It had the desired effect, for shortly afterwards he addressed me a note tendering one of the Schools to Fred’s wife which she will accept. 8 With regard to my chances for promotion I will state that I did not expect one before Congress should meet, & since they have met Judge Kelley9 has been unusually busy, but soon after the recess over the holidays I shall push my claims. I have had many drawbacks since you were here on account of sickness &c., & my trip to Rochester. I will be able on June 30th to present you with a mortgage covering the whole amount you loaned me with the interest for the time, and shall continue my interest until I can settle the whole debt. Libbie wants to go home to spend two or three months until after about the first of February, and her mother is quite anxious for her to come. I want to let her go, as it will earn me something, that is the expense of keeping house on so large a scale as I now am, during her absence. The children are growing finely, and Freddie is in his element & I trust nothing will occur to prevent him from keeping up until at least you can see him when he is perfectly well.10 I see by the papers that you are meeting with great success, which I am proud to know. We look anxiously for the 24th January. It was my intention when you should come here mention the purchase of a house here to you. Washington is building up rapidly, & on Capitol Hill there are many fine sites for a dwelling. Houses bring high rents here at all seasons of the year, and $5000 would build a nice pressed brick front house with 8 rooms. I write to you at Rochester. Bill,11 sent the apples, they are very good. Love from all, Yr. Son. CHAS. R. DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames, 508R–10L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Neither of these two letters from Douglass to his son Charles has been located. 2. Over one hundred delegates from twenty-three states and the District of Columbia attended the National Colored Labor Convention that met at Union League Hall in Washington, D.C., on 6–10 December 1869. The movement for this convention began at a meeting in Baltimore the preceding August, led by Isaac Myers. Many leading African Americans spoke at the convention, including John M. Langston, George T. Downing, George B. Vashon, William J. Wilson, and J. Sella Martin. White sympathizers such as the Pennsylvania congressman William D. Kelly, the abolitionist editor Aaron M. Powell, and General O. O. Howard of the Freedmen’s Bureau also addressed the gathering.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 151

5/17/23 2:35 PM

152

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 22 DECEMBER 1869

The convention created a permanent organization, the National Labor Union, with Myers as its president and Lewis Douglass as its corresponding secretary. The New National Era was named the official organ of the new union by the convention. Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 14 August 1869; NNE, 13 January 1870; Sumner Eliot Matison, “The Labor Union and the Negro during Reconstruction,” JNH, 33:426–68 (October 1948). 3. When the National Colored Labor Convention completed its organization, it elected William U. Saunders of Nevada and Lewis H. Douglass from the District of Columbia as its secretaries. NNE, 13 January 1870. 4. The National Colored Labor Convention selected James Henry Harris (1832–91) of North Carolina as its presiding officer. Born a slave, he gained his freedom in 1848, moved north, and eventually graduated from Oberlin College. He recruited African American soldiers for the Union army and returned to North Carolina after the Civil War. A founder of the state’s Republican party, he was elected to terms in both the House and Senate during Reconstruction. Harris lost two elections to the U.S. House of Representatives but remained active in national Republican party activities as a Raleigh newspaper editor. Elizabeth Balanoff, “Negro Legislators in the North Carolina General Assembly, July, 1868–February, 1872,” North Carolina Historical Review, 49:22–55 (January 1972). 5. On the third day of the convention, Lewis H. Douglass introduced a resolution calling for a committee to “draft a plan for the organization of unions among colored men to secure the recognition of colored mechanics and laboring men in the workshops of the country.” The convention passed the resolution and authorized the creation of such a bureau, to be based in the District of Columbia, to deal with the convention’s unfinished business. NNE, 13 January 1870. 6. There is no report of the speech by Almon Mason Clapp to the labor convention that Charles Douglass describes. 7. Most likely this is Charles’s reference to his brother’s failed attempt to obtain a position in the office of the Recorder of Deeds. Frederick Douglass, Jr., moved to Washington, D.C., in 1868 and opened a grocery store in Potomac City (now known as Anacostia). In August 1869 he married Virginia L. M. Hewlett at her family home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and returned to Washington, D.C., with his new bride shortly thereafter. During this period, both he and his brother Lewis were frustrated in their efforts to find gainful employment; prejudice within the all-white printer’s union prevented their membership in it, so both brothers sought employment with the federal government. Although Frederick Jr.’s efforts in that endeavor failed, by the end of the year he was employed as a printer for the New National Era. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 504; Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 27–28. 8. Although Charles R. Douglass was actively engaged in efforts to hire African American teachers in the Washington, D.C. school system, it is unclear how directly he was involved in the hiring of his sister-in-law. What is certain, however, is that when Virginia L. M. Hewlett Douglass was hired in 1870, she became the first African American teacher in the D.C. school system. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 36, 626–27; Fought, Women, 268. 9. William Darrah Kelley. 10. At this time, Charles R. and Elizabeth “Libbie” Murphy Douglass had two children: Charles Frederick, age 2, and Joseph Henry, 5 months. Their next child, Annie Elizabeth, was born in June 1871. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, xlix; Fought, Women, 310. 11. No doubt this is a reference to the same William mentioned in Charles R. Douglass’s letter of 26 February 1869, but again the editors cannot confirm which of the several Williams who worked for and lived with the Douglass family in Rochester over the years is intended. Whichever William it was, by June 1870 he was no longer residing with the Douglass family, since the census records only one young man (age fifteen), named Richard Floyd, living with Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass. 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 191.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 152

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 26 FEBRUARY 1870

153

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C. 26 February 1870.

Dear Father, Your letter came duly, and I was glad to know that my letter had been received at Chicago.1 Fred.2 has written to you, & through him you will learn more of the paper than I am able to inform you. Yesterday was one of the greatest days to me, in the history of this Country. I was present and listened to the dying groans of the last of Democracy, it was on the occasion of administering the oath to H. R. Revels3 as U. S. Senator. The Democrats fought hard, but were met on all sides with unanswerable arguments in behalf of justice and right. The fight was on the citizenship of colored men. Even that dead & odious “Dred Scott Decision” was lugged in by the Democrats to show that blacks were not citizens, but Senators Scott4 of Pennsylvania, Drake5 of Mo. Stewart 6of Nev. Nye7 of Nev. Sawyer8 of S. C. Trumbull9 & many others knocked that decision higher than a kite, by their strong and logical arguments. Senator Wilson10 appeared to be the happiest man in the whole body, not even excepting Revels, who advanced to the Desk and took the oath in a very dignified manner. I hope that he may bear up under the new responsibilities, but I fear he is weak. Many voices in the Galleries were heard by me to say, If it could only have been Fred. Douglass, and my heart beat rapidly when I looked into that crowded Gallery, and upon the crowded floor, to notice the great and deep interest manifested all around; it looked solemn, and the thought flashed from my mind that that honor, for the first time confered upon a colored man, should have been confered upon you, and I am satisfied that many Senators would much more willingly see you come there than to see the Reverend gentleman who has just taken his seat. But the door is open, and I expect yet to see you pass in, not though, as a tool as I think this man is, to fill out an unexpired term of one year, coming from a State too that has a large majority of colored voters; but from your native State to fill the chair; for the long and fullest term, of either Vickers11 or Hamilton,12 who only yesterday, made long wails and harangues against negro citizenship. I met Joseph Curtis13 and family a few moments ago in the halls of this Department. She said she witnessed the pleasing sight of yesterday in the Senate, he said nothing of the kind, but enquired particularly after you.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 153

5/17/23 2:35 PM

154

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 26 FEBRUARY 1870

We are all well, and do pretty much as usual. I hear from home frequently through William and Libbie14 who spent a week with mother. We have had it very cold for nearly a week. I see that you have had very severe weather also. I was down for a few days with sore throat, but am well again. I have your list now & will write oftener, All send love, Affcy Your Son CHAS. R. DOUG LASS

P. S. I think, as a duty you owe to yourself & those who are mostly interested in you, that before your health fails you, you should make this winter, the last one to take such hard and killing tours through the West as you have & are now taking. You cant feel that you have failed to do your duty in no sense, and as years are creeping over you, some reward should now be bestowed upon you as a small pittance for a long & devoted life of usefulness to a race which at this day, as the fruits of your efforts, stands on a political footing with all men. There would be no impropriety, in my opinion, of your returning and selecting a home in your native State, from which for so long a time you have been an exile, and through the chances of life, ultimately come to the [illegible]. C. R. D. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 521–23, FD Papers, DLC. 1. As part of a speaking tour of the Midwest arranged by the Western Lecture Association, Douglass travelled to Chicago, Illinois, on 9 February 1870. According to the Chicago Tribune, Douglass was scheduled to deliver his “Our Composite Nationality” speech for the benefit of the Olivet Baptist Church. From there, he continued his lecture tour, arriving in Decorah, Iowa, on 12 February. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxviii; Chicago Tribune, 4 February 1870; Decorah (Iowa) Republican, 4 February 1870; Peoria (Ill.) Daily Transcript, 5 February 1870. 2. Frederick Douglass, Jr. 3. Of African and Native American descent, Hiram Rhoades Revels (1822–1901) worked as a barber in North Carolina until he attended school in Indiana and Ohio. He became the minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore in 1845. During the Civil War, Revels worked as a recruiter for African American soldiers, for whom he also served as chaplain. After the war, he settled as a minister in Natchez, Mississippi, and soon entered politics as a Republican. Although he was the first African American to take a seat in the U.S. Senate (1870–71), he opposed Radical Republicanism and later supported the Democratic party’s campaign to end Republican rule in Mississippi in 1875. In 1871–74 and 1876–83, he served as president of Alcorn University and edited the Southwestern Christian Advocate. He continued in the ministry for the remainder of his life, which included leading a congregation for a period of time in Richmond, Indiana. Billy Libby, “Senator

Y8204-Douglass.indb 154

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 26 FEBRUARY 1870

155

Hiram Revels of Mississippi Takes His Seat, January–February 1870,” Journal of Mississippi History, 37:381–94 (November 1975); Julius E. Thompson, “Hiram Rhodes Revels, 1827–1901: A Reappraisal,” JNH, 79:297–303 (Summer 1994); NCAB, 2:405–06; DAB, 8:513. 4. John Scott (1824–96), U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, was born in Alexandria, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. He studied law with a local judge and started his own legal practice in 1846. Beginning in 1857, Scott frequently represented the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in litigation. Originally a Democrat, he won a term in the state house of representatives on the Union party ticket in 1862 and subsequently became a Republican. Scott served a single term in the U.S. Senate (1869– 75), where he worked for stronger legislation against the Ku Klux Klan. After leaving Washington, Scott became general solicitor for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company; he declined an invitation to serve as President Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary of the interior. J. Simpson Africa, History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1883), 96; John W. Jordan, Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania, 32 vols. (New York, 1914–67), 6:2114–16; NCAB, 24:187; BDUSC (online). 5. Charles Daniel Drake (1811–92), lawyer and Republican U.S. senator, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended St. Joseph’s College in Bardstown, Kentucky, and then Partridge’s Military Academy in Middletown, Connecticut. Following his studies, he entered the U.S. Military Academy in 1827, but resigned three years later to study law. He was admitted to the bar in 1833, and a year later he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he continued to practice law. Initially a Whig, Drake later briefly joined the Know Nothing party. Following the collapse of the Whig party in the mid1850s, Drake joined the Democrats and served in the Missouri state legislature in 1859–60. In the early 1860s he began speaking out against slavery and aligned himself with the Radical Republicans. He played a significant role in passing Missouri’s state constitution in June 1865, and thus it was nicknamed the “Drake Constitution.” He then served in the U.S. Senate from 1867 to 1870. Grant appointed him chief justice of the U.S. Court of Claims, where he served from 1870 until his retirement in 1885. ANB (online); BDUSC (online). 6. William Morris Stewart (1825–1909), U.S. senator from Nevada, was born in Galen, New York, and later moved with his parents to Trumbull County, Ohio. He taught mathematics at Lyons Union School in Ohio, and in 1848 he enrolled in Yale College. He left Yale after three terms to seek his fortune in the gold fields near Nevada County, California. He then studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1852. He established a practice in Nevada City and quickly became a district attorney. He began his political career as a Whig and attended the 1852 Whig National Convention. In the mid1850s he aligned himself with the Democrats until his pro-Union sentiments pushed him to join the Republican party after the Civil War. He moved to Virginia City, Nevada, in 1860 and was a member of the territorial council in 1861 and the state constitutional convention in 1863. Nevada entered the Union in the autumn of 1864, and Stewart was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Union Republican. In the Senate, he favored President Johnson’s impeachment and drafted the Senate version of the Fifteenth Amendment. He withdrew from the senatorial race in 1874 but was reelected in 1887. He secured his reelection in 1893 as a Silver Republican, and in 1900 he rejoined the Republican Party, serving in the Senate until 1905. He died in Washington, D.C., in April 1909. William M. Stewart, Reminiscences of Senator William M. Stewart of Nevada, ed. George Rothwell Brown, (New York, 1908); ANB, 20:755–57. 7. James Warren Nye (1814–76), a senator from Nevada, was born in De Ruyter, New York. After receiving his secondary education at Homer Academy, he practiced law in Madison County, New York. He joined the Democratic party and served as a district attorney in 1839, surrogate of Madison County (1844–47), and judge of the county court (1847–51). In the mid-1850s he abandoned the Democratic party and joined the newly formed Republicans. He became the fi rst president of the Metropolitan Board of Police in New York City in 1857 and served until 1860. President Lincoln appointed him territorial governor of Nevada in 1861, and when the state entered the Union in 1864, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. In Washington, D.C., he supported the Radical Republicans and their plans for Reconstruction. He sought reelection but was defeated in 1873. Soon after his political

Y8204-Douglass.indb 155

5/17/23 2:35 PM

156

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 26 FEBRUARY 1870

career ended, he was committed to an insane asylum in White Plains, New York, where he died in 1876. Effie Mona Mack, “James Warren Nye: A Biography,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, 4:7–44 (July–December 1961); ANB, 16:567–68. 8. Frederick Adolphus Sawyer (1822–91), U.S. senator from South Carolina, was born in Bolton, Massachusetts. After graduating from Harvard University in 1844, he taught in New England until 1859. He then moved to Charleston, South Carolina, and took charge of the state normal school. Although he desired to return to the North at the beginning of the Civil War, he remained in Charleston, teaching until early 1864, when he moved his family back to Massachusetts. In February 1865, he returned to Charleston, where he aided in the reconstruction of South Carolina. When the state was readmitted to the Union, he was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate and served from 1868 to 1873. After his term, he served as an assistant secretary of the treasury for a year, was employed in the U.S. Coast Survey (1874–80), and worked as a special agent of the War Department (1880–87). Following his service in Washington, D.C., he ran a preparatory school in Ithaca, New York, and tutored students from Cornell University. He moved to Tennessee in 1889 and died two years later. Edward Wheelwright, The Class of 1844, Harvard College: Fifty Years after Graduation (Cambridge, Mass., 1896), 194–203; BDUSC (online). 9. Lyman Trumbull (1831–96), who was born in Colchester, Connecticut, and educated at Bacon Academy, became a lawyer and a U.S. senator from Illinois. In his three terms in office (1855–73), Trumbull was in turn a Democrat, a Republican, and, finally, a Liberal Republican who supported Horace Greeley for president. When the Liberal Republican movement collapsed, Trumbull returned to the Democratic fold. During the Civil War, Trumbull strongly supported his friend Abraham Lincoln. During Reconstruction, he championed reforms favorable to blacks, particularly the Freedmen’s Bureau, but congressional rejection of his proposals dampened his radicalism and edged him toward a more moderate political course. Trumbull opposed the impeachment proceedings against President Andrew Johnson and was one of the seven senators who voted against conviction. In later years, Trumbull supported Populist candidates in the Midwest and drew up a declaration of principles for the People’s party that was accepted at its St. Louis convention in 1894. Horace White, The Life of Lyman Trumbull (Boston, 1913); Ralph J. Roske, His Own Counsel: The Life and Times of Lyman Trumbull (Reno, 1979); ACAB, 6:166; NCAB, 12:22; DAB, 19:19–20. 10. Henry Wilson. 11. George Vickers (1801–79), lawyer and senator, was born in Chestertown, Maryland. He studied law, passed the bar in 1832, and practiced in his hometown. He served as a major general of the state militia in 1861 and was a presidential elector for the Democratic ticket in 1864. After serving in the Maryland Senate (1866–67), he was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat in 1868 and served until 1873. Following his term, he resumed his law practice in Chestertown and died there in 1879. Thomas William Herringshaw, Herringshaw’s National Library of American Biography, 5  vols. (Chicago, 1909), 5:552; BDUSC (online). 12. William Thomas Hamilton (1820–88) was born in Hagerstown, Maryland. His parents died at an early age, and he was raised by two uncles in Boonsboro. Hamilton was admitted to the bar in Maryland and in 1846 was elected to the House of Delegates on the Democratic ticket. In 1848 he won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, which he held until 1855. From that time until 1869, Hamilton repeatedly turned down nominations offered to him, including that of the governorship in 1861, to focus on his career as a lawyer. In 1869 the state legislature chose him for a term in the U.S. Senate. In 1880 he was elected governor of Maryland. Despite his popularity among the voters, Hamilton did not work well with the legislature, to the consternation of the Democratic party, and thus did not seek reelection in 1884. Baltimore Evening Capital, 26 October 1888; Baltimore Sun, 27 October 1888; Scharf, History of Baltimore, 745–47. 13. Joseph Curtis (1817–83) was the longtime business manager of the Rochester Union and Advertiser. His wife, Mary Braithwite Fish Curtis (1825–73), actively supported abolitionism and women’s rights. Both were members of the Unitarian church in Rochester. Peck, History of Rochester

Y8204-Douglass.indb 156

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 14 APRIL 1870

157

and Monroe County, 1:193–94; Ambrose Milton Shotwell, Annals of Our Colonial Ancestors and Their Descendants; or Our Quaker Forefathers and Their Posterity (Concord, Mich., 1895), 221; Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 61, 118. 14. Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Murphy Douglass.

OTTILIE ASSING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Hoboken[, N.J.] 14 April 1870.

My dear Friend: To be sure, one’ room does not look as cheerful when entered after a dear guest has left it as it looked when he was in it, and yet there seemed to be left something in it as if it were in the very atmosphere—a little seasoned perhaps with the fragrance of cigars—that made it a better place than it would have been if that guest had not been in it. I feel rather inclined to enter on some details about that matter, but as I know that you would call them incendiary, I shall not say anything more except that I think it was a delightful time, admirably spent, thought it ought to have been at least one day longer in order to allow us to see Macbeth together. There being however no prospect of enjoying that pleasure in this season, I went on Tuesday with Mr. Lange1 and Mrs. Werpup.2 Booth was splendid in it, equal to any of his other parts.3 One feature that I appreciate particularly in his performance is the tact and skill with which he knows to bring out all that is yet good and human in Macbeth, so that notwithstanding all his bloody deeds one cannot help feeling interested in him even attracted, nor is it possible to deny him pity with his sufferings. The effect would have been much greater yet if he had been more ably supported, but the others being altogether quite inferior actors, there was quite a painful contrast and Lady Macbeth was such an abomination that she kept me in constant indignation.4 Such ugliness, such grimacing and raging, such utter lack of gracefulness can hardly be outdone by any other bad actress, whilst the only redeeming feature, the real deep love and affection she has for Macbeth, so that indeed the desire to see him great is the chief cause of her fall, this affection did not come to light at all, or rather was utterly and entirely wanting, so that the whole character became merely a horrible and repulsive caricature. Does not that tragedy show more than any other the terrible power of women? a power that the right of suffrage can neither increase nor diminish. With a good wife by his side—though possibly warranted to kill at forty paces—Macbeth would very soon have

Y8204-Douglass.indb 157

5/17/23 2:35 PM

158

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 14 APRIL 1870

overcome the temptation thrown out by those bad women, the witches, and would have lived as a famous and happy man—might even live nowa-days if he had not died, to use the style of the fairy tales, and that is the “moralite” which I attach to it.—To me it appeared very objectionable too to see the witches performed by men. The witch—such has popular superstition and tradition have handed her down to us, is the very personification of all that can be bad, mean and repulsive in woman not in nature generally, and therefore cannot be acted by men without damage being done to the conception. Other things that I utterly dislike are first the English custom of turning one’s back to the spectators—a real outrage according to German and French stage rule, and the coarse tastelessness of displaying wounds by smearing one’s face all over with red paint. It looks bad, but not natural. This is an article which—with some slight alterations might fill its place in a paper, but you know, I am almost an actor myself and imagine besides that the matter interests you somewhat and that you have time for reading. Of course, we should have talked it all over together, if we had seen it in common. Another matter which certainly will interest you and give you pleasure is: that coming home on Monday I found a letter from Lewis5 with a money order of 25 dollars and the promise to pay the rest in a month or so. He shows his good intentions anyhow, and does the best he can. I should like to know what figure a Border State6 will play. A pity that you won’t get any direct information about it and that we shall have to go merely by induction, to use a philosophical expression in a very unphilosophical affair. Good night my Friend and everything good to you! I am now looking forward to Anniversary week;7 you know I must have something to look forward too. Yours ever OTTILIA ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 532–34L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Johannes “John” Daniel Lange (1841–1916) was born in Lubeck, Germany, and immigrated to the United States in March 1863. Within a few years, Lange was boarding with Assing’s friends the Koëhlers in Hoboken, New Jersey, and working as a clerk. In 1870 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States and moved to Manhattan, where he continued to work as a clerk and bookkeeper for many years. In 1878, Lange married Alvina W. Bartels (1858–1944), with whom he had two children: Dr. Linda B. Lange (1882–1947), a specialist in the fields of bacteriology and immunology who taught at both Johns Hopkins and the University of Wisconsin Medical School, and Henry B. Lange (1885–1953), who was a mechanical engineer. Lange, who made frequent trips back to Germany, died there in 1916 while undergoing treatment for cancer in Berlin. 1870 U.S. Census, New Jersey,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 158

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 14 APRIL 1870

159

Hudson County, 42; 1900 U.S. Census, New York, New York County, 66B; 1910 U.S. Census, New York, New York County, 66A; Marilyn Ogilvie and Joy Harvey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century, 2 vols. (New York, 2000), 2:748; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 275; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; “U.S., Passport Applications, 1795–1925,” Ancestry.com; “Reports of Deaths of American Citizens Abroad, 1835–1974,” Ancestry.com; Find a Grave (online); Smithsonian Institution, “A Finding Aid to the Sylvester Rosa Koehler Papers, 1833–1904,” aaa.si.edu. 2. Apparently a native of Bremen, Germany, Eliza Werpup (1815–?) was in all likelihood Christine Elise Schroder, the wife of Johann Diedrich Werpup, whose sole surviving child (christened Georgina Auguste Elwire Sophie Werpup) was born in that city on 12 August 1841. Mrs. Werpup was Ottilie Assing’s landlady in Hoboken, New Jersey, off and on for nine years, beginning sometime in either 1869 or 1870. Although it is probable that she resided there earlier, Mrs. Werpup, who is described as the widow of John Diedrich (or Diedrick) Werpup, first appears in the Hoboken city directory in 1868, residing at 74 Garden, which is where Assing was living in 1870. In 1874, Mrs. Werpup resided at 286 Bloomfield in Hoboken, but by 1880 she was living with her daughter’s family at 300 Washington Street, where she was still dwelling as late as 1905. 1880 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 32D; 1905 New Jersey State Census, Hudson County, 11B; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 291, 342; Lohmann, Radical Passion, 336, 363n; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; “U.S., Dutch Reformed Church Records in Selected States, 1639–1989,” Ancestry.com; “Deutschland Geburten und Taufen, 1558–1898,” FamilySearch.org. 3. Edwin Thomas Booth (1833–93) was an accomplished Shakespearean actor who achieved critical acclaim and fame throughout the United States and Europe, most notably for his performances as Hamlet. Although Booth was famous in his own right, he is also known as the brother of President Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth. He began his acting career alongside his father, Junius Brutus Booth, Sr., as a teenager in a production of Richard III. He later was manager of the Winter Garden in New York from 1863 to 1867, when the theater burned down. In 1869, he built Booth’s Theatre at 6th Avenue and 23rd Street in New York City. Despite his popularity, the business venture was unsuccessful, and he declared bankruptcy in 1873. He continued to tour in the United States and Europe, finding success in London in 1880–81. Booth formed The Players, a men’s social club for actors and authors, in 1888. He served as its first president and was a member until his death, dying in his office at the club in 1893. Edwin Booth performed in Macbeth in April 1870 alongside Fanny Morant as Lady Macbeth. New York Times, 3 April 1870; Finding aid for Booth-Grossman Family Papers, *T-Mss 1967-001, Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; ANB (online). 4. Fanny Morant (1821–1900) was born in England and performed at Drury Lane before settling in America in 1853. She worked steadily on the New York City stage for decades. Morant also played Gertrude opposite Booth’s Hamlet on numerous occasions. T. Allston Brown, A History of the New York Stage, from the First Performance in 1732 to 1901, 3 vols. (New York, 1902), 2:409–13. 5. Lewis H. Douglass. 6. This was Assing’s private nickname for Anna Murray Douglass. Fought, Women, 213–14; Lohmann, Radical Passion, 363n; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 186. 7. According to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, this was a term commonly used before the Civil War to refer to interrelated reform movements premised on an expansive understanding of individual rights and the responsiveness of social organizations to deliberate change: antislavery, women’s rights, temperance, and tract or missionary societies. Because many people were committed members of multiple organizations, many of these organizations commonly met during “anniversary week” each year in the same city. Ronald G. Walters, “Abolition and Antebellum Reform,” History Now: The Journal of the Gilder Lehrman Institute (online).

Y8204-Douglass.indb 159

5/17/23 2:35 PM

160

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM WHIPPER, 9 JUNE 1870

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM WHIPPER Rochester[, N.Y.] 9 June 1870.

Wm Whipper Esqr. My dear Whipper: Your letters are always welcome. We understand each other about as well as is possible to mortals. The noise made among the Colored people about my Horticultural Hall Speech1 has given me a new impression of the evils wrought by Slavery. It has almost completely divested us of a love of Philosophical Inquiry. We are afraid of it. Such has been our training that we cannot trust our natural powers—and lean upon authority more like children than grown up men. We make ten preachers to one thinker—and value a scriptural text, far higher than a scientific truth. Slavery never admitted our manhood. It always called us “boys”— and its whole machinery was so managed to keep us “boys—” It is time that colored men had waked up to this fact. We have cultivated a love of the marvelous so long, that the simple truth of things seems to have no attraction for us. It is far pleasanter to us to pursue what cannot be known than that which may be known. Geology, Chemistry, Astronomy, Botany, Philology, Ethology—and profane history have no voice to the masses of our people. One sweep of the Telescope around the Heavens—convert Genesees into a mith2—The commonest stone on the Earth does the work for the six days story. But one would be stoned if he said so in the presence of the religious crowd of colored people, yet all intelligent white men know this—and know it none the less because they still cling to the Bible. Do you know that very many scientific men allow themselves to be misunderstood by the church simply because they lack the moral courage to face the fury of the crowed—which you know are generally furious in proportion to their ignorance. Others sail along with the church because they fear persecution and starvation. Even George Comb—in his admirable work, the Constitution of Man,3 after proving— questions that man is in his life what he is in his mutual and moral endowments.—What he is in his very Constitution, goes on to make room for faith. He wrote in Scotland—Superstitious Scotland—and he must do this or starve. As to my taking dear Mr Weir—in place of Bishop Campbell 4 you hit the nail exactly on the head. I know and appreciate Mr Weir. He is sharpe—but not weighty—intense but not strong—quick but not power-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 160

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM WHIPPER, 9 JUNE 1870

161

ful—as I a debator—he would be a more formidable opponent than Bishop Campbell—but for the sake of the position of the latter I prefer him to Mr Weir. This whole matter has been more widely circulated than I expected and will undoubtedly close some doors to me were heretofore open— but I am prepared for the words and am happy in the consciousness of being right. Very truly yours FREDERICK DOUG LASS ALS: Leon Gardiner Miscellaneous Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 1. On 26 April 1870, Douglass delivered a speech at Horticulture Hall in Philadelphia to celebrate the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. During this address, Douglass refused to praise God for any role he might have played in the antislavery movement, instead thanking the countless men and women who fought and died to end slavery. Many black Christian leaders in the city—including Bishop Jabez Campbell of Bethel Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia—severely criticized Douglass for his statements. Campbell led a meeting to address Douglass and his challenges to Christianity. The group adopted a set of resolutions condemning Douglass and his views, including his belief that Bible study should not be conducted in public schools. Douglass replied to these resolutions in a letter to the editor of the Philadelphia Press. The letter was also published in the 7 July 1870 issue of the New York Independent. Boston Investigator, 29 June 1870; New York Independent, 7 July 1870; Reginald F. Davis, Frederick Douglass: A Precursor of Liberation Theology (Macon, Ga., 2005), 54–55; John Ernest, ed., Douglass in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates (Iowa City, Iowa, 2014), 123; William L. Van Deburg, “Frederick Douglass: Maryland Slave to Religious Liberal,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 69:27, 38 (Spring 1974). 2. Douglass contends that science raises serious doubts about the literal accuracy of the creation myth in Genesis. Gen. 1:1–31. 3. Writings on moral education by the Scottish phrenologist George Combe (1788–1858) enjoyed a wide circulation on both sides of the Atlantic. Combe argued that happiness resulted from relentless efforts at moral, mental, and physical self-improvement, and that it advanced in proportion to one’s increase in knowledge. The American antislavery community esteemed Combe because “he put himself in communication with the American abolitionists, and ever afterwards kept the channel open.” NASS, 11 September 1858; Washington National Era, 30 September 1858; George Combe, The Constitution of Man Considered in Relation to External Objects (1834; New York, 1974); George Shepperson, “Frederick Douglass and Scotland,” JNH, 38:307–21 (July 1953); The Dictionary of National Biography, 22 vols. (London, 1921–22), 4:883–85. 4. Jabez Pitt Campbell (1815–91) was born in Slaughter Neck, Delaware, to free black parents, Anthony and Catherine Campbell. When he was a youth, his father used him as a security for a debt. When Anthony could not repay the debt, Campbell was forced into slavery. After four and a half years, he was able to pay off the debt and, at age eighteen, regain his freedom. Settling in Philadelphia, Campbell became a member of the Bethel A.M.E. Church and entered the ministry in 1839. From 1856 to 1858 he served as the editor of the Christian Recorder, and in 1864 he was elected a bishop of the A.M.E. Church. Never prominent in black antislavery activities, Campbell was a member of the African Colonization Society and became its vice president in 1876. Throughout his lifetime, he and his wife, Mary Ann, contributed money to many philanthropic institutions, including Wilberforce College in Ohio and Jabez Pitt Campbell College (later Jackson State University) in

Y8204-Douglass.indb 161

5/17/23 2:35 PM

162

DOUGLASS TO SYLVESTER R. KOËHLER, 14 JUNE 1870

Mississippi. African Repository and Colonial Journal, 53:48 (Washington, D.C., 1877); Benjamin T. Tanner, An Apology for African Methodism (Baltimore, 1867), 158–71; Smith, Notable Black American Women, 2:80–81; Simmons, Men of Mark, 1031–33.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SYLVESTER R. KOËHLER Rochester[, N.Y.] 14 June 1870.

My dear Mr Koehler. I shall find it no hardship to say a good word for the Portrait of Senator Revels1 which has just been published by the Prang and company in Boston2 for it is a remarkably good one. Since my letter to you in April,3 I have several times seen Mr Revels and can therefore speak of his picture from personal knowledge. (It strikes me as a faithful representation of the man.) It is neither flattered by partiality nor distorted by malice or prejudice. Upon public ground I think the Publishing House of Prang and Co. for giving the country this admirable picture of our first colored American Senator. Whatever may be the prejudices of those who may look upon it, they will be compelled to admit that the Mississippi Senator is a man, and one who will easily pass for a man among men. We colored men see ourselves described and painted as monkeys, that we think it a great piece of good fortune to find an exception to this general rule. The picture now before me not only speaks well for our representative man in the Senate, but speaks well for the Art which produced it. This chrome lithograph of Senator Revels, as a work of Art, is admirable. It has all the softness and perfection of shading of a fine oil painting. Heretofore colored Americans have thought little of adorning their parlors with pictures. They have had to do with the stern and I may say, the ugly realities of life. Pictures come not with slavery and oppression and destitution—but with liberty, fairplay, leisure and refinements. These conditions are now possible to the Colored American Citizens—and I think the walls of their houses will soon begin to bear evidences of their altered relations to the people about them. For once This portrait of Senator Revels This portrait, representing truly, as it does, the face and form of our first colored Senator to the U. States Senate—is a historical picture. It marks, with almost startling emphases the point dividing our new from our old condition. Every colored householder in the land should have one of these portraits in his parlor—and should explain it to his children—as

Y8204-Douglass.indb 162

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO JOHN WEISS FORNEY, 21 JUNE 1870

163

the dividing line between the darkness and despair that overhung our past, and the light and hope that now beam upon our future as a people. I shall be glad to have you make use of this note in commending the portrait of Hon: Hiram R. Revels to the colored people, and all other people of the United States. Yours Respectfully. FREDERICK DOUG LASS ALS: FD Miscellaneous, CtY. 1. Hiram R. Revels. 2. The Boston-based firm of Louis Prang & Co. promoted a chromolithograph print of Hiram Revels as “an exact imitation of an Oil Painting, and hardly to be distinguished from it.” The model for this print was an original oil painting produced by the artist Theodore Kaufmann. Louis Prang, Prang’s Civil War Pictures: The Complete Battle Chromos of Louis Prang, ed. Harold Holzer (New York, 2001), 26. 3. A letter by Douglass to Koëhler written in April 1870 has not been located.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JOHN WEISS FORNEY 1 [Washington, D.C. 21 June 1870.]

Trials for heresy in our day and country, where liberty of thought and speech are conceded to the humblest member of society, are usually deemed farcical, if not harmless. It was once, indeed, a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the church. History proves that there is no malice and cruelty so bitter and unrelenting as that malice and cruelty which clothes itself in saintly robes, and professes to be “contending for the faith once delivered to the saints.”2 A few centuries ago the weapons of religion against heresy were carnal enough. “Cord and steel,” “fire and sword,” “halter and rack” were the chosen instruments.3 Thanks, not to faith, but to the enlightenment of the age and the growth of rational ideas among men, to differ with the church to-day does not bring torture and physical death. The worst that bigotry can now do is to assail reputation and fill the mouths of the vulgar crowd with meaningless epithets. There is no doubt that religious malice is the same to-day as three hundred years ago. It would bite, sting, and devour now, as then, if it only had the power. It would crush living flesh to-day with the same sanctimonious ferocity as it does reputation. The will to do is manifest; the power only is wanting. The church and the street are about the same in point of authority and in point of excellence. Both are ever on the side of popular wrong, and both are

Y8204-Douglass.indb 163

5/17/23 2:35 PM

164

DOUGLASS TO JOHN WEISS FORNEY, 21 JUNE 1870

against unpopular right. The condemnations, maledictions, and denunciations of the church, whether Bethel or St. Peter’s,4 to the outside world, have no more significance than the vulgar curses of the crowd.5 It may be said of Bethel as of other religious bodies, they are “naught but men and women,” and no wiser or better than other men and women. Without consulting the confused, incoherent, illogical, and strangelyworded resolutions, so characteristic of Bethel, by which the attempt is made to degrade men among the colored people, I will here give the substance of what I did say on the evening of the 29th of April, in Horticultural Hall,6 and which I take to be the very head and front of my offending.7 I regarded, received, and treated the deliverance of the colored people of this country from bondage, their elevation to citizenship, and their subsequent enfranchisement under the Fifteenth Amendment, not as a miracle, nor due to any special interposition of Divine Providence but as resulting from the certain operation of natural causes inherent in the very constitution of human nature. As slavery was created by human selfishness, so slavery was abolished by human justice, wisdom, benevolence. Such was my view, and such is the “dangerous sentiment” to which I gave utterance. Had I come out with some “ram’s horn” story,8 some dream or vision, or presumptuous assertion as to the ways of Divine Providence, about which men speculate forever and settle nothing, I might have escaped the censures of my Bethel brothers, and perhaps passed along for a very pious man. If I had said that God had abolished slavery in answer to the prayers of the American Church and pulpit, a body which has done more to protect slavery and give it respectability than all other influences combined; if I had said that foremost among the instrumentalities which gave liberty to the American bondman were the sermons and prayers of “Big Bethel,” a church which closed its doors against abolition in the hour of its extremest need.9 I should have spoken against fact, but should have received a cheering amen from Bishop Campbell.10 I, however, professed no knowledge of the agency of prayer in the great revolution which has taken place; but spoke simply of the natural moral forces of human society, and their tendency to the noble, the true, and the good. I spoke only as a reformer, understanding the wisdom of adapting means to ends, and believing, if this sin cursed earth is ever to be made better, it is to be made so by faithful exertion and wise application of human energies. Moral, not less than physical, evils are under the control of man. When anything is to be done in this world, some denizen of this world has got to do it, or it will

Y8204-Douglass.indb 164

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO JOHN WEISS FORNEY, 21 JUNE 1870

165

go undone. We are under inexorable law, unchangeable and eternal, and “whatever a man soweth that shall he reap.”11 The American people violated the law of justice, love, and liberty; and in due time that law, written in the human soul, vindicated itself, through war, blood and pestilence. But why could I not join in the loud hallelujahs and thanksgiving on the 26th of April, and thus have escaped the dreadful censures which have since been heaped upon me? I will tell you. Because I would not stultify myself. During the forty years of moral effort to overthrow slavery in this country, that system, with all its hell-black horrors and crimes, found no more secure shelter anywhere than amid the popular religious cant of the day. One honest Abolitionist was a greater terror to slaveholders than whole acres of camp-meeting preachers shouting glory to God. Years ago, when denouncing the pro-slavery attitude of the church (and Bethel among the rest, for it too was in the South, preaching, “Servants, obey your masters!”)12 it was predicted that the day would come when the churches of this country would claim the honor of abolishing slavery. They already do so. Knowing their time-serving and cowardly subserviency to slavery, and knowing Bethel to be like unto the rest, I could give no countenance to its pretensions. Hence I declare, what I believe the literal truth, that the abolition of slavery is due to natural causes. Again, if we may venture upon such a question, admit, if we must, that God abolished slavery (and we must concede that he did that important work only as he does all things else) one act of his must be esteemed to be as wise and as beneficial as another. A finite creature has no right to discriminate between the acts of an infinite God. Do not all his acts accord with an infinite purpose? And is not this purpose eternally right? Who shall therefore sit in judgment upon the works of God? Unless we are prepared for this, have we not the same duty to thank God for slavery as for the abolition of slavery? Our divines, North and South, a few years ago, told us that slavery was of Divine appointment. Did “Big Bethel” then thank God for slavery? Did she call upon the slave in his chains to praise the Lord for the bloody lash that tore his quivering flesh? Why not, if God established slavery? If we assume to thank God for one of his acts, we must thank him for all. Very evidently, Mr. Editor, my Bethel brethren have opened up a large subject—far too large, I fear, for the limits of your paper, if not for the limits of Bethel intellect and theological learning. Being no theologian myself, I confine my public utterances to things more comprehensible. When a wrong thing has been done, I know that men have done it, and that

Y8204-Douglass.indb 165

5/17/23 2:35 PM

166

DOUGLASS TO JOHN WEISS FORNEY, 21 JUNE 1870

somebody is to blame for it. I know, too, that when a right thing has been done somebody has done it—somebody to whom praise and blame are of some consequence, and that awarding or withholding it may in some degree affect the conduct of other responsible beings for good. The way is clear to do this, since it is natural, and involves no doubt, darkness, nor contradiction. If I am wrong in all this, I shall be very glad to be set right, and will even return thanks to my Bethel brethren for enlightenment. But I warn them that hard names, threats, and denunciations, even though they should drive me outside their ranks and take from me the title of “leader of the colored people”—a title I never assumed and do not claim—will only leave me just where I am. PLe: Washington National Republican, 21 June 1870; Other texts in New York Independent,7 July 1870; Washington New Era, 14 July 1880. 1. The New York Independent indicated that this letter was written to the editor of the Philadelphia Press, John Weiss Forney (1817–81). A prominent Democratic party journalist from Pennsylvania, Forney had been a close ally of James Buchanan. From 1851 to 1855 he served as clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives while also editing the Union, a pro–Democratic party newspaper in the capital. After losing the race for a seat in the U.S. Senate to Simeon Cameron, a Republican, Forney launched a new newspaper, the Press, in Philadelphia in August 1857. After quarreling with Buchanan over his efforts to make Kansas a slave state, Forney shifted allegiance to the Republicans. From 1859 to 1861 he was again the clerk of the House, and he published a second newspaper, the Chronicle, in Washington. During the Civil War, Forney’s Chronicle was highly supportive of the Lincoln administration, but during Reconstruction he broke with Andrew Johnson and endorsed impeachment. In 1868, Forney returned to Pennsylvania and changed the name of his newspaper from the Press to the Philadelphia Press; he was still the paper’s editor during the U.S. centennial celebrations. North American and United States Gazette, 14 July 1857; Centennial Newspaper Exhibition, 1876 (New York, 1876), 277–79; J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 1609–1884, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1884), 3:2026–27; NCAB, 3:267–68; DAB, 6:526–27. 2. Jude 1:3. 3. Douglass refers to forms of torture employed by medieval and early modern Roman Catholic Inquisition courts to extract confessions of heresy. Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven, Conn., 1998), 189–90. 4. The original basilica of St. Peter’s was constructed by order of the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century. The building underwent major renovations during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including the construction of its massive dome, designed by Michelangelo Buonarroti. As the home church of the bishop of Rome, the pontiff, St. Peter’s became a symbol for the central administration of the Roman Catholic Church. John Murray, A Handbook of Rome and Its Environs (London, 1867), 194–210. 5. American Methodists founded the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1784, creating national autonomy for their denomination. Many free blacks were attracted to the Methodist Church for its inclusiveness; however, as the institution of slavery grew, so did racial discrimination within American Methodist congregations. In 1787, the black members of St. George’s Church in Philadelphia withdrew after white congregants attempted to forcibly remove Absalom Jones, Richard Allen, and William White to the area surrounding the church walls as the men knelt in prayer. This incident became the catalyst for the formation of two black churches in Philadelphia: an Episcopal church, St. Thomas, where Jones served as rector; and the Bethel African Methodist Church, led by Allen

Y8204-Douglass.indb 166

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO CHARLES SUMNER, 6 JULY 1870

167

but governed by the white leadership of St. George’s. Both churches were dedicated in 1794, but disputes between Bethelites and the white elders were frequent and bitter. Facing similar problems within their Methodist congregations, black Methodists in Baltimore established their Bethel Church in 1797. Daniel Coker assumed leadership of the Baltimore church in 1801. Allen and Coker together started the independent African Methodist movement in America; by 1816, several black Methodist congregations were in existence. Representatives of these congregations met at Bethel, Philadelphia, in April 1816 and resolved to form a separate body, the African Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States of America. While adhering to most of the Methodist discipline, the African Methodist Episcopal Church emphasized and continues to dedicate itself to education, political agitation, and social action. Daniel A. Payne, Recollections of Seventy Years (Nashville, Tenn., 1888); James T. Campbell, Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa (New York, 1995), 10–14; Harry V. Richardson, Dark Salvation: The Story of Methodism as It Developed among Blacks in America (Garden City, N.Y., 1976), 62–116; George A. Singleton, The Romance of African Methodism: A Study of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (New York, 1952), 1–25; ACAB, 4:685; NCAB, 4:188; DANB, 484. 6. Douglass spoke in Philadelphia’s Horticultural Hall on 26 April 1870 at a celebration for the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. Douglass was part of a procession of African Americans so long that it took over an hour to pass through the city streets. Washington National Republican, 27 April 1870. 7. The phrase “the very head and front of my offending” is from Othello, act 1, sc. 3. 8. Douglass probably alludes to the shofar, a musical instrument frequently mentioned in the Old Testament in connection with religious observances. Exod. 19:16, Ps. 81:3, Lev. 25:9. 9. Fearing mob attack, most of Philadelphia’s black congregations had not welcomed antislavery meetings in their sanctuaries. In 1848, Douglass had criticized not only the Bethel A.M.E. Church, but two other African American congregations in Philadelphia—St. Thomas Episcopal Church and Central Presbyterian Church—as well for not permitting visiting abolitionists to make speeches from their pulpits. In the North Star, Douglass sparked a public dispute with the Reverend William Douglass of St. Thomas’s over such restrictions, and the pressure forced these churches to adopt a more welcoming attitude toward abolitionism. NASS, 19 October 1948; NS, 27 October 1848; Julie Winch, Philadelphia’s Black Elite: Activism, Accommodation, and the Struggle for Autonomy, 1787–1848 (Philadelphia, 1988), 155–66. 10. Jabez P. Campbell. 11. Gal. 6:7. 12. Eph. 6:5–9.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO CHARLES SUMNER Rochester[, N.Y.] 6 July 1870.

Hon: Chas Sumner. My dear Sir. I have been deeply interested and instructed by your truly able speech on the Franking question.1 You have opened the eyes of the nation to the highly beneficent character of the whole mail service of the country. I rejoice also to see you in the right place upon the Chinese question.2 As usual, you are in the race. The country is in the rear, and you will have

Y8204-Douglass.indb 167

5/17/23 2:35 PM

168

DOUGLASS TO CHARLES SUMNER, 6 JULY 1870

to bide your time. A bitter contest, I fear, is before us—but when pride, prejudice—and narrow views of political economy are on one side—and humanity—civilization and sound Statesmanship are on the other—there is no reason to doubt as to which will finally prevail. In this discussion you have the advantage which comes of fixed principles. While others are entangled in the meshes of temporary expediency—and hesitate—you can go forward untousled. I send you this line simply to remind you that now as in time past I follow your every important step with eager earnest eye—of a friend. a grateful friend— I have not been able to see with you the Cuban question3—yet I trust your understanding of its relations and bearings rather than my own. I have to thank you for several important documents of late—and among them, I was especially pleased to find a copy of the eulogies pronounced upon the late Senator Fessenden.4 I see not how you could have spoken more tenderly of him. Your tribute to his memory, is a tribute to your own magnanimity. To his friends it must have touching and grateful indeed—for they know how easily a man of different mould— might have remained silent—or spoken in other tones of the grandly gifted but often ill tempered senator. Dont acknowledge this note. I value your time Truly yours Always FREDK DOUG LASS ALS: Charles Sumner Correspondence, MH-H. Another text in General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 561–63L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. On 10 June 1870, Charles Sumner delivered a speech in Congress on the franking privilege. This privilege, which allowed members of Congress to send and receive mail with their signature free of postage, had been debated over the years. While some believed congressmen abused this power, others viewed the franking privilege as a way to connect directly with constituents. Sumner argued that this system brought the government and people “nearer together” by circulating knowledge through franked speeches and documents. During this lengthy speech, Sumner not only defended the franking privilege but also gave a historical review of the postal systems of the United States and Great Britain. Walter Gaston Shotwell, Life of Charles Sumner (New York, 1910), 631–33; David B. Frost, Classified: A History of Secrecy in the United States Government (Jefferson, N.C., 2017), 101; Congressional Globe, 41st Cong., 2d sess., 4291–98. 2. Following the Civil War, there was great fear about the rising number of Chinese immigrants coming to the United States, especially in western states such as California, where Democrats attempted to sway voters by arguing that the Republican principle of “equality for all races” would lead to foreign born control of the government, and so pushed to keep strongly restrictive naturalization laws. As the chair for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Charles Sumner played a key role in the formation of the Burlingame-Seward Treaty of 1868, which, among other things, established some basic principles that aimed to ease immigration restrictions. In a speech entitled “Naturalization Laws: No Discrimination on Account of Color,” given over the course of 2 and 4 July, Sumner argued for the removal of the word “white” from current naturalization laws, as he had done in previ-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 168

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OLIVER OTIS HOWARD TO DOUGLASS, 10 JULY 1870

169

ous years. He argued that if any immigrant were coming to America with the intention of becoming a citizen and taking a vow of loyalty, regardless of color, that vow should be trusted to uphold “our institutions.” Sumner continued, “I simply ask you to stand by the Declaration of your fathers . . . Worse than any heathen or pagan abroad are those in our midst who are false to our institutions.” Douglass thought much the same way, as is seen in his discussion of Chinese immigration in his “Our Composite Nationality” speech. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:250–52; New Orleans Republican, 30 August 1868; Charles Sumner, The Works of Charles Sumner, 15 vols. (Boston, 1880), 13:483, 485; Foner, Reconstruction, 313–14; “The Burlingame-Seward Treaty, 1868,” history.state.gov. 3. In October 1868, a group of Cuban planters initiated a revolution for independence from Spain. In the United States, debates emerged over the role the country should play in the conflict. Some believed the United States should recognize the rebels as belligerents, while others deemed the conflict a civil war and called for neutrality. While Sumner and Douglass sympathized with the Cuban rebels, they differed about what action to take. Sumner, along with Grant’s secretary of state, Hamilton Fish, pushed the president to issue a proclamation of neutrality, not only to protect American commerce but also to avoid a war with Spain. Douglass advocated a more aggressive approach. For example, he called for money to be raised to publish the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, which would proclaim the abolition of slavery, and supported the calling of a national colored convention to aid the rebel cause. Ultimately, the United States declared its neutrality, and after a ten-year struggle, Spain thwarted the rebellion. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:204n; Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 284–85; Herbert Donald, Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (New York, 1970), 395, 416–19; Kenneth E. Hendrickson, The Spanish-American War (Westport, Conn., 2003), 5; Merline Pitre, “Frederick Douglass and American Diplomacy in the Caribbean,” Journal of Black Studies, 13:458 (June 1983). 4. Samuel Fessenden (1784–1869), lawyer and abolitionist, was born in Fryeburg, Maine. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1806, gained admission to the Maine bar in 1809, and married Deborah Chandler in 1813. He served in the Massachusetts state senate in 1818–19. Along with his son and later U.S. senator William Pitt Fessenden, he moved to Portland, Maine, in 1822. Fessenden served with the Massachusetts militia for fourteen years and rose to the rank of major general. He represented Portland in the state legislature from 1825 to 1826, following the separation of Maine from Massachusetts, and practiced law in Maine for forty years. An active philanthropist, Fessenden became involved with the American Anti-Slavery Society and was the Liberty party’s candidate for governor and congress in 1847. Douglass saw Fessenden speak at least once in Portland, and Fessenden was nearly always present for Douglass’s orations there. Douglass was also welcomed into Fessenden’s home not long after his escape from bondage. Douglass to Francis Fessenden, 10 October 1881, Fessenden Family Mss., MeB; ACAB, 2:443.

OLIVER OTIS HOWARD TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C. 10 July 1870.

Douglass Mr Frederic, My Dear Sir: I read a part of your reply to the Philadelphia resolutions, copied into the “Independent” of July.1 Much that you there say accords with my judgment and sympathy, but I feel that you speak more strongly and sweepingly than you meant. The church and state are about the same in point of “authority and in point of excellence.[”] Both are ever on the side of “popular wrong,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 169

5/17/23 2:35 PM

170

OLIVER OTIS HOWARD TO DOUGLASS, 10 JULY 1870

and both are against unpopular right.”2 Such had not been the teachings of the branches of the Church that I have attended from my youth. That individual ministers have led astray, that people have blindly followed them into the practice and defense of crime, I admit, but has not been the general rule. I learned in the church to love God. I learned to reverence the authority of His law. I found in the church a savior, and my heart has been by his word and grace enlarged in its capacity to love my fellow men, and I firmly believe that it is the foundation of the teachings of the New England Churches, that made so many strong abolitionists there. The great majority of ministers I have heard in Maine have been outspoken against slavery, against wrong of any description and my view has been that the usefulness of men and women in the church has been, not in consequence of, but in spite of right instruction they receive. “Love thy neighbor” is the teaching[.] Act up to it and slavery of every description falls. Now as to the abolition; you do not attribute it to a miracle; not due to any special interposition of Divine Providence, but as resulting from the certain operation of national causes inherent in the very constitution of human nature. Were this so we should be just as thankful to the author of human nature; the Lord God who so wonderfully imagined all things. But I think some of us who face the brunt of the battle, realized a daily aid, specially given as to a beseeching child. I cannot look upon Mr Lincoln3 regarding him as a special providence, as much as David, and even Andrew Johnson as much as was Pharaoh or Herod whose wicked purposes were overruled by the good of God’s people.4 Natural indeed, because God is in every thing and guiding every thing, and hindering even the independent will of Satan and his friends. We do not read that God is the author of wrong. He can abolish wrong. This is the everlasting work of Christ, by his spirit working in us and with us. He is not the author of sin such as slavery, drunkenness, lying, stealing, murder, hate & etc. You are a leader, have long been, and may God keep you in the forefront; but do not let the sins of church members obscure your clear vision, and hide the torches of truth that Christ and his followers (formed into the Churches) do really bear. My point is that I long to have you a strong leader in the church and have been fighting for truth and principle there, and are sustained. Very truly Yours [ILLEGIBLE] O O HOWARD 5 ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 567R–69, FD Papers, DLC. Another text in ALS: O. O. Howard Manuscripts, MeB.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 170

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO OLIVER OTIS HOWARD, 13 JULY 1870

171

1. The attack on Douglass’s religious faith by the Reverend Jabez Campbell and Douglass’s written reply appeared in the 7 July 1870 issue of the New York Independent. 2. In his letter, Douglass writes: “The Church and the street are about the same in point of authority and in point of excellence. Both are ever on the side of popular wrong, and both are against unpopular right.” Howard correctly quotes him except for his replacement of “street” with “state.” Boston Investigator, 29 June 1870; New York Independent, 7 July 1870. 3. Abraham Lincoln. 4. Douglass compares the autocratic behavior of President Andrew Johnson to three biblical figures: David, the second Jewish king to rule over a united Judea and Israel, around 1000 B.C.E; Pharaoh Thutmose II, believed by some to have been the monarch at the time Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt; and Herod “the Great” I, presided over Judea at the time of the birth of Jesus. 1 Sam., Exod., Matt., 2:1–23. 5. In the copy of the letter retained in Howard’s files, his rank followed on the line below his signature: “Bvt Major General UASA Commissioner.”

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO OLIVER OTIS HOWARD Rochester[, N.Y.] 13 July 1870.

Genl. O. O. Howard: Dear Sir: you were among the first in my thoughts this morning, and very gratefully so. I had read your noble letter to young Smith now so shamefully persecuted because of his color at W. Point.1 Your cheering and fortifying words to this young man are like yourself. But I did not know till I went to the Post Office this morning that you had a word for me as well as for him and are equally well meant. Whether the church in any age is more favorable to progress than the world— it is in advance of the World in adopting and propagating new truth, or new applications of old and admitted truths—Can easily be answered by an appeal to history. So far as the question relates to the great truth of human Liberty— I think that history proved that the church taken as a whole was [illegible] more ready to receive it and aid in its propagations than was the world. The public Hall rather than the Sacred Sanctuary, the public platform rather than the Holy pulpit—the secular press rather than the religious papers—the political conventions rather than the religious associations—the men standing outside, rather than the men standing inside—educated the public mind and heart up to the point of making a stand against slavery—and held the public mind and heart there, until it was was possible to elect Abraham Lincoln—and thus bring Liberty and Slavery face to face on the battlefield—and all subsequent events in relation to slavery and Liberty. Of course, I do not deny—that good men in

Y8204-Douglass.indb 171

5/17/23 2:35 PM

172

DOUGLASS TO OLIVER OTIS HOWARD, 13 JULY 1870

the Church, assisted in this great work—my statement simply respects the Church as such—as a grand organized power—and this grand organized power—I claim was from the first—no more friendly to the cause of the slave than the outside world. Who are those who are today persecuting young Smith at W. Point? Are they not the educated respectable young Christian gentlemen—who have grown up there from among Christian families—Christian pews—and Christian Sabbath Schools? Your own noble broad heart condemns this inhuman spirit of persecution. This malignant hate; but where do you find more of it than in the Christian church? I remember the odium you brought upon your own glorious name—none the less glorious in my eyes—for the effort recently made to cover it with shame, because you were in favor of opening the gates of the Congregational Church in Washington2 without regard to color or race. To me it matters not whether I am made a slave by a christian or an infidel— Whether I degraded by a church or a theatre—I regard them all on a moral level—and I have reverence nor respect for either. You remind me—not offensively, that you were reared under a religious a different religious from those of mine. In this you are fortunate—you would say; blest. I think however, my religious schooling—has done me good—in that it has compelled me to test the value—of ideas presented me in the name of religion. When I was once compelled to select between a text and manhood—I chose the latter. I could not run away and obey my master at the same time—but I did runaway—and when I did this—I threw off a religion of authority. You will naturally ask me; then Douglass—what have you now to guide you? I will tell you: I have the general enlightenment of the age— and my own moral convictions of right and wrong—to guide me. I have the truth—as open to me as to the Infallible Pope Pious IXth3—or any of his Protestant feeble imitators. On the question as to whether slavery was abolished by Divine or human intervention I need not dwell—for you virtually admit—that God does what men do, and that he leaves undone what men leave undone. Very truly yours FREDK DOUG LASS ALS: O. O. Howard Manuscripts, MeB. 1. James Webster Smith (1850–76), a West Point cadet from South Carolina, penned a letter to General O. O. Howard on 29 June 1870, describing the difficult environment he was facing at the military academy because of the color of his skin. Howard replied to the cadet on 8 July 1870, and the exchange was printed in the New York Tribune. In the letter, Howard encouraged Smith to “endure

Y8204-Douglass.indb 172

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO OLIVER OTIS HOWARD, 13 JULY 1870

173

the insults without any show of fear” and trust in God, who, he believed, “will bear you through every trial.” After a history of harassing incidents, Smith was dismissed from West Point in June 1874 on the pretext of academic deficiencies. New York Tribune, 12 July 1870; Little Rock Daily Arkansas Gazette, 27 July 1870; Albert E. Williams, Black Warriors: Unique Units and Individuals (Haverford, Pa., 2003), 18–23. 2. Founded in 1865 by New Englanders who had settled in the nation’s capital, the First Congregational Church, at the intersection of Tenth and G streets, in Washington, D.C., hired the Reverend Charles Brandon Boynton of Cincinnati, also the chaplain of the House of Representatives, as its first pastor. O. O. Howard had been an active lay leader of the congregation from its early years. During the summer of 1867, while Boynton was away on vacation, Howard encouraged members of the church to invite others, regardless of color, to join the Sunday school as a way to boost attendance. Soon, the Sunday school included 120 black children, which angered many members of the church. Once Boynton returned from vacation, he denounced Howard’s actions, causing a bitter division within the church. On 17 November 1867, Boynton delivered a sermon titled “A Duty Which the Colored People Owe to Themselves.” In this sermon, he claimed that while blacks were different from whites, they were so because God made them that way, which did not make them inferior or submissive to any race. He then stated that while he encouraged blacks to attend their own churches, if such churches were not available, any qualified black person would be welcome to apply for membership at the Congregational Church. While Boynton’s arguments in favor of a segregated church were mild, Howard had no choice but to oppose him, based on his strong convictions of equality and his role in the Freedmen’s Bureau. In January 1869, a council met to settle this issue and ultimately voted in favor of Howard’s faction. Boynton resigned in May, but the ramifications of this split had an ongoing effect on Howard. Boynton’s son, General Henry Van Ness Boynton, who served as a Washington correspondent for the Cincinnati Gazette, wrote scathing articles attacking Howard and accusing him of misconduct in the Freedmen’s Bureau. These attacks eventually led to investigations into Howard and his administration. Charles Boynton, “The Duty Which the Colored People Owe to Themselves,” Delivered at Metzerott Hall, Washington, D.C., November 17, 1867 (Washington, D.C., 1867); Howard, Autobiography, 2:431–35; Carpenter, Sword and Olive Branch, 191, 194–95; Alldredge, Centennial History of First Congregational Church, 20–25. 3. Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti (1792–1878), priest, cardinal, and pope, was born in Senigallia in Italy. He studied at the College of Volterra in Tuscany and was ordained a priest in 1819. He served as archbishop of Spoleto (1827–32) and bishop of Imola (1832–40) before being named a cardinal in 1840. In 1846, after a two-day conclave, he was elected pope, taking the name Pius IX. His pontificate, the longest in history, was burdened by revolutions, wars, and rising nationalism. While initially judged a liberal for his support of administrative changes in the Papal States and his sympathy toward Italian nationalism, he became more conservative as his secular powers were attacked. The seizure of Rome by the new unified Italian government in 1870 caused Pius to refuse to leave Vatican City for the remainder of his papacy. Viewed strictly through an ecclesiastical lens, Pius IX accomplished much during his time in power. Besides his decree of the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary in 1854, he is most associated with the dogma of papal infallibility. Pius called the First Vatican Council, in 1869, to vote on this issue, which was passed the following year. Papal infallibility is the notion that the “Sovereign Pontiff is by divine appointment exempt from error, when, in his official capacity, he teaches obligatory doctrine to the Universal Church; that is when, as vicar of Christ, he proposes to the Universal Church a doctrine regarding faith or morals.” This dogma did not apply to the pope in all situations: for example, while speaking in conversation or when discussing scientific issues unconnected with faith. Furthermore, papal infallibility did not excuse the pope from sin; it provided exemption only “from doctrinal error in teaching.” Pius IX is credited with establishing the modern papacy and centralizing authority within the church. John Walsh, The Doctrine of Papal Infallibility, Stated and Vindicated; with an Appendix on Civil Allegiance, and Certain Historical Diffi culties (London, Ont., 1875), 6–9;

Y8204-Douglass.indb 173

5/17/23 2:35 PM

174

LOUIS W. STEVENSON TO DOUGLASS, 15 SEPTEMBER 1870

Frank J. Coppa, Pope Pius IX: Crusader in a Secular Age (Boston, 1979); Mark E. Powell, Papal Infallibility: A Protestant Evaluation of an Ecumenical Issue (Grand Rapids, Mich., 2009), 22–25, 31–32, 36.

LOUIS W. STEVENSON1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Huntsville, Tex. 15 Sept[ember] 1870.

Hon. Frederick Douglass, Washington, D. C. My Dear Sir: It affords me great pleasure to have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your esteemed favor of the 8th inst. I am grateful at the change which has taken place in the editorial management of the New National Era, not because of any short comings on the part of the late editor, but because your name will give prestige to the paper, which will extend its circulation.2 Our people want the truth spread abroad among them. They have been so fooled by political demagogues, and talking editors—styled Republican, and to that extent, that there is great danger of Texas following in the wake of North Carolina, at the next election.3 Our Legislature proved corrupt. The Republican leaders sold themselves for gold.4 Do us the favor to look into some of our Railroad schemes—the vetoes of the Governor,5 and see who voted for there roads, giving away our school fund, over the veto. Ventilate some of the leading so-called Republicans, who are now trying to throw dust in the people’s eyes preparatory to the next election. Texas is far from you, but we want you near. The advice you give will be pure and disinterested. Your paper can be made the greatest power in the State. Something must be done to restore the lost confidence, or the party is dead in Texas. Yours truly, LOUIS W. STEVENSON. PLSr: NNE, 29 September 1870. 1. Louis W. Stevenson (?–1888), a native New Yorker, was a classic carpetbagger. After service as a junior commissioned officer in the 176th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Civil War, he held positions in the Freedmen’s Bureau as assistant superintendent in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1867, and as subassistant commissioner in Carrollton, Texas, throughout 1868. While the Republicans held power in Texas in the early 1870s, Stevenson served short stints as a district and then state superintendent of public schools, as well as the financial agent of the state prison system. During this

Y8204-Douglass.indb 174

5/17/23 2:35 PM

LOUIS W. STEVENSON TO DOUGLASS, 15 SEPTEMBER 1870

175

period, Stevenson acted as an agent for the New National Era in Texas. When the Texas Republican party fractured in 1871–72, he unsuccessfully ran for Congress in the Third District as the Radical candidate, the favorite of small farmers and African Americans. After the Democrats gained ascendancy in Texas in 1873, he moved to Galveston, where he was involved in several businesses before acquiring a position at the U.S. Customs House. From 1883 until his death in 1888, he was based in Laredo, working as the general freight and passenger agent for the Mexican National Railway, an American venture that linked Mexico City with Corpus Christi. Stevenson perfectly matches the modern (post-1960) historians’ profile of the carpetbagger—those northerners who moved to the South after the Civil War: young and idealistic, they served in the Union army or the Freedmen’s Bureau and were genuine supporters of African American civil rights and true believers in the power of modernization to bring social progress. NNE, 18 August 1870; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; “Westchester County, New York, Letters of Testamentary, vol. O–P, 1884–1889, 355,” Ancestry.com; “New York, Wills and Probate Records, 1659–1999,” Ancestry.com; Galveston (Tex.) Daily News, 3, 22 August, 16 September 1871, 16, 18 May 1872, 12 April 1877, 13 May 183, 17 March 1884; Fred Wilbur Powell, The Railroads of Mexico (Boston, 1921), 133–35; Carl H. Moneyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas (Austin, Tex., 1980), 156–57, 159–60; William L. Richter, Overreached on All Sides: The Freedmen’s Bureau Administrators in Texas, 1865–1868 (College Station, Tex., 1991), 243–44, 287–88; Alton Hornsby, Jr., “The Freedmen’s Bureau Schools in Texas, 1865–1870,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 76:415–17 (April 1973). 2. The New National Era experienced serious financial problems in its first year of publication. Many of its original shareholders withdrew, and J. Sella Martin was forced to step down as editor in the summer of 1870. To save the failing publication, Douglass relocated to the nation’s capital. With his sons Lewis and Frederick Jr., he purchased a half interest in the newspaper and became the editor of the renamed Washington New National Era. NNE, 1 September 1870. 3. Stevenson is referring to the egregious corruption associated with the railroad subsidies that the North Carolina legislature provided in 1868 and 1869 to the “ring” headed by Milton S. Littlefield and George W. Swepson, a friend and adviser of the Republican governor, William W. Holden. The ring collapsed on 24 September 1869, Black Friday, a financial panic that left the state in difficult financial straits for years to come. Among the many services North Carolina could no longer adequately fund was its new public school system, the primary source of education for its thousands of poor whites and African American freedmen—the Republicans’ two primary constituencies. Although political corruption was undoubtedly bipartisan in Reconstruction North Carolina (as it was in all states, north and south), its Republican-dominated legislature and governor inevitably received the bulk of public scorn throughout the state and across the nation. Many factors played a part in the Republican party’s loss of control of the North Carolina legislature in the fall elections of 1870, but the organization’s unraveling began with the loss of legitimacy it suffered from the railroad scandals. Stevenson is concerned that something similar might happen in Texas. Foner, Reconstruction, 386–87, 440–44; Charles L. Price, “The Railroad Schemes of George W. Swepson,” East Carolina Publications in History, 1:32–50 (1964). 4. The Texas Republican party during Reconstruction consisted of disparate elements that felt compelled to keep the planters who had led the state out of the Union in 1861 out of power in the postwar era. Therefore, despite Republicans holding the governor’s office and clear majorities in both houses of the Twelfth General Assembly, extensive negotiations, executive coercion, and distasteful compromises were needed to get bills passed and signed into law in the spring and summer of 1870. Governor Edmund J. Davis, leader of the Radical faction, put forward a broad program that centered on the establishment of a state police force and a state militia to protect white and black Republicans from ex-Confederate vigilantes, and frontier settlements from Indian raids, along with a highly centralized and racially integrated system of free public schools. But state senators representing railroad interests refused to allow the program to pass unless they received subsidies for their favorite projects. Radicals close to Davis agreed to exchange the police and militia bills for two railroad bills,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 175

5/17/23 2:35 PM

176

HENRY O. WAGONER TO DOUGLASS, 17 SEPTEMBER 1870

although it is uncertain whether Davis ever approved the deal. Regardless, Davis signed his prized law enforcement bills, but vetoed the railroad bills, claiming that they were unconstitutional. Davis argued that the Southern Pacific bill violated the prohibition against land grants and that the Houston and Texas Central bill invested school funds in the failing railroad’s bonds, in clear violation of school-funding provisions. While extensive negotiations between the governor and legislators worked out the first impasse, the second bill was passed over Davis’s veto. For Radicals who valued public education, like Louis W. Stevenson, it was a bitter blow, especially since the legislature had already gutted the school bill by placing most control of education in the hands of local authorities. These actions ensured the creation of racially segregated dual systems, both of which, and particularly the black schools, would be severely underfunded. Stevenson called these deeds corrupt. Mark W. Summers, Railroads, Reconstruction, and the Gospel of Prosperity: Aid under the Radical Republicans, 1865–1877 (Princeton, N.J., 1984), 150–52; Moneyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas, 135–44; John M. Brockman, “Railroads, Radicals, and the Militia Bill: A New Interpretation of the Quorum-Breaking Incident of 1870,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 83: 105–22 (October 1979). 5. Edmund Jackson Davis (1827–83) was a Texas Unionist, Union army officer, leader of the Texas Radical Republicans, and the last Reconstruction governor of Texas. Born and educated in St. Augustine, Florida, he studied law in Corpus Christi, where he was admitted to the bar in 1849. In 1853 he won election as district attorney of the Twelfth Judicial District in Brownsville, and in 1856 was appointed judge of the same district, a position he held until removed in 1861. Typical of many in South Texas, Davis staunchly opposed secession and refused to take the oath of loyalty to the Confederacy. He moved to New Orleans, where he recruited and led the First Texas Cavalry (U.S. Volunteers), which saw extensive service in the Gulf theater. He was one of only two Texans to be appointed general by the United States during the war. Upon returning to Texas, he quickly became the leader of the Radical wing of the Republican party, favoring restricted political rights for secessionists, expanded rights for blacks, including suffrage, and the ab initio theory, which held that all laws passed since secession were null and void. Under the military rule provided by Congressional Reconstruction, he was president of the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1868–69, and he won a close election for the governorship in fall 1869. His administration was highly controversial: it pursued a program that would centralize power in Austin, uphold the civil rights of Republicans, white and black, through a strong state police and militia, and create a system of free public schools. These measures were strongly opposed by Democrats and moderate Republicans, who combined to decisively defeat Davis in his bid for reelection in 1873. As an Austin attorney, he continued to head the Texas Republican party until his death in 1883, although he was never again elected to office. Moneyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas 129–30; James A. Baggett, “Birth of the Texas Republican Party,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 78:1–20 (July 1974); James Alex Baggett, “Origins of Early Texas Republican Party Leadership,” JSH, 40:441–54 (August 1974); “Davis, Edmund Jackson,” Handbook of Texas (online).

HENRY O. WAGONER TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Denver, Colo. 17 Sept[ember] 1870.

Frederick Douglass, Esq., E DITOR NEW NATIONAL E R A : My dear old friend: I have just received a copy of the New National Era, and rejoice on seeing your name in connection with it; as I did twenty-four years ago on

Y8204-Douglass.indb 176

5/17/23 2:35 PM

HENRY O. WAGONER TO DOUGLASS, 17 SEPTEMBER 1870

177

seeing your name in connection with the old North Star.1 Many and great have been the changes which have crowded rapidly upon the heels of each other since that eventful period. It is a proud satisfaction to you and I to feel that we have done something in the cause of the down-trodden and oppressed, who have, at last, swelled beyond the measure of their chains, and now stand forth in their manhood, completely enfranchised. This is not, in my humble judgment, the result of a special Providence, but it is the result of the inevitable logic of events—aye, of adopting means to ends. What our people now need most is education, money, and higher ideas of religion. They have long been fanatically, emotionally religious. Preaching and praying—aye, words are but feathers in comparison with deeds. Words are only valuable as they conduce to action. Of course, I do not mean to undervalue the importance of words timely and fitly spoken. I mean, so to speak, that we have emerged from the chapter of Resolutions, on paper, and have entered upon the chapter of Acts. It has now come to the pith and point of the matter, that it is not so much what we say as it is what we do. Then I would say, and especially to our youth, let all your movements, energies, and acts bend in the right direction. But enough of this simple and commonplace talk. Inclosed find $2.50, the price of one year’s subscription for the New National Era.2 I will do all I can for the paper. Your friend and brother, H. O. WAGONER PLSr: NNE, 29 September 1870. 1. In November 1847, after completing his speaking tour of western states, Douglass moved to Rochester, New York, to prepare publication of his own weekly newspaper, the North Star, with funds donated by British abolitionists. Douglass’s name for the journal undoubtedly referred to the star (Polaris) that served as a guide for fugitive slaves fleeing north. By locating his newspaper in Rochester, Douglass established his independence from William Lloyd Garrison and the New England Garrisonian abolitionists. The Rochester region of western New York was known as a hotbed of reform and as a final stop on the Underground Railroad. Political abolitionists and other reformers in the area offered significant encouragement and support for Douglass’s publication. The first issue of the North Star appeared on 3 December 1847. In 1851 the North Star merged with a political abolitionist newspaper, the Liberty Party Paper, and was renamed Frederick Douglass’ Paper. NS, 21 January, 5 February 1848; James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860 (New York, 1997), 250–51; Wolseley, Black Press, 20. 2. The first page of the New National Era at the time of this letter states that the cost of an annual subscription was $2.50 per year, with a discounted price of $10 for a five-year subscription. These fees were payable in advance. NNE, 6 October 1870.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 177

5/17/23 2:35 PM

178

DOUGLASS TO AARON M. POWELL, 7 OCTOBER 1870

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO AARON M. POWELL1 Washington, D.C. 7 October 1870.

A. M. Powell, Esq.— MY D EAR S IR :— I am just here from Westminster, Carroll Co., Maryland,2 where I have been speaking on the very subject upon which you wish to hear me in Cooper Institute. I cannot be with you on Monday night.3 Other duties make it impossible. The refusal of the hotels in New York to receive and accommodate refined and wealthy colored strangers and travellers, solely because of their color, is the meanest kind of barbarism, and could happen in no other civilized country.4 It belongs to free, democratic America, a land of Bibles, Sabbath Schools, churches and missionary societies, (perpetually boasting of liberty, manners and morals as compared with other nations) to furnish such examples of inhuman brutishness. Even a pig is willing that a fellow pig shall have shelter and food, if he can get enough for himself, but your genuine American negro hater surpasses the pig in piggishness. He would rather have space itself entirely unoccupied than to have it occupied by one not colored like himself. The same unbrotherly and inhuman spirit of pride and hate which excludes a respectable man and woman from the shelter of a public house in New York or elsewhere, (the only apology for the existence of which is its accommodation of strangers and travellers,) would shut him out of all houses and out of the world. Neither in London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburgh, Rome, Vienna, nor Constantinople,5 would two decent persons with money in their pockets and willing to pay, be refused accommodation at any hotel on account of color. But here in the city of New York, the commercial metropolis of the United States, sustaining relations of commerce with all nations, kindreds, tongues and peoples, men stoop to the narrowness and littleness to peep under a man’s hat to find out whether he shall for his money and his manhood, be accommodated with food and shelter. This inhuman treatment of men and women for a color which they cannot alter to suit the taste of anybody, plainly enough tells the colored people that no part of their number shall ever be respected as men or as gentlemen if the New York hotels can degrade them. After all it is not in its essence a prejudice against color that excludes colored men from hotels or from other places. For certain purposes the colored man is welcome anywhere. He can be employed to sweep the holy dust from the velvet of the saintly pew, in which he would not be allowed to worship God for one moment; he would be allowed to enter the most

Y8204-Douglass.indb 178

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO AARON M. POWELL, 7 OCTOBER 1870

179

aristocratic drawing-room car as a servant, but would be wholly unwelcome as a passenger; he would be admitted to any parlor or dining-room in New York as a waiter, but never as a gentleman; as a driver he may ride with fashionable ladies and gentlemen, who seem as proud of his dark rich color as they are of the shining carriage, prancing bays, and the gold and silver mountings of their equipage, but the skin-deep aristocracy of New York would not tolerate in such place a colored man as a gentlemen—no matter how refined or how elevated in character and attainments. It is, therefore, not the negro’s color that makes him distasteful, but the assumption of equal manhood. But after all, there is consolation here as everywhere. If a man is determined to be a man, a good citizen, a refined, well-mannered, and cultivated gentleman, there is no power, even in New York hotels, to prevent him. Our hotels are powerful institutions, but they cannot long resist the enlightened and humane spirit of the age. The colored man and all other men will by and by be treated according to their character rather than their color. Truly yours, FREDERICK DOUG LASS. PLSr: NNE, 20 October 1870. 1. Born in Clinton, New York, Aaron Macy Powell (1832–99), a Quaker, left farming to become a reformer. He was a lecturing agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society from 1852 to 1865 and then was an editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard and its successor, the National Standard, until 1872. Powell then edited the National Temperance Advocate. In the 1880s, he helped found the American Purity Alliance and edited its periodical, the Philanthropist. Philadelphia Friends’ Intelligencer and Journal, 20 May 1899, 389; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 9:499–500. 2. Douglass had moved to the District of Columbia from Rochester in September 1870. Douglass addressed an audience at the Odd Fellows Hall in Westminster, Maryland. That community, thirty miles northwest of downtown Baltimore in heavily agricultural Carroll County, had been an important Union army supply base during the Civil War. Westminster (Md.) American Sentinel, 13 October 1870; NNE, 1 September 1870; NASS, 17 September 1870; Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 2081. 3. There are no reported speeches by Douglass anywhere in New York City for the remainder of 1870 or in 1871. 4. Douglass was not alone in complaining of racial discrimination in New York City in the years immediately following the Civil War. In May 1873, the New York state legislature passed a civil rights statute to guarantee African Americans equal enjoyment of all forms of public accommodations, including hotels, trolleys, restaurants, and school systems. Even African Americans with considerable financial means found it difficult to obtain lodgings at many of New York City’s hotels. After a well-publicized campaign by the veteran African American leaders Henry Highland Garnet and Charles B. Reason, an antidiscrimination law was passed. Douglass and other former abolitionists had publicly endorsed the campaign of the Civil Rights Committee of New York. Willard B. Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880–1920 (Bloomington, Ind., 1990), 3–4, 12, 19, 41– 42, 110, 124–25, 200–01; David McBride, “Fourteenth Amendment Idealism: The New York State Civil Rights Law, 1873–1918,” New York History, 71:207–33 (April 1990); Myra B. Young Armstead,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 179

5/17/23 2:35 PM

180

DOUGLASS ET AL. TO AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION, NOVEMBER 1870

“Revisiting Hotels and Other Lodgings: American Tourist Spaces through the Lens of Black Pleasure-Travelers, 1880–1950,” Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, 25:136–59 (2005). 5. Douglass refers to the capitals of the United Kingdom, France, Prussia, Russia, Italy (as of 2 October 1870), the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS ET AL. TO THE AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION [n.p. November 1870].

TO THE A MERICAN WOMAN SUFFR AGE A SSOCIATION: Friends and Coworkers: We, the undersigned, a committee appointed by the Union Woman’s Suffrage Society in New York, May, 1870, to confer with you on the subject of merging the two organizations into one,1 respectfully announce: First, that in our judgment no difference exists between the objects and methods of the two societies, nor any good reason for keeping them apart; Second, that the society we represent has invested us with full power to arrange with you a union of both under a single constitution and executive; Third, that we ask you to appoint a committee of equal number and authority with our own, to consummate, if possible, this happy result. Yours, in the common cause of woman’s enfranchisement, LAURA CURTIS BULLARD, 2 GERRIT SMITH, SARAH PUGH, 3 FREDERICK DOUG LASS, MATTIE GRIFFITH BROWNE, 4 JAMES W. STILLMAN, 5 ISABELLA B. HOOKER, 6 SAMUEL J. MAY, CHARLOTTE E. WILBOUR,7 JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING, THEODORE TILTON, ex-officio. PLSr: NNE, 24 November 1870. 1. In the wake of the disastrous annual proceedings of the American Equal Rights Association in May 1869, two suffrage societies were formed. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony established the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in May 1869, and Lucy Stone led

Y8204-Douglass.indb 180

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS ET AL. TO AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION, NOVEMBER 1870

181

the formation of the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) in November. The following May, members of the American Equal Rights Association agreed to officially dissolve and transfer all of its records to a new organization, the Union Woman Suffrage Society. Theodore Tilton was elected its president. Tilton then persuaded some NWSA members to join his organization in an attempt to merge permanently with the AWSA. At the first anniversary meeting of the AWSA, in November 1870, Tilton, along with Douglass, presented this letter as a final attempt to reconcile the fractured suffrage movement. In April 1871, Tilton resigned as president and the Union Woman Suffrage Society dissolved. Anthony then reorganized the NWSA with Stanton as president. New York Times, 15 May 1870; Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, 20 May 1870, 4 April 1871; Bellows Falls Vermont Chronicle, 21 May 1870; Harper, Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, 1:348–50; Lois W. Banner, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Radical for Equal Rights (Boston, 1980), 117; Douglass, On Women’s Rights, 87–90, 153n. 2. Laura Curtis Bullard (1831–1912), writer, editor, and women’s rights advocate, was born in Freedom, Maine, to Lucy Winslow Curtis and Jeremiah Curtis. Her father, a leader in the state’s Liberty party, waged unsuccessful campaigns for governor in 1841 and Congress in 1847. In 1854, she anonymously published her first novel, Now-a-days!, and the following year she founded the Ladies’ Visitor, and Drawing Room Companion, a newspaper based in New York City and published monthly from 1855 to 1861. In 1856, she finished her second novel, Christine, or, Woman’s Trials and Triumphs, and three years later she married Enoch Bullard, an executive in her father’s pharmaceutical business. While she closed her newspaper following the birth of her first child in 1861, she returned to public life in the late 1860s, devoting her time to the women’s rights movement. In 1868 she became a founding member of Sorosis, a society for professional and literary women. She served as one of the first corresponding secretaries of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869 and also represented the society at the Women’s Industrial Congress in Berlin. In 1870 she founded the Brooklyn Women’s Club with her friend Elizabeth Tilton and also began her eighteen-month tenure as editor of the Revolution, the radical newspaper and political publication of the NWSA. She spent the later years of her life immersed in the literary world. For example, she published several essays in the Victoria Magazine and an essay on Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the book Our Famous Women. New York Times, 20 January 1912; Laura Curtis Bullard, Christine, or, Woman’s Trials and Triumphs, ed. Denise M. Kohn (Lincoln, Neb., 2010), x–xxviii; David S. Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville (New York, 1988), 392. 3. The teacher and abolitionist Sarah Pugh (1800–84) was born in Alexandria, Virginia, to Jesse Pugh and Catharine Jackson. The Quaker household moved to Pennsylvania following the death of Sarah’s father when she was two. After studying at the Friends’ Westtown Boarding School, she taught (1821–28) at the Quaker school in the Twelfth Street Meeting House in Philadelphia. In 1829 she established a school, also in Philadelphia, with her friend Rachel Pierce; she taught there until 1840. An avid abolitionist, Pugh joined and held leadership positions in several antislavery groups. She joined the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1836, was elected secretary the following year, and served as president for many years. She was also a secretary at the first Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women held in 1837 in New York City. Pugh served as a delegate to the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and as an officer of the group in 1841, and represented not only that society but also the American Free Produce Society at the 1840 World’s Anti-Slavery Convention, held in London. During the early 1850s, she traveled to Europe again, promoting abolition and women’s rights; upon returning to Philadelphia, she resumed her leadership position in the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Following the Civil War, she promoted equal rights and universal suffrage, although she was never considered a leader in the women’s rights movement. She supported the National Woman Suffrage Association and its leaders, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. In 1873, she helped found the Moral Education Society in Philadelphia. Memorial of Sarah Pugh: A Tribute of Respect from Her Cousins (Philadelphia, 1888); Jonathan Hart, Contesting

Y8204-Douglass.indb 181

5/17/23 2:35 PM

182

DOUGLASS ET AL. TO AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION, NOVEMBER 1870

Empires: Opposition, Promotion, and Slavery (New York, 2005), 161; Robin Hanson, “Sarah Pugh,” in Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World, ed. Junius Rodriguez, 3 vols. (Armonk, N.Y., 2007), 2:436–37; ANB (online). 4. Mattie Griffith Browne (c. 1825–1906), writer and women’s rights advocate, was born in Owensboro, Kentucky. Her parents died in 1830, leaving Mattie and an older sister orphaned. As a young woman, she contributed to the Louisville Courier and published a volume of poetry, Poems . . . Now First Collected, in 1852. Although she inherited a few slaves from her father, Mattie had antislavery sentiments. In an effort to raise money to free and relocate her slaves, she published Autobiography of a Female Slave in 1856. Many readers, such as William Lloyd Garrison, believed the novel was an authentic chronicle of a slave woman. A few months after its publication, Browne made her authorship known and received much criticism from proslavery Kentuckians. In 1858, the American Anti-Slavery Society awarded her one hundred dollars to emancipate her slaves and move to Ohio. From 1857 to 1860 she worked for the American Anti-Slavery Society in Boston and New York City. Browne published another antislavery novel, Madge Vertner, serially in the National Antislavery Standard from July 1859 to May 1860. During the Civil War, she became active in the Woman’s National Loyal League, concentrating on the campaign to emancipate the slaves. Browne married the abolitionist and attorney Albert Gallatin Browne in 1866 and continued to devote her energies to the women’s rights movement. The later years of her life were spent in New York City and Boston, where she participated in temperance and woman suffrage groups. Joe Lockard, afterword to Mattie Griffith Browne, Autobiography of a Female Slave (1856; Jackson, Miss., 1998), 403–18; Gordon, Selected Papers of Stanton and Anthony, 2:537n; ANB (online). 5. James Wells Stillman (1840–1912) was a lawyer, legislator, and poet. Born in Unadilla Forks, New York, he graduated from the Albany Law School and served in the Rhode Island legislature in 1868–69. During his time in the legislature, he was an advocate of suffrage for women and founded the state suffrage association in 1869. The following year, Stillman signed an appeal for a union of the two fragmented suffrage societies, the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1873 he opened a law office in New York City but moved to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1880. Thomas William Herringshaw, Herringshaw’s Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century, (Chicago, 1911), 891; Gordon, Selected Papers of Stanton and Anthony, 3:19n. 6. Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822–1907), writer, suffragist, and advocate for women’s rights, was born in Litchfield, Connecticut. Her mother, Harriet Porter, was the second wife of the wellknown minister and evangelist Lyman Beecher. At age thirteen, she began studying at the Hartford Female Seminary, an institution founded by her half sisters Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher (Stowe). She also attended the Western Female Institute, another one of Catherine’s schools, located in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1841, Isabella married John Hooker, a lawyer, and the couple had three children. Her deep commitment to her family, especially her interest in child rearing, led her to explore the problems facing women and their varied roles in the private sphere. In 1868 she published “A Mother’s Letters to a Daughter on Women’s Suffrage,” which publicized her devotion to women’s rights, a commitment she honored until her death. Two of her most influential publications were Womanhood: Its Sanctities and Fidelities (1873) and An Argument on United States Citizenship (1902). In the 1860s she supported Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony by joining the National Woman Suffrage Association, founding a Connecticut branch, and lobbying Congress for a national woman suffrage amendment. In 1872, the tight-knit Beecher family criticized Hooker when she openly doubted Henry Ward Beecher’s innocence after he was accused of having an affair with Elizabeth Tilton, wife of the abolitionist Theodore Tilton. Following this scandal, Isabella and John traveled to Europe for two years. After returning to the United States, she found public success after Connecticut passed the Married Women’s Property Act in 1877, which she had drafted with her husband. She continued her work on behalf of women’s rights and the quest for universal suffrage until her death. Isabella Beecher Hooker, “The Last of the Beechers: Memories on My Eighty-Third

Y8204-Douglass.indb 182

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO CHARLES SUMNER, 12 DECEMBER 1870

183

Birthday,” Connecticut Magazine, 9:286–98 (1905); Barbara A. White, The Beecher Sisters (New Haven, Conn., 2003), ix, 209–14, 331, 334–35; ANB (online). 7. The women’s rights advocate Charlotte Beebe Wilbour (1830–1914) was born in Norwich, Connecticut. She received her education in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and married Charles Edwin Wilbour in 1858. She served as secretary of the Women’s Loyal National League and as an officer in the National Woman Suffrage Association. She was a founding member of the women’s club Sorosis and served as its president in 1870. She was reelected five times. Wilbour frequently lectured on women’s rights, especially on subjects such as health and dress reform. She helped form the Association for the Advancement of Women, which held an annual Women’s Congress. In 1874 she and her husband left for Europe and took up residence in Paris. Atchison (Kans.) Daily Globe, 26 September 1889; Phebe A. Hanaford, Women of the Century (Boston, 1877), 314; Gordon, Selected Papers of Stanton and Anthony, 4:241–42; Douglass, On Women’s Rights, 153n; ACAB, 6:503.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO CHARLES SUMNER Washington, D.C. 12 Dec[ember] 1870.

Hon: Chas: Sumner: My dear Sir: I am obliged by your note of this morning. To all who have spoken to me in respect to the St Domingo question,1 I have said I must learn the views of Senator Sumner before I commit myself entirely to the annexation of that country to ours.2 I have no hesitation however in assuring you that if that country honestly wishes to come to us, I now see no reason against the policy of receiving her. I say this supposing the conditions upon which she comes are all right. I need not assure you that I deem myself happy when at aggre agreement with you—and somewhat embarrassed when otherwise Yours Very Truly and gratefully FREDERICK DOUG LASS ALS: Charles Sumner Correspondence, MH-H. 1. One of the most controversial diplomatic initiatives of the Grant administration was its attempt to annex the Dominican Republic. In 1869, Grant’s personal representative, General Orville Babcock, negotiated a treaty of annexation with the Dominican president, Buenaventura Báez. The Senate twice refused to ratify the treaty, largely because of the vociferous opposition of a faction of the president’s own Republican party, led by Charles Sumner. To rally public support for the treaty, Grant persuaded Congress to authorize him to send a commission to the Dominican Republic to investigate political and economic conditions there and to ascertain popular sentiment toward American annexation. The commissioners selected by Grant were Andrew White, president of Cornell University; Samuel G. Howe, a wealthy Boston reformer; and Benjamin Wade, a former U.S. senator from Ohio. Although he regarded the position as “inconsiderable and unimportant,” Douglass accepted an appointment as assistant secretary to the commission. The commissioners, their staff, and numerous reporters left New York City on 17 January 1871 and arrived at Samana Bay seven days

Y8204-Douglass.indb 183

5/17/23 2:35 PM

184

DOUGLASS TO CHARLES SUMNER, 5 JANUARY 1871

later. Douglass participated in the commission’s interviews with Dominican governmental officials and civic leaders and also had the responsibility of contacting English-speaking blacks who had migrated from the United States to the Samana area during the Civil War. The commission arrived back in Washington, D.C., on 26 March 1871 and soon thereafter published a report strongly favoring annexation. Despite regrets at disagreeing with his friend Sumner, Douglass endorsed the annexation policy as being in the mutual interests of both nations, in speeches and in editorials in the New National Era. Opponents of annexation remained obdurate, however, and the treaty was never ratified. Douglass to Hamilton Fish, 3 April 1871, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 589, FD Papers, DLC; NNE, 19 January, 23 February, 6 April 1871; Washington National Republican, 24 February 1871; Washington Evening Star, 28 March 1871; Charles Callan Tansill, The United States and Santo Domingo, 1798–1873: A Chapter in Caribbean Diplomacy (1938; Gloucester, Mass., 1967), 428–40; Merline Pitre, “Frederick Douglass and the Annexation of Santo Domingo,” JNH, 62:390–400 (October 1977). 2. The issue of the annexation of Santo Domingo drove a wedge not only between Douglass and Charles Sumner, but also between Sumner and President Grant. While Grant adamantly desired the annexation, and was supported by Douglass and other Republicans, other politicians of the new Liberal Republican persuasion vehemently opposed any such annexation. Grant initially believed Sumner would support the treaty to annex Santo Domingo, but that proved to be a gross misunderstanding of Sumner’s claim of being “an Administration man.” Douglass later said that he believed that Sumner felt the “annexation was a measure to extinguish a colored nation, and to do so by dishonorable means and for selfish motives.” Douglass, on the other hand, thought the annexation meant, “the alliance of a weak and defenseless people . . . to a government which would give it peace, stability, prosperity, and civilization.” Douglass felt that after the fall of slavery, the United States should have no qualms about extending American dominion. It has also been asserted that Sumner did not want to annex the Dominican Republic because he disdained the people there. The New York Herald reported on one of Sumner’s speeches in which he described the Dominican people as “a turbulent, treacherous race, indolent and not disposed to make themselves useful to their country or to the world at large.” In the end, Sumner and Douglass’s relationship was salvaged, but Grant and Sumner were not able to move past their differences and remained bitter toward each other for years. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:319; Calhoun, Presidency of Grant, 229–61.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO CHARLES SUMNER Washington[, D.C.] 5 Jan[uary] 1871.

Hon: Charles Sumner My dear Sir: I have your letter of to day.1 In answer I have to say—I have said many things in your honor but I remember no word I ever uttered of this character that I would now recall. No line of love and confidence that I would now erase. What you have been to me and to my oppressed race during the long years of your public life, you are still recognized to be: higher than the highest[,]better than the best of all our statesmen. I have no fear that you will ever be less than this in my own heart, nor in that of my people. The Article to which you take exception was written in the inter-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 184

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO CHARLES SUMNER, 5 JANUARY 1871

185

est of peace between you and the President—and not in furtherance of the scheme of Annexation of San Domingo. I reserve my sentiments for the moment on that subject.2 The point at which I thought you bitterly severe upon the President was where you exposed his ignorance in regard to the names of Senate Committees, and more especially where you associate his name with the infamous names of Pierce, Buchanan and Johnson.3 These names in the minds of all loyal and liberty loving men stand under the heaviest reproach—and I candidly think you did wrong to place Grant in that infamous category even by implication. I may be wrong—but I do not at present see any good reason for degrading Grant in the eyes of the American people. Personally, he is nothing to me, but as the president, the Republican President—of the country—I am anxious if can be done to hold him in all honor. But I am free, I am slave to no man—and if the future shall show that General Grant is unworthy—I will join with the “World”4 the “Sun”5— and the whole Democratic party in denouncing him. I have to thank you for a copy of your speech on the San Domingo question. I heard every word of it—and would go many miles to hear a similar effort. It has been many years since I have seen you so roused, and so terribly effective. Your printed speech grand and powerful as it is, falls short of the speech as heard from the Gallery, where voice, manner and action united to give it force and effect. But my dear Sir: I come not now to praise your effort—but simply to tell you, at your own request wherein I thought you to blame. I have done this, and have no business further to take your time. When you speak again I shall take it as a favor that you let me know that I may hear you. I return here with letters of Messrs Garrison and Purvis6 which you have done me kindness to allow me to peruse. With unabated confidence, respect and love, your friend. FREDERICK DOUG LASS PLSr: Charles Sumner Correspondence, MH-H. 1. Sumner’s letter to Douglass of 6 January 1871 has not survived. 2. In his annual message to Congress in December 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant advocated the annexation of the Dominican Republic by the United States. Secretary of State Fish then worked with Senator Oliver P. Morton of Indiana to craft a congressional resolution authorizing the dispatch of a commission to travel to the Caribbean to gather information regarding the feasibility of annexation. Charles Sumner, who strongly opposed this policy, delivered an angry address in the Senate on 21–22 December 1870, to which Grant’s allies Roscoe Conkling and George Edmunds immediately responded. Sumner had his speech published under the title Naboth’s Vineyard, with a

Y8204-Douglass.indb 185

5/17/23 2:35 PM

186

DOUGLASS TO CHARLES SUMNER, 5 JANUARY 1871

few additional arguments added and most of his opponents’ interjections expunged. Observing this growing feud within the Republican party, Douglass published Grant’s message in the New National Era without commenting on the annexation issue. The paper never published Sumner’s speech but did reprint some stories from other newspapers on the intraparty controversy. In the New National Era’s 5 January 1871 issue, Douglass published an editorial, “Let Us Have Peace,” that decried “the intense personal feelings brought into this debate,” because they threatened “to do more to weaken the Republican party than the best contrived assaults of all the Democracy combined.” In his next issue, Douglass endorsed the proposed annexation, on the condition that it be done “without dishonor, rapine, and bloodshed.” Douglass advised readers that because of Sumner’s experience in foreign relations, the senator’s warnings be “listened to with utmost deference upon this subject.” NNE, 8 December 1870, 5, 12 January 1871; Calhoun, Presidency of Grant, 295–98; Beverly Wilson Palmer, ed., The Selected Letters of Charles Sumner, 2 vols. (Boston, 1990), 2:533–34. 3. Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Andrew Johnson. 4. The New York World was started in 1859 by Alexander Cummings, the former publisher of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, as a daily religious paper. The paper attempted to elevate the moral standards of New York City journalism but ran into trouble in May 1864 when its editors and proprietors were arrested for printing a forged proclamation of President Lincoln’s. After passing through the hands of multiple owners, it eventually was turned into a partisan newspaper at the hands of Manton Marble. In the presidential campaign of 1868, it editorialized heavily in support of Horatio Seymour, of New York, the Democratic presidential candidate. Frederick Hudson, Journalism in the United States from 1690 to 1872 (New York, 1873), 667–76. 5. In 1833, Benjamin Day founded the New York Sun as the city’s first penny paper. While not an official organ of any political party, it became most popular among the Democratic working class. In 1868 the well-known Republican editor Charles A. Dana bought the paper and immediately claimed that the Sun would remain politically independent. But Dana, a Republican, had purchased the paper with the aid of Radical Republican stockholders, and many believed he would transform the Sun into a Republican publication. Initially, Dana walked a fine line between promoting the interests of his financial backers and those of his Democratic readers. For example, the Sun supported Grant for president in 1868 but did so while maintaining journalistic independence. In the following years, Dana decided to appeal more to his Democratic audience. The Sun began criticizing the Grant administration and increasingly published Democratic-leaning editorials. While the Sun remained nominally independent, most of the public viewed it as a Democratic paper. James Harrison Wilson, The Life of Charles A. Dana (New York, 1907), 389, 404; Frank M. O’Brien, The Story of the Sun, New York, 1838–1918 (New York, 1918); Janet E. Steele, The Sun Shines for All: Journalism and Ideology in the Life of Charles A. Dana (Syracuse, N.Y., 1993), xi, 5–6, 79–86, 93, 99, 102, 114. 6. Douglass might be referring to a letter from Garrison to Sumner dated 26 December 1870. In the letter, Garrison discusses President Grant’s desire to annex San Domingo. A letter from this time period from Robert Purvis has not been found. Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 6:594; Harold T. Pinkett, “Efforts to Annex Santo Domingo to the United States, 1866–1871,” JNH, 26:40–41 (January 1941).

Y8204-Douglass.indb 186

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO HAMILTON FISH, 3 APRIL 1871

187

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO HAMILTON FISH1 Washington[,] D.C. 3 April 1871.

Hon: Hamilton Fish: Secretary of State, of the United States. Sir: In pursuance of the commission given under your hand, dated January fourteenth 1871 duly appointing me assistant secretary to the commission in relation to the Republic of Dominica, authorized by a resolution of Congress, approved January 12th 1871,2 I respectfully beg leave to state, that my official relation to the said commission has now ceased. I had the honor to accompany the Commission as directed during their whole time of duration in the West Indies and returned with them to the United States landing at Charleston.3 Regretting that my services in the capacity authorized by the terms of my appointment were inconsiderable and unimportant, I can nevertheless assure you that such other services in connection with the objects of the mission as the honorable commissioners [illegible] [fit] were pleased to inquire at my hands were promptly and cheerfully rendered. I am, dear sir, very respectfully your most obedient servant FREDK DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 589, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Hamilton Fish (1808–93) was born in New York City, graduated from Columbia College in 1827, and was admitted to the bar in 1830. Fish successfully ran for Congress in 1842 on the Whig ticket and was elected governor in 1848. He ran for the Senate in 1851, when he was not reenominated for governor, and served until his term expired in 1857. Fish joined the Republican party after the demise of the Whig party. His record in the Senate was unremarkable, but President Grant offered him the position of secretary of state in 1867. Foreign relations issues confronting Fish included difficulties with Cuba, the failure of negotiations for the construction of an interoceanic canal, and the recall of the Russian minister Konstantin Catacazy in 1871. His most notable achievement was to arrange a settlement with Great Britain in regard to damages suffered by northern shipping during the Civil War from warships supplied to the Confederacy by Britain while the country was ostensibly neutral. Fish retired from public life at the end of Grant’s presidency. ACAB, 2:463–64; DAB, 6:397–400; ANB (online). 2. The congressional resolution creating the Commission of Inquiry to Santo Domingo passed on 12 January 1871, as Douglass indicates. He received an appointment to serve as assistant secretary under direction of the commission’s secretary, Allan A. Burton, but was frequently assigned additional duties such as interviewing English-speaking inhabitants of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 538–45, 833. 3. The official report of the Santo Domingo Commission indicates that the returning party arrived aboard the U.S.S. Tennessee at Charleston, South Carolina, on 26 March 1871. Members proceeded by train northward to Washington, D.C. Report of the Commission of Inquiry to Santo Domingo, with the Introductory Message of the President, Special Reports Made to the Commission, State Papers Furnished by the Dominican Government, and the Statements of over Seventy Witnesses (Washington, D.C., 1871), 5.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 187

5/17/23 2:35 PM

188

DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON, 10 APRIL 1871

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON Washington[, D.C.] 10 April 1871.

My dear Tilton: You are anticipated: The Golden Age has already been duly advertised in three numbers of the Era.1 You have only to command me. I cannot tell you how delighted I was to find you again in the field. The battle with error superstition and all manner of bigotry needs your arm—and I could not bear to have it broken or paralyzed for an hour. The Golden Age is a perfect Gem of Typographical neatness and elegance. It comes forth like a bride adorned for her husband. Let no wrong stand in its shining path. Let the Golden Age flourish. Let it shame malice, silence fury, crush meanness—and hasten on that true golden Age which is first pure, then peaceble without partiality and without hypocrisy. I am your friend always FREDK DOUG LASS

[P.S.] Please remember me most kindly to Dear Mrs Tilton—and your precious children.2 ALS: Autographs, NNPML. 1. In late 1870, the New York businessman Henry Bowen, owner of the New York Independent, fired Theodore Tilton from the paper’s editorship because of Tilton’s support for the early stages of the Liberal Republican revolt against Ulysses S. Grant, as well as for Tilton’s endorsements of divorce reform and women’s rights. The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher then secretly bankrolled a new weekly, the Golden Age, for Tilton to edit, perhaps to keep him from spreading rumors about the minister’s alleged affair with Tilton’s wife, Elizabeth. Tilton used his new journalistic vehicle to champion “free love,” spiritualism, and divorce. He publicly defended the controversial Victoria Woodhull, with whom many critics believed he was having an affair. The Golden Age failed to attract a large readership, and it alienated many of Tilton’s old friends by endorsing Horace Greeley’s 1872 presidential bid as both the Liberal Republican and Democratic candidate. The newspaper was closed in 1874. Altina Laura Waller, Reverend Beecher and Mrs. Tilton: Sex and Class in Victorian America (Amherst, Mass., 1982), 88–92, 135–38; Fox, Trials of Intimacy, 148–57; Shaplen, Free Love and Heavenly Sinners, 109. 2. At this time, Theodore and Elizabeth Tilton were attempting to hold their marriage together following her confession of an earlier affair with the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher. Fox, Trials of Intimacy, 136–37, 154, 175–77.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 188

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO ULYSSES S. GRANT, 6 JUNE 1871

189

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ULYSSES S. GRANT Washington[, D.C.] 6 June 1871.

U. S. Grant: President of the U. States. Sir: I have the honor to resign my seat as the member for the first District, in the Legislative Council of the District of Columbia.1 I beg also to request that my resignation shall be allowed to take effect ten days after the date of this Communication. I am sir, with very great Respect Your obedient servant FREDERICK DOUG LASS ALS: R.G. 59, Box 3, Entry 399, DNA. 1. In an effort to govern the District of Columbia more uniformly and representatively, Congress abolished the separate governments of Washington and Georgetown, and on 21 February 1871 formed one municipality, to be governed in the manner of a territory. A governor, appointed by the president, held executive authority, while legislative power resided in the Legislative Assembly. This bicameral assembly consisted of the Council, composed of eleven residents of the territory appointed by the president, and the House of Delegates, to which local voters annually elected twenty-two residents. As a reward for his loyal support, President Ulysses S. Grant chose Douglass to fill one of the eleven seats in the Council of the newly created Legislative Assembly. The Council elected William Stickney, a white educator, as president and Douglass as vice president at its organizational meeting on 15 May 1871. Douglass also served on the Council’s committees on printing, schools, transportation facilities, and relations with the federal government. After actively participating in the Council during its first month of operations, Douglass announced to the body on 20 June 1871 that he had resigned his membership, in order to attend to “the urgent necessities of private business.” The Council unanimously passed a resolution expressing its regret at Douglass’s departure, declaring, “his association . . . most pleasant to each member thereof, as well as profitable to the people he represents.” The Washington Daily Morning Chronicle reported Douglass’s resignation with the observation that he had “by his simple, cordial, manly bearing, and his manifest ability and sound judgment, won the respect and affection of all.” Douglass publicly thanked Grant for appointing three blacks to the eleven-member Council, citing it as evidence of the president’s “high sense of justice, fairness, and impartiality.” Notably, Grant appointed Douglass’s son Lewis to complete his term. Washington National Republican, 29 April, 16, 29, 30 May, 1, 2, 14, 15, 17 June 1871; NNE, 4, 18 May, 8 June 1871; Washington Evening Star, 13, 17, 21 June 1871; Washington Morning Chronicle, 21 June 1871; F. H. Smith to Douglass, 20 June 1871, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 596–97, FD Papers, DLC; Alan Lessoff, The Nation and Its City: Politics, “Corruption,” and Progress in Washington, D.C., 1861–1902 (Baltimore, 1994), 55; John Muller, Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: Lion of Anacostia (Charleston, S.C., 2012), 42, 44–46; Whyte, Uncivil War, 101–13; Edwin Melvin Williams, “The Territorial Period—1871–1874,” in Washington Past and Present: A History, ed. John Clagett Proctor, 4 vols. (New York, 1930), 1:130–41.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 189

5/17/23 2:35 PM

190

DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL GRIDLEY HOWE, 21 JUNE 1871

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL GRIDLEY HOWE1 Washington, D.C.2 21 June 1871.

Dr J. G. Howe. Dear Sir: You have rightly stated my opinion of the Baez Government of Santo Domingo.3 I would willingly unite with any measure of temporary relief which you with other gentlemen may be able to devise whether in the way of a loan or by emigration. The well disposed and order loving, loving people of that country are with Baez and have claimed upon the friends of good order every where. The thing to be done is for our Government to annex Santo Domingo at the earliest possible moment. It is a crying shame to raise the hopes of that people as we have done and then leave them to perish. I will see General Babcock4 as you request. Respectfully FREDK DOUG LASS ALS: Samuel Gridley Howe Collection, MB. 1. Born into one of Boston’s leading families, Samuel Gridley Howe (1801–76) graduated from Brown University in 1821 and Harvard Medical School in 1824. For the next six years, Howe participated as a soldier, surgeon, and relief worker in the Greek rebellion against Turkish rule. After returning to the United States, he was a pioneer in the education of the blind, deaf, and insane. Howe married Julia Ward in 1843, and the two coedited the Free Soil newspaper the Boston Commonwealth in the early 1850s. His active support for the free-state movement in Kansas brought Howe into close contact with John Brown, who recruited Howe as one of the Secret Six who financed the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. After that incident, Howe wrote a public letter disclaiming any advance knowledge of Brown’s plans. Howe then briefly fled to Canada, returning later to testify before the congressional panel investigating the raid. During the Civil War, he assisted the U.S. Sanitary Commission and, at the conflict’s conclusion, served on the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission. In 1871, Howe traveled to Santo Domingo as one of the three members of the commission (which Douglass accompanied as secretary) charged to study the advisability of U.S. annexation of that nation. Rossbach, Ambivalent Conspirators, 26; ACAB, 3:283–84; NCAB, 8:372–73; DAB, 9:296–97. 2. Douglass wrote this letter on printed stationery from the New National Era. 3. Buenaventura Báez (1812–84) was born in Azua, Dominican Republic, to a wealthy landowning father and a mulatto slave mother, and he was educated in France. After the War for Independence from Haiti (1844–49), leadership of the new Dominican Republic alternated for the next thirty years between the northern Blue party, led by Pedro Santana (1801–64), and the southern Red party, led by Báez. To protect their persons and property from domestic rivals, spiraling national debt, and Haitian invasion, these caudillos (strong men) repeatedly sought to secure their nation’s protection or annexation by a foreign power. Spain recolonized the Dominican Republic at Santana’s invitation in 1861 but retreated after the bloody popular resistance that the Dominicans named the War of the Restoration (1863–65). During the Spanish annexation, Báez moved to Europe, where he lived off subsidies and titles bestowed by Spain’s queen. When Spanish defeat appeared imminent, Báez renounced his allegiance to the Crown and relocated to Curaçao to orchestrate his return to power. Restoration of Dominican sovereignty inaugurated twenty years of political chaos; conflict between conservative

Y8204-Douglass.indb 190

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CASSIUS M. CLAY TO DOUGLASS, 15 JULY 1871

191

Reds and liberal Blues resulted in more than fifty revolts and at least twenty-one changes in government. Báez held the presidency three times during the era, the longest period being from May 1868 to January 1874, during which he encouraged U.S. annexation. After ruling from December 1876 to February 1878, Báez died in exile in 1882. Modern historians of the Dominican Republic universally denounce Santana and Báez for creating a national culture in which political and economic chaos was the norm. Sumner Welles, Naboth’s Vineyard: The Dominican Republic, 1844–1924, 2 vols. (1928; Mamaroneck, N.Y., 1966), 1:66–67, 76, 91–92, 96, 100, 136–37, 301–02; Richard A. Haggerty, ed., Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies (Washington, D.C., 1991), 12–18; Frank Moya Pons, The Dominican Republic: A National History (New Rochelle, N.Y., 1995), 219–32; Eric Paul Roorda, Lauren Derby, and Raymundo González, eds., The Dominican Republic Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Durham, N.C., 2014), 141, 146. 4. Orville Elias Babcock (1835–84) was born in Franklin, Vermont, and graduated from West Point in 1861. Babcock was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers and appointed to the staff of General William B. Franklin in the Army of the Potomac. He then served as acting chief engineer of the Department of the Ohio, being promoted to captain of the Corps of Engineers in June 1863. His success in overseeing construction tasks during the Knoxville campaign gained him favor with General Ulysses S. Grant, who promoted him to lieutenant colonel of staff in 1864. Following Grant’s successful election to the presidency in 1869, Babcock was assigned to serve as Grant’s assistant private secretary and major of engineers. That same year, he was sent to the Dominican Republic to explore terms for that country’s proposed annexation by the United States, one of the most controversial diplomatic initiatives of the Grant administration. Babcock negotiated a treaty of annexation with the Dominican president, Buenaventura Báez, which Grant proposed to the Senate. The treaty was twice defeated, largely because of the vociferous opposition of a Senate faction led by Charles Sumner. Following the controversy surrounding the Dominican Republic, Babcock was appointed superintendent of public buildings and grounds for Washington, D.C., in 1871. But this assignment became marred by controversy when a congressional investigation revealed irregularities in the oversight of finances. In December 1875, a grand jury indicted Babcock for conspiring to defraud the government, in what was known as the Whiskey Ring scandal. For over a decade, distillers and others in the liquor industry had evaded paying taxes by bribing federal officials. It was estimated that 12–15 million gallons of whiskey had gone untaxed annually. Grant nonetheless maintained his support of Babcock, giving a deposition from the White House that was delivered to a St. Louis grand jury investigating corruption. Babcock was acquitted in February 1876, but Grant replaced him as his private secretary with his sons, Ulysses Jr. and Fred. Babcock instead was appointed inspector of lighthouses and was the engineer in charge of the Fifth and Sixth Light-house Districts. He drowned at Mosquito Inlet in Florida while fulfilling his duties. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:281–82; New York Times, 4 June 1884; Jean Edward Smith, Grant (New York, 2001), 501–02, 581–82, 590–93; ANB (online).

CASSIUS M. CLAY1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS N[ew] York, [N.Y.]2 15 July 1871.3

My Dear Mr. Douglas, Your letter of the 7th inst. is recd.4 I take your paper because of my regard for you—not because I approve at all of the spirit of your paper— 1.st Why should you be the partizan of Grant: who never voted but once I am told & then for J. Buchanan: a man who ignores the leading

Y8204-Douglass.indb 191

5/17/23 2:35 PM

192

CASSIUS M. CLAY TO DOUGLASS, 15 JULY 1871

Republicans5 and is led by Fish6 who voted for Hoffman,7 & Butler 8 who voted for Jeff. Davis9—who has promoted but one man in the diplomatic service—and that man Bancroft10 who never was and is not now a republican! Who crushes out liberty in Cuba against the will of a majority of republicans—and who allows killing of American citizens, and continual murder of Cuban Patriots Black & White!11—who [illegible] his office to family [illegible]—and gives the highest places to those who make him presents—a thing never before done by any President!12 But I have not space for my objections to him. Is there no republicans in all our ranks fit to rule us? if no then we ought to perish as a party—the sooner the better! 2. I cannot approve of the proscriptive course against the South— [illegible] if you please. The the Republicans: Black & White are in a minority (amnesty being granted) in the South—is it our intent to have a [illegible] [illegible] majority against us for centuries? You know parties change rule in this country—now when the national party are in power— and we have shown a spirit of revenge, denunciation, and unconstitutional action against them! 3. The force bill13 is an iniquity I am not willing to lay all my liberties down at the feet of any man—not for the sake of the Blacks or Whites of the South! In a government like ours we must trust something to the people—we dont want a strong government—but a strong people—a vital people— ready to resist oppression—and to avenge wrong. Some blacks will suffer after a great war—some whites will suffer by more law—we must leave the remedy to the legal normal actions of the states. If this will not or cannot cure the evils—then our republicanism is lost. It would take hours to explain how much I feel that the party is wrong in all this. Greeley14 or some other man comes with the olive branch—if you refuse him or such for Grant the Dictator with the sword—you declare eternal war upon the South! is this just—or safe? 4. I think the Blacks have gained much by freedom. They should enjoy their great advance with moderation. They should be encouraged to make a living—an independence—and [illegible] to educate themselves in whatever way possible. I regard a pursuit of politics per se—as a great [illegible] to all of us—and especially to the freed men. It took time to overthrow slavery—and it will take time to build up the freedmen. Let us enter upon the work in a spirit of gratitude to God and good-will to all

Y8204-Douglass.indb 192

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CASSIUS M. CLAY TO DOUGLASS, 15 JULY 1871

193

men—even the late deluded master. I feel sure as I do of my part—that such is the just way, and the only road to success. Wishing you and the race to which I have devoted my life in equal enjoyment of all our rights, I remain as ever your friend C. M. CLAY

P. S. All Grant’s fight in N. York—is but the contest was of the old Seward traitor party15 against the old Republicans! C. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 598–600, FD Papers, DLC. 1. The Kentucky free-labor advocate Cassius Marcellus Clay (1810–1903) inherited seventeen slaves and extensive farm acreage in 1828. As a Whig representative in the state legislature, Clay began expounding an economic indictment of slavery. In 1843 he freed his slaves and hired them as laborers. At the same time, he launched a campaign for gradual abolition that was addressed largely to the state’s nonslaveholding whites. In June 1845, Clay launched a weekly newspaper in Lexington, the True American, to advocate for the formation of a moderate antislavery party in Kentucky. After local residents forcibly dismantled his press and shipped it to Cincinnati, Clay published the True American in Louisville. Clay joined the U.S. Army in the Mexican War, a move denounced by abolitionists, who otherwise generally applauded him. Clay sold the newspaper to John C. Vaughan, who suspended it in September 1846. Clay provided crucial financial support and physical protection to John G. Fee’s abolitionist colony at Berea in the 1850s. He served as U.S. ambassador to Russia (1861–69) and remained active in Kentucky politics during and after Reconstruction. David L. Smiley, Lion of White Hall: The Life of Cassius M. Clay (Madison, Wisc., 1962); Asa Earle Martin, The Anti-Slavery Movement in Kentucky prior to 1850 (1918; New York, 1970), 112; Harrold, Abolitionists and the South, 28–29, 32–33, 40–41, 132–33; DAB, 4:169–70. 2. Clay added the following address information: “Box 4950 / No. 89 Liberty St.” 3. This letter contains the notation “Private.” at the top. 4. In a letter from Douglass to Clay dated 26 July 1871, published later in this volume, Douglass denies that he had written that earlier letter to him. 5. Critics of Ulysses S. Grant’s presidency, primarily Democrats and Radical Republicans, charged him with having no real political convictions and holding the office merely for personal aggrandizement. They found the fact that Grant had voted only once before the Civil War, for Democrat James Buchanan in 1856, to be damning evidence. In both a postpresidential interview and his famous Personal Memoirs, Grant stated plainly that the charge was true, but deserved clarification. As a professional military officer between 1843 and 1854, Grant was stationed in posts around the United States, thus never fulfilling the residency requirements to vote in any state until 1856, when he had lived as a civilian in Missouri for two years. Also, Grant followed his father in supporting the policies of the Whig party, but by 1856 that organization had become defunct; it was replaced by the Republican party, which deeply alienated the South with its strong stand against the expansion of slavery. Although Grant detested slavery and supported restrictions on its spread, he believed that victory for the Republican John C. Frémont in the 1856 presidential election would provoke slave states to secede; therefore, he voted for the status quo candidate, Buchanan. In a relaxed moment during his postpresidential world tour, Grant made light of the incident and the persistent controversy it created: “The reason I voted for Buchanan was that I knew Frémont.” Curiously, Grant did not vote in the 1860 presidential election, since he had only recently moved to Galena, Illinois. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 2 vols. (New York, 1885), 1:212–15; John Russell Young, Around the World with General Grant, abridged, edited, and introduced by Michael Fellman (1879; Baltimore, 2002), 284–85; Ron Chernow, Grant (New York, 2017), 94–95.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 193

5/17/23 2:35 PM

194

CASSIUS M. CLAY TO DOUGLASS, 15 JULY 1871

6. Conservative in instincts and calm in demeanor, Hamilton Fish became Grant’s most trusted political adviser. Although some scholars have criticized Fish for his insensitivity to the plight of southern blacks during Reconstruction, others have praised him as one of America’s best secretaries of state. Hans L. Trefousse, Historical Dictionary of Reconstruction (Westport, Conn., 1991), 77–79; Calhoun, Presidency of Grant, 152–54, 196–97, 325. 7. John Thompson Hoffman (1828–88), lawyer and politician, was the recorder of New York City from 1861 to 1865, mayor of New York City from 1866 to 1868, and governor of New York from 1869 to 1872. Hoffman’s rapid rise and fall were due to the machinations of “Boss” William M. Tweed, leader of the city’s Democratic party, which was headquartered in Tammany Hall. Tweed’s corrupt practices were so blatant that they provoked elite New Yorkers to form the bipartisan Committee of Citizens and Taxpayers for the Financial Reform of the City and County of New York. As a result, Tweed, Hoffman, and other members of the Tammany faction fell from power in the early 1870s. Ironically, Hoffman had won the 1866 mayoral race running as the reform candidate, even attracting the votes of many Republicans associated with the longtime Whig-Republican political operative Thurlow Weed. Since Hamilton Fish was part of the Weed faction of the New York Republican party, Clay is accusing him of supporting Hoffman and, thereby, Tweed and his corrupt Democratic political machine. Mitchell Snay, Horace Greeley and the Politics of Reform in Nineteenth-Century America (Lanham, Md., 2011), 172; Foner, Reconstruction, 490-91; “John Thompson Hoffman,” hallofgovernors.ny.gov. 8. Benjamin F. Butler. 9. Jefferson Davis. 10. George Bancroft (1800–91) was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, and educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University. In 1818 he sailed to Europe to study at Georgia Augusta University in Gottingen (Hanover), Germany. Returning to the United States in 1822, Bancroft received an appointment as a Greek instructor at Harvard. In 1824 he cofounded the Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts, modeled on the German gymnasium. In 1827, Bancroft published the fi rst volume of his History of the United States, which was quickly hailed as both a literary and a scholarly triumph. Bancroft moved to Boston, where he was appointed collector of the port. In 1840, the second volume of his History was published. After campaigning for James Knox Polk in 1844, he was appointed to Polk’s fi rst cabinet as secretary of the navy; in that position, he played a key role in both the acquisition of California and the founding of the U.S. Naval Academy. Polk then appointed Bancroft ambassador to Great Britain, where he served for the next three years. Returning to the United States in 1848, he concentrated on completing the unfinished History of the United States. The following year, Bancroft returned to public life and accepted an appointment from Andrew Johnson as U.S. minister to Prussia, a position he continued to hold under Ulysses S. Grant. Returning to the United States in 1874, he moved to Washington, D.C., and published the tenth and final volume of the mammoth History of the United States. In recognition of his stature in the field, he was elected president of the American Historical Association in 1885. DAB, 1:564–71; ANB (online). 11. Ulysses S. Grant’s eight years as president (1869–77) roughly coincided with the Ten Years’ War (1868–78), the first of three wars of liberation that Cubans waged against the Spanish Empire before finally gaining their independence in 1898. The Cuban cause was widely popular in the United States, and sympathetic Americans smuggled money, guns, and men onto the island in support. Several American citizens were celebrated for dying in these efforts. As a result, Grant was heavily pressured to recognize Cuban independence by the press, Republican congressmen, several of his cabinet members, and prominent African Americans, led by Frederick Douglass. But Secretary of State Fish steadfastly resisted American intervention in the affair, fearing that it would undermine other diplomatic concerns, especially the crucial negotiations with Britain over the Alabama claims. Through adroit diplomacy with Spain and skillful counseling of Grant, Fish managed to keep the United States officially neutral through the end of the conflict. Trefousse, Historical Dictionary of Reconstruction,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 194

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CASSIUS M. CLAY TO DOUGLASS, 15 JULY 1871

195

77–78, 81; Calhoun, Presidency of Grant, 179–98, 426–32; Jay Sexton, “The United States, the Cuban Rebellion, and the Multilateral Initiative of 1875,” Diplomatic History, 30:338–46 (June 2006). 12. President Ulysses S. Grant was accused of practicing nepotism to an exceptional degree during his two administrations, and the charge has haunted his legacy ever since. In truth, there are credible claims that roughly forty of the president’s relatives held governmental posts or were awarded contracts during his terms. Nevertheless, scholars who have reevaluated Grant’s career since the 1980s believe that allegations of exceptional corruption in the Grant presidency are overstated. Before the establishment of a rigorous civil service system in the late nineteenth century, the notorious “spoils system” meant that nearly all governmental posts and contracts were awarded via political patronage. Much unethical behavior inevitably resulted, most of it technically legal at the time. Therefore, corruption during the Grant presidency, even among his relatives, was certainly real, but more typical than exceptional for the era. Modern scholars also note that the emphasis on corruption by Grant appointees has overshadowed the fact that he assigned more African Americans, Native Americans, and Jews to federal positions than any president before him. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 14 June 1872; Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Era of Good Stealings (New York, 1993), 181–85, 263; Chernow, Grant, 638–40, 641–43; Lawrence M. Salinger, ed., Encyclopedia of White-Collar and Corporate Crime, 2 vols. (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 2005), 1: 374–75. 13. From 1869 to 1872, the depredations of the Ku Klux Klan spread throughout the South, especially in Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Since the Klan’s strength exceeded the power of any one state to control it, President Grant and Congress took measures to curb the terror. In his first few years in office, Grant cautiously helped reinforce some state militias so they could combat the Klan. On 31 May 1870, Congress passed the Enforcement Act. Intended primarily to protect the guarantees of the Fifteenth Amendment, the act made it a federal felony for anyone in disguise to deprive someone of their rights or to act against a person for exercising them. This bill, which received President Grant’s support, laid the basis for further federal indictments against the Klan. Under growing public pressure, especially from Republicans in the South, President Grant and Congress created a committee in January 1871 to investigate the Klan further. From this inquest issued the Ku Klux Klan Act of 20 April 1871, which made any conspiracy to travel on public highways in disguise with the purpose of depriving anyone of his rights a federal offense subject to federal jurisdiction. The act empowered the president to use U.S. troops against the Klan and to suspend habeas corpus if necessary. President Grant speedily issued a proclamation in support of the act and gave warning to conspirators in the South. Although Grant’s actions had checked some of the Klan’s expansiveness by 1872, he had by no means thwarted the silent society. Klan activities continued unabated in many parts of the South, and political considerations and constraints on the exercise of federal power within the states often checked Grant’s hand. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:338n; James  E. Sefton, The United States Army and Reconstruction, 1865–1877 (Baton Rouge, 1967), 220–29; Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, La., 1999), 383–418; William B. Hesseltine, Ulysses S. Grant, Politician (New York, 1935), 238–51; McFeely, Grant, 367–73. 14. Horace Greeley founded the New York Tribune in 1841 and made it arguably the most influential Republican newspaper of the Civil War era. A reform Whig at heart, Greeley argued for the protection of American industry, western expansion, temperance, restrictions on slavery expansion, and full-throated nationalism. He also evinced a consistent sympathy for the plight of African Americans, free and enslaved. Once war commenced, Greeley was an early voice for emancipation as a war aim. Nevertheless, he held a deep passion for national reunion without rancor, which led him to quixotic and inconsistent behavior during Reconstruction. At first, he supported Andrew Johnson’s mild policies, but came to advocate for his impeachment. He initially backed Radical Republican policies, yet persistently called for a general amnesty for Confederate leaders, notoriously signing Jefferson Davis’s bail bond in 1867. He endorsed Ulysses S. Grant’s run for president in 1868, but by 1871 he had begun to attack the administration over corruption and its southern policy. Greeley

Y8204-Douglass.indb 195

5/17/23 2:35 PM

196

DOUGLASS TO CASSIUS M. CLAY, 26 JULY 1871

argued that the high taxes and graft common in southern Reconstruction governments repelled the northern migration and investment required for regional development and national reconciliation. In 1872, one year after this letter to Douglass was written, Greeley ran for president on the Liberal Republican ticket, advocating “local self-government” in the South and calling on Americans to “clasp hands across the bloody chasm” in order to put the war and sectional strife behind them. He was decisively defeated by President Grant and died only a few weeks later. Foner, Reconstruction, 503–04; Trefousse, Historical Dictionary of Reconstruction, 95–96, 128–29. 15. Clay probably alludes to followers of the former New York governor William H. Seward, who had been secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. When the latter broke with the Republican party over Reconstruction policies and formed a short-lived National Union party coalition of Democrats and a few northern conservative Republicans in 1866, Seward was most prominent among the latter. Eric L. McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1960), 428–39; Patrick W. Riddleberger, 1866: The Critical Year Revisited (Carbondale, Ill., 1979), 86–104, 217–23, 395–97.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO CASSIUS M. CLAY Rochester[, N.Y.] 26 July 1871.

Hon: C. M. Clay. My dear Sir: I am obliged by your letter of the 15th although I am not the writer of the letter to which it is a reply. Remembering your noble, and I may say, your glorious effort in the strong and perilous past, I was much astonished by what you now seem to regard for you, the path of political duty. The Republican party cannot be broken up at this juncture, without, in my judgment, putting in peril not only the Freedmen of the South, but the honor and safety of the country. In my mind, I had better put a pistol to my head and blow my brains out, than to lend myself in my will to the destruction or the defeat of the Republican party. The facts concerning Gen. Grants voting in the past were well known in 1868—and he was voted for nevertheless. He has proved himself a better Republican than he was supposed to be when he was first nominated and voted for. Though I am a party man I am no man’s partizan. I stand for General Grant while he is the stand bearer of the great party that elected him and I am extremely sorry to find that you cannot see it to be your duty to do the same.1 If Gen Grant is sorry concerning Cuba—and I think he is, he is in company with Senator Sumner2 and other great and good men. I am not sure either that killing Grant, would help Cuba. In deciding the question as to who shall receive the nomination in 1872 the whole ground shall be calmly and carefully surveyed. What can be done, should be as carefully considered as well as what ought to be done. To me, it does not seem likely

Y8204-Douglass.indb 196

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO CASSIUS M. CLAY, 26 JULY 1871

197

that the Republican party will find a candidate of equal strength with General Grant. The uncontrollable logic of events points him out as our candidate, we must take him or take division, weakness and defeat. I have not committed my self to this view in my paper—but shall do so at no distant day, unless I get unexpected light to the contrary.3 I note what you say of General Grant’s nepotism. Since reading your letter, I have been at the pains of looking into the Diplomatic Service. The result is, to my mind, disastrous to your charge. I have before me the Tribune 1871. I commend to your attention page 43. You will there find the names of all our foreign ministers.4 I will not copy them here—but I think that I would respectfully you to that list list before you venture to repeat this Statement, that General Grant has promoted but one man, not a relation, in the diplomatic service. You astonish me beyond measure when you tell me that you cannot approve of Grant’s proscriptive course toward the defeated rebels. Great God! were ever rebels and traitors treated with equal unity? My dear Mr Clay there must be some mistake about this. You are a brave man and a generous man, but not even your generosity can exceed that which the Government has extended to our defeated slaveholding rebels of the South. I see no such surrender of personal liberty in the Ku Klux Bill5 as you see in it. A large discretion is given the president it is true. But what of that? You say that something must be trusted to the people in a Government like ours. That is true and wise. Equally true and wise is it, that in order to good government something must also be trusted to the public servants of the people. When Minister to Russia, you enjoyed a pretty large margin of discretion. I have no question that you used it wisely, and patriotically and would do so again. Power is easily abused—but when men are to be governed some body must have the power to govern. A cruel and brutal police officer will some times make it the means of gratifying his [illegible]. What then, shall we strip the office of power? But my dear Mr Clay, I did not mean to argue this question with you—and I will not. If Cassius M. Clay cannot set himself right any effort of mine by way of argument will be unavailing. I write simply in acknowledgement of your note. And in token of my old time respect for your great deeds in favor universal liberty and justice. Very truly yours FREDK DOUG LASS. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 606–07, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Following Grant’s first presidential term, Clay was unconvinced of the Radical Republicans’ Reconstruction programs, and as early as January 1871 he began openly criticizing Grant. Clay

Y8204-Douglass.indb 197

5/17/23 2:35 PM

198

CASSIUS M. CLAY TO DOUGLASS, 28 JULY 1871

ultimately campaigned for the Liberal Republican candidate, Horace Greeley, in 1872. Clay was opposed to the continued military occupation of the South and sought to restore local control to southerners. As a Kentuckian, he appealed to southern Democrats to join the Liberal movement; he served as a leader of the Kentucky delegation to the National Liberal Republican Convention in May 1872. Westminster (Md.) Democratic Advocate, 26 January 1871; Smiley, Lion of White Hall, 222–25. 2. Charles Sumner. 3. On 10 August 1871, Douglass republished an article from the New York Independent that concluded, “Give General Grant two full terms of official service, and . . . the financial and political questions left by the war will be pretty thoroughly settled.” The following week, he published an original editorial listing all the praiseworthy accomplishments of Grant’s administration during the last three years and pointing out everything to be feared if the Democrats regained the presidency. In late December 1871, Douglass wrote an editorial concerning what he called the “Political Civil War,” which he feared might split the Republican party. He encouraged squabbling politicians to put aside personal grievances and objections and to show unity regarding the reelection of Grant. NNE, 10, 17 August, 21 December 1871. 4. Douglass refers to The Tribune Almanac and Political Register, which listed people employed in the U.S. diplomatic service on page 43. For thirty-five nations, it gave the minister’s name, native state, salary, and date of appointment. The Tribune Almanac and Political Register (New York. 1871), 43. 5. The Ku Klux Klan Act of 20 April 1871.

CASSIUS M. CLAY TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS N[ew] York, [N.Y.]1 28 July 1871.2

Hon. F’—Douglas Rochester NY Dear Sir, Your letter of the 26th is received. I never knew at the time I wrote you that you had a son Frederic—so I overlooked the “jr”. As you say men who have reached one standpoint in life are not to be moved by argument—each no doubt having made up a judgement on all the data presentable. I therefore say only a word in reply: first, that I do not propose to rest my future upon my past—however secure—but so long as I live to feel the same interest in the Blacks—on whose emancipation my fame rests—and to [illegible] the same measure of success in the future as in the past. First then whilst it would have been good policy as I think to have executed a few leading rebels promptly—it certainly is bad policy to keep up proscription and irritation after all prospect of an aggressive policy is past. In this Govenor Andrews3—one of the truest and wisest of our friends agreed with me.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 198

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CASSIUS M. CLAY TO DOUGLASS, 28 JULY 1871

199

I have no fear with you that the fruits of the war are to be lost by a liberal policy towards the South. On the contrary the danger to the Blacks is in the widening the difference between the whites & Blacks—the whites being superior in numbers, and at present in intelligence & wealth in the South. Therefore if Grant comes with the sword, & Greeley or Sumner 4 with the olive branch—I go for the man of “peace.” All experience shows that no party can live long in a free country— and I would the Blacks to show magnanimity to the rebels—that they might in turn in the day of need receive it. With regard to Grant’s nepotism—I wrote hastily—and did not intend to write it with his European appointments: His nepotism here is beyond controversy5—and his promotions in the Diplomatic service except the elevation of his brother-in-law was confined so far as I was aware to Bancroft.6 I have not seen the list nor taken the trouble to look into the details—my purpose was in writing a hasty letter to a friend to note the crimes of the President—and in that I see no reason to change my opinions from what you say about it. With regard to Cuba, I believe as I live that a majority of the American people desired a fair course of neutrality observed between Cuba and her tyrants that Grant & Fish7 would not allow—and but for the message and influence of Grant against the Republicans moving for Cuban independence—a majority of the Republicans would have done their duty to Cuba! Fish is another of the men voting for Democrats to the last hour; who are now foisted upon us (voting for Hoffman!)8 and who was mean enough to blackguard the Cuban Patriots after betraying them. Very truly yours, CASSIUS M. CLAY ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 600–02, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Clay supplied additional address information: “Box 4950.” This letter was marked at the top “Private” by Clay. 2. Clay mistakenly dated this letter as 18 July 1871 when he was replying to a letter from Douglass dated 26 July 1871. The editors have concluded that the correct date of composition must have been 28 July 1871. 3. John Albion Andrew (1818–67), governor of Massachusetts, was born in Windham, Maine, and educated at Bowdoin College. After his graduation in 1837, he settled in Boston and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar. Although he was one of the founders of the Free Soil party, Andrew did not hold public office until 1858, when he was elected to the Massachusetts General Court as a Republican. In 1860 he not only headed his state’s delegation to the Republican National Convention, but also was elected governor, a position he held until January 1866. Throughout the Civil War, he

Y8204-Douglass.indb 199

5/17/23 2:35 PM

200

DOUGLASS TO JAMES REDPATH, 29 JULY 1871

was an outspoken advocate of emancipation and a leader in persuading the Lincoln administration to enlist blacks in the Union army. After the Confederate surrender, however, Andrew recommended a conciliatory Reconstruction policy toward southern whites. On 19 November 1859, Andrew was chosen to chair and speak at the meeting of John Brown’s sympathizers in Tremont Temple. Lib., 25 November 1859; Henry Greenleaf Pearson, The Life of John A. Andrew: Governor of Massachusetts, 1861–1865, 2 vols. (Boston, 1904); ACAB, 1:72–73; NCAB, 1:118; DAB, 2:279–81. 4. Horace Greeley and Charles Sumner. 5. Critics and admirers of Ulysses S. Grant, then and now, agree that he was far too generous in using his power and influence to advance the interests of his friends and family members. In fact, some family members appear to have built their entire careers upon his largesse. Such was the case with Grant’s brother-in-law the Reverend Michael John Cramer (1835–98), the husband of his youngest sister, Mary Frances (1839–1905). Grant procured a chaplain position for Cramer, a Swiss-born Methodist clergyman, at a hospital during the Civil War, and another at an army barracks in Covington, Kentucky, after the war. Cramer then used his significant initiative to accumulate so many recommendations from prominent men from both parties that Grant felt it impossible to deny his appeal to be resident minister in Denmark, a post he held for eleven years. Based upon this experience, Cramer acquired the same position in his native Switzerland from 1881 to 1885. Largely because of the prestige he acquired in the diplomatic service, he taught at several universities and seminaries until his death in 1898. During the last year of his life, Cramer cashed in on the Grant name one final time, publishing a book revealing private conversations and letters his brother-in-law had shared with him. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 14 June 1872; Michael John Cramer, Ulysses S. Grant: Conversations and Unpublished Letters (New York, 1897), 7–8; Summers, Era of Good Stealings, 95; Chernow, Grant, 638, 717, 875; Office of the Historian, Department of State, “Michael John Cramer (1835–1898),” history.state.gov; Find a Grave (online). 6. George Bancroft. 7. Hamilton Fish. 8. Clay believed that Hamilton Fish had supported the Democrat John T. Hoffman in his race for mayor of New York City (1866) or for governor of New York (1868). A pre–Civil War Whig, Fish had opposed abolitionism and only reluctantly affiliated himself with the nascent Republican party. Politically inactive during the Civil War and the early years of Reconstruction, Fish might have given his support to the moderate Hoffman as some other conservative Republicans in the state did. Calhoun, Presidency of Grant, 152–54; Homer A. Stebbins, “A Political History of the State of New York, 1865–1869,” in [Columbia University] Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, 55:106–07, 370 (New York, 1913).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JAMES REDPATH1 Rochester, [N.Y.] 29 July 1871.

My dear Mr Redpath: What upon earth can you want with the character of my lecture? People ought by this time to take me on trust, especially as their expectations have always been remarkably moderate and never disappointed. It is too late now to do much to improve my relation to the public—I shall never get beyond Fredk Douglass the self educated fugitive slave. While my lecture on Santo Domingo2 will be historical, descriptive and political, favor-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 200

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO JAMES REDPATH, 29 JULY 1871

201

ing annexation or some other extention of power over that Country, I shall endeavor not to forget that people do not attend lectures to hear statesmanlike addresses, which are usually rather heavy for the stomachs of young and old who listen. People want to be amused as well as instructed. They come as often for the former as the latter, and perhaps as often to see the man as for either. Get me all the appointments you can—but I beg that you will say nothing to create expectations which may be disappointed. Yours very truly FREDK DOUG LASS ALS: Alfred W. Anthony Collection, NN. 1. Born in Berwick-on-Tweed, Scotland, James Redpath (1833–91) immigrated with his family to the United States around 1850 and soon found work as a reporter for Horace Greeley’s New York Daily Tribune. In the mid-1850s he traveled throughout the South, reporting on the institution of slavery and calling for its immediate abolition. By the late 1850s, Redpath had moved to Kansas, where he edited the Doniphan Crusader of Freedom and supported the fight to make the territory a nonslaveholding state. Redpath befriended John Brown in Kansas and, after the latter’s execution, became his first biographer, writing The Public Life of Captain John Brown (Boston, 1860). In 1859 and 1860, Redpath toured Haiti as a reporter and returned to the United States as the official Haitian lobbyist for diplomatic recognition, a status he secured within two years. During the Civil War, he was a frontline correspondent with the Union army commanded by William Tecumseh Sherman, who in 1865, when South Carolina was under federal military occupation, appointed Redpath superintendent of the state’s public schools. Returning north in 1868, Redpath organized the first professional speakers bureau, which included Douglass among its clients. During the 1880s he returned to his earlier career as a journalist-activist by editing newspapers and writing books and pamphlets on behalf of Irish nationalism, woman suffrage, and socialism. Douglass to James Redpath, 10 April 1869, Miscellaneous Mss., University of Illinois at Chicago Library; McKivigan, Forgotten Firebrand; Charles F. Horner, The Life of James Redpath and the Development of the Modern Lyceum (New York, 1926); Willis D. Boyd, “James Redpath and American Negro Colonization in Haiti, 1860–1862,” Americas, 12:169–82 (October 1955); DAB, 15:443–44. 2. From January to March 1871, Douglass served as assistant secretary to the special investigating committee sent by the U.S. government to study the feasibility of annexing the Dominican Republic, a small Caribbean nation that occupied the eastern portion of the island of Santo Domingo, which it shared with Haiti. Douglass began lecturing on Santo Domingo within a month of his return to the United States. He used the address both to provide his audiences with a physical and historical description of Santo Domingo and to foster support for President Ulysses S. Grant’s effort to annex the Dominican Republic. Douglass revised the text for this lecture several times for presentations in cities such as Baltimore, Boston, Rochester, and Chicago during the 1871–72 winter lyceum. He revived the lecture for the following season but found it drew much smaller audiences. Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser, 25 April 1871; NNE, 26 October 1871, 2 May 1872, 23 January, 25 May 1873; Boston Evening Transcript, 15 November 1871; NASS, 25 November 1871; Chicago Tribune, 30 December 1871; St. Louis Democrat, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 January 1873; Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig & Courier, 15 March 1873; Speech File, reel 18, frames 259–88, 289–311, 312–26, 327–47, FD Papers, DLC.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 201

5/17/23 2:35 PM

202

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 2 SEPTEMBER 1871

GERRIT SMITH TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Peterboro[, N.Y.] 26 August [18]71.

My dear Douglass, I have received from your boys their Circular of 23rd inst.1 I have not the houses & land I once had. Nonetheless, I must do a little for this good digest, which they lay before me. Please hand them the enclosed draft.2 I prize your Paper. The Editorials of [this] paper are as wise & profound as those of your Paper. Are you ever coming to see me again? Do take me in your way between Washington & Rochester. In haste your friend GERRIT SMITH ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 613, FD Papers, DLC. 1. The New National Era reached its one-year anniversary in August 1871 after undergoing significant changes in management and acquiring a new name. Lewis H. Douglass and Frederick Douglass, Jr., were credited on the masthead as the paper’s “publishers,” and their father served as “editor.” It is likely that Smith refers to a circular sent out by the younger Douglasses to subscribers and other potential supporters to solicit financial aid for the struggling newspaper. NNE, 24 August 1871. 2. No record of a contribution from Smith to the New National Era was recorded in that newspaper.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH Rochester. [N.Y.] 2 Sept[ember] 1871.

My dear Gerrit Smith: Though I know you to be a cheerful giver—I am not pleased that you have been called upon to aid in the circulation of the Era among the Freedmen. My boys seem to think that because you have helped the father you are bound to help the sons. On this principle you will be likely to have your hands full, for you have helped a good many fathers in your day. They sent you the Circular without my knowledge and though you have my best thanks for the donation of twenty dollars—I am not pleased that they sent you the Circular. You may now be safely left without prompting in all matters of benevolence. I am just now spending a few weeks at my old home in Rochester.1 Rose and her husband live in my house here and Mrs Douglass and I came here to spend a few weeks with them.2

Y8204-Douglass.indb 202

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 2 SEPTEMBER 1871

203

I certainly do hope to see you once more at your home in Peterboro— and is possible that I may do so sometime during the coming winter.3 Our friend Charles Sumner never wearies of the subject of his visit to you last winter—You must have made him very happy there.4 I have bought the entire printing establishment of the New National Era—paying eight thousand dollars for it—and have given it to my three sons—in the hope that they may be able to serve themselves as well as their people.5 I am sure, you will say this is pretty well for a fugitive slave. It is just thirty three years tomorrow, since I ran away from Master Tommy Auld6 —and it seems but yesterday—though a world of change has taken place since then. My old Master has reached a good old age and is still hale [illegible] toward eighty [illegible] to see him—but I shall never go to him without being invited. He wants to see me—but he is too proud to invite me—and I shall probably never see him. I have a better opinion of my old master now than formerly. From all that I can learn of him through my sister Eliza7—he was always much troubled about slavery—and was puzzled as to the path of duty. Please remember me kindly to Dear Mrs Smith.8 I am always your grateful friend. FREDERICK DOUG LASS ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. 1. Few details have survived concerning Douglass’s activities in late summer 1871. A brief clipping in the New York National Anti-Slavery Standard reported that in mid-September, Douglass was “confined at his home in Rochester, N.Y., by illness,” and wished him a speedy recovery. NASS, 23 September 1871. 2. Douglass’s daughter Rosetta, her husband, Nathan Sprague, and their children resided at a number of houses in Rochester in the late 1860s and early 1870s, including one on Pearl Street owned by Douglass. They were living in Douglass’s own home on South Avenue, along with Anna Murray Douglass, when it was destroyed by arson in June 1872. Rochester Union and Advertiser, 3 June 1872; O’Keefe, Frederick and Anna Douglass, 57–58, 86; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 171–72, 274–76. 3. Douglass visited Rochester in early February 1872 while on a lecture tour that had taken him through the Midwest. Later that month, he lectured in Elmira, New York, about sixty miles southwest of Smith’s home in Peterboro, but no record has survived of a visit that winter. Frederick Douglass to Rosetta Douglass Sprague, 7 February 1872, General Correspondence File, reel 9, frame 207R, FD Papers, DLC; Rochester Union and Advertiser, 17 February 1872. 4. Surviving correspondence indicates that Sumner was a guest at Gerrit Smith’s estate in Peterboro, New York, the day after he addressed an audience in nearby Canastota, New York. Palmer, Selected Letters of Charles Sumner, 2:531–32. 5. On 12 December 1870, Douglass purchased the remaining half interest in the New National Era and its printing office for $8,000. Douglass had placed much of the management of the newspaper into the hands of his sons Lewis and Frederick, Jr., both experienced printers. Charles retained his job as a federal government clerk but wrote articles for the newspaper. Foner, Frederick Douglass, 281.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 203

5/17/23 2:35 PM

204

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 2 SEPTEMBER 1871

6. Born in St. Michael’s, Maryland, Thomas Auld (1795–1880) was the eldest son of Hugh and Zipporah Auld. Trained as a shipbuilder, Auld supervised the construction of the Lloyd sloop the Sally Lloyd and subsequently became its captain. In 1823 he met and married Lucretia Anthony while a boarder in the Anthony home. Shortly thereafter, Auld became a storekeeper in Hillsborough, Maryland, and inherited Douglass, along with ten other slaves from the estate of Aaron Anthony, his father-in-law. He later managed a store in St. Michael’s, where he also served as postmaster before retiring to a nearby farm. The 1850 census lists him as a “farmer” with $8,500 worth of real estate. References to Thomas Auld in Douglass’s Narrative and public speeches are generally uncomplimentary, although Douglass disclaimed any personal hostility toward his former owner. The two men met once in the post-Reconstruction period when Douglass visited the dying Auld in St. Michael’s. Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58-59, MdTCH; 1850 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 1169 (free schedule); NASS, 25 November 1845; NS, 8 September 1848, 7 September 1849; Baltimore Sun, 19 June 1877; Tilghman, Talbot County, 1:395; Emerson B. Roberts, “A Visitation of Western Talbot,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 41:235–45 (September 1946); Dickson J. Preston, “Aaron Anthony” (unpublished paper, Easton, Maryland, 1977), 5, MdTCH. 7. The third oldest of six children born to Harriet Bailey, Eliza Bailey (1816–c. 1876), a slave owned by Aaron Anthony, was the sister of Frederick Douglass. When Anthony died in 1826, Eliza became the property of Thomas Auld, Anthony’s son-in-law. Eliza married Peter Mitchell, a free black who worked as a field hand in Talbot County, with whom she would have nine children. In 1836, Mitchell bought Eliza and their (at that time) two children from Thomas Auld for one hundred dollars. After settling on an acre of land that they rented from Samuel and John Hambleton of Talbot County, they raised their own vegetables and meat and hired themselves out as a domestic and a field hand. Eliza and her brother Frederick were separated after the latter’s escape from slavery in 1838. On 6 June 1844, Mitchell freed Eliza and the other children because state laws no longer required removal from Maryland upon manumission. Eliza and Frederick were reunited in 1865 when Douglass stopped in Baltimore while on a speaking tour. Lewis Douglass to Douglass, 9 June 1865, FD Papers, DHU-MS; Thomas Auld to Peter Mitchell, 25 January 1836, Talbot County Records, V.52, 258; Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58–59, Sale of Slaves, Manumission of Eliza Mitchell, 1 July 1844, Talbot County Records, V.58, 234–35, all in MdTCH; New York Independent, 2 March 1865; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 164–65, 184, 206-07, 229. 8. On 2 January 1822, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh (1805–75), sometimes called “Nancy,” became the second wife of Gerrit Smith. She was born in Hagerstown, Maryland, where her father, William Fitzhugh (1761–1839), was a prominent planter connected with elite families. In 1800, Fitzhugh entered into a real estate venture with his neighbors Charles Carroll and Nathaniel Rochester. The three purchased land in upstate New York and established the town of Rochester, where Fitzhugh moved his family in 1815. He became a prominent resident and philanthropist, contributing to the town’s growth into a city. Gerrit and Ann Smith had eight children, including Elizabeth Smith Miller (1822–1911), who followed in her father’s footsteps, becoming an activist and reformer in her own right. Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, 27; Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 16; Robert McNamara, “Charles Carroll of Belle Vue: Co-founder of Rochester,” RH, 42:1, 13 (October 1980).

Y8204-Douglass.indb 204

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES H. HOWARD TO DOUGLASS, 9 JANUARY 1872

205

CHARLES H. HOWARD1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Chicago[, Ill.]2 9 Jan[uary] 1872.

Hon. Frederic Douglass Dear Sir: Since listening to your instructive and truly inspiring lecture on Santo Domingo3 I am the more convinced that your sentiments regarding the great mission of this country to that long oppressed people ought not to be confined to the considerably few who can hear your voice. As soon as the Island is under our flag it will fall to the lot of our Association4 (which represents some 8500 membership scattered throughout the land and embracing in one union the energy & character of the old abolitionists headed by such men as the Tappans5 of New York) to start upon the work of Education there, with all the [illegible] of Primary, normal & collegiate schools as have [illegible] in the South. Now I beg you let some one write off for me some of the introduction and a part of the closing portion of your lecture if you have not the time and strength and inclination to prepare especially an article bearing on this subject.6 I shall gladly pay you for your valuable Contribution at your accustomed rates. And I shall be grateful both for my own part & for the cause which we trust is that of the Master and which I doubt not you will be satisfied to aid of if you consistently can. Please inform me by Eastern mail or as soon as convenient what you can do. I would like the article before the end of February—but if I can know it is coming would wait longer. Very Respectfully C. H. HOWARD ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 619–20, FD Papers, DLC. 1. The younger brother of the Civil War general Oliver Otis Howard, Charles Henry Howard (1838–1908) graduated from Bowdoin College in 1859. He rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Union army where he was wounded twice in combat and placed in charge of training black troops. After the war, Howard served as both a Freedmen’s Bureau inspector of schools and as the western district secretary of the American Missionary Association. He thereafter edited a series of religious and political newspapers later returning to government service as an inspector of Indian agencies during the Garfield and Arthur administrations. Joe Martin Richardson, Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861–1890 (Athens, Ga., 1986), 80–81, 174–75; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 6:321. 2. Howard added additional information regarding his address: “American Missionary Association / 204 West Madison St.” 3. Howard probably attended Douglass’s lecture “Santo Domingo,” delivered at the Union Park Congregational Church on 29 December 1871. The following January, Douglass delivered the lecture

Y8204-Douglass.indb 205

5/17/23 2:35 PM

206

CHARLES H. HOWARD TO DOUGLASS, 9 JANUARY 1872

throughout the Midwest. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxx; Chicago Tribune, 30 December 1871; Champaign (Ill.) Champaign County Gazette, 3, 10, 17 January 1872. 4. Formed in 1846 in Albany, New York, the American Missionary Association was an organization of Christian abolitionists who chose not to associate with established missionary agencies of the major denominations. Early leaders of the group included Lewis Tappan (treasurer) and Simeon S. Jocelyn and George Whipple (secretaries). The organization promoted educational and missionary activities for blacks in the United States and abroad. By 1855, the American Missionary Association had more than one hundred missions in North America as well as posts in Egypt, Thailand, Haiti, Jamaica, and West Africa. In addition to establishing missions, the association served as an important medium through which Christian abolitionists lobbied American churches to take up antislavery activities. During and after the Civil War, the association became a leading missionary and educational agency, serving southern freedpeople. As Reconstruction progressed, the association became aligned with the missionary interests of the Congregational Church, leading African American clergymen to accuse the group of stifling their independence. Although similar charges were lodged against the association’s schools and college, the organization nonetheless made a major contribution to the advancement of African American education in the late nineteenth century. Richardson, Christian Reconstruction, 154–59, 259–61; McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 114–15; Clifton H. Johnson, “The American Missionary Association, 1846–1861” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1958). 5. The Tappan brothers were two of the most prominent opponents of William Lloyd Garrison inside the abolitionist movement. Lewis Tappan (1788–1873), an affluent New York merchant and abolitionist, devoted much of his considerable wealth and energy to religious and reform causes such as abolitionism. He was an early supporter of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the American Bible Society, a founder of the New York Evangelist, and a patron of Oberlin College. He helped organize the New York Anti-Slavery Society and the American AntiSlavery Society in 1833. In 1840, Lewis broke with Garrison over the issue of political action and the advisability of linking abolitionism with other reforms. A founder and leading figure in the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, he maintained close ties with British abolitionists opposed to Garrison. Lewis played a leading part in securing the freedom of the African captives on the slave ship Amistad in 1841. In 1846, abandoning efforts to convert older benevolent societies to abolitionism, he founded the American Missionary Association. Focused mainly on the religious sphere, he gave only a lukewarm endorsement to political abolitionism. Arthur Tappan (1786–1865) began work as a dry-goods clerk in Boston, but by the age of fifty, he had become a prosperous silk-jobbing merchant in New York City. Believing that his wealth obligated him to be “a steward of the Lord,” Arthur gave generously of his time and money to such reform organizations as the American Bible Society, the American Tract Society, the American Home Missionary Society, and efforts to root out moral vice of every sort, including intemperance. Oberlin College was founded largely through his financial contributions. He also made timely contributions at an early period to Garrison’s Liberator. After renouncing his membership in the American Colonization Society, Arthur devoted most of his philanthropic energies to the antislavery movement. In 1833 he helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society. Seven years later, he seceded from it because of tactical disagreements with the Garrisonians, and he helped organize the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Arthur served as the first president of both these major antislavery organizations and was an early supporter of the Liberty party. When missionary societies with which he had been affiliated failed to adhere to his antislavery principles, he cut his connections with them; in 1846, he helped establish the American Missionary Association. Arthur tried to promote schools and colleges for free blacks in the North, but local racist feeling frustrated his efforts. Lewis Tappan, The Life of Arthur Tappan (New York, 1870); Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War against Slavery (Cleveland, 1969); ACAB, 6:33; NCAB, 2:320–21; DAB, 18:298–300, 303–04. 6. While Douglass lectured frequently in 1871–73 on Santo Domingo, he never published an article on that topic for any American Missionary Association periodical.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 206

5/17/23 2:35 PM

JOSEPH WARNER TO DOUGLASS, 9 JANUARY 1872

207

JOSEPH WARNER1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, [D.C.] 9 Jan[uary] 1872.

Fredk. Douglass Esq: Your Sons2 inform me that you think too much space is given to the Tariff.3 My reasons for giving the subject so much prominence is first because I think it is more intimately concerns the welfare of the working men of the country than almost any other, and second because I hope to make it of direct advantage to the paper. The manufacturing is, next to agriculture, the great interest of the country. Production is its breath of life. They will make a desperate struggle to save it from the free traders. The New Era is the only defender they have here, and they must help its circulation. As an effort to help the paper in this way is consistent with its views, and therefore requires no sacrifice of principles, it has seemed to me that it may [illegible] done. When the tariff bill is [illegible] it will bring the protection—its here, and then we will see whether I am right in the hope I have intimated. The Syracuse Post now have ordered 300 copies of the next no. and 300 of a succeeding no. on account of an article in favor of continuing publication to that intent.4 Whatever I may say about the republican opponents of Grant, I think is a legitimate criticism, since I make no attacks upon his personal character, and never charge them with corruption &c. I have always thought a man’s political career is fair game, as Gen. Grants enemies certainly do. It dont hurt the paper to be talking about [illegible] [illegible] [illegible], provided there is no other course than that we differ from them on political questions and acts and say so plainly.5 But if you desire that no reference should be made to the Republicans who are as free in their comments upon the President, except of a complimentary character, all you have to do is to say so [and] I will avoid that subject. Yours Truely, JOSEPH WARNER ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 621–22, FD Papers, DLC. 1. While the signature at the end of this missive cannot be verified, it is possible that it belonged to Joseph Warren (1815–?). Born in Maine, Warren later moved to Michigan and began working for the U.S. Treasury Department. By 1870, he had been transferred to Washington, where he was part of the Sixth Auditors group, making between $1,200 and $1,600 a year. The connection between Warren, the New National Era, and the Douglasses is not clear, but since Charles Douglass was also employed by the Treasury Department at the time, it is possible that the two had struck up an

Y8204-Douglass.indb 207

5/17/23 2:35 PM

208

JOSEPH WARNER TO DOUGLASS, 9 JANUARY 1872

acquaintance. Also, since Warren was a longtime employee of the Treasury Department, it is not unreasonable to think he might have been composing or collecting articles for publication concerning pending tariff legislation. 1870 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 104; Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval in the Service of the United States . . . 1871 (Washington, 1871), 26; The United States Treasury Register, Containing a List of All Persons Employed in the Treasury Department . . . 1874 (Washington, 1874), 33; William H. Boyd, Boyd’s Directory of Washington, Georgetown, and Alexandria . . . 1871 (Washington, 1871), 363. 2. By June 1871, the New National Era was being published by Douglass’s sons Lewis and Frederick Jr., who had been involved with the newspaper since its inception. A Treasury Department clerk, Charles seems to have contributed occasional articles. Early on, Lewis was listed as the assistant editor to his father, though he apparently acted as chief typesetter too. In January 1871, when the senior Douglass, accompanied by Charles, was sent by President Grant to the Dominican Republic for two months, Frederick Jr. placed himself in charge of “business management” and Lewis took over as editor. NNE, 21 January 1871; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 529, 539. 3. By and large, editorials in the New National Era in 1871 took stances against revisions to tariff legislation. Though some believed that African Americans in the 1870s were “radical ‘freetraders,’ ” Douglass and other black editorialists were ardent protectionists opposed to opening up international trade. The New National Era hoped that the American people would not be swayed by the zeal of pro-British propaganda, which promoted altering the status quo tariffs. An article titled “Cause of Our National Prosperity” urges readers to “ ‘let well enough alone.’ [As] we have stated that there has been no period in the history of the county in which its progress and wealth and general prosperity has been greater than during the last ten years under the present tariff system.” In the end, only minor changes were made to importation laws in June 1872. NNE, 7, 14, 21, 28 December 1871, 4 January 1872; F. W. Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States: A Series of Essays, 4th ed. (1892; New York, 1905), 171–92. 4. Many residents of Syracuse, New York, would have agreed with the New National Era on protectionism because of the local salt industry. Lake Onondaga, on which Syracuse is built, is home to numerous salt springs. Since at least 1654, Europeans had been extracting salt from the region for profit. Under the tariffs on salt imports in place since 1864, the New National Era reported that Syracuse salt producers thrived. As with many other industries, salt producers feared that reducing tariffs would lower profits and employment for many domestic industries. NNE, 11 January, 28 March 1872; W. W. Clayton, History of Onondaga County, New York (Syracuse, N.Y., 1878), 44–54. 5. As Joseph Warren says, he did not wish to harm the paper’s Republican reputation by criticizing President Grant publicly, even if he did not always agree with Grant’s political positions or respect his political ability. After the Black Friday gold scandal (24 September 1869), in which Grant’s brother-in-law was implicated, the New National Era was reporting in 1871 that Democrats and some “sorehead” Republicans had grown disgruntled with Grant’s appointments. These critics accused him of accepting “costly presents,” and were upset that he had appointed some twenty-five of his relations to office. The New National Era defended the president, arguing that twelve of these supposed relatives were, in fact, “neither related to the President nor to Mrs. Grant.” Some of Grant’s relatives had indeed been put in office, but as the paper pointed out, some of these appointments occurred before Grant’s presidency. NNE, 5, 12, 19 October, 9 November, 7, 14 December 1871.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 208

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 20 JANUARY 1872

209

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington[,] D.C. 20 January 1872.

Dear Father, My delay in writing to you has been in consequence of your being constantly on the wing.1 Though I am kept pretty busy I don’t urge that as an excuse for my negligence. I have the supervision of two school buildings now being erected in the County,2 and in connection with my clerical duties I am kept closely and continually employed.3 I have successfully baffled all attempts made by Brown4 for the removal of the school house. I have been before the Legislature, and my letters and testimony showing Brown to be a person given to petty lying to carry his points,—are to be published in the report of the Comm on schools in that body. The building opposite me is nearly ready for the roof, the sides having been closed in this week. Brown got tired fighting me, and turned his attention to Lew. He has failed all round.5 Langston has simply made a fool of himself by trying to build himself up in running you down.6 He took your letter published in last weeks Era7 to Senator Sumner,8 in order to get him to say something against you that he might carry out. He also, at a public meeting of students, said that you had sent a letter here boasting of being accommodated at the same Hotel where the Grand Duke stopped,9 and representing that you claimed that you had all your rights.10 He got his dose the next day in the Senate chamber, in the presence of the largest and most intelligent assemblage of colored persons I have ever beheld in those Gallerys, when Senator Sumner in his great speech11 spoke in the most flattering terms of you and Gov. Dunn,12 leaving Langston entirely out of his remarks. Langston at that point left the gallery. He is not leaving a stone unturned to cripple the paper, and your popularity.13 The latter he can never do. People will begin to ask who is this man Langston? what has he sacrificed for the cause of his race? is he more than an ordinary stump speaker? Is he a a success at his profession? All these questions will have to be answered affirmatively and satisfactorily before he can ever succeed in injuring you before thinking people. I have no fears of it; but I do despise the man for making the attempt. He dare not over his own signature publish one thing against you. I had great respect for him once, but can never have again, he is too much a coward. I will be glad when you have finished your tour. I know you are having it rough enough. This time a year ago we were on the ocean. You

Y8204-Douglass.indb 209

5/17/23 2:35 PM

210

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 20 JANUARY 1872

saw many rough as well as pleasant times, now you are at it again. I hope you will make this your last winter of travelling. All my family are well. I have killed and smoked my hogs, over 300 weight. The weather is beautiful, resembling spring time. I never hear from mother,14 though I have written. That Howard boy15 was in my company in the 5th Cavalry. He came to the Regt. as a substitute, and asked to go in my Co. I had to tie him up by the thumbs quite often. His offense was stealing. Mr. Loguen16 is here— All join in love Aff. Yr. son CHAS. R. DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 623–25, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Douglass’s itinerary indicates that he was touring the Midwest in January 1872. He spoke in Champaign, Illinois, on 19 January; in Greenville, Illinois, on the 23rd; in Richmond, Indiana, on 29 January; and in Columbus, Ohio, on the 30th. His next known speaking engagement was in Elmira, New York, on 23 February 1872. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxx. 2. By an act of Congress in May 1802, the nation’s new capital city became a political entity, with its own mayor and city council. The federal district (i.e., the District of Columbia), which was created around the new city, comprised five distinct governmental units: Alexandria (the town), Alexandria County, Washington County (which included Anacostia), the town of Georgetown, and the city of Washington. The Douglass brothers were residents of Washington County. Louise Daniel Hutchinson, The Anacostia Story: 1608–1930 (Washington, D.C., 1977), 21–22. 3. From 1871 to 1874, Charles R. Douglass served as secretary and treasurer of the Washington County Board of Trustees and also as a school trustee. Although the editors were unable to link Douglass directly with the construction of a specific school in Washington County, the two schools that were built during this period were the Mt. Zion School (later renamed Howard School) and Hillsdale School. Hutchinson, Anacostia Story, 85–86. 4. The editors have not been able to confirm the identity of Mr. Brown, but there were two men named Brown (Solomon G. Brown and Marshall Brown) involved in District of Columbia politics at the time this letter was written, so it is likely that one or the other is Charles Douglass’s “Mr. Brown.” The first African American employee of the Smithsonian Institution, Solomon G. Brown (1829–1906) was a well-known and highly regarded resident of the District who held numerous local positions, including serving as a member of the House of Delegates from 1871 to 1874. He represented both Barry’s Farm and Anacostia in the House of Delegates, and was known to be especially interested in public education. He defeated Frederick Douglass, Jr., in his bid for election to the House of Delegates in 1871. That same year, Brown ran into conflict with both the senior Frederick Douglass and his son Lewis over the issue of renaming Barry’s Farm Hillsboro. Brown supported the name change, but Douglass vehemently opposed it. The reason for Douglass’s opposition is unclear, but some scholars have speculated that it might have been due to his recollection of a slave community called Hillsboro in his native Talbot County, Maryland. Against Douglass’s objections, Brown succeeded in passing a bill in favor of the change in the House of Delegates, but Lewis Douglass effectively killed the bill in the Legislative Council by sending it to a committee for further study. When the name was fi nally changed in 1874, Barry’s Farm became Hillsdale, not Hillsboro. The second Mr. Brown involved in District politics was the very wealthy Marshall Brown (1816–81), a former slave owner and the former co-owner of Brown’s Hotel; his son-in-law Richard Wallach had served as the Republican mayor of

Y8204-Douglass.indb 210

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 20 JANUARY 1872

211

the nation’s capital from 1861 to 1868. Little is known about Marshall Brown’s activities or views: in 1872 he was a school trustee, and in 1868 his son-in-law had been voted out of office, largely by African Americans, in response to his outspoken opposition to black suffrage. 1850 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 232B; 1860 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 258; 1870 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 84; 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 50; Laws of the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C., 1872), 44; Hutchinson, Anacostia Story, 86–87, 93, 95–97; Find a Grave (online). 5. The editors cannot identify the subject of Brown’s attack on Lewis Douglass, whom President Grant had appointed to fill out his father’s term on the upper council of the District’s territorial government. But if Brown is indeed Solomon G. Brown, it might have had something to do with the fight over changing the name of Barry’s Farm to Hillsboro. Hutchinson, Anacostia Story, 97. 6. Although the growing animosity between Douglass and John Mercer Langston was public knowledge at the time this letter was written, the first significant reference to their personal feud did not appear in the pages of the New National Era until May 1872, when an unsigned letter to the paper’s readers acknowledged Langston’s recent “spiteful attack” against Douglass, asserting that Douglass had done absolutely nothing to warrant it. In January 1872, however, there was little or no evidence that Langston, a well-regarded member of Howard University’s law faculty, was publicly denouncing Douglass. Instead, the paper’s coverage of Langston was mostly focused on his ongoing support of Sumner’s civil rights bill, in and around Washington, D.C. NNE, 28 December 1871, 11 January 1872, 13 January 1872, 18 January 1872, 2 May 1872; Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 488–89. 7. Nine days earlier, Douglass had published a letter in the New National Era in response to rumors that he was opposed to Senator Charles Sumner’s supplementary civil rights bill. Douglass dismissed the false claim, noting the absurdity of the idea that he would engage in actions directly contrary to his life’s work. He went on to explain that if he had not been actively engaged in promoting Sumner’s bill, it was solely due to the fact that his busy lecture schedule had kept him away from Washington, D.C., for long stretches of time. NNE, 11 January 1872. 8. Charles Sumner. 9. Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich (1850–1908), fourth son of Tsar Alexander II of Russia and his first wife, Marie of Hesse, was sent on what became an extended goodwill tour of the world in the fall of 1871. The American leg of the journey began on 21 November 1871, when he arrived in New York City. The grand duke reached Chicago on 31 December 1871. While in Chicago, he and his party stayed at the Tremont House hotel. The Russians left Chicago on 2 January 1872, taking a train to Milwaukee. The grand duke left the United States on 22 February 1872, sailing out of Pensacola, Florida, for Cuba, where he began what became a lengthy tour of Latin and South America. He then sailed to South Africa, reached Japan in October 1872, and returned to Russia (landing in Vladivostok) in late November, arriving back in Moscow on 5 December 1872. Lee A. Farrow, Alexis in America: A Russian Grand Duke’s Tour, 1871–1872 (Baton Rouge, La., 2014), 123–24, 131. 10. In his 11 January 1872 letter to the New National Era, Douglass mentioned that he was currently staying in “one of the best rooms in one of the best hotels” in Chicago, and that it was the same hotel that had hosted the grand duke on his recent visit to the city. Douglass noted those facts in support of his argument that in being able to do so without opposition, he was in effect “illustrating” the “principles” that Sumner was hoping to enshrine through his bill. He also contrasted the ease and comfort with which he was now able to travel with the difficulties he had faced earlier in his public career. Douglass concluded his letter by explaining that he believed Sumner’s bill, which, he stated, he supported more “for its educational tendency than for anything else,” would lead “the American people” to a “higher point of civilization,” and that he was a “co-worker” and “not against” Sumner and his allies. NNE, 11 January 1872. 11. In a speech delivered in the Senate Chamber on 15 January 1872 in support of his supplementary civil rights bill, Senator Sumner referred to Douglass as a “gentleman of unquestioned ability

Y8204-Douglass.indb 211

5/17/23 2:35 PM

212

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 20 JANUARY 1872

and character, remarkable as an orator, of refined manners, and personally agreeable.” NNE, 25 January 1872. 12. Oscar James Dunn (1826–71) was the first African American elected lieutenant governor in the United States, serving in that capacity in Louisiana from 1868 until his untimely death in late November 1871. Dunn was born in New Orleans to a free woman of mixed race who managed a boardinghouse that catered to entertainers. In 1841, while apprenticed to a painter and plasterer, Dunn ran away from home and began working on steamboats traveling up and down the Mississippi River, first as a barber and later as a successful musician-singer. After the Civil War, he spent several years working for the Freedmen’s Bureau in New Orleans, managing an employment service that negotiated contracts between former slaves and their former masters. Dunn gained a reputation for honesty in his work, and was easily elected lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket in 1868. Initially, his relationship with the governor, Henry Clay Warmoth, seems to have been cordial, but by 1870 it was growing strained, since Dunn considered Warmoth too eager to welcome unreconstructed politicians back into the state’s political life and insufficiently concerned with safeguarding African Americans’ rights. In early 1871, Dunn assumed the duties of acting governor while Warmoth left the state to seek treatment for a foot injury. In August, Dunn was selected by the delegates to preside over the Republican State Convention, instead of the governor. Infuriated by the slight, Warmoth hurried back to New Orleans and pulled his supporters from the floor of the convention and set up one of his own in a nearby building. Warmoth accused Dunn of attempting to “Africanize” Louisiana, while the delegates meeting at the official Republican convention, presided over by Dunn, voted to expel Warmoth from the Republican party and called for his impeachment. Dunn fell ill in the middle of the political crisis (rumors spread that he had been poisoned) and died in November, before the crisis was fully resolved. Emily Suzanne Clark, A Luminous Brotherhood: Afro-Creole Spiritualism in Nineteenth Century New Orleans (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2016), 64–65; Philip Dray, Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen (New York, 2008), 111–18. 13. Whatever negative opinions Langston may have held about the New National Era at the time Charles Douglass wrote this letter, little evidence suggests that he expressed them in public. Moreover, Langston’s activities during January 1872 in support of the supplementary civil rights bill and other civic matters received generally favorable coverage in the local newspapers, including the New National Era. Alexandria (Va.) Daily State Journal, 11, 13 January 1872; NNE, 28 December 1871, 11, 13, 18 January 1872. 14. Anna Murray Douglass. 15. Possibly the William E. Howard (c. 1844) who enlisted in Boston, Massachusetts, on 30 June 1864, joining Company I of the Fifth Massachusetts Colored Cavalry. Born in Hamilton, Canada, he apparently was living in Rochester, New York, at the time he enlisted, and was a shoemaker by trade. Howard may be the mixed-race six-year-old who is recorded in the 1850 Census as living in the household of the elderly couple Archibald and Elisabeth Gaul, with parents James (a waiter) and Elisabeth Howard. His military records indicate that he received a $325 bonus upon enlisting. They also indicate that he was first listed as absent without leave on 1 April 1865, near City Point, Virginia, and declared a deserter on or around 1 May, after being arrested in Richmond, Virginia. He seems to have spent some time incarcerated but was mustered out in Texas on 31 October 1865. He may be the William E. Howard who died in September 1877 and was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 174; “U.S., Colored Troops Military Service Records, 1863–1865,” Ancestry.com; Find a Grave (online). 16. Jermain Wesley Loguen.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 212

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS, JR., 25 JANUARY 1872

213

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS, JR. Tuscola, Ill. 25 Jan[uary] 1872.

Dear Son: This is to tell you I am well and at work.1 The enclosed will show you that though my way has been for the most part pleasant, it is not entirely so. The extract from the Missouri Democrat is literally true, and you may copy it into the Era.2 Such outrages should be known. They prove the need of Mr. Sumner’s Supplementary Civil Rights Bill,3 and at the same time that I am in the line of my duty in asserting the rights of colored citizens, at the points where those rights meet with most resistance. I could have saved myself this insult, if I had shrunk from asserting my right as an American traveler. I preferred to make the issue—for this is the only way to bring the disease to the surface—and affect a cure. The cry of shame raised by the Missouri Democrat will be taken up and continued by others, and thus the barbarism of the Planter’s House4 will be properly branded and reprobated by all the decent and civilized people of the country. I was glad to see that Senator Morton5 had avowed his intention to vote for Senator Sumner’s Supplementary Civil Rights Bill.6 He is a power in the country, and as much as any man in it a leader of the Republican party. No man in the party had more to overcome in regard to the position and rights of the colored people of the United States, and no man has more nobly triumphed over his prejudices. With his powerful aid Mr. Sumner can hardly fail to carry through the crowning measure of his life—a measure which will put an end to the persistent effort to perpetuate the degradation of colored American citizens. I am now, as you see, in the heart of Illinois, in the town of Tuscola. The public mind here is somewhat excited on the color question. Until now the colored children in Tuscola have been entirely deprived of school privileges, but the Board of Education sharing the growing enlightenment and liberality of the age, have unbarred the gates and doors of the common school, and these dusky children are now to be admitted to share its privileges.7 I mention this fact with grateful emotions, but I hope the mention of it will not be taken as an argument against the necessity of the Supplementary Civil Rights Bill, but rather to show that there is nothing unreasonable or impossible in the principle of that bill, or its practical operation. Of course this measure of the Board of Education displeases a part of the people here, and they exercise the right to speak against the

Y8204-Douglass.indb 213

5/17/23 2:35 PM

214

DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS, JR., 25 JANUARY 1872

radical innovation, but reason and justice are powerful, and will certainly prevail here as elsewhere. A short distance below here, at Effingham,8 on the Illinois Central Road,9 a few years ago the people would allow no person of color to settle in the town, and any one of the race passing through it was hooted and shouted after in the street, with all manner of opprobrious and rowdy epithets; but the people there have become much more civilized since the war, and are rapidly improving. I was greatly cheered in St. Louis, by the signs of enterprise and prosperity I saw there, among the colored citizens. The city, as my treatment at the Planter’s house will show, is still only half civilized—and the negro is by no means abolished there—in the sense of having his manhood respected like other men, but in those vocations open to him, the colored man is bravely pursuing the battle of life, and endeavoring to make his business respectable by making it prosperous. Foremost among the young men in this line is Mr. William Robinson,10 who has one of the most elegantly fitted barber shops and bathing establishments in the West. It almost equals the magnificent establishment of Mr. Peter Baltimore,11 at Troy. The way to make such business attractive, is to make it remunerative. This can be done by energy, taste, enterprize, industry, and polite attention to customers. I do not join in the cry to quit barbering, but call upon colored men to make the best of the profession. If colored men will not do this, white men will. Mr. Robinson is just now refitting rooms for which he pays a rent of three thousand dollars a year. He is building now an elegant Turkish Bath, which will, when completed, surpass anything of the kind in the West. He is young, enthusiastic, full of energy, and resolved to please even the most exacting and punctilious. All colored men cannot be lawyers, doctors, preachers, and politicians, and as they are shut out from most of the handicrafts, they are wise in making the best of bathing and barbering, and whatever other honest vocations are open to them. F. D. PLIr: Washington New Era, 1 February 1872. 1. Commencing with an address on Santo Domingo at the Union Park Congregational Church in Chicago on 29 December 1871, Douglass lectured across Illinois for much of January before taking up similar engagements in Indiana and Ohio. It is not confirmed whether Douglass spoke in Tuscola, a farming community in Douglas County, south of Champaign, but on 25 January 1872 he was probably in transit to Akron, Ohio, for a lecture there the following day. Champaign (Ill.) Champaign County Gazette, 3, 10, 17 January 1872; St. Louis Missouri Democrat, 24 January 1872; Washington

Y8204-Douglass.indb 214

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS, JR., 25 JANUARY 1872

215

National Republican, 25 January 1872; NNE, 1 February 1872; Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1967. 2. Douglass refers to an article entitled “Fred. Douglass and the Planters’ House,” from the St. Louis Daily Democrat of 24 January 1872. The newspaper reported the refusal of the Planter’s House in that city to register Douglass or to serve him dinner. After protesting, Douglass left and ate elsewhere. The newspaper reported that several other patrons expressed outrage at Douglass’s treatment. The Democrat declared: “Fred Douglass is a gentleman, so far as brains and culture and refinement can make one, and is the peer of any of the guests of the first hotels in the land.” Douglass’s New National Era reprinted the Democrat’s article on the third page of its 1 February 1872 issue. 3. Radical Republicans in Congress tried repeatedly to pass a comprehensive civil rights bill during the first half of the 1870s. In May 1870, Massachusetts’s Radical Republican senator Charles Sumner introduced the Supplementary Civil Rights Act, intended to build on the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Ku Klux Klan Acts of 1870–71. Sumner’s legislation outlawed racial discrimination by transportation carriers, places of public amusement and accommodation, public schools, juries, churches, cemeteries, and benevolent institutions incorporated by law. Democrats and key moderate Republicans stymied the law’s progress for years. When the House of Representatives passed an amnesty bill removing political disabilities from former supporters of the Confederacy in the fall of 1871, Sumner attempted to add his civil rights provisions to it as an amendment. In February 1872 and again that May, Sumner’s amendments were added to the amnesty bill, only to see the bill fail to win House approval and become law. William Dudley Foulke, Life of Oliver P. Morton, Including His Important Speeches, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, Ind., 1899), 2:221–26. 4. The second St. Louis hotel by that name, the Planter’s House of Douglass’s era, was erected on Fourth Street, bounded by Chestnut and Pine, in 1841. Four stories tall, it had three hundred guest rooms. Many dignitaries stayed there over the years, including Charles Dickens, who in his American Notes praised it as “an excellent house, and the proprietors have most bountiful notions of providing the creature comforts.” J. Thomas Scharf, History of Saint Louis City and County, from the Earliest Periods to the Present Day (Philadelphia, 1883), 1441–42; Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation (1842; London, 2000), 193. 5. Oliver Hazard Perry Throck Morton (1823–77) was born in Wayne County, Indiana. Removed from school at the age of fifteen and apprenticed to his brother, a hatter, Morton practiced that trade for four years. He then studied at Miami University in Ohio and began the practice of law in Centreville, Indiana, in 1847. Morton rose quickly in prominence in his new profession, largely owing to his success at representing railroad interests. Although initially a Democrat, Morton left that party in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor of Indiana in 1854. Elected lieutenant governor in 1860, he succeeded to the governorship when Henry S. Lane was chosen to be a U.S. senator by the Indiana legislature. He served in that office from 1861 to 1867; during the Civil War, he engaged in bitter political conflicts with Democrats in the state legislature. From 1867 until his death, Morton was a U.S. senator. He soon broke with Andrew Johnson and became a leader of Radical Republicans and later an advocate of inflationary “soft money” policies. Foulke, Oliver P. Morton; E. Orville Johnson, “Oliver P. Morton: A Study of His Career as a Public Speaker and of His Speaking on Slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction Issues” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1957); ACAB, 4:431–32; DAB, 13:262–64; BDUSC (online). 6. Morton supported Sumner’s efforts in early 1872 to add civil rights provisions to a proposed amnesty bill. He debated that measure on the Senate floor with Senator Allan Thurman of Ohio. Foulke, Oliver P. Morton, 2:221–26. 7. During the antebellum era, Black Laws greatly restricted the rights of African Americans in Illinois. Even after repeal of the Black Laws in 1865 and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1870, most Illinois communities still excluded blacks from their public schools. Thomas Badhe,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 215

5/17/23 2:35 PM

216

CHARLES SUMNER TO DOUGLASS, MAY 1872

The Life and Death of Gus Reed: A Story of Race and Justice in Illinois during the Civil War and Reconstruction (Athens, Ohio, 2014), 45–46, 58–60. 8. The county seat of Effingham County, Effingham was a railroad and manufacturing center in central Illinois in the 1870s. In the early 1870s, black men in the town still could not vote and were excluded from many areas of public life. Badhe, Life and Death of Gus Reed, 43, 45–46; Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 559. 9. Chartered by the state legislature in 1851, the Illinois Central Railroad completed a line across the state, from Cairo in the south to Galena in the northwest. The railroad ran a major branch line from Centralia to Chicago, which passed through Tuscola and Effingham. The Illinois Central extended its lines west into Iowa and South Dakota and south to New Orleans in the 1870s. Howard Gray Brownson, History of the Illinois Central Railroad to 1870 (1915; Urbana, Ill., 1967), 37–39, 45, 56, 61, 157–63. 10. This is actually William Roberson (1836–78), who operated a barbershop and a Turkish bathhouse at 410 Market Street in St. Louis. Earlier, he had operated a barbershop in partnership with his brother Frank in the basement of the city’s Barnum Hotel. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 17 February 1878; Gould & Aldrich’s Annual Directory of the City of St. Louis, for 1872: Embracing a General Directory of the Citizens, a Business Directory, and a Directory from Official Surveys (St. Louis, 1872), 640, 836; Cyprian Clamorgan, The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis (Columbia, Mo., 1999), 95. 11. The son of a runaway slave and Revolutionary War veteran, Peter F. Baltimore (1829–1913) inherited his father’s barbering business in Troy, New York. The extended Baltimore family was active in Troy’s Underground Railroad. Peter Baltimore’s son Garnet Douglass Baltimore, named for two leading black abolitionists, was the first African American graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and became a successful landscape architect. Rensselaer Alumni Magazine (Winter 2005–06), rensselaer.org.

CHARLES SUMNER TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, [D.C.] [May 1872.]1

Dear Mr Douglass, I started yesterday to find you at yr office but was detained on the way until it was too late. I shall try again tomorrow.2 I long to talk with you about the Republican party & its perils to which I fear you are not sufficiently flexible, if I may judge from your paper, which I read regretfully. Pray don’t drive the wedge to split us. Let us try to leave the colored people in their rights and [illegible] the energies of this people from the real quest. Ever yours CHARLES SUMNER ALS: Gilder-Lehrman Collection, NNPML. 1. Sumner dated this letter to Douglass only as “Sunday.” The letter’s contents allude to the growing estrangement of Sumner from the Grant administration, which occurred in the spring of 1872 as the Liberal Republican movement began organizing to challenge the president’s renomina-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 216

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO AMY POST, 18 JULY 1872

217

tion in the fall. Sumner was in the capital during the first half of the year, but Douglass traveled in the Midwest on the lyceum circuit in January and then went to New Orleans in April to attend the National Convention of Colored People. In his absence, the New National Era printed several editorials condemning the Liberal Republican movement and supporting Grant. On 25 April 1872, the Era published a short article predicting that Sumner would not join any exodus from the Republican party but would instead endorse Grant if renominated. In April and May 1872, Sumner was writing old friends, trying to enlist aid in blocking Grant in order “to save the Republican party, now imperiled by selfish men,” and this outreach to Douglass might have occurred then. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxx, 293–99; NNE, 1 February, 25 April 1872; Palmer, Selected Letters of Charles Sumner, 2:584–90. 2. There is no report of such a personal meeting occurring between Sumner and Douglass. Since many Republicans saw the Liberal Republicans as little different from Democrats (indeed, the Liberal Republican nominee, Horace Greeley, also became the Democratic nominee), Douglass saw Sumner’s support of Greeley as a betrayal. Throughout the summer of 1872, the paper continued to print editorials against Sumner’s position as well as resolutions from around the country lamenting his choice to remove himself from the Republican party. By September, the New National Era was regularly republishing criticism of Sumner, for example, “No one has been so overrated on one side of his intellection and personal life as Senator Sumner.” While no one wished to denounce the “lifelong devotion of Hon. Charles Sumner to [colored persons’] welfare,” the paper felt that in voting for the Democrats “in preference to the National Republican’s nominee, he has not only erred, but has suffered his personal hostility to General Grant to warp his better judgement.” In Life and Times, Douglass admitted his deep remorse at this estrangement from Sumner, whose sincerity he never questioned. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:397–401; Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:319–20; NNE, 6 June, 15  August, 5, 12 September 1872.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO AMY POST Washington[,] D.C. 18 July 1872.

My dear Friend: I have not forgotten my promise to send you a line. I hope you are well. I see that the heats of July to in Rochester have been very trying—and I naturally think of health as the best thing though among the most uncertain things of life. The heat in Washington is greater than is remembered before by the oldest inhabitant—from ninety five to one hundred in the shade for weeks together.1 I often sigh for the shade of my Rochester trees and for the pleasant calls I occasionally made to your house. But I am in the harness and must needs work while it is day. My Bonds are yet giving me trouble. There was a mistake in the numbers—and one Bond that I represented as burnt, has been found in the Treasury—This of course, casts a doubt upon all the rest.2 I can come to no decision about building again in Rochester while the Bonds question remains. I am leaving here for Virginia in a few days to stump3 for the election of Grant and Wilson[.]4 My line of argument will be, that Grant’s position is pure and simple—while that of Greeley5 is mixed and ambiguous. I shall admit that

Y8204-Douglass.indb 217

5/17/23 2:35 PM

218

DOUGLASS TO AMY POST, 18 JULY 1872

I should on personal grounds like to vote for Greeley if I really knew what I am voting for.—and which of the many Greeleys my vote would elect. For there a great many Greeleys. If I could select the right one I would gladly give him my vote—But just here is the trouble. This many sided man has been on all sides—one does not know which will finally control. His going over to Democracy to get elected president is against him6 —Our country wants certainty—and wants the confidence and repose which only certainty can give—Hence I am in short I am for Grant. I hope to be in Rochester for a few days about the 1st of August7—All good things to you my friend— Yours Truly FREDK DOUG LASS ALS: Post Family Papers, Rush Rhees Library, NRU. 1. Douglass correctly reports record heat for the month of July in the District of Columbia, which would not be surpassed for over a century. Washington Post, 26 August 2016. 2. Douglass reported a loss of $11,000 in bonds in the fire that destroyed his Rochester home. He ultimately recovered that money from the Treasury Department. Douglass calculated that after the insurance settlement, he lost between four and five thousand dollars and never returned permanently to Rochester. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 275. 3. Douglass campaigned in the company of the Republican vice presidential candidate, Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, in Richmond, Virginia, on 24 July 1872. The next day, he addressed a Republican rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. Finally, on 27 July 1872, he joined John Mercer Langston in Wilmington, North Carolina, for a final speech in this short southern campaign tour. Richmond (Va.) Daily Dispatch, 24, 25 July 1872; Richmond (Va.) Daily Enquirer, 24, 25 July 1872; Raleigh (N.C.) North Carolina Era, 27 July 1872; Raleigh (N.C.) Daily Sentinel, 27 July 1872; San Francisco Elevator, 27 July 1872; NNE, 1 August 1872. 4. Henry Wilson. 5. Horace Greeley. 6. The Democratic party’s national convention, meeting in Baltimore, had just nominated Horace Greeley as its presidential candidate, though Greeley had already accepted the presidential nomination of the Liberal Republican party. Douglass is rehearsing with Post the attack he planned to make in upcoming campaign speeches about Greeley’s inconsistent political record. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:302–12, 322–41; NNE, 11 July 1872. 7. There is no surviving evidence of a visit by Douglass to Rochester in August 1872. He campaigned for the Republican ticket in Virginia and North Carolina in late July, and correspondence indicates that he was away from Washington in early August, but it is not clear where he traveled. Douglass was back at his Washington residence in mid-August and then departed to campaign for the Republican ticket in Maine for the remainder of the month. He delivered some campaign speeches in New York in September, but not in Rochester. Douglass to C. J. Langdon, in Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig & Courier, 23 August 1872; Douglass to Edwin D. Morgan, 16 August 1872, Edwin D. Morgan Manuscripts, NN; NNE, 1 August 1872; Rochester Union and Advertiser, 6 August 1872; Boston Daily Evening Transcript, 20 August 1872.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 218

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO CHARLES J. LANGDON, 15 AUGUST 1872

219

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH Washington, D.C. 15 Aug[ust] 1872.

My dear Gerrit Smith: Your defense of your consistency is before me. I think you were wrong when you consented to follow even so good a man as S. P. Chase into the Democratic party—but you are clearly right in refusing to follow Mr Greeley there.1 You see that I am becoming quite important of late because not invited to dine in company with the Santo Domingo Commissioners at the White house.2 I cannot make the President a great sinner for that omission, though I would have rejoiced in such a reproof of the insult offered me on my return to Washington as an invitation to dine with the President would have been. Always yours. FREDK DOUG LASS ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. 1. In the 1868 campaign, Gerrit Smith had hoped that the Democratic party would support the former abolitionist and Supreme Court chief justice Salmon P. Chase as its candidate for president, although Smith did not publicly promise the party his support. Four years later, Smith was an at-large delegate to the Republican National Convention, where he supported Grant’s nomination for a second term and opposed the Liberal Republican bolt led by Horace Greeley into an alliance with the Democrats. Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 446, 474–78. 2. Douglass had been appointed assistant secretary to the commissioners who were sent to the Dominican Republic in 1871 to investigate possible U.S. annexation of the small nation. Douglass had given his support to the idea after the fall of slavery. On their return, the commissioners were invited by President Grant to a dinner at the White House, but he omitted Douglass. Many black leaders and Liberal Republican critics of Grant voiced outrage at this perceived snub. Douglass remained largely silent on the subject, but during the campaign season of 1872, Charles Sumner and Horace Greeley tried to use this insult as proof that Grant was no friend to African Americans. Douglass, who remained unswervingly loyal to Grant, later said that as he was “so used to being snubbed, and receiving insults because of my color,” that he could ignore this incident. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:318–21; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 542; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 277.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO CHARLES J. LANGDON1 Washington, D.C. 15 Aug[ust] 1872.

My dear Mr Langdon: I am obliged by your favor of the nineth August.2 Absence from home is my apology for my silence. I believe in General Grant fully. There is something so ridiculous about this dinner affair, that I really don’t care

Y8204-Douglass.indb 219

5/17/23 2:35 PM

220

DOUGLASS TO ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE, 4 NOVEMBER 1872

to talk or write about it. While it would have given me great pleasure to dine with our worthy President, and while an invitation to dine with him in the circumstances would have been a valuable fuel against prevailing prejudices—I should be ashamed to charged the omission to invite me as offense against me or my race. The President was under no obligation to invite me to dine with him. It was a matter in which he had a perfect right to act free from outside guidance or outside criticism. I very much enjoyed my dinner at your hospitable table last winter winter—as I had enjoyed many winters thirty years ago—good dinners at the house of your noble father—but, while I appreciate the kind hospitality in both cases—I do not bring any complaint against numerous good people by whom did not happen to dine. I may be forced to say a word more to the public on this subject, but I would rather avoid it. It is enough that I am with all my heart laboring to elect U. S. Grant President of the U. S. for a Second Term. I certainly should not so labor if I thought him capable of offering me an insult because of the color of my skin. With kind rememberances to all your kind circle. Yours Very truly FREDK DOUG LASS ALS: Division of Rare Books and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, N.Y. Other texts in Boston Daily Globe, 22 August 1872; Bangor (Me.) Daily Mail & Courier, 23 August 1872. 1. Possibly Charles Jervis Langdon (1849–1916), son of the wealthy coal merchant Jervis Langdon of Elmira and the brother of Mark Twain’s wife, Olivia. In 1870 he took over the family coal business and expanded into other enterprises. An active Republican, Langdon served as a delegate to the 1880 Republican National Convention, where he was one of the 306 “Stalwarts” who unsuccessfully attempted to nominate Ulysses S. Grant for a third term. Harriet Elinor Smith and Richard Bucci, eds., Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume Two: 1867–1868 (Berkeley, Calif., 1990), 63–64, 287, 378; J. R. LeMaster and James D. Wilson, eds., The Mark Twain Encyclopedia (New York, 1993), 440; NCAB, 16:31. 2. Langdon’s earlier letter to Douglass has not been located.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE Washington, D.C.1 4 November 1872.

My Dear Daughter: I thank you for your dear little note urging me to come home to vote and assuring me of every comfort in your little home on Jefferson Street.2 Your limited quarters is not the cause of my staying away. It is solely due

Y8204-Douglass.indb 220

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE, 4 NOVEMBER 1872

221

to my limited time for the preparation of my winter lecture. The troubles and travels of this summer have left me less than my usual time for preparation and I am therefore much behind hand.3 It would spoil a whole week to make the journey to and from and would incur the loss of two nights sleep which to me is a serious matter. I am no longer the strong young man—but the father of grand children. It is in the order of nature that I now begin to favor myself—and have my children come to me. It is natural for young people to desire to travel. It is equally natural for old ones to wish to stay at home. But for the burning and the destruction of my hard earnings, I should be able to spare myself the coming winter from the labors, perils and fatigues of a lecturing campaign—Miss Assing4 leaves us day after tomorrow. Mother5 Louisa6 and Miss Assing and myself took dinner at Fred’s7 yesterday. Lewis8 is again on his legs—Libby9 is better, but feeble. The boy’s horses are all victims of the horse disease. I am, as usual very much troubled to please myself with a lecture. I have taken the old subject of slavery and Anti-slavery.10 But this subject is old—and has been handled by so many able men and has been presented in so many aspects—that I am puzzled to know how I can invest it with new interest and make it agreeable to lecture young people this winter. I am, however, buoyed up considerably by the fact that I always have succeeded. Our house is still torn to pieces—not because we are doing so much to it, but rather because we can really get nothing done—The men work a day or two and leave us again for weeks—Not a cent will I pay till the work is done and well done.11 Make my love to Annie,12 Hattie,13 and Alice14 —I want to see Fredericka.15 How does she look? Kind regards to Nathan16 — Your affectionate father FREDK DOUG LASS ALS: Frederick Douglass Papers,NRU. 1. Douglass added his home address to this letter: “316. A. N. East, St.” 2. The editors cannot confirm that Rosetta lived on Jefferson Street. Rochester city directories indicate that Nathan Sprague lived at 62 Pearl Street from roughly 1868 through 1870, and then on South Street (usually, but not always with the street address of 110, and sometimes referred to as South Avenue) for most of the time period between 1871 and 1873, with a possible brief interlude at 68  Hamilton Place in 1871. The city directories have no separate listing for Rosetta Douglass Sprague. “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” 3. As he had most winters since the end of the Civil War, Douglass joined the nation’s lyceum circuit during the winter months. In January and February, he lectured across the Midwest. In March, he lectured in the Philadelphia Academy of Music’s Star Course. Douglass most frequently delivered the announced lecture, “Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict,” but he also delivered two veteran talks: “Self-Made Men” and “Composite Nationality.” St. Louis Democrat, 10, 11, 12,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 221

5/17/23 2:35 PM

222

DOUGLASS TO ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE, 4 NOVEMBER 1872

13 January 1873; Omaha Daily Herald, 19, 21, 22 January 1873; Grand Rapids (Mich.) Daily Times, 22, 24, 29 January 1873; Carthage (Ill.) Republican, 22 January 1873; Council Bluffs (Iowa) Weekly Nonpareil, 22, 23, 24 January 1873; Grand Rapids (Mich.) Daily Eagle, 29, 30, 31 January 1873; NNE, 23, 30 January, 13, 20 February 1873; St. Paul (Minn.) Dispatch, 4, 7, 8 February 1873; Philadelphia North American and U.S. Gazette, 10 March 1873; Philadelphia Inquirer, 10 March 1873; New York Times, 11 March 1873. 4. Ottille Assing. 5. Anna Murray Douglass. 6. Helen Louise “Louisa” Sprague. 7. Frederick Douglass, Jr. 8. Lewis H. Douglass. 9. Mary Elizabeth Murphy Douglass. 10. At least three manuscript drafts of Douglass’s lyceum lecture “Recollections of the AntiSlavery Conflict” survive. He delivered it on the lyceum circuit in the winter 1872–73 season and occasionally thereafter, including during his 1886 visit to Great Britain. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:360–75, 606–09. 11. It is unclear what work was being done on the A Street house in 1872. Douglass undertook a major renovation project on the house in 1873, which wrapped up in 1874 with the addition of a new wing, so it is possible that the work being done at the time this letter was written might have been in preparation for the major project that began the following year. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 572; Fought, Women, 215. 12. Annie Rosine Sprague. 13. Harriet “Hattie” Bailey Sprague. 14. Alice Louise Sprague (1868–75) was born in Rochester, New York, shortly after her father returned from his failed efforts to establish a business in Nebraska. She became ill in April 1874 and died in Rochester in early June. Fought, Women, 209, 220, 310. 15. Fredericka Douglass Sprague (1872–1943) was the fifth child and fifth daughter of Nathan and Rosetta Douglass Sprague and, like her four older sisters, was born in Rochester. With her mother and surviving siblings, she moved to Washington, D.C., in 1876 and joined Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass’s household in their home on A Street. During her childhood, her grandfather, Frederick Douglass, seems to have taken a particular interest in both her education and violin lessons, and like many of the Douglass grandchildren, she spent lengthy periods living in the Douglass homes, first on A Street and later at Cedar Hill. In early 1893, Fredericka began teaching at a rural school in Culpeper County, Virginia, but in 1894 she returned to Washington, D.C., moved into Cedar Hill, and began working as a copyist in the office of the Recorder of Deeds. She remained in that job until 1897, when she began teaching in the Washington, D.C., public school system. Fredericka remained in Washington until 1910, when she accepted a teaching position in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1912 she married Dr. John Edward Perry, and although she left her teaching career upon marrying, she occasionally accepted offers to work as a substitute teacher. Largely, however, Fredericka devoted her time to working with a variety of clubs, including the Missouri Association of Colored Girls; the National Association of Colored Women, an auxiliary that supported the Wheatley Provident Hospital (where her husband practiced); and the Civic Protection Organization, which gave legal assistance to African Americans. She also organized activities commemorating John Brown and was one of the few family members to work with the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association (which Helen Pitts Douglass entrusted with Cedar Hill following her death in 1903), serving as a trustee before her death. 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 52; 1900 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 4B; Fought, Women, 216–17, 225–26, 266–69, 272, 274–76, 301–04, 310. 16. Nathan Sprague.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 222

5/17/23 2:35 PM

WILLIAM G. BROWN TO DOUGLASS, 19 DECEMBER 1872

223

WILLIAM G. BROWN1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS New Orleans, [La.] 19 Dec[ember] 1872.

Hon Frederick Douglas My Dear Sir The purpose of my letter will be my excuse for intrusion on you to day. You are aware of our “situation.”2 You know the distinguished services rendered all the time but especially recently by our mutual friend Gov Pinchback.3 We think he ought to be sent by our Legislature when it meets in Jany ’73 to the U. S Senate, not only because he deserves this high recognition & endorsement, but also because our people ought to have a representative in the higher branch of the National Legislature & one who is competent & who can & will be a representative of the “true & tried”4 sort. There is a splendid opportunity for us all to rally to the support of Gov Pinchback now. There is no candidate in the field against him that is or ever was so prominently Republican as to eclipse the Governor’s claims. Our white republicans (of course) like him, & endorse & laud him, but then—they must prefer one of their color for the place. They are insidiously working on the minds of some of our colored Representatives to keep in the lower House, & not create a vacancy there—dont claim everything for him & all that sort of stuff. It seems to me that “now’s the day, & now’s the hour”5 for us to elect him to the U. S Senate. And it has occurred to me that through your paper you could do your man service in this matter if the thing strikes you favorably.6 Should you conclude to write & advocate it, send a copy of your paper with the article to the addresses on the back [&] your bill to me for payment[.] Respectfully WM. G. BROWN

James F Casey—Collector P F Herwig—Deputy do8 J H Ingraham—Survey in port 9 Thomas Ong—appraiser 10 Geo W Carter—New Orleans G W Lowell “ ” John Ray “ ” J P Norton “ ” A E Barber “ ” H C Warmoth “ ” H C Dibble “ ”

Y8204-Douglass.indb 223

N. O7

P. O 11 “ 12 “ 13 “ 14 “ 15 “ 16 “ 17

5/17/23 2:35 PM

224

WILLIAM G. BROWN TO DOUGLASS, 19 DECEMBER 1872

Jacob Hawkins—sup. Court— “ 18 E C Billings—N. G. “ 19 E H Durell— “ ” “ 20 Col Jas Lewis “ ” “ 21 22 J H Burech—Grand Era—Bat Rouge National Republican— N. O.23 N O Times “24 N O Picayune “25 N O Bee “26 German Gazette “27 N O Republican “28 ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 638–40L FD Papers, DLC. 1. Born in New Jersey and raised in Jamaica, William G. Brown (1832–83) was of mixed race. He settled in Louisiana after the Civil War and became a teacher. Brown soon became a political ally of P. B. S. Pinchback and edited the pro–Radical Republican New Orleans newspaper, the Louisianan. He resigned as editor in 1872 to become Louisiana’s elected state superintendent of education. Brown’s effort to desegregate New Orleans schools provoked rioting. William Preston Vaughn, Schools for All: The Blacks and Public Education in the South, 1865–1877 (Lexington, Ky., 1974), 92–96; Peter J. Breaux, “William G. Brown and the Development of Education: A Retrospective on the Career of a State Superintendent of Public Education of African Descent in Louisiana” (Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 2006). 2. Louisiana’s history during Reconstruction is perhaps the most complex and confusing of that of any former Confederate state. In 1872, as the state was trying to elect a governor, the Republican party divided into three competing camps: the first led by Governor Henry Clay Warmoth; the second headed by William Pitt Kellogg and Stephen B. Packard, who controlled the lucrative patronage of the New Orleans federal customhouse; and the final group, headed by the African American lieutenant governor, P. B. S. Pinchback. The second and third groups eventually joined forces. The Liberal Republicans, led by Warmoth, tried to bring together not only conservative white Republicans and “reformers,” but also Democrats. In the end, Warmoth used his influence as governor to support the Democratic party candidate, John McEnery, who promised Warmoth a seat in the U.S. Senate for his support; this caused the state house to impeach Warmoth in December, since he was still governor while this took place. Although Warmoth was never convicted, Pinchback acted as governor for the remainder of his term. In the meantime, the state’s Return Boards split into two committees, each declaring victory for separate candidates, Kellogg and McEnery. For all his faithful work, Pinchback had been put forward by the Republicans of Louisiana for a U.S. Senate seat. He had also been elected as the congressman-at-large for Louisiana. As acting governor, he signed his own certificate of election. But as with the gubernatorial race, the Democratic party had put forward a candidate for that seat, and the debate over who should receive the seat lasted well into the following year, as the U.S. Senate committee was evenly divided. In the end, Pinchback never took his seat in either house of Congress. James Haskins, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (New York, 1973), 196–222; Ted Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction: War, Radicalism, and Race in Louisiana, 1862–1877 (Baton Rouge, La., 1984), 168–72. 3. Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (1837–1921) was born a free black in Macon, Georgia, the son of William Pinchback, a white Mississippi planter, and Eliza Stewart, a slave of mixed ancestry who had been manumitted before his birth. After the death of William, Eliza, threatened with reenslavement by William’s heirs, left Mississippi with her son and settled in Cincinnati. After

Y8204-Douglass.indb 224

5/17/23 2:35 PM

WILLIAM G. BROWN TO DOUGLASS, 19 DECEMBER 1872

225

a few years in school, Pinchback found employment as a cabin boy on canal boats, rising to the level of steward. In 1862, Pinchback jumped ship at Yazoo City, Mississippi, and made his way to New Orleans, which was in the hands of the Union army. Determined to play a role in the Union victory, he became a recruiting officer for black volunteers. Pinchback assumed an active role in Louisiana politics in 1867 when he became a member of the Republican State Central Committee. In 1868 he joined the state Senate and three years later became president pro tempore of that body. Pinchback served as lieutenant governor and then acting governor during the impeachment proceedings against Henry Clay Warmoth. He campaigned for William P. Kellogg in the gubernatorial race of 1872, and for his loyalty was declared congressman-at-large by the Kellogg administration. During Pinchback’s term as acting governor, he was elected to the U.S. Senate; thus, for a period, he had the singular distinction of holding a seat in both houses of Congress. Realizing that a choice had to be made, Pinchback surrendered his seat in the House to his opponent in order to serve his six-year term in the Senate. There was considerable opposition within the Senate to Pinchback’s claim of membership, and after three years of debates and investigations, he lost the seat. Haskins, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback; DANB, 493–94. 4. Perhaps an allusion to a line of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s 1849 poem In Memoriam A. H. H. Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H. (London, 1900), 132. 5. Brown quotes from the second stanza of Robert Burns’s 1793 poem “Bannockburn.” Alexander Smith, ed., The Complete Works of Robert Burns (New York, 1884), 227. 6. Douglass had met Pinchback—and possibly Brown—in April 1872 when he traveled to New Orleans to participate in the National Convention of Colored People. Pinchback had acted as temporary president of the convention while it awaited the arrival of its permanent president, Douglass. On 2 January 1873, Douglass’s New National Era gave the endorsement that Brown sought: “Mr Pinchback, we understand, is a man of means, we know him to be a man of extensive hospitality, of uncommon energy, and of unquestioned devotion to his race. We hope to see him in the Senate of our nation.” Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4: 293–94; NNE, 2 May 1872, 2 January 1873. 7. Kentucky-born James F. Casey (c. 1830–?) was a brother of Samuel L. Casey, a former congressman from that state. In February 1861, Casey married Emma Dent, the sister of Julia Grant, and thus the sister-in-law of the future president. President Andrew Johnson appointed Casey the collector of the port of New Orleans in March 1869. By April 1870, however, sizable opposition had grown to his conduct as collector and his political activities, which seemed more suited to a Democrat. As a result, calls for his resignation were sent to Grant by New Orleans Republicans. Despite further complaints filed against Casey in 1872, he evidently held the favor and trust of his brother-in-law and retained his position until 1877. James Steedman to Andrew Johnson, 17 January 1869, Johnson, Papers of Andrew Johnson, 15:391; Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 22:102, 372, 323, 339; 1870 U.S. Census, Louisiana, Orleans, 368. 8. Philip Felix Herwig (1839–1907) was a Louisiana state senator, a deputy collector of the port of New Orleans, and the assistant U.S. treasurer at New Orleans. He enlisted in the Confederate army in 1861 and served as a lieutenant in the Lafayette Artillery. As a state senator, Herwig was a member of Governor Henry Clay Warmoth’s conservative Republican faction in 1870. Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 22:339; Statutes at Large of the US of A 63rd Congress 1914 Session II, chap. 165; Althea D. Pitre, “The Collapse of the Warmoth Regime, 1870–72,” Louisiana History, 6:164 (Spring 1965); Find a Grave (online). 9. James Holt Ingraham of Louisiana (1839–76), a free black, distinguished himself with bravery during the Civil War and rose to the rank of captain with the Union army. After the war, he returned to Louisiana and became active in Reconstruction politics. He was elected to the state Senate in 1870 and retained his seat until 1874. Ingraham is said to have impressed President Grant while visiting Washington in 1872, and he was appointed surveyor of the port of customs in New Orleans. New Orleans Republican, 27 March 1872; Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America, from March 4, 1871, to March 3, 1873, Inclusive (Washington, D.C. 1901),

Y8204-Douglass.indb 225

5/17/23 2:35 PM

226

WILLIAM G. BROWN TO DOUGLASS, 19 DECEMBER 1872

18:228–30; Charles Vincent, Black Legislators in Louisiana during Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, La., 1976), 121; 1870 U.S. Census, Louisiana, Orleans, 542. 10. Thomas Ong was a deputy postmaster and registrar of voters in St. Bernard Parish in New Orleans. He also owned a plantation. New Orleans Daily Picayune, 14 April 1868, 6 March 1869. 11. A native of Texas, George W. Carter (1826–1901) was a lawyer who defended Governor Warmoth against embezzlement charges for his business practices in that state. As governor, Warmoth appointed Carter judge of the newly created Cameron Parish of Louisiana in 1870. Carter was soon elected to the state House of Representatives and became its Speaker, though he was accused of aiding in corruption at the customhouse. He also edited the short-lived New Orleans National Republican, a newspaper aligned with Oscar Dunn’s supporters against the Warmoth-Pinchback faction of the state Republican party leadership. Carter sided against Warmoth in the struggle to impeach the governor and lost the Speaker’s office. Richard Edwards, Edwards’ Annual Directory of . . . the City of New Orleans for 1872 (New Orleans, La., 1872), 90; Pitre, “Collapse of the Warmoth Regime,” 166, 171–74. 12. Charles Winthrop Lowell (1834–77) was a ninth-generation descendant of Perceval Lowell, the first Lowell to immigrate to America, in 1639. He was born in Farmingham, Maine, and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1859. Lowell then studied law with Charles P. Chandler, his future father-in-law. During the Civil War, Lowell served as a captain in the U.S. Colored Troops and later rose to the rank of colonel. After the war, he established himself as a lawyer in Shreveport and became involved in politics. Lowell served as Speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives (1868–69) and was later appointed postmaster of New Orleans. He broke with Governor Warmoth and sided with the African American lieutenant governor, Oscar J. Dunn, in intraparty struggles in the early 1870s. Lowell backed President Grant’s reelection against Liberal Republican–Democratic challengers in 1872 and supported the impeachment of Governor Warmoth. Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 142–43, 146, 169; Pitre, “Collapse of the Warmoth Regime,” 164, 174. 13. John Ray (1816–88) was a politician and lawyer who, despite being a former slaveholder, opposed secession and was an ardent Reconstructionist. Born in Missouri, he was educated in Indiana and Kentucky before moving to Louisiana around 1835. Ray became a lawyer there in 1839 and generally supported the Whig party. He won election to the state House and Senate during the 1840s and 1850s, but was the unsuccessful Whig candidate for lieutenant governor in 1854. In 1860, Ray supported the Constitutional Union party ticket and gave only lukewarm support to secession. After the war, he was elected to the U.S. House and the Senate as a Republican, but was not seated, since Louisiana had not been officially readmitted to the Union. He served in the state Senate and then as register of the state land office. After suffering financially on account of his politics, Ray relocated from northern Louisiana to New Orleans. New Orleans Times-Picayune, 5 March 1888; Frank J. Wetta, “ ‘Bulldozing the Scalawags’: Some Examples of the Persecution of Southern White Republicans in Louisiana during Reconstruction,” Louisiana History, 21:45, 53–54 (Winter 1980). 14. Emery Ebenezer Norton (1816–1901), a native of Albany, New York, practiced law in Louisiana and served a term in the state legislature in the 1850s. He settled in New Orleans after service as a captain in the Union army. Norton and his wife were close family friends of Edward Henry Durell, a federal judge who appointed Norton as general assignee in bankruptcy before his court. In the heavily disputed 1872 contest for the U.S. Senate in the Louisiana legislature, Norton was the candidate backed by the new Republican governor, William Pitt Kellogg. According to one account, another candidate for the Senate seat, P. B. S. Pinchback, sought the support of legislators otherwise loyal to Kellogg by distributing $10,000 among them; according to another account, Pinchback agreed to accept $10,000 from Norton to take himself out of the running. An angered Norton made sure U.S. senators in Washington were aware of this chain of events, and Pinchback ultimately submitted a petition to the Senate stating that he was owed $10,000 from the Kellogg regime for out-of-pocket expenses related to an extra state legislative session. Norton left Louisiana and settled in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, where he became a prosperous farm owner. Henry Clay Warmoth, War, Politics, and

Y8204-Douglass.indb 226

5/17/23 2:35 PM

WILLIAM G. BROWN TO DOUGLASS, 19 DECEMBER 1872

227

Reconstruction: Stormy Days in Louisiana (New York, 1930), 207–09, 234; Matthew Lynch, ed., Before Obama: A Reappraisal of Black Reconstruction Era Politicians, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2012), 1:226–27; Dray, Capitol Men, 224–25. 15. Alexander Eusibius Barber, or Barbour, was born into slavery in Maryland around 1830. He was reputed to have taught himself to read and write “from torn leaves out of a spelling book.” In 1860, he was recorded as serving as a “steward” in New Orleans. Barber became a leader in post– Civil War New Orleans by investing in several businesses. In 1870, Barber was the harbormaster in New Orleans, a position he held until at least 1873. James Longstreet appointed him one of two brigadier generals in the state militia. James K. Hogue, “The Strange Career of James Longstreet: History and Contingency in the Civil War Era,” in The Struggle for Equality: Essays on Sectional Conflict, the Civil War, and the Long Reconstruction, edited by Orville Vernon Burton, Jerold Podair, and Jennifer L. Weber (Charlottesville, Va., 2011), 159–60, 170; John W. Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 1860–1880 (Chicago, 1973), 72, 160; David C. Rankin, “Origins of Black Leadership in New Orleans during Reconstruction,” JSH, 40:437 (August 1974). 16. Henry Clay Warmoth (1842–1931) was a Reconstruction-era governor of Louisiana. He grew up in Illinois and became an attorney in Laclede County, Missouri. He served as a lieutenant colonel in a Missouri regiment in the Union army, where he had a dishonorable discharge reversed on an appeal to President Lincoln. After fighting in campaigns in Tennessee and Arkansas, he was appointed a judge of the Department of the Gulf provost court at New Orleans, but soon after returned to private practice in New Orleans. He launched his political career during the early years of Presidential Reconstruction, and was elected Louisiana’s unofficial “territorial delegate” to Congress in 1865. In April 1868, Warmoth won the governorship in an easy victory against the Democratic candidate, James G. Talliaferro. Warmoth’s win prompted conservatives around the state to launch an aggressive campaign to secure the state for the Democratic presidential candidate Horatio Seymour. The conservatives’ belligerent crusade against Republicans convinced Warmoth of the need to protect the Republican party and secure black suffrage. The legislature placed the New Orleans Metropolitan Police District and the state militia under Warmoth’s control; in this way, more local officials could be appointed by Warmoth rather than elected. Warmoth hoped to stabilize state politics by inducing Louisiana whites to join the Republican party through the awarding of patronage jobs. This strategy caused division among Republicans, since committed Republicans—especially black Republicans— needed jobs, too. Ultimately, a rivalry grew up between Warmoth and a group of carpetbaggers who were in charge of the New Orleans Custom House and backed by President Grant. The Louisiana U.S. marshal, a leader of the Custom House faction, arrested Warmoth. Following his release on bail, Warmoth used the Metropolitan Police to take control of the state House. Warmoth renounced the Republican party and joined the Liberal Republican party. The Republican-controlled legislature impeached Warmoth in December 1872. Despite his political fall from grace, Warmoth remained active in Louisiana politics, serving in the legislature in 1876, narrowly losing a campaign for governor in 1888, and receiving an appointment from President Benjamin Harrison in 1890 to be the collector of customs of New Orleans. Warmoth, War, Politics and Reconstruction; Glenn R. Conrad, Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, 2 vols. (New Orleans, 1998), 2:223–24; ANB (online). 17. Born in Delphi, Indiana, Henry C. Dibble (1844–?) entered the Union army at the age of seventeen and ended the war at his aunt’s residence in New Orleans, recovering from wounds. After briefly studying law at Tulane University, he began a practice in New Orleans. Appointed judge of the Sixth District Court and identifying with the Radical Republicans, Dibble regularly ruled in favor of equal rights. In an 1871 case involving an African American named C. S. Sauvinet, Dibble ruled that the plaintiff had the right to drink in any establishment open to the public. He subsequently served as Louisiana’s assistant attorney general, and he fought for school integration as president of the New Orleans Board of Education. After briefly practicing law in Arizona, Dibble moved to California and won four terms in the state Assembly as a Republican, beginning in the late 1880s. As a legislator, he worked for woman suffrage and the protection of African Americans’ civil equality. After losing his

Y8204-Douglass.indb 227

5/17/23 2:35 PM

228

WILLIAM G. BROWN TO DOUGLASS, 19 DECEMBER 1872

legislative seat in 1900, Dibble returned to his law practice and took many cases on behalf of Chinese immigrants. San Francisco Examiner, 14 June 1910; Henry C. Dibble, Why Reconstruction Failed: A Letter to the Vice-president of the United States from Henry C. Dibble, of Louisiana (New Orleans, 1877); Charles McClain, “California Carpetbagger: The Career of Henry Dibble,” Berkeley Law Scholarship Repository, Quinnipiac Law Review, 28:885–967 (2009). 18. Jacob Hawkins (?–1876) was the judge of the superior court for Orleans Parish. He was a supporter of Governor Michael Hahn, whom Lincoln had installed after the Union occupation of New Orleans. Andrew Johnson received complaints that Hawkins sided with radical factions against the administration. In the 1872 gubernatorial election, Hawkins opposed Warmoth. New Orleans Times-Picayune, 10 May 1876; United States Congressional Serial Set, 1549:992; Johnson, Papers of Andrew Johnson, 13:75; John Kendall, History of New Orleans (Chicago, 1922), 346. 19. Edward Coke Billings (1829–93) was a Harvard- and Yale-educated lawyer from Massachusetts and a strong Republican. He practiced law in New York City from 1855 to 1865. Following the Civil War, he relocated to New Orleans and joined the firm of Sullivan, Billings & Hughes. In 1872, when some questioned James F. Casey’s integrity and ability as collector at New Orleans, Billings wrote to President Grant on Casey’s behalf. Later, in 1876, Grant appointed Billings federal judge for the District of Louisiana, a position he held until his death. Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 22:339; Richard Edwards, Edwards’ Annual Directory of the . . . City of New Orleans for 1870 (New Orleans, 1869), 76; Biographical Directory of Federal Judges (online). 20. Edward Henry Durell (1810–87) was an interim mayor of New Orleans and a federal judge in Louisiana. He was from a politically established family in New Hampshire. Durell graduated from Harvard in 1831 and then moved south and practiced law in Mississippi and Louisiana. He served on the New Orleans City Council and was the city’s mayor in 1863. President Lincoln appointed Durell a federal district judge in 1864. He joined the Republican party in 1864 and presided over Louisiana’s state constitutional convention. His support of citizenship equality for all races at the state convention reflected the evolution of his beliefs on the issue of slavery. Although Durell had managed to cultivate respect from both Republicans and Democrats alike, his judgeship was eventually marred by controversy as a result of his role as the judge in the 1872 lawsuit between Governor Warmoth and the Republican gubernatorial candidate, William Pitt Kellogg. Kellogg accused Warmoth of rigging the election results in favor of the Liberal Republican–Democratic ticket. Ultimately, Durell ruled in favor of Kellogg. As a result, Louisiana’s conservatives turned against Durell, and Democrats on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee initiated impeachment proceedings against him on charges of drunkenness and corruption. Durell resigned in December 1874 and moved to New York. Durell was unable to finish his book on southern history from 1860 to 1877 before his death, but he had published New Orleans as I Found It in 1845 under his pen name, H. Didimus. Charles Lane, “Edward Henry Durell, A Study in Reputation,” Green Bag, 13:153–68 (Winter 2010); Biographical Directory of Federal Judges (online). 21. James Lewis was born a slave in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, in 1832. Before the Civil War, he worked at various jobs aboard Mississippi River steamboats. He was a steward on Confederate naval vessels in several engagements early in the war, but fled to Union lines after the capture of New Orleans. He enlisted in the Union army and was made a captain in the Louisiana Native Guard. After working for the Freedmen’s Bureau, he was appointed collector of customs for New Orleans. An important political figure in the city, Lewis was the chairman of the Louisiana delegation to the Republican National Convention in 1872 and a staunch supporter of P. B. S. Pinchback. Governor Warmoth made him a colonel in the state militia. Lewis, however, broke with Warmoth and supported the election of William Kellogg as governor in 1872. He received a series of federal patronage appointments from Republican presidents down to McKinley. Simmons, Men of Mark, 954–58. 22. James Henri Burch (1836–83), a Republican politician from Louisiana during the Reconstruction years, led the impeachment proceedings against Governor Henry Clay Warmoth. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Burch was the son of the wealthy Reverend Charles Burch and attended Owega Academy. He moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in April 1868 and became the head of

Y8204-Douglass.indb 228

5/17/23 2:35 PM

WILLIAM G. BROWN TO DOUGLASS, 19 DECEMBER 1872

229

a local black school at the urging of his father. Burch rapidly became a recognized name within Louisiana Republican party circles. He represented East Baton Rouge Parish in both the Louisiana state House and Senate, purchased the Baton Rouge Courier in 1871 and published it as the Grand Era until 1878, owned the Athletic Base Ball Club, and managed the Aetnas baseball team. Burch briefly joined the Reform party, which was formed in December 1871, but left it when he felt its leader had tried to deceive black voters in the 1872 election. Burch worked closely with fellow African American politicians, especially lieutenant governors Oscar Dunn and P. B. S. Pinchback. Governor Warmoth aggressively attacked Burch on key issues. In turn, Burch played a notable role in the December 1871 impeachment of Warmoth, which contributed to the eventual falling out between Burch and Pinchback, Warmoth’s pick to succeed him as governor. In an interview just before his death in 1931, Warmoth stated, “J. Henri Burch and his group gave me a lot of trouble. He was a difficult man to handle, and finally lined up with the Custom House faction which opposed me and my administration.” Burch concluded his public career after Louisiana went through Redemption, starting with President Hayes’s decision in 1877 to recall federal forces from the state. Burch later married the widow of Oscar Dunn and became a master mason. Vincent, Black Legislators in Louisiana, 115–16, 138, 178; James E. Brunson III, Black Baseball, 1858–1900: A Comprehensive Record of the Teams, Players, Managers, Owners and Umpires (Jefferson, N.C., 2019), 104, 303; A. E. Perkins, “James Henri Burch and Oscar James Dunn in Louisiana,” JNH, 22:321–41 (July 1937). 23. The National Republican of New Orleans was a short-lived daily paper, running from January 1871 to December 1872. Published by the Republican party of Louisiana, it was merged with the New Orleans Republican. Edited by George W. Carter, the National Republican backed the city’s customhouse “ring” and Lieutenant Governor Oscar P. Dunn in his intraparty competition against Henry Clay Warmoth and P. B. S. Pinchback for control of the state Republican party. Edwards, Edwards’ Annual Directory of . . . the City of New Orleans for 1872, 90; Pitre, “Collapse of the Warmoth Regime,” 166, 171–74. 24. The New Orleans Times first began publication on 20 September 1863 under the publisher Thomas P. May. In 1865, the Times was bought by William H. C. King. From 1865 to 1872, the paper was acknowledged as a leading publication, especially as one of the first papers in the city to issue a Sunday literary supplement. The Times had a reputation for attacking carpetbaggers and espousing conservative policies under King, a confidant of President Andrew Johnson. The Times vehemently denounced Judge Edward Henry Durell for ruling in favor of William Pitt Kellogg in Kellogg v. Warmoth et al. The paper was sold in 1872 following a court-ordered seizure. In 1881, after going through a number of owners, the Times was combined with the Democrat, effectively becoming the New Orleans Times-Democrat until its dissolution in 1914. New Orleans Times-Democrat, 26 April 1913; Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 15:151, 18:180–81; Henry Rightor, Standard History of New Orleans, Louisiana (Chicago, 1900), 276. 25. Both the Weekly Picayune and the Daily Picayune were originally published by Frances Asbury Lumsden and George Wilkins Kendall. The Picayune has been a staple in New Orleans journalism since its inception in 1837. Its title, Picayune, recalls New Orleans’s long history before becoming part of the United States, a picayune being a small Spanish coin worth about five cents, considered legal tender until 1857. In 1820, a group of city merchants acquired and operated the Picayune, but bankrupted it in less than two years. Publication was taken over by Alva M. Holbrook and his wife, Eliza Jane Nicholson, who in 1876 became the sole publisher, making her the first female owner of a major paper in the United States. New Orleans Times-Picayune / Advocate, 6 July 2019; Rightor, Standard History of New Orleans, 272–76. 26. The New Orleans Bee (L’Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orleans) was a daily English and French publication founded in 1809. Alternatively, the paper was titled Arielle, the Daily Bee, and the New Orleans Daily Bee. Its antebellum publisher was Jerome Bayon. Richard Campanella, Time and Place in New Orleans: Past Geographies in the Present Day (New Orleans, 2002), 148; Rightor, Standard History of New Orleans, 271–72.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 229

5/17/23 2:35 PM

230

DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL D. PORTER, 1872

27. The German Gazette, or Die Tägliche deutsche Zeitung (and under various other names), was published in New Orleans from 1848 to 1907 and was the longest-running German newspaper in Louisiana. German immigration to the United States peaked in the 1840s and 1850s, and in New Orleans these German immigrants, who made up nearly 13 percent of the population, ran much of the city’s industry. This daily paper was one of several German-language papers catering to the German population of New Orleans in the middle of the nineteenth century. Andrea Mehrländer, “ ‘With More Freedom and Independence Than the Yankees,’ ” in Civil War Citizens: Race Ethnicity, and Identity in America’s Bloodiest Conflict, Susannah J. Ural, ed. (New York, 2010), 57–97; Ellen C. Merrill, Germans of Louisiana (Gretna, La., 2005) 180–92; Rightor, Standard History of New Orleans, 277–79. 28. The weekly New Orleans Republican was published from 1867 to 1878 by S. K. Brown & Company. It issued a prospectus endorsed by such leading congressional Republicans as Benjamin Butler, Thaddeus Stevens, Benjamin Wade, and John Logan. The prospectus declared the new paper’s purpose was “to organize the patriotic sentiment of [Louisiana] into harmonious relations with the Federal government, to reconcile the defeated portion of our population to the changes in institutions and political principles produced by the war.” “Prospectus of the New Orleans Republican,” n.d., David M. Rubinstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL D. PORTER1 Washington[,] D.C. [1872.]

Sam[ue]l D. Porter Esqr Rochester N. Y. My dear Sir: Your note of the 26th expressing a wish on the part of friends of mine, in Rochester N.Y., that I would sit to Mr Mund[y]2 a bust (of marble or bronze) designed to be placed in some pu[blic] Hall of that city, has just been handed me by the distinguished artist selected for the work.3 I am very sincerely obliged to you for your respected note and am deeply sensible of the honor implied in the request it contains. I beg to assure you and such of any friend as takes an interest in the matter, that it will give me very great pleasure to sit as requested to Mr Mundy, both because I desire to gratify my friend in the beautiful City of Rochester, and because I know something of the talents, skill and fidelity of the sculptor to whom you have been pleased to commit the work of producing my featu[re]s4 I am, dear sir, very truly yours, FREDK DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 636, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Samuel D. Porter (1808–81), a prosperous land agent, moved to Rochester, New York, from Waldosborough, Maine, in 1835. He served as the first president of the Western New York AntiSlavery Society, and his wife, Susan Farley Porter, founded and belonged to several reform organizations. The Porters aided fugitive slaves in crossing the border into Canada, and their barn was

Y8204-Douglass.indb 230

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES SUMNER TO DOUGLASS, 1872

231

reputed to be a common hiding place. In the 1840s, Samuel joined the Liberty party and supported the Free Soil party while attempting to mediate between Garrisonian abolitionists and those who, like himself, sought the end of slavery through political agitation. Additionally, he was a perennial candidate for mayor, running on an antislavery platform. Although he became a Republican in the late 1850s, he broke with that party in the 1870s, charging that it had abandoned reform and the plight of the freedmen. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 92; Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 60, 120, 149, 180, 206; Dexter Perkins, “Rochester One Hundred Years Ago,” RH, 1:1–24 (July 1939). 2. Johnson Marchant Mundy (1831–97) was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, but moved with his family to Geneva, New York, in his youth. Failing eyesight caused him to withdraw from school at a young age, but he studied for six years under the sculptor Henry K. Brown of Brooklyn. Mundy eventually settled in Rochester, where he made a living as a portrait artist. Also a talented sculptor, he is best remembered for his statue of Washington Irving, erected in Tarrytown, New York. Ezra F. Mundy, Nicholas Mundy and His Descendants Who Settled in New Jersey in 1665 (Lawrence, Kans., 1907), 13–14; “The Late Johnson M. Mundy: The Blind Sculptor,” Phrenological Journal and Science of Health, 104:190 (October 1897). 3. A short unsigned article in the Boston magazine Folio provided details about the work underway on the bust of Douglass: “A number of influential citizens of Rochester, N.Y., the former residence of Mr. Douglass, having commissioned the sculptor Johnson M. Mundy to visit Washington for the purpose of modeling a bust of this distinguished orator, to be placed in one of the public halls of that city as a mark of esteem, the artist began his work a few weeks from sittings, and has succeeded in producing an unusually characteristic portrait bust.” Boston Folio, 8:70 (March 1873). 4. The marble bust of Frederick Douglass was formally presented by its sculptor, Johnson M. Mundy, on 17 June 1879 in Sibley Hall at the University of Rochester. Joining Mundy as speakers at the ceremony were D. M. Dewey, a member of the committee that commissioned the bust a few years earlier, and Martin B. Anderson, the University of Rochester’s president. Established in 1877, the two-story Sibley Hall contained the university’s library and museum and was named after its benefactor Hiram Sibley, a successful businessman in the telegraph industry who donated $100,000 for the building’s maintenance. The bust was later relocated to a permanent position in the university’s Frederick Douglass Building. In 1880, Douglass wrote the sculptor and said, “I am content to be made known through this specimen of your art to all who may come after me, and who may wish to know how I looked in the world.” Douglass to Johnson Mundy, 23 March 1880, Frederick Douglass Collection, NRU; Rochester Daily Union & Advertiser, 18 June 1879; Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 28 June 1879; Arthur J. May, A History of the University of Rochester, 1850–1962 (Rochester, 1977), 67, 69, 219; Nancy C. Curtis, Black Heritage Sites: An African American Odyssey and Finder’s Guide (Chicago, 1996), 331; Carol Summerfield and Mary Elizabeth Devine, International Dictionary of University Histories (New York, 1998), 599–603; DAB, 17:145–46.

CHARLES SUMNER TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Nahant[,1 Mass. 1872.] 2

Nahant Thursday Dear Mr Douglass, Since my note of this Monday Mr Longfellow3 has read to me what purports to be an interview where are attributed to me words about you which

Y8204-Douglass.indb 231

5/17/23 2:35 PM

232

SUSAN B. ANTHONY TO DOUGLASS, 13 JANUARY 1873

never crossed my lips. I said that, whatever Mr Douglass might think of the Presidential indignity every body has a liberty to express an opinion in as much as it concerned the race.4 I write this because I am determined that no ill-will or carelessness of others shall make trouble between us. Ever sincerely yours, CHARLES SUMNER ALS: Gilder-Lehrman Collection, NNPML. 1. Nahant was a resort community along Massachusetts Bay south of Lynn. Sumner spent many summer days there as a guest of friends such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who maintained a vacation home in Nahant. Shotwell, Life of Charles Sumner, 706; Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1277. 2. Sumner provided only “Thursday” as the letter’s date. 3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) was one of the most prominent American authors of the nineteenth century. Born in Portland, Maine, Longfellow graduated from Bowdoin College in the same class as Nathaniel Hawthorne. He studied languages in Europe, accepted a professorship in modern languages at Bowdoin (1829–35), and later relocated permanently to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he accepted the Smith professorship of French and Spanish at Harvard College. Early in his career, Longfellow published translations of foreign works; by 1833, he was receiving considerable publishing success with his own prose and poetry. He was catapulted to literary stardom with the appearance of his prose romance Hyperion in 1839. In 1842 he published Poems on Slavery, which made an important contribution to the antislavery movement. Over a long and highly productive career, Longfellow authored numerous collections of poetry and prose. He is best remembered for his long poem The Song of Hiawatha (1855), which portrays Native Americans with dignity and respect, and The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), treating the life and adventures of the Pilgrim leader. Cecil B. Williams, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (New York, 1964), 139–40; Newton Arvin, Longfellow: His Life and Work (Boston, 1963), 77–78; James D. Hart, The Oxford Companion to American Literature, 6th ed. (New York, 1995), 387–88; ACAB, 4:10–15; DAB, 11:382–87; ANB (online). 4. During the 1872 presidential election, Sumner repeatedly criticized President Grant for excluding Douglass from dining with the other Santo Domingo commissioners at the Executive Mansion on 30 March 1871. While Douglass initially remained quiet on this subject, he felt it necessary to defend Grant during the election. Perhaps Sumner is referring here to an interview he gave on this subject in which his feelings regarding Grant and his slighting of Douglass might have been embellished for political purposes. NNE, 18 July, 12 September, 19 September 1872; Sumner, Works, 15:151–52, 205–08.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington[, D.C.] 13 Jan[uary 18]73.

Room 125—National Hotel Dear Friend Douglass— I hope to see you here personally—but more than all—I want you to speak your strong word for the power & majesty of the Old Charter of Rights to

Y8204-Douglass.indb 232

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 16 JANUARY 1873

233

protect all citizens under the government in their right to vote—you, with your old Liberty Party Construction of the U.S. Constitution must be in harmony with us that it guarantees a Republican form Gov’t in each state—& not a Repub. form must be passed on the freedom & franchise of every U.S. Citizens—1 Sincerely yours SUSAN B. ANTHONY ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 642R–43, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Through the late 1840s, Douglass’s views on the Constitution coincided with the Garrisonian belief that the country’s founding document supported proslavery interests. In a March 1849 editorial in the North Star, Douglass outlined his position and concluded that the Constitution was “radically and essentially pro-slavery.” Following his move to Rochester and his close association with political abolitionists such as Gerrit Smith, Douglass began to reevaluate that position. Douglass came to believe that those sections of the Constitution that excluded the sanction of “property in man” offered evidence that the founding fathers had in fact viewed slavery as evil and had even planned for its eventual abolition. He also observed that those clauses that the Garrisonians and slaveholders used to justify the proslavery nature of the document did not explicitly mention slavery at all. Coming to a more literal interpretation, like the one held by political abolitionists, by 1851 Douglass was beginning instead to interpret those clauses dealing with the basic freedoms as expressly antislavery statements. His political-abolitionist colleagues, centered on the remnant of the Liberty party, congratulated him “upon the change of sentiment” he now expressed. Gerrit Smith remarked, “I have observed for years, that you were coming to this conclusion.” Gerrit Smith to Douglass, 9 June 1851, Bob Markle to Douglass, 20 August 1851, Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:450–54, 476–81; NS, 16 March 1849, 28 August 1851; Salem (Ohio) Anti-Slavery Bugle, 2 August 1851; FDP, 24 July 1851; Martin, Mind of Frederick Douglass, 31, 37–38.

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington[,] D.C. 16 Jan[uar]y 1873.

Dear Father, I have delayed writing until now, simply for something of interest to write about. Fred.1 informed you of the new arrival2 and I can add that both Libbie and the baby are doing finely. They are progressing rapidly with the building on the corner, and by the last of next week I expect the roof will be completed. I have great prospects in view, and I expect by April first, in company with four or five others to open a brick yard on the hill. We have had one meeting at my house and have examined the clay on the hill lot and find it to be of superior quality. Two of our company are practical brickmakers. We propose to start with five hundred dollars, and burn 100,000

Y8204-Douglass.indb 233

5/17/23 2:35 PM

234

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 16 JANUARY 1873

brick before making any sale. I am satisfied the investment will pay handsomely, and after a short time, I intend to make the profits build me on the two remaining building sites on the corner, two buildings like the one now going up, the difference being that they shall be entirely brick. I have agreed to take my share in brick for one year.3 With my health keeping good, in a very few years I expect to make myself independent of Uncle Sam, and turn my back on politics. This I am determined on. I have found out lately that those for whom I have striven to serve are the first ones to turn their backs on me when I am down. I now intend to mind my own business, and leave others to do the same for themselves. You would hardly believe the mean things that have been said and done against me and mine by those whom I have served faithfully, and the reason, contemptible as it is, seems to be my success in keeping my head above water, and trying to get hold of something. I am fully satisfied that I have done no injury to any of my own folks, or their friends. On sunday morning last I took mother,4 Miss Peirce,5 and Louisa6 to the Presbyterian Church7 in the large carraige. It was a beautiful day, and to day seems like spring. Ladies are out with parasols. The bay window has been completed, and is now ready for use. I hope you will get home before the first of March. It seems to me that you might let your Nebraska appointments go.8 You would enjoy such weather as we are having now, and I see no necessity of sacrificing every pleasure in this world especially after you have done more than the work of a score of men, and can live independently to the end if you choose. I would rejoice to day if I knew that you had determined to stop, and for the remainder of your life enjoy the fruits of your too many years labor as other men do who have not labored as you have. Thirty years on Rail-roads and steam-boats, aside from lecturing night after night, would kill most any ordinary man, and now that you are in seeming good health you should stop. If any thing less laborious should turn up for you, the case might be different. I firmly believe by the signs of the times, and the recognition you are receiving from such prominent administration men as Sec’y Fish,9 that something worth your while to accept is in store for you.10 Your course since election is being favorably commented upon by all parties, while that of [illegible] is being condemned. All join in love and hope to see you at home soon, Aff’y Your Son CHAS. R. DOUG LASS

Y8204-Douglass.indb 234

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 16 JANUARY 1873

235

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 644–46L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Frederick Douglass, Jr. 2. Charles’s wife, Mary Elizabeth Murphy Douglass, gave birth to the couple’s fourth child, Julia Ada Douglass (1873–87), on 5 January 1873. “Ada” was born in Washington, D.C., where she died of typhoid fever at age fourteen, just one day after the disease claimed her brother Charles Frederick. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 37, 38, 489; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 678; Fought, Women, 266, 310. 3. Although there is no evidence that this business venture ever materialized (or, if it did, that it proved to be a financial success), it is worth noting that Charles did build a structure, Douglass Hall, at the corner of Howard Street and Nichols Avenue in Anacostia in the 1870s. Muller, Lion of Anacostia, 98; Hutchinson, Anacostia Story, 118. 4. Anna Murray Douglass. 5. The editors have not been able to identify Miss Peirce. The only person by that name who can currently be placed within Charles R. Douglass’s potential social circle is a young widow named Rosemond “Rose” Asenath Simons Pierce (aka Peirce or Pearce) (1840–1913), who worked as a clerk in the treasurer’s office starting in 1863. A native of Herkimer County, New York, and the daughter of a Methodist minister who supported the abolitionist and the temperance movements, Pierce gave up her job with the Treasury Department in March 1873 after marrying Lester Frank Ward, the wellknown author, botanist, and sociologist. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Herkimer County, 44A; 1870 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 119; 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 13; Edward C. Rafferty, Apostle of Human Progress: Lester Frank Ward and American Political Thought, 1841–1914 (Lanham, Md., 2003), 88–89; “U.S., Register of Civil, Military, and Naval Services, 1863–1959,” Ancestry.com; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; Find a Grave (online). 6. Helen Louise “Louisa” Sprague. 7. Charles and his party probably attended the Fifteenth Street “Colored” Presbyterian Church, where the Reverend J. Sella Martin had been pastor before editing the New National Era with the Douglass family. After Martin’s departure, the Reverend Septimus Tustin served as minister beginning in 1871 and might still have been there in early 1873. In 1877, the Reverend Francis Grimké began a more than half-century tenure as pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. From 1870, the church housed the first high school for African Americans in the District. Douglass frequently spoke at meetings in the church, whose carpeted interior and glass chandeliers were a source of pride for the city’s African American community. Allan Johnston, Surviving Freedom: The Black Community of Washington, D.C., 1860–1880 (New York, 1993), 56, 60, 84–85, 192; Constance McLaughlin Green, The Secret City: A History of Race Relations in the Nation’s Capital (Princeton, N.J., 1967), 51–52, 97, 102. 8. Douglass gave his speech “Reminiscences of the Anti-Slavery Conflict” at Simpson’s Hall in Omaha, Nebraska, on 21 January 1873 as part of an extended tour that also took him to Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Michigan. Douglass was back in Washington, D.C., by the end of February. His only known speaking engagement in March took place on the 10th, when he spoke at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. His next engagement was not until 11 April, when he spoke at Lincoln Hall, in Washington, D.C. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxxii; Omaha Daily Herald, 19, 21, 22 January 1873; Grand Rapids (Mich.) Daily Times, 22, 24, 26, 29, 30, 31 January, 1 February 1873; Carthage (Ill.) Gazette, 22 January 1873; Council Bluffs (Iowa) Weekly Nonpareil, 22, 23, 24 January 1873; Omaha Weekly Herald, 29 January 1873; Grand Rapids (Mich.) Daily Eagle, 29, 30, 31 January 1873; NNE, 30 January, 13, 20 February 1873; Grand Rapids (Mich.) Morning Democrat, 1 February 1873; St. Paul (Minn.) Dispatch, 4, 7, 8 February 1873. 9. Hamilton Fish. 10. At the time Charles wrote this letter, rumors that Douglass was under consideration for appointment to a senior diplomatic post had been circulating in Washington, D.C., for several years, and would continue to do so for years to come. In an era when political allies were routinely rewarded for

Y8204-Douglass.indb 235

5/17/23 2:35 PM

236

DOUGLASS TO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 15 MARCH 1873

their support, Douglass, who vigorously campaigned for Ulysses S. Grant in the 1872 election, would not have been amiss to expect his efforts to receive acknowledgment from both the Republican party and the Grant administration in the form of an appointment of some kind. Whether he was seriously under consideration for the kind of diplomatic post implied by Charles is uncertain, but we know that Douglass’s only political appointments under Grant were as an assistant secretary to the commission sent to Santo Domingo in 1871 and as a council member in the upper legislative branch of the District of Columbia’s territorial government in 1872. Barnes, Douglass, 110–13; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 533–34; Horne, Deepest South, 245; Hutchinson, Anacostia Story, 95, 97.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER1 Rockland[,] Me. 15 March 1873.

John G. Whittier: Dear Sir: I am with you entirely. No censure of Mr Sumner should be allowed to stain the annals of Massachusetts.2 I am far from assenting to the principle of his resolutions[.] We are more likely to forget too soon than to remember too long the dreadful struggle with slavery in armed rebellion—But we know the noble and pure motives of the patriot Philanthropist and statesmen: He is consistent with himself—and with the cheerished convictions of his life, known and read of all men. Massachusetts in her haste, has misapprehended him and should make haste to repair the blunder.3 She can less afford to persist in it than he can afford to bear her censure[.] I fear your letter has come into my hands too late for me to be of any service to the expunging Movement—but I want you to know that I am with you entirely. I have this winter lectured from Bangor to Omaha and from St Louis to St Paul4 and in no instance have I failed to speak of Mr Sumner with confidence, esteem and gratitude. This is not new for me but I have been all the more mindful of this duty to a faithful statesman because I found many who once admired and trusted disposed to censure him. Hoping that you will succeed in setting Massachusetts right with the man who to day sheds more lustre upon her and upon the Nation than any other Living American Statesman. Very truly yours FREDERICK DOUG LASS ALS: Frederick Douglass Manuscripts, NHi. 1. Born to Quaker parents, John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–92) tended his family farm near Haverhill, Massachusetts, in his youth. Inspired by the poets Robert Burns and John Milton, Whittier

Y8204-Douglass.indb 236

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, 15 MARCH 1873

237

published his first poem, “The Exile’s Departure,” in William Lloyd Garrison’s Newburyport Free Press in 1826. Garrison encouraged Whittier’s father to allow his son to attend the Haverhill Academy in Boston for a year. Again with Garrison’s help, Whittier secured his first editorial position in 1829 at a political weekly, the American Manufacturer, in Boston. There, he became acquainted with the abolition movement and was one of the founding members of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Whittier was elected to a term in the Massachusetts state legislature in 1835, and two years later, friends published his first collection, Poems Written during the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States. Whittier worked as a corresponding editor for the Washington National Era, an antislavery journal that published many of his poems, until he cofounded the Atlantic Monthly in 1857. Roland H. Woodwell, John Greenleaf Whittier: A Biography (Haverhill, Mass., 1985); DNB, 20:173–75; ANB (online). 2. In December 1872, Sumner proposed a bill in the U.S. Senate to erase Civil War battles and regimental colors from the Army Register. Although Sumner proposed similar legislation in 1862 and 1865 without much attention, this particular bill triggered outspoken criticism. The Massachusetts legislature, then in extra session, feared the reaction from Civil War veterans and quickly voted to censure Sumner. Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig & Courier, 14 December 1872; Boston Daily Advertiser, 27 February 1873; Philadelphia North American and United States Gazette, 14 February 1874; Samuel Thomas Pickard, Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier, 2 vols. (Boston, 1894), 2:583, 585–86; Moorfield Storey, Charles Sumner (Boston, 1900), 419–22. 3. In January 1873, supporters of Sumner began a movement to rescind the vote passed to censure the senator, which had occurred in December 1872 during a special session of the Massachusetts legislature. John Greenleaf Whittier led the movement, relentlessly gathering signatures for petitions. From January to March, over five thousand people signed Whittier’s petitions criticizing the legislature for its hasty decision. This 1873 “expunging movement” ended in failure, however, with the legislature upholding the censure vote at the end of March. But Whittier succeeded in the next congressional session, and the censure was lifted in February 1874. Philadelphia North American and United States Gazette, 14 February 1874; Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Sumner, 4:553–54; Pickard, Life and Letters of Whittier, 2:583–86. 4. In the winter of 1872–83, Douglass’s lecturing engagements were arranged by the Boston Lyceum Bureau, operated by the abolitionist veteran James Redpath. Douglass spoke in Lewiston and probably in Bangor in early January and then headed west. He is known to have lectured in St. Louis, Missouri, on 13 January; Carthage, Illinois, on 16 January; Burlington, Iowa, on 17 January; Omaha, Nebraska, on 21 January; Council Bluffs, Iowa, on 23 January; Red Oak, Iowa, on 24 January; Grand Rapids, Michigan; on 30 January; Big Rapids, Michigan, on 31 January; and St. Paul, Minnesota, on 7 February 1873. His usual speeches included “Reminiscences of the Anti-Slavery Conflict,” “Composite Nationality,” and “Self-Made Men.” James Redpath to Frederick Douglass, 20 December 1872, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 640R, FD Papers, DLC; Omaha Daily Herald, 19, 21, 22 January 1873; Grand Rapids (Mich.) Daily Times, 22, 24, 26 January 1873; Carthage (Ill.) Gazette, 22 January 1873; Carthage (Ill.) Republican, 22 January 1873; Council Bluffs (Iowa) Daily Nonpareil, 22, 23, 24 January 1873; Grand Rapids (Mich.) Daily Eagle, 29, 30, 31 January 1873; NNE, 30 January, 13, 20 February 1873; St. Paul (Minn.) Dispatch, 4, 7, 8 February 1873; Washington Evening Star, 11 February 1873.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 237

5/17/23 2:35 PM

238

DOUGLASS TO AMY POST, 17 MARCH 1873

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO AMY POST Damariscotta[,] Maine. 17 March 1873.

My dear Friend. Since the morning I left Rochester I have been wishing for a moment to thank you for your kind note handed me by Willie1 as I was getting into the cars but I have found none till I reached this queer named place away down here in the State of Maine.2 I thought much of your advice concerning the Tiltons—and the more I thought the more I was convinced that you were right.3 But after all I did not go as I expected to Brooklyn the appointment there having been given up—and hence I did not have occasion to act upon your wise advice. It is easy to see that that there may good and sufficient reasons for silence of which the public do not know and perhaps ought not to know—It may be that the good lady is subject to moments of insecurity and in that irresponsible condition has said things which are not true and which in her sane condition she would not be likely to tell if they were true. There is ever room for charity. I had the pleasure and it was a real one to see my friend William Hallowell 4 when I lectured in Philadelphia last week.5 I fear that my lecture there was not a success though my audience was a splendid one both as to numbers and character. Though I spoke two hours I had to omit some of the best or what I think the best parts of my lecture. The story of my escape was clumsily told because I had no heart in telling it. There is really nothing exciting in it. Hoping that this will find you well. Very truly yours FREDK DOUG LASS

[P.S.] Please remember me kindly to Mrs and Mr Hallowell and to Mr and Mrs Willis—Time but revives and increases my respect and regard for all your dear circle. F. D. ALS: Post Family Papers, Rush Rhees Library, NRU. 1. Possibly William R. Hallowell, the husband of Mary Hallowell (daughter of Isaac Post and his first wife). Arriving in Rochester in 1841, William R. Hallowell (1816–82) ran a woolen mill and leather business. He was a member of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society and served on the board of education in Rochester. Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, 2:1243–44; Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 61. 2. Douglass’s first reported lecture of the winter 1873 season was in St. Louis on 13 January. In the next month, he is known to have lectured extensively in Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Michigan, and

Y8204-Douglass.indb 238

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL R. SCOTTRON, 29 MARCH 1873

239

Minnesota. In late February, he spoke at Howard University in Washington, D.C., as part of the commencement of that school’s law department. Omaha (Neb.) Daily Herald, 19, 21, 29 January 1883; Grand Rapids (Mich.) Daily Times, 22, 24, 26 January 1873; Carthage (Ill.) Gazette, 22 January 1873; Council Bluffs (Iowa) Weekly Nonpareil, 22–24 January 1873; Grand Rapids (Mich.) Daily Eagle, 29–31 January 1873; Grand Rapids (Mich.) Morning Democrat, 1 February 1873; St. Paul (Minn.) Dispatch, 4, 7, 8 February 1873; NNE, 20 February 1873; Washington Daily Morning Chronicle, 26, 28 February 1873; Washington Evening Star, 26, 28 February 1873. 3. Amy Post might have advised Douglass against making a personal visit to the home of Theodore and Elizabeth Tilton while he was scheduled to deliver a lecture in Brooklyn, New York. An alleged affair between Elizabeth “Libbie” Tilton and her minister, the prominent reformer Henry Ward Beecher, had taken place in 1868–70. Rumors of the illicit relationship had been spreading among reform circles since 1870 and had finally been made public by Victoria Woodhull in her newspaper, Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, on 2 November 1872. The Tiltons remained together in a strained household for a time, but the mounting scandal eventually led Theodore Tilton to sue Beecher for “criminal conversation” with his wife in 1874, leading to a nationally publicized four-month trial the next year that ended in a deadlocked jury. Amy Post might have learned of the controversy from friends in the woman suffrage movement, especially Susan B. Anthony, and attempted to warn Douglass against becoming personally involved. Hewitt, Radical Friend, 266–67; Fox, Trials of Intimacy, 161–67. 4. It is possible that William Hallowell was coincidentally in Philadelphia on business related to his Rochester textile firm. 5. Douglass had been scheduled to deliver his lecture “Our Composite Nationality,” which he had been delivering since 1869, at the Philadelphia Academy of Music’s “Star Course,” on 20 March 1873. At the last minute, the course manager, Thomas B. Pugh, persuaded Douglass to shift his subject to slavery, according to press reports, “because the public would rather hear the famous colored man on the subject with which he is peculiarly identified.” In that impromptu lecture, Douglass revealed many details of his September 1838 escape from slavery for the first time. He recalled that a free African American sailor named William Stanley had lent Douglass his “protection papers” to wear on a daring train ride from Baltimore to freedom in New York City. Douglass explained that he had kept these details secret until this time because he wanted to prevent any retribution against Stanley or the railroad conductor who had erroneously validated Douglass’s borrowed credentials. Philadelphia North American and U.S. Gazette, 10 March 1873; Philadelphia Inquirer, 10 March 1873; New York Times, 11 March 1873; Rochester Union and Advertiser, 12 March 1873.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL R. SCOTTRON1 Washington[,] D.C. 29 March 1873.

Dear Sir: You are right: The first gleam of the sword of freedom and independence in Cuba secured my sympathy with the revolutionary cause2—and it did seem to me that our Government ought to have made haste to accord the insurgents belligerent rights. Why it did not is still a mystery to me. Nothing but my high confidence in its wisdom, knowledge and good intentions has restrained me from joining in reproaches—I have deemed our Government with all the facts of the situation before it, a safer guide, than my

Y8204-Douglass.indb 239

5/17/23 2:35 PM

240

DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL R. SCOTTRON, 29 MARCH 1873

own feelings. I have assumed that President Grant and his Cabinet were better judges than myself—of the international duties of the Republic— though I still think with my limited knowledge that a grand opportunity has been lost. Since Spain has become a Republic3—since antislavery feeling is dominant in the Councils of that nation—since slavery is abolished in Portorico4 —and since Liberty is now probable and even inevitable to the Cuban slaves, under Spanish rule, I am for doing nothing in favor of prolonging the dreadful struggle in Cuba—and would do anything in my power to make peace between the insurgents and the present Government of Spain. Respectfully yours FREDK DOUG LASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 664, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Born in Philadelphia, Samuel R. Scottron (1841–1908) grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where he entered the barber’s trade. For several years, he attended the free school at Cooper Union. He was a sutler with the Third U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War, stationed at Morris Island, South Carolina. Rather than immediately returning north, he operated stores in Fernandina and Jacksonville, Florida, and became an early organizer of the Republican party in that state. He had represented Florida at the National Convention of Colored Men, over which Douglass presided, in Syracuse in October 1864. Unsuccessful in both politics and business, Scottron resumed his career as a barber in Springfield, Massachusetts. He perfected a system of mirrors that allowed a customer to view his head from all angles. Scottron patented his “Adjustable Mirror,” which became the first of a half-dozen of his patented inventions for the home and business. Returning to Brooklyn, he founded a company to manufacture and sell his products. At the same time, he attended the free school at Cooper Union and graduated with distinction in the mid-1870s. In 1872, Scottron joined Henry Highland Garnet in founding the Cuban Anti-Slavery Society to promote emancipation on the Spanish-controlled island. He served on the Brooklyn Board of Education for eight years but was not renewed in the office after the merger of the boroughs by Seth Low, first mayor of the consolidated New York City. Along with other wealthy northern African Americans, Scottron worked with Booker T. Washington in advancing the economic interests of the race. 1860 U.S. Census, New York, Kings County, 26–27; 1900 U.S. Census, New York, Kings County, 15; Samuel R. Scottron, “Manufacturing Household Articles,” Colored American Magazine, 7:620–24 (October 1904); “New York Society for Mutual Relief—Ninety-Seventh Anniversary,” Colored American Magazine, 9:685–90 (December 1905); Booker T. Washington, The Negro in Business (Boston, 1907), 150–58; Rayvon Fouché, Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation (Baltimore, 2003), 122–23; Encyclopedia.com (online). 2. Douglass openly supported the insurgents of Cuba who sought independence from Spain, stating that they were “heroic and noble” and “defending the cause which this Society and all America have sworn to support.” Although the Cuban planters took an ambiguous position on slavery, Douglass believed their freedom from Spanish rule would ultimately lead to emancipation. An 1872 editorial in the New National Era summarized his position: “Cuba must someday belong to the Cubans; slavery is doomed everywhere; but thanks to the perverse resistance to the natural and necessary course of events, two countries [Spain and Cuba] may be nearly ruined for many years to come, thousands of lives sacrificed to a phantom of glory, unless higher wisdom should unexpectedly obtain control in the councils of the nation, and achieve the natural solution at an earlier day.” Douglass

Y8204-Douglass.indb 240

5/17/23 2:35 PM

HENRY O. WAGONER TO DOUGLASS, 29 APRIL 1873

241

Papers, ser. 1, 3:117–18, ser. 1, 4:204; NNE, 31 October 1872; Johnnetta B. Cole, “Afro-American Solidarity with Cuba,” Black Scholar, 8:73–80 (Summer 1977). 3. Spain became a republic on 11 February 1873, following the abdication of King Amadeo I, who struggled unsuccessfully to form a stable government after the overthrow of Queen Isabella II. The First Republic, as it is commonly referred to, was short-lived. It ended on 29 December 1874 with the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. Raymond Carr, “Liberalism and Reaction, 1833–1931,” in Spain: A History, ed. Raymond Carr (New York, 2000), 219–23. 4. The institution of slavery was abolished in Puerto Rico on 22 March 1873 by the Spanish National Assembly, but that legislation did not fully emancipate enslaved Puerto Ricans. Puerto Rican slaves were required to buy their freedom by working for three years under contracts known as “libertos.” This policy was touted by the government as an effort to ease their transition to freedom, but benefited planters who had formerly relied on uncompensated labor. Luis A. Figueroa, Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2005), 121–50.

HENRY O. WAGONER TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Denver, Colo. 29 Ap[ri]l 1873.

My dear Douglass: A few days ago I saw in our Morning paper a telegram stating that Hon. Frederick Douglass would Lecture in Denver about the the 2d or 3d of June.1—I went directly to Jno. Clough2 & Co., proprietors of “Governor’s Guard Hall,”3 and they told me that they had received such a dispatch from your Agt in Kansas. I gave them, by request, your address, and they said they would write you themselves. Well, our Honored President has been in Denver and in the Mountains a part of three days,4 and left here for Galena5 this morning. So great was the pressure upon by the people that I had bearly the chance of two shakes of his hand. No opportunity for an interview, and so I addressed him a note, which he got last night, and I presume he will read it to-day uninterruptedly in the car.6 You were not forgotten in significant allusions. In one paragraph I said: “I fully accord with you and Frederick Douglass, on St. Domingo. I believe that Island needs the protecting Arm of our Government. Her people need our civilization, our System of schools, and our language. God grant that she may come, in the not distant future.” I mention to you the drift of what I said that we may privately understand each other with reference to President Grant. You might, at some convenient time, mention me to him, in your own peculiar way. I was standing in the crowd near the carriage that conveyed him down , as he came from the cars, and as he got into the carriage, he glanced his eyes forward and saw me standing near, and he instantly reached out his hand and called me by name & shook me

Y8204-Douglass.indb 241

5/17/23 2:35 PM

242

HENRY O. WAGONER TO DOUGLASS, 29 APRIL 1873

heartly, and was about to enter into conversation. But the crowd behind me took advantage of the occasion and pitched into shaking hands with him that he was compelled to drive off to get rid of them. But my note, in some degree, will have to supply the place of a personal conversation. I shall continue to work, for you & my son,7 through Grant & my Galena friends. I will go to Galena when I go East, and when I get to Washington I will seek a personal interview with the General. Private, if possible.— Let this be confidential between you, my son & self— Sic semper in secula seculorum—8 H. O. WAGONER ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 674–75, FD Papers, DLC. 1. In April 1873, Douglass was invited to speak in Denver, Colorado. H. J. Traver wrote to Douglass on 10 April requesting a response to the invitation and the proposed financial terms. On 25 April 1873, the Denver Daily Rocky Mountain News reported that Douglass would deliver two lectures at the Governor’s Guard Hall during the first week of June. In May, the paper also stated that Douglass wrote to John Clough, confirming he would travel to Denver on 3–4 June. But before the scheduled lectures, the Daily Rocky Mountain News printed a telegram dated 22 May from Douglass to Clough, in which he stated, “It is impossible for me to come.” H. J. Traver to Douglass, 10 April 1873, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 671–73, FD Papers, DLC; Denver Daily Rocky Mountain News, 25 April 1873, 9, 23 May 1873. 2. John A. Clough (1826–74), businessman and real estate agent, was a native of Cazenovia, New York. In the mid-1850s he moved to Chicago and began his hide and wool business, first with the firm Clough & King and, later, with John Clough & Co. He also invested in the development of Evanston, Illinois, and aided in its expansion. In 1870, he moved to Denver, Colorado. He started the John Clough & Co. Real Estate and Loan Agents, with its office located at 356 Larimer Street. His firm was widely successful, which allowed him to invest in several other public enterprises in Denver. In March 1874, Clough died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He left behind a wife and four children. Denver Daily Rocky Mountain News, 1 January 1873, 28 March 1874; Chicago Inter Ocean, 28 March 1874; Frank Hall, History of the State of Colorado, 4 vols. (Chicago, 1895), 4:509. 3. Governor’s Guard Hall was designed by the architect Emmett Anthony and constructed in 1873–74. Located on the southwest corner of Fifteenth and Curtis streets, the building was fi rst used as a public meeting hall and as an armory for the governor’s guards. A small stage was added later, which created a space for theatrical performances. Cyrus Strong of New York then purchased the hall, and for a short time it was used by the Colorado School of Mines. In 1876, Nick Forrester bought the building and remodeled it as an opera house and music hall. Jerome C. Smiley, ed., History of Denver: With Outlines of the Earlier History of Rocky Mountain Country (Denver, 1901), 907; James Bretz, Denver’s Early Architecture (Charleston, S.C., 2010), 40; Frank W. Zern, “Early Day Show Houses and Actors,” Trail, 3:18 (October 1910). 4. In late April 1873, Grant visited Denver, Colorado, as part of a tour of the West. The president arrived there on 27 April. Other stops included St. Louis, Missouri; Idaho Springs, Colorado; and Omaha, Nebraska. Central City (Colo.) Daily Central City Register, 27 April 1873; Denver Daily Rocky Mountain News, 27 April 1873; Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 24:xxi, 110. 5. Located in Jo Daviess County in northwestern Illinois, this small community was a local trade point on the Mississippi River and, until the 1860s, a center of lead mining. Both Wagoner and Grant had spent part of their pre–Civil War lives in Galena. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 656.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 242

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO GEORGE WASHINGTON GRIFFITHS, 3 MAY 1873

243

6. A letter to President Grant from Wagoner regarding Dominican annexation does not appear to have survived. 7. The only son and namesake of one of Douglass’s closest friends, Henry O. Wagoner, Jr. (1850–78), was born in Chicago and attended the city’s public schools. A precocious orator, the eleven-year-old Wagoner addressed an audience in Chatham, Ontario, in support of the Union cause and then reported on his speech for the Chicago Tribune. After the war, he joined his father in Denver, where he probably became well acquainted with Douglass’s sons Lewis and Frederick Jr., who lived for a time with the Wagoner family while perfecting their typesetting skills. The younger Wagoner later attended the Howard University school of law. Douglass used his influence to secure a job for him at the U.S. embassy in Paris in 1873, and Wagoner later transferred to the consulate at Lyons. When the head position of the Lyons consulate became available in 1877, he again sought the aid of Douglass in being promoted. Wagoner died in 1878 in Lyons. Denver Rocky Mountain News, 4 May 1870; Junger, “Thinking Men and Women,” 156–61. 8. This Latin phrase most closely translates to “thus forever and ever.” P. G. Glare, ed., Oxford Latin Dictionary (1968; New York, 1982), 1720, 1733, 1753; Merriam-Webster Dictionary (online).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GEORGE WASHINGTON GRIFFITHS1 Washington, D.C. 3 May 1873.

My Dear Dr. Griffiths: I am much obliged to you for two Louisville papers—the Commercial and the Evening Ledger 2—the former containing a complimentary notice and the later an amusingly depreciative notice of me and of my sayings and doings while in your good city. I can honestly express no sorrow for the pain my visit to Louisville seems to have given the editor of the Evening Ledger. The limit of power is the limit of responsibility. A man is not to be blamed for what he cannot help. It is no fault of mine that I am not colored to the taste of the editor of the Ledger, and he is a little to blame for abusing me on that account. The justice and magnanimity of the Commercial are in striking contrast with the contemptuous malignity of the Ledger. My assailant, with all his ribaldry, could make no case against me without resorting to falsehood. Here is one which I hardly need point out to you—the only real point made by the Ledger. “The fatal mistake that Fred. Douglass is making in his addresses to negroes is found in the fact that he seeks to make the impression that the negro race may shape and in some measure, at least, control the destinies of this country.”3 Now, you who heard all I had to say in Louisville, know very well that I sought to make no such impression. You will bear me witness that I held up the idea of negro control of the destiny of the Republic to ridicule, denouncing the apprehension of such control as groundless and absurd, in view of our relative numbers and the decided advantage the white race

Y8204-Douglass.indb 243

5/17/23 2:35 PM

244

DOUGLASS TO GEORGE WASHINGTON GRIFFITHS, 3 MAY 1873

have over us in point of culture and civilization. What I asked and all I asked for the colored man in this Republic, during my stay in Louisville, was simple fair-play, and equal chance in the race of life. Cannot the white race afford to grant this? Is there any danger that the black race, if given equal freedom, will outrun the white race and usurp control? To suppose such a result possible is a higher compliment to the natural endowments of my race than I ever allowed myself to pay them. Notwithstanding the ungentlemanly notice the Ledger has been pleased to take of my visit, I look back to it with sincere pleasure. I shall not soon forget that many of the best citizens of Kentucky dared to treat me with respect and to call upon me, notwithstanding I was the guest of an humble citizen of my own race. The time is coming when character and attainments, not color and race, will determine the place a man shall hold in the esteem of his fellow-men. Very truly yours, FREDERICK DOUG LASS. PLSr: NNE, 15 May 1873. 1. George Washington Griffiths (1840–1908) was a prominent Louisville physician and military officer. Born in Wales, he was the son of the Reverend Thomas Griffiths and Anne Jeremey Griffiths. After living in Philadelphia for a time, the family arrived in Louisville in 1855, where Griffiths spent the remainder of his life. During the Civil War, Griffiths assisted in raising men for the Fifth Kentucky Infantry Regiment and was appointed a lieutenant. He was later commissioned captain in the Second Kentucky Cavalry and was wounded at the Battle of Chickamauga. Griffiths was captured during Edward McCook’s unsuccessful raid on Atlanta, in July 1864. After several months of confinement in Charleston, he was exchanged and returned to his regiment. Following the war, Griffiths returned to his medical practice in Louisville. He held a multitude of civil service posts during his lifetime, including president of the board of aldermen for twelve years, school trustee for the twelfth ward (Louisville’s African American ward), and president of the Jefferson County Board of Health. Griffiths served on the University of Louisville’s Board of Trustees for thirty years, and at his death was the chief surgeon of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. Louisville Courier Journal, 19 November 1866, 11 April 1908. 2. The Louisville Ledger was a Democratic daily newspaper edited by James A. Dawson. It was first issued on 16 February 1871 and ceased publication on 26 April 1876. The daily Louisville Commercial began publication on 29 December 1869 and was succeeded by the Louisville HeraldCommercial in December 1902; that paper ceased publication the following year. The papers were in a constant ideological battle, each often publicly responding to the other in their pages. In its 28 April 1873 issue, the Ledger accused Douglass of profiting off his race: “Fred. can be hired to lead the dusky army through the wilderness paths of their journey to equality with the whites, but the moment the money gives out Fred. vanishes out of sight, and plays Moses no more, until more money is raised.” While the Ledger did not immediately address Douglass’s upcoming lecture in Louisville, on 21 April the Commercial wrote, “His manner is suave and dignified, and will impress itself upon every one. We have no doubt both of his lectures will be attended by a large number of our white citizens.” Louisville Commercial, 21 April 1873; Louisville Ledger, 28 April 1873. 3. Douglass accurately quotes from the 28 April 1873 issue of the Louisville Ledger.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 244

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 13 MAY 1873

245

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS [Washington, D.C.]1 13 May 1873.

Dear Father, My intentions yesterday on seeing you were simply to deny any, and all charges of an improper character that have been made against me.2 I begged Libbie not to go to you, I asked her to listen to me but she was fired up by outside influence and would not listen, and now in justice to myself I must now afflict you with my statement. On Sunday night I went into the barn as I have done before going to bed for some time past, to see that all was right, and to put Manny’s3 little rat dog in the barn in order to protect the little chickens. When I left my door, Freds door 4 was open and I heard them talking aloud Manny’s voice above the rest, I called the dog and he followed me to the barn, I stooped down to pick him up and he ran behind Freds barn, I followed him on my side of the fence and stood still waiting for him to come around, while waiting I looked around and saw Lizzie Smith5 coming out of Freds. I suppose I called for her to come to the corner opposite to where I stood so that the dog would allow her to pick him up, he being shy of me, Lizzie said “No Mr. Charles it is too muddy[”]and immediately went towards Freds. house, thinking I heard the dog coming back I stepped aside that he might not see me, and immediately Libbie who was standing in the door called out “I have caught you! “I have caught you!” Not thinking of Lizzie at the moment I said caught who! when she said Lizzie and myself together. Lizzie then said [“]do you think I have been with Mr. Charles” Knowing that Libbie had become angry at me on coming home at something I had said about a young man who she was acquainted with by the name of Simmons,6 and the company he kept, I simply said to her that I knew her object in raising the cry she did, and after reminding her of the many times I had done the same thing with reference to catching the dog I went into the house. She made me angry at the time but as the same thing had been charged to me before I made up my mind to say nothing know[ing] that she had no foundation for her action. Yesterday after I left for the Office, she called Lizzie to her and questioned her, cautioning her to tell the truth and threatening to have her arrested if she did not. Lizzie told her substantially what I have told you in the foregoing. She then asked Lizzie to say my intentions were improper or rather she tried to get Lizzie to give that as her idea. After that she went to you and I dont know what she has told you, but she informed me this morning that you had taken sides against me and said that you

Y8204-Douglass.indb 245

5/17/23 2:35 PM

246

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 13 MAY 1873

would not have done what you have for me, had you known this before. Were I guilty of an improper act I should not desire to see you, neither did I think you could give credence to such an improbable charge. A bright moonlight night, with every body astir, for Libbie nor Rosetta7 had retired, Manny was standing at an upper window and Fred. & Virginia8 were in their room with their light lit, and both houses were open. Without having had any previous conversation with Lizzie or even knowing that she would allow improper conduct. I must be set down as a terrible passionate person in view of all these circumstances, and a jealous wife to attempt any such thing at my own door. Libbie is incurably jealous, has been since we first married, and has to made me feel sore on many an occasion. Only a few days ago when Miss Peirson9 was at the table and I said something to her about my duties at the Office Libbie not hearing what I said charged me with saying something I ought not to say. Whether Miss Peirson understood the meaning of her remarks or not I cant say, but fearing that she did I spoke up and asked Miss Peirson to repeat to Libbie what I had said and she did so, and I told Miss Peirson right before her that Libbie was jealous. I had to say something to explain her conduct and to keep Miss Peirson from feeling uncomfortable, you can ask her if what I have said is not true. When Miss Patterson10 the school teacher was at our house I handed her a check for her salary, Libbie happening in just as I handed it to her flew into a rage and charged me with passing notes to Miss Patterson of an improper nature. I had again to call in on Miss Patterson to show the note,—and when she saw what it was she could say nothing, but looked ashamed as she did before Miss Peirson. This last charge is to keep me from visiting Freds. house because she is out with Virginia, Amelia11 is also out with Virginia, and between Amelia, Mrs. Sh[illegible], & I am sorry to say Libbie, they have done all in their power to keep me from using my influence in Virginia’s behalf. Both Virginia and Amelia have treated Libbie badly by making fun of her dress and her education, she feels it, but Amelia has now made her believe that Virginia was the one who had said all and she only listened, and now Libbie is a tool in her hands to be dropped as soon as she is through with her. I have told her so repeatedly and it will turn out so. For my interest in behalf of others I have made enemies instead of friends, and enemies who would scruple to nothing to accomplish their end, but as I said before, although you can only take my word for it, I never have and never will disgrace myself. If I have placed myself in a position to arouse suspicion I have done so unwittingly, and am truly sorry

Y8204-Douglass.indb 246

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 13 MAY 1873

247

for that, but in the eyes of one not jealous or prejudiced I dont believe the same construction could be put upon my action. I feel almost satisfied that Libbie in her own heart does not believe her own statement to be true, but at the time she was in high temper and has no control of her temper as could show if I desired you to have an unfavorable opinion of her. I shall strive to cure her of this jealous feeling if it is possible. I am attached by no tender ties to all my family, and I know full well, what the result would be of any improper act on my part. I have a large circle of friends in this city, some that I made before marriage, and some since and I challenge one of them to say aught against my character. Neither have they ever intimated anything of the kind against me. I am innocent of all this stuff and shall remain so. I have written this out because I can explain myself, I think, better by letter than verbally. Aff. Yr. son as ever CHAS. R. DOUGLASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 678R–81, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Charles Douglass added “Third Auditors Office” to his address. 2. As noted in this letter, Charles attributed the strains in his marriage to his wife’s long-standing jealousy as well as to a general sense that she did not quite meet, in class or education, his brothers’ (or more importantly, their wives’) expectations of a suitable spouse for one of Frederick Douglass’s sons. The extent to which Charles’s ongoing financial difficulties, the death of their daughter Annie Elizabeth in July 1872, the recent birth of their fourth child, Julia Ada, in January 1873, and ill health may have also contributed to Libbie Douglass’s distress seems to have gone largely unnoticed, or at least unremarked upon, by her husband. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 36–37; Fought, Women, 223, 268, 310, 358n. 3. Charles is probably referring to his brother Frederick’s brother-in-law, Emanuel D. Molyneaux Hewlett (1850–1929). Hewlett was born in Brooklyn, New York, but raised in Boston, where he was educated at a local preparatory school. In 1877, he graduated from Boston University Law School and practiced there until 1880, when he joined his sister Virginia Hewlett Douglass in Washington, D.C. A highly regarded criminal defense attorney who specialized in defending African Americans and their rights, Hewlett was admitted to the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1883. He subsequently served as counsel or cocounsel on ten cases heard by the Court. In 1890 he was appointed justice of the peace for the District of Columbia by President Benjamin Harrison and was reappointed to that same post by Presidents Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt, serving continuously through 1906. Washington Evening Star, 22 September 1929; R. Volney Riser, Defying Disfranchisement: Black Voting Activism in the Jim Crow South, 1890–1908 (Baton Rouge, La., 2010), 43; John Clay Smith, Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer, 1844–1944 (Philadelphia, 1993), 131–33; Find a Grave (online). 4. Although the 1873 city directory for Washington, D.C., lists Charles Douglass’s address as Nichols Avenue and Frederick Douglass, Jr.’s as Barry Farm, they were neighbors. Nichols Avenue ran through the center of the Barry Farm neighborhood, and it appears that Charles’s house was on Nichols Avenue, and his brother’s house must have been located either behind or beside his, with a fence separating the two properties. In 1875, both brothers were listed as living on Nichols Avenue in Hillsboro, according to the city directory. Hutchinson, Anacostia Story, 89; Muller, Lion of Anacostia, 95–96; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.”

Y8204-Douglass.indb 247

5/17/23 2:35 PM

248

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 13 MAY 1873

5. Based on the available evidence, it is possible that Lizzie Smith might have been the young Maryland-born African American woman (c. 1851) who was working as a domestic servant for a well-off white widow named Harriet Mitchell, who first appears in the 1870 census. 1870 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 273; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” 6. The identity of Simmons remains uncertain. According to the 1873 Washington, D.C., city directory, at least twenty-five men named Simmons resided there, with occupations including laborer, policeman, waiter, and sexton. At least one of the men, George Simmons, was, like Charles R. Douglass, a clerk at the Treasury Department, and another, William H. Simmons, was a student at Howard University. Without more information to go on, however, there is no way to determine which of these men was the “young” Simmons about whom Charles and his wife were arguing. “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” 7. Most likely this is Rosetta Douglass Sprague. 8. Virginia L. M. Hewlett Douglass. 9. The editors have not been able to identify anyone by this name working in either the District of Columbia’s school system or the Treasury Department during this time period. But the woman in question might have been a member of the English Quaker family with whom Charles lived in Lockport, New York, after John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. At least two of Thomas and Hannah Smith Peirson’s daughters, Elizabeth (1826–aft. 1900) and Mary Ann (1833–aft. 1900), seem to have maintained long-term friendships with members of the Douglass family. 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Niagara County, 73; 1900 U.S. Census, New York, Niagara County, 163; Fought, Women, 170–71, 179, 241, 270; “England and Wales, Quaker Birth, Marriage, and Death Registers, 1578–1837.” 10. Probably Mary Jane Patterson (1840–94), an African American educator who started teaching in Washington, D.C.’s school system in 1869. Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, she was the daughter of a skilled mason who obtained his and his family’s freedom in 1856. Shortly thereafter, her family settled in Oberlin, Ohio. In 1862, she graduated from Oberlin College, becoming the first African American woman to complete a bachelor’s degree in the United States. In 1864 she taught for a year in Chillicothe, Ohio, before moving to Philadelphia, where she spent the next several years teaching at the Institute for Colored Youth. Moving to Washington, D.C., in 1869, she spent two years as a teacher at the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth (later known as Dunbar High School) before being promoted to school principal in 1871. In 1873, however, she was demoted to assistant principal and returned to teaching. The following year she was once again promoted to principal and served in that capacity until 1884, when she was once again reassigned back to teaching full time, which she did until her death in 1894. Fletcher, Oberlin College, 2:534–35; Alison Stewart, First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First Black Public High School (Chicago, 2013), 32; Jerry Aldridge and Lois McFadyen Christensen, Stealing from Mother: The Marginalization of Women in Education and Psychology from 1900–2010 (New York, 2013), 79–80. 11. The third and oldest-surviving child of her parents’ eight children, Helen Amelia Loguen Douglass (1843–1936) was born in Steuben County, New York. Her father, Jermain Wesley Loguen, was, much like her father-in-law, Frederick Douglass, a self-emancipated man who achieved remarkable success. Loguen, who escaped slavery in 1834, married the wealthy, educated, mixed-race Caroline Storum in 1840. In 1847 the family settled in Syracuse, New York, where Amelia’s father served as a teacher, minister, and, later, bishop, of the African American Methodist Zion Church. Amelia was both educated in Syracuse public schools and privately tutored by her mother. In the years preceding the outbreak of the Civil War, she participated in her parents’ Underground Railroad activities. By 1862, she was being courted by Lewis H. Douglass, but marriage plans were indefinitely delayed upon his enlistment in March 1863. Later that same year, Douglass was severely wounded in battle, further delaying their marriage. In 1864, Amelia began teaching at the Hawley Street School for African American children in Binghamton, New York, where she remained for several years. In 1869, following an unusually lengthy engagement, she and Douglass were married at her parent’s home in Syracuse on 7 October. Following her marriage, Amelia appears to have permanently given up her career as a teacher and settled with her husband in Washington, D.C., where she remained for

Y8204-Douglass.indb 248

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL D. PORTER, 18 JUNE 1873

249

the rest of her life. 1860 U.S. Census, New York, Onondaga County, 39; 1870 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 62; 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 7C; 1910 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 8A; 1930 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 9A; Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 23–24, 46–50, 60; Fought, Women, 188, 216, 268, 358n; Find a Grave (online).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL D. PORTER Washington[,] D.C. 18 June 1873.

My dear sir: It is now about one year since my house in Rochester was destroyed by fire.1 Until recently I have fondly hoped to rebuild on the place of the old building and to spend there what may remain of life and at last lay down to rest in the beautiful shades of Mt. Hope.2 I have not parted with this prospect without a struggle, but I have parted with it. Nathan Sprague, my son in law writes me that it impossible to keep off trespassers—and that the fences and trees are going to ruin— Now, my purpose in writing to you is, to ask you in the line of your business, to advertise and sell that property for me.3 I know you will get for it the highest price the property will bring at private sale. The lot contains three acres and is well stocked with choice fruit. I think it ought to bring six thousand dollars. I should want about half in cash and bond and mortgage for the remainder—Running, if you please from two to five years. By giving your immediate attention to this business, you will much oblige your old friend. FREDERICK DOUGLASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 682–83, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Douglass’s house, which had stood on South Avenue in Rochester for twenty-one years, burned to the ground on 2 June 1872. Although Douglass was in Washington, D.C., at the time, his wife and the family of his son-in-law Nathan Sprague were then residing at the estate. Douglass’s family became aware of the fire in the early hours of the morning, and all managed to escape without harm. Attributed to arson, the fire began in Douglass’s barn and from there spread to his house. Douglass lost twelve volumes of his newspaper, an estimated $7,000 in property, and $11,000 in U.S. bonds that he kept at the estate; only some pieces of furniture, a piano, and a portion of Douglass’s library were saved. Rochester Union and Advertiser, 3 June 1872; NNE, 6 June 1872; Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 268. 2. Mount Hope Cemetery, located in Rochester, New York, was established in 1838. With its rural, garden-like design, it is considered the first Victorian-style cemetery in America. Some of the notable people interred there include Susan B. Anthony, women’s rights activist; Myron Holley, abolitionist and proponent of the Erie Canal; and eventually, Frederick Douglass. Richard O. Reisem,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 249

5/17/23 2:35 PM

250

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 26 SEPTEMBER 1873

Mount Hope, Rochester, New York: America’s First Municipal Victorian Cemetery (Rochester, 1994), 4, 15. 3. Douglass’s longtime abolitionist supporter Samuel D. Porter was also one of Rochester’s established real estate agents and advertised properties for sale regularly in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. Nonetheless, Porter never placed a newspaper advertisement for the sale of Douglass’s property on South Avenue. The likely explanation is that the property had been allowed to fall into disrepair in the year since the fire, according to Nathan Sprague. Douglass’s desire for $6,000 for this property seems inflated for the Rochester real estate market of that era. Rather than giving it its own listing in his regular newspaper advertisement, Porter appears to have included it among the “lots” for sale that he had available. Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, June–August 1873; Dexter Perkins, “Rochester One Hundred Years Ago,” RH, 1:1–24 (July 1939).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH Washington, D.C. 26 Sept[ember] 1873.

Venerated Friend: It did my heart good to see and read your note to me, and your printed letter to Miss Anthony.1 They told me how grandly you yet live, think and write. General Howard2 gave me an interesting account of his visit to you. He was greatly pleased. He is a great and good man and is doing a great and good work here. But he has too much work to do—that is, more than he can do. His presence is very much needed at the University3 and is equally needed abroad to procure the needed support of the Institution.4 He cannot be here and there at the same time and the trouble is to find the right man to preside over the University when he is absent as he must be for several months to come. When the question was up yesterday before Board of Trustees, I ventured to say that I knew of no man who could fill General Howards place, but Gerrit Smith. If you could reside here for a few months and preside over this University in the absence of General Howard, it would be the Crowning position of your life and the most powerful aid you could render to the Institution itself. I have faith in your presence. You would only have to visit the different departments to defuse your influence—the influence they so much need. Of course, in view of your age and duties at home, I cannot urge this new work upon you, but I want you to know the thought that is passing here concerning you. The suggestion was received with emphatic approval on all sides. I am not sure that my boys will be able to continue the “Era.” I have put about ten thousand dollars into the concern5—and have given it over to them entirely. They have formed a stock company and the paper is under their management.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 250

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 26 SEPTEMBER 1873

251

The trouble of supporting the paper is twofold. First the negro is not yet a reader: Secondly he is unconscious of having an associate existence or common cause. All the social forces drive us asunder. Our confidence is in the white race. White schools, white churches, white Theology, white Legislators white public journals, secure our highest confidence and support. Our women powder their faces and buy the hair of the white race to make themselves more acceptable or less objectionable to the white race. Nor is this strange. The honor, the power, the wisdom, wealth and the glory are all with the white race. Large bodies attract small. I found myself better appreciated by the whites than by my own people at Nashville—and much of the attention paid me by the colored people was due to the respect paid me by the whites.6 It is with us as it once was with American authorship: no American writer was considered great at home till he was confessed to be great abroad. No black man is worthy of consideration in the eyes of his race, till he has gained consideration in the eyes of yours. I make no complaint. I accept the inevitable and shall cheerfully work on to raise my people to a higher plane of life—whether the road shall be by disintegration or combination. Pardon me for so long a note. Always yours with love and veneration FREDERICK DOUGLASS ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. 1. Gerrit Smith wrote to Susan B. Anthony on 5 February 1873 to express disgust that she had been arrested for voting. Smith declared that women have a natural right to the vote and that male “tyrants” were prohibiting its exercise. Smith sent Anthony $100 to pay her fine, which she declined to do. Smith told her to use the money for whatever she wished. Smith issued a public circular on the question, addressed to Anthony, on 15 August 1873. Gerrit Smith to Susan B. Anthony, 5 February 1873, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU; Gerrit Smith, “Woman Suffrage above Human Law” (Peterboro, N.Y., 1873). 2. O. O. Howard. 3. Congress incorporated Howard University, named for the Freedmen’s Bureau commissioner Oliver Otis Howard, in 1867 to help meet the educational needs of blacks settling in the District of Columbia. Although its faculty was mixed, whites filled the top administrative posts well into the twentieth century. Frederick Douglass joined Howard’s board of trustees in June 1871 and served continuously until his death. Howard awarded Douglass an honorary LL.D. degree at the fi rst commencement of its collegiate department on 11 June 1871. Henry D. Cooke, the territorial governor of the District of Columbia, presented the degree to Douglass and lauded him as the “silvery tongued orator of America.” By 1875, the university was carrying a devastating $100,000 deficit, and the board initiated a program of retrenchment that involved significant cuts in expenses, personnel, and salaries. Douglass was proposed as a candidate for the Howard presidency during this period of crisis. He served the university as a fund-raiser and as a public advocate on its behalf to Congress and the public. He also made numerous addresses at the university over the years at both official and unofficial functions. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxxvi, xxxii, 305, 5:170–71, 636; NNE, 13, 20 June

Y8204-Douglass.indb 251

5/17/23 2:35 PM

252

GERRIT SMITH TO DOUGLASS, 30 SEPTEMBER 1873

1872; Logan, Howard University, 61, 64, 71, 75–78, 82–83, 177; Dwight O. W. Holmes, “Fifty Years of Howard University,” JNH, 3:128–38, 368–80 (April, October 1918). 4. In the summer of 1873, a controversy surfaced in the Washington press concerning the Howard University Board of Trustees voting to give special financial compensation to General Howard. Douglass had presided over a special committee that approved back pay of over $13,000 to Howard, forcing the university to cut the salaries of its professors. The criticism that Howard received caused him to request that the army return him to active service, which would force him to resign as the school’s president. To provide leadership to the university in case Howard departed, the trustees elected John M. Langston, a law professor, as vice president in December 1873. Logan, Howard University, 61–62, 73; Muller, Lion of Anacostia, 115–17. 5. In his autobiography Life and Times, Douglass describes the New National Era as a “misadventure . . . which cost me from nine to ten thousand dollars, over it I have no tears to shed. The journal was valuable while it lasted, and the experiment was full of instruction to me, which to some extent has been heeded, for I have kept well out of newspaper undertakings since.” Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:313. 6. Douglass appeared at the third annual fair of the Tennessee Colored Agricultural and Mechanical Association in Nashville on 18 September 1873. As many as five thousand people listened to Douglass’s address in the fairground’s auditorium. Newspaper reports confirm Douglass’s complaint that his audience grew inattentive and restless during his long oration. He was better received the next day by an audience of two thousand at the fair’s exhibition building, where he delivered his wellpracticed “Self-Made Men” lecture. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:375–94; Nashville Republican Banner, 20, 21 September 1873; Nashville Union and American, 20, 21 September 1873; NNE, 2 October 1873.

GERRIT SMITH TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Peterboro[, N.Y.] 30 Sept[ember] 1873.

My dear Douglass, This is a very instructive as well as very beautiful letter that you have written to me. Faithfully & ably have you pictured the disadvantages under which the black man labors. Nonetheless, notwithstanding those so multiplied & so great disadvantages, he is rising, rising wonderfully—and promises to attain, at no distant day, a manhood as full & as beautiful as that enjoyed by the most formal varieties of the human family. I am glad to hear from you that our dear friend General Howard was as usual pleased with his visit to Peterboro. That visit is remembered here, by both the old & young, with great interest. I agree with you that the General has too much to do. He has a passion to do good. He longs to help the poor Cubans amongst the needy ones.1 But I know not who could fill his place, even for a brief season, at the head of the University.2 Certain it is that I must not. I am an old man (76)3 and infirm. Moreover, neither morally nor mentally am I fit for the place. The religious element in me is far from strong, and my learning is quite moder-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 252

5/17/23 2:35 PM

HENRY O. WAGONER TO DOUGLASS, 10 DECEMBER 1873

253

ate. Hence I must decline the proposed honor—though I am very thankful for the favorable opinions of me entertained by your Board. I strongly hope that the Era will be sustained—& I hope it all the more since learning that you have invested in it so large a portion of your property. My dear wife, who is not strong,4 joins me in love to you, your wife & children— Your friend GERRIT SMITH ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 17–19, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Most Radical Republicans, including Douglass, Gerrit Smith, and, probably, Oliver Otis Howard, were sympathetic to the Cubans fighting to win their freedom from Spanish rule. Some Americans had gone to Cuba to assist the rebels in their insurgency, and Howard had possibly mused about taking such an action while a visitor in Smith’s home. There is no record of him acting or even speaking publicly in favor of the Cuban cause. As Smith hoped, the general stayed on as Howard University’s president until the end of 1874. Howard, Autobiography; Logan, Howard University, 59–64; Calhoun, Presidency of Grant, 428–32. 2. Gerrit Smith was a generous supporter of Howard University and freedmen’s education in general. One biographer of Smith calculates that the philanthropist contributed $4,600 to Howard between 1868 and his death in 1874. Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 485–86; Logan, Howard University, 79. 3. Smith was born on 6 March 1797, making him seventy-six years old. Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 3. 4. Smith often referred to his wife, Ann, as being ill, when in fact she was a hypochondriac. As she put it, “I am only comfortably sick.” Norman K. Dann, Practical Dreamer: Gerrit Smith and the Crusade for Social Reform (Hamilton, N.Y., 2009), 197.

HENRY O. WAGONER TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Denver, Colo. 10 Dec[ember] 1873.

My very dear old friend: My Son,1 my dear boy is here. He came on Sunday night and found me at my son-in-law’s house. After the joyous outbursts of nature and nature’s laws, in such Salutations, peculiar to such occasions, my first Enquiries were after you and your dear family, Lewis, Frederick2 and all. He at once gave us all the particulars, in his own peculiar style. Last night we slept together, if sleep I may call it, for we talked nearly the whole night, over a wide range of life. And I must here tell you what I have never told you before, that I could discover in the young man a certain impress of his dear Mother,3 who now “sleeps the sleep that knows no waking.” 4 At the time of his Conception, and during gestation, his Mother had taken a deep interest in, and was strongly impressed with the character and admiration

Y8204-Douglass.indb 253

5/17/23 2:35 PM

254

HENRY O. WAGONER TO DOUGLASS, 10 DECEMBER 1873

of Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith and John P. Hale.5 Should he, in some sort, seem to echo your Honorable self, let it not be set down as an imitative disposition, but as an inherent impress, a gift of Nature, which, of course, is susceptible of cultivation. I see that even now, at his present time of life, he can imitate your voice, elocution, manner or style, with, as I think, Great Exactness. But I will not dwell. Well, my dear man, as I approach that great End, to which we must all come at last, I am a little disposed to contemplate the planatery system in which we live. What a glorious theme it is to me to contemplate the great fact, to even a limited Extent, that natures laws are fixed and immutable through the Ages. Yes, evolution and progress are immutable laws which plainly disclose themselves to discerning minds. What a glorious Century is this in which you and I have lived, and what a part you have played. Thinking men and women, in the coming centuries, will look back with interest at the great work you have done. Of course we will continue to the End to do all the good we can, so let us, in the mean time, be as jovial and as happy as we may— In conclusion, I am strong in my gratitude to you and to all who have acted with me in helping my son to his present position.6 I trust he will do no discredit to those who have taken an interest in him. But Enough— As ever H. O. WAGONER ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 700–03L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Henry O. Wagoner, Jr. 2. Lewis H. Douglass and Frederick Douglass, Jr. 3. Susan Wagoner died in 1870. Junger, “Thinking Men and Women,” 160–61. 4. Wagoner alludes to lyrics from the song “Little Footsteps.” J. A. Barney, “Little Footsteps: Song & Chorus” (Boston, 1868), 2. 5. John Parker Hale (1806–73), congressman (1843–45) and senator (1847–53, 1855–65) from New Hampshire and minister to Spain (1865–69), was the presidential nominee of the moribund Liberty party in 1847–48 and of the Free Soil party in 1852. Removed from the Democratic party in 1845 because of his opposition to the annexation of Texas, Hale helped forge an antislavery coalition of Whigs and Independent Democrats that gained control of the New Hampshire legislature in 1846 and elected him to the U.S. Senate. Unhampered by partisan ties, Hale emerged during the first two years of his term as virtually the sole antislavery spokesman in the upper chamber. His approach to abolitionism was often indirect and legalistic, however, as exemplified by his response to the 1848 Pearl incident. Although deeply moved by the plight of the recaptured fugitives, Hale did not openly attack slavery or the slave trade but instead raised the issue of proslavery mobs. On 20 April 1848, two days after the mob attack on the National Era office, he introduced a bill to make local communities in the District of Columbia liable for damage to private property by any “riotous or tumultuous assemblage of people.” The bill contained no specific mention of slavery, yet it produced heated responses from several southern senators, including Henry S. Foote, who threatened to lynch Hale if the New Hampshireman ever ventured inside the state of Mississippi. The Pearl incident and its aftermath enhanced Hale’s stature among most abolitionists and helped to solidify his antislavery convictions. Richard H. Sewell, John P. Hale and the Politics of Abolition (Cambridge, Mass., 1965).

Y8204-Douglass.indb 254

5/17/23 2:35 PM

ROBERT MCCORKELL TO DOUGLASS, 1 JANUARY 1874

255

6. Douglass had helped Wagoner’s son receive a post in the consul’s office in the U.S. embassy in Paris in 1873. Junger, “Thinking Men and Women,” 161.

ROBERT MCCORKELL1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Philadelphia[, Pa.] 1 January 1874[.]

Dear Sir, Excuse the liberty that I have taken in thus addressing you, my object in doing so is to enquire from you; whether you approve or think it a feasible project in establishing in Washington City a Normal Institution for young (Colored) men only to be instructed & educated as Teachers, I went thru the Classics in the old Country am a native of Jamaica West Indies where I was myself instructed with several young Men by the first Teacher in the Normal or training system (the Revd John Murray Auld a native of Glasgow Scotland)2 who was engaged by the Methodist denomination to instruct young Men themselves to teach, and sent as Principals to their various schools. I now thought that the young Men in this Country could be similarly instructed since there is now no barrier in this Great & Glorious Republic to be educated and now there is a chance and an opportunity for so doing. I would feel proud and highly honored to have the pleasure of an introduction to you and hear your views and impressions on this subject—I will feel also proud to be installed as the first Teacher in the City of Washington for young Men all teachers should you seem likely and get up an Institution I would be pleased if it should be honored with your Name “The Douglass” Normal Institute3 and be under your superintendance as its President. —I now subscribe myself— Yours with every token of respect ROBERT MCCORKELL ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 712–13, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Robert D. T. McCorkell (c. 1825–80) was an immigrant of white ancestry from Jamaica who settled in Philadelphia around 1856. McCorkell worked as a copyist in 1863 and as a clerk in 1873. “Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Naturalization Records, 1789–1880,” Ancestry.com; “Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Death Certificates Index, 1803–1915,” FamilySearch.org; McElroy’s Philadelphia City Directory for 1863 (Philadelphia, 1863), 474. 2. John Murray Auld (?–c. 1880) shows up only occasionally in the history of Kingston, Jamaica. He was an officer of the Colonial Literary and Reading Society in Kingston and in later years was recorded as a Presbyterian rather than a Methodist minister. Kingston Daily Gleaner, 16 October 1880; 1865 Jamaica Almanac (online).

Y8204-Douglass.indb 255

5/17/23 2:35 PM

256

HENRY O. WAGONER TO DOUGLASS, 28 FEBRUARY 1874

3. There is no evidence of a Douglass Normal School being opened in Washington, D.C. General O. O. Howard tells how the Freedmen’s Bureau bought farmland south of the Anacostia River in Washington and then sold plots to homeless freedmen. The plan was to use the money from land sales to establish a normal school for African Americans in the District. Since the owner of the farm was David Barry, the black neighborhood became known as “Barry Farm.” Douglass eventually purchased his Cedar Hill estate nearby. The need for an institution to prepare teachers of African American students was eventually met by the Miner Normal School, affiliated with Howard University from 1871 to 1876 and then with the District of Columbia public school system. Howard, Autobiography, 420–22; Hutchinson, Anacostia Story, 83; Green, Secret City, 110, 135, 195.

ALICE LOUISA SPRAGUE 1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C. 22 Jan[uary] 1874.

My Dear father. I have received your kind letter2 and was very glad to hear from you. but I am so sorry that you feal so. a bout going to Rochester.3 I hope it will be all Right thair. When you go thair. I shill take good care of your letters and not think of distroying them in anny way, we have had a few very cold days but we have very pleasant weather. mother is well and sends much love to you and wishes that you were home for we miss you very much. with much Love. Your daughter. LOUISA.

[P.S.] do not Laugh at this. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 715–16, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Alice Louisa Sprague, Douglass’s granddaughter. 2. Douglass’s letter to his granddaughter has not survived. 3. Douglass drew a large audience in Rochester’s Corinthian Hall on the evening of 26 January 1874. He delivered his lyceum address “The Life and Times of John Brown.” Rochester Union and Advertiser, 24, 26, 27 January 1874; NNE, 29 January 1874,

HENRY O. WAGONER TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Denver, [Colo.] 28 Feb[ruar]y 1874.

Dear Douglass: I received, last evening, at the dusk of my 58th birth-day,1 your happy and genial letter of the 21st inst; and I am, as always, glad to get a letter from you.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 256

5/17/23 2:35 PM

HENRY O. WAGONER, JR., TO DOUGLASS, 2 APRIL 1874

257

The “thought,” which you have put in the form of a question, has, indeed, often “struck me”; and I have been pained at the “want of the feeling,” you have referred to, “in our people.” Ay, the want of a proper pride in their posterity. I have, for many, many years believed that we could beget a better race of men and women, by a judicious combination of the sexes, by the union of the two as man and wife, in the true sense of these generic terms: a congeniality of natures and dispositions, having a decent and proper affinity for each other. Such are the Conditions Essential to the production of a better progeny, a higher standard of intellectual and moral attainment, and an improved physical development. In confirmation of this theory, the improved stock of to-day, as exhibited in our County and State pairs—the beautiful symetry of form, is in altertation of the great law of Evolution, and of conforming the harmonious conditions. At this moment I am called away and must abruptly close— I will add, however, that I wish my matters should so come around as to allow me to accompany you to Europe2—What a pleasure that would be to me. Regards to all and best wishes for yourself As ever and Always H. O. WAGONER ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 724–25, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Wagoner was born on 27 February 1816 in Hagerstown, Maryland. Junger, “Thinking Men and Women,” 142–43. 2. Undoubtedly, the older Wagoner was interested in visiting Henry Jr. at the U.S. embassy in Paris, but he and Douglass never made such a journey. Junger, “Thinking Men and Women,” 161.

HENRY O. WAGONER, JR., TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Paris, [Fr.] 1 2 April 1874.

Hon Frederick Douglass, Washington, D.C. My dear Sir, The valuable assistance you rendered me in obtaining my appointment2 would seem to render it my duty to write you on my arrival at my post. But it is less in this light than as a token of my personal esteem for yourself, of whose existence and intensity you cannot be ignorant, that I would have you view this letter

Y8204-Douglass.indb 257

5/17/23 2:35 PM

258

HENRY O. WAGONER, JR., TO DOUGLASS, 2 APRIL 1874

Some days ago I sent a letter to the Era.3 It was a “harum scareum”4 affair, but, if you should stumble upon it and trouble yourself to read it, you will find in it a more detailed account of my impressions of the voyage than I can give in this letter. And to you, who have travelled so extensively in England, it would be folly to dwell upon my visit of a few days. I could not hope to interest you. Nor shall I now dwell upon Paris. Indeed it would be hard to say anything on this subject which has not already been written a hundred times. In fact pen-pictures are so multitudenous that we Americans all know Paris well enough on the printed page. What we want now is to see it for ourselves. So it was with me and I doubt not it is the same with you. When I called on Mr. Washburn5 after my arrival among his first inquiries was in regard to yourself. I have been anxious to know whether you still retain your original intention of visiting Paris this summer and have just been gratified by receiving a letter from my father in which he states he has received one from you reiterating it. I am convinced that the Paris Consulate is the most desirable one under our Govt. and am, of course, pleased to be connected with it. I could only wish that my salary were more, as my absolute expenses here are more than they were in Washington. Yes, I could in this connection, wish one thing more; and that is that you were Consul General. How is it that you never had an eye to it? I am sure it would suit you admirabily. You might suppose there would be some technicalities about its duties which might trouble you. But it is not so. There is not a question you would be called upon to decide but what you could do and not “half think”. And then, if you were here, I dont think that the Consul General would dictate dispatches for me to write so full of bad grammar and school-boy sentences that my pen would recoil with disgust. Of course I don’t mean to reflect upon the present incumbent for that be—well, what shall I say?— unparliamentary, that will do well enough. It were superfluous for me to say that I have been deeply touched at the death of Chas. Sumner.6 But I have been patially consoled at seeing the distinguished homage which has been paid to his memory. My feeble pen shall essay no word of tribute. The most impressive language I could Command would be but a mockery of the real feelings which his death excites in me, or, at best, but a faint and distant echo of them. In this connection let me say that I recognize more than a fluent sentence in your declaration that “Mr. Sumner lived to a time when his death would contribute more to his objects than the continuance of life.”7 And the admission of this implies no want of sorrow at his demise.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 258

5/17/23 2:35 PM

HENRY O. WAGONER, JR., TO DOUGLASS, 2 APRIL 1874

259

I do not think much of the French character. They squander an unreasonable share of their time in Cafés, smoking, drinking coffee, beer and wine and talking with the courtezans who infest those places. Some of these times, when my pen seems to run easy, I may come down on them with all my power of denunciation. Such, of course, does not suit me and the result is I resort to more laborious reading and writing. I am, perhaps, now, in this great metropolis where every one is supposed to h give himself up to the amusements which abound here, more of a student than I was when I was in Washington with my name on the class-rolls of the Law Dept. of Howard University.8 Please present my tenderest regards to Mrs. Douglass9 and accept my best wishes for yourself— I am, very sincerely, Yours, etc. H. O. WAGONER, JR ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 733–36, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Wagoner wrote on stationery with the printed letterhead: “Consulat Général / Des Etats-Unis d’ Amérique / 55, Rue de Chateaudun.” 2. With aid from Douglass, Henry O. Wagoner, Jr., secured a position as a consular clerk in Paris on 14 November 1873. He remained employed in France until he died from consumption at age twenty-seven in 1878. Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:288n; Denver Daily Rocky Mountain News, 29 March 1878; Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 24:112n. 3. This letter was apparently never published in the New National Era. 4. Generally spelled “harum scarum,” the phrase means reckless or impetuous. 5. Elihu Benjamin Washburne (1816–87), congressman and diplomat, was born in Livermore, Maine. He studied law at Maine Wesleyan Seminary and Harvard Law School. He was admitted to the bar in 1840 and moved to Galena, Illinois. His successful legal career led him to practice before the Illinois Supreme Court in Springfield, where he befriended Abraham Lincoln and aligned himself with the Whig party. Elected in 1852, he served eight consecutive terms in Congress, first as a Whig and then as a Republican. Washburne emerged as a leader in the Republican party, and his close friendship with Lincoln amplified his influence during the Civil War. Familiar with Ulysses S. Grant from Galena, Washburne helped him secure an appointment as a brigadier general at the beginning of the war and supported him throughout the conflict. During Reconstruction, Washburne sided with the Radicals and opposed Andrew Johnson. In 1868, President Grant appointed him secretary of state, although Washburne resigned five days later. Instead, he accepted the offer of minister to France and held that position for eight years. He lived the remainder of his life in Chicago, where he served as president of the Chicago Historical Society and penned Recollections of a Minister to France, 1869–1877, 2 vols. (1887). Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, 23 October 1887; John Y. Simon, “From Galena to Appomattox: Grant and Washburne,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 58:165–89 (1965); ANB, 22:750–51. 6. After years of declining health, Charles Sumner suffered a heart attack and died in his Washington, D.C., home on 11 March 1874. Donald, Sumner and the Rights of Man; ACAB, 5:747–49. 7. The phrases quoted by Wagoner cannot be traced to reports of Douglass’s eulogy for Sumner delivered at the Sumner School in Washington, D.C., on the evening of 16 March 1874, or in the

Y8204-Douglass.indb 259

5/17/23 2:35 PM

260

THOMAS. P. SAUNDERS TO DOUGLASS, 3 APRIL 1874

editorial on Sumner’s passing in the New National Era of 19 March 1874. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:397–401. 8. In 1870, Henry O. Wagoner, Jr., enrolled in the Howard University Law School and graduated in 1873. Denver Daily Rocky Mountain News, 10 September 1873; Union Alumni Association, Alumni Catalogue of Howard University with List of Incorporators, Trustees, and Other Employees, 1867–1896 (Washington, D.C., 1896), 27. 9. Anna Murray Douglass.

THOMAS P. SAUNDERS1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Hartford[, Conn.] 3 Apr[il] 1874.

Dear Friend Douglass I return you by mail your John Brown lecture2 which my wife3 and myself have perused with the most unbounded satisfaction. Your task was doubtless a grateful one in endeavoring to picture him as you knew him to be, a grand, sincere, and honest old man. So far as words can paint, or delineate character, you have chosen the best that the Language is capable of, and you may well feel proud of your success. Taken [illegible] whole it is splendid while it abounds in passages that are diamonds and pearls and is a worthy tribute to the greatest honor of the nineteenth century, say Our friend Bloncourt4 calls him “the Jesus of the nineteenth century.”5 You do not know how I lament that the Black people of this country seem to manifest a forgetfulness of him, which, to me, seems to smack a little of ingratitude. Had it not have been for his devotion to his sense of justice and right, the blacks might to-day have been the slaves of the whites My wife bids me to thank you for the opportunity given her to peruse the manuscript and joins me in the kindest remembrances to you Hoping you and yours are all well and that the most unbounded success may attend you I am Yours Truly T. P. SAUNDERS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 737–38L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Thomas P. Saunders (c. 1829–94) was the son of William and Roxanna Saunders. His father was a mixed-race native of the West Indies who was living in Connecticut by 1829 (Thomas, the eldest of four siblings, was born there) and working as a tailor. William was also an agent for William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator. Roxanna, who was also mixed race, was a native of New York. Thomas P. Saunders’s siblings were Prince Henry Boyer Saunders (1832–88), who was his partner in their merchant tailor business; Amos; and Elizabeth. Hartford (Conn.) Trinity Tablet, 18 October 1868; Sacramento (Calif.) Daily Union, 28 May 1870; 1850 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Hartford County, 544; 1860 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Hartford County, 383; 1870 U.S. Census, Connecticut,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 260

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 1 MAY 1874

261

Hartford County, 10; 1880 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Hartford County, 16D; Frank Andrews Stone, African American Connecticut: The Black Scene in a New England State; Eighteenth to TwentyFirst Century (Deland, Fla., 2008), 127; Theresa Vara-Dannen, The African-American Experience in Nineteenth-Century Connecticut: Benevolence and Bitterness (Lanham, Md., 2014), xxiii, 48, 71–72, 74; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; Find a Grave (online). 2. Douglass delivered a lecture on John Brown at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., on 18 November 1873. He repeated the lecture on a speaking tour of New England in December 1873, and Saunders perhaps heard it then. NNE, 27 November 1873; Boston Daily Globe, 15 December 1873; Newport (R.I.) Mercury, 20 December 1873. 3. The census reveals that Thomas P. Saunders was married to woman named Elveta (or M.  Elveta), who was born circa 1842 in Pennsylvania. 1850 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Hartford County, 544; 1860 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Hartford County, 383; 1870 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Hartford County, 10; 1880 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Hartford County, 16D; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” 4. Sainte Suzanne Melvil-Bloncourt (1825–80), activist and author, was born in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, a French-governed archipelago in the Caribbean. He was the son of wealthy mulattoes and studied law in Paris, graduating in 1846. He devoted himself to the antislavery cause, writing pamphlets and organizing a club devoted to abolition and equal rights. Following the complete abolition of slavery in the French colonies in 1848, Melvil-Bloncourt was elected a deputy in the constituent assembly. Beginning in 1849, and during Napoleon III’s reign, he wrote on the subject of colonial life for French magazines and published biographies of several black citizens of South America. In 1871 he was reelected deputy in Guadeloupe. That same year, Napoleon III was overthrown and his government collapsed. Melvil-Bloncourt was then condemned for his participation in Guadeloupe’s civil government and sentenced to death by a military tribunal. He fled to Switzerland to avoid capture. After receiving amnesty, he returned to Paris in 1880, where he died that November. Little Rock Daily Arkansas Gazette, 24 February 1874; Philadelphia North American, 24 November 1880; Hermann Von Holst, John Brown, ed. by Frank Preston Stearns (Boston, 1888), 192–93; ACAB, 4:293. 5. The abolitionist Robert Purvis deemed John Brown “the Jesus Christ of the nineteenth century” during his speech at National Hall in Philadelphia on Martyr’s Day—the day of Brown’s execution—2 December 1859. Melvil-Bloncourt may have been quoting Purvis in this instance. Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 243; Claudine L. Ferrell, The Abolitionist Movement (Westport, Conn., 2006), 100; Daniel R. Biddle and Murray Dubin, Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America (Philadelphia, 2010), 233.

OTTILIE ASSING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Hoboken[, N.J.] 1 May 1874.

My dear Friend: You will believe me when I tell you that all these days I have been reading all the news about the bank1 with the greatest anxiety.2 Certainly, there are many reasons for wishing that the institution would stand the shock and prove able to brave the storm, yet I acknowledge that above all others I am influenced by personal motives. I thought it such a pleasant and easy occupation for you, and the difference between the income derived from it and that earned by lecturing, more than balanced by the gain in comfort

Y8204-Douglass.indb 261

5/17/23 2:35 PM

262

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 1 MAY 1874

and health. Your name may yet achieve great things however, I have come to the conclusion that my new quarters are utterly unfit for me.3 The close proximity with the inevitable piano is becoming more and more odious, but there is another real evil just as great if not greater. Those good people keep the most miserable table without exception that it ever was my bad luck to share. Not only that the food is of the plainest kind, but everything is utterly spoiled by rascally bad cooking and made more unpalatable by the slovenly manner in which it is served up. Dirty tableclothes, broken dishes, German silver spoons the plating of which has come off, are the ornaments of the table, and it has come so far that instead of looking at meals as a pleasant part of the day, I dread going down and consider it an inevitable evil. Of course, if I have to stay in Hoboken next winter, I shall go back to Mrs. Werpup,4 who was quite happy when I made the announcement to her last night, and told me that she felt quite lonely without me. So far all will be right, but I am so disgusted with this slovenly concern that I would rather go today than tomorrow and Mrs. Werpup would also like me to come the sooner the better, but the difficulty is to get away without giving offense, and there does not seem to be the slightest idea that I should not be perfectly satisfied. Today I made an attempt and expressed the fear that my close proximity might be rather troublesome to them, but was assured by Mrs. Fehr5 that such was not the case at all, and I saw but too distinctly that she wants to keep me by all means. Of course, I could not mention the bad food, since this is always the most sensitive point of a housekeeper’s and thus see no escape before the end of the month, when I shall escape to Boston and stay there untill you call me, never to go back save to the fleshpots of Egypt at Mrs. Werpup’s. The best part of this starvation comedy however is that the people in Mr. Fehr’s employ, the clerk and porter bless me, as if it were, and heartily wish that I should stay, since, as they say, they now get better and more food than formerly ! How then must it have been? As after all, these inconveniences are but of secondary importance and the end is certain to come, I can well afford to take a humourous view of them , yet I am so impatient that for a moment I formed the adventurous idea of giving out that I was going to Boston in a week and to hide away mean while at Mrs. Werpup’s. The evident desire to make me comfortable is the great difficulty, otherwise I should be off by next Monday. A kingdom for a good, plausible pretext!

Y8204-Douglass.indb 262

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 1 MAY 1874

263

In fact, I ought not to have entertained you so long with these little miseries, but you know, we share great and small things, and besides I think you want to know how I am off. Snow and cold and wind and cold the next, such is the bill of fare in the weather department. When shall we have spring? All good things to you! Yours ever OTTILIA ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 740–43L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Congress authorized the establishment of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company on 3 March 1865 to meet the growing financial needs of newly emancipated blacks. The bank eventually opened thirty-seven branches in seventeen states and the District of Columbia. In his Life and Times, Douglass reported that after moving to Washington, D.C., he “entrusted . . . about twelve thousand dollars” in the Freedmen’s Bank. The nationwide economic panic of 1873 revealed serious financial weaknesses in the bank, owing to incompetent and corrupt management. A reorganized board of trustees appointed Douglass the bank’s president in hopes of restoring public confidence in its solvency. At that time, Douglass lent the institution $10,000 dollars. When the bank nevertheless failed in July 1874, Douglass shared the fate of his fellow investors. He eventually received sixty-two cents on the dollar for the $2,000 dollars he still had deposited when the bank closed. Douglass described his involvement with the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company at U.S. Senate investigation hearings on 14 and 19 February 1880. Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 183–99, 211–13. 2. In March 1874, the U.S. Comptroller Office’s report on the Freedmen’s Bank disclosed deficits of over $200,000, which many viewed at evidence of fraud and mismanagement. Panic among depositors ensued, and runs on the bank induced some branches to require sixty days’ notice before withdrawing funds. Douglass, in the New York Herald of 29 April 1874, attempted to explain the bank’s troubles. Other publications, such as the New York Times and the New York Independent, published reports of ongoing problems with the bank throughout late 1873 and early 1874. New York Herald, 29 April 1874; New York Times 28, 30 April 1874; New York Independent, 29 January 1874; Walter Lynwood Fleming, “The Freedmen’s Savings Bank,” Yale Review (May 1906), 87. 3. Following the retirement of Assing’s previous landlady Eliza Werpup, Assing moved into a room at the Hoboken home of Julius and Eliza Fehr, who some scholars mistakenly believed to be the daughter of Mrs. Werpup. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 340; Lohmann, Radical Passion, 363. 4. Assing had lived nine years with Eliza Werpup in Hoboken. The two developed a congenial relationship, and Douglass visited Werpup while Assing was traveling in Europe. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 334, 342, 345, 347. 5. Assing refers to Eliza Broguet Fehr (?–1883) and her husband, Julius Fehr (1825–97). Assing and the Fehrs had a tumultuous relationship. In the late 1870s, Assing made a large personal loan to Julius, who wanted to expand his business as a druggist and manufacturer of a patented talcum baby powder. Although Ferh’s business became a long-running enterprise, Assing lost more than $4,000 on the investment. Eliza Fehr also disapproved of Assing’s friendship with Dr. Gustav Frauenstein, a fellow freethinker. Francis Bazley Lee, History of Trenton, New Jersey: The Record of Its Early Settlement and Corporate Progress, 2 vols. (Trenton, N.J., 1895–98), 2:109–10; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 341–42; Lohmann, Radical Passion, 363.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 263

5/17/23 2:35 PM

264

DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK T. FRELINGHUYSEN, 23 MAY 1874

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK T. FRELINGHUYSEN1 Washington, D.C. 23 May 1874.

Dear Senator Frelinghuysen: I give you joy Sir, in the sublime triumph of this morning, and at the same time I wish to thank you as I certainly do most sincerely, for your large share in this achievement. You have defended the Civil Rights Bill2 not only from the assaults of its natural enemies, but what was still more trying, you have defended it from the honest doubts of its natural friends. You have no reason to be ashamed of your work. You have coupled your name with a great public measure—one which marks an era in the history of American justice, liberty, and civilization. I slept soundly and rested securely after my first interview. You were opposed in the senate as I knew would be, by the prejudices of an extinct institution, and by a system of false reasoning. The colored man was charged with a want of self respect, a want of race pride, because he asked for this Bill. How absurd. It is precisely because we have this sentiment natural to all men—that we oppose all discriminations against us on the score of race. But I took my pen only to thank you in the name of my race. Very truly yours FREDK DOUGLASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 745, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen (1817–85) was the scion of the most eminent family of Dutch Reformed heritage in the state of New Jersey. At the age of three, on the death of his father, Frederick became the ward of his uncle, Theodore Frelinghuysen, a distinguished attorney and politician. After graduating from Rutgers College in 1836, Frelinghuysen settled in Newark, where he established a successful legal and political career. He served as Newark’s city attorney and councilman in the 1850s, as New Jersey’s attorney general from 1861 to 1866, and as a U.S. senator in two nonconsecutive terms from 1866 to 1877. In the Senate, Frelinghuysen proved to be a Radical Republican, consistently supporting measures that would expand civil and political rights for freedmen. He remained staunchly loyal to the Republican party throughout the 1870s, unlike many Radicals, and was rewarded with the post of secretary of state in the cabinet of Chester A. Arthur from 1881 to 1885. ANB (online); BDUSC (online). 2. Congressional Republicans tried repeatedly to pass a comprehensive civil rights bill during the first half of the 1870s. In May 1870, the Radical Republican senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts introduced the Supplementary Civil Rights Act, which was intended to build on the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Ku Klux Klan Acts of 1870–71. Sumner’s legislation outlawed racial discrimination by transportation carriers, in places of public amusement and accommodation, in public schools, and on juries as well as in churches, cemeteries, and benevolent institutions incorporated by law. Democrats and key moderate Republicans stymied the law’s progress for more than two years. After Sumner’s death in March 1874, the bill’s sponsorship was taken up by New Jersey’s Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, who guided its passage in the Senate, 29–16, in the early-morning hours of May 23, 1874. This event precipitated Douglass’s

Y8204-Douglass.indb 264

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO NATHAN SPRAGUE, 30 MAY 1874

265

glowing letter to Frelinghuysen. Unfortunately, House Republicans were unable to pass the bill before the end of the legislative session. When an amended version of Sumner’s bill passed both houses of Congress the following February, it was titled the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Charles W. Calhoun, Conceiving a New Republic: The Republican Party and the Southern Question, 1869–1900 (Lawrence, Kans., 2006), 36–39, 53–54, 72, 78; Black Americans in Congress, “Legislative Interests,” history. house.gov.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO NATHAN SPRAGUE Washington, D.C. 30 May 1874.

My dear Nathan: I am obliged by your letter and also by a box of my favorite crackers. Matters are proceeding here about as usual. The boys are struggling manfully to keep their paper afloat. They had no notion of letting the paper fail, but I fear they will have to. If they do not, and make a success they will be entitled to a large measure of praise. I have got myself in a hard place in this Freedman’s Bank and shall consider myself fortunate if I get out of it as easily as I got into it. I was wanted to bolster up the credit of the concern and to get through some legislation in its favor.1 When this is done as I hope it will be soon, I may separate myself from it, and go on with my literary work which I should have never have abandoned. Love to Dear Rosetta,2 and the children. Truly yours, FREDK. DOUGLASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frame 23L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. In the waning phase of his last newspaper, the New National Era, Douglass accepted an offer to become president of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, also based in Washington, D.C. That institution was floundering well before Douglass’s arrival—a reality hidden from him by its trustees, who recruited him in a last-ditch effort to bolster its credibility. In his capacity as the bank’s official spokesperson, Douglass wrote a number of circulars and public letters, trying in vain to preserve confidence in the bank. Acknowledging some prior mismanagement, he emphasized the important purpose for which the bank had been created: “The mission of the Freedman’s Bank is to show our people the road to a share of the wealth and well being of the world. It has already done much to lift the race into respectability, and, with their continued confidence and patient cooperation, it will continue to reflect credit upon the race and promote their welfare.” Finally admitting defeat, Douglass oversaw the institution’s closing on 2 July 1874. Circular reprinted in U.S. Congress, Senate, Select Committee to Investigate the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, Report, 2 April 1880, 46th Cong., 2d sess., Senate Report 440 (Serial 1895), appendix, 44–45; Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 183; Fleming, “Freedmen’s Savings Bank,” 85–86. 2. Rosetta Douglass Sprague.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 265

5/17/23 2:35 PM

266

HARRIET H. GREENOUGH TO DOUGLASS, 3 JUNE 1874

HARRIET H. GREENOUGH1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Cambridge[, Mass.] 3 June [1874.]

Frederick Douglas Esq 316 A. N. E. St— My dear friend Through your friend Mrs Mosher,2 I hear that you are in present affliction thru’ the bank of which you had accepted the Presidency unconscious of its unstable condition3— I feel a very sincere sympathy for you in a trial of this sort as I know that your sensibilities will be wounded undeservedly in many ways and that for a time you will be more or less helpless in your resistance to an evil so new to your experience— If it were in my power to offer the kind of help you need in an emergency of this kind, I should feel less hesitation in writing to you of so barren a sympathy as mine—but I trust to your generous nature, to appreciate my better motive which is to assure you of my confidence in your ability—to bring to your work even in this direction so new to you, the same integrity of purpose, clearness of perception and intellectual ability that has sustained you in far more arduous endeavours— There probably was never a time when embarrassments of a pecuniary character would have pressed more heavily upon the energies of all persons connected with business of any kind, but I cannot but hope that the limit of embarrassment will have been reached and that with the glorious harvest of which we have the promise in this favored country will provide the ways and means of escape from present stagnation in many of the most important industries of the country and that many of the broken institutions will revive and the struggling ones recover their lost ground—Hoping that you will be among the first to feel the good effects of every change for the better and that the honorable position offered to you, and taken in good faith, will afford to you another opportunity to triumph over difficulties for which you were unprepared, believe me always your friend and advocate— HARRIET H GREENOUGH

P.S. at Mrs. Mosher’s suggestion I wrote to you of a little circumstance which she thought would interest you—but as I had not your direction she thinks may not have reached you One evening, I was reading to the children of my daughter Mrs Hamilton4 as is my habit, after they [illegible] sleep for the night—

Y8204-Douglass.indb 266

5/17/23 2:35 PM

HARRIET H. GREENOUGH TO DOUGLASS, 3 JUNE 1874

267

Among the pieces selected was the story of your childhood as written by yourself—after closing the book, I found the little girl weeping under the bedclothes bitterly—It was some time before I could learn what sorrow had so convulsed her that she could not speak. After a time of continued soothing, she confessed that she felt that she had [illegible] very rude to you, the evening you took tea with us, and she thought she could never forgive herself nor be forgiven—I did not ask in what way she had rude to you, because she was so much agitated, but I told her that should I ever see you, I would ask for her, your forgiveness—this comforted her a little, but she sobbed herself to sleep—under the conviction that perhaps she might have added by some thoughtless word or action to the trials of feeling to which your sorrowful life had felt been effused—True to my promise, I ask for her, your forgiveness, knowing that in all probability, I shall not see you as I then hoped, in Washington—as I could not go on the charitable mission which took Mrs Hamilton there, I have thus placed on record, the effect of your touching story upon the susceptible heart of this young child, who sorrows still, like by some unaccountable impulse. She had wounded the sensibility of which she first gained knowledge by the expression of your gratitude to your grandmother and of your love for her I write in haste, but I thought with Mrs Mosher, to whom I mentioned the incident that I ought to withhold from you, the knowledge, of which perhaps you had as little conception as I had of her feelings, that you could so stir the young soul into a recognition of its duties and susceptibilities by you made of narrating duly the solemn truths they unfolded— I hope I have not wounded you by this bitter incident, but that as hitherto, you will excuse me if I appear devoid of the sympathy I have always felt for you— Truly yours— HARRIET H GREENOUGH ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 47–50, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Harriet Howard Fay Greenough (1810–85) apparently became a friend of Frederick Douglass while both were living in Rochester, New York. Born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, she married a New York City merchant named William Henry Greenough (1796–1853) in 1831. By 1850, they were living in Rochester, where Frederick and Anna Douglass lived from 1848 to 1873. Harriet was likely a member of the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, which held fund-raising events to provide support to the two newspapers that Douglass edited while in Rochester, the North Star and Frederick Douglass’ Paper. After her husband died in 1853, Harriet lived the rest of her life with or near family members in Cambridge, Massachusetts. New York Evening Post, 2 December 1853; 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 308B; 1860 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Middlesex County, 60; 1870 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Middlesex County, 465B; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; 1880 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Middlesex County, 251C; Find a Grave (online); O’Keefe, Frederick and Anna Douglass, 31, 40, 47, 54, 56, 57, 59, 63; EAAH, 3:57–58.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 267

5/17/23 2:35 PM

268

RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 4 JUNE 1874

2. In May 1886, Angeline “Angie” Judd McKay Mosher (1837–c. 1900) hosted a breakfast for Douglass that was attended by many notables in Cambridge, Massachusetts, shortly before he departed for a European tour with his wife, Helen Pitts Douglass. Mosher was born in Warsaw, New York, where her father, Ferdinand Cecil Dwight McKay, was a successful attorney and businessman. The family was active in the temperance and abolitionist movements. In 1860, McKay moved his family to Des Moines, Iowa, where Angeline McKay married Charles Mosher in 1856. Following her husband’s death in 1869, Mosher returned to the East Coast and eventually settled in Cambridge with her three daughters. In the late 1890s, Mosher published magazine articles and often addressed women’s clubs on topics related to the history of Brittany. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Wyoming County, 319A; 1880 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Middlesex County, 19; New York Christian Union 33:6 (27 May 1886); (Springfield, Mass.) New England Stationer and Printer, 11:17 (September 1897); Cambridge (Mass.) Chronicles, 9 April 1898; Old Anti-Slavery Days: Proceedings of the Commemorative Meeting Held by the Danvers Historical Society, at the Town Hall, Danvers, April 26, 1893 (Danvers, Mass., 1893), 139; James Adolphus McKay, Genealogy of the McKay Family, Descendants from Elkenny McKay, the founder of the Family in America . . . (West Superior, Wisc., 1896), 57–59; Find a Grave (online). 3. Greenough refers to the financial problems of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Bank, which Douglass had become president of on 1 April 1874. Despite his efforts to save that institution, it officially closed on 2 July of that year. Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 183–86, 198–99. 4. Annie Lillie Greenough (1842–1928) was the sixth of seven children born to William H. and Harriet H. Greenough. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she gave evidence of an exceptional singing voice early in her life, and at age fifteen began lessons in London. Two years later, she married Charles Moulton (1838–71), the son of an American banker who resided in Paris. Throughout the 1860s, the couple were guests at the court of Napoleon III, where Lillie often performed. With the fall of the Second Empire in 1870, they moved to the United States; Charles died soon after. In 1875, Lillie married Johan Henrik de Hegermann-Lindencrone (1838–1918), a Danish diplomat stationed in Washington, D.C. He was subsequently posted to Rome, Stockholm, Paris, and Berlin over the next four decades, and so the couple became acquainted with nearly every significant European and American political and cultural figure of the era. Lillie recounted her experiences in elite society in two books, In the Courts of Memory, 1858–1877 (1912), and The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875–1912 (1914), which drew heavily on her correspondence with family members. Lillie died in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 17 March 1928. The daughter referred to in this letter is either Lillie Suzanne Moulton (1864–1946) or Nina Moulton (1870–1946). “Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620–1988,” Ancestry.com; “U.S., Passport Applications, 1795–1925”; “Massachusetts, Marriage Records, 1840–1915, Ancestry.com; Lillie de Hegermann-Lindencrone, In the Courts of Memory, 1858–1875: From Contemporary Letters (New York, 1912), vii–viii; Lillie de HegermannLindencrone, The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875–1912 (New York, 1914), vii.

RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Bridport[, Eng.] 4 June 1874.

My dear Mr. Douglass, Your letters are always welcome, but I was particularly glad to hear from you now,1 because I was quite uneasy about your new office. An extract from one of the Rochester papers in the Era, conveyed my own idea—that it was a great pity for you to risk your property and reputation on a bank.2

Y8204-Douglass.indb 268

5/17/23 2:35 PM

RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 4 JUNE 1874

269

I feel all the more sure on the matter, because I lost a good slice of my [illegible] patrimony, and my brother Phillip3 lost the whole of his, in the Bank of London,4 which is supposed a most wise investment and so it cannot have been, till, in an out day, the Bank advanced half a million during, or something like it, to the Atlantis & J. W. Ray!5 We were afraid that we should have been bankrupt: as it happened, we have been able, during the last 8 years, not only to pay all our creditors without any call on the property, but to get back about a quarter of what we gave for our shares. I cannot say that the amount I lost greatly affected my happiness: and, in my brother Phillip’s case, it [illegible] obliged him to earn money by a school, instead of working just as hard for nothing on his philanthropic labours; but he naturally should be very sorry for you to be straitened, after the hard battle of life you have been fighting. Then again, in our case, it was merely the loss of perhaps the part of the paper which are lost [illegible] to me, may be needed to make it attractive to many of [illegible] [illegible]. I am concerned about the bad management in South Carolina.6 I sometimes wonder what faith you had [illegible] your people. Those who have been engaged in the just struggle, or who have been told its history, must know you well; but has another generation even of “who know not people”? What will be your influence among all these new Carolina men, who have come into power? Do they appreciate what you have done for your race? I hope they do: and that this Bank, and the Howard University, and all the good movements, moral as well as political, which you have helped in, will carry on your influence in the days to come. You tell me nothing of your family: I hope you might hear from a good spirit. I suppose that the bank, at present at least, will confine you a good deal to Washington. Thank you for your kind word about my articles & c.7 Now and then I fancy that, both by voice and pen, I can do a little that does not fall behind my old standard: Still I [illegible] only a little. I have a colleague in the ministry;8 and only undertake about a quarter of what I did at Halifax9 in various ways. A little tires me. The gleams of highness are few and soon spent: but I am afraid many of the cares & trials that multitudes of others found too much for them: and as my brain would be pretty sure to wander away, if I had not some

Y8204-Douglass.indb 269

5/17/23 2:35 PM

270

RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 4 JUNE 1874

definite occupation, I am very glad that my supporters here have been anxious to keep me still among them. I have been more than some years here: so of course my position in the town is not that of a stranger. I was in London, about a month ago. My aunt,10 who is about 86 years old, still attends to the books of her firm (Carpenter & Worthing):11 and is generally very bright and cheerful, though infirm in body. I take to see her every year. My object was to attend the Formal Conference of the Liberation Society,12 on the executive committee of which I was placed, a few years ago, as a representative of [my] denomination; but I never attended its Conference or Committee before. Notwithstanding the defeat of the Liberals at the last election,13 or are in good spirits, for the tories are with us. “The Liberator” is the organ of the society. It [illegible] not much a [illegible] and to [illegible] as [illegible] paper: for it is only to secure religious equality, by the abolition of church establishments. In [illegible] people dont ask what a man does on Sunday: but, in the country, the division into Churches and Dissenters is very hurtful, and keeps up the spirit of caste, and a sense of injustice. Our own denomination came more into collision with the Church, than with the orthodox dissenters, who tried to oust us from our chapels: and so we have been rather shy of helping those Dissenters in these attacks on the Church. But I feel that bygones should be bygones. The Dissenting churches no longer persecute us: but the Establishment holds an [illegible] position, and has, in my estimate, a bad moral influence—so far as it can [illegible] with the state as concerned. I had no idea that I should have used two sheets. I meant to have left more room for a note for my wife.14 It is tantalizing to hear that you might have come and seen us, had it not been for the bank! Our Country walks, hills, and sea [illegible] are now in full beauty—hence I hope we may enjoy them with you, another year. I dont quite despair of seeing the US. once more; but all the changes I shall see there will not [illegible] be as gratifying as the change in the position of your people. I hope that you will be able to infuse your own spirit into your coadjutators, and to maintain the spirit of their [illegible]. I don’t at all know what qualification you have for a banker or for passing an opinion on [illegible]! (the bond you had most experience of, you broke!): but I hope that

Y8204-Douglass.indb 270

5/17/23 2:35 PM

RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 4 JUNE 1874

271

your high sense of honour and integrity, and your strength of purpose, will enable you to confer a lasting benefit on your people, without any serious loss to yourself:— but the man and star of an [illegible] concern must be very great! I hope, in time, that you will be able to pen us a good report. As to your son’s paper,15 perhaps I ought not to expect it to be nearly as good as your own. It is not [illegible] living in such tragic days, as you are; but still, as their [illegible] shows, there is as much need as ever of true, [illegible], rumors, self-denying work money: in your case, if you are not the head of the concern, you will still be greatly at stake. Altogether, I felt very uneasy. Your letter, on the whole, greatly comforts me. In one respect, I [illegible] not; for I a gather that you [illegible] the part in consequence of false representation: the real condition of the Bank was not told you. I [illegible] you [illegible] on your endeavor, I do not know a more honourable or useful work that you can now perform. If the Bank had fulfilled its design, it would have greatly encouraged the [illegible] and [illegible], for which the [illegible] of your people had if it is a failure, is not it a great discouragement to those who our first [illegible] to [illegible]: had the despair which the enemies of your race are sure to cast upon it. All then that I can say is, that with my kind [illegible], in which I am sure my [illegible] would you, Believe me very faithfully yours R. L. CARPENTER

[illegible] I shall send on your letter to them ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 749–53, FD Papers, LC. 1. Douglass’s earlier letter to Carpenter has not been located. 2. The New National Era printed a story entitled “Mr. Douglass and the Freedman’s Bank” from the Rochester Express, which contained rumors that Douglass, as president of the Freedmen’s Bank, might have become ensnarled in the corruption that many believed endemic in Washington. The Express feared that “in this era of defalcations, embezzlements, and investigations, he [Douglass] might, through the dishonesty of subordinates and the malice of enemies become involved in scandals that, by association at least, would tarnish his fame. This feeling maybe been caused by the difficulties already encountered by the Freedman’s Bank when Mr. Douglass took charge of it.” There were worries at the time that the bank was on the verge of bankruptcy because of poor investments, but the Express wanted to assure people that this was not Douglass’s fault, as other papers claimed. NNE, 14 May 1874. 3. Philip Pearsall Carpenter (1819–77) was born in Bristol to the Reverend Lant Carpenter and Anna Penn. He was the brother of Mary and Russell Lant Carpenter. He attended Bristol College and trained for the ministry at a Presbyterian college in York before attending the University of London in 1841. He preached in Warrington for fifteen years while also devoting his life to causes such as abolition and temperance as well as campaigning for more efficient urban sewage and drainage systems. A conchologist, he identified several new species of shells throughout his life. He married Minnie Meyer in 1860, and the couple adopted a young boy whom Carpenter had met in Baltimore

Y8204-Douglass.indb 271

5/17/23 2:35 PM

272

RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 4 JUNE 1874

during his visit there in 1858. In 1865, Carpenter and his family moved to Montreal, where he died in 1877. Russell Lant Carpenter, Memoirs of the Life and Works of Philip Pearsall Carpenter (London, 1880); DNB, 3:1071–72. 4. Philip Carpenter lost much of his capital in 1866 just after he moved to Canada. He wrote, “The Bank of London has failed; so I must cast about for the ways and means to earn more money.” According to Russell Lant Carpenter’s memoir of Phillip’s life, Phillip had invested some property in shares with the Bank of London, which earned £200 a year. Concerned that his family might be reduced to poverty after the market crash, he reached out to family members, who immediately lent him money. In a footnote, Russell L. Carpenter explains how, over the following ten years, Philip “received back about a third of what he had paid for the shares at a premium.” Carpenter, Philip Pearsall Carpenter, 286–87. 5. In May 1866 the Bank of England experienced what is now referred to as the Panic of 1866, or the Overend Gurney crisis. Overend, Gurney & Co., a bill broker, attempted to increase the credit on several of its loans, but when this backfired and the bank declined to assist the firm, Overend suspended payments, causing a panic that heavily damaged joint-stock companies and industries such as shipping. As a contemporary stated, “It was well known to the members connected with commerce, that Overend, Gurney & Co. held large sums of money on call from country bankers, as well as from the general public, and that these depositors would on the morrow find the resources on which they had hitherto with such confidence relied, no longer available.” The Panic of 1866 represented a temporary financial slump in Britain, and it was followed by a period of economic stability that survived until the First World War. Nicholas Dimsdale and Anthony Hotson, ed., British Financial Crises since 1825 (Oxford, Eng., 2014), 76–78; J. P. Gassiot, Monetary Panic of 1866 (London, 1875), 5. 6. This could refer to the financial problems surrounding the Freedmen’s Bank in South Carolina (and across the United States), or it could be a reference to the upcoming gubernatorial election in South Carolina in November 1874. Governor Franklin J. Moses, Jr., had been accused of corruption throughout his term in office, so the Republicans chose a new candidate, Daniel Henry Chamberlain. Economic concerns added to the political unrest, since Democratic politicians objected to Republicans’ policies of high taxes, which they believed were harming the growth of South Carolina in the wake of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Orangeburg (S.C.) News and Times, 17 April 1875; Atlanta Constitution, 28 March, 1874; Walter Edgar, South Carolina: A History (Columbia, S.C., 1998), 401–02; Barbara P. Josiah, “Providing for the Future: The World of the African American Depositors of Washington, DC’s Freedmen’s Savings Bank, 1865–1874,” Journal of African American History, 89:1–3 (Winter, 2004). 7. Carpenter wrote extensively for the London Inquirer, but the article in question has not been located. 8. Carpenter preached at Northgate End Chapel in Halifax from 1856 to 1864. Here he is likely referring to the Reverend James Martineau or one of his successors at Halifax, perhaps Francis English Millson, who was minister of the chapel from 1872. G. E. Evans, Vestiges of Protestant Dissent (Liverpool, Eng., 1897), 32–33, 98–99. 9. Carpenter began preaching in Bridport in 1865, twenty-five years after first giving a sermon there. According to the Bridport News, 150 people attended a welcome meeting for him, and “appropriate addresses were delivered by various members of the congregation, breathing kindly and hearty wishes that Mr Carpenter may long continue in their midst, and that his settlement here may be fraught with happiness to himself, and may prove a blessing to the congregation.” He preached at Bridport until 1887. Bridport News, 14 January 1865; Evans, Vestiges of Protestant Dissent, 32–33, 98–99. 10. This is a reference to Mary Carpenter, sister of Lant Carpenter, who was born in 1787 in Exeter and died at age ninety in 1877. She took over the family’s optician business—Carpenter & Worthing—in 1833. Carpenter, Philip Pearsall Carpenter, 9–11. 11. Russell Lant and Philip Pearsall Carpenter’s uncle Philip Carpenter worked as a manufacturing optician, with offices in London and Birmingham. When he died in 1833, Mary Carpenter took

Y8204-Douglass.indb 272

5/17/23 2:35 PM

GERRIT SMITH TO DOUGLASS, 27 JUNE 1874

273

over the family business. During an apprenticeship there, Philip Pearsall Carpenter “stayed behind the counter, properly aproned etc., for six months,” until the ministry soon called him back to Bristol. Carpenter, Philip Pearsall Carpenter, 9–11. 12. The Liberation Society, formed by radical Nonconformists, championed disestablishment of the Church of England and the abolition of any connection between church and state. From its inception, in 1844, the society (previously called the Anti-State Church Association) was a powerful political force in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. Supported chiefly by radical reformers such as John Bright and Samuel Morley, as well as by the working classes, the society and its members argued the Church of England was in fact an immoral institution that made no effort to connect with ordinary people. After the abolition of taxes on paper in the early 1860s, the society promoted its message yet further through print culture: in 1865–66, the society collected donations that amounted to £7,556, double the amount from the previous year. The Liberator and the Inquirer were the two main publications through which the society promoted its cause; the latter remains the oldest Nonconformist publication in the world. The monthly Liberator, which began publication in 1855, was designed to act as a unifying publication for the thousands of letters the executive committee wrote or received every year. The newspaper cost twopence and had over eight thousand subscribers by 1874; despite this, only 250 copies were sold, the rest being circulated to members, who paid a minimum of ten shillings per year to the society. J. P. Parry, Democracy and Religion: Gladstone and the Liberal Party (Cambridge, Eng., 1986), 28–29, 235–36, 381; Timothy Larsen, Contested Christianity: The Political and Social Contexts of Victorian Theology (Waco, Tex., 2004), 156–58; J. P. Ellens, Religious Routes to Gladstonian Liberalism: The Church Rate Conflict in England and Wales, 1832–1868 (University Park, Pa., 1994), 128–30, 135–36; J. S. Newton, “The Political Career of Edward Miall, Editor of The Nonconformist and Founder of the Liberation Society” (Ph.D. diss., Durham University, 1975), 464–65. 13. Carpenter probably refers here to the 1874 general election, in which William Ewart Gladstone’s Liberal party lost to Benjamin Disraeli’s Conservative party. The defeat has been attributed to, in part, a series of reforms ushered in by the Liberals that were deeply unpopular with the Tories. Gladstone’s attitudes toward Ireland and Home Rule, together with the Depression of 1873 and Disraeli’s effective oratory, were also significant factors in the defeat. William Henry Maehl, “Gladstone, the Liberals, and the Election of 1874,” Historical Research, 36:53–69 (May 1963); Michael Hurst, “Liberal versus Liberal: The General Election of 1874 in Bradford and Sheffield,” Historical Journal, 15:669–713 (December 1972). 14. Russell L. Carpenter’s wife was Mary Browne Carpenter. 15. Douglass had turned the management of the New National Era over to his sons Lewis and Frederick Jr.

GERRIT SMITH TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Peterboro, [N.Y.] 27 June 1874.1

Hon. Frederick Douglass, Washington, D.C. My old and much esteemed friend, So Congress has again adjourned without passing the Bill on which our hearts had so long been set!2 Much prejudice was wrought up against the Bill by persistently declaring it to be a Bill for social rights. None of its friends regarded it in this light. All they sought in it was the equality of civil rights. Social

Y8204-Douglass.indb 273

5/17/23 2:35 PM

274

GERRIT SMITH TO DOUGLASS, 27 JUNE 1874

rights they left to take care of themselves—wisely judging that these do not fall within the scope of legislation. This prejudice, however, was not the only nor the worst form of opposition to the Bill. As is usual in cases where the protection of fundamental human rights is the object, this Bill had to encounter the constitutionscarecrow. On the surface of the constitution simple birth in this nation makes a citizen of the nation. But, in the New Orleans Slaughter case,3 the Supreme Court dug down below the surface and taxed its ingenuity to discover two kinds of citizens—a State kind as well as a national kind. This mischievious discovery, though made by but five of the nine judges, has, in the present instance, furnished the enemies of equal rights with their most effective weapon. But this dual citizenship is fanciful—fanciful, if only because impracticable. I would argue its impracticableness somewhat as I argued it in my Letter to Mr. Downing.4 Of all the instances in which the Court asserts the paramount right of national citizenship there is not one where this right could not be defeated in a State which is guilty of discriminating between its people. One of these instances is the coming to the seat of Government to transact business with it. But how could cultured and self-respecting colored gentlemen and refined colored ladies cross such a State as Georgia on their way to transact business in Washington? Denied its vehicles, save on terms too degrading for them to submit to, instead of riding they must walk: and denied its hotels, save on similarly degrading terms, they must depend upon the bread and cheese in their pockets, and find what sleep they can by the roadside. Is it said that they must be supplied with proofs that they are, at such times, in the capacity of national citizens? But the expense of giving effect to such proofs they might not be able to bear. Moreover, however conclusive the proofs and however humiliating to exhibit them, there would, probably, be but few persons to give an open eye or a listening ear to them. In spite of these proofs they would find themselves helpless in an enemy’s country. Alas, how many a colored brother and colored sister have felt their hearts die within them, whilst travelling, or attempting to travel, through this still caste-cursed and still satan-swayed land! My soul is sick of this running to constitutions for authority to outrage man. That one is a man proves that he is entitled to all the rights of a man, whatever constitutions or aught else may say to the contrary. Our courts and congress have not yet risen up out of the world’s atheism. They still war against God by still refusing to accept and protect man as He presents him. Their highest crime was in tolerating the turning of God’s

Y8204-Douglass.indb 274

5/17/23 2:35 PM

GERRIT SMITH TO DOUGLASS, 27 JUNE 1874

275

man into Man’s slave: and, now, they follow up this crime by still tolerating his partial enslavement. We are to welcome every man because every man comes from God, and, whatever his race or complexion, is the child of his and our Father. Human laws are needed to regulate many of the external relations and interests of men;—but the men themselves we are to accept as they are given to us, and to hold their high being with all its essential rights to be sacred and unassailable. Come quickly the day when throughout our country and throughout the word the citing of a law to justify the invasion of fundamental human rights shall be instantly arrested and sternly rebuked as treason against man and contempt of the law of his being and the law of his God! There are two concessions to our insulted colored countrymen which admit of no delay. One of these is the passage of the Civil Rights Bill, and the other is the breaking up of the Academy at West Point.5 The great Father in Heaven—the equal Father of his white and colored children—cannot be at peace with our guilty nation, until the abominations against which this Bill is aimed and the kindred abominations, which exist at that Academy, are blotted out. To this end the school itself must be blotted out. It cannot be reformed. The pro-slavery spirit, which, in subservience to the wishes and interests of the slave-power, has, for more than fifty years, been fostered and rampant there, will die only with the death of the school. Government is, always, more or less, complained of for its money matters. But these, in their worst aspect, sink out of sight in comparison with its wrongs against man. Money in comparison with man is of no account. Nothing meaner nor more wicked has Government ever been guilty of than suffering the numerous white cadets to league themselves for insulting, at every turn and corner and in every possible way, the handful of colored cadets. It is because the Government stands back of this league, and suffers it, if indeed it does not positively encourage it, that not one member has had the manliness to break out from it and deal justly with his colored brothers. Surely, a school, pervaded so thoroughly by this mean and cruel spirit, is not the place for training up patriots and christians. This school, which the whole American people are compelled to support, wars frightfully upon all true sense of justice and fair-dealing. It is an insult to the nation—an insult to the grand old hills, which surround it and frown upon it. These sublime highlands, which rank so highly amongst the glories of nature, can have no affinity for a thing so violative of nature and so steeped in meanness as the Academy at West Point.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 275

5/17/23 2:35 PM

276

GERRIT SMITH TO DOUGLASS, 27 JUNE 1874

My complaint of the state of things at West Point may, to some minds, appear inconsistent with what I have hitherto and repeatedly said against legislating for social rights. But the insults and abuses at West Point are much more, much worse, than the mere denial of social rights. Moreover, there are no rights, either civil or social, that Government should be allowed to trample under foot. A Government school must be open to all— for it represents all, and is supported by all. If Irishmen or Germans are, as such, systematically insulted and outraged in it, then it cannot be said to be open to them. Nor can it be said to be open to persons of African blood unless they can be in it on self-respecting terms. This refusal to pass the Civil Rights Bill and this reigning of the diabolical caste-spirit at West Point are but a poor atonement for our ages of crime against the poor black man, and but a poor recompense for his magnanimous services to our country in the late war. The Republican Party has disappointed us. It has failed to redeem some of its solemnly-made pledges. What can we do?—we who are black men and we white men, who are their friends? I wish we could quit this Party for a time, and thus punish and improve it. But we cannot quit it for even a single year, with safety to the country. For the Democratic Party is still eager to be restored to power, and is as lynx-eyed in watching for opportunities as it was in 1872, when it swallowed up the Greeley party,6 and made formidable advances toward swallowing up the Republican Party. There are excellent men in the Democratic Party—but the Party remains bad, very bad, hopelessly bad. Had it come into power any time within the last fourteen years our country would have been lost. It would now be lost were that negro-hating and rum-recruiting Party to come now into power. The old Federal Party went down to death under the suspicion of having sympathized with the enemy in the War of 1812–15.7 And should we ever forget that the Democratic Party sympathized with the rebels in our late War, and sympathized with them too because it was one with them in the malignant purpose of perpetuating slavery? Let us be patient with the Republican Party, a year longer. It came so near passing the Civil Rights bill a few days ago, and, this too, in the face of the solid Democratic vote, that I can hardly doubt it will pass it early in the next session of Congress. With great regard, cordially yours, GERRIT SMITH. PLSr: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 276

5/17/23 2:35 PM

GERRIT SMITH TO DOUGLASS, 27 JUNE 1874

277

1. This letter was published by Smith as a printed circular under the title civil rights bill and west point academy. 2. In May 1870, the Republican senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts began an unsuccessful four-year campaign to pass a civil rights bill that would outlaw racial discrimination by transportation carriers, places of public amusement and accommodation, and public schools as well as in juries, churches, cemeteries, and benevolent institutions incorporated by law. Sumner’s death in March 1874 motivated the Republican majority in the Senate to adopt an amended version of his bill on 23 May 1874. Nevertheless, House Republicans could not guide this bill to passage before the end of the legislative session, which Smith here bemoans. When a modified version of Sumner’s bill passed both houses of Congress the following February, it was titled the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Calhoun, Conceiving a New Republic, 36–39, 53–54, 72, 78. 3. The ruling in the Slaughterhouse Cases, issued on 14 April 1873, was the first interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment by the Supreme Court, and it proved crucial in delineating early civil rights law. The Louisiana legislature had attempted to consolidate all animal-slaughtering establishments in New Orleans into one licensed corporation; however, the city’s butchers argued that this infringed on their right to make a living, based on the Due Process, Privileges and Immunities, and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision, ruled that the Privileges and Immunities Clause applied to the rights of national citizenship, but not state citizenship; thus, the butchers’ Fourteenth Amendment rights had not been violated by Louisiana. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel F. Miller narrowly defined the U.S. citizenship rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to include access to ports and navigable waterways, the ability to run for federal office, the ability to travel to the seat of government, and protection on the high seas and abroad. As Smith noted, congressional Democrats immediately and repeatedly employed the Supreme Court’s narrow interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment in their arguments that Charles Sumner’s civil rights bill, the basis of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, was unconstitutional. Foner, Reconstruction, 529–30, 533; Calhoun, Conceiving a New Republic, 51–52; Michael A. Ross, “Justice Miller’s Reconstruction: The Slaughter-House Cases, Health Codes, and Civil Rights in New Orleans, 1861–1873,” JSH, 64:649–76 (November 1998). 4. Although many old abolitionists such as Gerrit Smith considered Charles Sumner’s civil rights bill to be unquestionably constitutional, others equally supportive of legal protections for African American rights sincerely doubted or denied that it was. Henry C. Bowen, editor of the New York Independent and longtime champion of abolitionism and black rights in New York City, declared, in an editorial on 5 February 1874, that Sumner’s bill was an unconstitutional extension of federal power into the realm of states’ rights. Bowen insisted that he was fully in favor of all the bill’s provisions, but maintained that only state legislatures held the constitutional authority to enact them. George T. Downing, the African American abolitionist and manager of the restaurant in the U.S. House of Representatives (1865–77), responded with two letters to the Independent (26 February, 12 March 1874), arguing strenuously against the logic of dual national and state citizenship held by the Supreme Court in the Slaughterhouse Cases. Smith commended Downing and expanded on his arguments in a letter dated 6 March 1874, which was immediately printed for public distribution. This is the letter Smith refers to here. New York Independent, 5, 19, 26 February, 12, 26 March, 4 June 1874; Gerrit Smith, Equal Rights for Blacks and Whites (Peterboro, N.Y., 1874); James M. McPherson, “Abolitionists and the Civil Rights Act of 1875,” Journal of American History, 52:504–05 (December 1965). 5. Between 1870 and 1887, at least twenty-seven young men who self-identified as having African American ancestry were nominated to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Of those nominated, twelve were admitted to the academy, but only six lasted more than one semester, and only three graduated: Henry Ossian Flipper, class of 1877; John Hanks Alexander, class of 1887; and Charles Young, class of 1889. Academic deficiency was the primary reason for the low acceptance and high dismissal rates of African Americans at West Point in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, widespread racial discrimination by white cadets, faculty, and administrators certainly

Y8204-Douglass.indb 277

5/17/23 2:35 PM

278

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 3 JULY 1874

played a significant role. Black cadets faced near-total social ostracism, meaning white cadets would not talk to them except to conduct official business or verbally abuse them. Open hostility was the norm, and physical violence was not uncommon. As racial attitudes hardened and Jim Crow laws became widespread in the 1890s, almost no African Americans were nominated or accepted at West Point. Two black cadets lasted only one semester each in 1918 and 1929 before Benjamin O. Davis graduated in 1938. Only after 1945 were African Americans regularly appointed by congressmen and accepted without social ostracism by the West Point community. Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point: Autobiography of Lieutenant Henry Ossian Flipper, U.S.A., First Graduate of Color from the U.S. Military Academy (New York, 1878); John Marszalek, “A Black Cadet at West Point,” American Heritage Magazine 22:5 (August 1971); Thomas M. Carhart, “African-American West Pointers during the Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1998), vii–ix, 80, 56–93, 265–66, 268–70. 6. Horace Greeley was first nominated for president by the Liberal Republican party before being selected as the candidate of the Democratic party in 1872. 7. The demise of the Federalist party, like that of most failed political parties, was gradual, multicausal, and due to the party’s inability to maintain public support for its policies and personalities. The primary deathblow to the Federalists was the party’s opposition to the War of 1812, especially the convening of the Hartford Convention of New England states in December 1814. Called together to express grievances against the national government and the Republican party’s policies, delegates discussed secession and a separate peace with Britain, though these courses were firmly rejected. Instead, the convention proposed a series of amendments to the Constitution in the hope that these would restore sectional balance to national politics. The convention’s report and proposals arrived in Washington at virtually the same time as news of the smashing American victory at New Orleans on 8 January 1815, followed by word that a peace treaty with Britain had been signed on Christmas Eve. Because of this, the reports were utterly discredited, and the Federalist party was branded as traitorous by the Republican opposition. The Federalists quickly disintegrated as a national party. Future generations of American politicians learned from this incident that opposing war was dangerous, since it could quickly lead to political oblivion. Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (New York, 2009), 276, 312–13, 692–96; David Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York, 2007), 94–95, 743; Joseph F. Stoltz, “ ‘It Taught our Enemies a Lesson’: The Battle of New Orleans and the Republican Destruction of the Federalist Party,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, 71:112–27 (2012).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH Washington[,] D.C. 3 July 1874.

Hon Gerrit Smith. My dear and venerated Friend, I thank you very sincerely for your kind note of June 29th and for your printed letter to me,1 adminstering a timely and deserved rebuke of the malignant spirit of caste and the timidity and perfidy of the Republican party for failing to pass the Civil Rights Bill. It was gratifying to see again your well known hand and to find proofs in it, as well as in the warmth and vigor of your arguments that you bear up bravely under your nearly four score years. You hit the nail on the head when you strike the imprac-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 278

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 3 JULY 1874

279

tical doctrine of two citizenships as laid down in the slaughter house case. Two citizenships mean no citizenship. The one destroys the other. It is the Folly as Franklin2 would have it, of harness a horse at each end of the wagon.3 The one defeats the efforts of the other. The nation affirms, the state denies, and there is no progress. The true doctrine is one nation, one country, one citizenship—and one law for all the people. I am disappointed but not discouraged by the action of Congress. Massachusetts was one hundred years free before she lifted her former slaves into complete civil rights.4 We have suffered long, but can suffer longer. Our progress during the last dozen years has been vast, rapid and wonderful. We cannot stop. Time and effort will prevail. Down with West Point would be a powerful war cry in the lips of a million voters—and I am glad you have given us this cry. Despite my efforts to uphold the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company it has fallen. It has been the black man’s cow, but the [whit] White mans milk. Bad loans and bad management have been the death of it. I was ignorant of its real condition till elected as its president. Please mention me kindly to Dear Mrs Smith.5 Mrs Douglass6 and my boys are all well and would join me in love to you if they knew of my writing— Yours very truly FREDK DOUGLASS ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. 1. Douglass printed Smith’s letter to him, dated 27—not 29—June 1874, in a New National Era article entitled “Civil Rights Bill and West Point Academy.” In that letter, Smith labeled the “two citizenships” doctrine of the Supreme Court’s recent Slaughterhouse decision a “mischievous discovery, though made by but five of the nine judges, [which] has, in the present instance, furnished the enemies of equal rights with their most effective weapon.” NNE, 9 July 1874. 2. One of the early nation’s most iconic figures, Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) migrated from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania at age seventeen and eventually became one of Philadelphia’s cultural, business, and political leaders. His writings won him an international reputation. Franklin spent many years in London as a lobbyist for Pennsylvania (and sometimes additional colonies) at the Court of St. James. Initially, Franklin worked for accommodation between the British and the colonists, but he wholeheartedly supported the revolutionary cause. He represented the rebels at the court of the French king and won crucial military support. After the revolution, Franklin was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and held the equivalent of the Pennsylvania governorship for over two years. Franklin lent his name to several antislavery organizations in his last years, but modern scholars caution that his record was far more compromised and compromising than generally recognized. H. W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 2000); David Waldstreicher, Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution (New York, 2004). 3. When discussing the merits and risks of the forms of government that might manage the emerging nation in 1776, Thomas Paine recorded that Benjamin Franklin advocated for a “carefully

Y8204-Douglass.indb 279

5/17/23 2:35 PM

280

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 25 AUGUST 1874

calculated system of checks and balances” and a bicameral system of government: “It Appears to me like putting one horse before the cart and the other behind it, and whipping them both. If the horses are of equal strength, the wheels of the cart, like the wheels of government, will stand still; and if the horses are strong enough the cart will be torn in pieces.” Thomas Paine, The Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Monecure Daniel Conway, 4 vols. (New York, 1894), 4:465. 4. While Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783, African Americans did not enjoy the benefits of freedom immediately. For example, miscegenation laws were not overturned until 1843. The following year, abolitionists successfully ended segregation on railcars in the state. In 1855, Boston’s public schools were integrated, thus specifically prohibiting racial discrimination in education for the first time in Massachusetts. Immediately following the Civil War, in May 1865, discrimination based on color or race in any inn or public place of amusement became illegal. While these statutes in Massachusetts helped frame the 1873 federal Civil Rights Act, it still took nearly a century for African Americans in Massachusetts to earn certain rights following the abolition of slavery in the state. John Daniels, In Freedom’s Birthplace: A Study of the Boston Negroes (Boston, 1914), 84, 91, 94; James Brewer Stewart, “Boston, Abolition, and the Atlantic World, 1820–1861,” in Courage and Conscience: Black and White Abolitionists in Boston, ed. Donald M. Jacobs (Bloomington, Ind., 1993), 114; Kazuteru Omori, “Race-Neutral Individualism and Resurgence of the Color Line: Massachusetts Civil Rights Legislation, 1855–1895,” Journal of American Ethnic History, 22:34–37 (Fall 2002). 5. Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith. 6. Anna Murray Douglass.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH Washington[,] D.C. 25 August 1874[.]

Hon: Ger[rit] Smith: My dear Sir: I have just returned home from a three weeks tour1 and find your letter and a draft of one thousand dollars in aid of Howard University.2 I have not yet seen my friend John Mercer Langston, but will probably see him to day, when we will draw the money and hand it over to the Treasurer of Howard University. Without waiting to see Langston and to thank you jointly with him, I send my thanks for making me in part, the bearer of your generous donation to this worthy institution. Trouble and violence are [damaged] in the Southern sta[tes] and the papers represent my ra[ce] as the aggressors. I cannot believe it. [Du]ring all the late rebellion the negroes of the south were left on the plantations with old men children and defenseless women, and no act of wrong was done by them to the feeblest. It is not reasonable to suppose that these negroes have now become the demons of wrath and fury they are now painted. I am glad to know that you still believe in us and are ready to help us in the way of Education, which after all is our best protection. For want of knowledge we are killed all the day long. I do not know that I shall be able to reside in Washington in case of a change in

Y8204-Douglass.indb 280

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 17 SEPTEMBER 1874

281

the administration. The wa[ve] of violence now sweeping over the South in that case would be likely to come here also. I shall however, continue to toil and trust and counsel my people to do the same. My best wishes for your health and happiness—in which Mrs Doug3 lass joins me. Always truly yours FREDERICK DOUGLASS ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. 1. Neither Douglass’s surviving correspondence nor the August issues of the New National Era provide clues to his travels in early August 1874. 2. The New National Era published Gerrit Smith’s letter to Douglass of 5 August 1874, with which the philanthropist had sent a $1,000 check for Howard University. Smith declared: “If we would save this guilty nation we must educate its deeply wronged colored citizens. God help Howard University—its teachers and students!” NNE, 27 August 1874; Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 485–86. 3. Anna Murray Douglass.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH Washington[,] D.C. 17 Sept[ember] 1874.

Hon. Gerrit Smith. My dear Sir: I am glad you approve my speech at Bridgeport1 and am still more glad that you find strength and inclination to speak and write in the interest of my race and the national welfare. You once told me in Jerry rescue times, when you had written a long series of annual addresses for the rescue celebrations2 that you thought you might live till you were eighty. I hope you will live that and more, but whether you do or not, you have already done an eighty years work in the cause of truth and humanity. Until now I did not know your agency in giving a Thousand Witnesses3 to the World—I have not now a copy of that Book. Mine, given me when I entered the anti slavery field, by Wendell Phillips, was consumed with my house at Rochester. You will do me a kindness and have my thanks, if you will let me have one of the few copies you have for your children. Love to your dear family. Truly your friend FREDK DOUGLASS ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. 1. Douglass may have spoken in Bridgeport, Connecticut, sometime in August 1874 during the three weeks of travel away from Washington, D.C., that he had taken following the closing of the Freedmen’s Bank. Douglass to Gerrit Smith, 25 August 1874, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 281

5/17/23 2:35 PM

282

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 24 SEPTEMBER 1874

2. On 1 October 1852, an estimated five thousand people attended the Syracuse celebration organized by Samuel Joseph May to honor the first anniversary of the rescue of William “Jerry” McHenry, a black cooper arrested under the Fugitive Slave Law. The celebration continued to be held annually on 1 October by New York abolitionists until 1860. Douglass usually attended and spoke at these public events, as he did in 1855, although that year he apologized to his readers for the “ague and fever speech” he delivered. FDP, 9 October 1851, 1, 8, 15, 29 October 1852, 5 October 1855; Mabee, Black Freedom, 307–08; Yacovone, Samuel Joseph May, 150–51. 3. In 1839, the American Anti-Slavery Society published American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, compiled by the abolitionist Theodore Weld as a way to educate northerners about the evils of slavery. Several abolitionists contributed to the book by giving testimony about their direct encounters with slavery in the South. More importantly, the publication included facts about slavery given by the slaveholders themselves as printed in southern newspapers, letters, periodicals, and books. Throughout the book are multiple examples of the advertisements for runaway slaves. In an 1892 newspaper interview, Douglass described Weld’s book as “the most powerful work of its kind written in the anti-slavery cause.” Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 5:497; Cleveland Gazette, 10 September 1892; Theodore Weld, American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (New York, 1839).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH Washington[,] D.C. 24 Sept[ember] 1874.

My Dear Gerrit Smith: I am very much obliged by your note and the copy of the pamphlet entitled “slavery as it is”1 As to the future of our Republic, I share your fears. Not alone however, are my fears excited by the power and the policy of the Democratic Party. Rightiousness is the strength of nations as well as of individuals. In this respect, Washington is the place to see the weakness if not the strength of this nation. The moral atmosphere is more than tainted, it is rotten. Averice, duplicity, falsehood, corruption, servility fawning and trickery of all kinds, confront us at every turn. There is little here but distrust and suspicion. Every body is supposed to have some ulterior object. I devide the people here into two classes: 1st the class used, 2dly the class that uses them. I belong to the first class. Because I happen to be well known to President Grant and the heads of departments, I am made use of by all who want office and want influence to get office. I have been compelled in order to have any command of my time, at last, to deny all who apply for my services in that line.2 Please speak kindly of me to Mrs Smith3— Always truly yours FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Y8204-Douglass.indb 282

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 7 OCTOBER 1874

283

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. 1. An allusion to Theodore Weld’s American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (New York, 1839). 2. In his final autobiography, Life and Times, Douglass described being besieged by candidates for some kind of federal government appointment: “They have been told by somebody, somewhere, that if they can only get to Washington and find Douglass, they will be quite sure to get an office. . . . Like the mist and spray which rises over the cataract of Niagara, its particles are ever meeting and separating in the air. One goes, another comes, and none stay long. Few are successful in getting what they seek. There are a hundred applicants for every ten vacancies. The demand is incomparably greater than the supply and the cry is, ‘still they come.’” Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:464. 3. Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH Washington[,] D.C. 7 Oct[ober] 1874.

Hon: Gerrit Smith: My Dear Sir: You will receive this with a call for a national convention of the friends of Equal Civil and political rights.1 This call originated with Mr Thomas W Conway 2 and myself—We felt that some formal and impressive notice should taken of the murderous warfare going on against the newly emancipated citizens and their friends at the South. We both agreed that such a convention to be effective, should be approved by the ablest and best men of the land and that your name should stand first on the list of callers.3 I have advised Mr Conway to see you on the subject during his visit to Western N.Y.4 I thank you for saying the right word to your friends and neighbors upon the issues of the hour in the forthcoming Election in the State of New York.5 Yours truly and gratefully FREDK DOUGLASS

[P.S.] Mr Conway wrote the call and modestly handed it to me for correction, I have merely copied it from his rough draft without alteration or amendment ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. 1. There is no surviving record of Smith’s response to the proposed national African American convention. Thomas W. Conway independently wrote Smith on 21 October 1874, asking him to sign and return an enclosed draft of the call for the convention. Conway told Smith that he was moving the date for the convention from November to December, “as Congress will then be in session, the Convention will do the more good. . . . I will have the call printed and sent to every part of the Union

Y8204-Douglass.indb 283

5/17/23 2:35 PM

284

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 8 OCTOBER 1874

for signers after you have headed the call with your honored name.” Smith died just two months after this request, so he may not have responded. Thomas W. Conway to Gerrit Smith, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. 2. A Baptist minister from New York, Thomas W. Conway served as chief administrator of the Bureau of Free Labor, created in 1863 by the Union general Nathaniel Banks. O. O. Howard, commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, chose Conway as assistant commissioner for the state of Louisiana. Conway was committed to achieving justice for blacks and approved of the distribution of former slaveholders’ land to black people. After Conway had distributed over sixty thousand acres to freed blacks, President Andrew Johnson, sympathetic to former southern landowners, restored their land to them in August 1865. Conway was released by Johnson from his Freedmen’s Bureau position. He later became superintendent of education in Louisiana and worked to achieve racially integrated schools there. He also wrote “The Freedmen of Louisiana: Final Report of the Bureau of Free Labor, Department of the Gulf.” Disillusioned by the collapse of Reconstruction, Conway wholeheartedly supported the black “Exoduster” movement to the West in 1879. To assist and coordinate that movement, he and eastern sympathizers organized the National Emigration Aid Society in April 1879. Robert G. Athearn, In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to Kansas, 1879–80 (Lawrence, Kans., 1978), 135, 144–52; Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (New York, 1992), 198–99, 228–29; William Malvin Caskey, Secession and Reconstruction of Louisiana (Baton Rouge, La., 1938), 142, 193, 196; John Cornelius Engelsman, “The Freedmen’s Bureau in Louisiana,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 32:145–224 (January 1949). 3. There is no surviving copy of the call, and no such convention was held. 4. Conway did not visit Gerrit Smith at Peterboro, New York. In his 21 October 1874 letter to Smith, he said: “I have been waiting for time to go to Peterboro to see you, but the need of my presence with my family in Washington makes me forego that pleasure.” Thomas W. Conway to Gerrit Smith, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. 5. Smith had two public letters printed and circulated during the 1874 New York state elections. One undated letter was entitled Every Vote for Mr. Tilden Helps to Bring on the Ruin of the Country by Helping to Restore the Democratic Party to Power (Peterboro, N.Y. [1874]). On 8 September, Smith issued Our First Duty Is to Keep Down the Democracy (Peterboro, N.Y. [1874]). Despite his efforts, the Democratic party ticket, headed by the gubernatorial candidate Samuel J. Tilden, carried the state in the 3 November 1874 election. New York Times, 19 November 1874.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH Washington[,] D.C. 8 Oct[ober] 1874.

My dear Gerrit Smith: During the thirty and six years of my freedom from slavery1 you have made me thankful for many good words from your pen—but I remember nothing in the past for which I am more grateful than for your last circular.2 You have placed the question of Tilden3 and Dix4 fairly before the the people of New York—and I find in your words not only the wisdom of age but the vigor of youth. I am very glad you were able to write that circular. That the best man is the worst man to vote for if he is bound up in the worst party—will startle—I have no doubt, but is a pregnant truth

Y8204-Douglass.indb 284

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 8 OCTOBER 1874

285

amply supported by history. Some of the worst things recorded have been done with the best intentions, and by the best men. I have placed a letter in the hands of Mr Conway5 who will probably call upon you soon, on the subject of a national convention of the friends of Equal Civil and political rights—which I hope you will see and approve. Mr Conway has done good service to the cause of the colored people of the south. He has said the right word in favor of Equal Civil Rights— and a good true man. Unless the call can be influentially signed and attended I think it better not be held. The names of prominent abolitionists—such as yourself Garrison6 and Phillips7—would at once be an assurance of character and earnestness in the movement. Very truly your friend FREDK DOUGLASS ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. 1. Douglass dates his freedom from his successful escape from bondage in Maryland in September 1838, rather than on his manumission, purchased from Hugh Auld in December 1846. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:151–57, 199–200. 2. Douglass probably refers to Smith’s election circular entitled Every Vote for Mr. Tilden Helps to Bring on the Ruin of the Country by Helping to Restore the Democratic Party to Power (Peterboro, N.Y. [1874]). 3. The Democratic presidential nominee in 1876, Samuel Jones Tilden (1814–86) was long active in New York politics and played a leading role in the exposure and overthrow of the Tweed ring, which had robbed the New York City government of millions in the early 1870s. Born in New Lebanon, New York, Tilden briefly attended several colleges before commencing a lucrative legal career in New York City. Elected governor of New York in 1874, he reduced governmental expenditures and enhanced his reputation as a reformer by curbing corruption in the state canal system. Following his defeat in the disputed election with Rutherford B. Hayes, Tilden retired from public life. Alexander Clarke Flick, Samuel Jones Tilden: A Study in Political Sagacity (New York, 1939); Sobel and Raimo, Governors of the United States, 3:1087–88; DAB, 18:537–41. 4. A strong supporter of Andrew Jackson, John Adams Dix (1798–1879) entered New York politics as adjutant general and then gained a reputation as a champion of education as secretary of state (1833–39). In 1845, the New York legislature appointed him to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Silas Wright upon Wright’s election as governor. A protégé of Martin Van Buren, Dix supported the Wilmot Proviso, but was not considered an opponent of slavery on moral grounds. In 1848, Dix followed Van Buren into the Free Soil party, becoming its gubernatorial candidate. In 1852 he returned to the Democratic party and campaigned heavily for Franklin Pierce, but he received no political appointments until the end of the decade, when President James Buchanan made him U.S. postmaster general. In 1860 he ran as a Constitutional Unionist for governor of New York, arguing that southerners were not secessionists. In early 1861, Dix served as secretary of the treasury, and soon after the outbreak of war, Abraham Lincoln appointed him a general in the army. ANB (online). 5. Thomas W. Conway. 6. William Lloyd Garrison. 7. Wendell Phillips.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 285

5/17/23 2:35 PM

286

DOUGLASS TO JOHN J. FREEMAN, 24 OCTOBER 1874

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JOHN J. FREEMAN1 Washington, [D.C.] 24 Oct[ober] 1874.2

The Freedman’s Bank. 316 A St., N. E. Mr. Editor: It may be shown why Frederick Douglass issued his “Bull” to the colored people of the United States after he became President of the rotton concern, “that it was in a better financial condition than it ever was before,” The foregoing extract is from the leading Editorial of the “Progressive American” of October 22nd,3 discussing a threatened prosecution of some of the Trustees connected with the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company. Now, though the allusion to me is manifestly, in an unfriendly spirit, it is not necessary that I should believe it intentionaly misrepresents me: I therefore beg to say to your respected readers, that I never stated at any time during the three months I was connected with the Freedman’s Saving & Trust Company. “That it was in a better financial condition than it ever was before.” This I never thought, said, or wrote While I thought and hoped that the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company might, under certain specified favorable conditions, weather this storm in which I found it, and did what I honestly could to encourage depositors to be patient, and in no case to sacrifice their bank books. I never was over sanguine as to the prospects of the Bank. In advising the depositors to make no run on the Bank, my practice accorded with my precepts, for I am to day, (although being on the inside, I could have withdrawn my money,) one of the largest depositors in the institution, and in case it does not pay, I shall be among its greatest sufferers. I, however, belive that larger percentage, of the deposits of the Freedman’s Saving and Trust Company will yet be paid, though I do not believe this result will be reached in less than two years from this time.4 There is, for the present, no market for the large property owned by the Bank, especially in this city,5 and it would be ruinous to force sale, so that the Commissioners, in whom I have full confidence, are wise in husbanding the resources of the Bank, and waiting the better times soon to come. Yours, Respecfully, FREDERICK DOUGLASS. PLSr: Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 5 November 1874. 1. John J. Freeman founded the New York Progressive American in 1871 and served as editor until he had to suspend it in February 1887 as a result of his failing health. Freeman used his news-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 286

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO JOHN W. HUTCHINSON, 18 NOVEMBER 1874

287

paper to champion the hiring of African American teachers in the New York City school system. The Progressive American described itself as “the official organ of the colored people of the State of New York, a weekly journal of general intelligence, devoted to the interests of the colored people.” William Wells Brown called the Progressive American a “spicy and spirited weekly” and praised the editor for his “natural genius, untiring industry, and scholarly attainments.” In December 1874, the San Francisco Elevator reported that Freeman was joined by an editor named “Washington,” probably a reference to the paper’s publisher George A. Washington. San Francisco Elevator, 12 December 1874; Pettengill’s Newspaper Directory and Advertisers’ Hand-Book for 1877 (New York, 1877), 47; George P. Rowell & Co., American Newspaper Directory (New York, 1876), 156; William Wells Brown, The Rising Son: Or, The Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored Race (Boston, 1874), 551–52; Penn, Afro-American Press, 111–12. 2. This letter was published in the Progressive American with the headline “voice of our exchanges.” 3. A surviving copy of the 22 October 1874 issue of the Progressive American could not be located, but in Douglass’s account, it refers to a circular that Douglass issued in June 1874: To the depositors of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company. In his circular, Douglass claimed (incorrectly) that recent congressional legislation had restored the bank to solvency. U.S. Congress, Senate, Select Committee to Investigate the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, Report, 2 April 1880, 46th Cong., 2d sess., Senate Report 440 (Serial 1895), appendix, 44–45. 4. The federal government closed the Freedmen’s Bank in July 1874 and gradually liquidated its resources to repay depositors. This process took nearly a decade to complete, and the government was only able to return 62 percent of the depositors’ investments. Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 211–15. 5. The Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, which had conducted business from its headquarters branch in the District of Columbia since June 1865, acquired some District of Columbia property as an investment. Other land and buildings in Washington had been acquired as the bank took possession of them as collateral on defaulted loans. Because of incompetence and, in some cases, fraud by bank officers, much of this property proved to be overpriced, which contributed to the inability of the federally appointed trustees to repay the bank’s depositors in full after it closed in 1874. Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 17, 119–24, 160, 199–200.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JOHN W. HUTCHINSON1 Biddeford[, Me.]2 18 Nov[ember] 1874.

My dear John: I have only time while on the wing as I am, to tell you that you made me very much obliged to you for the little pamphlet,3 you kindly put into hands night before last in Lynn,4 containing biographical sketches of the several members of your remarkably musical family. No apology was needed for its publication. All who have listened as I have done, to the “Concord of Sweet Sounds”5 from members of the “Tribe of Jesse”6 —want more of the music and wish to know more of the persons from whom it comes. I especially have reason to feel a grateful interest in the whole Hutchinson family—for you have sung the yokes from the necks & and the fetters

Y8204-Douglass.indb 287

5/17/23 2:35 PM

288

OLIVER OTIS HOWARD TO DOUGLASS, 12 DECEMBER 1874

from the limbs of my race, and dared to be true to humanity against all danger to worldly prosperity and reputation. You have dared to sing for a cause first and for cash afterward. I know of few instrumentalities which have done more Liberty and temperance than have your voices. But I only took this moment simply to thank you for the pamphlet and not to speak in the praise of the dear family. Yours Very Truly FREDK DOUGLASS ALS: Hutchinson Family Letterbook, Lynn Historical Society, Lynn, Mass. 1. In 1840, John Wallace Hutchinson (1821–1908), along with his brothers Asa, Jesse, and Judson, organized the Hutchinson Family Singers, a four-part ensemble modeled after itinerant German and Swiss singing groups then touring the United States. Their sister Abigail soon joined performances; later, so did other family members. All committed abolitionists, the Hutchinsons performed regularly at antislavery conventions throughout the North and toured Great Britain with Douglass in 1845 and 1846. John Wallace Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons (Tribe of Jesse), ed. Charles E. Mann, 2 vols. (Boston, 1896), 1:iii–iv; Dale Cockrell, ed., Excelsior: Journals of the Hutchinson Family Singers, 1842–1846 (Stuyvesant, N.Y., 1989), xi. 2. Biddeford is a small commercial and manufacturing city in York County, Maine. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 214. 3. John W. Hutchinson probably gave Douglass a copy of the pamphlet Our Paper: Thirty Years Singing! Concert in This Place! Over a Quarter of a Century’s Career of the Hutchinson Family, which he had prepared to promote a series of midwestern concerts in early 1869. Two decades later, Douglass wrote an introduction to the Hutchinson family’s longer history. John W. Hutchinson, Our Paper: Thirty Years Singing! Concert in This Place! Over a Quarter of a Century’s Career of the Hutchinson Family (Chicago, 1869); Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons, 1:xv–xviii. 4. Douglass spoke at Cosmian Hall in Florence, Massachusetts, on 14–15 November 1874. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxxiii. 5. Merchant of Venice, sc. 20, line 2366. 6. The “Tribe of Jesse” is a biblical reference to the Twelve Tribes of Israel. These tribes were originally headed by the twelve sons of Jacob, whose name was later changed to Israel. His sons were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. Because Jesse—also the name of the Hutchinson family’s patriarch—is not numbered among the Twelve Tribes, the Hutchinson Family Singers most likely borrowed this allusion as part of their Christian image. Gen. 49:1–28; Yair Zakovitch, Jacob: Unexpected Patriarch (New Haven, Conn., 2012), 66–75.

OLIVER OTIS HOWARD TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS [Washington, D.C.] 12 Dec[ember 1874.]

Frederick Douglass Esq. Washington D.C. Dear Mr Douglass: Is not the news by the morning’s paper that “150 blacks have been killed” and probably four or five lives, the usual proportion, wounded perfectly

Y8204-Douglass.indb 288

5/17/23 2:35 PM

ELIZABETH SMITH MILLER TO DOUGLASS, 14 JANUARY 1875

289

terrible? 1 Can the lie that the black men are the aggressors pass itself upon the nation for truth? Are we all dead? Is there no longer any black left in the friends of right, of humanity, of justice. Congress has but one more session [illegible] [present] constituent=can it want [damaged section] a law? Corruption may have weakened us as a party—but on that account we canot cannot afford to enthrone tyranny, murderers of our people & liars. Put leaders & corrupt men under your feet if you please but let the loyal millions who fought or backed up the fighting that America might be free never never, never go back on their blood bought rights. “Forty white men fighting 700 black men are driven back to Vicksburg with the loss of 8 white men & the killing of 150 blacks.” I cannot believe it lives in light.2 Very truly yours O. O. HOWARD ALS: O. O. Howard Manuscripts, MeB. 1. In December 1874 a large group of whites demanded the resignation of the black sheriff Peter Crosby in Vicksburg, Mississippi. As a means of reinstating himself to office, Crosby organized a group of rural blacks to march on Vicksburg. On 7 December, an armed force of whites repelled the group, and violence erupted. In the following days, whites roamed the outskirts of Vicksburg, murdering blacks. News reports initially downplayed the number of blacks killed. On 11 December, the New York Tribune reported that “the actual number of negroes killed in Monday’s fight is probably 150.” When the violence ended, the death toll was likely close to 300, with only 2 white casualties. President Grant finally dispatched federal troops to Vicksburg in January 1875, curtailing the violence and restoring Crosby to office. Cleveland Daily Herald, 7 December 1874; San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 8 December 1874; New York Tribune, 11 December 1874; Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig & Courier, 12 December 1874; William C. Harris, The Day of the Carpetbagger: Republican Reconstruction in Mississippi (Baton Rouge, La., 1979), 646–48; Foner, Reconstruction, 558. 2. Tim. 6:16.

ELIZABETH SMITH MILLER1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS New York[, N.Y.] 2 14 Jan[uary] 1875[.]

Mr Douglass, My dear friend, Of all the letters of sympathy that have poured in from all quarters,3 none are to me quite like yours! It comes very near us because you lay so close to my Fathers heart—he loved you so dearly & was so proud of you! And knowing so well the tortures of your early life—your passage out of slavery into the season & prejudices of the north, & the many trials which

Y8204-Douglass.indb 289

5/17/23 2:35 PM

290

ELIZABETH SMITH MILLER TO DOUGLASS, 14 JANUARY 1875

clustered about you in your new life, we are sure of your love for one who never failed you, who was ever ready to stand at your side with words of cheer & encouragement. We shall be very glad to see you, both in Peterboro & Geneva4 —We hope you will, in both homes, always consider yourself a most welcome guest. Greene5 is still in Chicago6 —a great sufferer. When the first sad news reached him he was so ill with rheumatism, that he could not turn in his bed. Will you please give us Julia Griffith’s address?7 My Mother8 will probably spend most of her time here, for several weeks. She is under medical treatment, which, so far, has proved most successful. With very kind regards to you & yours, in which my Mother heartily unites, Yrs sincerely ELIZABETH J MILLER ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 763–64, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Elizabeth Smith Miller (1822–1911), Gerrit Smith’s only daughter, was a women’s rights and dress reform activist. The Smith and Douglass families developed an unusually cordial cross-racial relationship in the 1850s. Elizabeth Smith Miller was also a cousin and confidant of the women’s rights leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In later years, Miller defended her father’s legacy, even causing the removal of any mention of a connection with John Brown from the “authorized” biography written by Octavius Brooks Frothingham. Norman K. Dann, Ballots, Bloomers, and Marmalade: The Life of Elizabeth Smith Miller (Hamilton, N.Y., 2016); Gordon, Selected Papers of Stanton and Anthony, 1:383–84; Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 16–17, 32, 42–43, 54, 118, 129, 454; John R. McKivigan, “The Frederick Douglass–Gerrit Smith Friendship and Political Abolitionism in the 1850s,” in Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays, ed. Eric J. Sundquist (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 205–32. 2. Miller added the additional details of her address to the letter following her signature: “60 Clinton Place / New York” 3. Smith died of a stroke on 28 December 1874 in New York City on a holiday visit to his nephew John Cochrane. Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 490. 4. Gerrit Smith purchased an estate of sixty-four acres on the western shore of Seneca Lake in 1865 and gave it to his son Greene. Greene, recently discharged from the Union army, wanted to become a farmer. Because of health issues, Greene sold the estate, which he had named “Lochland,” back to Gerrit in 1869. Gerrit then gave the estate to his daughter, Elizabeth Smith Miller. She and her husband, Charles Dudley Miller, moved in on 5 July 1869 and lived there until their deaths—his in 1896, and hers in 1911. Dann, Ballots, Bloomers, and Marmalade, 94. 5. Greene Smith (1842–80) was the sole surviving son of Gerrit Smith. Educated by private tutors, Smith did not share his father’s appreciation for education and often clashed with his tutors. His relationship with his father also suffered because of Gerrit Smith’s strong belief in temperance. Greene briefly joined the Union army in 1864 as a second lieutenant in the Fourteenth New York Artillery. Following the war, Greene, a passionate ornithologist, continued his study of birds, amassing a large collection of stuffed specimens. Regarded as an eccentric, he died among his collection at the family estate in Peterboro, New York. Chattanooga (Tenn.) Gazette, 27 July 1864; New York Times, 24 July 1880; Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 42, 189–90.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 290

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO R. C. HEWETT, FOLLANSBEE, AND PIATT, 11 FEBRUARY 1875

291

6. Greene Smith resided in the Chicago suburb of Kensington intermittently between March 1868 and his death in July 1880. He went there to seek help from Dr. Charles Gilman Smith (no relation) for the condition known today as fibromyalgia. Norman K. Dann, Greene Smith and the Wild Life (Hamilton, N.Y., 2015), 49, 53. 7. In 1875, Julia Griffiths Crofts resided at 14 Denmark Street, Gateshead-on-Tyne, County Durham, England. She would move in April 1877 to St Neots, Cambridgeshire, England. Julia Griffiths Crofts to Douglass, 12 December 1874, 26 March 1877, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 201–06, 77R–79L, FD Papers, DLC. 8. Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO R. C. HEWETT, GEORGE FOLLANSBEE,1 AND DONN PIATT 2 [n.p. 11 February 1875]

[“]There is still one other alternative to which we are exposed—one which is truly fearful to contemplate. Human nature is the same everywhere. There are many varieties of man, but only one human nature; and it is possible that, stung to madness and desperation by continued and unceasing outrages, and seeing no manner of escape, a spirit of retaliation and revenge may be aroused which will fill the South with scenes of rapine, blood and fire. To avoid this catastrophe we earnestly appeal to Congress for the action already mentioned, and we invite the sympathy and support to this appeal of all the lovers of liberty and order throughout the country[”]3 Strangely enough, both the Tribune and the Capital have mistaken this statement and treated as a threat what was intended as an argument; have construed a wail of despair into a stamp of defiance. To say that a natural consequence of injustice and violence is to invite injustice and violence, or that like begets like, is a ‘dangerous political suggestion.’ Now, Mr. Editor, in conclusion, I admit that the language of the resolutions is strong, but is it stronger than the circumstances call for? What have we seen during these three years? 4 Three thousand of our people murdered in a single State; thousands escaping from Georgia to Mississippi; a sentiment abroad in the South which gets itself expressed by ruffian tongues, ‘No more harm to shoot a nigger than to shoot a bear;’ fifty shot down in the streets of New Orleans; one hundred in Coushatta;5 fifty at Grant parish;6 a half hundred in Vicksburg;7 and not a single murderer punished. In view of such a state of facts, the words of those resolutions are almost contemptibly tame and heartless. The negro is docile, amiable,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 291

5/17/23 2:35 PM

292

DOUGLASS TO R. C. HEWETT, FOLLANSBEE, AND PIATT, 11 FEBRUARY 1875

and slavery may have made him servile, but ‘a man’s a man for a’ that,’8 and because he is a man, he may be stung by oppression to despair and crime. Now a word to Faneuil Hall9 and Cooper Institute.10 I think it strange that while Ku Klux and White Leagues11 have been burning school houses, murdering school mistresses, shooting down men in the streets of New Orleans, you have remained silent as the tomb. You have had no word of pity for the persecuted—none of rebuke for our murderers; but, strange to say, just so often as Grant12 and Sheridan13 extend the arms of the Republic to arrest and prevent the further shedding of blood, your eloquent voices are heard in thundering tones of denunciation. In view of the violence at the South, and the tones of many powerful presses in the country, I might be alarmed for the future, both for my race and for the country, but there are grounds of hope, and I feel their inspiration. The times are perilous, but there is a steady hand at the helm of our ship of state and a strong-handed loyal crew on deck. The party of freedom and progress is not yet disbanded, though traitors have endeavored to disband it. The loyal people, however much they may be divided upon local issues, will, when the time comes for action, see to it that this Government shall be kept in the hands of loyal men, while there is enough of disloyalty at the South to require the presence of military force to stay the hand of disloyal violence. PLe: Syracuse Journal, 11 February 187. 1. The only available copy of this letter by Douglass indicates that it was sent to the editors of the Washington Tribune and the Washington Capital. R. C. Hewett and George Follansbee owned and edited the Tribune, a short-lived daily newspaper. Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, Bibliography of the District of Columbia: Being a List of Books, Maps, and Newspapers, Including Articles in Magazines and Other Publications to 1898 (Washington, D.C., 1900), 203; George P. Rowell and Co., Geo.  P. Rowell and Co.’s American Newspaper Directory, Containing Accurate Lists of All the Newspapers and Periodicals Published in the United States, Territories, the Dominion of Canada and Newfoundland, 1876 (New York, 1876), 31. 2. Donn Piatt (1819–91) helped found the Washington Capital in 1871 and was its editor through 1879. His efforts in his native Ohio on behalf of the successful Democratic presidential candidate Franklin Pierce in 1852 gained him an appointment as secretary of the American legation in France (1853–55). He served in the Union army during the Civil War, rising to the rank of colonel. After the war, he served a stint in the Ohio legislature and then moved to Washington, where he served as a correspondent for the Cincinnati Commercial. During his decade in the nation’s capital, he exercised tremendous influence as both a lobbyist and an opinion setter. Impelled by his Jacksonian principles of negative government, Piatt used his considerable rhetorical skills to incessantly deride Republican Reconstruction-era policies and politicians—especially Ulysses S. Grant. The historian Mark W. Summers argues that Piatt’s satirical style and unremitting charges of official corruption became the model for most journalists reporting from Washington in the Grant era, and significantly contrib-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 292

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO R. C. HEWETT, FOLLANSBEE, AND PIATT, 11 FEBRUARY 1875

293

uted to the loss of public support for Reconstruction. Rowell, American Newspaper Directory, 31; Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Press Gang: Newspapers and Politics, 1865–1878 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994), 123–42; Peter Bridges, Donn Piatt: Gadfly of the Gilded Age (Kent, Ohio, 2012). 3. The passage quoted by Douglass is the conclusion of a public statement produced by “representative colored men” from southern states who met in Washington, D.C., on 29 January 1875. It was printed in full in the Washington National Republican on 1 February. Consisting of about a dozen leaders of Washington’s black community, including most sitting African American members of Congress and Douglass, the group appealed to congressional Republicans to unite to pass both the Civil Rights Act and the Enforcement Bill pending before them. To justify these bills, the statement recounted many of the atrocities recently perpetrated on African Americans in the South. It also praised President Grant for efforts to maintain order in the region and for pressing Congress for more stringent legislation to stem violence against blacks. Since public sentiment had hardened against Reconstruction by this time, editorial responses to the statement from across the political spectrum tended to ignore its discussion of the plight of African American citizens while roundly condemning its concluding warning that a desperate black population might resort to violence. This was precisely the case with the moderate Republican New York Tribune and the Democratic Washington Capital. Ultimately, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by Grant on 1 March 1875, but the stringent Enforcement Act failed to pass before the Forty-third Congress adjourned on 3 March. Washington National Republican, 28 January, 1, 8, February 1875; New York Tribune, 2 February 1875; Washington Capital, 7 February 1875; Calhoun, Conceiving a New Republic, 69–78. 4. Although the entire Reconstruction era was punctuated by racial violence, the period 1873–75 saw unprecedented campaigns of intimidation, assault, and murder directed against African Americans and their white allies in attempts to overthrow the remaining Republican-controlled state governments in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Here, Douglass lists four recent incidents that captured national attention. His tallies of casualties are not correct, but then, most reports of these events available to him were statistically inaccurate. The White League, having overturned Republican rule in at least eight Louisiana parishes by the late summer of 1874, next attempted to force the resignation of Governor William P. Kellogg and other Republican state officials in New Orleans. On 14 September, eight thousand armed white conspirators routed at least three thousand black militia and five hundred Metropolitan Police, and for three days ruled the capital. (New Orleans, rather than Baton Rouge, served as the state capital during Reconstruction.) Only the commitment of six U.S. Army regiments by President Grant restored the city and the state government to Republican hands. State elections in November were marred by widespread violence. In response, a Republican-controlled returns committee disqualified votes from majority-black parishes that had elected Democrats, thus producing more disputed results. Enraged, Democrats attempted to forcibly take over the lower house when it assembled on 4 January 1875, but armed federal troops thwarted the coup by entering the House chamber and arresting the usurpers. To the shock and dismay of southern Republicans, their Radical friends, and President Grant, protests of these events across the North decried the intervention of federal troops in “local affairs,” but were silent on the depredations of the White Leagues. This clear evidence of the eagerness of the northern populace to disengage itself from Reconstruction convinced Republicans leaders (except for a handful of Radicals) that it was time to end federal efforts to protect the lives and civil rights of African Americans and their white allies in the South, or else they risked losing their voter base in the North. Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 202–03, 204–05; Trefousse, Historical Dictionary of Reconstruction, 137, 142, 255; Foner, Reconstruction, 551, 554. 5. During the spring and summer of 1874, conservative whites throughout Louisiana formed local branches of the White League, a paramilitary organization committed to ending Republican rule and reinstating white supremacy. In late August, armed White Leaguers in Red River Parish, resentful of the influence of Republican state senator Marshall Twitchell, assembled in Coushatta to induce Republican officeholders to resign and leave the state. Despite promises of protection,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 293

5/17/23 2:35 PM

294

DOUGLASS TO R. C. HEWETT, FOLLANSBEE, AND PIATT, 11 FEBRUARY 1875

six cooperative white Republicans—four of whom were relatives of Twitchell—were robbed and murdered on 31  August. An equal or greater number of blacks were killed in the area at the same time. Twitchell won reelection in 1875, but within months was ambushed, maimed for life, and driven from the state. Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 196–208; Trefousse, Historical Dictionary of Reconstruction, 53. 6. The Grant Parish event grew out of the disputed Louisiana gubernatorial election of 1872. William P. Kellogg, the Republican candidate, and John McEnery, his Democratic opponent, each claimed the executive office, assembled their own legislatures, and conducted state functions until President Grant upheld the Kellogg regime in May. This chaos produced catastrophe. When Kellogg appointed replacements for the Democratic sheriff and judge of Grant Parish, an armed body of African Americans entrenched around the courthouse in Colfax to enforce the decision. After a three-week standoff, a white posse attacked on 13 April 1873 and killed indiscriminately. At one point, around 50 blacks were systematically murdered after being induced to lay down their arms with promises of safety. Accounting for the deaths of at least 105 African Americans—some sources claim 200 or more—the Colfax Massacre was the most lethal single day of racial violence in the bloody Reconstruction era. Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 170–71, 189–93; Foner, Reconstruction, 437; Trefousse, Historical Dictionary of Reconstruction, 48. 7. Throughout the summer of 1874, militia groups bearing diverse names formed around Vicksburg, Mississippi, all committed to ending Republican rule and reinstating white supremacy. In December, members of these groups forced the black sheriff, Peter Crosby, and other Republican officials to resign and leave town. Finding neither federal nor state support at Jackson, the state capital, Crosby hastily formed a militia of rural freedmen to march on Vicksburg to enforce his right to stay in office. Heavily outgunned by whites, sixty to eighty African Americans were killed—perhaps as many as two hundred—over several days. In early 1875, President Grant dispatched federal troops to restore Crosby to office, but only temporarily. Over the next year, similar paramilitary groups used violence and intimidation in the countryside and at the polls to remove Crosby and most other Republicans from office throughout the state. Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2014), 356–57; Foner, Reconstruction, 558; Dray, Capitol Men, 190-93. 8. Douglass quotes a line from Robert Burns’s “For A’ That and A’ That.” Smith, Complete Works of Burns, 92. 9. Faneuil Hall was built as a gift to the city of Boston by the wealthy merchant Peter Faneuil (1700–43) in 1742. Primarily intended as a market house, it also contained a spacious second-floor meeting hall where civic gatherings, banquets, and ceremonies were held. During the years of controversy with Great Britain that led to the American Revolution, Faneuil Hall hosted so many important revolutionary meetings that nineteenth-century citizens of Boston proclaimed it the “Cradle of Liberty.” The hall’s symbolism drew political and social activists to use it for meetings and conventions throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Douglass is chiding the hypocrisy of all those who took part in an indignation meeting held at Faneuil Hall on 15 January 1875 to protest the federal government’s actions in Louisiana. Smaller and less enthusiastic than a similar meeting in New York on 11 January—President Grant had delivered a well-received address explaining his administration’s actions on 13 January—the gathering was largely notable for its harsh treatment of Wendell Phillips, who spoke in defense of the government’s continued action to protect the lives and civil rights of African Americans and their white allies in the South. Ironically, Phillips had launched his career as an abolitionist speaker in the hall in 1837. Then, he had persuaded the crowd of the righteousness of his position, but now he was heckled off the stage. New York Tribune, 12, 16 January 1875; New York Times, 14 January 1875; New York Herald, 15, 16 January 1875; Jesse H. Jones, ed., Wendell Phillips’ Last Battle and One of His Greatest Victories, Being the Speech of Wendell Phillips in Faneuil Hall on the Louisiana Difficulties (Boston, 1897); Stewart, Wendell Phillips, 308–10; Foner, Reconstruction, 554; “Faneuil Hall,” nps.gov.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 294

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO R. C. HEWETT, FOLLANSBEE, AND PIATT, 11 FEBRUARY 1875

295

10. The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to as the Cooper Institute in the nineteenth century, was founded as a school for workingmen and workingwomen by the wealthy industrialist Peter Cooper (1791–1883) in New York City in 1859. The institution quickly gained a national reputation for the free public access to its Great Hall, which hosted scientific courses, cultural lectures, and significant addresses by notable personalities on important social and political issues. Here, Douglass is sharply rebuking the leaders of a mass meeting held at the Great Hall on 11 January 1875 to express indignation over the intrusion of federal troops into the Louisiana legislature to halt a Democratic coup on 4 January. Throughout the protracted proceedings, “this act of military despotism” was repeatedly denounced as a harbinger of the permanent destruction of federalism, the constitutional balance between state and national authority. Little mention was made of the violent outrages perpetrated against Louisiana Republicans over recent months, or of the lawlessness inherent in the attempted Democratic takeover of the legislature. Perhaps most galling to Douglass was the participation of several prominent Republicans in the largely Democratic event. William Cullen Bryant, the nationally recognized poet, longtime editor of the New York Evening Post, and renowned abolitionist and social egalitarian, played a major role in calling and organizing the indignation meeting and delivered one of its key addresses. This was a cruel irony for Radical Republicans like Douglass, for it was Bryant who had invited Abraham Lincoln to Cooper Union in February 1860 and introduced him, whereupon he delivered the antislavery speech that propelled him to the presidency. Despite Douglass’s assertions, in the closing remarks of this editorial, of continued confidence in the Republican party, he had to know that the defection of progressives like Bryant from the party’s Reconstruction efforts foreshadowed their impending collapse. New York Times, 8, 9, 11, 12 January 1875; Brooks D. Simpson, The Reconstruction Presidents (Lawrence, Kans., 1998), 176–77; “Cooper Union, History,” cooper.edu; William Cullen Bryant, “Mr. Lincoln and New York,” mrlincolnandnewyork.org. 11. The White League was a terrorist organization in Louisiana dedicated to the overthrow of Republican rule and the reestablishment of white supremacy. It was founded in Opelousas in April 1874 after a call for the formation of a “white man’s party” had swept newspapers around the state the previous month. During the summer, dozens of branches formed throughout the state, drawing members from all segments of the white population. Over the next two years, the White Leagues terrorized and murdered African Americans and white Republican officials and committed voting fraud in order to bring most parishes under Democratic control. When the state government was fully back in the hands of Democrats in 1877, the organization disbanded, its mission accomplished. Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 193–94; Foner, Reconstruction, 550; Trefousse, Historical Dictionary of Reconstruction, 255; Oscar H. Lestage, Jr., “The White League in Louisiana and Its Participation in Reconstruction Riots,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 18: 615–95 (July 1935). 12. Douglass is defending the recent actions of President Ulysses S. Grant to protect the lives of southern Republicans and sustain the policy of southern Reconstruction. In response to escalating violence perpetrated by Democratic paramilitary groups on African Americans and white Republicans through the summer and fall of 1874, Grant committed additional bodies of federal troops to restore order and preserve Republican regimes in Mississippi and Louisiana. In his Annual Address in December 1874, Grant defended his actions and renewed his commitment to protect the rights of African Americans. He also called on Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act and the accompanying Enforcement Bill pending before it. When near hysteria swept the North in response to federal intervention to thwart a Democratic coup in the Louisiana legislature, Grant issued a strong message to the Senate on 13 January 1875, in which he clearly articulated the continuing need for federal action to protect the rights of all men in the South. Although it was certainly heartening to Radicals like Douglass, Grant’s robust support for Reconstruction in 1874–75 proved too little, too late, since all southern states fell into Democratic hands after the fall elections of 1876. In truth, Grant lacked a consistent Reconstruction policy toward the South throughout his eight years in office, but not because of apathy or incompetence. With the best of intentions, he simultaneously sought to achieve

Y8204-Douglass.indb 295

5/17/23 2:35 PM

296

DOUGLASS TO OLIVER OTIS HOWARD, 18 FEBRUARY 1875

irreconcilable goals: to protect black civil and political rights and also to conciliate white southerners. James D. Richardson, ed., Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Washington, D.C., 1903), 7:296–99, 305–14; Simpson, Reconstruction Presidents, 135, 161–62, 166, 170–79; Calhoun, Presidency of Grant, 466–67, 470–73. 13. Philip Henry Sheridan (1831–1888) was a career U.S. Army officer and a significant Union general in the Civil War. A respected and trusted subordinate of Ulysses Grant during the war, after the conflict Sheridan was handpicked by Grant for several important assignments, including acting as military governor of the Fifth Military District (Texas and Louisiana) and pacifying the Plains Indians. By January 1875, Grant was equally enraged by the violence of the White Leagues and the graft and incompetence of Louisiana’s Republican officials, and so he sent Sheridan to New Orleans to take command of the Department of the Gulf and be his eyes and ears in the troubled region. Sheridan arrived on the night of 4 January, the very day when Colonel Philippe Régis de Trobriand had used federal troops to stop the Democratic seizure of the legislature. Hearing regular threats to kill Republican officials, Sheridan sensed New Orleans was on the verge of open rebellion. In several telegraphed reports to Secretary of War William Belknap, Sheridan insisted that order could be easily restored if the president or Congress would declare the leaders of the White League to be “banditti,” and thus subject to arrest by soldiers and trial by military courts. Belknap did not endorse this proposal, but assured Sheridan that he had the support of Grant and the cabinet. Accounts of this exchange provoked massive protest meetings across the North. Critics charged that Sheridan’s “banditti” reference demonstrated the military’s readiness to overthrow civilian rule and impose military despotism. Calls for Grant to officially censure Sheridan were widespread, but the president adamantly refused to rebuke his protégé. Summers, Ordeal of the Reunion, 358–61; Calhoun, Presidency of Grant, 24, 25, 27, 28, 468–73, 501; William L. Richter, “General Phil Sheridan, the Historians, and Reconstruction,” Civil War History, 33: 131–54 (June 1987).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO OLIVER OTIS HOWARD Washington[,] D.C. 18 February 1875.

Gen[era]l O. O. Howard: My dear sir— I am obliged by your two notes.1 They came here in my absence and hence the delay in answering—I cannot tell by whom the attacks upon you in connection with the Freedmen’s Bank are inspired.2 I do not believe that any one of the commission is at all unfriendly to you.3 I have however, no hesitation in saying to you that the 60 or 70 thousand depositors who were induced to put their hard earnings in the Freedman’s Bank in the belief that it was wisely and honestly managed, deeply regret their confidence and that I am one of their number. I never was more imposed upon by any concern in my life. It is bad enough to plunder the rich, it is worse to plunder the poor—and there is [no] disguising the fact that the poor have been swindled by this Bank and that too under the disguise of Christian philanthropy. The whole thing is a terrible blow to confidence in men in whatever position and under whatever name.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 296

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO DANIEL C. FORNEY, 4 MARCH 1875

297

Now, my dear General, take nothing of this to yourself—I believe you have been as much imposed upon as any of us. The men who managed that Bank and plunged it into its present wretched condition had your confidence and may have it yet—but I don’t believe in any of them living or dead— Yours Very truly FREDK DOUGLASS ALS: O. O. Howard Manuscripts, MeB. 1. Only one of these letters has been located. Howard wrote to Douglass on 15 January 1875, reporting that an extract from a New York World article in the Chicago Tribune implicated Howard in fraud during his management of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Oliver Otis Howard to Douglass, 15 January 1875, O. O. Howard Manuscripts, MeB. 2. Howard had a history of questionable activity in connection with the Freedmen’s Bank. Long before 1875, he had been charged in two bank scandals, leading to a new round of accusations when Douglass was head of the bank. In 1870, Howard was accused of misappropriating governmental funds deposited at the bank, and in 1874 he was accused of the misuse of bounty-fund money. Investigations exonerated Howard of both charges, though evidence collected at the time showed that some of his chief lieutenants were involved in very suspicious investments. These past blots on Howard’s record led to renewed questioning of his integrity regarding the financial instability that caused the collapse of the Freedman’s Bank. Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy and Fraud, 163, 188; McFeely, Yankee Stepfather, 322–37. 3. Charges of corruption lodged against Howard stemmed mainly from his connections with the brothers Henry D. Cooke, the District of Columbia’s territorial governor, and the financier Jay Cooke, in the latter’s attempt to sell bonds for his Northern Pacific railroad. Howard had solicited wealthy supporters of freedmen’s aid efforts to purchase bonds offered by Jay Cooke, who had promised, in return, to make a significant contribution to Howard’s fund-raising for the YMCA. The Cookes had also gotten the Freedmen’s Bank to make overly generous loans to building projects in the District and to purchase Northern Pacific bonds. When the overextended Jay Cooke & Company was forced into bankruptcy, it precipitated a national financial panic. The Freedmen’s Bank was one of the principal victims of that crash. Walter L. Fleming, The Freedmen’s Savings Bank (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1927), 85, 120–21; McFeely, Yankee Stepfather, 525–27.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO DANIEL C. FORNEY1 [n.p. 4 March 1875.]

TO THE E DITOR OF THE WASHINGTON C HRONICLE :—2 Sir:— You have already allowed me liberal space in your columns to speak in the interest of my people, for which I thank you sincerely. You will now increase my debt and my sense of obligation by allowing me space for a few words more, especially with reference to the pending civil rights bill.3 While I regard the Senate bill as incomparably better than the one

Y8204-Douglass.indb 297

5/17/23 2:35 PM

298

DOUGLASS TO DANIEL C. FORNEY, 4 MARCH 1875

passed by the House, it does seem to me of the utmost importance that one or the other of these bills shall be immediately passed. There are urgent reasons for this, both in the hard lot of the colored people in the South, and in the necessities of the Republican party itself. If that bill is passed and becomes the law of the land the country will have its doubts removed as to the vitality and soundness of the Republican party. It will show that its leaders are still in earnest; that they still believe in the great principle of freedom and equality asserted in the Declaration of Independence, and reasserted in the amended constitution of the country, and that, sink or swim, fall or flourish, they mean to stand by that principle, and by every just inference from it. at this moment of gloom, when the old disloyal element of the country seems steadily rising to power, and all revolutionary elements are rampant, and apostates from our ranks are grinning in the faces, and squeezing the hands of men who once hated, but now only despise them, the passing of this bill would be such a manifestation of our courage and fidelity as would greatly redound to the credit of the Republican party, and help to check the lawless spirit of the South. My people are killed there because they are supposed to have been, or are about to be abandoned by the Republican party. We need the measure, not so much for its literal execution as for its moral effect. we want it because it is right and because, now that it has been debated for years, if it shall be defeated our condition as a class will be rendered worse than it would have been had no attempts been made to pass it. I counsel nothing, however, inconsistent with the success of the Republican party in urging this bill, but I see success in the line of its principles, and nowhere else. It has nothing to gain by any deviation or leaning toward reaction. That position has already been conspicuously and permanently taken by a party from which it cannot be wrested. Our strength is in keeping on our own ground. Any concession to the prejudices born of slavery is folly and weakness of the worst kind. It exposes the party, with some show of truth, to one of the most destructive charges which can be brought against it, and that is insincer-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 298

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO DANIEL C. FORNEY, 4 MARCH 1875

299

ity, cowardice and hypocrisy. The party can far better take the odium of passing the bill than be lashed and despised for its lack of manliness—its want of courage in carrying out its convictions. In my judgment the future success of the Republican party depends upon no three things more than these: the civil rights bill, giving President Grant all needful power to keep the peace of the South, and seating P. B. S. Pinchback 4 in the Senate upon his credentials. The fundamental, perpetual and vital objection to the passing of the civil rights bill is its supposed tendency to promote social equality between the white and colored people of this country. This, if I understand it, is what gives such serious trouble to Senators Saulsbury,5 Bayard,6 Gordon,7 Merrimon 8 and others from the late slave States. in replying to these gentlemen I have no cowardly disclaimers against social equality to make, for I know what social equality is. I have rather a favorable opinion of it. Having associated pretty freely with white persons, both at home and abroad, I have acquired a taste for it, and would be the last to shrink from any of its consequences. But what do these gentlemen mean by social equality? That is the question. When we know this we can tell whether their fears are well or ill founded, and whether this bill favors what they so earnestly deprecate or not. Under the old slave system, with which these gentleman are well acquainted, and under which I was born, and, as we used to say, “fotched up,” 9 we had a great deal of “society” with white people, but not the least bit of “equality.” It was one-sided “society.” Voluntary on one side and involuntary on the other. There was nothing mutual about it. If my old master at any time wanted my company, whether to ride, to walk, or to sit down with him, he had not to address me a respectful and polite invitation to do so. He had but to command—my part was to obey. Good as his society was i often found it a great bore and would have gladly separated myself from it, but the old man would insist upon my staying with him. I saw all around me much pleasanter society than his, but even that society shrunk from me when then saw me in company with the “old man.” A deeper shade is given to this inequal society when we look a little further into the relations of its members. A state of facts existed in this regard which should tinge with shame these

Y8204-Douglass.indb 299

5/17/23 2:35 PM

300

DOUGLASS TO DANIEL C. FORNEY, 4 MARCH 1875

fighters against social equality. Two hundred years ago the people of this country were, on the one side, white, and on the other side black. There was no intermediate race or color in the country. But how stands the case to-day? You are confronted by more than a million of people who are neither white nor black.10 under what social relations was this result brought about? I charge it as the direct result of the social inequality which for two centuries prevailed in the South. The black woman of the South was subject to the will of her master, and also subject to all those who belonged to the master class—for the slave was not only slave to her master, but the slave of all the white members of society. Against this sort of society the voice of no Southern Senator has been raised. Their learning, their wit, and their eloquence have all been expended against what they call social equality. In their opposition to the Civil Rights bill they have either failed to comprehend it or have grossly perverted its meaning and effect. I should like to ask those men who oppose this bill on the ground that it tends to social equality, what they mean by social equality? What is it composed of? How is it defined? What conditions are essential to its existence? Where does it begin? Where does it end? What are the laws by which it is regulated? As the matter stands now they make social equality something quite mysterious, not to say terrible and awful. Perhaps the best way to find out what social equality is, will be to inquire and ascertain, if possible, what it is not. Let us now go to the outer circle and travel toward the center, and we may thereby be able to solve this mystery of social equality. Is it living in the same world, breathing the same air, and feeling the genial rays of the same sun? Then the Bushman and Hottentot of Africa11 is socially the equal of the best society in London and Paris. Well, if it is not living in the same world then what is it? Is it living on the same continent, in the same country, in the same state, the same city? It is evident that neither of these conditions embrace the idea of social equality; for a man may live in the same town and yet have no social fellowship with thousands of his equal fellow townsmen. But let us come a little nearer. Does living on the same street, walking on

Y8204-Douglass.indb 300

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO DANIEL C. FORNEY, 4 MARCH 1875

301

the same sidewalk, riding on the same horse car, standing upon the same deck, or sleeping under the same roof, comprehend what is involved in the idea of social equality? I suppose nobody with any brains will contend that they do. a man may sit at my side in a theater or at the dinner table of a hotel, and yet be as far above or below me socially as heaven is above the earth. Well, what then is social equality? for it is evident that we have not yet found it by this negative method. But once more:—Is it voting at the same ballot-box, drinking water from the same stream, seated in the same Senate chamber, of having one’s name on the same roll? No, this cannot be, for it entirely excludes the idea of kindred character and disposition, and involves the absurdity that Senator Norwood,12 with his stale jokes and coarse witticisms at the expense of a race which has no representative on the floor of the Senate to reply to him, is socially the equal of such gentlemen as Senators Frelinghuysen,13 Boutwell,14 Edwards,15 Sherman,16 Conkling,17 Thurman18 and others. I have traveled in an English stagecoach for days together without ever exchanging a word with the passenger next to me. When a slave I sat side by side by my mistress, and master in their carriage, and yet social equality did not exist. Every day I am spoken to here in this capital by gentlemen who do not recognize me as socially their equal. A great many things are essential to social equality. The hod-carrier and the millionaire are equal as to rights in the street, and equal as to proprietorship when in their homes, but neither has the right to enter the doors of the other without that other’s invitation or consent. Social equality involves a sacred right of choice. The right of choice is not less precious to the humble and poor than the high and rich. As a colored man I ask only such protection by the law as is freely granted to the people of all other colors. I ask that my color shall no longer be treated as a crime, and that the manhood of my race may no longer be insulted by the denial of rights which are freely accorded to every other race and nationality. I ask that loyal men who assisted in saving the country shall not be denied civil rights in deference to the malign sentiments of defeated rebels and traitors who sought to destroy the country. To those who pretend to think me indifferent or inactive in regard to the civil rights bill I have only to say that I have written and spoken as

Y8204-Douglass.indb 301

5/17/23 2:35 PM

302

DOUGLASS TO DANIEL C. FORNEY, 4 MARCH 1875

much in its favor as themselves. A hundred towns and cities in this country can bear witness to the truth of this statement. I have no disposition to question the efficiency of those who have merely hung about the capitol and committee rooms of Congress. They have doubtless done well within their sphere, and I thank them for all they have done, but when they turn upon me and charge me as failing in my duty they display neither modesty, charity nor justice. FREDERICK DOUGLASS. PLSr: Syracuse Journal, 4 Marc 1875. 1. D. C. (Daniel Carpenter) Forney (1827–91) was the publisher and editor of the Washington Chronicle in 1875. Forney was the younger cousin and longtime associate of the ambitious Pennsylvania politico John W. Forney, who established the Chronicle in 1861 as a virtual organ for the Lincoln administration. Throughout the period of the Forney family’s editorial control (1861–81), the Chronicle was staunchly Republican and generally supported legislation and governmental action aimed at expanding civil rights for blacks. Washington Evening Star, 27 June 1891; Rowell, American Newspaper Directory, 30; James Thompson Sheep, “John W. Forney: Stormy Petrel of American Journalism” (Ph. D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1959), 65; Ford Risley, “The President’s Editor: John W. Forney of the Press and Morning Chronicle,” American Journalism, 26:63–85 (2009). 2. A copy of Douglass’s letter in the Washington Chronicle could not be located. The text reproduced here is from the Syracuse Journal. It is not known whether the Chronicle or the Journal initiated the practice of excerpting portions of Douglass’s letter text to serve as subheadings in the newspaper article. 3. Beginning in May 1870, Massachusetts Republican senator Charles Sumner repeatedly and unsuccessfully sponsored a civil rights bill that would outlaw racial discrimination in transportation carriers, places of public amusement and accommodation, public schools, and juries, as well as in churches, cemeteries, and benevolent institutions incorporated by law. Sumner’s death in March 1874 motivated Republican senators to pass his bill—amended to leave out churches, cemeteries, and benevolent institutions—on 23 May 1874, too late for passage by the House of Representatives before its summer recess. After congressional elections in the fall of 1874 returned a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives for the first time since 1860, Radical Republicans in the House, led by Benjamin F. Butler, worked feverishly that winter to pass a civil rights law before relinquishing control that spring. Overcoming severe Democratic obstructionism, as well as resistance from moderates in their own party, House Republicans passed a bill on 5 February that was identical to the Senate’s, except it eliminated all mention of schools. Naturally, all those who believed that integrated public schools would significantly undermine popular racism favored the Senate’s version. Nevertheless, Senate Republicans, recognizing that the House version was the best that could be obtained, approved it on 27 February. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was signed by President Ulysses S. Grant on 1 March 1875. Calhoun, Conceiving a New Republic, 36–39, 52–54, 69–72, 78; “Black Americans in Congress, Legislative Interests,” history.house.gov. 4. Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback was a colorful and controversial black politician whose ambitions for national office were destroyed by his ties to the imbroglio known as the Louisiana question. The freeborn son of a Georgia planter and his manumitted mulatto mistress, Pinchback was one of many Republicans, both white and black, to mix officeholding and business speculation in Louisiana’s notoriously corrupt post–Civil War political environment. Elected to the state senate in 1867, he was chosen by that body in 1871 and 1872 to fill out terms as lieutenant governor and governor when those offices were vacated because of death and impeachment. When Pinchback ran for Congress, he aligned himself with the William P. Kellogg faction in the violence-marred and disputed

Y8204-Douglass.indb 302

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO DANIEL C. FORNEY, 4 MARCH 1875

303

state and congressional elections of 1872, commonly known as the Louisiana question to the multiple congressional committees that attempted to sort them out. Before Pinchback’s election to Congress was resolved, he was elected by the state legislature to represent Louisiana in the U.S. Senate in January 1873. Eventually granted a seat in the House, he waived it, seeking approval of his senatorial election. The combined efforts of hostile Democrats and disgruntled Republicans delayed the Senate’s voting upon his seating until 1876, whereupon he was rejected. Although racism certainly played an outsized role, Pinchback’s shady reputation, his claims to both a House and a Senate seat, the sordid details of the Louisiana question, and the Republicans’ growing weariness with southern Reconstruction all contributed to his rebuff by the Senate. Eric Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders during Reconstruction, rev. ed. (Baton Rouge, La., 1996), 171–72; Nicholas Patler, “The Startling Career of P. B. S. Pinchback: A Whirlwind Crusade to Bring Equality to Reconstructed Louisiana,” in Lynch, Before Obama, 1:211–33; Agnes S. Grosz, “The Political Career of Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 27:527–612 (1944); George Rable, “Republican Albatross: The Louisiana Question, National Politics, and the Failure of Reconstruction,” Louisiana History, 23:109–30 (Spring 1982). 5. A member of a politically prominent Delaware family, Willard Saulsbury, Sr. (1820–92) practiced law before being elected state attorney general (1850–55) and then U.S. senator (1859–71) as a Democrat. He returned to the practice of the law before holding the post of state chancellor from 1873 until his death. During the Civil War, Saulsbury was a vocal critic of the Lincoln administration, especially the president’s suspension of habeas corpus. BDUSC (online). 6. Thomas Francis Bayard, Sr. (1828–98) served three terms as a U.S. senator from Delaware (1869–85). His father, James A. Bayard, Jr. (1799–1880), had served in the Senate (1851–64), and as a Peace Democrat he contested nearly every action of the Lincoln administration and the Republican Congress during the Civil War. Likewise a Peace Democrat, the younger Bayard subsequently challenged every Republican executive or legislative effort to reconstruct the South, and especially denounced the bill that became the Civil Rights Act of 1875. So forceful and consistent was Bayard’s defense of the South that one admiring correspondent labeled him an “ex-Confederate.” Bayard later served as secretary of state under Grover Cleveland (1885–89) and as ambassador to the United Kingdom (1893–97). His son, Thomas F. Bayard, Jr. (1868–1942), served as U.S. senator from Delaware from 1922 to 1929. Charles Callan Tansill, The Congressional Career of Thomas Francis Bayard, 1869–1885 (Washington, D.C., 1946), 1–101; Albert V. House, Jr., “Northern Congressional Democrats as Defenders of the South During Reconstruction,” JSH, 6:46–71 (February 1940); BDUSC (online). 7. John Brown Gordon (1832–1904) served as a U.S. senator from Georgia from 1873 to 1880, and again from 1891 to 1897. The son of a Georgia planter, Gordon had a stellar military career in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, rising from captain to major general in the course of three years. After the war, Gordon was heavily rumored to have headed the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia. He strenuously denied this charge, or even of having any knowledge of the Klan, before a congressional investigating committee in 1871, although he acknowledged temporary membership in a secret “peace police” organization. Most historians, even fawning biographers, believe that he played a greater role in the Klan than he publicly allowed. In the Senate, he was more moderate in speech and tone than most southern Democrats, yet he always insisted that northern carpetbaggers and Radical Republican Reconstruction policies were the primary source of social unrest in the South. After northern public opinion had generally repudiated Reconstruction by the 1890s, Gordon became a popular national figure as an ambassador of sectional reconciliation and national unity. These themes are central in his best-selling book Reminiscences of the Civil War (1903), which influenced Americans’ views of the Civil War and Reconstruction far into the twentieth century. U.S. Congress, Testimony Taken by the Joint Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States: Georgia, 1:308–10, 320–26 (Washington, D.C., 1872); Allan P. Tankersley, John B. Gordon: A Study in Gallantry (Atlanta, 1955), 249–62; Ralph Lowell Eckert, John Brown Gordon: Soldier, Southerner, American (Baton Rouge, La., 1989), 145–49; Foner, Reconstruction, 433.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 303

5/17/23 2:35 PM

304

DOUGLASS TO DANIEL C. FORNEY, 4 MARCH 1875

8. Augustus Summerfield Merrimon (1830–92) was a significant lawyer, jurist, and Democratic politician in North Carolina during the Reconstruction era. A native of Asheville, Merrimon held state legislative and judicial positions in western North Carolina before and during the Civil War. In the late 1860s, his reputation acquired a permanent stain when he amassed wealth and influence by providing legal services to a group of buccaneering railroad promoters led by Milton S. Littlefield and George W. Swepson. Although he lost a close gubernatorial election in the fall of 1872, he was immediately elected U.S. senator and began his term in March 1873. In the Senate, he consistently banded together with other southern Democrats to oppose all Reconstruction policies. After losing to Zebulon Vance in the battle to control the state’s Democratic party, Merrimon returned to law and the bench, serving as an associate justice (1883–89) and then chief justice (1889–92) of the North Carolina Supreme Court. Foner, Reconstruction, 386–87; Charles L. Price, “The Railroad Schemes of George W. Swepson,” East Carolina Publications in History, 1:32–50 (1964); BDUSC (online). 9. “Fotched up” or “fetched (fotched) up” meant “raised” or “brought up.” The phrase possibly was of Native American origin. “A Dialect Dictionary of Lumbee English,” learnnc.org. 10. It is not clear where Douglass got his information, but the Ninth U.S. Census reported 4,295,960 blacks and 584,049 mulattos, for a total of 4,880,009 non-white residents on June 1, 1870. It should be noted that the categories “black” and “mulatto” were very fluid in all censuses of this period, since their individual determination was left up to local census marshals. Ninth Census of the United States, Vol. 1: The Statistics of the Population of the United States, Embracing the Tables of Race, Nationality, Sex, Selected Ages, and Occupations, (Washington, D.C., 1872), 5, 608. 11. “Bushman” and “Hottentot” were terms applied to the indigenous San and Khoekhoen (also Khoikhoi) peoples of the South African Cape by the Dutch settlers who colonized the region in the seventeenth century. The two groups were closely related in many ways, yet because of their separate historical development, the San remained hunter-gatherers and the Khoekhoen were herders. Europeans considered the appearance and lifestyles of these groups to be so strange and primitive that by the nineteenth century the terms “Bushmen” and “Hottentot” were well-established shorthand references for ignorance, barbarity, and cultural inferiority. That is precisely the way in which Douglass is using the terms here. Note that Douglass is writing before the ascendency of the theory of cultural relevancy, that is, the concept of considering the beliefs, values, and practices of a culture from the viewpoint of that culture. In the twenty-first century, both “Bushman” and “Hottentot” are considered offensive terms. Alan Mountain, The First People of the Cape: A Look at Their History and the Impact of Colonialism on the Cape’s Indigenous People (Claremont, South Africa, 2003), 23–24; Linda E. Merians, Envisioning the Worst: Representations of “Hottentots” in Early-Modern England (Newark, Del., 2001), 13–31. 12. Thomas Manson Norwood (1830–1913) was a lawyer and politician whose long professional career was based in Savannah, Georgia. He was a Democrat who served in the Georgia House of Representatives (1851–62), the U.S. Senate (1871–77), and the U.S. House of Representatives (1885– 89). In the Senate, Norwood’s voice was perhaps the loudest attacking Charles Sumner’s civil rights bill—the genesis of the Civil Rights Act of 1875—on the grounds that it attempted to legislate “social equality” and would thereby legalize miscegenation. In fact, some Republicans charged that the term “social equality” was nothing more than a lightly veiled reference to miscegenation, deliberately chosen to arouse public sentiment against the bill. Those supporting the law countered by arguing for a distinction between civil and social equality, as Douglass does here. In contrast to his Georgia colleague John B. Gordon, Norwood was notorious for his sarcasm, vituperation, and race-baiting, as is noted by Douglass. In his later years, which corresponded with the triumph of Jim Crow throughout the South, Norwood displayed his undeniable wit and erudition in a wide range of articles and books encompassing an impressive array of genres. Their defining characteristic, according to William H. Bragg, was “a racism extreme even for his time and place.” William Harris Bragg, “The Junius of Georgia Redemption: Thomas M. Norwood and the ‘Nemesis’ Letters,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 77:86–122 (Spring 1993); Steven A. Bank, “Anti-Miscegenation Laws and the Dilemma of

Y8204-Douglass.indb 304

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO DANIEL C. FORNEY, 4 MARCH 1875

305

Symmetry: The Understanding of Equality in the Civil Rights Act of 1875,” University of Chicago Law School Roundtable, 2:303–44 (1995); BDUSC (online). 13. Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen. 14. George Sewall Boutwell. 15. Probably George Franklin Edmunds (1828–1919), a long-serving Republican U.S. senator from Vermont whose legacy is underappreciated. After serving almost a decade in the Vermont House and Senate, Edmunds was sent repeatedly by those bodies to the U.S. Senate from 1866 until his resignation in 1891. He is largely remembered as the architect and manager of the electoral commission that decided the outcome of the presidential election of 1876, and thus is credited by some with saving the nation from widespread bloodshed. Otherwise he is considered a rather colorless member of the moderate Half-Breed faction of the Republican party, which equally emphasized social harmony and economic growth. Largely forgotten is his loyal backing of the Radical Republican agenda during his first ten years in the Senate, as well as his consistent support, during his entire Senate career, for the use of federal power to protect the civil rights of African Americans. Since Edmunds’s time in the Senate perfectly overlapped with the rise and fall of southern Reconstruction—from the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to the defeat of the Lodge Federal Elections Bill in 1891—he might be considered the steadiest congressional defender of black civil rights throughout this crucial quarter century. George F. Edmunds, Senator from Louisiana: Speech of Hon. George F. Edmunds, of Vermont, in the United States Senate, March 16, 1875 (Washington, D.C., 1875); Calhoun, Conceiving a New Republic, 28–29, 31, 37, 64, 66, 78, 161, 197, 258–59; Richard E. Welch, Jr., “George Edmunds of Vermont: Republican Half-Breed,” Vermont History, 36:64–73 (Spring 1968); Norbert Kuntz, “Edmunds’ Contrivance: Senator George Edmunds of Vermont and the Electoral Compromise of 1877,” Vermont History, 38:305–15 (Autumn 1970); BDUSC (online). 16. A younger brother of the Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman, John Sherman (1823–1900) worked as a surveyor before commencing the practice of law at the age of twenty-one. A founder of Ohio’s Republican party, he served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from the Cleveland district (1855–61). In 1861 the Ohio legislature elected Sherman to the U.S. Senate, where he stayed until 1897, except for four years as Rutherford B. Hayes’s secretary of the treasury. The war turned Sherman from a proponent of gradual emancipation into a strong abolitionist and critic of Lincoln’s even slower evolution. In 1864 he was a public supporter of the efforts to replace Lincoln as the Republican presidential nominee with Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase. A highly pragmatic politician, he usually sought the middle ground on controversial Reconstruction and economic issues. Sherman’s efforts to obtain the Republican presidential nomination in 1880, 1884, and 1888 proved futile. He served as William B. McKinley’s secretary of state but resigned in 1900 because of his antiexpansionist sentiments. John Sherman, Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1895); Sobel, U.S. Executive Branch, 328; NCAB, 3:198–201. 17. Roscoe Conkling (1829–88), Republican politician, was born in Albany, New York. He trained for the law in Utica, was admitted to the bar in 1850, and served as district attorney for Oneida County from 1850 until he was elected mayor of Utica in 1858. The following year he entered the U.S. House of Representatives, serving until an 1862 defeat, but returning in 1865 for one term. Serving in the Senate from 1867 until 1881, Conkling ardently advocated Ulysses Grant’s Reconstruction policies. A champion of the political spoils system, Conkling opposed the civil service reforms advocated by Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and James A. Garfield. During Garfield’s administration Conkling and a colleague, Thomas C. Platt, resigned from the Senate to protest Garfield’s appointment of a former Liberal Republican to a key patronage job in the New York City customhouse. Platt and Conkling were chagrined when they lost their anticipated reelections. Conkling resumed his law practice in New York City. David M. Jordan, Roscoe Conkling of New York: Voice in the Senate (Ithaca, N.Y., 1971); Donald B. Chidsey, A Gentleman from New York: A Life of Roscoe Conkling (New Haven, Conn., 1935); ACAB, 1:706–07.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 305

5/17/23 2:35 PM

306

P. B. S. PINCHBACK TO DOUGLASS, 20 APRIL 1875

18. Allen Granberry Thurman (1813–95) was a conservative Democratic lawyer, politician, and jurist from Ohio who was widely respected for his ability to balance partisanship with the courteous treatment of his opponents. He was introduced to the practice of law and Jacksonian politics by his uncle, William Allen, a long-term influence on Thurman and Ohio’s Democratic party. Thurman served as a U.S. representative (1845–47) and as both an associate and chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court (1852–56). During the Civil War he positioned himself as a War Democrat highly critical of the Lincoln administration. In 1867 he lost the Ohio governor’s race to Rutherford B. Hayes by a slim margin. His conduct during this campaign largely eliminated the influence of the Copperhead Clement L. Vallandigham from the state party, and a grateful Democratic-controlled legislature elected him to two terms in the U.S. Senate (1869–81). Throughout his tenure in the Senate, Thurman mercilessly attacked Republican Reconstruction policies but usually in a manner that highlighted legal reasoning and downplayed emotion. As a result, he established close friendships with Republicans with whom he disagreed vehemently upon policy, most notably George F. Edmunds. It seems clear that Thurman’s reputation for civility is the reason that Douglass placed him on a list otherwise full of Republicans. Allen G. Thurman, Bayonet-government in Louisiana: Speech of Hon. A. G. Thurman, Ohio, in the United States Senate, January 27, 1875 (Washington, D.C., 1875); House, “Northern Congressional Democrats,” 50, 53, 55; Albert V. House, “Internal Conflict in Key States in the Democratic Convention of 1880,” Pennsylvania History, 27:188–216 (April 1960); BDUSC (online).

P. B. S. PINCHBACK TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS New Orleans, [La.] 20 Ap[ri]l 1875.

My dear Mr Douglass The “compromise” which is nothing more nor less than a further unloading of the Negro has been completed and the State is virtually in the hands of our enemies—what they have failed to obtain by the “compromise” they will soon take or have given them by our cowardly white Republicans to serve their personal safety—and I am again full of apprehensions for our people in this state.1 Oh God how I wish I had your knowledge and ability to grapple with the difficulties I see on every hand besetting us in this God forsaken section of our country. Our people stand so much in need of some great mind to guide them in this crisis of our history. It is plainly evident that the white Republican has become alarmed at the exhibition of manhood manifested by our people to claiming a fair share of representation in high places and are determined to rule or ruin him. I state it as my firm belief that White republicans here would infinitely prefer to see the meanest democrat in the state in the u.s. senate than myself or any other independent colored man, for without any necessity they deliberately gave away the majority on joint ballot in the assembly which renders it impossible for any colored man to be elected in case the

Y8204-Douglass.indb 306

5/17/23 2:35 PM

P. B. S. PINCHBACK TO DOUGLASS, 20 APRIL 1875

307

Senate rejects my claim.2 At last I am sure of one thing none of the scoundrels that have pursued me so relentlessly can profit by my discomfiture for as sure as we live a democrat will come from this state if I am rejected. I opposed the recent sell out down here but the pressure was too great they had too many letters from prominent men of the party north & west Sheridan threatening to remove the troops & [illegible] asserting that the President demanded it our poor people were [illegible]. What a commentary upon our best government ever instituted by man when the President of the Republic & the General of the armies are employed in forcing the representatives of the people to leave their places in the Legislature. This most extraordinary spectacle was witnessed here. When I think how nobly you stood by me in my trying struggle last winter when all hope seemed gone I am encouraged to ask your advice now what course would you pursue were you in my place rest easy & quiet until after Dec or make an alliance here for soon I can make my own terms now with our white people. Write soon my dear Sir for I am in great perplexity and would not for the world do anything that would [illegible] against our people. Present my kind regards to your family from myself & family & believe me Your most humble and devoted friend PINCHBACK ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 766–68L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. The period of Reconstruction in Louisiana was perhaps the most tumultuous and violent of that in any of the former Confederate states. With White League groups harassing the black population, especially near elections, and even overthrowing the governments in numerous parishes, by 1875 many Louisianans were seeking peace by any means necessary. In April of that year, Governor William Pitt Kellogg convened an extra session of the state legislature for the purpose of settling the matter of “political adjustment.” Most black congressmen opposed this extra session because it would cause “nine black representatives and one black senator to lose their seats.” Pinchback, who was returning home from Washington, D.C., after again pleading his case to be allowed to take his disputed U.S. Senate seat, remarked that such an “adjustment” would “denationalize” Louisiana. But persuaded that such an adjustment, namely, the reduction of black representation, would bring peace to Louisiana, many Republicans, including President Grant, backed the compromise in favor of a stabler Louisiana. Vincent, Black Legislators in Louisiana, 201–02; Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 170–72; 201–05; Grosz, “Political Career of Pinchback,” 27:599–600. 2. General Philip Sheridan ran against P. B. S. Pinchback for the House of Representatives seat in 1873. Concurrently, Pinchback ran for a Senate seat from Louisiana. On 8 June 1873, Sheridan and Pinchback appeared before the House to argue their claims to the House seat. Sheridan attacked Pinchback’s decision to seek a seat in both the House and the Senate; Pinchback rejoined that his decision was in fact a patriotic act. The House resolved that neither man had an adequate claim to the seat and that neither would be admitted. In February 1874 the House Committee on

Y8204-Douglass.indb 307

5/17/23 2:35 PM

308

DOUGLASS TO P. B. S. PINCHBACK, 25 APRIL 1875

Elections again took up the issue, and in a vote of 121–29, resolved that Sheridan would receive the House seat. A decision regarding Pinchback’s Senate seat was not decided until December 1876, three years after the election. He was not admitted. Haskins, Pickney Benton Stewart Pinchback, 196–222.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO P. B. S. PINCHBACK Washington[,] D.C. 25 April 1875[.]

Senator Pinchback. My dear Sir. I am much obliged to you for your letter1 giving me your views of the present and future effects of the late so called compromise adopted to preserve the peace of your state. To me it is not so much a measure of peace as a measure of mischief and bloodshed. It was born of lawless murder on the one hand and of loyal cowardice on the other. It is the harvest reaped by the red sword of the rebel Penn.2 He may well hail it as a victory for all the reactionary and rebellious elements of the country. You need not be ashamed of any resistence that yourself and friends made to that compromise. The sad thing about it was your inability to defeat it. The compromise combination in New Orleans and the Republican defeat in Connecticut3 are both due to the same cause. They are due to the old spirit of concession. Courageous vice is more than a match for virtuous cowardice. In deference to the mean spirit born of slavery—no colored man was invited to show his face in the Connecticut Canvass—and in deference to the same mean spirit the colored majority in your state have been placed under the legislative heels of the disloyal whites—who have all the treason of the late rebellion in their hearts—and would have it in their arms, if they had the power. The compromise—is a part of that policy which was tried and failed fifteen years ago—which sought conciliate wrong instead of stamping it out. It belongs to that wisdom which refused to reinforce Sumpter, for fear of exasperating our southern brethren4 —when those same brethren had muskets in their hands and bullits in their pockets. This cowardly policy did not avail then and it will not avail now. It is the secess influence that keeps your seat vacant in the Senate. I do not despair however of the future. Do nothing rush : stand your ground—bide your time, you are postponed but not defeated. December will soon be here—and a presidential Election is only a little farther off.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 308

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO P. B. S. PINCHBACK, 25 APRIL 1875

309

You have shown the people of your state with what patience, steadyiness, and fidelity you can serve them—that you have courage, fortitude and ability,—that you are not turned aside from your course by discouragements of any kind—You had better fall in that attitude, than succeed by in anywise compromising that enviable position. Your friends in Louisiana cannot desert. Though depressed, and to some extent, intimmidated—they have votes and those votes will some day be needed. You have earned the Confidence of those voters—Hold it—and neither you nor they can be much longer ignored. My kindest regards to Mrs Pinchback5 and the children. I should like to see you all and, and I cling to the faith that I shall see you snugly in your seat in the Senate. Yours Truly FREDK DOUGLASS ALS: Frederick Douglass Manuscripts, Illinois State Historical Library. 1. Pinckney Benton Stewart (P. B. S.) Pinchback wrote to Douglass on 20 April 1875. See the preceding document in this volume. 2. Davidson Bradfute Penn (c. 1836–1902) was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, but moved with his family to New Orleans as a teen before entering the Virginia Military Institute in 1852. After graduating, he went back to New Orleans and engaged in the cotton business until the Civil War. Soon after the start of that conflict, Penn was commissioned an officer in the Confederate army and was present at the battles of Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg before being captured in November 1863. After the war, he returned to Louisiana and became a leader of the Democrats and their paramilitary arm, the White League. Penn became the candidate for lieutenant governor on the unsuccessful Fusion ticket, backed by Democrats and Liberal Republicans, in 1872. The Fusionists claimed victory, but the election results were disputed by supporters of the Republican candidate, William Pitt Kellogg, who ultimately won in federal courts. In September 1874, Penn was one of the leaders of the armed efforts by the White League to force Kellogg out of office, which were thwarted by the arrival of federal troops from Mississippi that were ordered to New Orleans by President Grant to protect the Republican government. In 1876, after failing to get the backing of the new Conservative party to be its candidate for mayor of New Orleans, he left politics to work in the sugar industry. New Orleans Times-Democrat, 16 November 1902; Joe Gray Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 1863–1877 (Baton Rouge, La., 1974), 229, 234–36, 241–46, 292–96, 482–83; Clement Anselm Evans, ed., Confederate Military History: A Library of Confederate States History Written by Distinguished Men of the South, 12 vols. (Atlanta, 1899), 10:255, 266, 542–45. 3. During the congressional elections of 1874 and 1875, Republicans suffered large defeats in several northern states. In Connecticut, Democrats gained three out of the four U.S. House seats, two of which had previously been held by Republicans. Additionally, William W. Eaton, a Democrat, was elected to the Senate seat held by the Republican William Alfred Buckingham following Buckingham’s death. Michael J. Dubin, United States Congressional Elections, 1788–1997: The Official Results of the Election of the 1st Through the 105th Congresses (Jefferson, N.C., 1998). 4. Following Lincoln’s election to the presidency in November 1860, Governor William Henry Gist of South Carolina wrote to President Buchanan, demanding that the federal government surrender three forts in Charleston Harbor: Castle Pinckney, Fort Sumter, and Fort Moultrie. Buchanan refused to surrender the forts, but promised not to send any reinforcements as long as South Carolina

Y8204-Douglass.indb 309

5/17/23 2:35 PM

310

DOUGLASS TO ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE, 2 JUNE 1875

agreed not to attack. Following South Carolina’s formal secession in December 1860, South Carolina began setting up barriers near the forts, yet Buchanan still refused to surrender. The conflict over the military battlements continued into Lincoln’s presidency. His dispatch of reinforcements to Fort Sumter, in an attempt to maintain control, forced the crisis that led to the first battle of the Civil War. Roy Franklin Nichols, Disruption of American Democracy (New York, 1948), 448–49; Elbert B. Smith, The Presidency of James Buchanan (Lawrence, Kans., 1975), 169–80. 5. P. B. S. Pinchback married Nina Emily Hawthorne (1844–1928) in 1860. They had four children who lived to adulthood: Pinckney Napoleon (c. 1862–1900), Nina Eliza (1866–1909), Bismarck Robert (1868–1924), and Walter Alexis (1871–1938). Two other children died in infancy. “New Orleans, Louisiana, Birth Records Index, 1790–1915,” Ancestry.com.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE Washington[,] D.C. 2 June 1875.

My dear Rosa: Nearly six weeks ago, I received a telegram from dear Nathan,1 almost in the precise words of the one which came yesterday, and since that time I have been waiting daily expecting to learn that the dear suffering child had passed beyond the reach of care, trouble, sickness and pain.2 Since it now seems that the dear child cannot live—and that she could never be strong and healthy if she did live, her passing away will be a happy release from a life of misery. With her high spirit, a life of weakness and dependence would be intolerable. I hope Dear Rosa, that you are thoroughly nerved for the event—that you are wholly emancipated from the superstitious terrors with which priest craft has surrounded the great and universal fact of deaths—and that you will be able to look with calmness upon the peaceful features of the dear child whose sufferings are ended. Death is the common lot of all—and the strongest of us will soon be called a way. It is well! Death is a friend not an enemy. It comes at the right time when it comes naturally, and not by violence. It takes the feeble infant from prospect in misery—and releases the aged from continued aches and pains—the pain of death is with the living not with the dead. We shall all miss our dear little Alice. She was the remarkable child [of] your flock—a real character, [t]he memory of her words and ways will live with us all. I do not dogmatize as to the life of the future. I know not, and know no man can know what is beyond—or what is the condition of existence, whether conscious or unconscious beyond this life—but whatever else it may be, it is nothing that our taking thought about it can alter or improve.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 310

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO W. SCOTT SMITH, 22 JUNE 1875

311

The best any of us can do is to trust in the eternal powers which brought us into existence—and this I do. For myself and for all. I do not think our house should be left alone or entirely in the hands of strangers, we have been burnt out once and may be burnt out again— and if burnt out a second time I have no more strength to start life anew again—and build up another house. We are not among friends here any more than in Rochester. It is our misfortune to create envy wherever we go. The white people dont like us and the colored people envy us. I do not wish to burden Amelia3 with the responsibility of taking care of all here—and she told mother 4 before she went away that she did not want to take the responsibility. Your father— FREDK DOUGLASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 27–28L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Nathan Sprague. 2. Alice Louisa Sprague died on 8 June 1875. 3. Helen Amelia Loguen Douglass. 4. Anna Murray Douglass.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO W. SCOTT SMITH1 Washington, D.C. 22 June [1875.]

Dear Sir: I have duly received your note of to day making sundry inquiries as to the future management of Howard University;2 as to whether that institution is to be conducted on the same basis in the future as in the past, or whether it passed under the control of the American Missionary Association or the Congregationalists, and also asking me to define my own position in regard to Howard University in the future. In reply to these inquiries I beg to state that, as I understand it, no organic change has taken place in the instituiion; ostensibly, at least it is the same institution it ever was. There have been no changes in the Board of Trustees; its members are the same as when General Howard3 was the President of the University.4 At the recent meeting of the Board of Trustees5 there was no declaration of purpose to manage the University either in the interest of the American Missionary Association nor in that of the Congregationalists.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 311

5/17/23 2:35 PM

312

DOUGLASS TO W. SCOTT SMITH, 22 JUNE 1875

There was a purpose declared to curtail the expenses of the Institution, and power was given to the Executive Committee to bring these expenses within the income of the Institution[.]6 This Executive Committee is composed of two white gentlemen and one colored. The Board of Trustees also elected the Rev. George Whipple,7 the veteran Secretary of the American Missionary Association, as President of Howard University. This was done in the face of the earnestly expressed desire of the colored members of the Board that the position should be given to a colored man.8 While, as I have said, there was no declaration of purpose to change the character of Howard University, or to make it in any measure a mere tender to either the American Missionary Association or to the Congregationalists, I will not deny that the colored members of the Board thought they saw in the election of Mr. Whipple, and in the influence by which he was elected, a tendency in those directions. The fact that this election seemed a foregone conclusion, and the members promoting it being all of the Congregational and the American Missionary Association persuasions, serve to confirm this apprehension. Howard University, as the public are generally aware, was built by General Howard while Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, with moneys derived from unclaimed bounties due colored soldiers killed in the service of their country[.] It was designed to afford the means of a classical education to the colored youth of the country, and of course was not intended by any means, to be either sectarian in character or in management. With the history of the Freedmen’s Bank before them an institution which afforded a set of hungry sharks, with professions of piety upon their lips, the opportunity to rob the freedmen of their hard earnings, the colored trustees of the University may be pardoned for being a little suspicious of having the University pass into the exclusive control of any religious organization. Howard University to day owns property to the amount of nearly a million dollars,9 and the control of the institution, even in respect to this vast sum, is not undesirable, and, since it is money drawn from the blood of colored soldiers, it was not unreasonable that colored men desired a voice in its management. As to what shall be my individual course in respect to Howard University hereafter, it is needless here to declare. Respectfully, etc. [SIGNED] FREDERICK DOUGLASS. PLSr: Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 1 July 1875. 1. The correspondent is Winfield Scott Smith (1847–1919), the longtime Washington, D.C., reporter for the New York Evening Post. Born in Batavia, Ohio, he achieved some notoriety for publish-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 312

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO W. SCOTT SMITH, 22 JUNE 1875

313

ing rumors of bribery of American congressmen by Cuban revolutionaries in 1870. When called to testify before a House investigating committee, Smith refused to divulge his sources, and the effort to censure him was then tabled. He later purchased a home in the LeDroit Park development, which was built on land sold by Howard University to recover from a financial crisis in the mid-1870s. “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 7; 1910 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 89A; “Libelous Statements and Publications as to Members of the House of Representatives—Cuban Bond Lobby,” in U.S. Congress, Digests of Decisions and Precedents of the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1894), 505–12; LeDroit Park Historic District, “National Register of Historic Places—Nomination Form,” planning.dc.gov; Find a Grave (online). 2. Congress incorporated Howard University—named for the Freedmen’s Bureau commissioner Oliver Otis Howard—in 1867 to help meet the educational needs of blacks moving to the District of Columbia. Although its faculty was racially mixed, whites filled the top administrative posts well into the twentieth century. At the time of this letter, the university carried a devastating $100,000 deficit, and its board of trustees initiated a program of retrenchment that involved significant cuts in expenses, personnel, and salaries. Press reports at the time speculated that “the institution is to be conducted in the immediate interest of the Congregation Church.” Washington National Republican, 18 June 1874; Holmes, “Fifty Years of Howard University.” 3. Oliver Otis Howard was president of Howard University from 1869 to 1874. 4. Douglass is correct that no new members joined the Board of Howard University between 1874 and 1878. 5. The most recent meeting of the Howard University Board of Trustees occurred on 16 June 1875. Logan, Howard University, 76. 6. John Mercer Langston reported that Howard University’s financial problems were handed over to a five-member executive committee to resolve, three of whom were members of the District’s First Congregational Church. The committee renegotiated the university’s debts, sold off some of its local landholdings, and cut salaries and programs, including the School of Law, where Langston was also dean. Logan, Howard University, 78–81. 7. Born in Albany, New York, George Whipple (1805–75) studied at the Oneida Institute before enrolling in Cincinnati’s Lane Seminary, which was under the direction of the Reverend Lyman Beecher. He was one of the “Lane Rebels” who left the school because it censored antislavery views. He finished his training as a Congregationalist minister at the seminary at Oberlin College. He stayed to teach mathematics at Oberlin before becoming the corresponding secretary of the American Missionary Association and an executive committee member of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. General Catalogue of Oberlin College, 1833–1908 (Oberlin, Ohio, 1909), 181; McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 77, 114. 8. General Oliver Otis Howard submitted his resignation as Howard University’s president in December 1874. The fifteen-member board of trustees voted for a new president on 16 June 1875. George Whipple received ten votes; the university’s vice president and acting president John Mercer Langston received four; and Douglass received one. Historians believe that Langston received the votes of all four African Americans on the board, including Douglass, and one white, perhaps Whipple, had voted for Douglass. Protests by African Americans in the press and in speeches, such as the ones both Douglass and Langston delivered on 5 July 1875, helped persuade Whipple to decline his selection. Langston also resigned his posts at the university. The trustees then selected the Congregational minister Edward Parmelee Smith as president. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4: 414–22; New York Evening Post, 24, 26 June 1876; Washington National Republican, 8 July 1875; New York Times, 7 July 1875; Walter Dyson, Howard University: A History, 1867–1940 (Washington, 1941), 56–57; Logan, Howard University, 74–81. 9. Howard University’s land acquisition in the District of Columbia began with the purchase of a 150-acre farm from a John A. Smith in June 1867. The university disposed of portions of its land to remain solvent during difficult economic periods. Logan, Howard University, 27–28, 90.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 313

5/17/23 2:35 PM

314

DOUGLASS TO ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE, 30 JUNE 1875

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE Washington[,] D.C. 30 June [1875].

My dear Daughter: Your dear letter with one to mother each containing an excellent picture of Estelle1 has just come to hand. This, being almost daily in communion with you, makes it unnecessary for me to be running backward and forward at heavy expense—and great loss of time on Rail Roads to see you. Emerson2 says that those who made Rome worth going to see staid there.” And I may say, that people who make houses worth visiting stay there. I have my little garden, and my horse and carriage and my house duties to look after. The demands upon my time and attention by my Books and papers, and by visitors are incessant. Besides, I am beginning to look upon a journey as a positive misfortune. My long public career of travelling has cured my desire for change in location—and I now like to remain in the same place, dine at the same table, sleep in the same bed—bath in the same tub, and do an hundred other same things. I suppose, if I were in Rochester, I should manifest the same love of locality that I do here. A thousand times I have wished I never had left it. I have been nearly ruined financially by coming here—I have things to tell you concerning my affairs which trouble me very much and lead me to fear the worst. Age and want are an ill matched pair. I should have been glad to have dropt in upon you while Molly3 was with you, but that is out of the question. I have told mother to take Dear Lew4 —and have her answer your note to her. It will seem more like coming from her if Lew: writes than if I should. Your Dear little Estelle is doing very well. My letter to dear Hattie5 will give you some idea of Estelle’s daily life. Yours Lovingly FATHER ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 24–36L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Estelle “Stella” Irene Sprague (1870–1927) was the fourth child and fourth daughter of Nathan and Rosetta Douglass Sprague. Although her death certificate mistakenly lists her birthplace as Maryland and year of birth as 1876, she was in fact born at her maternal grandparents’ home in Rochester, New York, in August 1870, and was living there when the house burned on 2 June 1872. Estelle spent much of 1875 living with her maternal grandparents (Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass) in Washington, D.C. In 1876, she, along with her mother and surviving siblings, took up permanent residence in the Douglass household while her father was jailed for mail fraud in New York. Even after her father’s release from jail, both Estelle and the rest of the Sprague children continued to live for long stretches of time at Cedar Hill, into the early 1890s. In 1891, she moved to Cappahosic, Virginia, and began teaching at the Gloucester Agricultural and Industrial Institute. In 1897 she married one of the cofounders of the Gloucester School, David D. Weaver, and, along with her husband, took up

Y8204-Douglass.indb 314

5/17/23 2:35 PM

THEODORE BOURNE TO DOUGLASS, 9 JULY 1875

315

farming. Over the next fifteen years the couple had eight children. Following her husband’s death (at the time, the family was living in Newport, Virginia, where Weaver was employed as a shoemaker) in 1913, Estelle was forced to place her underage children with relatives and return to teaching. By 1920, she was living alone and teaching at Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas. At the time of her death in 1927, however, she appears to have joined her sisters Fredericka, Rosabelle, and Harriet in Kansas City, Missouri. 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 52; 1900 U.S. Census, Virginia, Gloucester County, 3B; 1910 U.S. Census, Virginia, Warwick County, 25B; 1920 U.S. Census, Texas, McLennan County, 14B; Death Certificates, Missouri Digital Heritage, Mo.gov; “District of Columbia, Marriage Records, 1810–1953,” Ancestry.com; “Virginia, Death Records, 1912–2014,” Ancestry. com; Fought, Women, 211, 216, 220, 225, 267–69, 271, 275, 310, 376n. 2. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), essayist, philosopher, and poet, was born to a prominent family in Boston, Massachusetts. After retiring from pastoral duties in 1832, Emerson returned to Concord, where he lived out the rest of his years. His eight-chapter essay Nature (1836) reflects the transcendentalist philosophies of comity, beauty, language, and discipline. These principles appear throughout Emerson’s works, in particular his poetry. His best-known works include Poems (1847), Representative Men (1850), English Traits (1856), and the essays “Self-Reliance” (1841) and “The American Scholar” (1837). Emerson also published regularly in the Dial and the Atlantic Monthly. Although he never identified himself with them fully, Emerson embraced the sentiments of abolitionists, frequently opening the doors of his pastorate to them. He later gave a strong public endorsement to John Brown following the Harpers Ferry raid. ACAB, 2:343–48; NCAB, 3:416–18; DAB, 6:132–41. 3. The editors have not been able to ascertain the identity of the Molly Douglass referred to in this letter. There are no known members of the family named Molly. The only known members of Douglass’s extended family named Mary at this time were his niece Mary Douglass Mitchell (b. 1856) and his granddaughter (Charles’s daughter) Mary Louise Douglass (b. 1874), and neither seems a likely candidate. The same holds true for the Douglass family’s circle of friends and in-laws; there are a number of women named Mary (although there does not appear to be anyone named Molly), but again there is also no obvious candidate for the Molly who was visiting Douglass’s daughter in Rochester. Fought, Women, 306–10. 4. Helen Louise “Louisa” Sprague. 5. Harriet “Hattie” Bailey Sprague.

THEODORE BOURNE1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS New York[, N.Y.] 9 July [1875.]

232 West 11th St Frederick Douglass Esq Dear Sir I dropped you a hasty line yesterday to say I forwarded two of Mr Ray’s2 pamphlets to you and to enclose one (old) copy of a circular address which I issued in London in 1859 intended to arouse an interest for Africa.3 Thousands of Spanish Portuguese French British & American Merchants for 300 years have grown rich on the Palm Oil, Ivory, Gold, Diamonds, Cotton &c &c of Africa and I thought I could call the attention of Anglo Africans to that great field for discovery ambition of doing good, and

Y8204-Douglass.indb 315

5/17/23 2:35 PM

316

THEODORE BOURNE TO DOUGLASS, 9 JULY 1875

progress—I was doing[.] I formed the Society 4 even before the War on the platform of Equal Rights, in fact gave 2/3ds, nearly, to the colored people—Control of the American Miss[iona]ry Association with that! But I now write to say that Rev Chas B. Ray has just called to see me and seems quite convinced that the time has come for the Colored Race to take up fully and squarely the case of the American Missionary Association and dispose of its claim to collect $300,000 to $400,000 per annum on the strength of the “sufferings of the colored people,”5 and then make 3 or 4 white men so say G. Whipple,6 M. E. Strieby7 E. Ketchum8 W. E. Whitney,9 “Assistant Pastor Halliday,”10 & E P Smith,11 the Ring by which to disperse all that amount of money, collected for the “Colored people” Why they have even omitted to employ Mr Ray though a Congregationalist himself— My father Rev George Bourne12 commenced the work of Abolition of Slavery in Maryland & Virginia 1805 to 1815, and then at the North till 1845 He devoted all his spare time and means to the great contest without any reward. He certainly never contemplated that a class of professional Abolitionists and Carpet Baggers 13 should put the colored people in a false light North & South and when half a million per annum was raised for them, put only white men into every place of honor, profit, prominence & trust—The Office of that Association & Committee deserve thunder & lightning from you for their conduct towards the Colored Race for ten or more past years—Mr Ray can put you up & so can Revd I. N. Gloucester 14 of Brooklyn—I wrote from N. C. in 1870 to Whipple & Strieby on the subject, and spoke verbally to them also. Mr Strieby acknowledged to me that it was not in his opinion wise policy to put the colored people forward on account of the feeling on that point North and in effect upon the Society!! (pecuniarily of course). The time has come to show him your policy towards that Assocn[.]15 I am Yours Respectfully THEODORE BOURNE ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 777–79L, FD Papers, LC. 1. The son of the pioneering abolitionist George Bourne, Theodore Bourne (1822–1910) graduated from Union Seminary and was ordained a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. He played an active role in the compensated emancipation campaign led by Elihu Burritt in the late 1850s. Bourne researched opinion about emigration among poor African Americans in New York City and served as the corresponding secretary of the African Civilization Society. He was later professor of languages at the Huguenot Institute in New York, and secretary of the Society for the Prevention of Crime in New York. New York Times, 23 March 1910; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 5:3–6; Merrill and

Y8204-Douglass.indb 316

5/17/23 2:35 PM

THEODORE BOURNE TO DOUGLASS, 9 JULY 1875

317

Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 6:108; Ousmane K. Power-Greene, Against Wind and Tide: The African American Struggle against the Colonizationist Movement (New York, 2014), 175. 2. Born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, Charles Bennett Ray (1807–86) studied theology at Wesleyan University until a protest by white students forced him to leave in 1832. He operated a boot and shoe business in New York City in partnership with Samuel Cornish in the 1830s. When Cornish was chosen to be the primary editor of the newly formed Colored American in 1837, Ray became a traveling reporter and subscription agent for the newspaper. For two years, Ray’s reports on black education, businesses, and church life were a regular feature of the paper. His endorsement of the Colored American in speeches and sermons boosted circulation, which helped maintain the publication as a black-funded enterprise. In 1839, Ray took over as owner and chief editor following Cornish’s resignation, but the venture collapsed and ceased publication at the end of 1841. Ray remained an active reformer, supporting the Liberty party in the early 1840s and both the New York City and state vigilance committees. After 1841, Ray devoted himself to improving black education, serving as president of the New York Society for the Promotion of Education among Colored Children from 1851 to 1865. After giving up his editing post, Ray returned to the pulpit, too, holding weekly worship meetings for the poor, handicapped, and elderly. In 1845 he was installed as minister of the Bethesda Congregational Church in lower Manhattan, where he remained until 1868. The precise pamphlets by Ray that Bourne sent Douglass cannot be determined. Charlotte Augusta Burrough Ray, Sketch of the Life of Rev. Charles B. Ray (New York, 1887); Monroe N. Work, “The Life of Charles B. Ray,” JNH, 4:361–71 (October 1919); DAB, 15:403–04; DANB, 515–16; ANB (online). 3. In February 1859, Bourne, as corresponding secretary of the African Civilization Society, joined Henry Highland Garnet and other officers of the society in issuing a circular that solicited funds to help establish “industrial settlements” that would foster “the conversion and elevation of the nations of sunny Africa.” The group then sent Bourne on a fund-raising mission to England, where he presumably used the circular in his efforts. “Circular by the African Civilization Society, 16 February 1859,” in Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 5:3–6; James L. Conyers, Jr., Nancy J. Dawson, Lee E. Thompson, and Mary Joan Thompson, eds., The Frederick Douglass Encyclopedia (Westport, Conn., 2010), 6. 4. In the late 1850s, Henry Highland Garnet, after reversing his initial opposition to colonization, founded the African Civilization Society, which supported voluntary immigration by African Americans to Africa and Haiti. Never insisting on the wholesale exodus of blacks from America, Garnet argued that black people should move where they might improve their economic opportunities. Moreover, he hoped to use emigration as a support for American abolition by encouraging emigrants to grow cotton in direct competition with southern slaveholders, thereby weakening the slaveholders’ influence on the American economy and political life. Schor, Henry Highland Garnet, 91, 103; Lysle E. Meyer, “T. J. Bowen and Central Africa: A Nineteenth-Century Missionary Delusion,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 15:247–60 (1982); Vincent Bakpetu Thompson, “Leadership in the African Diaspora in the Americas Prior to 1860,” Journal of Black Studies, 24:63–64 (September 1993). 5. The American Missionary Association carried on a very active fund-raising campaign after the Civil War to support a growing array of educational and religious activities among former slaves. Besides sending out traveling agents, the group published the American Missionary, which solicited funds from northern white benefactors. While annual fund-raising totals reached the approximate sums that Bourne reports in the late 1860s, collections began dropping in the 1870s as many of the association’s original abolitionist supporters died off, causing it to run a deficit. The association was occasionally accused of reluctance to place blacks in policy-making roles in the national organization or to appoint them to supervisory roles at the schools it sponsored in the South. Critics claimed that the organization remained paternalistic and unwilling to acknowledge the competency of blacks. Richardson, Christian Reconstruction, 92–105, 246–50. 6. George Whipple.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 317

5/17/23 2:35 PM

318

THEODORE BOURNE TO DOUGLASS, 9 JULY 1875

7. Michael Epaphras Strieby (1815–99) graduated from Oberlin College in 1838. Ordained a Congregational minister, he served in churches in Mount Vernon, Ohio, and Syracuse, New York, before accepting the position of corresponding secretary of the American Missionary Association in 1864. In that post, he wrote many articles and books to support his organization’s work among African Americans in the South. In politics, Strieby endorsed Andrew Johnson’s impeachment and the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. Occasionally losing patience with the association’s teachers, Strieby was characterized by one historian as “a competent, and sometimes erratic, administrator.” New York Outlook, 25 March 1899; Richardson, Christian Reconstruction, 90–91, 136, 224, 253–54. 8. Edgar Ketchum (1811–82) replaced the veteran abolitionist Lewis Tappan as the treasurer of the American Missionary Association in 1865. Ketchum was a prominent New York City attorney and a former collector of internal revenue for the New York district; his house was targeted by New York draft rioters in July 1863. He delegated most of the actual accounting to his assistant, William E. Whiting. Although considerably less invested in the management of the association than Tappan, Ketchum nevertheless stayed in his post until 1879. Clara Merritt DeBoer, His Truth Is Marching On: African Americans Who Taught the Freedmen for the American Missionary Association, 1861–1877 (1995; New York, 2016), 102; Lyman Horace Weeks, Prominent Families of New York: Being an Account in Biographical Form of Individuals and Families Distinguished as Representatives of the Social, Professional and Civic Life of New York City (New York, 1897), 338–39; Richardson, Christian Reconstruction, 77, 186. 9. Bourne probably means William E. Whiting (1803–78), a ruling elder of a Dutch Reformed church in Brooklyn, New York. Whiting, a longtime abolitionist ally of Lewis Tappan, sat on the executive committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (1844–55) and was its treasurer (1846–55). When that group went defunct, he held similar offices in the American Abolition Society. Whiting served as an executive committee member of the American Missionary Association from its start in 1846 and was later its assistant treasurer (1865–76). In the latter role, Whiting paid salaries and ordered supplies for missionaries across the South. Richardson, Christian Reconstruction, 91, 179, 283. 10. Born in Morristown, New Jersey, Samuel Byram Halliday (1812–97) graduated from the Bloomfield Academy and undertook work for tract societies in New York and Rhode Island. In the 1850s, Halliday worked as an agent of the Female Guardian Society and as superintendent of the Five Points House of Industry in New York City. Ordained a Congregationalist minister in 1863, he engaged in missionary work among New York City’s poor until becoming the assistant pastor of Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. After Beecher’s death, Halliday joined Lyman Abbott in writing a flattering biography of the controversial minister. Halliday was an executive committee member of the American Missionary Association. New York Times, 9 July 1897; American Missionary, 42:116 (May 1888); The Congregational Year-Book, 1898 (Boston, 1898), 23; Samuel Byram Halliday, The Lost and Found: Or, Life among the Poor (New York, 1860); Julie Miller, Abandoned: Foundlings in Nineteenth-Century New York City (New York, 2008), 90–94. 11. Edward Parmelee Smith (1827–76) was born in South Britain, Connecticut, and graduated from Dartmouth College and Yale Theological Seminary. After serving as a Congregationalist pastor in Pepperell, Massachusetts, he joined the U.S. Sanitary Commission during the Civil War and ministered to Union soldiers. After the war, as a field secretary for the American Missionary Association in Cincinnati, Smith was put in charge of establishing schools in the southwestern states. A Republican, he served the Grant administration as U.S. commissioner of Indian Affairs (1873–75); though charged with corruption, he was exonerated. While in that position, Smith was elected president of Howard University, but died on a tour of American Missionary Association stations in Africa before he could assume the post. New York Times, 16 August 1876; Richardson, Christian Reconstruction, 81, 91, 99, 124. 12. The English immigrant George Bourne (1780–1845) settled in Virginia, where he became a Presbyterian minister and an early questioner of the morality of slaveholding. His preaching led to his defrocking by the local presbytery in 1815. In response, he wrote and had printed The Book and

Y8204-Douglass.indb 318

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO P. B. S. PINCHBACK, 16 JULY 1875

319

Slavery Irreconcilable by a Citizen of Virginia (1816), which argues that slaveholding violated the earliest Presbyterian Church disciplines. Bourne left Virginia and preached in several northern cities before becoming a New School Presbyterian minister in New York City. He was an early member of the American Anti-Slavery Society and the author of many abolitionist works. Theodore Bourne, his son, wrote a biography of him. McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 205; Theodore Bourne, “Rev. George Bourne, the Pioneer of American Antislavery,” Methodist Quarterly Review, 42:68–90 (January 1882). 13. The term “carpetbagger” was generally applied to northerners who traveled south after the Civil War to profit from the social, economic, and political disorder then prevailing there. The label derived from the style of suitcase in which these northerners placed their meager belongings and also suggested their mobility and lack of rootedness. Although some of these northerners were unscrupulous adventurers seeking political or economic profit, many more came to initiate legitimate business enterprises or to serve as administrators, teachers, clergymen, and doctors for either the Freedmen’s Bureau or the benevolent societies organized to aid blacks. Carpetbaggers usually received their opprobrious title because of their frequent willingness to aid the freedmen with material sustenance and to organize them politically. Kenneth M. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877 (New York, 1965), 156–59; Mitford M. Mathews, ed., A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1951), 1:273. 14. The Reverend James Newton Gloucester (1818–90) and his wife, Elizabeth A. Gloucester (1820–83), were friends of Douglass and notable leaders of the African American community in New York. James grew up in Philadelphia, entered the Presbyterian clergy, and eventually led a congregation in Brooklyn’s black community. Along with Elizabeth, a native of Richmond, Virginia, who owned and operated a furniture store in Brooklyn, Gloucester was involved in philanthropic causes and the movement that organized black national conventions. He supported John Brown’s attempted raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. During the Civil War, he served as president of the American Freedmen’s Friend Society, which offered aid to black residents of Brooklyn. 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Kings County, 265; The New York Supplement: Containing the Decisions of the Intermediate and Lower Courts of Record of New York State, 300 vols. (St. Paul, Minn., 1888–1938), 15:899–900; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 4:379–81. 15. There is no record of Douglass joining Bourne or the black ministers he names in a joint protest to the American Missionary Association. That same summer, Douglass spoke out against “the swarm of white beggars that sweep the country in the name of the colored race. We must hereafter do our own begging, if any begging is done at all, on our own name.” Press reports assumed Douglass was advising blacks to seek independence from northern benevolent societies such as the American Missionary Association. Douglass later wrote that association, assuring it that while he differed with it on some theological principles, he believed it labored honestly and successfully for the freedpeople. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:419–22; American Missionary, 20:208 (September 1876); Richardson, Christian Reconstruction, 249, 319.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO P. B. S. PINCHBACK Washington[,] D.C. 16 July 1875[.]

Hon P. B. S. Pinchback My dear Sir: Your letter from Hot Springs1—July 1st2 is before me. I think the suggestion by Mr Clark3 a wise one. A meeting of Editors exclusively 4 would

Y8204-Douglass.indb 319

5/17/23 2:35 PM

320

DOUGLASS TO P. B. S. PINCHBACK, 16 JULY 1875

simply be an advertisement of our destitution—while if the bases were enlarged by the bringing in of good men from all parts of the country, a valuable influence may be exerted. I think however that the whole meeting should regard itself, and be regarded by others, as simply preliminary to a general national convention to take place early in the Month of May 1876.5 It is not at all, probable that I shall attend the convention in Cincinnati on the 2d of August next, but should that convention, after due deliberation decide to call a national convention either in May or in the earlier part of next year, I will endeavor to be one of its members. With the immense political power now in our hands, if wisely exercised, the colored people of this country need not fail to have all their rights respected—nor fail to secure a respectable and proportional representation both in the states and in the nation. My best wishes for your deliberations at Cincinnati. Yours Very Truly FREDERICK DOUGLASS ALS: Frederick Douglass Manuscripts, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C. 1. Hot Springs is located in Garland County in west-central Arkansas. In 1832, Hot Springs was designated the first federal reserve, to prevent exploitation of its natural springs. Because of the supposed healing properties of natural hot springs, entrepreneurs nonetheless established bathhouses and hotels for visitors. By 1873, a sizable tourist economy was thriving: six bathhouses and twentyfour hotels on Bathhouse Row were located near the springs. By 1875, a rail line running directly to the town had been constructed, further increasing tourism. John C. Paige and Laura Woulliere Harrison, Out of the Vapors: A Social and Architectural History of Bathhouse Row, Hot Springs National Park (Washington, D.C., 1987); Robert Bauer, “Gilded Age Gladiators: Hot Springs and the First Major League Baseball Spring Training,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 77:1–20 (Spring 2018). 2. This letter apparently has not survived. 3. Peter Humphries Clark (c. 1829–1925) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, but he was not, as tradition maintained, the grandson of the explorer William Clark. Recent scholarship has established that his grandfather was instead a Virginia-born planter named John Clarke, who settled in Harrison County, Kentucky, in 1798. Clark’s family was manumitted in 1814 in accordance with John Clarke’s will, and they moved in 1816 to Cincinnati, where they altered the spelling of their surname. Clark was educated in a school for black children founded by the Reverend Hiram S. Gilmore. In 1849, he became a teacher in the first black public school in Cincinnati. In addition to teaching, Clark helped edit two Free Soil party papers in the Cincinnati area: the Wilmington Herald of Freedom, which he launched, and the Newport News. For a brief time in 1856 he worked as an assistant editor on Frederick Douglass’ Paper. In 1857, Clark returned to Cincinnati, where he became both a teacher and the principal at a black elementary school. He remained there until 1866, when he became principal of the city’s segregated high school. While serving in this role, Clark attempted to organize black teachers for the National Labor Union. Unlike Douglass, who remained a steadfast Republican, Clark embraced radical positions and jumped party lines throughout his life. Disappointment with Republicans’ failure to protect black civil rights led him to campaign for Cincinnati’s socialist Workingmen’s party in 1877. In later years he joined the Democratic party. Falling out of favor with Cincinnati’s

Y8204-Douglass.indb 320

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE, 2 AUGUST 1875

321

African American community because of his opposition to desegregation, in addition to charges that he had bribed a witness in a political corruption case in an effort to save political allies from jail, Clark was fired from his job in 1886. After a brief tenure as principal of the segregated State Normal and Industrial School at Huntsville, Alabama, Clark settled in St. Louis, where he taught in segregated public schools until retiring in 1908. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:134–35; Cleveland Gazette, 19 April 1884, 19 June 1886; Nikki M. Taylor, America’s First Black Socialist: The Radical Life of Peter H. Clark (Lexington, Ky., 2013); Herbert G. Gutman, “Peter H. Clark: Pioneer Negro Socialist, 1877,” Journal of Negro Education, 34:413–18 (Fall 1965); ANB, 4:943–45. 4. The Convention of Colored Newspapermen was held on 4–5 August 1875 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was presided over by the Louisiana Republican P. B. S. Pinchback. During the meeting, participants elected Peter H. Clark president of the newly formed organization. The convention had several goals: to make African American newspapers financially sustainable; to ensure proper reporting on African Americans in the press, particularly in the South; and to secure representation at the Centennial Exposition to be held in Philadelphia the following year. To this end, the participants planned for the publication of a “Centennial Tribute to the Negro,” an eighteen-volume history of African Americans; the project never came to fruition. Savannah (Ga.) Colored Tribune, 8 April 1876; Convention of Colored Newspaper Men, August 4th, 1875, Wednesday A. M. (Cincinnati, 1874); Philip S. Foner, “Black Participation in the Centennial of 1876,” Negro History Bulletin, 39:533–38 (February 1976). 5. Although Douglass refers to a national convention to be held in May, the Colored National Convention was held on 5–7 April 1876 in Nashville, Tennessee. The convention had been planned for April as early as August 1875. Nashville Union and American, 19 August 1875; Nashville Tennessean, 5 April 1876.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE Washington[,] D.C. 2 August 1875.

My Dear Daughter: I still hope to reach Rochester on the 10th.1 As this time is now near at hand—and as Louisa2 doubtless keeps you well informed as to all that is worth knowing about affairs here I will not trouble you with a long letter. Lewis,3 left us last night for the meeting of Editors, in Cincinnati, which is advertised to meet there to day 4 I am glad he was able to go, since I could not myself be there—Some one of the family ought to be on hand at such meetings while there are any of us left. Estella5 is standing at the window of the new study quite near me while I am writing. She still seems quite contented and happy. In this respect she is a puzzle to me for thus far she insists that she wants to stay here. She finds it pleasant to be the only child about the house. I received a note from our friend E. P.6 a few days ago. She seems hurt because she has written three letters to you of late and has received no answer. All grievances find their way to me. Mother7 says tell Rosa that Stella is fat and plump, I think she has much improved every way—Louisa don’t seem to me quite as well and cheerful as usual but she

Y8204-Douglass.indb 321

5/17/23 2:35 PM

322

MARTHA WALDO GREENE TO DOUGLASS, 16 MARCH 1876

does not complain. Miss Assing8 is fighting her way here as usual—Every body seems to hit the blue ball on the Croquet ground.9 As usual I fight on the side of my old friend—and words fierce and loud pass between Lewis [illegible] and myself—He thinks I presume on being daddy—and I think he presumes on being son—, but we manage to live under the same roof, for all—and very comfortably—I often wish I could have Nathan10 on my side. Love from Mother and all. Your father FREDK DOUGLASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 31R–32, FD Papers, DLC. 1. On 23 August, Douglass sent a letter to his daughter Rosetta informing her of his safe arrival back in Washington, D.C., following his visit to Rochester, New York. Douglass to Rosetta Douglass Sprague, 23 August 1875, General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 32–33, FD Papers, DLC. 2. Helen Louise “Louisa” Sprague. 3. Lewis H. Douglass. 4. Lewis H. Douglass attended the first Convention of Colored Newspapermen, which was held in Cincinnati, Ohio, 4–5 August 1875. The convention met in Union Chapel and was presided over by the former Louisiana governor P. B. S. Pinchback on the first day, and by Peter H. Clark on the second. The younger Douglass served as vice president of the committee on organizations and chaired one of the sessions on the second day of the convention. Savannah (Ga.) Colored Tribune, 8 April 1875; Convention of Colored Newspapermen, 2. 5. Estelle “Stella” Irene Sprague. 6. Elizabeth Peirson. 7. Anna Murray Douglass. 8. Ottilie Assing. 9. In the game of croquet, play begins with the blue ball followed by the red, black, and yellow ones. croquetamerica.com. 10. Nathan Sprague.

MARTHA WALDO GREENE1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Prov[idence,] R.I.2 16 March [1876].

My dear Friend To know that you will be 10 days longer, where a written word will reach you without delay, is to make it impossible for me to stay my pen. It is in vain for me to wish there were no barriers to a more satisfactory inter communication. Could I speak to you face to face, I think you would see that your “call,” was not the one I had promised to heed. You said “come and I will show you the Capitol, and give you an earlier taste of Spring than you can get in New E [”] not “I am sick and need you. Come”! Am I not right? You say “Woman should be man’s custodian.” do you not mean of his good name as well as of himself? 3 Under the circumstances, should I have been such had I gone to you? But no more now. I can not help saying this much. But don’t get sick, and don’t need me that way so long as the “fates are against it—” I deeply sympathize with you in your self forgetting me for poor dear Rosa and hope her loyalty for Nathan will be so wise as to make the years experience of service to him for all the future.4 Write a word please before you go West.5 And will you not come to R.I on yr way back to Washington? You will be no less welcome here now than when my sisters were living.6 and if you would like to give any one of your lectures before the F.R. Ass.7 I believe they will pay you for it—by knowing in time, not to have engaged any other— as ever MARTHA W G ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 30R–31, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Martha Waldo Brown Greene (1820–1902) was the daughter of John and Mary Hodges Brown. She married William Arnold Greene (1822–73) on 9 May 1842. Her husband was engaged in the mercantile business in New York City during the time Martha Greene was an officer of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1842–43). The couple then moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, where they had six children. Martha and Douglass remained relatively close friends after the Civil War. She wrote him letters concerning private matters such as his relationship with Ottilie Assing and helped him recover from depression after his first wife died in 1882. Martha died in Melrose, Massachusetts, which was the residence of her daughter, Martha Greene Sherman. Martha W. Greene to Frederick Douglass, 7 July 1864, 2 August 1865, 22 July 1871, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 40–42, 138–39, 604–05, FD Papers, DLC; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 306, 368; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 167; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 313. 2. Greene supplied additional details on her address: “11 Cushing St. Prov. R.I.” 3. While many of Greene’s letters to Douglass have survived, there are none from Douglass that provide clues to Greene’s description of an invitation to visit him in Washington, D.C., in the spring. 4. Greene probably alludes to the fact that Nathan Sprague spent most of 1876 in jail in Rochester after pleading guilty to mail fraud. Rosetta was hounded by debt collectors in Rochester, and by the end of the year she had moved with her children to Douglass’s Cedar Hill home in Washington, D.C. Rosetta Douglass Sprague to Frederick Douglass, 17 September 1876, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 862–65, FD Papers, DLC; Fought, Women, 220–21. 5. In early March 1876, Douglass had just returned to Washington from a speaking tour of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. He would not travel west again until mid-June, when he attended the Republican National Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4: xxxiv–xxxv. 6. Martha Greene had two older sisters, Mary Hodges Brown Adams (1814–72) and Sarah Josephine Brown (1817–75), who had died in Rhode Island. Find a Grave (online). 7. Greene appears to allude to the Free Religious Association, a loose collection of progressive Friends, Unitarians, Spiritualists, Jews, and freethinkers that had formed in 1867. Many former abolitionists, such as Lucretia Mott, Wendell Phillips, Oliver Johnson, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 323

5/17/23 2:35 PM

324

RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 10 JUNE 1876

attended and addressed its annual meetings. Douglass was listed among the association’s many vice presidents in 1892–93. William J. Potter, Free Religious Association: Its Twenty-Five Years and Their Meaning (Boston, 1892), 2, 7–17.

RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Bridport, [Eng.] 10 June 1876.

Dear Mr. Douglass: I have just been writing an article for the Inquirer “The Freedmen’s Monument” founded on the interesting pamphlet which you sent my wife1 It is a very poor affair, and I should have proposed reprinting your oration, to the few extracts I gave for it; but it will do a little to keep you in the remembrances of those whom your affectionate disposition [illegible] shd remember you. You have had a great deal to spoil you, in your life; but your enemies could not spoil you, neither have your admirers, done so. I only wish that those whose circumstances have turned so much more favourable than yours, could do equal much? t[o] them. But “such are the seas of adversity”:2 and perhaps your trials have helped to make you what you are. I have been writing an article “The New Abolitionist” in which the only warm-hearted paper may seem an extract for a speech by Dr. Martineau3 but my friend Mrs. Butler? 4 instantly dislikes to have anything on the subject of “C. D. A”;5 and I know that only a very tame creature would be allowed entrance! It has been deferred a fortnight. I expect it will be in, next week: and, if no, I shall send my article on your Nation, to which he cannot possibly take exception: and, in a month’s time (when you and your friend will have your thoughts employed on quite other matters!) & hope to send it you—or to write to you why it is not sent. I am sure I dont remember what I said to you at Halifax—but if I said anything good, I am proud that you remember it. I should be pleased, in any way, to help one who has very often helped me out of some of my cynical and desponding moods. I have pleasure in [illegible], and [illegible] my great [illegible] to relations and friends. I have been glancing at a large illustrated book on the South—by a Mr. White6 I think,—contributed originally to one of your magazines. Of

Y8204-Douglass.indb 324

5/17/23 2:35 PM

RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 10 JUNE 1876

325

course the article seizes on the ludicrous phases, and there is much in the book to make one sad; but, on the whole, the writer sympathized with the efforts made to reach and elevate your race. I want to come over and see them, some day, though I am not of an age to enjoy the weather of American land, as I did 27 years ago:7 and both your heat and your cold might be perillous t[o] me. Before writing my article, I did what only an old man is able t[o] do— viz glanced at many of my old articles in the Inquirer: and in one of them (Oct. 1863) I see a column to the heroic daring of Sargent L. Douglass.8 I wonder what he is doing now. I hope that your generosity to your own family has not prevented you from making a suitable provision for old age. I trust that you were not involved in great pecuniary responsibility by that unhappy Bank.9 Please excuse a hasty line: and Believe me, ever very faithfully yours, RUSSELL L. CARPENTER

[P.S.] My sister Mary bore her late Indian journey very well: and has brought home two little Brahmians at 8 and 12. The elder attends the Bristol Grammar School, where the boys are kind to him. It is too soon to say how the experiment will answer? ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2 frames 842–44L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Douglass probably sent Mary Browne Carpenter a copy of the pamphlet containing his speech of 14 April 1876. Oration by Frederick Douglass Delivered on the Occasion of the Unveiling Freedmen’s Memorial Monument to Abraham Lincoln, in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., April  14th, 1876; with an Appendix (Washington, D.C., 1876). 2. One of the earliest references to this phrase comes from a 1770 letter from the poet and playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who was quoted in Thomas Moore’s writings as stating: “We are born in a state of warfare with poverty and distress. The sea of adversity is our natural element, and he that will not buffet with the billows deserves to sink.” Thomas Moore, “Memoirs of the Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan,” Complete Poetical Works (Hastings, Eng., 2016), 63. 3. James Martineau (1805–1900) was born in Norwich, England, to Thomas and Elizabeth Martineau, and was the brother of the famed abolitionist Harriet Martineau. He was a Unitarian minister and philosopher, attended Lant Carpenter’s school in Bristol, and served congregations in Dublin, Liverpool, and, finally, Bristol, where he preached in the Unitarian Chapel from 1864. He worked as a professor of moral philosophy and served as principal of Manchester College (1869–85). He was also the editor of the Prospective Review (1845–54); published several of his sermons in edited collections, including Hours of Thought on Sacred Things (1876 and 1879); and wrote books, including Rationale of Religious Enquiry (1836), Types of Ethical Theory (1885), A Study of Religion (1888), and The Seat of Authority in Religion (1890). He married Helen Higginson in 1828. Bristol (U.K.) Western Daily Press, 11 November 1864; Bristol (Eng.) Times and Mirror, 12 November 1864; “1851

Y8204-Douglass.indb 325

5/17/23 2:35 PM

326

RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO DOUGLASS, 10 JUNE 1876

England and Wales Census,” Ancestry.co.uk; J. Estlin Carpenter, James Martineau: Theologian, and Teacher; A Study of His Life and Thought, (London, 1905), 1–20, 50–80, 120–30, 190–95, 460–70. 4. Josephine Butler (1828–1906) was born in Northumberland to John and Hannah Grey. In 1852 she married George Butler, who was ordained two years later and eventually became residentiary canon of Winchester Cathedral in 1882. The couple had four children. Because of her husband’s ministerial work, Butler lived in Liverpool, Oxford, Cheltenham, and Winchester, and in each place dedicated her life to helping working-class women, particularly prostitutes. She established the International Abolitionist Federation in Liverpool in 1875 and successfully campaigned against the Contagious Diseases Acts in the 1880s. A decade later, Butler was an active campaigner during the “white slavery” panic in London; she encouraged Parliament to target traffickers of women and to increase the age of sexual consent to sixteen. She was a passionate supporter of education and published numerous books, including The Constitution Violated (1871), The Salvation Army in Switzerland (1883), Recollections of George Butler (1892), Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade (1896), and Native Races and the War (1900), the last one intended to encourage support for British military intervention in South Africa. She published several pamphlets, including The Education and Employment of Women (1868), An Appeal to the People of England on the Recognition and Superintendence of Prostitution by Governments (1870), and A State Regulation of Vice (1876). She died in Northumberland. Josephine Butler, Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade, (1896; Cambridge, Eng. 2010); Jenny Daggers and Diana Neal, eds., introduction to Sex, Gender and Religion (New York, 2006), 1–20. 5. The Contagious Diseases Acts were a series of laws passed between 1864 and 1869 to lower the rates of sexually transmitted diseases in the British armed forces. The government believed that high rates of disease compromised military preparedness. The acts focused on specific garrisons, military towns, and ports and gave local authorities the power to arrest and detain women whom they deemed to be prostitutes within these areas. If a local judge approved the arrest, the woman was forced to undergo a medical examination or else face imprisonment for up to three months. A woman found to have a venereal disease was sent to a “lock hospital” to be treated. Although the acts were intended to regulate prostitution and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, their passage in Parliament caused widespread outrage among feminists. In 1869, Josephine Butler established the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and separate branches were established across the country. The organization’s newspaper, the Shield, declared that “the system of these acts is a conspiracy, of the foulest kind, against the womanhood of the realm.” Butler, together with the leading politician James Stansfeld and their supporters, proved the acts were unconstitutional and did nothing to reduce the spread of venereal disease among the armed forces. After the repeal of the acts in 1886, Butler continued her campaign to abolish the Indian Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, which were still in operation. London Shield, 25 July 1870; Margaret Hamilton, “Opposition to the Contagious Diseases Acts 1864–1886,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 10:14–18 (Spring, 1978); Pamela Cox, “Compulsion, Voluntarism, and Venereal Disease: Governing Sexual Health in England after the Contagious Diseases Acts,” Journal of British Studies, 46:95–97 (January 2007). 6. This is possibly a reference to Carl Schurz’s The Condition of the South: Extracts from the Report of Major-General Carl Schurz, on the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana: Addressed to the President, (Washington, 1866). An 1866 edition credits another author, Andrew Dickson White. It is quite possible, however, that Carpenter misremembered the author, since another likely candidate is Edward King’s The Great South; A Record of Journeys in Louisiana, Texas, the Indian Territory, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland (Hartford, Conn. 1875), which contained illustrations by J. Wells Champney and was first published as a series of magazine articles. 7. Carpenter visited the U.S. in 1850 and traveled (by his count) roughly thirteen thousand miles through New York, Washington, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. He stopped at Rochester, but Douglass was not home; instead, Anna

Y8204-Douglass.indb 326

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 3 JULY 1876

327

invited him to tea. Carpenter later wrote there was “much to converse about.” Carpenter and Douglass met by chance on a train in New England, and the latter was “afraid lest his English friends should be set against him by his desire to occupy a position independent of the Garrisonians.” Douglass regretted that Carpenter “could not employ that unqualified denunciation of slaveholders . . . but he knew my views on this point” when he stayed with the family in Bridgwater, England. Carpenter published a book about his American travels, Observations on American Slavery, after a Year’s Tour in the United States (1852). Russell Lant Carpenter to Samuel May, February 1850, digitalcommonwealth.org; Russell Lant Carpenter, Observations on American Slavery, after a Year’s Tour in the United States (London, 1852). 8. Lewis H. Douglass. 9. Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company.

OTTILIE ASSING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Boston[, Mass.] 3 July 1876[.]

My dear Friend: Thanks for your dear letter! Indeed, it is a sacrifice to write letters when the thermometer is in the nineties, and I can well imagine how oppressive it must be in Washington, since even here, in cool New-England we had yesterday ninety-one degrees, accompanied by intolerable sultriness and swarms of most malignant muskitoes.1 Yet I am going to tax you once more just with one line. Please do drop me a note directed 29 10th St. Hoboken, informing me whether and when I may expect you on a visit, in order to enable me to devote those days which you will appoint entirely to you and to fix some other day for the numerous other friends who will doubtless call to bid me farewell.2 You see, it is in your own interest that I am asking for that little exertion, for I know how you dislike a rush of visitors as is likely to take place.—People here declare my plan for traveling in Europe excellent, almost envy me and predict great enjoyment to me. I think I should look forward to the trip with some expectation if I only could rely that my large bird would follow me in due time. Without this confidence it is just one degree above going into exile. You will have noticed that Schurz 3 is attempting to regain favor with the Republicans and has already declared fealty to Gov. Hayes.4 Well if he can whip in those weak minded Germans who still believe in him, he is welcome to do so, since their votes count just as much as those of the most intelligent, but no impartial person can fail to perceive that he only comes back because he found apostasy not a paying business. He has kept long enough on the fence to find out in which direction the wind blows, and that the Democrats—even if successful, would have no reward for him.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 327

5/17/23 2:35 PM

328

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 3 JULY 1876

This time I don’t wish you as much sunshine as usually, but rather a fine cooling breeze. Yours ever OTTILIA ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 852R–53, FD Papers, DLC. 1. On 1 July 1876, the maximum temperature in Boston was 80 degrees Fahrenheit; on 2 July, the maximum temperature was 93; and on 3 July the maximum temperature was 89. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service Forecast Office, NOWData. 2. Douglass visited Assing before her trip to Europe, and they traveled to Philadelphia to attend its Centennial Exhibition, where a bust of Douglass was on display. His itinerary indicates that in mid-June he was in Cincinnati, where he spoke at the Republican National Convention, and that on 21 June he was campaigning in Rochester, New York. On the day when Assing sailed for Europe, 13 July, Douglass was in New York City, attending a Republican rally at Cooper Union. Therefore, while the editors cannot confirm that Douglass visited Assing one last time before she left the United States, he might have had time to do so. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4: xxxiv–xxxv; Alexandria (Va.) People’s Advocate, 27 May 1876; Jerome Hodos, “The 1876 Centennial in Philadelphia: Elite Networks and Political Culture,” in Social Capital in the City: Community and Civic Life in Philadelphia, ed. Richard Dilworth (Philadelphia, 2006), 19–39; Kathleen A. Clark, Defi ning Moments: African American Commemoration and Political Culture in the South, 1863–1913 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2005), 123; Ottilie Assing to Ludmilla Assing, 11 June 1876, Varnhagan Collection, Biblioteka Jagiellonska Krakowa, cited in Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 322. 3. Carl Schurz (1829–1906), born in Liblar, near Cologne, Germany, and educated at the University of Bonn, was an officer in the revolutionary movement of 1848 before his immigration to the United States in 1852. Settling first in Wisconsin, he quickly transferred his political skills and interests to Republican party and antislavery politics, and was later rewarded by Abraham Lincoln with the position of minister to Spain. Schurz soon resigned that post, accepted a military appointment, and saw action at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Chattanooga, eventually achieving the rank of major general. In his subsequent political career as editor, U.S. senator from Missouri (1869–75), and secretary of the interior in the Hayes administration (1877–81), his interests encompassed the conditional readmission of the ex-Confederate states and a general amnesty for their leaders, the Liberal Republican movement, and reform in civil service, public land, and Indian policy. At the close of the century, Schurz remained outspoken in his opposition to American expansionism. Joseph Schafer, Carl Schurz: Militant Liberal (Evansville, Wisc., 1930); James P. Terzian, Defender of Human Rights: Carl Schurz (New York, 1965); ACAB, 5:428–29; NCAB, 3:202–03; DAB, 16:466–70; BDUSC (online). 4. Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–93), nineteenth president of the United States, had previously served as governor of his home state of Ohio (1867–71) and as a Republican congressman (1865–67). Although Hayes had supported the Radical Reconstruction program while in Congress, events during Grant’s administration had convinced him that the remaining southern Republican state governments, led by carpetbaggers and blacks, could no longer sustain themselves, even with federal military intervention. As president, Hayes attempted to rejuvenate the southern Republican party through a program of sectional reconciliation aimed at attracting former Whigs and Douglas Democrats. He believed that the goodwill of southern whites was better protection than federal military force for the political and civil rights of blacks. Soon after his inauguration, Hayes ordered U.S. troops in Charleston and New Orleans away from the statehouses and back to their garrisons, causing the Republican governments in South Carolina and Louisiana to collapse in the face of armed force by their Democratic opponents. Hayes appointed numerous southern Democrats to federal office, including ex-Confederate general David M. Key, who became his postmaster general.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 328

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO MICHAEL E. STRIEBY, 8 JULY 1876

329

Despite Hayes’s hope, few new southern white voters joined the Republican party, and it shrank into a powerless minority in most of the region for the remainder of the nineteenth century. Kenneth E. Davison, The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (Westport, Conn., 1972); Keith Dan Polakoff, The Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, La., 1973), 246–51, 317–21; Vincent P. DeSantis, Republicans Face the Southern Question: The New Departure Years, 1877–1897 (1959; New York, 1969), 66–132; William Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869–1879 (Baton Rouge, La., 1979), 335–52.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO MICHAEL E. STRIEBY Washington, D.C. 8 July [1876.] 1

Rev. M. E. Strieby.— MY D EAR S IR : I have received your note as to the impression made by certain remarks of mine at Hillsdale, D.C., twelve months ago.2 It seems that those remarks have been made the ground upon which some of our old friends and donors have refused aid to the American Missionary Association, of which you are, with my friend, George Whipple, Secretary. Now I very much regret this. While in the exercise of my right of religious liberty I differ with the American Missionary Association upon some important points of religious belief; I have always, and do now recognize that society as laboring honestly and successfully for the welfare and education of my newly emancipated race, and as affording an appropriate channel through which the Christian benevolence of the country may find its way to a part, at least, of the needy ones of my race. In what I had to say at Hillsdale, I aimed at two things: First, to inspire the colored people with a purpose of self-dependence, and to assume the full responsibility for their own existence and elevation; and, second, to impress upon the American people the duty of giving us an equal chance in the race of life. I said there, just what I have said a thousand times before, “Give us fair play, and let us alone;” that we need justice, and the protection of the law, more than alms.3 But while holding this view, I had no idea of discouraging any from the duty of doing what they could or can for us in the absence of fair play. Where no provision is made for our education by State or nation; while we are persecuted and hunted, and our schools are burnt and our teachers beaten and driven off, I would not throw one straw in the way of the American Missionary Association, or of any other society honestly laboring to disseminate light and hope amongst us.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 329

5/17/23 2:35 PM

330

DOUGLASS TO MICHAEL E. STRIEBY, 8 JULY 1876

I made no attack upon the American Missionary Association, and I decline to be held responsible for what my friend, Mr. Langston,4 was pleased to say on that occasion. I spoke generally for justice, rather than for alms-giving or alms-asking. I demand now, and demanded then, education for my race through all the channels open to other people, and that they be allowed to work out thereafter their own destiny. Faithfully yours, FREDERICK DOUGLASS. PLSr: American Missionary Magazine, 20:208 (September 1876). 1. This letter was printed in the American Missionary Magazine with the following preamble: “fred. douglass and the american missionary association. From the subjoined letter of Mr. Frederick Douglass to one of the secretaries of the American Missionary Association, it is manifest that he did not, as some persons have supposed, refer to that society in the remarks he made a year ago, criticizing the efforts of many organizations at the North to raise funds in aid of his people. It is due to the Association that Mr. Douglass’ indorsement of its aims and efforts should be known, and the misapprehension corrected.” 2. Douglass delivered an Independence Day address to a largely African American audience in the Hillsdale section of Washington, D.C., on 5 July 1875. The portion of the address that apparently offended Strieby, an officer of the American Missionary Association, as well as others, such as the editor of the Philadelphia Christian Recorder, was the following: “In our judgment, we have been injured more than benefited by the efforts of so-called benevolent societies. While they may have helped a few, they have injured the many. They originate with and are organized by some good men, but they invariably fall into the hands of a peculiar class of men—men who combine shrewdness with religious zeal, and who, whether they sing, pray or preach, always ‘mean business.’ They are ever on the look-out for just such associations as special colonization societies, African civilization societies, African educational societies, Lincoln and Howard universities, and freedmen’s banks. They follow these with a scent as keen as the shark’s, which in old times followed the slave ship to eat the flesh of dead and dying negroes. They are heels over head in love with the negro, and want to do him ever so much good. These sharply-pious men usually manage to slip into the money-boxes of these associations.” Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:414–15, 420–21; Washington National Republican, 8 July 1875; Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 15 July 1875. 3. The Philadelphia Christian Recorder published Douglass’s comment as, “All we ask . . . is a fair field to work in, and the white man to leave us alone.” In the corrected text of his Hillsdale address published in the Washington National Republican, Douglass reported his remark thus: “The burden of our demand upon the American people shall simply be justice and fair play. We utterly repudiate all invidious distinctions, where in our favor or against us, and ask only for a fair field and no favor.” Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:420; Washington National Republican, 8 July 1875. 4. John M. Langston was the principal speaker at the Independence Day celebration at Hillsdale. Critics such as the Philadelphia Christian Recorder condemned the strident black nationalism in his remarks, including the following: “The hour has come when we must manage our own institutions, if we have colored churches, then give use colored preachers; if we have colored banks, we must have colored bankers; if we have colored schools, let us have our own teachers; if we have colored colleges, we demand our own officers. We have played the second fiddle too long. We want, we must have, a change for the better.” Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:414–15; Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 22 July 1875.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 330

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 5 AUGUST 1876

331

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Puerto Plata, [Dominican Republic]. 5 August 1876.1

Dear Father, Having twice written you since I received your last letter,2 and under the circumstances of my many failures in life, I have felt that my letters were not desired. I write again however risking the result. It seems that under any circumstances I am to fail in my undertakings, and my life is to be one series of blunders.3 I have been here nearly a year, and I dont know how I have lived.4 I have fallen among friendly people, though when I arrived all hands were against me because of my color, and because I had displaced a white man, but now that man and all his friends stand by me in any of my official acts with the Government. My income does not average over $60 per month, and has not since I have been here as my reports will show. I am holding on because I dare not let go. These Dominicans are a savage set and are daily growing worse. For sixteen days we have been besieged, and nightly the town is fired upon by the country people. The most formidable revolution that has taken place for years, is now going on.5 Last week when the “Tybee”6 arrived I had to abandon my house and take Libbie7 and the children8 on board for the night as all our lives were in danger. The Consulate was full of Cubans and bullets were flying thick and fast in the streets, several were killed and wounded. To night as I write—as the Steamer leaves tomorrow, Genl. Luperon9 is shelling the outskirts of the town from the Fort, and a ball has passed through my flag flying over the house. I am here, and here I obliged to stay it out. Times are hard, money scarce, and provisions dear. Merchants are afraid to import, hence my fees are growing less by degrees. Secretary Fish10 has addressed me a Circular informing me that Congress has not as yet passed the Consular appropriation bill11 and so my hopes for a fixed salary here are in a precarious condition. Fred.12 has written to me concerning what I sent you and your failure to receive it—I did send a five gall. demijohn of rum and I now believe it was confiscated by the authorities. I could very well send some fruits as they cost me nothing, but it would be necessary to have some one in New York to whom I could address them. Mr. Eato13 was very kind in looking after my family and seeing them safely aboard the Steamer. I sent him by way of gratitude, a doz. pineapples. Both Matie14 and Julia Ada15 are down with the fever and we are up nearly all night with them. The hot weather makes it go pretty hard with

Y8204-Douglass.indb 331

5/17/23 2:35 PM

332

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 5 AUGUST 1876

them though I have hopes of their recovery. The rest of us have escaped the fever thus far. I would go to Turks Island16 only a few hours journey from here if I could get the appointment. The salary is $2000 per annum and rent paid. The inhabitants are English. It is between here and New York. The present incumbent Mr. Driggs17 is a very dissipated man without family. If he is to leave I should like the place in preference to this only on account of the salary. In health it is about like this place. The children and all join in love to yourself and mother18 Aff. Your son CHAS. R. DOUGLASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 855–56, FD Paper, DLC. 1. Charles Douglas added this additional piece of information regarding his address: “United States Consulate.” 2. No copies of these letters have been located. 3. Given his complaints about his income and living conditions in Santo Domingo, Charles may have been reflecting on his ongoing financial difficulties, which left him in ever-increasing debt to his father. Foremost in his mind, however, was probably his abrupt dismissal from his far better-paying job with the Treasury Department on 30 June 1875, which led directly to his acceptance of the consul position at Puerto Plata two weeks later. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 505–09, 570–72, 606, 700–01; Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 37. 4. Charles was appointed U.S. consul to Puerto Plata in Santo Domingo on 10 July 1875. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 37. 5. Following a period of political turmoil, a council of secretaries of state took charge of the Dominican Republic in February 1876. In the spring of 1876, the Puerto Plata native General Ulises Heureaux rebelled against the council and secured the election of his own candidate, Ulises Francisco Espaillat Quinones, as the nation’s president. Espaillat’s presidency, however, was met with a number of rebellions, the most successful of which was led by the priest (and future president of the Dominican Republic) Fernando Arturo de Meriño Ramírez. By the end of the year, the civil unrest had grown so widespread and violent that Espaillat was forced to resign on 20 December 1876. Country Study Guide (Washington, D.C., 2002), 55; Michael Newton, ed., Famous Assassinations in World History, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2014), 1:221. 6. In the 1870s, the commercial steamer Tybee was one of several ships owned and operated by Clyde & Company that made regular thirty-day round trips carrying passengers, mail, and cargo between New York City and ports on the island of Hispaniola, including Puerto Plata. The Executive Documents of the Senate of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1871), 48, 229, 237, 285; Harry Hoetink, The Dominican People, 1850–1900: Notes for a Historical Sociology, trans. Stephen K. Ault (Baltimore, 1982), 62; James W. Trent, Jr., The Manliest Man: Samuel G. Howe and the Contours of Nineteenth-Century American Reform (Boston, 2012), 263. 7. Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Murphy Douglass. 8. The family of Charles and Libbie Douglass at this time included Charles Frederick Douglass, Joseph Henry Douglass, Annie Elizabeth Douglass, and Julia Ada Douglass. 9. Gregorio Luperón (1839–97) was born in humble circumstances in the northern Dominican port city of Puerto Plata. He rose to prominence as a military leader during the War of the Restoration (1863–65), which thwarted Spanish efforts to recolonize the Dominican Republic (1861–65). In response to President Buenaventura Báez’s efforts to secure U.S. annexation of the country between 1868 and 1871, Luperón joined General José María Cabral, the other major leader of the northern

Y8204-Douglass.indb 332

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 5 AUGUST 1876

333

Blue party, in a pact to overthrow Báez and maintain Dominican national sovereignty. Famous for his audacity, Luperón purchased a steamship that had served as a blockade runner during the Civil War, and in 1869 he used it to ferry Dominican nationalist revolutionaries from Haiti through a screen of U.S. naval vessels operating in support of Báez. More significant were the defiant letters protesting American annexation that Luperón wrote to President Ulysses S. Grant and Republican senators in 1869 and 1870, which directly contributed to the death of the scheme in 1871. Among modern Dominicans, Luperón is highly esteemed as a nationalist who successfully resisted foreign intrusions in their country. Welles, Naboth’s Vineyard, 1:361–64; Pons, Dominican Republic, 228–29; Roorda, Derby, and González, Dominican Republic Reader, 141, 171–72. 10. Hamilton Fish. 11. On 14 August 1876, President Grant signed the bill authorizing the appropriation covering the salaries of the members of the consular and diplomatic corps for the fiscal year ending on 30 June 1877. First Session of the Forty-Fourth Congress: Executive Documents, printed by the order of the House of Representatives, 1875–76, 17 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1876), vol. 14, doc. no. 192, 1–2. 12. Frederick Douglass, Jr. 13. Charles is likely referring to one of two brothers, either Edward Valentine Clark Eato (1845–1914) or his younger brother Christopher Rush Eato (1848–79). The brothers were the sons of a prominent Harlem-based African Methodist Episcopal Zion minister, the Reverend Timothy Eato (1800–54). At the time Charles’s family sailed from New York City, Edward Eato was working as a clerk in a law firm (later he worked for the Queens Insurance Company), and his brother Christopher was a porter at an envelope factory. Christopher Eato’s career was cut short by his early death, but Edward Eato rose to prominence in New York City’s African American community, serving as president of the African Society (of which his father had been a founding member) for twenty-five years, starting in the mid-1880s, as well as grand master of Prince Hall Masonry in New York beginning in 1890. Edward Eato was also the first African American delegate to an international convention of the Young Men’s Christian Association, as well as a member of the Ugly Club and the Society of the Sons of New York. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, New York County, 4; 1870 U.S. Census, New York, New York County, 31; 1880 U.S. Census, New York, New York County, 595C; 1910 U.S. Census, New York, New York County, 12B; Martin Summers, Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900–1930 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2004), 118, 130; Everett Jenkins, Jr., ed., Pan-African Chronology II: A Comprehensive Reference to the Black Quest for Freedom in Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Asia, 1865–1915, 6 vols. (London, 1998), 2:35; Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color, 230; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” 14. Mary “Matie” Louise Douglass (1874–90) was born and died in Washington, D.C. She was the fifth child and second surviving daughter of Charles and Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Murphy Douglass. Her death at age fifteen, on 7 March 1890, left her brother Joseph Henry as the only surviving child of Charles Douglass’s first marriage. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 37, 38; Fought, Women, 223, 266, 310. 15. Julia Ada Douglass. 16. This island and the nearby Caicos Islands belong to the same Caribbean archipelago as the Bahamas. It was a longtime British colony whose principal industry was salt. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1965. 17. Born in Oneida County, New York, George Washington Driggs (1832–90) grew up in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin. While serving in the Civil War, he also worked as a war correspondent for the Madison (Wisconsin) Patriot. After the war, he moved to Florida, where he served as the assistant secretary of state from 1869 through 1871 while simultaneously acting as the assistant adjutant general of the Florida state militia. In 1871, the Grant administration appointed him U.S. consul to Turks Island, where he remained until 1877. In 1878 he was appointed U.S. consul to the city of Paramaribo, Suriname. By the following year, however, he was acting as a commercial agent for the United States in Hull, England. 1850 U.S. Census, Wisconsin, Fond du Lac County, 516; 1870 U.S.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 333

5/17/23 2:35 PM

334

ZACHARIAH CHANDLER TO DOUGLASS, 11 AUGUST 1876

Census, Florida, Leon County, 6; The Acts and Resolutions Adopted by the Legislature of Florida at its Fourth Session, under the Constitution of A.D. 1868 (Tallahassee, Fla., 1871), 46–47; Official Register of the United States, Containing a List of all Officers and Employees in the Civil, Military, and Naval Services on the Thirtieth of June 1879, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1879), 1:21; Howard Roscoe Driggs, Driggs Family History (Salt Lake City, Utah, 1959), 127. 18. Anna Murray Douglass.

ZACHARIAH CHANDLER1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C. 11 August 1876.

Fredk Douglass. Esq Washington. D.C. My Dear Sir. Mr. Blaine2 has telegraphed the committee3 that they want you in Maine,4 to speak for two weeks, beginning August 28th. The democrats are making herculean efforts to increase their vote in that State, and it being the first in which there is a general election that will be taken as an index of that in November,—the first game of the campaign—the importance of holding our ground can hardly be overestimated We will pay your expenses and sincerely hope you can comply with this request.5 Very Truly yours. Z. CHANDLER6 ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 857, FD Papers, LC. 1. Zachariah Chandler (1813–79) was born in Bedford, New Hampshire. After attending public schools in his hometown, he moved to Detroit, Michigan, in 1833. He first started a general store and later pursued careers in banking and land speculation, becoming quite successful. After serving as mayor of Detroit (1851–52), he was defeated as the Whig candidate for governor in 1852. In 1854, Chandler helped organize the newly formed Republican party. Chandler then served as a Republican U.S. senator from Michigan (1857–75). President Grant appointed him secretary of the interior, in which position he served from 1875 to 1877. He was also chairman of the Republican National Executive Committee (1868–76). Chandler won reelection to the Senate in February 1879, serving briefly until his death in November. Wilmer C. Harris, Public Life of Zachariah Chandler, 1851–1875 (East Lansing, Mich., 1917); ANB (online); BDUSC (online). 2. Born in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania, James Gillespie Blaine (1830–93) graduated from Washington College near his hometown in 1847. After studying law and teaching, Blaine moved to Maine, where he worked for newspapers in Kennebec and Portland in the mid-1860s. An early adherent of the Republican party, he held office in the state legislature (1858–62), the U.S. House of Representatives (1863–75), and the U.S. Senate (1875–81). Relatively conservative on the issue of military Reconstruction, Blaine was a leader of the anti-Grant Half-Breed faction of the Republican party and lost bitterly contested battles for the presidential nomination in 1876 and 1880. He served Garfield as secretary of state but departed the cabinet when Chester Arthur became president. In 1884, Blaine finally captured the nomination for president but lost to Grover Cleveland in a close

Y8204-Douglass.indb 334

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO ZACHARIAH CHANDLER, 19 AUGUST 1876

335

election, during which Democrats charged him with accepting financial favors while a congressman. Blaine concluded his long public career by serving as Benjamin Harrison’s secretary of state (1889–93). David Saville Muzzey, James G. Blaine: A Political Idol of Other Days (New York, 1934); Charles Edward Russell, Blaine of Maine: His Life and Times (New York, 1931); ACAB, 1:275–80; NCAB, 1:137–39; DAB, 2:322–29. 3. Chandler is most likely referring to the National Republican Executive Committee, of which he was chairman from 1868 to 1876. The committee had its headquarters in New York City, with a regional office in Chicago. Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig & Courier, 3 August 1876; Chicago Inter Ocean, 5 August 1876; Harris, Zachariah Chandler; BDUSC (online). 4. Both Republican and Democratic party leaders viewed Maine as an important state in the 1876 presidential election. Because Maine held its elections for Congress and state offices at the beginning of September, many treated the results as an indicator of which party would win the presidency in November. While the Republicans had carried Maine decisively in 1872, the race between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, Democrat Samuel Tilden, and Peter Cooper of the Greenback Party four years later proved tighter. The Republican party emerged victorious in the state and congressional elections, leaving party leaders hopeful. In November, Hayes carried Maine with 66,300 votes to Tilden’s 49,917; the Greenback party secured 663 votes. Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig & Courier, 12 June, 12 September 1876; Arthur M. Schlesinger, History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968, 4 vols. (New York, 1971), 2:1402–03, 1487; Michael Holt, By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876 (Lawrence, Kans., 2008), 153, 253, 255. 5. It is unlikely that Douglass campaigned for Hayes in Maine during the summer of 1876. According to the Bangor Daily Whig & Courier, he was scheduled to speak in Portland at the beginning of September but was prevented by illness. He did not return to the campaign trail until the end of September, making several stops in Indiana from 25 September to 9 October. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxxv; Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig & Courier, 11 September, 30 October 1876; San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 27 September 1876; Chicago Inter Ocean, 4 October 1876. 6. Chandler added “Chairman” after his signature.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ZACHARIAH CHANDLER Washington[,] D.C. 19 August 1876.

Hon: Z. Chandler: Dear Sir: I am just home from a six weeks absence and and your letter sending me to Maine has only now come into my hands.1 I am now and have been for Several weeks quite out of health, and am wholly unfit for campaign work: Nevertheless if I find myself stronger in time for the canvass in Maine I shall report to you for service: It is the same old conflict: Liberty, union and civilization on the one hand and slavery disunion and barbarism on the other. With you, I appreciate the importance of an emphatic and decisive voice from Maine in September and I am obliged to Mr Blaine for calling me hither. Truly yours FREDK DOUGLASS—

Y8204-Douglass.indb 335

5/17/23 2:35 PM

336

WILLIAM BRECK TO DOUGLASS, 15 SEPTEMBER 1876

ALS: Zachariah Chandler Papers, DLC. 1. Details of Douglass’s activity during the summer of 1876 are not well known. Following his speech at the Republican National Convention in Cincinnati on 14 June, he might have continued his campaign efforts with speaking engagements in the North. On 27 July, the Concord, New Hampshire, Independent Statesman claimed that he was “a summer guest” at Newport, New Hampshire. There is also evidence that Douglass addressed an audience in Biddeford, Maine, on 29 July. Assuming he returned to Washington, D.C., sometime in August, as this letter suggests, he then resumed campaigning in September, when he made several stops in Indiana from 25 September to 9 October. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxxv; Concord (N.H.) Independent Statesman, 27 July 1876; Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig & Courier, 31 July 1876.

WILLIAM BRECK1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Canton, Miss.2 15 Sept[ember] 1876.

Hon. Frederick Douglass. Washington— My dear Sir. How to get out of Mississippi, has been a question, I have of late, many times asked myself, and, reading in an old Rochester Democrat, notice “of our fellow citizen Frederick Douglass being in town,” determined me to call upon our old friend and neighbour for aid to the accomplishment of our wishes. Your name in a Rochester paper called up so much of the past from 1840 to 1857—of our old home corner of Troup & High Streets3—of our life in India and China,4 but more especially of our disappointed and disappointing life of nine years in Mississippi and this with much thought of late of our situation here, association perhaps, but, it seems to us you of any one may see a way for us out of this land of violence, and social ostracism, because we are Northerners and Republicans and blood. You knew of me until 1857, when I went to India and China, returning in 1864. During my residence in India I was appointed to act as Consul at Singapore by Minister Reid,5 and afterwards at four of the Ports in China by Presidents Buchanan and Lincoln,6 soon after our return from China, and on account of climate, I came to Mississippi, bought lands, rented Mills, stores, shops, School House and church for the Freedmen, expending in improvements and lands about $30,000. During these years I have been a law abiding citizen [and Republican] but being a Northern man and a Republican I am a “Carpet Bagger”—By Governor Amos7 I was appointed one of the chancellors of the State,8 and in 1872 was a Member of the Philadelphia Convention9—but, most of my time has been spent upon my Plantation, and, up to our last fall election, I have thought

Y8204-Douglass.indb 336

5/17/23 2:35 PM

WILLIAM BRECK TO DOUGLASS, 15 SEPTEMBER 1876

337

to “fight it out in this life.” Since then I have become satisfied we can do no more good here and to live ostracized with the “cold shoulder”10 always toward you, an outsider and always a Carpet Bagger, at our age, one gets tired of constant warfare and is willing to sacrifice always every thing for rest and peace. This is our situation, and we are very, very anxious to get away. All we have expended here, will avail us nothing. We would like to settle in Washington. But, to do this, I should be compelled to obtain, if possible a position under Government and I hesitate to put myself among office seekers and a bone to all my friends. Necessity, however, sometimes compels us to do distasteful things, and to know it is distasteful to ask for office—Would it, in your judgment, be possible to obtain position in one of the [illegible] departments, as Deputy or Chief of Division—or, an office of that character?— I trust you will pardon me for thus troubling you. I am sure you must have but little leisure, and, but for one very dear to me, who has faithfully tried [illegible] these years to educate and [illegible], and, [illegible] [illegible] the poor and despised about him. I would but come to you, if endorsements from Mississippi Republicans are necessary, I can furnish them, but I prefer the endorsement of Frederick Douglass. Believe me Sir— Very Respectfully Yours— WILLIAM BRECK ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 860–61, FD Papers, DLC. 1. William Breck (1816–84), lawyer and U.S. diplomat, was born in Newport, New Hampshire. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1838 and moved to Rochester, New York, where he was admitted to the bar. In 1859 he was appointed U.S. consul to Singapore, later serving at Swatow, China, as well as at a commercial point on the Yangtze River. In 1865 he returned to the United States and moved to a plantation near Canton, Mississippi. In June 1872 he served as a delegate at the National Union Republican Convention in Philadelphia, and Governor Adelbert Ames appointed him chancellor of the Thirteenth Chancery District of the State of Mississippi in 1874. Breck left Mississippi in 1877 and moved to Boston. Boston Daily Atlas, 6 November 1843; Lowell (Mass.) Daily Citizen and News, 26 December 1862; San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 17 February 1863; Francis H. Smith, Presidential Election, 1872: Proceedings of the National Union Republican Convention Held at Philadelphia, June 5 and 6, 1872, Which Nominated for President and Vice-President Ulysses S. Grant and Henry Wilson (Washington, D.C., 1872), 16; Samuel Breck, Genealogy of the Breck Family Descended from Edward of Dorchester and His Brothers in America; With An Appendix of Additional Biographical and Historical Matter, Obituary Notices, Letters, etc., and Armorial Bearings; and a Complete Index (Omaha, Neb., 1889), 80. 2. Incorporated in 1836, Canton was a trading and lumbering community in Madison County, Mississippi, approximately twenty miles northeast of Jackson, the state capital. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 326.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 337

5/17/23 2:35 PM

338

WILLIAM BRECK TO DOUGLASS, 15 SEPTEMBER 1876

3. From 1853 to 1857, Breck resided on the corner of High and Troup streets in Rochester, New York. During this time, Douglass lived on South Avenue, across the Genesee River and southwest of the city’s center. The two men most likely interacted at work—Breck’s law office was located at 17 Buffalo Street, and Douglass edited his newspaper at 25 Buffalo Street. Dewey’s Rochester City Directory [for 1853–54] (Rochester, 1853), 88, 125; Dewey’s Rochester City Directory [for 1855–56] (Rochester, 1855), 108, 145; Dewey’s Rochester City Directory [for 1857–58] (Rochester, 1857), 143, 186; Oliver J. Stuart and S. S. Cornell, Map of the City of Rochester: From Cornell’s Maps to Accompany Boyd’s Rochester and Six County Directory (online). 4. On 1 January 1859, Breck wrote to Secretary of State Lewis Cass regarding his recent appointment as vice consul in Singapore. He expressed the hope that his “familiarity with the languages and habits of the people” would allow him to perform his duties as vice consul to the satisfaction of the president and the U.S. government. William B. Reed served as minister to China from April 1857 to December 1858 and therefore most likely appointed Breck to his post in Singapore just before leaving office. Charles Lanman, Biographical Annals of the Civil Government of the United States: During its First Century (Washington, D.C., 1876), 592; Walter B. Smith, America’s Diplomats and Consuls of 1776–1865: A Geographic and Biographic Directory of the Foreign Service from the Declaration of Independence to the End of the Civil War (Arlington, Va., 1986), 95, 142, 210; “Feb. 1, 1858–Nov. 16, 1859,” in Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Singapore, Straits Settlements, 1833–1906, Vol. 5, archives.gov; Congressional Globe, 37th Cong., 2d sess., 487. 5. Philadelphia-born William Bradford Reed (1806–76) graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1822 and was admitted to the bar in 1826. That same year, he traveled with his uncle, John Sergeant, to Mexico as his private secretary, and for six months they both stayed with Joel R. Poinsett, American minister to Mexico. Returning to Philadelphia, he started his law practice, joined the anti-Masonic movement, and later became a Whig. Reed served in the Pennsylvania Assembly (1834–35) and then as state attorney general (1838–39). After a term in the state Senate (1841–42), he was elected district attorney for Philadelphia, holding that office from 1850 to 1856. Reed was also appointed a professor of American history at the University of Pennsylvania in 1850. In 1856 he abandoned the Whig party, joined the Democrats, and supported James Buchanan’s presidential candidacy. For his support, Buchanan selected Reed to serve as U.S. minister to China in 1857. In 1859, Reed returned to the United States. During the Civil War, he was openly hostile to the Lincoln administration, which made him unpopular in the North. While Reed desired to continue his political career, his antiwar sentiments virtually killed his future in politics as well as his law practice. In 1870 he moved to Orange, New Jersey, and served as a correspondent for the New York World. Farley Foster, “William B. Reed: President Buchanan’s Minister to China, 1857–58,” Pennsylvania History, 38:271–73, 280 (July 1970); Arnold Schankman, “William B. Reed and the Civil War,” Pennsylvania History, 39:455–58, 463, 467 (October 1972); ACAB, 5:209–10; DAB (online). 6. In February 1860, President Buchanan nominated Breck to serve as consul at Swatow, China. In December 1862, President Lincoln nominated him to serve in Hankow. The following year, Breck transferred to Ningbo, China, and then, in 1863, to Kiukiang. An Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of the United States, For the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1863 (Washington, D.C., 1864), 94; Annual Report on Foreign Commerce for the Year Ended September 30, 1863 (Washington, D.C., 1865), 583; Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America, from December 6, 1858 to August 6, 1861, Inclusive, Vol. XI (Washington, D.C., 1887), 145; Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America, from December 1, 1862, to July 4, 1864, Inclusive, Vol. XIII (Washington, D.C., 1887), 21. 7. Adelbert Ames (1835–1933), soldier, U.S. senator, and Mississippi governor, was born in Rockland, Maine, to Jesse Ames and Martha B. Tolman. He attended the U.S. Military Academy and graduated in 1861. First commissioned as a second lieutenant, he had risen to brigadier general by the end of the Civil War. During that conflict, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism during the First Battle of Bull Run, and he saw action in several other major battles, including

Y8204-Douglass.indb 338

5/17/23 2:35 PM

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO DOUGLASS, 17 SEPTEMBER 1876

339

Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg. In 1866, Ames was commissioned a lieutenant colonel of the Twenty-fourth Infantry, and the following year, he was assigned to serve in Mississippi. In June 1868, President Andrew Johnson appointed him provisional governor of Mississippi, and Ames took over the Fourth Military District, which encompassed Arkansas and Mississippi in 1869. When Mississippi passed a state constitution and reentered the Union, the Republican-controlled state legislature elected Ames to the U.S. Senate in 1870. He resigned his seat in January 1874, having been elected governor of Mississippi the previous fall. During his term, pervasive violence, voter intimidation, and fraud allowed the Democrats to take control of the state legislature in 1875. Legislators immediately voted to impeach Ames, who chose to resign in 1876 rather than face a trial. He then moved north with his wife, Blanche Butler, to Minnesota and then to Tewksbury, Massachusetts. There, he invested in textile mills and real estate, where he was very successful financially. He returned to the military as a brigadier general of volunteers during the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Celebrated as the last surviving Civil War general, Ames died in Ormond, Florida, in April 1933. Richard Nelson Current, Those Terrible Carpetbaggers (New York, 1988), 112–17, 172–73, 181–84, 308–09, 324–26, 412–16; ANB (online); BDUSC (online). 8. Governor Adelbert Ames appointed William Breck chancellor of the Thirteenth Chancery District of the State of Mississippi on 6 June 1874. This district included Madison County, where Breck resided. Mississippi in 1875: Report of the Select Committee to Inquire into the Mississippi Election of 1875 with the Testimony and Documentary Evidence, 2 vols. (Washington, 1876), 1:855; Adelbert Ames, The Testimony in the Impeachment of Adelbert Ames, as Governor of Mississippi (Jackson, Miss., 1877), 41–42, 110; James D. Lynch, Kemper County Vindicated, and a Peep at Radical Rule in Mississippi (New York, 1879), 152–53. 9. William Breck served as a delegate from Madison County, Mississippi, to the 1872 National Union Republican Convention, held in Philadelphia in June. Smith, Presidential Election, 1872, 16. 10. Although sometimes misattributed to Nehemiah 9:12, this expression, describing an act of dismissal or disregard, has its literary origin in Sir Walter Scott’s 1816 novel The Antiquary. Sir Walter Scott, The Antiquary, 2 vols. (1816; Boston, 1893), 1:211.

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Rochester, [N.Y.] 17 Sept[ember 18]76.

My Dear Father The past two weeks have been full of events and I am having a singular time and I wonder can it be me. My breaking up has caused such a flutter among Nathan’s creditors1 and I am being sued on every side Mrs Rodenbeck2 brought a note for me to sign of $91.48 I refused to sign it as I told her I could not promise to pay in six months not knowing how I could meet the note she was very angry and left sending a Constable to attach articles in the house to cover the amount. I gave up the black sofa furniture a corner stand 49 ¾ yards of Brussels carpet that large chrono of Nathan’s the smaller chrono’s two marble top stands a chest of Carpenters tools the alarm clock my small rocking chair three office stools the two rugs that were in the parlor, which made one cart load and the Constable said

Y8204-Douglass.indb 339

5/17/23 2:35 PM

340

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO DOUGLASS, 17 SEPTEMBER 1876

all left over the sale came to me and then went away returning with three other men took my piano out in a drenching rain and carried all of my things to this woman’s house. Every body in the neighborhood says she has taken too much for such a debt and consider that she has acted outrageously, and it is questioned if she can keep any thing. The piano she cannot hold at any rate. It is a poor rule that does not work both ways.3 I cannot dispose of the furniture to pay N’s debts as it is considered his personal property, it is mine as much as his for housekeeping purposes and I can remove it but cannot dispose of it, but my piano is my personal property and it can be seized to settle debts contracted by Nathan. Dis[trict] Attorney Raines4 assures me it cannot be kept and tomorrow morning is the time set for deciding if I can be made responsible for N’s debts if I cannot be so responsible the other parties that have sued me will have to withdraw their suits. I am all torn up here and I have disposed of many of Charles’ things.5 I have a few more to sell and I have the house rented from the first of October I hope to get away by that time if it is possible. I was obliged to go to see Nathan about this Rodenbeck debt I found him wondering at my not having written to him or been to see him,6 he said one story would hold good until another was told. I told him I was going away and had rented the house7 he did not like it that I had rented, we could not talk much he said he should see me but that he should not come to Washington. I came away, the next evening his keeper came with a message from him not to rent the house if I did I would simply ruin him. I cannot understand him in that and propose to follow out my own plans as far as I can. I have received no money down to bind the bargain and can conclude not to rent if I choose. My selling Charles’ furniture has given the idea that I am moving to Washington and she (Mrs Rodenbeck) swore that I was “packing up to remove to Washington with the intention of defrauding and cheating my creditors.” Parties have called to know if it is so and I tell them I was thinking strongly of going to my fathers this winter the house being rented. I can tell you better in a couple of days how matters stand. Mollie8 is with me me having arrived from Philadelphia yesterday morning. I suppose Elizabeth9 has been with you. Mollie desires to be remembered to all. Lewis was down from Syracuse10 well before last and took Estella11 back with him. It is a wild night a cold rain has fallen all day and as I write it is pouring and blowing the wind howling around the house makes one shiver Good night dear father I wish I could be with you

Y8204-Douglass.indb 340

5/17/23 2:35 PM

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE TO DOUGLASS, 17 SEPTEMBER 1876

341

to night and be out of this turmoil. I never knew so little what to think in my life. Love to all Affectionately your Daughter ROSETTA ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 862–65, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Four months after the death of his daughter Alice in June 1875, Nathan Sprague was arrested and charged with stealing mail from the post office where he was employed. After being convicted, he was sent to jail for a year. During his imprisonment, Sprague’s creditors began demanding payment from his wife, Rosetta. Upon learning that she was planning to take her children and stay with her parents in Washington, D.C., the creditors moved from simply badgering her for repayment to obtaining a court order to seize all of Nathan’s property, stripping Rosetta of the chance to sell the property and settle her husband’s debts. Moreover, because of changes in New York’s laws regulating married women’s property rights, Rosetta was not allowed to separate or salvage her personal property, such as her piano, from Nathan’s property and prevent it from being sold at public auction to settle his debts. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 570; Fought, Women, 220–21, 268–71. 2. This is most likely a reference to the wife of either William Rodenbeck (1838–1923) or his brother, Adolph Rodenbeck (1840–1915), who co-owned the A&W Rodenbeck grocery store. The Rodenbeck brothers were natives of Mecklenburg, Germany, who had immigrated to the United States in 1854. Adolph Rodenbeck married Margaret Greim (1840–1902), a German immigrant, in 1865. They had six children, only four of whom were living in 1900. William Rodenbeck married Jennie Schied (1848–1926) of New York in 1871. Her parents were immigrants from Bavaria. The couple had three children. 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 37; 1880 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 32; 1900 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 74A and 78A; 1875 New York State Census, Monroe County, 28; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; Find a Grave (online). 3. Although variations of this proverb are found in both correspondence and printed sources as far back as the eighteenth century, its origins are unknown. Bartlett Jere Whiting, Early American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases (1977; Cambridge, Mass., 1980), 373. 4. The son of a Methodist minister, George Raines (1846–1908) was born in Pultneyville, New York, and raised in a series of towns across central New York (including Geneva, Corning, and Elmira) where his father served as a pastor. After graduating from the Elmira Free Academy at fifteen, he enrolled in college in Lima, New York, in 1862. The following year, he transferred to the University of Rochester after his father was appointed senior pastor of the Alexander Street Methodist Church in that city. After graduating in 1866, Raines was admitted to the bar in 1867, after which he joined the Rochester practice of H. C. Ives, where he remained until 1871. That same year, he was elected Monroe County’s district attorney on the Republican ticket. In 1874 he ran successfully for the same office as a Democrat. Three years later Raines was elected to the New York Senate, where he served until 1881. After losing his bid for reelection, he retired from politics (although he remained active in the Democratic party) and returned to private practice. New York Times, 28 November 1908; Peck, Semi-Centennial History of Rochester, 718–23; Find a Grave (online). 5. Charles R. Douglass. 6. Nathan Sprague was in prison at the time this letter was written. He was not released until sometime in 1877, after which he rejoined his family in Washington, D.C. Fought, Women, 220–21. 7. Douglass purchased the property at 68 Hamilton Place (also referred to as the Bond Street property because of its location at the corner of Hamilton and Bond) in 1855. In 1872 he put the deed in his daughter’s name, and she and her family seem to have taken up residence there sometime in either 1873 or 1874. The exact date when Rosetta and her children joined her father’s household in Washington, D.C., is uncertain, but Douglass was actively seeking a tenant for the house in the

Y8204-Douglass.indb 341

5/17/23 2:35 PM

342

MARTHA WALDO GREENE TO DOUGLASS, 7 DECEMBER 1876

spring of 1877. “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; “Frederick Douglass Surviving Urban Homesite,” Freethought Trail, freethought-trail.org. 8. The editors have not been able to identify Mollie. 9. The editors have not been able to identify Elizabeth. 10. More likely than not, Lewis Douglass was visiting members of his wife’s family in Syracuse and may have picked up his niece in order to bring her with him when he returned to Washington, D.C., where she would soon be joined by her mother and the rest of her siblings. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 816n; Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 20–21. 11. Estelle Irene Sprague.

MARTHA WALDO GREENE TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS [n.p.] 7 Dec[ember] 1876.1

My dear Friend The morning’s news takes me at once to you in congratulations. What a narrow escape our country & race, have made!2 Shall the very narrowness of the escape be our safety or our peril! You must be glad to be in Washington this week to watch the chivalry of Congress, in spite of the disappointment of not coming here. You not coming, is, I trust, only a delay—for the F. R. S. want you whenever your other engagements bring you near enough to permit you to come nearer,3 and this I hope will be soon—All day yesterday I felt /Evening/ I was interrupted this morning, and am to night in receipt of your welcome favor. I do not share your convictions in regard to the Presidential probabilities, and believe you are needlessly discouraged, but it may be because I know so ignorant of the real conditions. It seems to me the triumph of Republican party this time will be a guarantee for the continuance of its principles if not its [illegible], and at any rate the present is all we have to do with, and with this secure we will wait the issues of the future as they come. And oh this dreadful disaster in Brooklyn!4 Perhaps it is well at this exciting hour that something gives change to the tide of rage which ebbs & flows in the political sea, but what agony for those whose hearts were bound up with the poor helpless ones— I note every word you say—not less about poor dear Rosy5—why why will women be such fools! but my dear friend you like me not as nemesis, and it is not that I do not like you always as the merciful & the forgiving, but if you say truly that “we our personal interests, are and ought to be of prime consideration” true justice to ourselves, may require us to defend ourselves against the opportunity of others to take advantage of

Y8204-Douglass.indb 342

5/17/23 2:35 PM

MARTHA WALDO GREENE TO DOUGLASS, 7 DECEMBER 1876

343

us—particularly from giving repeated opportunity, when once deceived from being again deceived—I can see how hard it must be for you to step between and yet it seems to me, he should at least have placed himself in a situation to take care of his family, instead of adding himself to your care—but then I do not know—I cannot ought to [illegible] I feel for you all I can, in your perplexity, & [illegible] most earnestly—I could help you to see the way [shou]—If you decide to go to Boston6 let us know as soon as possible so that you can be relied on to speak Sunday—I should like best if it should be the Sunday after Christmas, & perhaps we might together spend New Years with the children at Fall River—By the way there are 2 or 3 persons to whom I want to give yr photos—if you have any & want to give them to me for that , it would be nice I trust you have rec’d ‘the Crackers’ within I did not start them as I said in my letter—I should, but did send the next day so they ought now to be with you— Gertie7 & Alice share my room with me to night. Will. took tea with us, & is gone to N. Falls for the night—tomorrow they all go home. It has been so good that they have been with me here a good many times this summer, for I have not been there, since we went together in May— and had the row on the River and that conversation in the Boat. Do you remember? But I must leave you now—I wish I were as sure as you of the “real presence” needed I am such a skeptic! I dare not be sure of anything— but I do trust—what else is there to do?—Gertie is waiting for me, & says give my kind regards always very truly MARTHA W. G. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 877–79, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Greene placed the notation “(morning)” following the date of the letter. 2. Greene refers to the contested victory of the Republican presidential candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, over the Democrat Samuel Tilden on 7 November 1876. The electoral votes of three states, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida, plus one of the three from Oregon, were disputed when they were tallied in Congress. The appointment of a fifteen-member electoral commission to investigate allegations of electoral fraud by both parties dragged the dispute out almost to inauguration day in March 1877. Roy Morris, Jr., Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876 (New York, 2003). 3. In an earlier letter published in this volume, Greene tells Douglass that the Free Religious Association, a predominantly New England organization, desired a lecture by him. Martha W. Greene to Douglass, 14 March 1876, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 815R–816, FD Papers, DLC. 4. Greene is probably alluding to the Brooklyn Theatre fire, one of the most catastrophic events to occur in the city in the nineteenth century and the third-deadliest theater fire in American history.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 343

5/17/23 2:35 PM

344

DOUGLASS TO AMY POST, 15 JANUARY 1877

According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, over 200 bodies were recovered before the rubble could be removed, and the final total was around 300 lives lost. The newspaper noted that the fire broke out in the upper “family circle,” the cheapest and most crowded seats. Those seated in that section were trapped, and their panic made escape impossible from the beginning. The bodies were reported to be in piles upon the floor, evidence of patrons trying and failing to escape the flames. Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, 6 December 1876; New York Times, 30 December 1885. 5. Rosetta Douglass Sprague. 6. There is no record of Douglass traveling to or speaking anywhere in Massachusetts in December 1876. Surviving correspondence from that month indicates, to the contrary, that he was “quite ill” and housebound. George T. Downing to FD, 18 December 1876, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 880–882L, FD Papers, DLC. 7. Probably Martha Greene’s eldest daughter, Martha Gertrude Greene Sherman (1848–1929), who married William F. Sherman (1848–1926), an engineer. In 1876, the couple had one child, Alice Louise Sherman (1874–1965). The 1880 census indicates that Martha had begun living with the Shermans in Fall River. 1880 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 37; 1900 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Middlesex County, 246A; Louise Brownell Clarke, The Greenes of Rhode Island: With Historical Records of English Ancestry, 1534–1902 (New York, 1903), 451; “Rhode Island, U.S., Death Index, 1630–1930,” Ancestry.com; Find a Grave (online).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO AMY POST Buffalo[ N.Y.] 15 Jan[uar]y 1877.

Amy Post My dear Friend: After being snowbound, fifteen miles from Corfu1 all night Saturday and all day Sunday, unable to get East or West. I was able, by the assistance of seven Locomotives to reach here last night about nine o.clock. My next point is in Northwestern Michigan but how and when I am to get there I do not know. I am now about disgusted with my tour—and wish myself back under your hospitable roof; 2 but the idea of duty which has hitherto commanded me is still my master and will compel me to go on. I leave here to day for Detroit, and thence to Traverse City.3 Please let the dear Hallowells4 and Willeses5 know this, for I had hoped to have spent some time with them before leaving Rochester during my present tour. Tell Doctor Tilden6 that I read every word of his able letter—and while, I admit that he puts Bishop in a bad fix, he does not much help the case of the Markees.7 I am always so happy to agree with you generally that I almost regret that I am not a spiritualist and the same feeling makes me regret that you are one.8 Kind regards to Dear Willie,9 Mrs M.10 and a whole heap—or “bunch” to the Doctor. Always yours truly FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Y8204-Douglass.indb 344

5/17/23 2:35 PM

GEORGE T. DOWNING TO DOUGLASS, 28 FEBRUARY 1877

345

ALS: Post Family Papers, Rush Rhees Library, NRU. 1. Corfu was a small farming community in Genesee County, New York, twelve miles southwest of Batavia and twenty-five miles northeast of Buffalo, along the line of the New York Central Railroad. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 449. 2. Douglass lectured at Rochester’s Corinthian Hall as part of its Athenaeum Course on 12 January 1877, and he spoke the next evening in Corfu. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, xxxv. 3. Douglass was scheduled to address an audience in Traverse City, Michigan, on 19 January and then to move on to Chicago and Dixon, Illinois, for speeches on 21 and 22 January 1877, respectively. 4. William and Mary Hallowell. 5. Probably a reference to the Rochester family of Sarah Kirby Hallowell Willis (1818–1914), Amy Post’s younger sister. A longtime friend and supporter of Douglass, Sarah was the eighth and last child of Jacob and Mary Seaman Kirby. In 1838 she married Jeffries Hallowell, a distant relation of her niece’s husband, William R. Hallowell. Active in the antislavery movement, Sarah joined the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society in 1842. In 1844 her husband died, leaving huge debts, which the Posts repaid. In 1848, she (along with her sister Amy and Douglass) was one of the signers of the Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls. In 1853 she married her brother-in-law Isaac Post’s nephew and business partner, Edmund P. Willis. Widowed for the second time in 1882, she remained active in the woman suffrage movement as well as a variety of local charitable organizations. Near the end of her life, she endowed a scholarship for women at the University of Rochester. Hewitt, Radical Friend, 73–74, 103, 219, 224, 231, 262, 268–69, 273, 282, 287, 288, 291; Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 143, 167, 184, 214, 231; Fought, Women, 338n; Find a Grave (online). 6. A Rochester physician and friend of Amy Post, A. E. Tilden shared Post’s belief in Spiritualism, and the two often addressed the same conventions on the subject. He organized support for the Exodusters in the late 1870s. Hewitt, Radical Friend, 278–29, 285. 7. Tilden had perhaps written to take sides in the long-running public controversy in the Rochester region over the authenticity of the séances performed by Elizabeth Compton Markee in the company of her husband. American Spiritualist Magazine (Memphis, Tenn.), 3:110–11 (1877); Boston Banner of Light, 42:2 (30 March 1878); London Medium and Daybreak, 9:372 (14 June 1878); Olive Branch, 8:91 (May 1883). 8. Amy Post and her husband, Isaac, had been among the very first to embrace the Spiritualist movement and make the public aware of the special powers of the Fox sisters, who received messages in the form of “rappings” from the deceased. Douglass had attended one of the Foxes’ early séances held at the Post home, but rejected Spiritualism as a distraction from the antislavery movement. Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:413, 2:269–71; FDP, 10 June 1859; Hewitt, Radical Friend, 140–41, 154–55. 9. Probably William Hallowell. 10. Eliza J. Smith Mann (?–1908), suffragist and wife of the Reverend Newton W. Mann, the pastor of Rochester’s First Unitarian Church from 1870 to 1888. Hewitt, Radical Friend, 266, 271; Blake McKelvey, “Civil Medals Awarded Posthumously,” RH, 22:16 (April 1960).

GEORGE T. DOWNING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Newport, [R.I.] 28 Feb[ruar]y 1877.1

Frederick Douglass, Dear Friend. I look at my family that has been reared in a fathers house not in idleness, yet without the experiences of those who are accustomed to the hard

Y8204-Douglass.indb 345

5/17/23 2:35 PM

346

GEORGE T. DOWNING TO DOUGLASS, 28 FEBRUARY 1877

fisted toil of the outer world. They have been reared to a certain dignity, with much tenderness. I pray that their future may not contrast too pointedly with their past life; that they may not be cast upon the cold charity of a heartless world. They have been encouraged in an elevated tone and to encourage those striving upwards; this should commend them, but on the contrary it would make too many rejoice at their misfortune. I begin to see more than ever the cold and unfeeling character of the world, how non appreciative it is. I was so engrossed in efforts for my race in which I was encouraged by my parents2 and favored by circumstances that I have not thought sufficient of my family. I could bear misfortune for myself, but I have the pride of name and of family. I enjoy a character that should command consideration. I have property I have supposed that with these, I might go in an extremity to those who had known me from my boy hood days and be assisted, but I am disappointed: time I [illegible] that is to some extent time because of the general depression. Still I cannot get it from my mind that the absence of will exists to some extent. My property is worth $60,000 it probably would not under a forced sale at present sell for more than $50,000, it is free from all claims save one held by the Savings Bank for $21,000; I have an obligation of $220 to meet in a few days and a similar one the middle of next month: there would have been no difficulty in the matter had I rented my stores Last Summer as usual and had I collected rents and other debts due me, besides I have been out of business two winters; all of this creates anxiety. A jealousy exists because a cold man has such prominent property, and against his manliness, this is to me a source of anxiety. The Bank says we sho[uld] not make heavy loans as a rule, business men do not care to take second mortgages. So I am hemmed in, I expected to sell my dear property to a party but he cannot raise the funds, I have made my case full that you may understand it, I would like to have 500$ I will give you a mortgage on my property, if you cannot let me have it, of course you will state it freely for we know each other to well not to be candid.3 I am leaving for the Senate Restaurant,4 will you not see Senator Conkling,5 Allison6 Sherman,7 S Cameron,8 Spencer,9 and Davies10 or address them urging them to use effort in my behalf. Had I retained the Senate House I would not have had need to ask for this loan: I want to be tided over until the middle of Summer when my rents will come in. Remember me to family. We are all well. Yours & GEO T DOWNING

Y8204-Douglass.indb 346

5/17/23 2:35 PM

GEORGE T. DOWNING TO DOUGLASS, 28 FEBRUARY 1877

347

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 15R–16, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Downing wrote “Confidential” at the top of this letter. 2. Thomas Downing (1791–1866) was a prominent black abolitionist in New York City. Born a slave in Accomack County, Virginia, he was manumitted by will in early manhood. Downing moved north in 1812, when the heirs of his former master tried to reenslave him. He fought with the Americans during the War of 1812 and then settled in Philadelphia. In 1819 he resettled in New York City, where he worked as a caterer before establishing an oyster bar in the financial district, which for several decades was the favorite eating spot of many New York merchants and their families. Downing became a relatively wealthy man for his day, able to finance a European education for a few of his many children, and accordingly, he took an active part in the civic life of his community. He held membership in the New York African Society for the Mutual Relief, the Masons, and the Odd Fellows, and served for many years as a vestryman in St. Phillips Protestant Episcopal Church. Prominent in the antislavery and equal rights movements, from 1831 onward Downing was a familiar face at National Negro Conventions. He was in the forefront of the effort to repeal the New York property qualification for black voters, helping draft the 1837 petition that black abolitionists sent to the state legislature. Downing served on the New York Vigilance Committee and the Committee of Thirteen, two black organizations in New York City dedicated to assisting fugitive slaves. New York Times, 12 April 1866; New York Herald, 12 April 1866; NASS, 21 April 1866; New York Colored American, 16 January, 20 February 1841; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 107, 171; Freeman, “Free Negro in New York City,” 35, 46, 103–04, 128, 138, 197, 285, 295, 394. 3. Although Downing is requesting that Douglass purchase some of his property in Rhode Island so that he can make some essential payments, there is no evidence that Douglass did so, though the public record abounds with Downing’s transactions, especially with the “Savings Bank,” perhaps a reference to the Savings Bank of Newport, which figures prominently in Downing’s real-estate transactions. Downing also seems to have had holdings in New York and probably in Washington, D.C., as well, so it is possible that he is petitioning Douglass to a purchase stake in property in one of these locations. City of Newport, R.I., “Real Property Records,” uslandrecords.com. 4. Downing began his career by following in his father’s footsteps as a restaurateur; he had opened a catering business on Broadway in New York City by the age of twenty-six. In the mid-1840s he relocated to Newport, Rhode Island, where he opened a hotel for wealthy summer vacationers. He originally came to the District of Columbia in 1869 to run the House of Representatives’ restaurant, which became well known under his management for its high standards and quality. He lost that position in 1876, likely because of the changing political landscape, but his friend Senator Thomas W. Ferry arranged for him to take over as the keeper of the Senate’s restaurant instead. David S. Shields, The Culinarians: Lives and Careers from the First Age of American Fine Dining (Chicago, 2017), 255–56. 5. Roscoe Conkling. 6. William Boyd Allison (1829–1908) briefly attended Western Reserve College before opening a law office in Ashland, Ohio, in 1852. He helped found Ohio’s Republican party in 1854. After losing a county political race, however, Allison headed west in 1857, settling in Dubuque, Iowa, where he again practiced law. Allison’s political future was assured with the case of Gelpcke v. City of Dubuque (1862). Herman Gelpcke brought suit against Dubuque for its failure to pay interest on railroad bonds issued to promote the building of the Dubuque Pacific Railroad. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled in favor of the city, but the U.S. Supreme Court accepted Allison’s arguments that a state supreme court’s interpretation of its own constitution was subject to higher authority and ruled against the city. For his part, Allison endeared himself to the railroad industry, Iowa’s most powerful political force. In 1860, Allison was elected to the House of Representatives as a Republican, where he introduced a bill providing federal land grants for his old friends, the railroads. In 1870, with the support of railroad magnates, Allison was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served as Iowa’s political boss for thirty-five years. A master of political compromise, Allison served on the Senate’s

Y8204-Douglass.indb 347

5/17/23 2:35 PM

348

GEORGE T. DOWNING TO DOUGLASS, 28 FEBRUARY 1877

Appropriations Committee and Finance Committee, influencing the major domestic legislation of the day. Allison made two bids for the Republican presidential nomination but lost to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and William McKinley in 1896. Leland L. Sage, William Boyd Allison: A Study in Practical Politics (Iowa City, 1956); ANB, 1:365–67; BDUSC (online). 7. John Sherman. 8. Simon Cameron (1799–1889) began his career as a political editor and businessman in Pennsylvania. Elected for a term in the U.S. Senate in 1845 and again in 1857, Cameron built a powerful machine in Pennsylvania that led to his consideration for the presidential nomination in 1860. His influence within the Republican party led to his appointment as secretary of war in 1861. Cameron saw this as an opportunity to reward friends and punish enemies, and his inept administration of the War Department caused great scandal. In an effort to boost his popularity, Cameron advocated the emancipation and arming of slaves. Although Douglass and other African American leaders found this idea compelling, moderate and conservative Republicans were not amused. Thus, Lincoln removed him from the War Department and appointed him to a diplomatic post in Russia. Cameron returned to the U.S. Senate in 1867 and served for ten years before retiring to a farm in rural Pennsylvania. Erwin Bradley, Simon Cameron: Lincoln’s Secretary of War (Philadelphia, 1966); NCAB, 1:5009; DAB, 3:437–39. 9. George Eliphaz Spencer (1836–93), a brevetted Civil War brigadier general and U.S. senator, began his public career in Iowa as a result of his attraction to the new Republican party. From 1857 to 1859, Spencer was the secretary of the Iowa Senate and speculated in land throughout the Iowa frontier. Spencer served in the Union army, first as a sutler for the First Nebraska Regiment and then as the chief of staff of Brigadier General Grenville M. Dodge, a friend from Iowa. Following the war, Spencer moved to the South and became involved in the cotton industry in hopes of making a fortune. Democrats later accused Spencer of being a carpetbagger for pursuing these ambitions. Spencer opposed Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction policies and briefly relocated to San Francisco in 1866 to pursue mining. The early days of Radical Reconstruction in 1867 saw Spencer return to Alabama as a devoted Republican pushing for a permanent political change in the state. Spencer’s dedicated campaigning for Republicans in the 1868 state elections resulted in the new Republican legislature awarding him a U.S. Senate seat. Spencer was on the Senate Commerce Committee, and his time as senator was marked by unequivocal support for black suffrage and improved civil rights, adamant opposition to unremorseful former Confederates, and a push for revitalizing the South economically and socially towards progressivism. Spencer narrowly avoided being ousted when Democrats reclaimed control of Alabama in the 1874 elections and served as a senator until 1879. BDUSC (online); ANB (online). 10. Henry Gassaway Davis (1823–1916) was a U.S. senator from West Virginia and the Democratic party’s vice presidential nominee in the 1904 presidential election. Davis initially became recognized in the public eye for his success as a businessman in lumber, coal mining, and banking in West Virginia. His ventures included the Henry G. Davis & Company and the Potomac and Piedmont Coal and Railway Company. Davis was elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1865 and won election as state senator in 1869. Davis entered the U.S. Senate in 1870 and served two terms. Afterward, Davis returned to West Virginia to resume his business ventures. By 1892, Davis’s coal company, the Davis Coal and Coke Company, had become one of the world’s largest as a result of the business partnership between Davis and his son-in-law, U.S. senator Stephen Benton Elkins (also from West Virginia). Despite Davis’s reluctance to run for office again, and Democrats’ hesitation to put Davis on the party’s presidential ticket, he became the Democratic nominee for vice president under presidential nominee Alton B. Parker in the 1904 presidential election. Democrats needed Davis’s financial resources to fund the presidential campaign. The duo, however, lost to Theodore Roosevelt and Charles Fairbanks. Davis eventually became chairman of the Pan American Railway Committee and helped establish Davis and Elkins College. Charles Melville Pepper, The Life and Times of Henry Gassaway Davis, 1823–1916 (New York, 1920); BDUSC (online); ANB (online).

Y8204-Douglass.indb 348

5/17/23 2:35 PM

JOSEPH J. KIRKBRIDE TO DOUGLASS, C. 17 MARCH 1877

349

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JOHN SHERMAN Washington, D.C. 13 M[ar]ch 1877.

Hon: John Sherman: Secretary of State of the U.S.1 Dear Sir: Not wishing to trouble the President by repeated calls or by deputations of my friends, knowing as I do the pressure of business now upon him, I have felt it might be well to say to you, that the United States Marshalship for the District of Columbia with which my name has been coupled will be entirely agreeablyg agreeable to my wishes—and I believe will be gratifying to a large-class of the American people of all colors and races— Very truly yours FREDK DOUGLASS—2 ALS: Rutherford B. Hayes Manuscripts, OFH. 1. While Douglass addressed this letter to John Sherman, the secretary of state in Rutherford B. Hayes’s administration, that office was actually held by William M. Evarts. Hayes appointed Evarts on 7 March 1877, and he began serving on 12 March. “Biographies of the Secretaries of State: William Maxwell Evarts (1818–1901),” history.state.gov. 2. Sherman added the following notation after he received the letter from Douglass: “I call the special attention of the President to this note of Fred Douglass with my hearty approval—

John Sherman.”

JOSEPH J. KIRKBRIDE1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington[, D.C. c. 17 March] 1877.

United States Senate Chamber. Hon. Fredk. Douglass. Esteemed Sir. While in the Capital, yesterday and immediately after the adjournment of the Senate, I happened to drop in upon a group of men gathered in the “Supreme Court Room”2 who were excitedly discussing the probability of your confirmation.3 Believing, from what I was told that, the “true inwardness” of the opposition came from a source you may not be advised of, I have thought it my duty to apprise you thereof. The facts gleaned were these viz: that the seeming disapproval of your confirmation as exhibited at the meeting of the Republican Central Committee4 was instigated by “Langston,”5 for “Ordways”6 interest who in return was to promote

Y8204-Douglass.indb 349

5/17/23 2:35 PM

350

JOSEPH J. KIRKBRIDE TO DOUGLASS, C. 17 MARCH 1877

“Langstons” claim for the Superintendency of the Insane Asylum;7 that Profs. Langston felt the injustice done by the President when he (Langston) was declared to be, “not the leading colored man of the country,[”] and which fact Mr. Douglass would be compelled to acknowledge as being contrary the result of that and subsequent meetings so determining. I do not know how this information may be of service to you, but, I thought possibly it might point to the source of this “delay element,” and if so will discover a bad man’s tricks. It may be well to state that the spokesman of the party alluded to was a member of the “committee” and he told me that he attended the meeting well acquainted with its purposes, as since developed. Further, that the “Bar” was to be incited at “Langstons” insistence.8 With distinguished regard I am Yours Respectfully J. J. KIRKBRIDE MD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 82–83, FD Papers, DLC. 1. The photographer Joseph John Kirkbride (1842–99) was born in Philadelphia, the son of Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride and Ann West Jenks. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in 1872. As a result of ill health, Kirkbride never practiced medicine full-time; instead, he distinguished himself as an amateur photographer, traveling throughout the United States and around the world and documenting his journeys. His photograph albums are now part of the Library of Congress’s photography collection. A birthright Quaker, Kirkbride lived with his family in Philadelphia for the majority of his life. He never married. 1850 U.S. Census, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia County, 43; 1870 U.S. Census, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia County, 126; 1880 U.S. Census, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia County, 80D; George S. Layne, “Kirkbride-Langenheim Collaboration: Early Use of Photography on Psychiatric Treatment,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 105:182–202 (April 1981); “U.S., Quaker Meeting Records, 1681–1935,” Ancestry.com. 2. Designed by the architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, the Supreme Court Chamber was located on the ground floor of the original north wing of the Capitol. The Court met there from February 1810 until August 1814, when, during the War of 1812, British troops invaded Washington, D.C., and set the Capitol ablaze. After its restoration was completed in 1819, the Supreme Court met in this chamber continuously until 1860. While beautifully designed, the chamber was characterized as a dark and damp room with poor ventilation. In 1860, the Court moved upstairs to the former Senate Chamber, and the “Old Supreme Court Chamber” was converted into a law library. The Court moved to its current building in 1935. The U.S. Senate Commission on Art and Antiquities, The Supreme Court Chamber, 1810–1860 (Washington, D.C., 1981); John J. Patrick, The Supreme Court of the United States: A Student Companion, 2d ed. (New York, 2001), 57. 3. Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Frederick Douglass marshal of the District of Columbia, and the latter accepted the position on 13 March 1877. The public soon became aware of the appointment, and Douglass visited the city hall, where the marshal’s office was located, on 15 March 1877 to begin planning for the transition. In an executive session on 17 March 1877, the Senate confirmed the appointment on a vote of 30–12. Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York championed Douglass in this proceeding, and the opposition denied that race was their deciding factor. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:328–29; Washington National Republican, 9, 16 March 1877; Muller, Lion of Anacostia, 69–71; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 583.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 350

5/17/23 2:35 PM

JOSEPH J. KIRKBRIDE TO DOUGLASS, C. 17 MARCH 1877

351

4. The territorial government of the District of Columbia had been abolished in 1874, and with it the participation of its citizens in any elections. Supporters of the Republican party maintained a series of ward clubs and a Central Committee to organize public demonstrations and lobby the federal government. On 15 March, the Central Committee held a meeting at its headquarters at 1513 Pennsylvania Avenue to organize a mass celebration of the election of Rutherford B. Hayes as president and the appointment of Douglass as the District’s marshal. The Washington National Republican’s brief report on that meeting concluded cryptically: “There was a long discussion regarding the appointment of Mr. Douglass to the position of United States Marshal for the District of Columbia, and pending discussion of the resolution before that meeting on the subject, the committee adjourned.” Kirkbride might have stumbled on a group in the Capitol on 16 March 1877 voicing opposition to Douglass’s appointment. The Senate, however, confirmed it in an executive session on the following day. When the Central Committee finally held its mass meeting on 26 March 1877, only one of its many speakers alluded to Douglass’s appointment. Washington National Republican, 9, 16, 18, 27 March 1877; Harrison, Washington during Civil War, 293–310. 5. Suspicion and ill will between Douglass and John M. Langston were long-standing by the time of Hayes’s election, but no evidence has been located of the latter making an active effort to block the marshal appointment. Langston’s supporters called for the president to appoint him to a position of equal stature to Douglass’s. In March 1877 the press reported on efforts to appoint Langston commissioner of agriculture. Later efforts focused on a diplomatic post, culminating in Hayes’s appointment of Langston as minister plenipotentiary to Haiti. New York Times, 31 March 1877; Langston, Virginia Plantation to the Capitol, 353–54; William Cheek III, “Forgotten Prophet: The Life of John Mercer Langston” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1961), 172–75. 6. It is plausible that Albert Ordway (1843–97) or, more likely, Nehemiah G. Ordway (1828– 1907) were contenders with Frederick Douglass for the District of Columbia marshal’s position. Albert Ordway was born in Boston and studied at Harvard University. When the Civil War began, he enlisted in the Massachusetts militia in April 1861. He quickly rose within the ranks and was brevetted brigadier general at the age of twenty-two. At the end of the war, Ordway was promoted to provost marshal general of Virginia, and he served until February 1866, when his regiment was mustered out of service. Although offered a commission in the regular army, he returned to civilian life, engaging in business in Richmond. In 1877, Ordway moved to Washington, D.C., and was commissioned brigadier general in command of the National Guard in the District. Nehemiah Ordway was born in Warner, New Hampshire. His first major position was as sheriff of Merrimack County, where he served until 1860, when President Lincoln appointed him inspector of the mail service. In 1862 he was elected sergeant at arms of the House of Representatives and served for twelve years. He served in the New Hampshire Senate from 1875 to 1880. President Hayes then appointed him territorial governor of Dakota, where he served until 1884. Ordway returned to Washington, D.C., and spent the remainder of his life engaged in business. Portland Morning Oregonian, 22 November 1897; Washington Evening Star, 2 July 1907; Philip (N.D.) Weekly Review, 17 July 1908; Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States Held at Kansas City, Missouri, Sept. 27, 28, and 29, 1899 (Columbus, Ohio, 1900), 49–50. 7. The longtime superintendent of the Government Insane Asylum, locally known as St. Elizabeths Hospital, Charles H. Nichols had come under investigation by Congress in 1869 and 1876 for inappropriately benefiting financially from his position. Nichols stepped down in early 1877. Kirkbride would have been well aware of issues surrounding St. Elizabeths because Nichols was a close friend and admirer of his father, Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride, a pioneer in psychiatric treatment. The younger Kirkbride’s visit to Washington, in fact, might have concerned the effort to find a replacement for Nichols. Langston, a law professor at Howard University, would seem to be a dubious choice for the superintendency of St. Elizabeths, and the position ultimately went to Dr. William W. Godding, a former assistant surgeon at the hospital who had more recently been superintendent of the

Y8204-Douglass.indb 351

5/17/23 2:35 PM

352

HORACE MORRIS TO DOUGLASS, 18 MARCH 1877

state hospital in Staunton, Massachusetts. Thomas Otto, St. Elizabeths Hospital: A History (Washington, D.C., 2013), 8–11, 14–15, 36–38, 60–64, 89, 97, 123. 8. Some press reports claimed that a majority of the District of Columbia’s bar was opposed to Douglass’s nomination to become marshal. A five-member committee was sent to lobby Congress against the appointment on the grounds that Douglass was “unfamiliar with our people and their responsibilities, unbred in our local usuages and unacquainted with the intricate judicial system under which we live.” Rumors circulated in the city that Douglass had selected as his deputy Arthur Shepherd, the brother of the former territorial governor Alexander R. Shepherd, who had been accused of corruption. Douglass quickly disputed that accusation. The U.S. Senate Committee for the District of Columbia heard the bar delegation but still recommended the nomination on to the full Senate, which approved it the following day. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:328–29; Washington National Republican, 17 March 1877; Whyte, Uncivil War, 132, 215, 217–19, 225–26, 234.

HORACE MORRIS1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Louisville, Ky. 18 March 1877[.]

Office of Surgeon-in-Charge, Post of Louisville Ky, Hon Frederick Douglass. Dear Sir; I see by the morning’s papers that the Senate has confirmed your appointment as Marshall of the District of Colombia.2 I congratulate you and the colored people whose representative you are, on this favorable esteem. There is more in it than simply the appointment of Frederick Douglass. It is a full recognition by the Administration of the citizenship of the Colored American. I am truly glad that the choice has fallen on you, for of all men I regard you as the best representative of our people in this country. A slave, a fugitive, a freedman and a citizen! you represent all the different phases of the negro in American history. Hanging in my parlor side by side, are pictures of Charles Sumner and Frederick Douglass; the first, the best representative of the white American the second, the best representative of the Colored American, Tomorrow I intend to put a laurel wreath around the latter, for it is a great triumph for the cause. When I read the news in the mornings paper, I drew my little fellows up in line, (I have five (5) of them) and gave three cheers for Frederick Douglass, and then for President Hayes. Remember me respectfully to your sons, Fred, and Charlie,3 if he has returned.4 Hoping you all manner of success, I am Very respectfully HORACE MORRIS

Y8204-Douglass.indb 352

5/17/23 2:35 PM

GEORGE T. DOWNING TO DOUGLASS, 19 MARCH 1877

353

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 33R, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Horace Morris (1832–97) was born free to parents, Shelton Morris and Evalina Spradling, in Louisville, Kentucky. Both the Morris and Spradling families were integral to the formation of Louisville’s free black community and active in the regional Underground Railroad. Shelton Morris moved to Ohio following the death of his wife and accusations that he illegally voted in the 1840 presidential election in Kentucky. Horace grew to adulthood in Ohio and returned to Louisville in 1851 with his wife, Wilhelmina Chancellor (also referred to as Willieann in historical records). Morris became heavily involved in civic reform, Republican politics, and the local A.M.E. church while in Louisville. Throughout his life, Morris held a number of prominent positions. He was appointed head cashier at the Louisville branch of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Bank in December 1868, the first African American to hold the position. Under his direction, the Louisville branch saw significant growth, reaching upward of $3 million in deposits. Morris served in this role until the federal government closed the bank. In 1881, Morris was the only African American to receive an invitation to Washington, D.C., to assist in the resolution of the Freedmen’s Bank’s accounts. During the 1870s, Morris turned his efforts to public education reform in Louisville. As secretary of the Colored Board of Visitors, he fought for the establishment of and monitored Louisville’s African American public elementary and high schools. Morris also assisted in the formation of the Colored Orphan’s Home in 1878. Morris was appointed the first African American steward of Louisville’s U.S. Marine Hospital in 1876. Like Douglass, Morris had an interest in newspaper publishing, although he did not achieve the same success. His first newspaper, the Kentuckian, launched in the early 1870s but was published for only several months. Morris’s second newspaper, the Champion, was also short-lived. William H. Gibson, Historical Sketch of the Progress of the Colored Race in Louisville, Ky. (Louisville, 1897), 65; Henry Clay Weeden, Weeden’s History of the Colored People of Louisville (Louisville, 1897), 18; Marion Brunson Lucas, A History of Blacks in Kentucky: From Slavery to Segregation, 1760–1891 (Frankfort, Ky., 1992), 68, 246, 282–84; J. Blaine Hudson, Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland (Jefferson, N.C., 2002), 139–41; Mervin Aubespin, Kenneth Clay, and J. Blaine Hudson, Two Centuries of Black Louisville: A Photographic History (Louisville, Ky., 2011), 53–55, 78-79. 2. The U.S. Senate’s executive session for confirming the nomination of Douglass to the position of U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia was held on 15–17 March 1877. The nomination was considered in debate on the final day, but the speeches were not recorded. Douglass later contended that Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York had been his strongest advocate for confirmation. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:329; Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America, 147 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1828), 20:67–68, 71. 3. Frederick Douglass, Jr., and Charles R. Douglass. 4. Charles R. Douglass was appointed consul in Puerto Plata, Santo Domingo, in July 1875 and remained in that post until he resigned on 12 October 1877. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 37.

GEORGE T. DOWNING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS New Port, [R.I.] 19 March 1877.

Friend Douglass, It is not necessary for me to say to you, I was glad to hear of the confirmation of your appointment as United States Marshall for the District of Colombia; for you know what my feelings would be, not only as to the act in its effect in winning respect for the Race, but in view of our personal

Y8204-Douglass.indb 353

5/17/23 2:35 PM

354

GEORGE T. DOWNING TO DOUGLASS, 19 MARCH 1877

relations, I did not deem it necessary to write to you, and say—“stick”—, when I heard the remark; your name would not be withdrawn unless with your approval. There is method in the movements of the new administration. Rutherford B Hayes had to encounter difficulties on the new Role he has taken upon himself: he is acting with good judgment. It has been decided upon to make certain actions with the hope of moving the South, expecting to at least divide it; its strength has been in the unity of its white element.1 It has seemed as though the colored element was to be disregarded. This will be true to some extent; yes; perforce; we will have to be subjects of general laws. For a time I know not how long; there will be a continuance of confusion and outrage, including murders in the South; unless the cultured brain of the section is allowed to come to the front, where its education, means and centuries of domination not many would place it, especially as it is in contact with a class that is poor, Yes! Landless, illiterate and that has been reared to absolute submission. It is a fact chilling to look upon, but it must be made to have an inspirating effect; the class will have to abide its time, get means, apply itself, struggle hard, become educated and skilled more in the sciences of government than fourteen years of freedom2 admits of, it must teach its children to aspire, and play as much as possible, themselves the part of men. The administration would not rush the colored man; but it had to yield to the South for a policy, to satisfy intelligent Colored men and their earnest friends, it had to do at least what it has done in your case, it really has honored itself in having done what it has done in your case: you deserve more at its hands: it must do more to others. Every thing that has occurred in Washington in connection with your nomination and confirmation may be part of a studied plan or policy; even ignorant and predjudiced colored men may have been made to play their part, that it may be quoted that the colored men of Washington know their place; you cold men of the South know yours, This is the most ignoble of all the parts that come to my mind. But thanks to progress, we have gained a glorious step. Please reread the letter of mine you criticized some time ago in “The New Era,”3 Kindly Yours &c GEO T DOWNING ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 39–40, FD Papers, DLC. 1. To secure the presidency during the close, controversial 1876 election, the Republican party compromised with southern Democrats concerning Reconstruction policies. As president, Hayes

Y8204-Douglass.indb 354

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLES A. HAMMOND TO DOUGLASS, 20 MARCH 1877

355

reiterated his support for “home rule,” which involved removing federal troops from Louisiana and South Carolina, thus ending military Reconstruction in the South. The implications of removing soldiers and abandoning carpetbagger governments meant Democrats would once again control those southern states while predictably ostracizing and intimidating African Americans. Hayes sought to restore harmony between the North and South as well as to forge a Republican party that could appeal to southern conservative whites. C. Vann Woodward, Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction (1951; New York, 1991), 17; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 299; Vincent P. De Santis, “President Hayes’s Southern Policy,” JSH, 21:476–94 (November 1955). 2. Downing dates African American freedom to the Emancipation Proclamation, which came into effect on 1 January 1863. 3. Frederick Douglass and George T. Downing had a public falling-out in the columns of the New National Era during the summer of 1871 over African American loyalty to the Republican party in the face of the lack of patronage given to members of their race. NNE, 8, 22 June, 13 July 1871.

CHARLES A. HAMMOND1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Syracuse, N[.]Y.2 20 March 1877[.]

F. Douglass Esqr Dear Sir Allow me, as a life-long Abolitionist & an old admirer & friend of yours to congratulate you on your confirmation to an office which, though far below your merit, will, I suppose, be of some value, pecuniarily & otherwise. I think the Senate itself, your proper place, but I am glad Southern Demacrats see that it would be mean & impolitic in them to refuse confirmation of your appointment. I suppose you & I have not voted alike for some years, (I voted for Smith3 & Stewart4 Prohibition), but I rejoice in your welfare & remain, as ever, the sincere friend of you & your race; both the human race & the particular branches of it with which you are connected. C. A. HAMMOND 5

[P.S] I should feel honored by a call from you when in town: as I learned you were here, recently; though “Marshall Douglass” is less honorable than simple Frederick Douglass. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 48R–49, FD Papers, DLC. 1. The Reverend Charles A. Hammond (1825–?) was the minister of Gerrit Smith’s Free Church at Peterboro, New York, and an active member of the Radical Abolitionist party. After the Civil War, he studied for the bar and practiced law in Syracuse. He wrote and lectured on behalf of prohibition. Hammond wrote Gerrit Smith: The Story of a Noble Man, a flattering biography of his early mentor. Lib., 7 September 1860; The Cyclopaedia of Temperance and Prohibition: A Reference Book of

Y8204-Douglass.indb 355

5/17/23 2:35 PM

356

DAVID A. STRAKER TO DOUGLASS, 22 MARCH 1877

Facts (New York, 1891), vi; Charles A. Hammond, Gerrit Smith: The Story of a Noble Man (Geneva, N.Y., 1900). 2. Hammond added “No 8 Clinton Block” to his address. 3. Green Clay Smith (1832–95), politician, soldier, and prohibitionist, was born in Richmond, Kentucky. Before receiving his education, he served as a volunteer during the Mexican War. He then attended Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he graduated in 1849, and also received his law degree from that school in 1852. After practicing law in Richmond and then Covington, Kentucky, he served in the state legislature (1860–61). On the outbreak of the Civil War, Smith was appointed colonel of the Fourth Kentucky Cavalry in the Union army, eventually rising to the rank of brigadier general. In 1863 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, eventually serving two terms. The following year, Smith nearly became Lincoln’s running mate on the Union party ticket after losing to Johnson by one vote. In 1866–68, Smith served as the second territorial governor of Montana. In 1869 he was ordained a Baptist minister and presided over a congregation in Frankfort, Kentucky. A staunch advocate of temperance, he was selected as the Prohibition party’s candidate for vice president of the United States in 1876. From 1890 until his death, Smith served as pastor of the Metropolitan Baptist Church of Washington, D.C. Thomas William Herringshaw, ed., Herringshaw’s Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1898), 860; Thomas Speed, Records and Memorials of the Speed Family (Louisville, Ky., 1892), 91–92; Ezra J. Warner, Jr., Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders (1964; Baton Rouge, 1992), 765; Darcy Richardson, Others: Third Party Politics from the Nation’s Founding to the Rise and Fall of the Greenback-Labor Party (New York, 2004), 466. 4. Gideon Tabor Stewart (1824–1909), temperance advocate, was born in Johnstown, New York, to Thomas Ferguson Stewart and Petreshe (Hill) Stewart. He attended Oberlin College but left before graduating to study law in Norwalk and then Columbus, Ohio. Stewart was admitted to the bar in August 1846 and became a law partner of Jairus Kennan. From 1850 to 1856, he served as auditor of Huron County and then resumed his law practice until the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, Stewart moved to Iowa and purchased the Dubuque Times, a pro-Union daily, printing it until the close of the war, when he sold the paper and moved back to Ohio. Stewart then purchased and edited the Toledo Commercial briefly before returning to Norwalk and resuming his law practice in 1866. Initially a member of the Whig party, he later joined the Republicans and then the Prohibition party. Stewart served as chairman of its national committee for four years, was nominated three times as the party’s candidate for governor of Ohio, and ran nine times as its candidate for judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio. In 1876 he served as the Prohibition party’s candidate for vice president. He was a member of the Sons of Temperance and the American Bible Society as well as an advocate of various temperance movements. Gregory Irving Reed, ed., Bench and Bar of Ohio: A Compendium of History and Biography, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1897) 1:205–07; Richardson, Others, 466; ACAB, 5:686. 5. Hammond added “(Atty &c.)” following his signature.

DAVID A. STRAKER1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Orangeburg[,] S.C. 22 March 1877[.]

U.S. Marshal of the District of Columbia. Hon Frederick Douglass Hon’ble & esteemed sir. From the bottom of my heart I congratulate you on the merited appreciation of you, as shown by President Hayes in nominating you, one of the

Y8204-Douglass.indb 356

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DAVID A. STRAKER TO DOUGLASS, 22 MARCH 1877

357

highest representatives of the colored race, for the high and distinguished position of U.S. Marshal of the District of Columbia, also by the U.S. Senate in the confirmation of said nomination. God grant you health, strength and a preservation of that ability which has hitherto distinguished you in all vocations. I am glad to learn of the nomination of John W. Langston Esq to a position which I know he is well qualified for and will fill with ability.2 There are other colored men of eminent ability who like yourself & Mr Langston have fought for the preservation of the Union, & the Republican Party as well as their freedom, who I hope in due course of time the President will show his appreciation of their services & loyalty to the Republican Party and their ability to serve the party in some high position. I will instance the Hon R. B. Elliott;3 and there are others whose names I must omit at present but stand ready and willing to mention at some future time. We are in a fearful condition in S. C. Republicanism is threatened with annihilation. We have been or are about to be cheated out of our legally elected Governor. Daniel H. Chamberlain,4 who received a majority of all the legal votes cast at the late election. He did not receive a majority of all the votes cast as did Genl Wade Hampton5 but who will presume to say that there has not always been the distinction made as justifying the claims of a candidate to office between the vote cast and the legal votes as cast, else whence come persons contesting the claims of their opponents to office. The promise of peace by the Democrats is a promise to the ear to be broken to the heart Mark me It is an Ignis-fatuus6 misleading the Republicans down a precipice from which they can never again arise. I do not question the good will of President Hayes towards us as a race. I admire, agree with, and am willing to uphold his hands, in reconciling the conflict between the races in the south and making our motto E pluribus Unum7 not merely words but a veritable fact: but let him be certain that there is mutality in the contract. Whatever the purpose of President Hayes may be to the contrary if he fail to recognize D. H. Chamberlain as Governor of So. Car. & Packard8 Governor of Louisiania he transfers the Republican Party into the hands of the Democrats as sure as a God exists. Shall this great party be thus destroyed? Some people say a new party must arise. why? are any of the fundamental principles of the Republican Party as it existed 20 years ago destroyed today? Cannot a party be reformed in its practices without its principles being destroyed? I will be just & state that I know in this state many Democrats who honestly desire peace reconciliation and will do justice to the colored race but they are themselves ostracised by their own

Y8204-Douglass.indb 357

5/17/23 2:35 PM

358

DAVID A. STRAKER TO DOUGLASS, 22 MARCH 1877

Party in its majority & cannot do the good they would. A few new men guarantee peace, but the masses only can await it. Have they yet spoken in South Carolina or Louisiania? Ought not the President to hear from the whole people of these states, through themselves & not through Senator Gordon. Is it to be believed that Senator Gordon9 of Ga. & M. C. Butler10 of So. Car. desire peace more than the victory of their party in the states in question. It is said that taxation will settle the vexed question. If the contending factions are left to themselves so as to see if might can overcome right the inevitable result will be two governments in La & So. Ca. In this state every Republican who voted the Republican ticket will pay his tax to Chamberlain & the Democrats will do the same to Hampton. Did the framers of the Constitution intend such a state of things when they said “To every state shall be secured a Republican form of Government.”11 Pardon this lengthy letter I only desire to express my views to you and if you think they will conduce to good you may give them such publication as you think. I am not anxious nor desirous to appear in print but I do not fear my views being as generally known as possible. Since writing the above a Hampton trial Justice has shot a Negro in making an arrest which his constable ought to have made. Very truly Yours D. A. STRAKER ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 61–63L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. David Augustus Straker (1842–1908) was a black educator, lawyer, judge, author, and orator. Straker spent the first twenty-six years of his life in his home country of Barbados, where he became a teacher in the capital, Bridgetown. In 1868, Straker moved to Kentucky to teach in a freedmen’s school, but soon decided to take up law and enrolled in Howard University’s School of Law in 1869. Following law school, Straker was appointed to a position in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he worked for four years. In November 1870, Straker married Annie Carey, a former Howard student, and they settled in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He was active in the Republican party and became a state representative in 1876. Straker successfully ran for reelection in 1878 and 1880, but was denied a seat by the Democratic majority. In protest, Straker and his law partner, the former South Carolina congressman Robert Brown Elliott, traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with President James A. Garfield to discuss discrimination and voter intimidation by South Carolina Democrats. In 1882, Straker became the dean of the Allen University School of Law, where he served until 1886. In 1887, Straker and his wife relocated to Detroit, where he continued to practice law and was the first African American to appear before the Michigan Supreme Court. He remained an ardent Republican and attended the 1888 Republican National Convention as Michigan’s representative. During his lifetime he wrote opinion pieces for newspapers, including Douglass’s New National Era, and gave lectures throughout the North and South. He authored multiple books, including The New South Investigated (1888), Reflections on the Life and Times of Toussaint L’Overture (1886), and Negro Suffrage in the South (1906). Straker founded the National Federation of Colored Men of the United States, as well as his own newspaper, the Detroit Advocate, in 1901. W. Lewis Burke, All for Civil Rights: African American Lawyers in South Carolina, 1868–1968 (Athens, Ga., 2017), 91–92,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 358

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DAVID A. STRAKER TO DOUGLASS, 22 MARCH 1877

359

107–111; Dyson, Howard University, 233–34; Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers, 205–06; Glenn O. Phillips, “The Response of a West Indian Activist: D. A. Straker, 1842–1908,” JNH, 66:128–39 (Summer 1981); DANB, 574–76. 2. In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed John M. Langston U.S. minister plenipotentiary to Haiti, a position he held until 1885. Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers, 128. 3. Robert Brown Elliott (1842–84) was a South Carolina lawyer, newspaper editor, and politician. Elliott claimed to have been born in Boston and to have lived in Jamaica and then in England, where he supposedly graduated from Eton in 1852. The claims of his birth and education, however, have not been corroborated by primary-source evidence. In all likelihood, he was born and educated in Liverpool, England, arrived in Boston in 1867, and moved to South Carolina a few months later. There, he became the associate editor of the South Carolina Leader, a black Republican newspaper. A year later, he established a law practice with David Straker and became active in politics. His political aspirations may account for his complicated account of his birth and education, since he may not have been a legal citizen when he was elected to the South Carolina House in 1868. In 1870, Elliott was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served until 1874, when he resigned in order to return to South Carolina and fight against corruption in the state’s government. He returned to the state house in 1874 and was its Speaker until 1876. That same year, Elliott successfully campaigned to become the state’s attorney general, but was forced out by Democrats in 1877 when President Hayes ended Reconstruction. Elliott became a special treasury agent and in 1881 was transferred to New Orleans, where he was relieved of his position the following year. He attempted to practice law in that state, but was unsuccessful and died from malaria in 1884, nearly penniless. Maurine Christopher, Black Americans in Congress (New York, 1976), 69–77; Peggy Lamson, The Glorious Failure: Black Congressman Robert Brown Elliott and the Reconstruction in South Carolina (New York, 1973), 22–33; Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers, 69–70; DANB, 210–11. 4. Daniel Henry Chamberlain (1835–1907) was born in West Brookfield, Massachusetts, the ninth of ten children. He was educated at Yale University and graduated in 1862. He then entered Harvard Law School, leaving in 1863 to join the army. He received a lieutenant’s commission with the Fifth Massachusetts Calvary, a volunteer black regiment. Following the war, Chamberlain moved to South Carolina to practice law, and became involved in politics. He was the state’s attorney general (1868–72) and was elected governor in 1874 with the support of fellow white Republicans as well as prominent African American South Carolinians, including Congressman Robert Brown Elliott. Although Chamberlain won the popular vote during the 1876 gubernatorial campaign, his opponent, the Democrat Wade Hampton III, also claimed victory. Following a six-month legal battle, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled in Hampton’s favor. The appointment of Hampton was part of the Compromise of 1877, which settled the disputed 1876 presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden in Hayes’s favor, with Hayes promising Democrats that he would end Reconstruction and remove federal troops from the South. Following his defeat, Chamberlain left political office and moved to New York, where he practiced law. He became a professor at Cornell University in 1883, teaching constitutional law until 1897. He traveled in Europe extensively and eventually settled in Virginia, where he lived the remainder of his life. Walter Allen, Governor Chamberlain’s Administration in South Carolina: A Chapter of Reconstruction in the Southern States (New York, 1888), 524–26; James Green, Personal Recollections of Daniel Henry Chamberlain (Worcester, Mass., 1908); ANB (online). 5. Wade Hampton III (1818–1902) was born in Charleston, South Carolina, to a wealthy planter family. He graduated from South Carolina College in 1836. In 1855, his father passed ownership of his plantation and 250 slaves to Hampton and his brother Christopher. Hampton entered political life in 1852 when he became a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives. Elected a state senator in 1858, Hampton, although initially against secession, joined the Confederate army, eventually reaching the rank of lieutenant general. Following the war, Hampton ran against Governor Daniel Henry Chamberlain in the 1876 gubernatorial race. The election was marred by violence

Y8204-Douglass.indb 359

5/17/23 2:35 PM

360

DAVID A. STRAKER TO DOUGLASS, 22 MARCH 1877

from a radical group of white men known as the Red Shirts, who used intimidation and even murder to suppress black voters. While Hampton did not openly support the Red Shirts, he benefited from their actions. Both Hampton and Chamberlain claimed victory, and for six months there were two legislatures in the state. The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled in Hampton’s favor, and the state was returned to Democratic control for the first time since the Civil War. Hampton was reelected to a second term in 1878 but resigned following his election to the U.S. Senate in 1879, where he served two terms. He was appointed U.S. railroad commissioner by President Grover Cleveland in 1893, an appointment he held until 1897. He died in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1902. Robert Ackerman, Wade Hampton III (Columbia, S.C., 2007), 10–11, 16, 191–203, ANB (online). 6. Latin for “foolish fire,” it refers to a will-o’-the-wisp, or something deceptive or deluding. 7. Latin for “Out of many, one.” The phrase was added to the Great Seal of the United States, which is used to authenticate important documents issued by the federal government. Richard S. Patterson and Dougall Richardson, The Eagle and the Shield: A History of the Great Seal of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1978), 34–35. 8. Stephen Bennett Packard (1839–1922) was born in Auburn, Maine, and educated at Westbrook Seminary. After studying law, he enlisted in the U.S. Army’s Twelfth Maine Infantry in 1861, achieving the rank of captain. Following the war, he moved to Louisiana and practiced law. In 1869, Packard was appointed U.S. marshal for the state by President Ulysses S. Grant. During the 1876 gubernatorial election, Packard claimed victory against his Democratic opponent, Francis T. Nicholls, despite Nicholls’s claim of victory. Both men were sworn in on inauguration day, and the state maintained two legislatures until President Hayes sent a commission to the state to remove Packard from office. Hayes’s support of Nicholls was part of the Compromise of 1877, which gave Hayes victory over Samuel J. Tilden in the disputed presidential election of 1876. Packard left Louisiana shortly thereafter and was appointed consul at Liverpool, England, where he remained until he moved to Iowa and became a livestock breeder. He served as a member of the Iowa State Board of Agriculture from 1901 to 1909, when he moved to Seattle, Washington. Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 489–503; “Stephen B. Packard,” Annals of Iowa, 14:234–35 (1924). 9. John Brown Gordon (1832–1904) attended Pleasant Green Academy and the University of Georgia, where he excelled in oratory and literature; however, he left during his senior year and never completed a degree. In 1854, Gordon moved to Atlanta and studied law, but this venture proved unsuccessful. He instead entered journalism and worked with his father in the coal mining industry, where he built his fortune. Gordon was a proponent of secession and joined the Confederate army as a captain, eventually rising to the rank of general. Following the war, he entered politics, unsuccessfully running for governor in 1868. In 1873, Gordon was elected U.S. senator from Georgia and fought to restore home rule and alleviate restrictions on the South imposed by Reconstruction policies. He served until 1880, when he left unexpectedly to work for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. Gordon returned to politics in 1886 when he became governor of Georgia. Following his term, he returned to the U.S. Senate in 1891 and served two additional terms. On his retirement from politics in 1889, Gordon served as commander in chief of the United Confederate Veterans (1889–1904). He was also a prominent member of the Ku Klux Klan. Eckert, John Brown Gordon, 6–15; Howard Dorgan, “A Case Study in Reconciliation: General John B. Gordon and ‘The Last Days of the Confederacy,’ ” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 60:83 (1974); ANB (online). 10. Matthew Calbraith Butler (1836–1909) was a former Confederate major general, politician, and lawyer who came from a long line of politicians: his father, William Butler, Jr., was a congressman; his uncle, Andrew Butler, was a U.S. senator; and another uncle, Pierce Mason Butler, was governor of South Carolina. Butler attended South Carolina College but left in 1856, two years shy of graduation. He continued his legal studies under James P. Carroll, and was admitted to the bar one year later. Butler entered politics early, successfully winning a seat in South Carolina’s House of Representatives in 1860, but left once the state seceded. In 1866, he was again elected to the state House of Representatives. Following the end of Reconstruction, Butler won three terms in the U.S. Senate,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 360

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO SARAH JANE CLARKE LIPPINCOTT, 24 MARCH 1877

361

serving until 1895. He was a moderate conservative who supported the black emigration movement. Following his retirement from politics, he practiced law in Washington, D.C., until becoming a major in the Spanish-American War. Following the war, he returned to Edgefield, South Carolina, where he had spent his youth, and resumed his law practice. He spent a brief amount of time in Mexico while working for a mining company, but ultimately returned to the Washington, D.C., area, where he lived until his death. Samuel J. Martin, Southern Hero: Matthew Calbraith Butler, Confederate General, Hampton Red Shirt, and U.S. Senator (Mechanicsburg, Penn., 2001), 1–7; BDUSC (online); ANB (online). 11. Straker paraphrases article IV, section 9, of the U.S. Constitution: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.”

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SARAH JANE CLARKE LIPPINCOTT (“GRACE GREENWOOD”)1 Washington[,] D.C. 24 M[ar]ch 1877[.]

All right, my kind friend, there is much in what you Say of the Many good words you have said of me, not only in the article in the “Times,” to which I took a solitary exception, but in many other articles reaching over many years.2 I remember you for them all and thank you for them all. I now better comprehend your aim in the “Times” than upon the first reading your article, and yet I think you make me deeper and less transparent than I am. Few however, have the ability to see themselves as others see them and perhaps I may seem a little less frank to others than I seem to others. I am glad you think my not being better understood by you my own fault—since this puts it in my power to remove the cause. Do you know, or would you believe, that after all the good things you have said of me—after all the service I have known you to render to the cause of justice, liberty and humanity, after all the kindness shown me at the fireside of your dear father and mother,3 after all your brave conduct in standing up for truth and enlightenment, at an early day, when to oppose slavery was to invite to your head the shafts of ridicule and even violence—after your full, free and conspicuous recognition of my rights and feelings, more than thirty years ago, when my manhood was insulted and wounded—on my passage from New Brighten4 to Pittsburg—I say, would you believe after all these proofs of your interest in myself as well as in my cause—I have still felt that there was a cool stream running between us. I think now that this must have arisen in some measure from the fact that our courses were in different directions. You have been ministering

Y8204-Douglass.indb 361

5/17/23 2:35 PM

362

DOUGLASS TO SARAH JANE CLARKE LIPPINCOTT, 24 MARCH 1877

to a class occupying a place beyond me. You are not only reformatory and beneficent—but you are learned and philosophical, courted by the high and great at home and abroad—and I have been your humble friend all the while—standing at a respectful distance but admiring you and following you in all these thirty four years with the best wishes that one heart can feel for the welfare, prosperity and happiness that on soul can feel for another. From the time when in the fullness of your youth and beauty—you brought to me you brought to me for my opinion some of your earliest productions, I have never ceased to follow you in all your career with sentiments of respect and affection—I have even flattered my self that I had some hand in bringing you to the attention of the broad world—that I helped & to remove your distrust of your own ability as a writer—and encouraged you to venture into the arena of literature where you have shown for thirty years and more, as one of the most graceful of american writers—I have secretly shared your glory. But I only meant to tell you that all is quiet on the Potomac—and that you and I are even better friends to day than ever before, As soon as I can I shall see you and let you have a peep into those fancied depths—which will when you have seen them—not seem so deep after all. If all this shall seem over done I assure you that it is only seeming—I have never spoken more sincerely than in this imperfect and hastily written note. FREDERICK (AS OF OLD) ALS: Frederick Douglass Manuscripts, CtY. 1. Sarah Jane Clarke Lippincott (1823–1904) wrote poetry and children’s stories under the pseudonym “Grace Greenwood.” Originally from Pompeii, New York, Lippincott relocated to New Brighton, Pennsylvania, in 1842. Two years later she began her literary career by publishing in numerous periodicals. She became an editorial assistant for Godey’s Ladies Book but was fired for her antislavery writings. Lippincott then moved to Washington, D.C., where she wrote for the National Era. In 1853 she married and moved to Philadelphia, where she launched her own successful children’s magazine, the Little Pilgrim. Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3:513n; NAW, 2:407–09. 2. Greenwood wrote regularly for the New York Times from Washington, D.C., in the 1870s, often in a signed column entitled “Washington Notes.” None of these appear to be the one to which Douglass referred, but perhaps he believes her responsible for the Times’s positive coverage of his nomination by President Rutherford B. Hayes to become marshal of the District of Columbia. New York Times, 16, 17, 18, 20 March 1877. 3. Greenwood was the youngest of eleven children born to Dr. Thaddeus C. Clarke (1770–1854) and Deborah Baker Clarke (c. 1791–1874). Thaddeus, originally from Lebanon, Connecticut, was a physician. Deborah, a native of Brooklyn, Connecticut, was educated in English classics and helped ignite Greenwood’s interest in literature. New York Times, 7 January 1875; Donna Born, “Sara Jane Clarke Lippincott (23 September 1823–20 April 1904),” in American Newspaper Journalists, 1690– 1872, ed. Perry J. Ashley, vol. 43 of Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit, Mich., 1985), 303–09. 4. New Brighton is located in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, along the Beaver River, and is less than thirty miles northwest of Pittsburgh. In a letter written by Douglass to Sydney H. Gay dated 20

Y8204-Douglass.indb 362

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO JAMES WORMLEY, 25 MARCH 1877

363

August 1847, Douglass recounted his travels from Pittsburgh to New Brighton to visit Grace Greenwood and attend several abolitionist meetings there. During his travels aboard a steamboat, Douglass wrote that “no dinner was furnished, for the very American reason, that a goodly number of persons on board were coloured, and it was deemed probable that some of them might presume to dine, and would thus give offence to the white skinned aristocracy.” This may be the incident to which Douglass refers in his letter to Greenwood. While in New Brighton, Douglass, along with William Lloyd Garrison and Martin Delany, spoke at two meetings on Saturday, 14 August 1847. Both meetings were held in the upper room of a general store and were well attended by several hundred people despite the cramped conditions. Douglass to Sydney H. Gay, 20 August 1847, in Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:234–37; Lib., 20 August 1847; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3:510–11.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JAMES WORMLEY1 Washington, D.C. 25 March 1877[.]

My dear Wormly. A thousand thanks for your words of Cheer and Congratulation. A multitude of friends in all parts of the Country have followed your kind example. I want to say something to all, and in order to do so I must say but little to each, you will therefore excuse this brief but, sincere acknowledgement of your kind letter, and accept my thanks for the same your friend FREDERICK DOUGLASS ALS: Charles Roberts Manuscripts, PHC. 1. The hotel operator James Wormley (1819–84) was born free to a livery stable operator named Pere Leigh Wormley and his wife, Mary. Wormley briefly operated a horse and carriage hack in Washington, D.C., but left to seek his fortune in the California gold rush of 1849. After a stint as a steward on Mississippi River steamboats, he returned to Washington and worked as a steward at the Metropolitan Club. He started a catering business just before the Civil War erupted, and then expanded his business to include a restaurant, which was patronized by important politicos. In 1868 he traveled to Great Britain as the personal steward of the newly appointed U.S. minister, Reverdy Johnson. In 1871, Wormley opened the hotel that made him famous, at the southwest corner of H and Fifteenth streets. With its central location, the Wormley Hotel attracted many important guests and counted Schuyler Colfax, John Hay, and Roscoe Conkling among its long-term residents. In February 1877, a meeting held at the hotel produced the “Wormley Agreement,” which formed the basis for the Compromise of 1877. The Wormley Hotel continued operations under the direction of Wormley’s three sons for several years after his death. Cleveland Gazette, 23 October 1886; Charles E. Wynes, “James Wormley of the Wormley Hotel Agreement,” Centennial Review, 19:397–401 (Winter 1975); ANB, 23:882–83.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 363

5/17/23 2:35 PM

364

ARCHIBALD KENYON TO DOUGLASS, 26 MARCH 1877

ARCHIBALD KENYON1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Chatsworth, Ill.2 26 March 1877.

Hon Fred Douglass Dear Sir You will pardon an old time Abolition in addressing a note to you at this time—Having been associated with such Gentlemen as Rev. Nath Colver 3 C P Grosvenor,4 Dr Corless5 M A Mowrey6 Hon Gerritt Smith Wm Goodell7 Joshua Leavitt8 &c &c & having heard you when you first came North—I can but congratulate you upon the result following our great Battle in behalf of your race & of our humanity as well God, has done great things for us & our cause where-of we are glad For many years yes from—1842—, till its disorganization I was with the “Free Mission Society,”9 & through it sought the freedom & elevation of your enslaved people, & now I rejoice that Slavery is dead & that as one of the oppressed race you are placed in so prominent a place & take a lively interest in Prest Hays10 experiment with the south, for it is an experiment & one I should not have made—! I insist that Packard11 of La & Chamberlain12 of S. C. [illegible] be recognized instantly The Slavery Spirit is still alive & kicking—all it lacks is power & should be dealt with not by pacification, but by force. The idea of pacifying rebels is not only preposterous but ridiculous—Please accept my assurance of interest in your success. A KENYON

[P.S.] My address is Rev. A Kenyon Chatsworth Ill ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 80R–81, FD Papers, DLC 1. Born in Athol, New York, Archibald Kenyon (1813–90) joined the Baptist ministry in 1835 at the encouragement of the Reverend Nathaniel Colver. Active in the American Baptist Free Mission Society, Kenyon edited the Free Mission Visitor on behalf of that antislavery organization. He held pastorates in Rhode Island, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Kenyon was also the composer of more than a dozen popular hymns. The Baptist Almanac for the Year of Our Lord 1857 (Philadelphia, 1857), 29; Henry S. Burrage, Baptist Hymn Writers and Their Hymns (Portland, Me., 1888), 368–69; Alfred T. Andreas, History of Chicago, From the Earliest Period to the Present Times, 3 vols. (Chicago, 1884), 2:320–21; Find a Grave (online). 2. Chatsworth was a small farming community southwest of Chicago, built along the Peoria and Oquawka Railroad in Livingston County, Illinois. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 378. 3. The son of a New England Baptist minister, Nathaniel Colver (1794–1870) entered his father’s occupation and became one of the earliest leaders in that denomination to adopt immediateabolitionist views. After serving in a number of pastorates, he began preaching at the Tremont Temple in Boston. In the late 1830s, Colver helped lead a revolt among abolitionists against the anticlerical views of the Garrisonians in Massachusetts. In 1842 he became a founder of the American Baptist

Y8204-Douglass.indb 364

5/17/23 2:35 PM

ARCHIBALD KENYON TO DOUGLASS, 26 MARCH 1877

365

Anti-Slavery Convention, which protested tolerance of slaveholders in the denomination’s mission societies. After later pastorates in Detroit and Cincinnati, Colver was president of the Freedman’s Institute in Richmond, Virginia, from 1867 to 1870. Archibald Kenyon named a son after Colver. J. A. Smith, Memoir of Rev. Nathaniel Colver, D.D., Lectures, Plans of Sermons, etc. (Boston, 1873); McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 48, 62, 87–89; ACAB, 1:699; DAB, 4:324–25. 4. Cyrus Pitt Grosvenor (1792–1879) was born in Grafton, Massachusetts, and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1815. Ordained a Baptist minister, he was pastor to a series of congregations in Connecticut and Massachusetts. An early abolitionist, Grosvenor was an agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society in the 1830s and attended the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. He was a founder of the American Baptist Free Mission Society, an abolitionist come-outer denomination. In 1849, Colver became president of New York Central College, an early institution with an integrated faculty and student body. Frederick Clifton Pierce, History of Grafton, Worcester County, Massachusetts: From Its Early Settlement by the Indians in 1647 to the Present Time, 1879 (Worcester, Mass., 1879), 615; McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 48, 87, 130. 5. Hiram S. Corliss (1793–1877) was a successful physician in Union Village (present-day Greenwich) in Washington County, New York. His abolitionist principles led him to found an antislavery come-outer church and become active in the Underground Railroad. Tom Calarco, The Underground Railroad in the Adirondack Region (Jefferson, N.C. 2004), 18, 34, 57, 85, 92, 95, 262; William Richard Cutter, New England Families: Genealogical and Memorial; Achievements of Her People in the Making of Commonwealths and the Founding of a Nation, 4 vols. (New York, 1913), 3:1159. 6. Possibly William H. Mowry (1811–50), a member of Hiram Corliss’s antislavery Free Church in Union Village, New York. He and his wife, Angelina, were well-known Underground Railroad conductors in the Adirondack Mountains region of New York. Calarco, Underground Railroad in the Adirondack Region, 21, 53, 117, 122, 145. 7. William Goodell, (1792–1878) a New York abolitionist and newspaper editor, helped form both the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Liberty party. As a writer and editor, Goodell contributed to a number of reform and antislavery publications, including the Genius of Temperance, the Emancipator, the Friend of Man, the American Jubilee, the Radical Abolitionist, and Principia. Goodell’s abolitionist ideals did not always fall in line with those of the Garrisonians. On religion, Goodell agreed wholeheartedly that established churches supported proslavery ideology, and he went so far as to establish his own nonsectarian church in Honeoye, New York, on the principles of temperance and antislavery. In contrast, Goodell broke with the Garrisonians on the issue of politics. He helped found the Liberty party as a way to use political means to fight against slavery. Gerald Sorin, The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn., 1971), 57–62; Perry, Radical Abolitionism, 46–48, 180–83; DAB, 7:384–85. 8. Born to a wealthy family in Heath, Massachusetts, Joshua Leavitt (1794–1873) studied at Yale University and practiced law first in his hometown and then in Putney, Vermont. In 1823 he returned to Yale to study for the congregational ministry. After a pastorate in Stratford, Connecticut, Leavitt accepted a missionary position with the American Seaman’s Friend Society in 1828. He was soon drawn into evangelical reformism and served as editor of the New York Evangelist (1830–37). Recruited to abolitionist ranks by Arthur and Lewis Tappan, Leavitt took over the editorship of the New York Emancipator in 1837 and made it a strident critic of the Garrisonian wing of abolitionism. A founder of the Liberty party, he was a leader in its merger with antislavery Whigs and Democrats to form the Free Soil party in 1848. That same year, Leavitt accepted an editorial position with a new evangelical newspaper, the New York Independent, where he managed daily office operations and wrote occasional articles until his death. New York Independent, 23, 30 January, 6, 13 February 1873; Hugh Davis, Joshua Leavitt: Evangelical Abolitionist (Baton Rouge, La., 1990); ANB (online). 9. Baptist abolitionists had worked since the mid-1830s to persuade their denomination’s missionary societies to cease appointing slave-owning missionaries. Despite the sectional schism of

Y8204-Douglass.indb 365

5/17/23 2:35 PM

366

JULIA GRIFFITHS CROFTS TO DOUGLASS, 26 MARCH 1877

the American Baptist Home Mission Society and the American Baptist Missionary Union in 1845, militant abolitionists complained that those bodies continued to accept financial contributions from southerners. These abolitionists created their own organization, the American Baptist Free Mission Society, which dispatched its own missionaries, published newspapers and tracts, and established several colleges. These come-outer Baptists played prominent roles as officers of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and as supporters of the Liberty party. McKivigan, War against Proslavery Religion, 88–90, 93, 99–101; McKivigan, “The American Baptist Free Mission Society: Abolitionist Reaction to the 1845 Baptist Schism,” Foundations: The Journal of the American Baptist Historical Society, 21:340–55 (October–December 1978). 10. Rutherford B. Hayes. 11. Stephen S. Packard. 12. Daniel Henry Chamberlain.

JULIA GRIFFITHS CROFTS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Gateshead-on-Tyne, [Eng.]1 26 March [1877].

My dear Friend —This is the last letter you will receive from my hand from Denmark St—as, all being well, we move to St Neots next week— address— The Cross St Neots— Hants—2 It has of late years become the fashion to curtail the shires of our Counties: Huntingdonshire is the Co: but it is rarely written—you will inquire that I am very busy now, with moving in prospect—but I feel that I must send my dear old friend a word of congratulation upon his new appointment—of which I only definitely heard last Saty morning—your welcome letter greeted me on my return from that same evening—dear friend Fredk you know how warmly & truly I congratulate you. I am most anxious to know what your duties will be or rather are—for I suppose they will have [illegible] in this?—so, if in the press of business you only can send me a dozen lines, prithee send them—will the appointment keep you fixed at Washington?—I suppose there will be no lecturing now?—I do hope it will prove remunerative? Tell me all particulars—I will know how much I want to know then—Is the President a fine man? at any rate he has the discernment to appreciate true nobility—This is 1877—and 30 years ago this March (1847) we had our anti Slavery (Lndn.) service3 & Eliza4 pinned that white carnation in your coat? and the haughty brother Frederick “never rested till he knocked off the beautiful white flower

Y8204-Douglass.indb 366

5/17/23 2:35 PM

JULIA GRIFFITHS CROFTS TO DOUGLASS, 26 MARCH 1877

367

leaving only the green leaves on”—Can it be 30 years ago this coming 29th March? and then, 28 years ago this 29th March—/49—the “Sarah Sands”5 bore us across the wide Atlantic; And you, if God spares your valuable life will “cross over” again to see us—I fear not this summer but if the next November our St Neots house as yr head quarters—you can spend four St Neots a stop (over) in London—& see our “new, great Metropolis”—which you scarcely saw last time—& I am sure, you will feel quite at home with my household—which is an extremely pleasant one—Their very nice governess move with me—& Mattie Crofts6 joins me—& I hope God will bless us— & then all will be well—Dont fail to send me a few lines soon—Be careful of yourself—do not run any risks—the Southern tyrants will not relish the appointment—Remember me very kindly to Mrs Douglass,7 Rose,8 & the sons—if they bear me in memory—and praying that God may bless you abundantly, I am, forever & ever, your faithful and affectionate old friend, JULIA G. CROFT

[P.S.] Sh[oul]d the doctor9 knew I was writing he send you his best regards— ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 77R–79L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. This manufacturing community was located in northeastern England on the opposite bank of the Tyne River from Newcastle. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 665. 2. The Crofts moved from Newcastle to Cambridgeshire in 1879 after Henry Crofts retired. Their new address was Cross, St. Neots, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. Janet Douglas, “A Cherished Friendship: Julia Griffiths Crofts and Frederick Douglass,” Slavery and Abolition, 33:272 (May 2012). 3. Douglass first met the Griffiths sisters at the farewell reception given for him in London on 30 March 1847. The meeting was a great success, with hundreds of people flocking to the London Tavern to hear Douglass speak. The English parliamentarian and abolitionist George Thompson introduced Douglass, and several of the friends that Douglass had made traveled down to London to say farewell, including the author William Howitt and the Bristol-based abolitionist John Estlin. Joseph Sturge, a member of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, also spoke. Douglass’s speech was published in a pamphlet in London. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 2:19–52; Fought, Women, 93–94. 4. Eliza Griffiths Dick. 5. Griffiths and her sister Eliza sailed on the S.S. Sarah Sands from Liverpool and reached New York on 2 May 1849. The ship, which was built in 1846, sailed between Liverpool and New York until 1850, when it sailed between San Francisco and Panama City for over a year. The ship was eventually used by the British government to move troops from Britain to the Crimea and then to India after the Indian Mutiny of 1857. The ship was wrecked twelve years later in the Indian Ocean. Glanville J. Davies, “The Wreck of the S.S. Sarah Sands,” Mariner’s Miller, 61:61–71 (January 1975); “Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild (passenger manifest),” immigrantships.net. 6. Martha “Mattie” Nichol Crofts. 7. Anna Murray Douglass. 8. Rosetta Sprague Douglass. 9. Henry O. Crofts.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 367

5/17/23 2:35 PM

368

MARY E. STEARNS TO DOUGLASS, 26 MARCH 1877

MARY E. STEARNS1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Medford[, Mass.] 26 March 1877.

To Frederick Douglass. United States Marshall of the District of Columbia Dear Friend. No one can offer you profounder congratulations than the wife of George L. Stearns, and the friend of old John Brown. Indeed to chart my “Nunc Dimittis,”2 seems the only thing left for me to do. After all this dreary watching, and waiting for some result of the Great War, commensurate with its terrible sacrifice, comes a President so sane, and clean, and wellpoised that he seems more like an ideal Hero, than an actual presence; so far removed from all the political makeshifts, we have been used to call Presidents, that I rub my eyes, in half fear that it is some enchantment, and not quite real, and permanent.3 From first, to last, President Hayes, has not even offended, in simple matters of taste, while his moral courage, firmness of purpose, and heaven-eyed wisdom shine aloft like the stars: keeping in the busy turmoil of affairs the “law in silence made”. I love and honor him with my whole heart and soul: and I never could say that, of any President during my life. He is the Century blossom: and now having redeemed the promises of the Declaration of Independence, the Republic starts fair, and square on its second Century;4 And how narrow the escape from destruction, time will clearly reveal. President Hayes has a Herculean tasks before him, but I doubt not his triumph over them all. It is not twenty years, since John Brown was hung for a practical application of the Golden-Rule5 to your suffering Race. And today, as its representative you are Marshall of the District of Columbia! As my friend Mr. M D. Conway6 would say, “It is imense”—It is the Lord’s doing, and marvelous in our eyes. Very near, seems the spirit of my noble Husband in this sublime triumph of reason, and virtue. For this, he gave his life and fortune. With a renewal of my congratulations, and hearty God speed to you, and your Race. I am cordially Your friend MARY E. STEARNS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 82–84L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Mary Elizabeth Preston Stearns (1821–1901) was the second wife of George Luther Stearns, a prominent Boston manufacturer, social reformer, and abolitionist primarily remembered for be-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 368

5/17/23 2:35 PM

MARY E. STEARNS TO DOUGLASS, 26 MARCH 1877

369

ing one of the Secret Six that funded John Brown’s raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. Since George was a wealthy industrialist and Mary was descended from eminent Massachusetts families, the couple socialized with New England’s cultural elite. Although both of them held John Brown in high esteem and supported his activities in the late 1850s, Mary’s admiration approached idolatry. Upon the announcement of Brown’s death sentence, Mary commissioned a white marble bust to be made in his likeness. This statue was unveiled at the Stearnses’ home during a celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863 that was attended by William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Julia Ward Howe, and other notables. The Stearnses’ friendship and collaboration with Frederick Douglass largely revolved around George’s wartime exertions to recruit African American soldiers and his postwar efforts to establish black male suffrage. Charles E. Heller, Portrait of an Abolitionist: A Biography of George Luther Stearns, 1809–1867 (Westport, Conn., 1996), 24–27, 107, 142–43, 146–57, 189–209. 2. Nunc Dimittis, Latin for “now let depart [thy servant],” refers to the Song of Simeon, recorded in Luke 2:29–32. The passage, which conveys a sense of farewell after the completion of a great task, is used as a hymn, primarily for evening worship services. 3. Mary Stearns’s enthusiasm for the newly inaugurated president Rutherford B. Hayes, albeit excessive, was based on his well-deserved reputation as a defender of black civil rights. As a Cincinnati-based attorney in the 1850s, Hayes defended fugitive slaves in court. During the Civil War, he amassed an excellent record as an officer in the Union army, and while serving in Congress from 1865 to 1867, he staunchly supported Radical Reconstruction policies. Over the course of three terms as Ohio governor, from 1868 to 1872 and 1876 to 1877, he unsuccessfully advocated amending the state constitution to enfranchise black males; however, he successfully pushed the Fifteenth Amendment through the Ohio legislature. As president, Hayes never wavered in espousing civil rights for blacks, but understood that popular support for federal intervention in southern states had completely vanished by the mid-1870s; therefore, he made civil service reform and sound currency the hallmarks of his administration. Simpson, Reconstruction Presidents, 199–228. 4. Throughout 1876, Americans celebrated the centennial anniversary of the nation’s birth, marked from the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. According to the historian Dee Brown, during this year, “Americans were inclined to examine their past, to wonder about themselves and their institutions, and to seek an identity upon which to base their future.” Stearns appears to be doing all three in this short letter. Dee Brown, The Year of the Century: 1876 (New York, 1966), 3; Walter Nugent, “The American People and the Centennial of 1876,” Indiana Magazine of History, 75:53–69 (March 1979). 5. Stated by Jesus of Nazareth and recorded in Luke 6:31, the Golden Rule is essentially a moral principle advising one to treat others in the same manner in which one would like to be treated. The King James Bible, the standard version used in the nineteenth-century English-speaking world, renders it: “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” For a similar but more complex statement of the same idea, see Matthew 7:12. 6. Moncure Daniel Conway (1832–1907) was a freethinking clergyman, abolitionist, scholar, and author, perhaps best known as one of a small group of southern-born antislavery luminaries that included Angelina and Sara Grimké, James G. Birney, and Hinton R. Helper. Born into a prominent slaveholding family in Stafford County, Virginia, Conway became progressively alienated from his family, his religion, and his nation as his views on theology, race, and politics grew increasingly liberal throughout his life. Raised as a Methodist Episcopal and ordained in that denomination, he became a Unitarian, a transcendentalist, and an abolitionist while attending Harvard Divinity School in the early 1850s. As a Unitarian minister serving in Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati, Ohio, from 1854 to 1862, Conway acquired a national reputation as a powerful speaker and writer for the abolitionist cause. While in London in 1863 to argue for the abolitionist nature of the Union cause, Conway accepted a call to pastor the nominally Unitarian South Place Chapel, where he remained through the 1880s. Except for a couple of short stints, he lived in Britain and France during the last forty-five

Y8204-Douglass.indb 369

5/17/23 2:35 PM

370

DOUGLASS TO CHARLES E. DEVENS, 29 MARCH 1877

years of his life, surviving largely on the income from his prolific writings. John d’Entremont, Southern Emancipator: Moncure Conway; The American Years, 1832–1865 (New York, 1987); Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography (online).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO CHARLES E. DEVENS, JR.1 Washington City, D.C. 29 Mar[ch] 1877.

Hon Charles E. Devens Attorney General of the U.S. Sir: I respectfully ask the removal of Thomas Young,2 a guard to the van conveying prisoners to and from jail. I have reason to believe that through his neglect of duty, Charles Goodman a prisoner was allowed to escape from the court room, and has not yet been recaptured.3 His neglect consists of two omissions. First in failing to securely Iron the Prisoner, and secondly in leaving the Door which he was guarding without giving notice to any Baleif to take his place. This last charge he denies and says he told Baleif Hughes4 that he was going a way and to take care of the Prisoners. Hughes denies that Young told any such thing. The Attorney General will see that as I held responsible for the safety of Prisoners outside of jail that I ought to have a guard in whom I have full confidence. Respectfully Yours FREDK DOUGLASS 5 ALS: Miscellany File, reel 31, frames 318–19, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Charles Devens, Jr. (1820–91), soldier, jurist, and U.S. attorney general, was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the son of Charles Devens, Sr., and Mary Lithgow. He attended Harvard and graduated in 1838. After finishing Harvard Law School, he was admitted to the bar in 1840 and practiced from 1841 to 1849 in Franklin County, Massachusetts. In 1848–49, Devens served in the state senate before holding the post of U.S. marshal for the District of Massachusetts (1849–53). He then returned to his law practice while also serving as a city solicitor for Worcester (1856–58). Interested in military affairs, Devens rose to the rank of brigadier general in the state militia during the late 1850s. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Devens was appointed a major in the Third Battalion of Massachusetts Rifles, and later that summer was promoted to colonel in the Fifteenth Massachusetts Infantry. Throughout the war, he continued to move up in rank and was wounded at least twice in separate battles. At the close of the war, Devens was given the honorary rank of brevet major general and remained in the army for another year, serving in South Carolina. Back in Worcester, he was appointed a justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts in 1867, and in 1873 began a term on the Massachusetts State Supreme Court. President Hayes appointed Devens attorney general, a position he held until 1881. He then returned to the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, remaining at that post until his death. John Codman Ropes, “Memoir,” in Charles Devens: Orations and Addresses on

Y8204-Douglass.indb 370

5/17/23 2:35 PM

JAMES H. MAYO TO DOUGLASS, 30 MARCH 1877

371

Various Occasions Civil and Military, ed. Arthur Lithgow Devens (Boston, 1891), 2–3, 5–6, 15–18, 23; ANB (online). 2. Little information can be uncovered about Thomas Young. Evidently, he had worked in prisoner transport for the marshal’s office for some time, since the press described him as “an old hand at the bellows.” A newspaper article from two days after the date of this letter reveals that Douglass had received permission and had fired Young. Washington National Republican, 19 November 1874, 29, 31 March 1877. 3. According to the District of Columbia press, Charles Goodman (c. 1840–?), a prisoner on trial for attempted murder, escaped from the District’s criminal courtroom on 28 March 1877. Goodman had a long criminal record in Baltimore as well as the District of Columbia. Apparently, Goodman had been given certain favors denied to other prisoners, which, among other things, resulted in his not  being locked up as the others were, and generally being subject to less security. While most prisoners in the criminal court were handcuffed in pairs, he was not handcuffed at all. At some point during the proceedings, Goodman stood up, put on his slouch hat, and calmly walked out of the courtroom. He was in the corridor before the alarm was sounded, and he then bolted out of the courthouse door, with Bailiff Robert Hughes in pursuit. Despite the manner of his escape, the person whom Douglass blamed most for the getaway was the veteran guard Thomas Young, who had not only granted Goodman these favors in the first place, but also allowed him to have visitors who gave him whiskey while in jail. According to the press, both the bailiffs and Marshall Douglass decided that “there was too much allowance made for the duties of each other, or rather too much taken for granted,” and Douglass stated that Tom Young was fully responsible for being overly relaxed about his jailing duties. Washington National Republican, 29 March 1877; Indianapolis (Ind.) Civil Service Chronicle, 1:307–08 (February 1892). 4. Robert B. Hughes (1815–92) was born in Virginia. Hughes had moved to Georgetown by 1850, and by at least 1867 had become a bailiff in the District’s courts. By 1886 he seems to have moved up in rank to deputy marshal, according to later listings in the city directories. He was buried in the Glenwood cemetery in Washington. 1850 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 222A; 1870 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 345B; “U.S., City Directories, 1822– 1995”; Find a Grave (online). 5. Douglass added the following information after his signature: “U.S. Marshal of the D.C.”

JAMES H. MAYO1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Boston, [Mass.]2 30 March 1877.

Frederick Douglass Eq Dear Sir It gives me pleasure to congratulate you upon your acsession to a seat in the synagogue, and to read in it the moral to our much written story—The hunted has become the hunter.3 If it should happen to your lot to adjust a few coals of fire upon the head of your former proprietor4 the inversion would be complete. What I want now, is, the opinion of the U.S. Marshall on the sanity of our friend of the “Lost Arts”. 5 I think he should be entitled to all the light shown upon his truthfull nature & his christianlike charitable solicitude

Y8204-Douglass.indb 371

5/17/23 2:35 PM

372

JAMES H. MAYO TO DOUGLASS, 30 MARCH 1877

for the good of the nation, and his fostering tenderness of the sprouting buds of goodness just now putting forth—as more fully set forth in his little love story at Philadelphia recently[.]6 What do you think of him? Every word of Mr Gaffields Criticism on his “Lost Arts”7 is proven from authority and still Mr Phillips, who classed Mr Gaffield among his personal friends continues to deliver this lecture without one sign of correction. More than a year ago Mr G. commenced to expostulate with him on his error of statements in it, and finaly as a glass man indignant at having his profession so misrepresented by a great teacher he pitches into him.—and still to no effect. Phillips apparently believes in his own infallibility. If facts don’t agree with him “so much the worse for the facts”.8 We all hold him high in our estimation for the noble work he did when he walked and talked with his life in his hand, and this history will always be a book by itself—His new books I dont like at all.9 A soldier who does battle with all bravery and saves his cause—& comes home—and from force of habit keeps up his carving and shooting among his friends, will soon wear out his welcome. Truth is a great wrestler—and will surely trip up Bombastic Juniors as well as the preacher of truth as a lost art. I will again say, I very much want to know what you think of our Wendell Phillips—You know him well, and in our journeying conversation I was rather dampened in my convictions by your confidence in him— Yours truly JAMES H. MAYO ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 94–96L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. James Henry Mayo (1834–1915), a prosperous Boston coal merchant, resided in Brookline, Massachusetts, throughout the 1870s and 1880s. The son of Dr. James Laha Mayo and Laura Ann Snow, he was a descendant of several prominent colonial Massachusetts families, some of whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower. 1880 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Norfolk County, 65; Susan E. Roser, Mayflower Births and Deaths: From the Files of George Ernest Bowman at the Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants, 2 vols. (Baltimore, Md., 1992), 1:243. 2. Mayo added additional address information after his signature: “116 Freemont St.” 3. The phrase “the hunter becomes the hunted” likely has origins in Greek mythology. Actaeon, a great hunter, was transformed into a stag by the goddess Artemis and then pursued and torn apart by his own hunting dogs. (His transgression was to have inadvertently seen her naked while bathing.) Mayo is pointing to the fact that the U.S. Marshal Service, once used to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, now included Douglass, the most famous of all fugitive slaves, in its ranks. Frederick S. Calhoun, The Lawmen: United States Marshals and Their Deputies, 1789–1989 (Washington, D.C., 1989), 76–77, 82–93. 4. As the new U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia, Douglass replaced Dr. Alexander Sharp (1825–1901), the brother-in-law of President Ulysses S. Grant. Sharp was married to Ellen (Nellie) Dent, the sister of Julia Dent Grant. During the 1850s, Sharp was a physician in the St. Louis area, where he met and married Nellie and befriended the Grants. During the Civil War, he

Y8204-Douglass.indb 372

5/17/23 2:35 PM

JAMES H. MAYO TO DOUGLASS, 30 MARCH 1877

373

served as a Union army surgeon. Sharp held the prestigious U.S. marshal position through the entire eight years of the Grant administration; in the mid-1870s he was accused in the press of corruption. In January 1877, Grant appointed Sharp paymaster for the U.S. Army, a post that he held until his retirement in 1889. Here, Mayo seems to imply that Sharp was the epitome of the nepotism and corruption charged to Grant’s presidency by his critics. Modern reevaluations of the Grant administration consider claims of its ineptitude and corruption to be overblown. Washington National Republican, 28 April 1869, 27 January 1877; Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, 14 June 1872; New York Sun, 5 June 1874, 28 May, 10 June 1876; New York Times, 12 January 1877; Calhoun, Presidency of Grant, 1–7, 587–93. 5. Mayo refers to his fellow Bostonian Wendell Phillips and his famous lecture “The Lost Arts.” Although Phillips is largely remembered as a significant abolitionist orator and agitator, he made his living primarily as a celebrated lyceum speaker, giving lectures on a wide range of entertaining and educational topics. First delivered in 1838, “The Lost Arts” was wildly popular and therefore presented hundreds of times over many decades. Various forms of it, including satirical versions, were printed by American newspapers almost continually throughout Phillips’s lifetime. Its thesis was that the people of the nineteenth century should not be proud of scientific achievements of the time, since past ages had mastered material arts that could be neither rivaled nor revived. The lecture always had detractors in the scientific community, and by the twentieth century, it was largely dismissed as either pseudoscience or nostalgia for a mythical past. If anything, the talk was an artful piece of propaganda. According to Phillips, the “lost arts” were lost because aristocrats had monopolized them for their exclusive benefit; in the modern, democratic age, the dismantling of aristocracy had led to discoveries being applied for the benefit of all. In short, the lecture was a class-based attack on aristocracy, whether southern slaveholders or northern capitalists, without ever directly mentioning them. Wendell Phillips, The Lost Arts (Boston, 1892); Evansville (Ind.) Journal, 16 March 1870; Stewart, Wendell Phillips, 180–83; W. D. Richardson, “The Lost Arts of Chemistry,” Science, 33:513–20 (7 April 1911). 6. Mayo sarcastically refers to the speech that Wendell Phillips delivered in Philadelphia on 27 March 1877, in which he attacked President Rutherford B. Hayes and most of his cabinet members. Phillips employed his considerable rhetorical skills to castigate the new president for attempting to conciliate the South by removing federal troops and appointing conservative Republicans who were determined to dismantle southern Reconstruction policies. The address was widely condemned by the press of both parties for its spiteful tone, but its forecast of the rapid demise of Reconstruction proved accurate. New York Herald, 27, 28 March 1877; New York Daily Tribune, 28 March 1877. 7. Thomas Gaffield (1825–1900) was a wealthy Boston glass merchant and manufacturer, a partner in the firm Tuttle, Gaffield and Company (1847–69) who helped form the Boston Crystal Glass Works in 1861. Interested in using advances in scientific knowledge to improve glassmaking processes, Gaffield toured Europe in the early 1860s, where he amassed copious research notes, books, and artifacts related to making and using glass. After retiring in 1869 at the age of forty-four, he devoted the rest of his life to real estate development, civic and benevolent causes, and delivering lectures, both publicly and in educational institutions, on all aspects of glass production. He was a trustee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1896 until his death; his extensive collection of documents and artifacts related to glass are located in that school’s archives. Throughout his life, Gaffield confronted various men, including Wendell Phillips, over perceived scientific and historical inaccuracies concerning glassmaking in their public writings and statements. Phillips’s refusal to acknowledge Gaffield’s expertise and amend his celebrated “Lost Arts” lecture was evidence to Mayo of Phillips’s unsoundness of mind and penchant for opining on topics about which he was unqualified to speak, especially political economy. Ashtabula (Ohio) Weekly Telegraph, 1 March 1873; Boston Post, 11 January 1875; Port Jervis (N.Y.) Evening Gazette, 15 February 1877; Arthur Wellington Brayley, Schools and Schoolboys of Old Boston (Boston, Mass., 1894), 308–09; Joan E. Kaiser, The Glass Industry in South Boston (Hanover, N.H., 2009), 197–204.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 373

5/17/23 2:35 PM

374

RUTHERFORD B. HAYES TO DOUGLASS, MARCH 1877

8. Mayo alludes here to an expression coined by the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814): “If theory conflicts with the facts, so much the worse for the facts.” György Lukàcs, Tactics and Ethics (1929: New York, 1972), 30. 9. Though a stalwart defender of African American rights until his death, Wendell Phillips increasingly focused his attention on the issues of temperance, equal rights for women and Native Americans, and labor reform during the last fifteen years of his life. Of these causes, activism in support of labor most alienated his old friends in the antislavery movement. Phillips believed that industrial capitalists had gained such an ascendancy over workers and politics that they threatened the life of the American republic every bit as much as slaveholders had before the Civil War. To restore parity between capital and labor, he advocated an eight-hour workday and industrial cooperation, that is, laws requiring cooperative investments by workers in the incorporation of new companies. Phillips endorsed these planks as well as prohibition, woman suffrage, and greenbackism when he ran for governor of Massachusetts on the Labor Reform ticket in 1870. Although Phillips was decisively defeated, his loyal support of organized labor and their political spokesman, the peripatetic Benjamin F. Butler, made him despised and distrusted by businessmen such as James H. Mayo. Stewart, Wendell Phillips, 296–303; Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood, “The People Coming to Power! Wendell Phillips, Benjamin F. Butler, and the Politics of Labor Reform,” in Wendell Phillips, Social Justice, and the Power of the Past, ed. A.J. Aiséirithe and Donald Yacovone (Baton Rouge, La., 2016), 181–207.

RUTHERFORD B. HAYES TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS [n.p. March 1877.]

I regarded the Marshalship of the District of Columbia as the office that would speak loudest in protest agst race prejudice of any place at my disposal. As to the social service official duties which had been attached to it, only recently, my [illegible] were first to have a man of intelligence good judgment and [illegible] charact[er.] These I know believed you have. But in the next place I wanted a person well informed and accomplished in the Social usages and etiquette of Washington. Neither any family possessed these advantages. I did not suppose that you [illegible] possessed them. I th[ere]fore preferred a gentlman who[se] [duties were] intimately connected with the Presidents House and family and who had both the character and the special accomplishments of which were required. But no arrangement was definitely made until I had believed that the it was altogether agreeable to you and was in fact your preference. “An incongruity and innovation.” It took the Marshal from his duties—The custodian of the White House was the proper person— ALf: OFH.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 374

5/17/23 2:35 PM

“CITIZEN” TO DOUGLASS, 5 APRIL 1877

375

“CITIZEN” TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Rochester[,] N.Y. 5 Ap[ri]l [18]77[.]

Fred Douglass, Esq Sir . . . If you have thought that old age: & the office at Washington leaves you free to retire from the fight for the freedom of your race: you are woefully mistaken. If Hays1 recognizes Hamton2 & Nichols3 your race has gone up & will disappear like the Indian before 50 years. The danger is greater now to your race than it was under slavery. Have you got brains enough to comprehend that the giving way to the social precluding of the South, Breed of slavery, means, eternal subserviency to the lust for power of the whole race. Better fight social freedom out on this line S.C. than any other. Chamberlain4 is a [l]eader worthy of your race to follow. If the white race, the gentlemen in S. Carolina. Your race will become hewers of wood & drawers of water.5 Read Pharoah & Moses & the Ramses differently once more: where free men were murdered to give place to the social precluding of the South. The 15 amendment6 has lost much in our Supreme courts since enacted, look at the way a colored man is treated in England without being reconized with same way in this country. Your race will never have the same chance as the white race in the battle of live, when I see the white race fighting about the bone they don’t care for the bone, it is chawed up, like Marius7 of Roman fame. You will have to fight in your old age, the children of rebs. to get life liberty & the pursuit of Happiness.8 Go to Jim Blane9 & show him this letter, & he may be able to renue the fight for freedom once more. I wrote him before Election. Moses gave himself for the good of his race, can you do the same, Perfect freedom for all of Gods children beware of Compromise it is your death blow. He that will not fight for freedom is fit for nothing but a slave. I wish I could only impress your mind with the importance of this S.C. & low affair to your race. Hays is a lawyer & the worst enemy a race battleing for freedom can find, what your race wants is a new law unknown to white Christians; Hoping & praying that the Lord will at last let all men be free & eaquil in America I remain, Your well wisher CITIZEN

[P.S.] I thought also if your loose SC & Louis the Perpe[t]uity of the Rep is in danger ½ & ½ can not stand10

Y8204-Douglass.indb 375

5/17/23 2:35 PM

376

“CITIZEN” TO DOUGLASS, 5 APRIL 1877

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 101–03, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Rutherford B. Hayes. 2. Wade Hampton. 3. Francis Redding Tillou Nicholls (1834–1912) was born in Donaldsonville, Louisiana. Nicholls’s mother wrote to President James K. Polk, seeking an appointment for her son to the U.S. Military Academy based on Nicholls’s family history: his maternal great-grandfather died at White Plains, and his father served with Jackson at New Orleans in 1815. After graduating from West Point in 1855, Nicholls served in the Third Seminole War but then resigned his commission. He practiced law in Napoleonville, the seat of Assumption Parish, until the Civil War, when he joined the Confederate army. He had risen to the rank of brigadier general by October 1862. After the war, he returned to his law practice, entered politics, and was the Democratic party’s gubernatorial candidate in 1876. As a result of the infamous Compromise of 1877, Hayes recognized the election of Nicholls as governor of Louisiana in 1877. He won a second term twelve years later. Nicholls became chief justice of the state supreme court in 1892, a post he held until 1911. C. Howard Nichols. “Some Notes on the Military Career of Francis T. Nicholls,” Louisiana History, 3:297–315 (Autumn 1962); A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, 3 vols., ed. Glenn R. Conrad (New Orleans, 1988), 2:603. 4. Daniel H. Chamberlain. 5. Josh. 9:23. 6. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in February 1870, was the last of the three Civil War amendments. The amendment outlawed disenfranchisement based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” From 1870 to 1871, Congress passed three bills, known collectively as the Enforcement Acts, intended to protect African Americans’ suffrage rights in addition to their rights to hold office, serve on juries, and receive equal legal protection. Furthermore, the federal government was authorized to send federal reinforcement to a state that failed to comply with such protections. The last bill to pass became known as the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 for its genesis as a response to increasing Klan violence. Though the efforts of the Radical Republican–controlled Congresses and the Grant administration showed much promise, enforcement and protection of these rights proved to be difficult by 1877, as southern Redemption took hold. Worse, the Supreme Court’s ruling in U.S. v. Reese (1876) gutted the protections guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment. The background of the case: in January 1873 in Kentucky, a dispute occurred between two election inspectors, Hiram Reese and Matthew Foushee, and an African American voter, William Garner. Reese and Foushee faced charges under sections 3 and 4 of the Enforcement Act of 1870 for refusing to accept Garner’s affidavit, which he had submitted after not being allowed to pay the $1.50 poll tax. Reese and Foushee appealed, and the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Kentucky ruled 8–1 that the Enforcement Act exceeded the limits of the Fifteenth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court echoed the circuit court’s ruling. Chief Justice Morrison Waite, who delivered the opinion, argued the Fifteenth Amendment “does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one”; rather, it “prevents the States, or the United States, however, from giving preference . . . to one citizen.” Furthermore, the language of sections 3 and 4 of the 1870 Enforcement Act was insufficient as “appropriate legislation” in accordance with the Fifteenth Amendment’s Enforcement Clause. United States v. Reese et al., 92 U.S. 214 (1876), 214–56; Lawrence Goldstone, Inherently Unequal: The Betrayal of Equal Rights by the Supreme Court, 1865–1903 (New York, 2011), 22, 36–37, 91, 97; Foner, Reconstruction, 255, 446–47; Gillette, The Right to Vote, 46–47; Everette Swinney, “Enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment, 1870–1877,” JSH, 28:202–218 (May 1962). 7. Gaius Marius (157–86 B.C.E.) was a famous Roman general, consul, and politician. Armies under his command achieved victories against Germanic and Numidian opponents of the Roman Republic. He reformed the army into the famed “Roman Legions.” (Their style of military engagement had previously been much less sophisticated.) While elected consul an unprecedented seven times, he engaged in decades-long political and military struggles with more aristocratic Romans led by Lucius

Y8204-Douglass.indb 376

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM THOMAS, 9 APRIL 1877

377

Cornelius Sulla. His admirers bestowed the title “Third Founder of Rome” on Marius. Richard John Evans, Gaius Marius: A Political Biography (Pretoria, S.A., 1994). 8. The correspondent quotes the preface of the Declaration of Independence. 9. James G. Blaine. 10. The correspondent “Citizen” alludes to the most famous passage in Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech of 16 June 1858: “A house divided against itself, cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free.” Basler, Collected Works of Lincoln, 2:461–69.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM THOMAS1 Washington[,] D.C. 9 April 1877.

Wm Thomas Esq. My dear Sir, I have received during the past few weeks many kind notes of congratulation upon my appointment & confirmation as U.S. [M]arshal of the District of [Co]lumbia, but I have received none which I value more highly or have read with more satisfaction than yours. Please accept my thanks for your letter & remember me kindly to those dear grand children.2 I well remember their noble mother. I see her as she appeared five & thirty years ago. I give you joy that so much of her remains at your fireside in the persons of your grand-daughters to cheer you in your advanced age.—Your letter viewed in connection with your years, is a marvel. There are no marks of eighty nine years upon it. You seem about as well preserved as was Humboldt3 at your age. How glad I should be to see you and talk over the age of events through which we have passed & the world of people we have known in common. Although I am little, if any, over sixty, I have lived more than many who have lived longer. Once a slave—then a man now a marshal!— I do not forget that in my upward march from slavery to freedom, from chattleship to manhood, I have been greatly assisted by the Harlows,4 the Spooners,5 the Kendalls,6 the Russells,7 the Mortons,8 the Stephenses9 & the Thomases10 of Plymouth—Plymouth kindly heard the story of the wrongs of my people from my [illegible] lips & cheered me with its sympathy when all was dark & cheerless in the land. I shall never forget this. You will be glad to know that though the local opposition to my appointment to the Marshalship of the National Capital was fierce & bitter, I now discern no trace of it in the conduct of those with whom my office

Y8204-Douglass.indb 377

5/17/23 2:35 PM

378

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM THOMAS, 9 APRIL 1877

brings me in contact. My life has been thus far largely devoted to the work of removing prejudice, and I suppose it will be so to the end. Very truly & gratefully yours FREDERICK DOUGLASS ALS: Miscellaneous Manuscripts, Plymouth Historical Society, Plymouth, Massachusetts. 1. William Thomas (1789–1882) was the great-grandson, and bore the name, of William Thomas, a merchant adventurer of London who traded with the Pilgrims of the American colonies. His father, Joshua Thomas, served in the Revolutionary War as an aide-de-camp of General John Thomas of Kingston. Joshua married Isabella Stevenson of Boston, and they had three children: John Boles, William, and Joshua B. William graduated from Harvard in 1807 and went on to study law with his father in Plymouth, Massachusetts. In 1816 he married Sarah Warren Sever, and they had a daughter, Ann Sever Thomas. William practiced law in Plymouth and edited the Old Colony Memorial for several years while writing editorials for the North American Review. He was also well known for his abolitionist views and friendship with Garrison, Phillips, and Douglass. William Thomas to Douglass, 6 April 1877, Miscellaneous Manuscripts, Plymouth Historical Society; Boston Daily Advertiser, 22 September 1882. 2. Ann Sever Thomas Whitman (1817–55) married William H. Whitman of Plymouth, probably around 1848. Ann and William had three children, Isabella (b. 1849), Elisabeth (b. 1851), and William (b. 1853). Both Isabella and Elisabeth were living with their grandfather, William, as late as 1880. It appears that neither of them ever married, and they continued living with each other in Plymouth until at least 1930, both retaining the name Whitman. After Ann’s death, William Jr. continued to live with his father, who remarried sometime between 1855 and 1860. In 1888, William Jr. married a woman named Alice from New Orleans and listed himself as a cotton merchant. 1860 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Plymouth County, 33; 1880 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Plymouth County, 502D; 1900 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Plymouth County, B12; Find a Grave (online). 3. Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), German (Prussian) geographer, studied mineralogy at the University of Frankfurt and at the University of Gottingen and then worked for the Prussian government as the superintendent of mines. From 1799 through 1803, Humboldt traveled extensively in the Americas, where he studied the natural world and developed his holistic theory of nature, which integrated the study of biology, geology, geophysics, archaeology, and meteorology. The work resulting from his travels and extensive study was published in thirty-three volumes collectively titled Le voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent (1805–34). Humboldt continued to travel in Mexico, Peru, and Cuba, enhancing human knowledge of the natural world. Living to age ninety, he was regarded as one of the founders of modern empirical scientific methods as well as the founder of the modern science of geography. Gerard Helferich, Humboldt’s Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Latin American Journey That Changed the Way We See the World (New York, 2004); The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography, 12 vols. (New York, 1973), 3:1100–03. 4. The Harlow family had resided in Plymouth since the middle of the seventeenth century. The family of Ephraim Harlow (1770–1858) was known for its abolitionist persuasions, and Ephraim was an early agent in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Most of Ephraim’s daughters married into other local abolitionist families in the area. Zilpha married Nathaniel Bourne Spooner and became a nurse during the Civil War. Though she died young, Desire Harlow was noted by the Liberator for her faithful and spirited dedication to abolitionism. One story has it that as children, the Harlows walked about Plymouth with wooden boxes collecting money for the Juvenile Anti-Slavery Society as early as 1829. Andrea M. Daly, Self Guided Tour: Abolitionists of Plymouth (Bradenton, Fla., 2015), 15–16; Kara Wilson, “Discovering Plymouth Through Women’s Stories,” Worcester’s Women’s History Project, wwhp.org; Find a Grave (online). 5. An allusion to the family of Bourne Spooner (1790–1870). Spooner was a Massachusetts abolitionist who founded and operated the Plymouth Cordage Company. On account of his philanthropic

Y8204-Douglass.indb 378

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM THOMAS, 9 APRIL 1877

379

nature and strong character, Spooner was well liked by both his fellow abolitionists and his employees. Spooner was a strong advocate for the abolitionists, organizing meetings and inviting many into his home. William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips enjoyed his company. Spooner was an avid, well-known storyteller, and he often regaled guests late into the night. William Lloyd Garrison spoke at his funeral. D. Hamilton Hurd, comp., History of Plymouth County, Massachusetts, with Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men (Philadelphia, 1884), 187; Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 3:313, 412, 4:254; Abby Morton Diaz, “A Plymouth Pilgrimage,” New England Magazine, 7:14, 17 (September 1889); Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 6:55. 6. The Kendall family played an important role in the antislavery movement in Plymouth. The Reverend James Kendall (1769–1859) was the pastor of Plymouth’s First Church, which was affiliated with the Unitarians. He allowed the basement of the church to be used for lectures and fairs to raise money for the antislavery movement. His daughter Julia Kendall (1825–74) was noted for having joined the Juvenile Anti-Slavery Society in the 1830s and serving as a civil war nurse. William Richard Cutter, Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of Boston and Eastern Massachusetts, 3 vols. (New York, 1908), 1:314; Hannah Anderson Ropes, Civil War Nurse: The Diary and Letters of Hannah Ropes, ed. John R. Brumgardt (Knoxville, Tenn., 1993), 54. 7. There were a number of Russell families in eastern Massachusetts with strong ties to the abolitionist movement. The wealthy carriage manufacturer and Congregationalist church elder George W. Russell of Worcester served as a vice president of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1836–37 and later published a weekly newspaper, the Massachusetts Abolitionist. He also represented Plymouth County in the state assembly in 1838 and again in 1855. Russell was an early member of both the Free Soil and Republican parties. The Congregationalist minister Philemon R. Russell (1807–83) of Watertown was a founding member of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832 and lectured for the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1838–39. Thomas Russell (1825–87), a lawyer from Plymouth noted for his antislavery views, had the privilege of bringing Douglass’s confirmation of Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year’s Eve Day 1863. Russell and his wife were friends of John Brown and had sheltered him in their home for a week in 1857 to prevent his apprehension by federal marshals. The Thomas Russells visited Brown in his Charlestown, Virginia, jail cell the day before he was executed. Caleb A. Wall, Reminiscences of Worcester from the Earliest Period, Historical and Genealogical (Worcester, Mass., 1877), 286; William Lincoln, History of Worcester, Massachusetts: From Its Earliest Settlement to September 1836 (Worcester, Mass., 1837), 317; Charles Nutt, History of Worcester and Its People, 2 vols. (New York, 1919), 2:725, 804; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 2:13, 310, 5:478. 8. Edwin Morton (1832–1900) was an occasional poet and active abolitionist from Massachusetts. After graduating from Harvard in 1855, Morton easily found employment as a tutor. One of his first clients was Gerrit Smith. While in Smith’s employment, Morton became acquainted with John Brown and was present when Brown presented his audacious plan to capture Harpers Ferry to his closest friends on 22 February 1859. To escape the possibility of having to testify against Brown and his accomplices, Morton fled to Europe in 1859 and remained there until the following year. Because of ill health, Morton could not join the Union war effort, and remained on the home front. Edwin’s brother Ichabod was also a noted abolitionist and temperance crusader in Plymouth. Ichabod’s daughter Abigail carried the abolitionist torch into the next generation and from an early age was part of the Juvenile Anti-Slavery Society in Plymouth in the 1830s. Boston Transcript, 1, 2 April 1904; Edward J. Renehan, Jr., The Secret Six: The True Tale of the Men Who Conspired with John Brown (New York, 1995), 127, 141–45, 205–06; Rossbach, Ambivalent Conspirators, 124, 139, 141–42, 199, 220, 241; Franklin Sanborn, “John Brown and his Friends,” Atlantic Monthly, 30:50–61 (July 1872); Abby Morton Diaz, “Antislavery Times in Plymouth,” New England Magazine, 20:225 (April 1899); “Edwin Morton” (obituary), Harvard Graduates Magazine, 8:561 (June 1900). 9. The Stephens family played key roles in the founding of the antislavery movement in Plymouth. Abigail Morton recalled that it was in the home of her Aunt Phebe (Stephens) Cotton that

Y8204-Douglass.indb 379

5/17/23 2:35 PM

380

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM THOMAS, 9 APRIL 1877

the Plymouth Anti-Slavery Society was inaugurated. Sarah Stephens served as the secretary for the women’s branch of the group, and her father, Lemuel (b. 1786), husband of Sally Morton, was instrumental in organizing the men’s branch of the society. It is also claimed that the Stephens home served as a station for runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad. Daly, Self Guided Tour, 2; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3:571–72; Diaz, “Antislavery Times in Plymouth,” 20:225. 10. The Thomas family of eastern Massachusetts included many early Harvard graduates and Revolutionary War veterans. John Boies Thomas (?–1852) was a subscriber to the Liberator from the paper’s inception and made his home central to the abolition movement in Plymouth. Thomas was also president of the Old Colony National Bank of Plymouth, a member of the state constitutional convention of 1820, and a militia colonel, seeing service in 1814. His widow, Mary Howland Thomas, was also an ardent abolitionist and Underground Railroad agent. Francis R. Stoddard, Jr., “Old Thomas House at Plymouth,” Massachusetts Magazine: Devoted to Massachusetts History, Genealogy, and Biography, 3:271 (October 1910).

DEBORAH WEBB1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Rathgar, Dublin[, Ire.] 21 April 1877.

Dear Sir, Will you kindly look at enclosed circuler. I hope it may recommend itself to your sympathy. We should feel our list to be incomplete without your name—The amount contributed is of less importence.2 We think the testimonial will be graceful & appropriate and certainly a little help is really needed—although Mr. Robinson3 would be the last man to say so. Yours respectfully, with recollections of old times in Ireland. DEBORAH WEBB

[P.S.] Perhaps you will obligingly mention the matter to anyone in Washington likely to be interested and willing to help one of your most zealous fellow-workers. PRIVATE. Marius R. Robinson, of Salem, Ohio, formerly editor of The Anti-Slavery Bugle,4 was, with his equally devoted wife,5 among the earliest and most faithful Abolitionists. On one occasion he was tarred and feathered, from the shock of which his delicate constitution has never recovered.6 He has lately, through the failure of an Insurance Company, lost the prospect of a small independence for himself and his wife in age and declining health.7 We propose that Mr. Robinson should be presented with a pecuniary testimonial on his 72nd birthday—the 2nd of July. Those who have had the pleasure of his personal acquaintance will probably feel it a fur-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 380

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DEBORAH WEBB TO DOUGLASS, 21 APRIL 1877

381

ther privilege to be able to give him a substantial proof of sympathy and respect. We shall be glad of the co-operation of anyone who likes to join us. It is important to keep the matter strictly private. The gift is intended as a pleasant surprise in a time of difficulty and anxiety. The amount contributed by each must depend on means and inclination. The presentation might be accompanied with some such words as the following:— “Dear Sir, “A few of your friends and well-wishers, and in some cases fellowworkers in the Anti-Slavery Cause, for which you and Mrs. Robinson so generously laboured, request your acceptance of a little testimonial of esteem, with their congratulations on your birthday.” [Here might follow the names, alphabetically arranged.] It would be well for each contributor to enclose his or her name and address on one of the slips of gummed paper enclosed, for placing under the letter of presentation. A report of result of this circular will be sent to each contributor. James W. Suliot,8 of Salem, Columbiana County, Ohio, has kindly consented to receive contributions in America. Those on this side may be sent to Alfred Webb,9 Highfield-road, Rathgar, Dublin. Contributions should, if possible, be forwarded immediately. LYDIA SHACKLETON10 DEBORAH WEBB

Dublin, Ireland 3 April, 1877. Enclose D Webb. to F. Douglass ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 115–16, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Deborah Webb (1837–1921) was the daughter of Richard and Hannah Webb. Growing up in a staunchly Quaker and abolitionist household, Deborah supported the antislavery cause and aligned herself with the Garrisonians. She wrote antislavery poetry, and Evelyn Noble Armitage (writing in 1896) attributed “John Brown’s March” to her pen. In this poem, Deborah wrote new lyrics for the popular song “John Brown’s Body,” signaling her support for the Union and for abolition. According to Armitage, Deborah wrote that her family home in Dublin was “a resort of various celebrities and philanthropists, particularly of abolitionists and escaped slaves.” She visited the United States after the Civil War with her father and met abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Lucretia Mott. Deborah married the grandson of James Hargreaves (who created the spinning jenny in 1764); she is buried in the Friends Burial Grounds Cemetery in County Dublin, Ireland. Evelyn Noble Armitage, The Quaker Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1896), 289; Richard S. Harrison, Richard Davis Webb: Dublin Quaker Printer (Skeagh, Ire., 1993); Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 6:56. 2. It appears Douglass did not sign this circular (for reasons unknown), because when Marius Robinson sent out his own letter thanking contributors, Douglass’s name does not appear in it.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 381

5/17/23 2:35 PM

382

DEBORAH WEBB TO DOUGLASS, 21 APRIL 1877

Douglass’s inaction may have been due to some residual bitterness from the abolitionist infighting of the 1850s and 1860s. After receiving a similar request from Webb for donations, Edmund Quincy wrote a letter to William Lloyd Garrison, admitting he had “forgotten all about [Robinson]” and asking whether he had remained true to Garrisonian principles. The answer must have been in the affirmative, since Quincy signed the circular. Edmund Quincy to William Lloyd Garrison, 7 May 1877, Antislavery Collection, Boston Public Library, bpl.org; Josephine Elizabeth Grey Butler to William Lloyd Garrison, 28 July 1877, digitalcommonwealth.org. 3. In his youth, Massachusetts-born Marius R. Robinson (1806–78) moved with his family to Utica, New York, where he apprenticed in the printing trade. He then moved to Tennessee, where he graduated from Nashville University in 1832. Robinson went on to Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, where he was one of the “Rebels” who left the school for its suppression of abolitionist discussions. Although ordained a New School Presbyterian minister in 1836, he accepted an appointment from the American Anti-Slavery Society as one of its “Seventy” itinerant lecturers, recruited and trained by Theodore Weld. Robinson sided with the Garrisonians and became the longtime editor (1851– 59) of the faction’s western newspaper, the Anti-Slavery Bugle, based in Salem, Ohio. Russel  B. Nye, “Marius Robinson: A Forgotten Abolitionist Leader,” Ohio State Archeological and Historical Quarterly, 55:138–54 (1946); C. B. Galbreath, “Anti-Slavery Movement in Columbiana County,” Ohio State Archeological and Historical Quarterly, 30:355–95 (1921). 4. Published from 1845 to 1861 in Salem, Ohio, the weekly Anti-Slavery Bugle was the official newspaper of the Western Anti-Slavery Society and of the Garrisonians in the western states. Editors of the newspaper included Benjamin S. and Jane Elizabeth Hitchcock Jones (1845–49, 1859–61) and Marius Robinson (1851–59). In addition to abolition, the paper was dedicated to reform efforts such as temperance, pacifism, and ending capital punishment. Circulation remained small, with the AntiSlavery Bugle reaching about 1,500 readers each week. As a result, in 1847 one of its investors and editorial board members, Samuel Brooke, considered entering into a partnership with Douglass in which the North Star would subsume the Bugle. When the other board members and the leadership of the Boston Garrisonians learned of this plan, they quickly reorganized and placed management of the Bugle completely in the hands of the Western Anti-Slavery Society. Donations from Pennsylvanian supporters helped sustain the paper through 1848, and in 1849 the Boston clique sealed its influence on the paper by placing Oliver Johnson in the editor’s chair. Douglas A. Gamble, “Moral Suasion in the West: Garrisonian Abolitionism, 1831–1861” (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1973), 350–56; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 4:185n. 5. Emily Rakestraw Robinson (c. 1811–?) was the daughter of an antislavery Quaker family in New Garden, Ohio. She joined other students at the Lane Theological Seminary in educating Cincinnati’s black youth in the 1830s. At the seminary, she met Marius Robinson, who was soon to become one of the “Lane Rebels.” They married in 1836, and both became committed abolitionists. She assisted him in editing the Anti-Slavery Bugle and later became active in the women’s rights movement. 1860 U.S. Census, Ohio, Columbiana County, 116–19; Robertson, Hearts Beating for Liberty, 15, 22–24, 28, 191, 201–02; Nye, “Marius Robinson,” 145–36, 151–52. 6. In the spring of 1837, while Robinson was lecturing for the American Anti-Slavery Society in Berlin, Ohio, a mob tarred and feathered him and transported him in a wagon for ten miles to the town of Canfield. Undeterred, Robinson cleaned himself off, borrowed some clothes from a farmer, and returned to lecture in Berlin. Nye, “Marius Robinson,” 147–48. 7. After the Civil War, Marius R. Robinson remained in Salem, Ohio, and became president of the Ohio Mutual Fire Insurance Company. The company survived Robinson into the twentieth century. Nye, “Marius Robinson,” 153. 8. James White Suliot (1833–1914) was an immigrant from Ireland who settled as a farmer in Salem, Ohio. His father, Theodore Eugene Suliot, was born in France and immigrated to Ireland before moving to Ohio with his family. Through his maternal grandmother, James was related to the Irish Shackleton family, one of whom, Lydia Shackleton, led the call for financial aid to Emily Robinson. 1900 U.S. Census, Ohio, Columbiana County, 35a; Find a Grave (online).

Y8204-Douglass.indb 382

5/17/23 2:35 PM

HENRY O. WAGONER, JR., TO DOUGLASS, 12 MAY 1877

383

9. Wilhelmina Webb (c. 1832–98) was the daughter of William Webb and Maria (Lamb) Webb of Dublin, who were Irish Quaker abolitionists. Wilhelmina Webb was a relative of Alfred Webb, an Irish Quaker and ardent nationalist. Alfred Webb (1834–1908) was the son of Richard Davis Webb and Hannah Waring Webb. Raised in a Quaker household, he became an abolitionist, suffragist, and advocate for social justice. Alfred helped his father with the family printing business, which printed antislavery pamphlets, books, and slave narratives, as well as materials for the Irish Protestant Home Rule Association and the Ladies’ Land League. He was also an anti-imperialist: although his Quakerism prevented him from fully subscribing to the Fenians’ ideology, he sympathized with their beliefs. He became a member of Parliament for West Waterford in the House of Commons in 1890, serving for five years. He took a great interest in Indian affairs, and was friendly with Dadabhai Naoroji, a politician and representative of the Indian National Congress. Webb became president of the Madras National Congress in 1894. Following in his father’s footsteps, he was a prolific author, writing A Compendium of Irish Biography (1878), The Opinions of Some Protestants Regarding Their Irish Catholic Fellow-Countrymen (1886), and The Alleged Massacre of 1641 (1887), as well as numerous articles for the Freeman’s Journal, the Irish Monthly, and the New York Nation. He supported other publications, such as Catherine Impey’s anti-imperialist journal Anti-Caste; both Webb and Naoroji significantly improved that journal’s prospects by bringing in subscribers from across the globe. Marie-Louise Legg, ed., Alfred Webb: The Autobiography of a Quaker Nationalist (Cork, Ire., 1999); Caroline Bressey, Empire, Race, and the Politics of Anti-Caste (London, 2013), 23, 89, 153–54. 10. Born in Ballitore, County Kildare, Ireland, Lydia Shackleton (1828–1914) was a botanical artist. She was raised by her Quaker parents, George and Hannah. After studying at the Royal Dublin School of Art and Design, she moved to Lucan in County Dublin and organized a Quaker school for local children, teaching there for over twenty years. Shackleton is most famous for her position as an artist in residence at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Dublin (today the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland). Over a twenty-three-year period there, she painted numerous images and organized over 1,500 botanical studies, signing her work “L.S.” Most of her paintings depicted orchids, hellebores, peonies, and Lachnealia. Shackleton also worked for the Science and Art Museum in Dublin (today the National Museum of Ireland), where she painted one hundred plants native to the Irish countryside. Her paintings, often watercolours, were renowned for their detail. She visited America twice, staying for several months at a time. Shackleton presumably met Douglass in Dublin in July 1887 before he returned home to America; she sent a painting and some Irish heather to Washington so that he could remind himself of his friends in Ireland. She ceased work in 1907 due to a degenerative eye condition and died in 1914. Laurence Fenton, “I Was Transformed”: Frederick Douglass; An American Slave in Victorian Britain (Stroud, Eng., 2018); ODNB (online).

HENRY O. WAGONER, JR., TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Lyons, France[.] 12 May [18]77.

Hon. Fredk. Douglass, U.S. Marshal, Washington, D.C. My Dear Friend: It is true I am about to ask you a favor, as you will see from the sequel of this letter, but I hope that that will not cause you to doubt or depreciate my sincerity in tendering you my congratulations upon your appointment

Y8204-Douglass.indb 383

5/17/23 2:35 PM

384

HENRY O. WAGONER, JR., TO DOUGLASS, 12 MAY 1877

to so important and desirable a position as that of U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia. Knowing, as you cannot help but do, the high estimation which I have always entertained for your surpassing talents and exalted character, you will easily understand with what heart-felt joy I learned that they had been so substantially and practically recognized by the Chief Magistrate of the Nation. I have learned of your goodness in going to see the Secretary of State1 in company with Prof. Langston2 and saying a good word for me. I am profoundly touched at this additional mark of your consideration for me. Whether your kind offices in my behalf shall be successful or not, my gratitude to you remains the same. And if they should prove successful I shall endeavor to discharge my duties in a manner to justify the good opinion which you would seem to have of me. When I wrote you some months ago I supposed that Gen Osterhaus,3 the Consul here was then in the U.S. seeking a transfer. This was his intention when he left here, but he went first to Germany and while there was offered, and accepted, the very remunerative position of General Superintendent of a large manufacturing company. After returning a few days to Lyons he left again for Germany to assume his new duties and is now there with his family. I have, therefore, been practically Consul here for over three months. He delayed sending his resignation, long since determined upon, for reasons which I will not now detail. Of course, I could expect nothing, and your efforts add those of other friends were likely to remain fruitless until this was done. I have, however, to-day authoritatively learned that his resignation of the Consulship of Lyons was mailed on the 10th instant. It will, therefore, reach Washington about the same time as this letter. No you know well the importance striking a blow at the propitious moment. Mr. Evarts ought to be seen immediately after the reception of the Consul’s resignation and before he has time to make any engagements on the subject with other parties. May I count on you to do this? I know it is a bold thing in me to put your goodness to such repeated tests. But I am emboldened to do so by the remembrance of the old addage of the Greeks that “the gods attend on the brave”.4 As you see, I am making an almost death-struggle for this place and I shall await with great anxiety the result. My regards to your family and best wishes for your continued health happiness and prosperity. Your obedient Servant, H. O. WAGONER, JR.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 384

5/17/23 2:35 PM

WILLIAM JAY MURTAGH TO DOUGLASS, 12 MAY 1877

385

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 122–26, FD Papers, DLC. 1. William Maxwell Evarts (1818–1901), lawyer, politician, and U.S. secretary of state, was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale in 1837, studied law at Harvard, and was admitted to the bar in New York City in 1841. President Zachary Taylor appointed him assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1849. Evarts’s strong opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 led him to aid in the organization of the Republican party in New York. He was chair of the New York delegation to the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago. During the Civil War, Evarts was a member of New York’s Union Defense Committee, and it was during this time that he gained a strong reputation in international law. Although sympathetic to Radical Republicans during Reconstruction, Evarts defended President Johnson during his impeachment trial in 1868. As a result, Evarts served as attorney general until March 1869. In 1877, he represented Rutherford B. Hayes as chief counsel on the electoral commission to settle the disputed presidential election. Hayes appointed Evarts secretary of state in 1877. He served until 1881 and then briefly returned to New York City before being elected to the Senate. He held his seat from 1885 to 1891. New York Times, 1 March 1901; Brainerd Dyer, The Public Career of William M. Evarts (Berkeley, Calif., 1933); DAB, 6:215–18; ANB (online). 2. John Mercer Langston. 3. Peter Joseph Osterhaus (1823–1917), army officer and U.S. diplomat, was born in Koblenz, Germany. After receiving a military education in Berlin, he served as a volunteer in the Prussian Twenty-ninth Infantry Regiment. In 1848 he joined the revolution that tried to unify Germany under a liberal government. After its failure a year later, Osterhaus fled with his wife and their children to the United States. At first moving to Belleville, Illinois, and later to Lebanon, Illinois, the family eventually settled in St. Louis, Missouri, among the city’s large German population. Osterhaus enlisted at the beginning of the Civil War, rising through the Union army ranks after demonstrating leadership capabilities. As a brigadier general, he served under General Ulysses Grant during the siege of Vicksburg in spring 1863. Following exceptional performances during key battles in Grant’s offensive in the western theater and General William Tecumseh Sherman’s siege of Atlanta, Osterhaus was promoted to major general. Following the war, Osterhaus served in Mississippi until January 1866, when he was mustered out of service. In June he was appointed U.S. consul in Lyon, France, and served until August 1877. After returning to St. Louis and resuming his work in the hardware business for several years, he was appointed deputy U.S. consul in Mannheim, Germany. He served until his retirement in 1900. Warner, Generals in Blue, 582–83; DAB, 14:88–89; ANB (online). 4. Wagoner perhaps adapts the saying “Heaven helps not the men who will not act” from Sophocles’s play Philoctetes. Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, 59.

WILLIAM JAY MURTAGH1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington, D.C. 12 May 1877.

Hon. Frederick Douglass, Present: Dear Sir: This journal desires to be just. Our strictures upon your course are based entirely upon the reports of your utterances at Baltimore2 on last Tuesday evening as I read them in three leading morning newspapers of that city, namely, the American,3 the Sun,4 and the Gazette,5 all of which are in harmony with each other in their reports of your lecture. If you have been

Y8204-Douglass.indb 385

5/17/23 2:35 PM

386

WILLIAM JAY MURTAGH TO DOUGLASS, 12 MAY 1877

misrepresented by these three newspapers The Republican will not only cheerfully retract all it has said against you, but will make such amends as will set you right before the community. But in order to do so to the satisfaction of the public, and to enable me to write intelligently upon a subject in which the citizens of Washington evince so deep an interest, I will thank you to send me by bearer either a copy of your lecture or a loan of the original, in order that I may publish it in full in tomorrow’s Republican. A publication of the lecture, such as you delivered it, will speak for itself. Of course, if you indulged in extemporoneous remarks, not contained in your written lecture, please favor me with your best recollection of the same. PLe: Washington National Republican, 13 May 1877. 1. William Jay Murtagh (c. 1836–1901) was the founder and publisher of the National Republican, a newspaper published in Washington, D.C., from 1860 to 1888. Born in New York, Murtagh worked for Gamaliel Bailey’s National Era in Washington around the time that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was being published. Shortly after the National Era ceased publication, he started the National Republican. He established the paper as a pro–Lincoln administration paper and eventually sold it to Almon M. Clapp in 1877. In 1862–63, Murtagh held a seat on the Washington city council and sometimes was listed as a lawyer in directories. After selling the National Republican, he began a long series of investments in naval technology, his most successful one being in a Dutch submarine company. Washington National Republican, 1 October 1877; Washington Times, 28 October 1901; 1860 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 228; Johnson, Papers of Andrew Johnson, 8:448; Hudson, Journalism in the United States, 260. 2. On 8 May 1877, Douglass addressed an audience at Baltimore’s Douglass Institute. He delivered his lecture “Our National Capital” as part of the St. Paul’s lyceum course at the hall named after him. The speech, which many viewed as a critique of the racial prejudices of the white population in Washington, D.C., caused an uproar. He had delivered the same lecture in Washington in November 1875 to little attention. But since President Hayes had recently confirmed Douglass as marshal of the District of Columbia, closer attention was paid to this particular speech. In the days following, several petitions called for Douglass’s removal from office. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:443; Washington Evening Star, 26 November 1875; Washington National Republican, 12 May 1877; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 292; Graham Culbertson, “Frederick Douglass’s ‘Our National Capital’: Updating L’enfant for an Era of Integration,” Journal of American Studies, 48:913 (November 2014). 3. The Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser was the oldest newspaper in Maryland. It was first published by Alexander Martin, a native of Boston, on 14 May 1799. The American was a firm ally of the Whig party and became prominently identified with the Union cause and the Republican party. The American carried a report of Douglass’s speech in its 30 September 1865 issue. Scharf, History of Baltimore, 609. 4. The Baltimore Sun printed its first issue in May 1837. Arunah Shepherdson Abell (1806–88) served as the paper’s first publisher and devoted himself to the idea of an independent newspaper, free of any political or religious influences. Unlike other penny-press newspapers of the day, the Sun did not run personal or inconsequential stories and thereby quickly earned a reputation as a reliable source of daily news. Abell used trains, Pony Express riders, and even carrier pigeons to transport the news, which allowed the Sun to report the news faster than most other papers. For example, during the Mexican War, U.S. government officials often received war news from the Sun well before

Y8204-Douglass.indb 386

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM JAY MURTAGH, 12 MAY 1877

387

it arrived from their own sources, thanks to a team of Pony Express riders employed by the paper. While the paper sympathized with the southern cause during the antebellum period, it fell silent on the issue of slavery, the election of 1860, and even the Civil War itself. During the war, when most Baltimore papers were silenced by the U.S. government for running pro-Confederate content, the Sun sent no war correspondents into the field, printed only the bare minimum regarding battles, and remained neutral in its editorial sections. Following the war, the Sun struggled while the city of Baltimore declined economically. Eventually, Abell made three of his sons partners, and by the turn of the century, the Sun had regained its position as an independent, reliable, and influential source of news in Maryland. Scharf, History of Baltimore, 617–22; Jon A. Roosenraad, “Arunah S. Abell (10 August 1806–19 April 1888),” in Ashley, American Newspaper Journalists, 3–4, 6–7; William S. Abell, Arunah Shepherdson Abell (1806–1888): Founder of the Sun of Baltimore (Chevy Chase, Md., 1989), 2, 12–15, 23, 67; ANB, 1:36–37. 5. The Baltimore Gazette was first published as the Daily Exchange in 1858. An independent newspaper, it did not support secession but, editorially, it promoted states’ rights and reunion with the South by negotiation. During the Civil War, the U.S. government suppressed the paper and jailed its editors for opposing the Lincoln administration. To stay in print, the paper changed its name to the Maryland Times and later the Maryland News Sheet. The Baltimore Gazette printed its first issue in October 1862. A proponent of Democratic party principles, the Gazette continued its reputation as an independent paper and a trustworthy source of news. Clayton Colman Hall, ed., Baltimore: Its History and its People, 3 vols. (New York, 1912), 1:710–11; Scharf, History of Baltimore, 631–34; ANB, 9:119–20.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM JAY MURTAGH [n.p.] 12 May 1877.

Editor Republican:1 In your assault upon me, on account of my lecture delivered in Baltimore,2 you denounce me as “traveling through the North, spitting out spite and slander.”3 You say I have “thrown on the cloak of hypocrisy,” and describe me as “standing forth in the naked, hideous depravity of a slanderer, lost to all ideas of decency and propriety,” and much else of the same sort. You treat my lecture in Baltimore as something new, and as a studied insult to Washington, when you ought to know that the same lecture was delivered in the District of Columbia, and published in full, nearly two years ago, and was highly commended, if I mistake not, by the National Republican, as well as by the Chronicle, at that time.4 You ought to be glad to know, also, that you are mistaken in representing me as “traveling through the North,” for in fact I was only as far North as the International Exhibition,5 to the inauguration of which I had the honor to be invited, in company with many other distinguished persons, for after your assault I must be permitted to consider myself somewhat distinguished. Your first quotation from the condensed and necessarily imperfect report of my lecture is that

Y8204-Douglass.indb 387

5/17/23 2:35 PM

388

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM JAY MURTAGH, 12 MAY 1877

in which I am made to say that “Washington had a good many churches, but it was some distance from the spot to which their spires pointed.” I did make use of some suc[h] remark as that, and I hardly see now, upon reflection, how such a remark as that could properly give offense to any citizen of average intelligence. There is everywhere in the world, and there certainly is in Washington, some space between heaven and earth, some space between profession and practice, and I do not see how any statement of that fact can prove me “a slanderer” or “lost to all sense of decency and propriety.” My next offense is the den[i]al that Washington has pr[o]duced a great philanthropist, and in proof of my falsehood at this point you mention the late [A]mos Kendall6 and Mr. Wm. W. Corcoran,7 still living. I would belittle the benevolence of neither of these gentlemen, though I beg to remind you that there was a time when it was fashionable for The Republican to revile one of them with a bitterness only second to that with which it now reviles me. Yet I think philanthropy means love for the whole human family, and if the negro is a member of that family, I may be excused if I find anything in the character and history of either of those gentlemen to justify me in styling them great philanthropists. Mr. Corcoran is a gentleman of great wealth, and has done much for the city of Washington, for which, as a citizen of Washington, I will award him all honor, but I cannot describe him, nor do I think he wishes to be described, as a great philanthropist. In my manuscript I use the word great, which was omitted in your quotation; with that qualification I stand by every word of the quotation; but of course in this I am speaking only within the limits of my own knowledge and belief, and will gladly own myself mistaken when an exception is presented by you or anybody else. You complain of my assertion that “it is again getting dark for the colored race.” This isolated remark does great injustice to my lecture so far as respects the District of Columbia. I took pains in that lecture to show the vast and wonderful improvement in the condition of the colored people in this city, and especially to praise the educational institutions with which they are now present. I spoke especially of the Sumner School,8 and the hope of a future of my race which it inspires. The next statement, [damaged] [damaged] from the connections, to which you object, is that “the Washingtonian is intole[ra]nt.” I did not say this, but I did say the genuine Washingtonian to the manner born and a [damaged] [damaged] expression in all his movements. If you stop into a store to purchase an article you may expect to wait five minutes at least before any clerk will condescend to notice your presence. That is what I said, and, in judging that,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 388

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM JAY MURTAGH, 12 MAY 1877

389

you must remember that I am a colored man, and that I was speaking to colored men[.] No doubt the editor and proprietor of a powerful public journal would be waited upon with more [damaged] than myself. Not only is it true that clerks are slow to wait upon colored persons in many of our stores, but instances may be [damaged] where they have failed to have been waited upon at all. any rate, Mr. Editor, I think you will agree with me that there is no slander in this a[l]legation. In speaking of the absence of enterprise and industry in the city of Washington, I have committed an offense, if it be an offense, of which the columns of The Republican have been equally guilty with myself. I am not sure but at this point I have stolen your thunder, for no man in this community has held up the destitution of Washington at this point more conspicuously than yourself. Your main quotation is as follows: “You can generally tell the character of a man by the way he wears his hat. On first sight you would think you were among a lot of thieves by the manner in which they wear their hats in Washington. They wear them down over their eyes, which gives them a sombre, sinister appearance. Members of Congress set this fashion, being in the habit of wearing their hats in this style, with their eyes cast down, thinking on the legislation of the hour, and sometimes desiring to avoid recognition. Another distinction of the Washingtonian is his negro pronunciation. There is a class there called the poor white trash[.] During slavery they would follow an escaped slave as a dog would a bone. Now they manage to eke out an existence by hunting and fishing. Then [damaged] are the spoilsmen, pension buyers, lobbyists, &c, with all sorts of schemes to make money. To be honest in Washington is to be considered a fool. Nobody ever says ‘No;’ all say ‘Yes.’ There is more insincere politeness and obsequious hat-lifting there than anywhere else.” This is a condensed statement, and is consequently imperfect. What I said was, “There is no article of gentleman’s dress which can be worn more expressively than a hat.” You can almost tell a honest man from a rogue, a man of sense from a fool, a man of good breeding from a fop, by his manner of wearing his hat. There is almost a Washingtonian style of wearing this article, and it might upon first sight give one the impression that he is among dangerous characters. I did not say, as the quotation has it, you would think you were among a lot of thie[v]es. I did not say that “the people of Washington were a lot of thieves, or that the manner of wearing their hats” proved anything as to their character, I merely spoke of the appearance it gave them, and this, too, in a vein of broad humor, not

Y8204-Douglass.indb 389

5/17/23 2:35 PM

390

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM JAY MURTAGH, 12 MAY 1877

malice. But I need not go further with my explanations. Had the reporters been as careful to report what I said in praise of Washington as they have been to report what they may have considered disparagement of Washington I think you would hardly have ventured to assault me in so wrathful and furious a manner as you have done. You will pardon me if I just remind you that Washington is not a hamlet nor a village, but a great city, the capital of a great country, and that it is too large to be small, and that the public habits, customs and manners of its various classes are the subjects of public remark, and that no man is to be denounced as a criminal for speaking of such peculiarities as may offend his taste or make what he conceives to be an unpleasant impression. I spoke of the negro pronunciation, peculiar to the genuine old school Washingtonian. What I said was this: born and reared among negroes, learning their first songs and stories from the lips of the negroes, they had naturally enough acquired something of the negro manner of using their vocal organs. My consolation is that if the blacks are too low to learn from the whites, the whites are not too high to learn from the blacks, and I added that in any case the example is one which shows that the common good requires the education of all; it shows that we cannot touch [damaged] without being [damaged]; that ignorance is as contagious as knowledge, and that no people can afford to be in contact with an ignorant class. So far from slandering the whole people of Washington in that lecture, I spoke largely in their praise, and I very much mistake their ideas of liberality, their magnanimity of spirit, their conscious worth and complacency if my comments, even though they be not strictly just, shall [damaged] them into the tempest of rage which must have agitated the breast of the man who penned the editorial in your columns, upon which I have felt it due to myself and to my fellowcitizens to send you this letter. Let me say in conclusion that I live in the District of Columbia, my interests are in the District of Columbia; that I am interested in its character fame and fortune, and that I should as little think of aiming a blow at either as I should at the breast of my own family. FRED. DOUGLASS PLSr: Washington, D.C., National Republican, 13 May 1877. 1. William Jay Murtagh. 2. A reference to the lecture “Our National Capital,” which Douglass delivered in Baltimore on 8 May 1877, described in the annotation to the previous letter. 3. These and other quoted passages appeared in the 11 May 1877 issue of the Washington Evening Star in a story entitled “A Gratuitous and Studied Insult to Washington.” 4. While reports in neither the Washington National Republican nor the Washington Daily Morning Chronicle have been located, other sources disclose that Douglass delivered a well-prepared

Y8204-Douglass.indb 390

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM JAY MURTAGH, 12 MAY 1877

391

lecture entitled “The Popularity of the Capital” in late November 1875 at a fund-raising benefit for the Bethel Baptist Church. Washington Evening Star, 26 November 1875; Muller, Lion of Anacostia, 72. 5. On 10 May 1877, public ceremonies dedicated the Main Building of the former centennial fairgrounds at Fairmount Park in Philadelphia as the site for a new international exhibition, more popularly known as the Permanent International Exhibition. Presidents Grant and Hayes as well as Douglass were among a long list of dignitaries in attendance. The exhibition, which failed to live up to its name, closed on 14 February 1881 because of financial difficulties. New York Times, 8 May 1877; New York Tribune, 11 May 1877; Scharf and Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 3:1863. 6. Amos Kendall (1789–1869), journalist and postmaster general, was born in Dunstable, Massachusetts, and graduated from Dartmouth College. After studying law under the Republican congressman William M. Richardson, he moved to Frankfort, Kentucky, and worked as editor and part owner of the Argus of Western America newspaper for the next twelve years. Although he supported Henry Clay for president in 1824, he eventually joined the Democrats and enthusiastically backed Andrew Jackson during the presidential campaign of 1828. Jackson then appointed Kendall as an auditor of the treasury, and he became one of the president’s closest advisers. Using his excellent writing skills, Kendall helped compose several speeches for Jackson, including his second inaugural address. He served as postmaster general (1835–40) and helped eradicate corruption within the department. Kendall helped run Martin Van Buren’s unsuccessful bid for reelection in 1840. In 1845, Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, requested that Kendall serve as his agent to help handle his finances and defend his patent in court. Kendall’s work for Morse made him a millionaire. In 1857 he founded the Columbia Institution for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind (now Gallaudet College) and served as its first president. During the Civil War, Kendall supported the Unionist wing of the Democratic party, often criticizing the Republicans and President Lincoln for political overreach. His last years were spent arguing against Republican Reconstruction policies. New York Times, 13 November 1869; William Stickney, Autobiography of Amos Kendall (Boston, 1872); DAB, 10:325–27; ANB, 12:555–57. 7. William Wilson Corcoran (1798–1888), banker and philanthropist, was born in Georgetown, District of Columbia. He studied one year at Georgetown College (now Georgetown University) before leaving in 1815 to start a dry-goods store with his two older brothers. After some initial success, the business went bankrupt during the financial panic of 1823. Corcoran then became a real estate investor and a manager of real estate accounts for the Washington branch of the Bank of the United States. In 1840 he formed the banking firm Corcoran & Riggs with his partner, George Washington Riggs. Instead of issuing banknotes, the firm concentrated on investing in U.S. Treasury notes, which it would then resell to investors. Because Corcoran & Riggs developed into a main depository of government funds, it significantly aided in the financing of the Mexican War in 1846, thus earning the two partners a fortune. The firm continued to flourish until President Franklin Pierce’s treasury secretary, James Guthrie, eradicated government deposits from private firms in 1853. Corcoran retired the following year but continued to invest in government bonds, land grants, real estate, and railroads. A man with southern sentiments, Corcoran further distanced himself from the Union in November 1861 when his daughter and son-in-law were captured on board the British mail ship Trent, along with Confederate commissioners, and subsequently imprisoned. After their release, he traveled to France with them and eventually expatriated $1 million in cash to Europe. While some of his properties and rents were confiscated during the Civil War, after he took the loyalty oath to the Union upon his return to the United States in 1868, they were restored. Cochran spent the remainder of his years in Washington, D.C., contributing to philanthropic organizations and attempting to reestablish Democratic party power in the capital. He opened the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1872 and donated the funds to complete construction of the Washington Monument. Corcoran established the Democratic newspaper the Washington Union before his death in 1888. Henry Cohen, Business and Politics from the Age of Jackson to the Civil War: The Career Biography of W. W. Corcoran (Westport, Conn., 1971); DAB, 4:440–41; ANB (online).

Y8204-Douglass.indb 391

5/17/23 2:35 PM

392

DOUGLASS TO CROSBY STUART NOYES, 12 MAY 1877

8. The Charles Sumner School is located at the intersection of 17th and M streets, N.W., in Washington, D.C. It was constructed on the site of an earlier Freedmen’s Bureau school built in 1866. The new building was designed by the Washington architect Adolph Cluss and dedicated in 1872. Named for the abolitionist and black civil rights activist Senator Charles Sumner, the school served as one of the first public schools built exclusively for the education of blacks in Washington, D.C. The first story held four schoolrooms, the second housed more schoolrooms and offices, and a 3,000-square-foot hall completed the third floor. The first class graduated in 1877. Beth L. Savage, ed., African American Historic Places (Washington, D.C., 1994), 148–49; Curtis, Black Heritage Sites, 54–55.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO CROSBY STUART NOYES1 Washington, D.C. 12 May 1877.

To the Editor of the Washington Evening Star: Sir: You were mistaken in representing me as being off on a lecturing tour, and by implication neglecting my duties as United States Marshal for the District of Columbia.2 My absence from Washington during two days was due to an invitation by the managers to be present on the occasion of the inauguration of the International Exhibition in Philadelphia. In complying with this invitation I found myself in company with other members of the government who went thither in obedience to the call of patriotism and civilization. No one interest of the Marshal’s office suffered by my temporary absence, as I had seen to it that those upon whom the duties of the office devolved were honest, capable, industrious, painstaking and faithful. My deputy marshal3 is a man every way qualified for his position, and the citizens of Washington may rest assured that no unfaithful man will be retained in any position under me. Of course I can have nothing to say as to my own fitness for the position I hold. You have a right to say what you please on that point; yet I think it would be only fair and generous to wait for some dereliction of duty on my part before I shall be adjudged as incompetent to fill the place. You will allow me to say, also, that the attacks upon me on account of the remarks alleged to have been made by me in Baltimore, strike me as both malicious and silly. Washington is a great city, not a village nor a hamlet, but the capital of a great nation, and the manners and habits of its various classes are proper subjects for presentation and criticism, and I very much mistake if this great city can be thrown into a tempest of passion by any humorous reflections I may take the liberty to utter. The city

Y8204-Douglass.indb 392

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO CROSBY STUART NOYES, 12 MAY 1877

393

is too great to be small, and I think it will laugh at the ridiculous attempt to rouse it to a point of furious hostility to me for anything said in my Baltimore lecture. Had the reporters of that lecture been as careful to note what I said in praise of Washington as what was said, if you please, in disparagement of it, it would have been impossible to have awakened any feeling against me in this community for what I said. It is the easiest thing in the world, as all editors know, to pervert the meaning and give a one-sided impression of a whole speech, by simply giving isolated passages from the speech itself, without their qualifying connections.4 It would hardly be imagined from anything that has appeared here that I had said one word in that lecture at Baltimore, in honor of Washington, and yet the lecture itself, as a whole, was decidedly in the interest of the national capital. I am not such a fool as to decry a city in which I have invested my money and made my permanent residence. After speaking of the power of the sentiment of patriotism, I held this language in the lecture for which I am now so fiercely assailed: “In the spirit of this noble sentiment, I would have the American people view the national capital. It is our national center. It belongs to us; and whether it is mean or majestic, whether arrayed in glory or covered with shame, we cannot but share its character and its destiny. In the remotest section of the republic, in the most distant parts of the globe, amid the splendors of Europe, or the wilds of Africa, we are still held and firmly bound to this common center. Under the shadow of Bunker Hill monument,5 in the peerless eloquence of his diction, I once heard the great Daniel Webster give welcome to all American citizens, assuring them that wherever else they might be strangers, they were all at home there. The same boundless welcome is given to all American citizens by Washington. Elsewhere we may belong to individual states, but here we belong to the whole United States. Elsewhere we may belong to a section, but here we belong to the whole country, and the whole country belongs to us. It is national territory, and the one place where no American is an intruder or a carpet bagger. The new-comer is not less at home than the old-resident. Under its lofty domes and stately pillars, as under the broad blue sky, all races and colors of men stand upon a footing of common equality. The wealth and magnificence which elsewhere might oppress the humble citizen has an opposite effect here. They are felt to be a part of himself, and serve to ennoble him in his own eyes. He is an owner of the marble grandeur which he beholds about him—as much so as any

Y8204-Douglass.indb 393

5/17/23 2:35 PM

394

DOUGLASS TO CROSBY STUART NOYES, 12 MAY 1877

of the forty millions of this great nation. Once in his life every American who can should visit Washington; not as the Mahometan to Mecca;6 not as the Catholic to Rome; not as the Hebrew to Jerusalem; nor as the Chinaman to the Flowery Kingdom;7 but in the spirit of enlightened patriotism, knowing the value of free institutions and how to maintain and perpetuate them. Washington should be contemplated not merely as an assemblage of fine buildings; not merely as the chosen resort of the wealth and fashion of the country; not merely as the honored place where the statesmen of the nation assemble to shape the policy and frame the laws; not merely as the point at which we are most visibly touched by the outside world, and where the diplomatic skill and talent of the old continent meet and match themselves against those of the new; but as the national flag itself, a glorious symbol of civil and religious liberty, leading the world in the race of social science, civilization and renown. My lecture in Baltimore required more than an hour and a half for its delivery, and every intelligent reader will see the difficulty of doing justice to such a speech when it is abbreviated and compressed into a half or three-quarters of a column. Such abbreviation and condensation has been resorted to in this instance. A few stray sentences, called out from their connections, would be deprived of much of their harshness if presented in the form and connection in which they were uttered; but I am taking up too much of your space, and will close with the last paragraph of the lecture as delivered in Baltimore. “No city in the broad world has a higher or more beneficent mission. Among all the great capitals of the world it is pre-eminently the capital of free institutions. Its fall would be a blow to freedom and progress throughout the world. Let it stand then where it now does stand, where the Father of his Country planted it,8 and where it has stood for more than a half a century. No longer sandwiched between two slave states, no longer a contradiction to human progress; no longer the hot-bed of slavery in the slave trade; no longer the home of the duelist, the gambler and the assassin; no longer the frantic partisan of one section of the country against the other; no longer anchored to a dark and semibarbarous past, but a redeemed city, beautiful to the eye and attractive to the heart, a bond of perpetual union, an angel of peace on earth and good will toward men, a common ground, upon which Americans of all races and colors, all sections, north and south, may meet and shake hands, not over a chasm of blood, but over a free, united and progressive republic.” FRED’K DOUGLASS

Y8204-Douglass.indb 394

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO CROSBY STUART NOYES, 12 MAY 1877

395

PLSr: Washington Evening Star, 12 May 1877. 1. Born in Minot, Maine, Crosby Stuart Noyes (1825–1908) had the desire to be a journalist from childhood. After writing for several newspapers, he settled in Washington as a correspondent for the Evening Star. Through his political connections, he established that paper as a semiofficial outlet for presidential announcements from Lincoln’s administration. Rising through the ranks at the Star, Noyes eventually became editor in chief and co-owner of the paper with Samuel H. Kauffmann and George Adams. After the Civil War, he used the newspaper to promote the infrastructure improvements in the District undertaken by Alexander Robey Shepherd. Later in his career, he helped establish the first public library in Kensington, Maryland, which is now called the Noyes Children’s Library. Los Angeles Times, 22 February 1908; Harvey W. Crew, Centennial History of the City of Washington D.C. (Dayton, Ohio, 1892), 459–61; Proctor, Washington Past and Present, 4:890–894; Find a Grave (online). 2. The Washington Evening Star reported on Douglass’s lecture “Our National Capital” in its 10 May 1877 issue. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:475. 3. As his deputy marshal, Douglass selected L. P. Williams (c. 1831–?), a former newspaper editor from La Porte, Indiana, who in the spring of 1852 worked briefly on the short-lived Westville (Ind.) Free Press. After serving in the Union army during the Civil War, where he attained the rank of major, Williams moved permanently to Washington, D.C., living near Howard University. In Washington, Williams became an assistant clerk for the District’s Supreme Court before accepting the position of Douglass’s deputy marshal on 20 March 1877, replacing Colonel George W. Phillips. 1870 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 738; Washington Evening Star, 19 March 1877; New York Times, 20 March 1877; Jasper Packard, History of La Porte County, Indiana, and Its Townships, Towns, and Cities (La Porte, 1876), 78; E. D. Daniels, A Twentieth Century History and Biographical Record of La Porte County, Indiana (Chicago, 1904), 248–49; Douglass Zevely, “Old Residences and Family History in the City Hall Neighborhood,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, 7:146–49 (1904). 4. Several manuscript copies of Douglass’s lecture on Washington have survived among the papers preserved by his wife Helen Pitts Douglass at their Cedar Hill home and later donated to the Library of Congress. Approximations of all of the portions of that lecture quoted or paraphrased by Douglass in this letter can be found in those texts. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:443–74; Speech File, reel 15, frames 56–96, 97–146, 147–85, 186–229, 231–49, FD Papers, DLC. 5. The Bunker Hill Monument, a 222-foot granite obelisk, was erected between 1825 and 1842 on the famous battle site in Boston. Douglass probably attended the monument’s formal dedication ceremonies on 17 June 1843, when Daniel Webster delivered the principal public address. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 1:80n; Frederick Lewis Weis, A Brief History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, 1823–1948; Daniel Webster, The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, 18 vols., national ed. (Boston, 1903), 1:233–84. 6. Mecca, the holiest city of Islam, is located on the Arabian Peninsula, forty-five miles from the Red Sea. The city is the site of the Kaaba, a small, cube-shaped stone temple believed to have been built by Abraham, and of the Zamzam, a sacred well that figured in the biblical account of Hagar and Ishmael. The fifth and final tenet of the Islamic faith is that all believers, unless ill or impoverished, must make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lives. Vergilius Ferm, Encyclopedia of Religion (New York, 1945), 412, 478, 500–02. 7. The Chinese people do not refer to their country as “China” nor to themselves as “Chinese.” Among the names that its people use for the land are “Chung Kwoh,” the Middle Kingdom, and “Chung Hwa Kwoh,” the Middle Flowery Kingdom. The term “Hwa” carries the sense that its people are civilized and refined. G. W. Peck, “China,” American Review: A Whig Journal of Politics, Literature, Art, and Science, 1:231–39 (March 1848). 8. The Continental Congress left Philadelphia in 1783 and met in a series of locations while looking for a permanent site for a national capital. Final selection was not completed until the first

Y8204-Douglass.indb 395

5/17/23 2:35 PM

396

DOUGLASS TO SARAH JANE CLARKE LIPPINCOTT, 20 MAY 1877

Congress under the new Constitution passed a law on 16 July 1790 authorizing President Washington to choose a ten-mile-square site along the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia. The Potomac was selected in part to honor Washington, who resided along its banks at Mount Vernon and who had invested in improving the river as a major commercial artery into the interior. Another reason Congress chose to locate the capital in the South was an arrangement negotiated by Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton whereby the federal government assumed unpaid Revolutionary War state debts owed primarily by the North, and the South would receive the benefit of having the capital nearby. Green, Secret City, 1:7–13; William Tindall, Standard History of the City of Washington from a Study of the Original Sources (Washington, 1909), 21–56; Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, A History of the National Capital from Its Foundation through the Period of the Adoption of the Organic Act, 2 vols. (New York, 1914), 1:8–12.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SARAH JANE CLARKE LIPPINCOTT (“GRACE GREENWOOD”) Washington, D.C. 20 May 1877.

Dear Grace Greenwood, I wish I could now tell you in a modest and temperate way and in fitting words how much and how sincerely I am obliged to you. I have just read your able and sparkling letter in the New York Times of Saturday.1 You have done many services with your facile pen, guided by justice and enlightened liberality during the last thirty years, but you have never come to the rescue more chevalrously and effectively and I may add, when your help was more needed than in the present instance. After you have spoken in such manner and through such a medium I can afford to be silent. You have redeemed my lecture from the curse of popular wrath and largely set me in safty from those who have been puffing at me with might and main during the last ten days. Of course my accusers will rail on for yet a while longer, but the force of their charges are now broken and spent. My only fear now is that you have invited to your own head blows that ought to fall upon mine alone. You have in your efforts to give a true interpretation of my unfortunate Baltimore lecture sinned if you have sinned at all, in good company. The New York ’Times, “Tribune”2 and “Evening Post,”3 The Chicago “Inter ocean,”4 “Journal”5 and Post6 —The Cincinnati Gazette7 and the Rochester Democrat8” and many minor Journals are in the same boat with you. You will be glad to know that there is not the least danger of my removal from office at the bidding of those who have raised this Storm against me. There is a country as well as a capital and the country is too large hearted to take up this reproach against me. It understands how easily a cry is raised against an insolent negro in this latitude—no matter

Y8204-Douglass.indb 396

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO SARAH JANE CLARKE LIPPINCOTT, 20 MAY 1877

397

how insufficient and ridiculous the Cause—and will set down the attacks upon me at their true value. However the press here may rave and rant here—Your words of truth and soberness will be received with approval by the country. In any case my friend (for such you really are as well as a friend to truth) you have well and bravely performed a high duty—one which only a soul as noble as yours, could perform. You could have remained silent and drifted with the popular tide against me, but you have chosen a nobler path. You have again sided with the wronged and persecuted and I give you all honor and gratitude both for myself and my cause. Do not take this note as an effort to pay you for what you have done in this matter, but simply as a relief to my own feelings. Your friend FREDERICK DOUGLASS ALS: Alexander Gumby Manuscripts, NNC. Another copy is in JNH, 36:80–82 (January 1951). 1. On 19 May 1877 in the New York Times, Grace Greenwood came to Douglass’s defense, arguing that much of the “Our National Capital” speech had been misquoted and misleadingly displayed. She admits that some of his criticisms of Washington may have been harsh, but that they nonetheless did not negate his duty or genuine affection for the city. In the end, she says that the truth, though hard, will better serve the city than flattery. Over the years, Greenwood had written quite favorably of Douglass, and he probably believed her responsible for the Times’s positive coverage of his nomination by President Rutherford B. Hayes to become marshal of the District of Columbia. The New York Times has its origins in the 1850s, when Henry J. Raymond was its first editor. The Times grew into prominence in the early 1870s when it published stories about the corruption in New York City, centered on the political machine in Tammany Hall and the man behind it, William Tweed. Throughout that time, the Times was a Republican-oriented newspaper. New York Times, 16, 17, 18, 20, 24 March, 19 May 1877; Hudson, Journalism in the United States, 618–45. 2. Horace Greeley founded the New York Tribune in 1841. Greeley printed the first four-page, fivecolumn issue of the Tribune on 10 April 1841. It was conceived as a “cheap” political paper that workingmen could turn to for moral direction and nonpartisan political analysis. Helped by the financial talent of a Whig lawyer named Thomas McElrath, Greeley built the Tribune into a profitable enterprise, printing a daily morning edition and a weekly edition, which were sold mainly by $2 yearly subscriptions. Within only a few years, the Tribune became the leader in national news, and Greeley was the best-known newspaperman in the country. The Tribune’s success was enhanced by the high quality of the journalists that Greeley hired as reporters and editors, including Charles Anderson Dana, George William Curtis, Bayard Taylor, Sydney Howard Gay, and Henry Jarvis Raymond. After Greeley’s death in 1872, William Whitelaw Reid, an experienced journalist as well as Republican party politician, became its editor. The Tribune briefly reviewed the “storm” Douglass faced over the “Our National Capital” lecture and largely dismissed the controversy: “The probable explanation of the whole matter is that it was written about two years ago, and has by this time become a little out of date.” New York Tribune, 14, 15 May 1877; George H. Douglas, The Golden Age of the Newspaper (Westport, Conn., 1999), 39–43; Louis M. Starr, Bohemian Brigade: Civil War Newsmen in Action (New York, 1954), 98–116. 3. The New York Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1800 and, despite undergoing many modifications in its name, format, and politics, still survives. The abolitionist and poet William Cullen Bryant guided the Evening Post to support first the Free Soil party and then the Republicans. Though many articles in the Evening Post in the week after his Baltimore lecture criticized and chided Douglass, an article on 14 May called readers to recognize that the whole affair had been

Y8204-Douglass.indb 397

5/17/23 2:35 PM

398

SARAH JANE CLARKE LIPPINCOTT TO DOUGLASS, 26 MAY 1877

blown out of proportion, though it reiterated that most of what Douglass said was in poor taste, especially if he was simply reusing an old speech. New York Evening Post, 14 May 1877; Hudson, Journalism in the United States, 216–25. 4. Founded in 1865, the daily Chicago Republican was relaunched as the Inter Ocean after that city’s devastating fire. In 1876, William Penn Nixon became the principal owner and editor in chief and remained in that position until his death in 1912. A brief article entitled “Washington: Marshal Douglass” notes that “there is nothing in the lecture that is not true,” but questions Douglass’s purpose in making such a speech, given his recent appointment as marshal of the District of Columbia. Chicago Inter Ocean, 12 May 1877; Encyclopedia of Chicago (online). 5. The Chicago Evening Journal claimed to be “‘the oldest paper in the Northwest,’” though there is likely no way of corroborating this claim. In the 1870s, the paper was Republican leaning, largely isolationist in its economics, and strongly supportive of free trade. While not as big as the Chicago Tribune or Times, the Journal continued as a successful Republican paper in Chicago after the Civil War. Hudson, Journalism in the United States, 204. 6. Resulting from the merger of two competing dailies in 1875, the Chicago Post & Mail operated under that combined name until 1878, when it was absorbed by the Chicago Daily News. Donald J. Abramoske, “The Founding of the Chicago Daily News,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 59:341–53 (Winter 1966). 7. The Cincinnati Gazette, which began publishing in 1806, was considered one of the best papers in the Midwest, largely because of its editor, Charles Hammond. Hammond was an antislavery man, and this sentiment bled into his paper, no doubt endearing it to Douglass in earlier days. After Hammond’s departure, it continued to be run by New England–born journalists. In the early 1870s, it was the most successful paper in Cincinnati. Hudson, Journalism in the United States, 196–98. 8. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle’s opinion of Douglass’s words was that “their taste is no more questionable than their truth,” but that they had created far more tumult that they ought to have done: “Verily there is a tempest in a tea-pot.” The story had been blown out of proportion, and the Democrat felt that the people of Washington were not only upset at the truth of Douglass’s words but were further angered that they had been uttered by a black man, whom they thought “shouldn’t have any brains, and, most of all, he shouldn’t be a federal office holder.” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 14 May 1877.

SARAH JANE CLARKE LIPPINCOTT (“GRACE GREENWOOD”) TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS [Washington, D.C.]1 26 May 1877.

Dear Mr. Douglass, I have been trying hard ever since I received your letter2 to get time to reply to it. But I have been unusually hurried & worried of late you have perhaps seen the new work I am engaged in—with other friends—the bringing out what we believe to be “a bright, particular star”, dramatically speaking—Anna Boyle3—the 14 year old Juliet. Your grateful feeling toward me—but it seemed to me scarcely called for. I could have done no less and [illegible] myself suspect. Even if you had not been my friend, & should have said as much for the sake of pure justice & fair play.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 398

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS ET AL. TO RUTHERFORD B. HAYES, MAY 1877

399

I wish I could see you and have a long talk—sometime after this dibut is over. You will see that that infamous Aiken of the “Sunday Herald,”4 has pitched into me. I do not care for myself—but the paragraph may tell against me in my work of selling tickets for little Anna Boyle—just now. By the way, if you can go, or send any one to the National Theater,5 or Thursday—do so for my sake Yours [illegible] GRACE GREENWOOD ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 130R–37, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Lippincott added “272 New Jersey Ave” to her address. 2. Greenwood alludes to Douglass’s letter to her, dated 20 May 1877, published earlier in this volume. 3. Anne Boyle (?–1907) performed in Shakespearean works and comedies by other playwrights in theaters throughout the eastern United States in the late nineteenth century, and she was praised for the “intelligence” of her portrayals of characters such as Juliet and Desdemona. She married a fellow actor, W. Eugene Moore, and their daughter Gloria Moore (Hardin) became an early Hollywood star. Puck, 8 August 1877; Frederick B. Warde, Fifty Years of Make-Believe (Los Angeles, Calif., 1923), 204, 212; James Lauren Ford, Forty-Odd Years in the Literary Shop (New York, 1921), 193. 4. Few issues of the Washington Herald have survived, and this story could not be located. It is probable that the journalist attacking Lippincott in the Herald was Frederick A. Aiken (1832–78). Born in Massachusetts, Aiken graduated from Middlebury College and started careers in both law and journalism in Vermont. He relocated to Washington in 1860 and served as an officer in the Union army. He gained postwar notoriety while serving as a defense counsel for Mary Surratt, who was ultimately convicted and executed for her part in the Lincoln assassination. Aiken thereafter returned to journalism, working for several Washington newspapers, including the Post. Washington Post, 13 June 2012; Find a Grave (online). 5. The National Theatre is located at 1321 Pennsylvania Avenue, within a few blocks of the executive mansion in Washington, D.C. Still open today, it is the longest-operating touring house in the United States and among the oldest cultural institutions in the nation’s capital. Founded in December 1835 by William Corcoran, it has operated under a variety of names over its long history and has been rebuilt frequently. The National Theatre hosted every president from Andrew Jackson to George W. Bush and was the scene of numerous inaugural balls. Douglas Bennett Lee, Roger L. Meersman, and Donn B. Murphy, Stage for a Nation: The National Theatre, 150 Years (Lanham, Md., 1985).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS ET AL. TO RUTHERFORD B. HAYES [n.p. May 1877.]

Mr President. Sir: Under the operations of the Diplomatic and Consular Appropriation Bill1 passed at the last session of Congress, John F Quarles,2 Esq: Consul at Port Mahon, having been recalled from his post of duty, we the undersigned

Y8204-Douglass.indb 399

5/17/23 2:35 PM

400

DOUGLASS ET AL. TO RUTHERFORD B. HAYES, MAY 1877

respectfully ask that he be reinstated in the Consular service for the following reasons:— That Mr Quarles, is the only person from his state, Georgia, holding a position in this branch of the Consular service, that he is the only person, save one, in the whole foreign service—and that he is endorsed and recommended by the Republicans of the entire state. That Mr: Quarles, is the only colored man holding such a position in this branch of the foreign Service and thus he not only represents his state, but we regard him in a peculiar sense as the representative of the colored people of the country in this branch of the public service. That Mr Quarles, entered the service under the operations of the Civil Service Rules, having passed an examination altogether satisfactory to the Department of State;3 that he has since thoroughly prepared himself for this branch of the public service and that his official conduct has been such as to merit the highest commendations, both of the people among whom he has resided and of the Department of State. For these reasons which we trust and believe that you will deem sufficient we respectfully ask that Mr Quarles be reappointed to some position in the foreign service. B. K. BRUCE 4 JOHN R. LYNCH 5 FREDK DOUGLASS— J. M. LANGSTON 6

I regard Mr Quarles, as most eminently fitted for this or any other position. And earnestly pray for his reappointment. H. M. TURNER D. D. L L. D.7

Publisher Christian Recorder 8 Savannah, Ga. 1 May 1877 Hon. Wm. M. Evarts Secretary of State, Washington, D.C. Sir: I have been informed that Mr John F. Quarles of this State is an applicant for a Consulate in Europe, and I take much pleasure in recommending him as in every way qualified by education character etc, He has served one term as Consul. Mr. Quarles is a native Georgian and has always commanded the respect of all persons.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 400

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS ET AL. TO RUTHERFORD B. HAYES, MAY 1877

401

He is an efficient worker in the Republican ranks: a man of distinguished ability. I am sure that it would meet the universal approbation of the party in the State and I trust he may receive the appointment. I have the honor to be Very Respectfully Yours, EDWARD C. WADE 9

Mem. State Cen. Com, Republican Party of Ga. ALS: Secretary of War Applications, 1847–87, Record Group 107, DNA. 1. The Forty-fourth Congress passed the Diplomatic and Consular Appropriation Bill, “an act making appropriations for the consular and diplomatic service of the Government,” on 20 February 1877. It outlined the salaries of foreign service officers and other consulate staff members. Thirtyfour nations had consulate designations. Among these were Haiti, the Hawaiian Islands, and Liberia. Envoys to Great Britain, France, Germany, and Russia received the highest salary, $17,500 annually. The lowest salary for a minister resident was $4,000, for service in Liberia. The minister resident and consul general to Haiti received $7,500. Additionally, the bill made allocations for miscellaneous expenses such as “rent of prisons for American convicts,” stationery, and bookcases. Congressional Records, Forty-Fourth Congress, 2nd Sess., 1877, 233–38. 2. John F. Quarles (1847–85) was an African American lawyer, Republican politician, and U.S. diplomat to Spain from 1877 to 1880. Quarles was born a slave in Atlanta to a preacher father. Following the Civil War, Quarles attended and graduated from Westminster College in Pennsylvania at the top of his class. He studied law in Washington under Charles Sumner before being admitted to the bar in Washington, D.C. Quarles was active in the Georgia political scene during Reconstruction and gave a speech in support of vice presidential candidate Henry Wilson at the 1872 Republican National Convention. Georgia in the 1870s was hostile territory for African American politicians. The Macon American Union attacked Quarles, claiming that because he advocated for more offices for blacks, he “would send a cornfield negro to the United States Senate simply because he was black.” In response, Quarles argued the Republican party would be “doomed to defeat” if it did not distribute offices equitably among its supporters, black and white. Ultimately, Quarles was able to pursue his diplomatic ambitions when he found support from Congressman Richard Henry Whiteley. Whiteley recommended Quarles to President Grant as “one of the most promising and worthy young men of his race in our State or in the South.” Quarles wrote Grant in January 1873, pointing out that no one from Georgia was in the consular service. During his time in Port Mahon, Spain, Quarles married Marie Jacqueminot, a daughter of the French consul. Unfortunately, Grant developed a dislike for Quarles, and as a result, James Russell Lowell, the U.S. minister to Madrid, conducted an investigation into Quarles. In December 1876, Quarles wrote again to Grant, this time asking for an assignment to Switzerland following his recall from Port Mahon because of a congressional failure to make an appropriation. Douglass also wrote Grant, requesting Quarles’s reinstatement. Eventually, President Hayes transferred Quarles, at his request, to Málaga, Spain, a more significant post. Quarles returned to the United States in the spring of 1880 and rallied support among southern black delegates for James G. Blaine, who was running against James A. Garfield for the Republican presidential nomination. Quarles remained politically active after making his final residence in Flushing, New York, and helped secure U.S. senator William M. Evarts’s election. He also worked as a criminal defense lawyer and opened his home to Johnson Chesnut Whittaker, one of the first black cadets at West Point, who was unjustly court-martialed. Linda Heywood, Allison Blakely, Charles Stith, and Joshua C.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 401

5/17/23 2:35 PM

402

DOUGLASS ET AL. TO RUTHERFORD B. HAYES, MAY 1877

Yesnowitz, eds., African Americans in U.S. Foreign Policy from the Era of Frederick Douglass to the Age of Obama (Urbana, Ill., 2015), 15; Grant, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 24:314, 29:18; “New York, New York, U.S., Extracted Death Index, 1862–1948,” Ancestry.com; Edmund L. Drago, Black Politicians and Reconstruction in Georgia; A Splendid Failure (Athens, Geo., 1992), 61–62; William Warren Rogers, Jr., A Scalawag in Georgia: Richard Whiteley and the Politics of Reconstruction (Urbana, Ill., 2007), 112; William Harvey Quick, Negro Stars in All Ages of the World (Richmond, Va., 1898), 307–09; J. A. Rogers, Sex and Race: A History of White, Negro, and Indian Miscegenation in the Two Americas, vol. 2 (New York, 1942), 336. 3. In the nineteenth century, a U.S. consul’s primary focus was on commercial matters, especially maritime, rather than politics or social issues. They were strategically stationed at seaports and points of export. The diplomatic service, on the other hand, was involved in international affairs, which included politics. By law, one had “to be twenty-one years and not over fifty years of age, to be a citizen of the United States and of good character and habits, and physically and mentally qualified for the performance of consular work” to qualify for the consular examination and review before the examining board, which consisted of a representative of the secretary of state, the chief of the Consular Bureau of the State Department, and the chief examiner of the Civil Service Commission. The president designated exam takers. The exam itself consisted of an oral and a written portion “to ascertain the candidate’s business ability, general information, and probable efficiency” as well as to evaluate the candidate’s knowledge of a modern language and general commercial knowledge of the United States. Consuls were prohibited from holding any business interests or role in transactions during their tenure if their annual salary was more than $1,000. Additionally, consuls were unable to practice as lawyers. Moreover, a consul’s “functions [were] largely exercised by reason of the courtesies granted by the foreign government.” As a result, a new consul had to secure the host country’s permission before beginning his official duties. Typically, the United States communicated a change in the consulate through the diplomatic representative and an official notification called an exequatur. Consular offices had to be located in a town or city’s center, and consuls had to live in the same town. Although they did not hold diplomatic immunity, consuls did have special protections under inter national law and the ability to claim rights and privileges of the host nation in regard to consuls. Henry Colford Gauss, The American Government: Organization and Officials; With the Duties and Powers of Federal Office Holders (New York, 1908), 274–81. 4. Blanche Kelso Bruce (1841–98) was born a slave near Farmville, Virginia. In early adulthood, he escaped to the free state of Kansas, and there established and taught in the first elementary school for blacks. In February 1869, Bruce, convinced that there were more and better opportunities in the South, moved to Mississippi, where he was made supervisor of elections in Tallahatchie County. In 1870, he moved to Jackson, where he was elected sergeant at arms of the state senate. Later, having moved to Bolivar County, he was elected sheriff and tax assessor. In 1874 the state legislature elected Bruce to the U.S. Senate, making him the second black to represent Mississippi in that office. During his single Senate term, Bruce championed pensions for black war veterans, protection of Indian lands, and federal intervention to safeguard voting rights. The Senate chose him to head a committee to conclude the business of the bankrupt Freedmen’s Bank, which succeeded in refunding sixty-two percent of the depositors’ money. Remaining a power in the Mississippi Republican party, Bruce received federal appointments as register of the treasury (1881–85, 1897–98) and recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia (1889–93). Douglass and Bruce frequently appeared together at political events in Washington, D.C., and consulted on political strategy. Lawrence Otis Graham, The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty (New York, 2006); Christopher, Black Americans in Congress, 15–24; DANB, 74–76. 5. John Roy Lynch (1847–1939) was born a slave on a Louisiana plantation to a biracial slave named Catherine White and an Irish immigrant overseer, Patrick Lynch. Death prevented his father from carrying out a plan to manumit both White and the younger Lynch, causing the latter to remain

Y8204-Douglass.indb 402

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS ET AL. TO RUTHERFORD B. HAYES, MAY 1877

403

a slave until the Emancipation Proclamation. After the Civil War, a friend of his father helped Lynch gain jobs in the Natchez area, where he was able to attend night schools taught by northerners and eavesdrop on school lessons during the day. He quickly became active in the Republican party; he was elected to the Mississippi House in 1869, and in 1872 was reelected and made Speaker. That same year, Lynch became the youngest person elected to Congress. In 1874, he was the only Republican who returned to Congress from Mississippi after statewide anti-Republican violence led by the White League. After losing his seat in 1876, he regained it in 1880 for one more term. Benjamin Harrison appointed Lynch auditor of the Department of the Navy (1889–93). He returned to Mississippi and became a lawyer but resettled in Washington to practice. Lynch joined the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War, and President McKinley appointed him a major. He served in Cuba and the Philippines before retiring from the military in 1911. Lynch then moved to Chicago, where he practiced law until his death. He wrote The Facts of Reconstruction (1913) and numerous articles defending the legacy of southern Black Republicans. John Roy Lynch, Reminiscences of an Active Life, ed. John Hope Franklin (Chicago, 1970); Lynch, “Some Historical Errors of James Ford Rhodes,” JNH, 2:345–68 (October 1917); BDUSC (online). 6. John Mercer Langston. 7. Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (1834–1915) was born a free man in Newberry, South Carolina. Dreams of a prophetic nature figured importantly in Turner’s life, and beginning at the age of eight, Turner felt that God had marked him out to be a leader. Many were impressed with Turner’s speaking and intellectual abilities, and he was licensed as a preacher at the age of nineteen. He made his home in Georgia for a time. During the Civil War, Lincoln appointed Turner the first black chaplain in the U.S. military, and he also became a regular correspondent for the Christian Recorder. He returned to Georgia after the war and became instrumental in the organization of the Republican party there, holding a number of offices. In 1876 he became the publications manager of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Andre E. Johnson, An African American Pastor before and during the American Civil War, vol. 1: The Literary Archive of Henry McNeal Turner (Lewiston, N.Y., 2010), vii–xii; Simmons, Men of Mark, 805–19. 8. The Christian Recorder began publishing in Philadelphia in 1852 as the official newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and it is considered the oldest continuously published black newspaper in the United States. For many years it was a bulwark of the black community, and in 1870 it was called the “only well-established colored people’s paper in the country.” Different from other black-operated newspapers of the day, which were largely financed by proprietors, the Recorder was funded by the A.M.E. Church, and so was able to outlast and outreach other, smaller papers. With Benjamin Tanner and Henry M. Turner running the paper, it reached its peak circulation in 1878. Gilbert A. Williams, “The Role of the Christian Recorder in the African Emigration Movement, 1854–1902,” Journalism Monographs, 111:2–8 (April 1989); Benjamin Fagan, The Black Newspaper and the Chosen Nation (Athens, Ga., 2016), 143–46. 9. Edward Clements Wade (1830–1911) came from a well-off family in Screven County, Georgia. His father owned a large plantation with many slaves when he was a boy. As a teen, Wade left the plantation to seek his fortune in Savannah. There he ran a successful commission company that dealt in cotton, leather, and real estate; assisted as director of a bank; and served as an alderman. Labeled “the Wade that did not secede,” he was hounded for his progressive views on the treatment of freed blacks. Serving as a tax collector under Presidents Grant and Hayes, Wade proved to be a good civil servant and spent many of his last years trying to rid Georgia of the influence of the Klan. Savannah (Ga.) Morning News, 7 April 1911; Jay E. Armstrong, “An Interview with Mr. Edward Clements Wade,” Savannah Biographies, vol. 14, Special Collections, Lane Library, Armstrong Atlantic State University.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 403

5/17/23 2:35 PM

404

CHARLOTTE L. FORTEN TO DOUGLASS, 21 JUNE 1877

CHARLOTTE L. FORTEN1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington[, D.C.] 21 June [1877.]

1209 13th St. Hon. Frederick Douglass, Dear Sir, Are you acquainted with Senator Patterson2 of South Carolina? And if so, will you allow me to ask a very great favor of you? Not a position in your office, but yet a favor. I am [illegible] of re-entering the Treasury, as I am now out of employment.3 The Miner Normal School4 in which I have been doing a little teaching has now closed, & will probably not re-open until November as the Trustees intend erecting a new building. It is necessary that I should do something at once; I cannot even afford time to [illegible] and as the weakness of my lungs & throat would prevent doing full teachers’ work, even were the schools in operation,—there seems to be no alternative except to try to re-enter the Dept. I have five letters from Whittier,5 and others, but I have been told that, just now, Southern influence would probably do more for me than any other, as so many of the Southern-States have not their quota. Therefore I thought I would try to obtain Senator Patterson’s influence. My residence and services in South Carolina might dispose him favorably towards me. You must pardon me for troubling you, dear Mr. Douglass, I know you are beset with applications of all kinds; but I can think of no one else of influence, none here, whom I know, who would be likely to know the Senator. I think my uncle, Mr. Purvis6 knows him but he is now out of town, so, also, is my friend Prof. Greener.7 And it seems important that whatever can be done should be done immediately, as I am very anxious to enter the Dept. the first of July. Therefore, I have decided to ask you if you would be so very kind to mention my case to Senator Patterson. Perhaps it would be well to state some personal facts, as I am, of course, a perfect stranger to him. Mr. Whittier, in his letter mentions the fact that my grandfather 8 was in the Revolution & suffered on board the Jersey Prison Ship9—My father lost his life in the war for the Union.10 I taught the Freedmen some years in South Carolina, and also served for a time as nurse in one of the hospitals for wounded soldiers in Beaufort, S. C.11 My health was much injured by my labors in the south, and I was obliged to return to N. E. where I was engaged for several years, in writing in the N. E. Freedmen’s Society12 in Boston,—carrying on the greater part of the correspondence with more than a hundred Freedmen’s teachers. Afterwards I was

Y8204-Douglass.indb 404

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLOTTE L. FORTEN TO DOUGLASS, 21 JUNE 1877

405

employed in teaching in Charleston S. C. & trouble in my throat & lungs obliged me to give up teaching, and four years ago I entered the Treasury Dept. & was employed as clerk in the Office of the Fourth Auditor, where I remained three years. Serious illness compelled me to resign my situation last summer, but my health is now so much better that I feel able to resume the duties there. I have the most satisfactory testimonials as to faithful discharge of duty from the officials. Pardon me for wearying you with all these personal details. It seems best to give them. I shall send in my application with letters from Mr.  Whittier and others tomorrow. And if you can, conveniently communicate with Senator Patterson, or in any other way further my desires, I shall be exceedingly obliged to you. And if there is any way whatever in which I can serve you in return, I shall be most happy to do so. I hope your family are well Please present my regards to them. Excuse this hurriedlywritten letter. I can write more legibly. Believe me, dear sir; Very Sincerely Yours CHARLOTTE L. FORTEN

P.S. Since I wrote the above, I have heard of the loss you have sustained in your family.13 Accept, dear sir, my sincere sympathy, and pardon my sending you this under the circumstances. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 15–18L, FD Papers, DL. 1. Charlotte L. Forten (1837–1914) was born into elite black society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Robert Bridges Forten (1813–64) and Mary Virginia Woods Forten (1816–40). After her mother died, of consumption, Charlotte spent much of her childhood with her aunt Harriet Forten and her uncle Robert Purvis, both ardent and well-known northern abolitionists. In 1854, when she was sixteen, Forten’s father sent her to attend the Higginson School in Salem, Massachusetts. While there, she lived with the Remonds, a prominent black family heavily involved with the antislavery movement. Charlotte soon became active in the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society and met leading Garrisonian abolitionists. Following her education at Higginson, Forten enrolled in the Salem Normal School and in 1856 became its first black woman graduate. Afterward, she taught white children at the Epes Grammar School in Salem but resigned after two years because of ill health. In 1862, Forten applied to be part of the Port Royal Commission, an experiment designed to educate and prepare recently freed slaves following the northern takeover of Confederate plantations in the South Carolina sea islands. Her first application was denied, but eventually she became the only black teacher to be a part of the endeavor. She lived for eighteen months on St. Helena Island and published several accounts of her activities in the Liberator. After the war, Forten worked as a clerk for the Teacher’s Committee of the New England Freedmen’s Union Commission (1865–71). In 1872, Forten moved to Washington, D.C., to serve as assistant principal at Summer High School for Negroes. In July 1873 she was appointed first-class clerk in the Fourth Auditor’s Office of the Treasury Department, where she remained until 1878, when she married the Reverend Francis J. Grimké. They moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where Grimké was a minister at the Laura Street Presbyterian Church. In

Y8204-Douglass.indb 405

5/17/23 2:35 PM

406

CHARLOTTE L. FORTEN TO DOUGLASS, 21 JUNE 1877

1896, Forten became a founding member of the National Association of Colored Women. Throughout her life, she wrote and published essays and poems. Charlotte Forten Grimké, The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimké, ed. Brenda Stevenson (New York, 1988); Kay Ann Taylor, “Mary S. Peake and Charlotte L. Forten: Black Teachers during the Civil War and Reconstruction,” Journal of Negro Education, 74:2 (2005), 124–37. 2. John James Patterson (1830–1912) was born in Waterloo, Pennsylvania. He received his higher education at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, and then became involved in newspaper publishing. He served as the editor and co-owner of the Harrisburg Telegraph in the early 1850s. From 1859 to 1861, Patterson served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Following the Civil War, Patterson moved to South Carolina, where he became involved in railroad construction as the president of the Blue Ridge Railroad. He served as U.S. senator from South Carolina from 1873 to 1879. White South Carolinians accused Patterson of being a northern carpetbagger and of buying his Senate seat. Patterson admitted that the election had cost him nearly $40,000 dollars. Following his political career, Patterson returned to Pennsylvania, where he once again entered the transportation industry and focused on the construction of electric railroads. Yates Snowden, ed., History of South Carolina, 5 vols. (Chicago, 1920), 2:915; BDUSC (online). 3. Forten was employed as a first-class clerk with the Fourth Auditor’s Office in the Treasury Department, 1873–76. Grimké, Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimké, xxxviii, 50. 4. Myrtilla Miner, a white educator, reformer, and abolitionist from New York, moved to Washington, D.C., in 1851 to start a school for African American women, specifically to train them as teachers. This institution, known as the School for Colored Girls, opened that year in a rented room of a local black man, Edward C. Younger. Miner received financial assistance from prominent northern abolitionists. Harassment by local residents forced the school to move three times in its first three years of operation. The original school closed in 1860 as a result of continued hostility from the local government and an inability to raise funds for a permanent location. In 1863, Miner opened the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth. From 1871 to 1876, the new school was associated with Howard University. In 1879 it was absorbed into the District of Columbia public school system and renamed the Miner Normal School, in honor of its founder. The school was again renamed in 1929 as the Miner Teacher’s College. In 1955 the school merged with Wilson Teacher’s College, which taught white teachers, and was renamed the D.C. Teacher’s College. Druscilla J. Null, “Myrtilla Miner’s School for Colored Girls: A Mirror on Antebellum Washington,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., 52:254–68 (1989); National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, “Miner Normal School (Washington Normal School #2),” 1991, nps.gov. 5. John Greenleaf Whittier. 6. Robert Purvis (1810–90) was a prominent leader of antebellum Philadelphia’s black community and one of the most influential African Americans in the Garrisonian wing of the abolitionist movement. He was the son of Harriet Judah, a free black woman, and William Purvis, a white cotton broker from Charleston, South Carolina. In 1819, Robert moved north, along with his family, to be educated. Upon his father’s death in the mid-1820s, Purvis inherited a substantial fortune, which he used to support a wide array of benevolent causes, including temperance, women’s rights, penal reform, and integrated education. He helped launch the Liberator in 1831, became a charter member of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, and served as both president and vice president of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. From the 1830s onward, he actively assisted fugitives in escaping slavery. Following Douglass’s split with Garrison, Purvis frequently attacked Douglass in speeches. Purvis pointedly aimed his barbs at Douglass’s relationship with Julia Griffiths. Douglass responded to many of these attacks in speeches against Garrison and Purvis as well as in editorials in his newspaper. Margaret Hope Bacon, But One Race: The Life of Robert Purvis (New York, 2007), 7–9, 126, 173; William Still, The Underground Railroad: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, &c. (Philadelphia, 1872), 711; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 24–25, 55–56; Joseph A. Borome, “Robert Purvis and His Early Challenge to American Racism,” NHB, 30:8–10 (May 1967); Pauline C. Johnson, “Robert Purvis,” NHB, 5:65–66 (December 1941); NCAB, 1:413.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 406

5/17/23 2:35 PM

CHARLOTTE L. FORTEN TO DOUGLASS, 21 JUNE 1877

407

7. Philadelphia-born Richard T. Greener (1844–1922) was the first African American to graduate from Harvard College. Greener then read law and was admitted to the bar in South Carolina in 1876. He taught in Howard University’s Law Department and then became dean (1879–80). He came into conflict with Frederick Douglass, who then served as a Howard University trustee, over the issue of western migration for African Americans. As secretary of the Exodus Committee, Greener advocated migration to Kansas, but Douglass strongly opposed the Exoduster movement. Following the disbanding of Howard University’s law school in 1880, Greener worked as a lawyer and campaigned for the Republican party in 1884. In 1885 he secured an appointment as chief examiner for the New York City Civil Service Board, remaining in that post until 1889. In 1898 he was appointed the first U.S. consul to Vladivostok, Russia, remaining there until 1905. Greener later settled in Chicago, where he worked for an insurance company and became active in the Niagara movement. Allison Blakely, “Richard T. Greener and the ‘Talented Tenth’s’ Dilemma,” JNH, 59:305–21 (October 1974); DAB, 7:578–79; ANB (online). 8. James Forten (1766–1842) was born to free parents in Philadelphia and received his education from the Quaker abolitionist Anthony Benezet. Forten volunteered as a powder privateer during the Revolutionary War aboard the Royal Luis. After the British Amphion defeated the crew of the Royal Luis, Forten was taken prisoner. Released after seven months, he returned home to Philadelphia. Shortly thereafter, Forten traveled to England, where he lived for a year and conferred with British abolitionists. Returning to the States, Forten became the foreman of a sailmaker to whom he had apprenticed, and within twelve years, he owned the business. He employed over forty workers, both black and white, and amassed a large fortune. His success and wealth afforded him the opportunity to become a prominent member of the black community in Philadelphia. He became involved in the abolitionist movement and supported William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator monetarily and by soliciting subscriptions within the Philadelphia black community. Forten was opposed to colonization, denouncing a request to endorse the American Colonization Society in 1817 in exchange for a high leadership position in Liberia. Forten was also deeply involved with the American Anti-Slavery Society and frequently hosted events at his Lombard Street home. Upon his death in 1842, thousands turned out for his funeral procession, which passed through the streets of Philadelphia. Julie Winch, A Gentleman of Color: The Life of James Forten (New York, 2002); Charlotte Forten, The Journal of Charlotte Forten, ed. Ray Billington (New York, 1953), 6–11; Grimké, Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimké, 4; Taylor, “Peake and Forten,” 131. 9. James Forten spent most of his time as a prisoner of war confined on the Jersey, a British naval ship constructed in 1736. By 1771, it had been converted to a hospital ship; later, in 1780, it served as a prisoner-of-war ship. Commonly referred to as “Old Jersey,” it became one of the most infamous British prison ships because of the inhumane conditions on board and the many prisoner deaths. Danske Dandridge, American Prisoners of the Revolution (Charlottesville, Va., 1911), 246– 53; Winch, Gentleman of Color, 46. 10. Robert Bridges Forten (1813–64) followed in his father’s footsteps to become a sailmaker and ardent abolitionist. He was a member of the Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee, and the New England Anti-Slavery Society. Forten moved to Canada briefly in 1855 and then to England in 1858, where he worked as a commercial agent until returning to the United States in 1862 to join the Union war effort. He enlisted as a private in the Forty-third U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment in March 1864. A month later, Forten died of typhoid fever. He was the first African American to receive a funeral with full military honors. Grimké, Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimké, 13–15. 11. Following the Union defeat at Fort Wagner, South Carolina, on 22 July 1863, Forten volunteered to treat wounded soldiers of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, which included Douglass’s son Lewis. Grimké, Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimké, xxxvii. 12. From October 1865 until 1871, Forten served as the secretary of the Teachers Committee of the New England branch of the Freedmen’s Union Commission in Boston, Massachusetts. Grimké, Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimké, xxxviii, 49.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 407

5/17/23 2:35 PM

408

LOUISA BRUFF TO DOUGLASS, JUNE 1877

13. Forten probably alludes to the death, on the same day that her letter to Douglass is dated, of Maud Ardelle Douglass, the three-month-old daughter of Frederick Douglass, Jr. Fought, Women, 310.

LOUISA BRUFF1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS St. Michaels[, Md.] June 1877.

Mr Douglas Sir, the thought occurred to me a few days ago, perhaps you would like to buy a nice Summer residence in St. Michaels, we, got to sell the house we now reside in, Mr Bruff2 has been unfortunate in business, and has to sell, his property, this house is my property and I want to sell it my-self, the house contains ten rooms, besides two more rooms in the cellar, it cost over four thousand dollars, but I will sell it for three thousand, I know it is a small item with you, but a very considerable one with me, we have a family of seven children five boys, and two girls, we have concluded if we can get hold of a little money to take our large family and move to Texas, thinking it will be better for our boys, my father is very feeble today, he suffers very much indeed, please to write and let me hear from you as soon as you can, LOUISA BRUFF 3 ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 153–54, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Louisa Auld Bruff (1833–?) was the daughter of Captain Thomas Auld and his second wife, Rowena. Douglass remembered Louisa only as a small child who was born in 1833, the year he went to live at St. Michaels. Her mother, Rowena, had not been kind to the teenage Douglass. She despised him and the other slaves, depriving them of adequate nutrition, and for this he did not remember her fondly. By the time Douglass returned to St. Michaels, Maryland, to make peace with his former master, Captain Auld, in the spring of 1877, Louisa had become crippled by arthritis. Nevertheless, she and her husband, William Bruff, greeted Douglass warmly. Talbot County land records show that the Bruffs purchased the house for $1,000 and finally sold it on 1 October 1878, over a year after Douglass’s visit to Dr. Robert A. Dodson, for $1,200. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 106, 184–85, 188–89, 225n, 231–32nn. 2. William Bruff was married to Sarah Louisa Auld Bruff, the daughter of Captain Thomas Auld’s second wife, Rowena. He and Louisa greeted Douglass at their St. Michaels, Maryland, home on Cherry Street, where Douglass’s former owner, Captain Auld, resided. The location of Douglass’s reunion with Auld was disputed by the Auld family. They held that it took place at the country home of another daughter, Beverly. Despite this inconsistency, Douglass’s notes and letters regarding the visit show the Cherry Street home of William Bruff to be the location where, in the spring of 1877, Douglass returned as a free man to repair relations with the ailing man, which had been damaged by Douglass’s description of his treatment as Auld’s slave in his first two autobiographies. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 184–85, 225n, 231n. 3. Bruff added “Daughter of Capt Thomas Auld” below her signature.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 408

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 12 JULY 1877

409

OTTILIE ASSING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Munich[, Germany.] 12 July 1877.

My dear Friend: I have your dear and interesting letter of the 25 of June,1 and after getting it at the Post Office swallowed it in an omnibus. The meeting with your old master naturally was one of the chief points of interest and under the circumstances you met him , loaded with honor, one of the most prominent men in the country, it must have been quite gratifying to you and rather an act of condescention on your part than otherwise.2 If I only for once could see the Eastern shore in your company! Now as we see that you can venture to go there, I dare to hope that I may yet have that pleasure. Your encounter with Schurz3 too is rather a pleasant affair, if— as I think it quite natural, you like each other’s society, why not do so? I do not object either to associate superficially once in a while with people of whose character and fidelity to principle I have not exactly the highest estimate, provided they are interesting company.—As a matter of course I am delighted that the malignant pro-slavery element of Washington has failed in the attempt to oust you from your position, once for the sake of principle and the precedent established for the first time, and further because I want you to keep the office as long as possible on account of its pecuniary advantages, and just as much because I cannot bear the idea of your going on lecturing trips any more to the far West in midwinter. There is nothing surprising in the fact of my being so soon informed of your troubles since I have had all the time the “Times”,4 our good and faithful ally to keep me posted up about affairs at home. Today however I received the last number of the semester and do not want to renew my subscription for the few weeks which I have yet to stay on this continent. I shall not fail to read Grace Greenwood’s letter5 which doubtless is to be found in this number though I have not yet found time to look for it. It is great comfort to me that you take a hopeful view of the alteration. At a distance matters look terrible and I should give up Republicanism not exactly for dead but for paralyzed at least for many years, thanks to Hayes,6 Schurz and others of the same tendency if it were not for your hopefullness. Every number of the paper records new deeds of crime and violence.—Judge Hilton’s dastardly attempt against the equal rights of the Jews reveals prejudice of race in a quarter from which I suspected it least and I wonder what will be the result.7 It is an ugly feature in human nature that the lower the stage of development which either a race or an individual has reached, the more it is oppressed, the more it will yearn to oppress some one more humble in

Y8204-Douglass.indb 409

5/17/23 2:35 PM

410

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 12 JULY 1877

its turn. The Jews and the Irish, so long downtrodden in their own country are foremost among the negro haters and the slaves used to vent their superiority on poor defenseless animals. This has been a very rich day for me, quite aside from the daily revelling in works of art, in which this city is overrich.8 First I received your letter and all the afternoon I had a call from the wife and the daughter9 of Feurbach,10 who spending some months of the summer in a country place in the neighborhood and had come to the city for the sake of making my acquaintance. It was a great treat to me, and I also felt quite gratified to think that it is largely owing to our exertions when they now can afford the luxury of going in the country at all. They are two very good, warmhearted and genuine women, intelligent and receptive though a little depressed and kept down by years of care and privation. I made them feel directly quite at home with me and we talked about everything. It is surprising how—entirely aside from opinion and principles we a[gre]e in taste and sympathies, they are about as great lovers of animals as I am and so too was Feurbach. Particularly he had a great liking for cats, large and little ones, and they all like myself too, liked to raise and fondle mice, frogs, lizards and all such little usually dispised people. They send you a hearty greeting and would be delighted make your acquaintance. In Nürnberg11 they are quite isolated and suffer from the lack of friends whose society would give them any gratification. Did I or not tell you in my last letter that I had seen my old friend who had promised me disclosures about Ludmilla’s12 behavior towards me? I think I have, and won’t risk to tell you the same thing over again. If I am mistaken, let me know and I shall tell you. I regret that I told you to direct next to Paris, because not expecting to be there before the first week of August, it will last a good while before I shall get it and now it is too late to mend or alter the matter. Safe it is at any rate, only that for a while it will lig lie at anchor. My stay in Hamburg ended as pleasantly as it began and it required a great resolution to tear me away from new and old friends. Everywhere kindness and attentions too from beginning to end. Mr. Susmann too, who first had been absent and whom I saw only one day before leaving, wants to be kindly remembered to you. Good night this time! It is long after midnight, about five in the afternoon with you, and your nightowl has yet much to do in order to be ready in time tomorrow. Yours ever OTILLIA

[hand-drawn pictures of a cat, mouse, frog, lizard, and crab]

Y8204-Douglass.indb 410

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 12 JULY 1877

411

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 157R–60L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Douglass’s letter to Assing has not survived. 2. At the invitation of a black friend, Charles Caldwell, Douglass returned to St. Michaels, Talbot County, Maryland, on 17 June 1877 after a forty-one-year absence. Upon his arrival, the newly appointed U.S. marshal of the District of Columbia received word that his former owner, Captain Thomas Auld, requested a visit. Douglass, who had desired such a meeting, saw the bedridden eightytwo-year-old man at the home of Auld’s son-in-law, William H. Bruff. During this brief reunion, Douglass struck a conciliatory pose with Auld. According to the Washington Evening Star, both men wept when they parted company that day. The visit was widely publicized. Washington Evening Star, 19 June 1877; Harper’s Weekly, 7 July 1877; Frederic May Holland, Frederick Douglass: The Colored Orator (New York, 1895), 342–43; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 180–89. 3. Carl Schurz. 4. Assing probably refers to the New York Times. 5. Assing likely refers to the 9 July 1877 article “The New Order of Things: A Few Personal Explanations. ‘Heresies’ and ‘Vagaries’ Accounted For—The Civil Service Reformation—Who Are ‘Taken’ and Who Are Left—The South’s Forgiving Spirit—Mr. Dick’s Kite,” by “Grace Greenwood,” the pseudonym of Sara Jane Clarke Lippincott. New York Times, 9 July 1877; ANB (online). 6. Rutherford B. Hayes. 7. Henry Hilton (1824–99) was a wealthy New York judge and owner of the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga, New York. In June 1877, Joseph Seligman (1819–80), a Jewish banker and successful clothing merchant, was denied entry to the hotel by Hilton, and widespread public criticism of Hilton ensued. Henry Ward Beecher gave a sermon in support of Seligman and others of the Jewish faith; Jewish-owned businesses and merchants refused to continue doing business with Hilton; several protests were led in San Francisco, California, and Cincinnati. Hilton argued that he was not opposed to Jews; rather, he was opposed to Seligman himself. New York Times, 19 June 1877, 25 August 1899; ANB (online). 8. Munich was an important European city for artists from 1850 to the early twentieth century. The Munich Academy was perhaps the most famous fine-arts teaching institution in Europe at the time, particularly for painting. Along with aspiring European artists, American realists flocked to study at the city’s art colonies in the 1870s. Robin Lenman, “A Community in Transition: Painters in Munich, 1886–1924,” Central European History, 15:3–33 (March 1982). 9. Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (1804–72) met his future wife, the wealthy heiress Bertha Löw (1803–83), in 1834. By the time the couple married in 1837, she had inherited partial ownership of both a porcelain factory and a castle in the small Bavarian town of Bruckberg. The couple made their home on the grounds of the castle, and the income generated by the factory allowed Feuerbach to pursue writing as a full-time career. Following an economic downturn in the late 1840s, however, profits from the porcelain factory began to decline, and by 1859 it was bankrupt. The Feuerbachs were forced to sell their property in Bruckberg, and they moved to the small village of Rechenberg (near Nuremberg), where they lived in significantly reduced circumstances for the remainder of their lives. Their daughter Leonore Feuerbach (1839–1923), who served as her father’s literary executor, published a collection of his sayings in 1879. In 1919, she donated her father’s papers to the university library in Munich. Ludwig Feuerbach, Ausspruche aus seinen Werken gesammelt von Leonore Feuerbach (Leipzig, Germany, 1879); Peter C. Caldwell, Love, Death, and Revolution in Central Europe (New York, 2009), 31–36, 144; William Raeper and Linda Smith, A Brief Guide to Ideas (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1997), 121; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online). 10. Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (1804–72) was a German philosopher who wrote The Essence of Christianity (1841), a highly influential materialist critique of religious belief, which Douglass and Assing read together. According to Assing in a letter to Feuerbach, their reading of his book “resulted in a total reversal of his attitudes,” namely, it converted Douglass into a freethinker and atheist. Douglass continually grappled with the hypocrisy of Christian doctrine and American churches but continued to use biblical and religious imagery in his speeches and writings, indicating

Y8204-Douglass.indb 411

5/17/23 2:35 PM

412

ERNST J. LOWENTHAL TO DOUGLASS, 20 DECEMBER 1877

that Assing may have overstated the newness and the extent of his “conversion.” Assing to Ludwig Feuerbach, 15 May 1871, in Lohmann, Radical Passion, 364; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 227–307. 11. Nuremberg, Germany. 12. Rosa Ludmilla Assing (1821–80) was the younger sister of Ottilie, with whom she had a tumultuous and fraught relationship. Ludmilla, like her sister, was a successful writer and journalist who wrote numerous biographies and edited a sixty-volume set of her uncle Karl Varnhagen von Ense’s personal papers. Following her uncle’s death in 1858, the bulk of his estate went to Ludmilla, incensing Ottilie and causing a greater rift between the two. Following the publication of her uncle’s papers, which proved controversial, Ludmilla was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment by the Prussian government. Ludmilla was visiting Florence, Italy, at the time and chose to stay in the country in order to avoid the sentence. Although she was pardoned in 1866, she remained in Florence, where she built a large mansion. In 1873, Ludmilla married Gino Reimelli, twenty years her junior, whom she divorced a year later. Ludmilla fell ill with meningitis in the late 1870s and was sent to a mental asylum, where she died in 1880. She left nothing of her estate to Ottilie. Henry and Mary Garland, The Oxford Companion to German Literature, (Oxford: 1997), 40; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 7, 59–61, 311–13, 354–55.

ERNST J. LOWENTHAL1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Hoboken, N.J.2 20 December [18]77.

Honorable Fred. Douglas. Dear Sir! Miss Assing3 has shown me that part of your letter, which relates to my conception of a plan, to get some official mission, by which I could be enabled to stay a few years in Germany, wherefrom I have been exiled 30 years ago. Being gratefully moved by your generous readiness, to lend me your influence in that affair, your remarks at the same time give me the impression, that you do not consider it beyond some chance of success; and such encouragement has transformed what was until now merely a beau Ideal into a firm resolve, which I intend to work up to its sweet or bitter end. In consequence thereof I beg to ask your opinion regarding the prelimary steps. Do you consider it the best, that I should go at once to Washington, and immediately after having been introduced disclose my request before the resp. parties, or is it not preferable, that preceding it some other Gentleman—for inst. yourself, if you want to take the trouble—submits the matter to them, offering, if asked for, recomendations from influential friends/of Mr. Schurz/?4 Here I cannot ommit the remark, that my circumstances compel me to economize with time and money as much as possible. But if you think, that my going to W. ought to be the first step in the matter, would you advise me, to provide myself

Y8204-Douglass.indb 412

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO MARTHA WALDO GREENE, 21 DECEMBER 1877

413

beforehand with letters of recomendation /to Mr Schurz/, or would it be preferable, to wait for the proper opportunity of referring to some personal friends of Mr. S.? I do not doubt, that besides I could procure favorable mentioning from prominent Republicans of my State and County . I may mention here, that at the /I presume first/ election of Mr. Lincoln I was nominated Presidential Elector by Our party. The kind offer of your valuable assistance strengthens my belief, that you will continue to aid me in in this affair, and favor me with a reply either to Miss Assing or directly to myself. I am sincerely Yours E. J. LOWENTHAL ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 208–09, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Born in Heidingsfeld, Bavaria, Dr. Ernst Jonas Lowenthal (1813–1905) graduated from medical school in 1839. He was an active participant in the failed revolutionary movements of 1848 and fled to the United States in 1850. In 1853 he and his Prussian-born wife, Charlotte Knaur Lowenthal (1823–1903), settled in Vermont, where he took over management of the Brattleboro Hydropathic Establishment, opened in 1846 by Dr. Robert Wesselhoeft. Lowenthal was a founding member of Vermont’s Republican party, and in 1855 he was a presidential elector for the Frémont ticket. The following year, Lowenthal operated his own facility and water cure in Bergen Heights, New Jersey. Sometime later he seemed to abandon hydropathy and return to the practice of more conventional medicine. Lowenthal ran a successful private practice in Hoboken, New Jersey, until retiring around 1880. 1880 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 205; Sandra W. Moss, Edgar Holden, M.D., of Newark, New Jersey: Provincial Physician on a National Stage (Bloomington, Ind., 2014), 467, 507, 545n; “News of the Week,” Medical Record: A Weekly Journal of Medicine and Surgery, 67:823 (May 27, 1905). 2. Lowenthal added this information regarding his address: “219 Hudson Str” at the bottom of the letter. 3. Ottilie Assing. 4. Carl Schurz.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO MARTHA WALDO GREENE1 Washington[,] D.C. 21 Dec[ember] 1877[.]

My dear Friend: Thanks to dear little Alice2 for her dear little letter and to her dear Grand Ma for having taught her to love me. I wanted the acknowledgement simply to know that the letter had not been tampered with. If all is well; I shall see Joseph Jefferson3 tomorrow. He has been playing here, to crowded houses during the present week and to morrow is his last for the season, I have been the more desirious to see and hear him ever since getting

Y8204-Douglass.indb 413

5/17/23 2:35 PM

414

DOUGLASS TO MARTHA WALDO GREENE, 21 DECEMBER 1877

your notice of him. I would wait to see him in your company, but I learn he is getting old and cannot be expected to remain much longer on the stage. Besides even if he should long remain it might never happen that the conjunction of time, place, and circumstances, would favor us—so I shall go alone. I should have gone earlier in the week but for numerous engagements capturing all my Evenings. Generally you are an excellent manager, but the Christmas visit to Providence was badly managed. At the time I declined Miss Hoswells4 first note of invitation—I supposed its acceptance would clash with your Christmas visit here. Had I known, that your visit must be postponed till February, I might have run up to Providence on the 30th. Once having declined, and the time So limited allowed me to be absent & could not well do otherwise than persist in my destination. Well, we are now hastening toward the close of the year—and February will Soon be here—I look forward to it with with a mixed feeling of hope and fear, I want it to be a pleasant visit and one which may be pleasantly prolonged and repeated; but this in Some measure depends more upon favoring circumstances than upon ourselves. We may be ever so wise and proper and yet fail to hit the mark. I spoke to a very select and elegant audience at Mt Pleasant,5 last Wednesday night, and read with the Union Town Shaksphere Club6 last night. The play was The Merchant of Venice and my part Shylock. This is my second meeting with the Club. I find it very pleasant and entertaining but I have no one at my house to go with me, and I often fancy that I am losing one half of the happiness of such occasions because in all such matters I am alone. You do not tell me how Mrs L.7 came to know that you were much needed at this end of the line, and why she thought you ought to come, if only for a week—You need not answer this till I see you. I am not sure, but that you interpreted a little too broadly what I said of appearances of Concord in the Patton house.8 My description of what I saw is entirely confined to the surface. I don’t pretend to look deeper ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 210–11, FD Papers, DLC. 1. The style and content of this unsigned letter indicate that it was likely written by Douglass to his longtime friend Martha W. Greene. 2. Douglass most likely refers to Martha W. Greene’s granddaughter Alice Louise Sherman (1874–1965). Born in Fall River, Massachusetts, Alice L. Sherman was the eldest of Martha W. Greene’s three grandchildren and the daughter of Martha Gertrude “Gertie” Greene and her husband, William Frederick Sherman. In 1895 she married Albert W. Dimick (1869–1932), an agent for a local cotton mill who ended his career as treasurer of the Grosvenor-Dale cotton manufacturing company. 1880 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 225A; 1920 U.S. Census, Rhode Island, Providence County, 231A; 1930 U.S. Census, Rhode Island, Providence County, 36; Transactions

Y8204-Douglass.indb 414

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO MARTHA WALDO GREENE, 21 DECEMBER 1877

415

of the New England Cotton Manufacturer’s Association, April 24–25 (Waltham, Mass., 1901), 17; George S. Greene, The Greene Family of Rhode Island: With Historical Records of English Ancestry, 1534–1902 (New York, 1903), 454; “S.N.E.T. Club has Rousing Meeting,” Textile World, 13:38 (2 December 1922); Find a Grave (online). 3. Probably the American comedic actor Joseph Jefferson (1829–1905), who was born in Philadelphia to a stage family. He began acting at age four and became a sought-after performer in the United States, Great Britain, and Australia. In 1859, Jefferson adapted Washington Irving’s story of Rip Van Winkle for the stage and played the title role. The public never tired of him in that part, and he rarely performed any other for over forty years. Jefferson gave a matinee performance of Rip Van Winkle in Washington’s National Theatre on the day following Douglass’s letter to Greene. Washington National Republican, 21 December 1877; Benjamin McArthur, The Man Who Was Rip Van Winkle: Joseph Jefferson and Nineteenth-Century American Theatre (New Haven, Conn., 2007). 4. Probably Charlotte Rhodes Hoswell (1837–96), the daughter of William Hoswell, a boot and shoe dealer, and his first wife, Charlotte P. Rhodes. A lifelong resident of Providence, Charlotte Rhodes Hoswell was a music teacher who taught in the city’s private and public schools. She was also active in the woman suffrage movement, serving as one of the secretaries of the Rhode Island association. Hoswell died of typhoid fever in Providence on 17 January 1896. 1860 U.S. Census, Rhode Island, Providence County, 116; 1870 U.S. Census, Rhode Island, Providence County, 130; 1880 U.S. Census, Rhode Island, Providence County, 45A; Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper, eds., The History of Woman Suffrage, 4 vols. (Indianapolis, Ind., 1901), 4:907–08; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; “Rhode Island, Deaths and Burials, 1802–1950,” FamilySearch.org. 5. In the 1870s, Mount Pleasant was an early suburban neighborhood in the District of Columbia, northwest of the White House, reached by streetcars from downtown. Douglass might have addressed an audience at the Canaan Baptist Church there, one of the oldest African American congregations in the District. Washington Post, 5 April 2013. 6. This amateur group began in the 1870s and was still performing in the 1890s. Washington Evening Star, 23 April 1894; Muller, Lion of Anacostia, 136. 7. The editors have not been able to ascertain the identity of “Mrs. L.” 8. Possibly a reference to the relationship between the wealthy New York City financier Ludlow Patton (1825–1906) and his wife, Abigail “Abby” Jemima Hutchinson (1829–92), the best-known member of the Hutchinson Family Singers and an old friend of Douglass. Patton, who sold his business interests (including a seat on the New York Stock Exchange) in 1873, was the younger brother of Howard University president William Weston Patton; Ludlow served on Howard’s board of trustees from 1878 through 1892. The couple married in 1849, and Abby retired from the stage, thereafter performing with her brothers only on special occasions. It is now believed that the Pattons experienced a lengthy period of marital discord, beginning in the late 1860s, as a result of Abby’s romantic relationship with Henry Blackwell, husband of the well-known abolitionist and suffragist Lucy Stone. Although scholars disagree about whether their relationship was ever consummated, there is a consensus that the relationship lasted for several years and had a lingering impact on both marriages. After his retirement, Patton and his wife largely spent the next decade traveling the world and visiting family and friends in the United States. Following his wife’s death in 1892, Patton married her greatniece Mrs. Marion Loveridge McKeever (1867–1922) in 1894 and appears to have raised her daughter, Helen, as his own. New York Times, 29 November 1886; 1900 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Essex County, 165A; Sally Gregory McMillen, Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement (New York, 2008), 179-80; Barbara Goldsmith, Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull (New York, 1998), 184–85, 200, 335; Chris Dixon, Perfecting the Family: Antislavery Marriages in Nineteenth Century America (Amherst, Mass., 1997), 231; Andrea Moore Kerr, Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality (New Brunswick, N.J., 1995), 105, 106, 137, 144, 270; Henry Whittemore, The Founders and Builders of the Oranges: Comprising a History of the Outlying District of Newark, Subsequently Known as Orange . . . 1666–1896 (Newark, N.J., 1896), 27–74; Logan, Howard University, 137; Find a Grave (online).

Y8204-Douglass.indb 415

5/17/23 2:35 PM

416

JOHN L. SEARS TO DOUGLASS, 10 JANUARY 1878

JOHN L. SEARS1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Balt[imor]e[, Md.] 10 Jan[uar]y 1878.

My Dear Sir: My dear wife2 is still living. During last night it seemed impossible for her to last until this morning; but she still lives, clear in mind, and full of hope. She appreciated your visit3 very much & has often spoken of it as one of the most pleasant events of her illness. And I must add that, all my family so regard your kindness in coming to her so promptly, that our feelings towards you now & hereafter are, & will be, very much more of affection than mere friendship. God bless you for your kindness to her. To all human appearances she cannot hold out much longer; when that terrible call is made I want to communicate with you:—and as it might seem on Sunday, I will be glad of you with me, upon receipt of this, when I shall telegraph you on that day, if necessary to do so. Sincerely thanking you for your regard for my wife, I am True yr friend JOHN L. SEARS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 215–16, FD Papers, DLC. 1. John L. Sears (c. 1823–85) was the son of Captain Edward Sears, a slave owner originally from Anne Arundel County, Maryland, who was living in Talbot County by 1810. In 1843, Sears married Arianna Amanda Auld. It is believed that Sears served as the witness to Douglass’s manumission papers, signed by his father-in-law, Thomas Auld, in 1846, although the name was misidentified as “John C. Lear,” in the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Sears was listed as a teacher, still living in Talbot County, in the 1850 census, but by the end of the decade he was a successful coal merchant living in Philadelphia. In 1860, he relocated his family to Baltimore, where he became involved in the windows and sashes business, both as an agent and attorney. Sears died at his home near Owings Mills, a suburb of Baltimore, in 1885. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 2:215–16, 348–50; Walter Lowrie to Ellis Gray Loring, 15 December 1846; Hugh Auld’s Receipt of Payment, 12 December 1846, Deed of Manumission for “Frederick Bailey, otherwise called Frederick Douglass,” 12 December 1846, both on reel 1, frames 637–43, FD Papers, DLC; 1860 U.S. Census, Maryland, Baltimore County, 42; 1870 U.S. Census, Maryland, Baltimore County, 381; 1880 U.S. Census, Maryland, Baltimore County, 143B; Baltimore Sun, 9 March 1885; Easton (Md.) Star-Democrat, 17 March 1885. 2. Born in Hillsborough, Maryland, Arianna Amanda Auld Sears (1826–78) was the only child of Thomas and Lucretia Anthony Auld. In 1843 she married John L. Sears, with whom she had seven children. In 1859, Douglass and Amanda Auld Sears met in Philadelphia, their first meeting since his escape from slavery in 1838. Douglass initiated the contact in hope of discovering the fate of family members about whom he had heard nothing since his flight to freedom. Sears was able to provide Douglass with at least some of the information he was seeking, and it sparked a friendship that survived until her death in 1878. Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:307–09; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 485; Find a Grave (online). 3. At her request, Douglass visited the terminally ill Amanda Auld Sears in her home on Fayette Street, in Baltimore, in either late December or early January 1878. Douglass left a poignant account

Y8204-Douglass.indb 416

5/17/23 2:35 PM

MARTHA WALDO GREENE TO DOUGLASS, 19 JANUARY 1878

417

of their final meeting in the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. On 1 February 1878, her son Thomas E. Sears wrote Douglass to inform him of his mother’s death and to personally invite him to return to Baltimore and attend her funeral the following Sunday. Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:307–09; Thomas E. Sears to Douglass, 1 February 1878, General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 225, FD Papers, DLC.

MARTHA WALDO GREENE TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS [East Greenwich, R.I.] 19 January 1878.1

My dear Friend I am just home from Lydia Adam’s2 where we have been reading “The Rise and Fall of the” &c.3 In my attic chambers4 I have started a file and shall make sure of a little chat with you before consigning myself to the good Goddess who administers the “balm of hurt minds”5 and “Knits up the ravelled sleeve of Care”—With grateful heart, no I haven’t the right— sleep is itself the balm of hurt minds.6 I was going to say, that I seek his aid as “laid nature’s sweet gesture” to this than for her balm—because I haven’t the “hurt mind.” Mais n’importe—7 I was glad of your referring to your visit to Mrs Sears8—and shall be more glad of a further report when we meet. I realize now more than I did when I wrote before, how much I have missed by not being in Washt. during the W. Suffrage Convention9—I think I can understand well the treatment shown them in the House, from having seen how our R. I. legislatures thought it very smart in them to call them “cackling hens” &c.10 I am hoping it will not be many weeks before we can talk of all these things together. Gertie11 is instituting steps for obtaining a “maid of all work,” to take position when her sister12 leaves, and as soon as things are in good running order, I hope to be with you. There seems but one probable hindrance. I wrote you of my going to Greenwich13 when in Providence to see my brother.14 He has been in a very excited condition, and I may be called there, but his trouble is an old chronic ill, which has lately worse and threatened an immediate “taking off,”—but he had rallied a week ago when I heard from him—and may perhaps regain his old ground—Aunt Lucretia15 has never had another ill turn, since the night we came from Greenwich. It seems wonderful. I have heard nothing from Chicago, or directly from [illegible], since we were there. Indirectly I have heard that [illegible] interesting (!) & he is to marry the young lady who teaches

Y8204-Douglass.indb 417

5/17/23 2:35 PM

418

MARTHA WALDO GREENE TO DOUGLASS, 19 JANUARY 1878

the school in their vicinity. Do write to [illegible] if only a day in [illegible]—It will do her more good than 50 notes from me filled with all manner of assurances second hand to her—So much I want you to, (for her sake) I could almost forgo your regular contribution to me—[illegible] to her, corner of Dodge and Cranston sts. care Miss Amey Bowen. Her old heart will beat quicker and warmer, and yours too my dear friend in the consciousness of a good cause—I am so glad about your eyesight—I am eager to know of your reading Wednesday. I thought of you many times during the [illegible]—I hope you will keep up the readings that I may have the pleasure of listening—I am anticipating great pleasure in going over your “William the Silent” again, quickened in my interest from our reading, tho we have not yet finished the first volume— Thank you, but it will be time enough to “fulfil your promise” when I reach you—By the way I propose to go by the New England R. R.16 without change of Cars, and plan so as to reach you if possible not at night— Do you not approve this? Please make any and every suggestion—The new baby brother17 thrives, & the mother is well if not strong—Minnie’s18 throat is still in unnatural condition—her old lover was near married a wk ago to the young girl who captured him from her—and better still Minnie feels it a fortunate escape, but I fancy is not without a “nameless longing”, as she says for home & children—The want is human always MARTHA ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 217–19, FD Paper, DLC. 1. Greene added “Saturday PM” to the date of this letter. 2. Probably Lydia Ann Stowe Adams (1823–1904), daughter of Timothy and Lydia Foord Stowe of Dedham, Massachusetts. Her aunt was Sophia Foord, the naturalist and educator who at one time tutored the children of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott (including Louisa May Alcott), and whose proposal of marriage was turned down by Henry David Thoreau. Like her aunt Lydia A. Stowe, who graduated from the Lexington Normal School in 1841, she was a schoolteacher, first in Dedham and then in Fall River, Massachusetts. In 1844 she married the successful book dealer Robert Adams, an immigrant from Scotland who owned the Adams Bookstore (and bindery) in Fall River, Massachusetts. Both husband and wife were committed to the abolitionist movement and active in the Underground Railroad, using their home in Fall River to shelter escaped slaves on their way to Canada. Lydia Stowe Adams was also involved in the woman suffrage movement. She maintained an interest in education long after she left the profession and was the first woman elected to the Fall River School Board. 1870 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 39; 1880 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 161D; 1900 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 286B; Kelly Ann Kolodny, Normalites: The First Professionally Prepared Teachers in the United States (Charlotte, N.C., 2014), 124–64; Fall River (Mass.) Herald News, 4 November 2017; “Massachusetts, Compiled Marriages, 1633–1850,” Ancestry.com; Find a Grave (online).

Y8204-Douglass.indb 418

5/17/23 2:35 PM

MARTHA WALDO GREENE TO DOUGLASS, 19 JANUARY 1878

419

3. Possibly a reference to Henry Wilson’s History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (1872), the final volume of which was published in 1877. Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 3 vols. (Boston, 1872–77). 4. Greene addressed her letter from “Sky parlor.” 5. Macbeth, sc. 2, line 575, 578. 6. William Shakespeare. 7. French for “but, not important.” 8. Arianna Amanda Auld Sears. 9. Greene likely refers to the gathering of suffragists in Washington, D.C., early in January 1878, which culminated in the first introduction of a proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States to expand the franchise to include women. The resolution, which would have led to the passage of a sixteenth amendment, was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Aaron A. Sargent (Republican of California) on 10 January 1878. The brief text called for the “right of citizens of the United States to vote” not to be “denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” The resolution was debated in the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections and in the House Judiciary Committee for two days, but failed to gain enough support in either house to move forward. Over time the amendment became known as the “Susan B. Anthony Amendment.” Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, 5:623; Johanna Neuman, And Yet They Persisted: How American Women Won the Right to Vote (Hoboken, N.J., 2020), 88. 10. Although it has not been possible to pin down the specific instance of suffragists being likened to “cackling hens” that Greene quotes, the libel was commonly used to mock the activities of women involved in the suffragist movement. Harriet H. Robinson, Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement: A General, Political, Legal and Legislative History from 1774 to 1881 (Boston, 1883), 24; Lynn Sherr, Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words (New York, 1995), 202; Hasia R. Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore, 1983), 143; Ishbel Ross, Sons of Adam, Daughters of Eve: The Role of Women in American History (New York, 1969), 158. 11. Martha Gertrude “Gertie” Greene (1848–1929) was the second and oldest-surviving child of William A. and Martha Waldo Brown Greene’s six children. In 1872 she married William Frederick Sherman (1848–1926), a civil engineer. The couple’s three children, Alice Louise, Charles Greene, and Harold Frederick, were Martha W. Greene’s only grandchildren. 1880 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 225A; 1900 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Middlesex County, 246A; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; Find a Grave (online). 12. Mary “Minnie” Josephine Greene (1856–1909) was William A. and Martha Waldo Brown Greene’s fourth child and youngest daughter. Minnie, who was born and died in Massachusetts, often accompanied her mother on her visits to Frederick Douglass, including stays at his home at Cedar Hill. She never married and supported herself as a music teacher in Fall River. 1900 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 191B; “Massachusetts, Death Records, 1841–1915,” Ancestry.com; Find a Grave (online). 13. Probably East Greenwich, Rhode Island, a port town on Narragansett Bay that was the seat of Kent County. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 551. 14. Roland Greene Brown (1811–93) was third oldest of John and Mary Hodges Brown’s seven children. He was born in Warren, Rhode Island, but spent most of his adult life in East Greenwich, where he owned and operated a large four-story boardinghouse and hotel on Main Street known as the Kent House. In 1841 he married Lucy Valentine Hathaway in Fall River, Massachusetts. In 1880, ill health forced him to give up the boardinghouse, and after his wife’s death in 1885, he moved to Chicago to live with his daughter. 1850 U.S. Census, Rhode Island, Kent County, 454; 1870 U.S. Census, Rhode Island, Kent County, 203; 1880 U.S. Census, Rhode Island, Kent County, 180A; “Cook County, Illinois, Deaths Index, 1878–1922,” Ancestry.com; Find a Grave (online).

Y8204-Douglass.indb 419

5/17/23 2:35 PM

420

JOHN COCHRANE TO DOUGLASS, 3 FEBRUARY 1878

15. Lucretia Hodges (1797–1889) was the youngest sibling of Mary Hodges Brown (1780–1847), Martha W. Greene’s mother. She was sixteen years younger than Mary Hodges Brown and seems to have spent most of her life living with family members in Rhode Island. Hodges, who never married, died and was buried in Providence in 1889. Almon D. Hodges, Jr., comp., Genealogical Record of the Hodges Family of New England (Boston, 1896), 158, 275; “Rhode Island, U.S., Death Index, 1630–1930”; Find a Grave (online). 16. Possibly a reference to the New York & New England Railroad, which was one of only three lines that linked Boston, Massachusetts, directly to New York City. The line also connected Hartford, Connecticut, and Providence, Rhode Island, to Boston. The New York & New England ran two trains from Boston to New York City daily (sharing the line into New York with the New Haven Railroad): the New England Limited, also known as the White Train, which provided passengers with luxury accommodations, and the Mid-Day Express. The New York & New England opened in 1871 and operated until 1893, when the company was forced into bankruptcy. Under new management, the line reopened in 1895, renamed the New England Railroad. Lawrence Walsh, The Battle for Transportation Supremacy: How the Titans of Transportation Positioned Their Companies Over the Past 170 Years in the Boston to New York Corridor (Bloomington, Ind., 2014), 33–34, 40–41; Albro Martin, Railroads Triumphant: The Growth of a Vital American Force (New York, 1992), 67. 17. Martha W. Greene’s grandson Charles Greene Sherman (1878–1956) was born on 3 January 1878. He was her second grandchild and the younger brother of Alice Louise Sherman. Sherman spent most of his adult life working as an engineer while living in Malden, Massachusetts. 1880 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 225A; 1910 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Suffolk County, 120A; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” 18. Mary “Minnie” Josephine Greene.

JOHN COCHRANE1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS New York, [N.Y.] 3 F[ebrua]ry 1878[.]

Frederick Douglass Esq My Dear Sir You probably have noticed that Rev. O B. Frothingham2 has written a biography of my uncle Gerrit Smith. It was written by agreement with [illegible] his daughter Mrs Miller,3 who has arrested its further publication & all because of the author’s implication of Mr Smith with John Browns attack on Harpers Ferry.4 I have published a letter on the subject—in the New York Daily Tribune of yesterday,5 a copy of which I send to you. If you have not read the work, you will see by my letter the nature of the charge against Mr Smith & the error of his evidence— You will be chiefly interested much in the part which alludes to your agreeing and the evidence it furnishes. I was not familiar with these accusations as you were, and was an actor in them. You & Mr Smith seem to have agreed in opinion that John Brown had not disclosed his change of plans to any one in the North; before he called you to Chambersburg.6 You would very much oblige me

Y8204-Douglass.indb 420

5/17/23 2:35 PM

JOHN COCHRANE TO DOUGLASS, 3 FEBRUARY 1878

421

could you refer me to any opinion or knowledge you may have, personally, or be aware of otherwise which would confirm your views. I am satisfied that Mr Smith was aware only of the “old plans” of John Brown, and I think that you must be also satisfied of it—I should be very glad to hear from you, under the assurance that what you say shall be held in confidence— Truly Yours JOHN COCHRANE ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 226–27, FD Papers, DLC. 1. John Cochrane (1813–98) was the son of Cornelia Smith Cochrane and Gerrit Smith’s nephew. Cochrane first attended Union College in Schenectady, New York, but graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. After college, Cochrane began practicing law. A Democrat, he served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1857–61). He entered the Union army and rose to the rank of brigadier general. Gerrit Smith got Cochrane involved with the Loyal Leagues Convention in Utica in May 1863, where he was appointed both the temporary, and then permanent, chairman. Cochrane described the goal of the league: “Let each one of us here go to the work set before us of organizing loyalty, and disciplining patriotism, fulminating their reason and arguments, with the force of lightning from Heaven.” In 1864 he was chairman of the Independent Republican National Convention, based in Cleveland, Ohio, which nominated him for vice president on John C. Frémont’s ticket in a challenge to Lincoln’s reelection. Cochrane and Frémont both withdrew from the race in the early fall. A joint nomination by War Democrats and Republicans won Cochrane the post of New York attorney general (1864–65). He went on to be a delegate to the Liberal Republican National Convention in Cincinnati in 1872, and later was elected to the New York City Common Council. He also briefly served as acting mayor during the Tweed ring scandal. New York Times, 9 February 1898; BDUSC (online). 2. After graduating from Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School, Octavius Brooks Frothingham (1822–95) followed his father into the Unitarian ministry. Influenced by his close friend Theodore Parker, Frothingham developed liberal views on theological questions and on the slavery issue. In 1867, he was one of the founders, and the first president, of the Free Religious Association, a society that advocated rationalist principles of theology. Poor health forced Frothingham to retire from preaching in 1879, and he devoted his later years to writing. He is best remembered for biographies of Parker, George Ripley, and William Henry Channing. Frothingham also wrote Gerrit Smith: A Biography for the New York publishing firm G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1878. J. P. Quincy, “Memoir of Octavius Brooks Frothingham,” Proceeding of the Massachusetts Historical Society, ser. 2, 10:507–39 (1896); NCAB, 2:243; DAB, 7:44. 3. Elizabeth Smith Miller. 4. Frothingham’s biography of Smith is overall very flattering. In his discussion of Smith’s involvement with John Brown’s Harpers Ferry plot, however, Frothingham explicitly describes evidence that Smith had advance knowledge of Brown’s violent intentions. Frothingham recounts a visit by Brown to Smith’s home in Peterboro, New York, on 22 February 1858. Also present was Franklin B. Sanborn, acting as the go-between for a group of Massachusetts supporters of Brown. They met in the room of Edwin Morton, a former classmate of Sanborn, who was a live-in tutor for Smith’s son Green. Brown laid out details of his plan to Smith and Sanborn and disposed of any objections. According to Frothingham, Smith then told Sanborn, “Our friend has made up his mind to this course of action, and cannot be turned from it. We cannot give him up to die alone; we must stand by him.” Smith pledged funds for the plot and asked Sanborn to raise additional funds for it back in Massachusetts. Frothingham noted that Smith kept a strict public silence for years about his alleged

Y8204-Douglass.indb 421

5/17/23 2:35 PM

422

JOHN COCHRANE TO DOUGLASS, 9 FEBRUARY 1878

connection with the raid, but the author gave seven pages in the biography to a “manifesto” that Smith wrote in 1867, disclaiming “the slightest knowledge or intimation of Brown’s intended invasion of Harper’s ferry.” In that 1867 circular, Smith printed a letter from Douglass to Smith, testifying that Brown had never told Douglass that Smith had been informed about the planned raid. Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, 238–39, 246–53. 5. Cochrane’s detailed rebuttal of Brooks’s charges that Gerrit Smith had prior knowledge of and supported Brown’s attack on Harpers Ferry appeared in a three-column article headlined “Gerrit Smith Not a Liar,” in the New York Daily Tribune on 2 February 1878. Cochrane cited Douglass as agreeing with his exculpatory argument. 6. At Brown’s request, Douglass had met him at a stone quarry near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in mid-August 1859, two months before the attack on Harpers Ferry. Oates, To Purge This Land, 282–83.

JOHN COCHRANE TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS New York[, N.Y.]1 9 February 1878[.]

My Dear Douglass I am exceedingly rejoiced in your assistance. The whole family and I feel that you are a tower of strength. You know the facts and the facts sustain your opinion. Yours of yesterday2 is full to the conclusion at what I had previously arrived on that prove the nature of the surrounding facts it must have been for the purpose which you state. You saw what Mr. White3 said in Fridays Tribune about you & John Brown Junior 4 [illegible] [illegible] which he procures to be taken.5 To-day your letters in the Tribune6 show his mistake in respect to you: and therefore there is reason I think to suppose that he is mistaken in respect to Brown [illegible] If I knew where John Brown is, I should put myself in personal communion with him. Could you tell anything about what he swore to in substantially his Statement on the occasion, Mr. White refers to, as it rests in your remembrance? I was so much in the dark as to all these matters that as you see I am obliged to grope now for facts. Without your aid I dont know what Elisabeth Miller & all of us should do. You omitted to state to me the time & place when you asked John Brown if he had explained his plans fully to my uncle as you wrote in yours of the 4th inst.7 your first letter. Dont you specify those facts in answer? They are important. I suppose Chamberburg to have been the place and where you had your interview then with John Brown. I will see that you have a Biography8 sent to you—It was suppressed by Mrs Miller9 & therefore the difficulty of procuring a copy—I hope as you do that the error may be corrected & the embargo removed from the book

Y8204-Douglass.indb 422

5/17/23 2:35 PM

JOHN COCHRANE TO DOUGLASS, 9 FEBRUARY 1878

423

If any thing occurs to you to say pray do so: for your words are full of solace to weary hearts— You more than repay anything that Gerrit Smith may ever have contributed to you—I expect Elisabeth here very soon— I am very truly & sincerely Your Friend JOHN COCHRANE ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 229L–31, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Cochrane added “P. O. Box 250” to his address. 2. Douglass’s letter to John Cochrane cannot be located. 3. Horace White (1834–1916) was born in Colebrook, New Hampshire, to Dr. Horace and Elizabeth M. White. The family moved to Beloit, Wisconsin, when the younger White was about three years old. After graduating from Beloit College in 1853, he moved to Chicago and began working at the Chicago Evening Journal. After resigning that position in 1856, White spent a short time in Kansas in support of the free-state movement in that territory. He returned to Chicago in 1857 and took a position at the Chicago Tribune. White met Abraham Lincoln in 1854 and established a friendship with the future president, reporting on the famous Lincoln-Douglass debates of 1858. After being posted by the Tribune to Washington during the war, White returned to Chicago and became editor in chief and a part owner of the Tribune. He quit the Tribune in the late 1870s for health reasons and worked for western railroads owned by fellow Illinoisan Henry Villard. When Villard purchased the New York Evening Post and the Nation in 1881, White moved to New York to work for both publications. He eventually rose to become editor in chief of the Evening Post in 1899, serving until 1903. New York Times, 17 September 1916; “Horace White,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1908–1984), 9:388–98 (1916). 4. The eldest son of John Brown, John Brown, Jr. (1821–95), was born near Hudson, Ohio. In 1826, he moved with his family to Pennsylvania, where he was educated. Brown assisted his father in farming and tanning ventures until 1849, after which the younger Brown farmed for himself in Ohio and lectured on phrenology. In 1855, he joined the rest of his family in Kansas to fight in the free-state cause. He was arrested and imprisoned for three months in Lecompton, Kansas, after his father killed five proslavery sympathizers in the Pottawatomie Creek massacre, May 1856. Although he assisted his father in raising funds and volunteers, the younger Brown played no active role in the raid on Harpers Ferry and went into hiding in Ashtabula, Ohio, immediately following his father’s capture. After rheumatism ended his brief service as captain of Company K of the Seventh Kansas Volunteer Cavalry Regiment during the Civil War, Brown retired to Ohio to raise grapes. Cleveland Press, 3 May 1895; Ohio Historical Society, Inventory and Calendar of the John Brown, Jr., Papers, 1830–1892 (Columbus, Ohio, 1962), 1–2; Richard J. Hinton, John Brown and His Men (1894; New York, 1968), 567; Oates, To Purge This Land, 140–45, 160, 173, 316. 5. Included in an article in the New York Tribune on 8 February 1878 entitled “Was Gerrit Smith a Liar?” were letters by Octavius B. Frothingham to the Tribune and by Horace White to Frothingham. White wrote Frothingham: “General Cochrane is pleased to characterize as ‘hear-say’ the evidence which I claimed to possess to prove Gerrit Smith’s intimate knowledge of John Brown’s plans at or near Harper’s Ferry . . . This compels me to state that the evidence upon which I relied was the testimony of John Brown, Jr., and Frederick Douglass, taken under oath.” White claims to have access to said testimonies, probably from depositions gathered by the Chicago Tribune when Gerrit Smith threatened to sue that paper in 1867 for making the same charges that White now repeats. New York Tribune, 8 February 1878. 6. The day after publishing White’s letter, the New York Tribune printed a follow-up article, quoting an unidentified letter from Douglass responding to questions about Gerrit Smith’s prior

Y8204-Douglass.indb 423

5/17/23 2:35 PM

424

JOHN COCHRANE TO DOUGLASS, 18 FEBRUARY 1878

knowledge of John Brown’s attack on Harpers Ferry. Douglass stated, “I distinctly remember asking Captain Brown whether he had explained his plans and purposes fully to Mr. Smith. ‘I have not’ was his answer. ‘I am afraid that he would pronounce me a dangerous man and refuse to help me.’ ” This public assertion from Douglass refuted White’s and Frothingham’s claims that Smith knew what John Brown had planned for Harpers Ferry, and Cochrane was pleased with Douglass’s public help in the matter. New York Tribune, 9 February 1878. 7. A letter from Douglass to Cochrane written on 4 February 1878 has not been located. It is possible that this letter was shared with the New York Tribune and was the source of the passage by Douglass quoted in the article published on 9 February 1878. 8. Frothingham, Gerrit Smith. 9. Elizabeth Smith Miller.

JOHN COCHRANE TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS New York, [N.Y.]1 18 February 1878.

Hon Fredk Douglass. My Dear Fredk Douglass I got your kind & acceptable letters2 in due course, but have not been able to acknowledge them, because of ulcerated throat, which has confined me to my bed for a number of days. I am up just now to write this to you, and to ask if you won’t write to John Brown Jun[io]r3 in furtherance of desire to hear from him. I wrote him immediately on receiving from you his letter explaining the situation re Horace White’s assertion, your remembrance, and asking for his. I exceedingly desire to hear from him. I look upon John Brown & you as the combined pivot of the plans on which he was worked from ’47 when mission of capture were rejected to the autumn of 1859—11 years, when against your advice he drifted out of the adopted plan into the rejected one. But during that track of time the adopted plan underwent modifications as the exigencies of the times suggested. Change of place of operation, running off slaves to Canada or escaping into there & standing for their freedom in the mountains. Kagi’s4 development of the plan (Redpath’s Life of John Brown)5 does not differ from your statement in its cardinal features. Major Delany 6 writes, that the convention in Canada had nothing to do with the destruction at Harpers Ferry, and that Mr. F.7 has committed a great error in supposing that Mr. Gerrit Smith was proving to lack descent. He gives me the secret history of the Canada Convention in his Life. Rollins’ Life of Major Delaney, chap 9.8 Browns work then was for men with whom to cultivate the field in Kansas. His previous experience there had doubtless recommended that as a place better adapted at that time to operations

Y8204-Douglass.indb 424

5/17/23 2:35 PM

JOHN COCHRANE TO DOUGLASS, 18 FEBRUARY 1878

425

than was Harpers Ferry. He became sure of his merely holding an open not “a quiet” convention9 & gathering their signatures to “the paper”—the proposed organization of his provisional government. Major Delany was the Key of the convention. After that, doubtless Brown found cause to abandon Kansas & fall back to the plan with Harpers Ferry for the initiate. Having done this, he subsequently, and perhaps influenced by Kagi, went further to discard the plan of fleeing to the mountains from Harpers Ferry and adopt that of the capture of Harpers Ferry. He says that his better judgment was overruled (see letters & conversations in his [illegible]). But just how & just at what point it is difficult to tell. You alone gave to me a connected, far reaching narrative which makes it clear that John Brown worked systematically upon the plan of fleeing with Slaves to the mountains, [illegible] without change, [illegible] he [illegible] a[t] Chambersburgh in 1859 to the place of capture which you & he rejected in 1847, and had not thought of since. Then read his dying words in his speech in answer to the question why sentence should not be pronounced against him.10 Man must be secular indeed who won’t believe pious words, and how, if truthful, could therefore Gerrit Smith have been privy to an intention of John Brown which John Brown himself as he passed through his transfiguration claimed he never entertained. Do get John Brown Jun[ior] to say or write something to you or me—to both of us Sincerely, Your Friend JOHN COCHRANE ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 232–34, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Cochrane added “P. O. Box 256” as his address. 2. None of the letters Douglass sent to John Cochrane have been located. 3. On 26 February 1878, John Brown, Jr., wrote to Douglass, acknowledging receipt of a letter from him dated 20 February 1878, probably the same letter that Cochrane had requested. John Brown, Jr., to Frederick Douglass, 26 February 1878, General Correspondence File, reel 5, frames 234R–235, FD Papers, DLC. 4. Son of a blacksmith in Bristolville, Ohio, John Henri Kagi (1835–59) witnessed slavery fi rsthand while a schoolteacher in Hawkinstown, Virginia; he was dismissed from that post for expressing antislavery sentiments. Kagi traveled to Nebraska in 1855 and to Kansas in 1856, where he worked irregularly as a newspaper reporter. He joined free-state militia units in Kansas and fought under James Montgomery, Aaron Stevens, and, eventually, John Brown. As an early convert to Brown’s plan to liberate slaves, Kagi accompanied him to the convention in Chatham, Canada West, and was designated secretary of war under the Provisional Constitution drawn up there. Kagi supported Brown’s decision to attack Harpers Ferry but always maintained that the raiders should afterward move off

Y8204-Douglass.indb 425

5/17/23 2:35 PM

426

JOHN COCHRANE TO DOUGLASS, 18 FEBRUARY 1878

rapidly into the mountains. During the occupation of Harpers Ferry, Kagi unsuccessfully implored Brown to evacuate before becoming completely surrounded. Rather than surrender, he died while leading an isolated party of raiders in a doomed escape attempt. John H. Wayland, John Kagi and John Brown (Strasburg, Va., 1961); Oswald Garrison Villard, John Brown, 1800–1859: A Biography Fifty Years After (New York, 1943), 679; Glenn Noble, John Brown and the Jim Lane Trail (Broken Bow, Neb., 1977), 60–66, 80, 93–97; Oates, To Purge This Land, 220, 246, 266–68, 280, 290–96. 5. James Redpath published The Public Life of Captain John Brown in 1860, only a few months after Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry. Redpath knew Brown, and the book contains many personal conversations between the two men, along with dialogue from many others who knew Brown. Redpath discusses how John Kagi first met Brown in Kansas during the Bleeding Kansas struggles of the mid-1850s. Kagi is quoted as discussing the plans that he and Brown had developed for Harpers Ferry while they were in Kansas with a friend of Redpath. Kagi revealed to this friend that the plan was not to simply make one raid and remove any of the rallying slaves to Canada, but rather to start a war with freed slaves as fighters: “On the contrary, Kagi clearly stated, in answer to my inquiries, that the design was to make the fight in the mountains of Virginia, extending it to North Carolina and Tennessee, and also to the swamps of South Carolina if possible.” They wanted to set up an independent state where runaway slaves could join them and feel safe. James Redpath, The Public Life of Capt. John Brown (Boston, 1860), 203–05. 6. Born to a free mother and a slave father in Charlestown in western Virginia, Martin Robinson Delany (1812–85) was an editor, physician, and leading advocate of black emigration. In 1822, Delany and his mother moved to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where his father later joined them, and the young Delany attended a local school. In 1831 he moved to Pittsburgh, where he worked as a barber, attended a school run by a black Methodist minister, and studied medicine. Between 1843 and 1847, Delany was editor of the Mystery, a black newspaper in Pittsburgh. For the next two years, he served as coeditor of Douglass’s North Star and lectured extensively to gain new subscriptions for that paper. In 1850 and 1851, Delany attended Harvard Medical College, but, owing to protests from white students, the school denied him admission to the final term, which he needed to complete his medical degree. The following year, he wrote The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered (1852), in which he argued that emigration was the only remedy for the oppressed state of black Americans. When many black abolitionists, including Douglass, rejected Delany’s position, he organized a series of National Emigration Conventions that met in 1854, 1856, and 1858. These assemblies created a permanent National Board of Commissioners, of which Delany was president and chief propagandist. In 1856, Delany moved to Chatham, Canada West, and three years later he explored the Niger River valley in Africa, looking for possible emigration sites. His novel Blake was serialized in the Weekly Anglo-African from November 1861 through May 1862. During the Civil War, Delany served the North first as a recruiter and examining surgeon and eventually as a major of the 104th U.S. Colored Troops. From 1865 to 1868, Delany was a Freedmen’s Bureau officer in South Carolina and later was active in that state’s politics, running unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor on the Independent Republican ticket in 1874. Martin R. Delany, Blake; or, The Huts of America, ed. Floyd J. Miller (Boston, 1970), ix; Thomas Holt, Black over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina during Reconstruction (Urbana, Ill., 1977), 74–75, 176–77; Dorothy Sterling, The Making of an Afro-American: Martin Robinson Delany, 1812–1885 (Garden City, N.Y., 1971); Victor Ullman, Martin R. Delany: The Beginnings of Black Nationalism (Boston, 1971); Floyd J. Miller, The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787–1863 (Champaign, Ill., 1975), 115–33, 171–83; DAB, 5:219–20. 7. Octavius Brooks Frothingham. 8. Martin Robison Delany first encountered Frances Ann Rollin, an African American teacher, in 1865 while working in South Carolina as an agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Rollin had filed a lawsuit under the Civil Rights Act, and Delany provided counsel. Delany learned about Rollin’s ambitions to have a literary career and persuaded her to write his authorized biography. In 1867, Martin Robison Delany told Rollin about his conversations with John Brown. Rollin ultimately published

Y8204-Douglass.indb 426

5/17/23 2:35 PM

JOHN BROWN, JR., TO DOUGLASS, 26 FEBRUARY 1878

427

the biography under her nickname, “Frank” A. Rollin, because the publisher was worried how a biography written by an African American woman would be perceived. According to the biography, Brown visited the home of Delany in April 1858 and sought his assistance in forming a council, which the black abolitionist fully supported. Delany provided a vivid firsthand recollection of the meeting. Frank A. Rollin, Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delany: Sub-Assistant Commissioner Bureau Relief of Refugees, Freedmen, and of Abandoned Lands, and Late Major 104th U.S. Colored Troops (Boston, 1868), 5–88; Delany, Martin R. Delany, 328–30; Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., “ ‘The Remarkable Misses Rollin’: Black Women in Reconstruction South Carolina,” Carolina Historical Magazine, 92:177–78 (July 1991). 9. Brown secretly arranged to meet with other militant abolitionists in Chatham, Canada West (a town known for its large population of escaped slaves) in the spring of 1858. The constitution that Brown presented at the Chatham convention sought to ensure the rights of everyone in the proposed nation to the “eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence.” As Redpath reported it, Brown and Kagi intended the constitution to be “the framework of organization among the emancipationists,” which would not only help give leaders control over the situation and prevent anarchy, but also “alarm the Oligarchy by discipline and the show of organization. In their terror they would imagine the whole North was upon them pell-mell, as well as all their slaves.” The convention went so far as to begin appointing officers for the new government: John Brown, commander in chief; J. H. Kagi, secretary of war; and Richard Realf, secretary of state. Redpath, Public Life of John Brown, 231–33; Oates, To Purge This Land, 242–47. 10. John Brown’s last words in the courtroom at the time of his sentencing were full of insistence that while he had intended to take “slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side” and move them to Canada, he had never planned on the murder and treason that occurred at Harpers Ferry. He acknowledged that the case against him had been “fairly proved” by the witnesses’ “truthfulness and candor,” but argued that had he acted in the same way on behalf of the rich or the powerful, he would be deemed a hero rather than a criminal. Claiming that he had intended only to do as the Bible commanded and “remember them that are in bonds as bound with them” (Heb. 13:3), he was ready to mingle his blood with the “blood of millions in the slave country whose rights are disregarded by the wicked.” He maintained that he had induced no one to join him in the raid but that all partook willingly and of their own accord. Redpath, Public Life of John Brown, 340–43.

JOHN BROWN, JR., TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Put in Bay Island, Ohio.1 26 Feb[ruar]y 1878.

Fredk Douglass Esq Washington D.C. My Dear Friend:— Your kind favor of the 20th Inst. received. By tomorrow’s mail I shall send a reply to a letter recd. by me from Hon. John Cochrane of New York; I have requested him to publish my letter as I think I may contribute towards a settlement of the question in dispute.2 Shall send by same mail a copy to Rev. O B. Frothingham asking him to publish my letter in case Gen. Cochrane should not do or publish such parts only as might seem to sustain his view of the question.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 427

5/17/23 2:35 PM

428

JOHN COCHRANE TO DOUGLASS, 7 MARCH 1878

I have no idea however, that Gen. Cochrane would do this. My long silence of twenty years in regard to this matter, is, so far as my feeling is concerned, most reluctantly broken. Perhaps it is for the best. I certainly have not sought any controversy over the grave of my dear, noble friend, Gerrit Smith. It affords me great pleasure to get a word from you once more. Hope it may not be the last. With kindest regards, I remain ever, Faithfully your friend. JOHN BROWN JR. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel3, frames 234–35, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Put-in-Bay is a small village located on South Bass Island in Lake Erie, three miles off the shore of Ohio’s Ottawa County (previously Huron County). Put-in-Bay was the base for Commodore Matthew Perry’s small fleet that defeated a British naval force in 1813 and won control of Lake Erie for the Americans. Brown purchased a ten-acre farm at Put-in-Bay shortly after resigning his commission in the Union army in 1862. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1535; Hinton, John Brown and His Men, 14. 2. John Brown, Jr.’s letter to John Cochrane, in fact, corroborated much of Octavius B. Frothingham’s account of Gerrit Smith’s intimate involvement in John Brown’s plot. The younger Brown acknowledged that Smith might not have known that the Harpers Ferry Arsenal was Brown’s intended target, but he believed Smith knew that his father had planned an armed invasion of the Appalachian regions of the South in order to raid plantations and help slaves escape. Cochrane had that letter published in the New York Tribune, and it was reprinted widely. Brown’s letter to Frothingham, dated 7 March 1878, was also published in the press. New York Tribune, 23 March 1878; New York Times, 23 March 1878; Chicago Tribune, 1 April 1878; Charles Edwin Perkins, “A Great Citizen: A Life of Gerrit Smith,” Unity, 74:9–12 (3 September 1914).

JOHN COCHRANE TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS New York, [N.Y.] 7 March 1878[.]

Frederick Douglass Esqr My Dear Friend You will not, I hope, weary of my impertinences. Mr Sanborn1 who is Mr Frothingham’s2 principal source for his account of Gerrit Smith’s connection with John Brown in his designs upon Harpers Ferry, says that “you are quite mistaken” in your statement that the Provisional Constitution was drawn up your house in “Jany 1859.”3 He insists that it was drawn up there during 1858, was read at Gerrit Smith’s house4 July 18585 & again to Theodore Parker6 & others in

Y8204-Douglass.indb 428

5/17/23 2:35 PM

JOHN COCHRANE TO DOUGLASS, 7 MARCH 1878

429

Boston 1858,7 & was adopted at a Convention in Chatham Canada May 8. 1858.8 He says the true dates may be found in the Report of Senator Masons Committee (36th Cong. 1st Sessions Report Committee no. 278 pp 45–47).9 He also says that he has a statement of G. Smith in which he says that he heard Brown’s plan in July 1858, & adds that it “was drawn up not long before under the roof of Mr Frederick Douglass in Rochester.”10 Now I think that it is Mr Sanborn who is in error. But probably you can refer to contemporary memorandums, or give other data which support your statement. You know that Mr Sanborn says that this Constitution was in May of the same year (1858) adopted by the convention in Canada. Then its adoption & “drawing up” were in the same year. Redpath11 in his Life of John Brown gives the date of the convention 1859 (May 8)12 and so does M. R. Delany in his life. 13 Now your paper published at Rochester must probably have alluded to it.14 Perhaps it’s filed among some other papers—Might disclose a reference in May 1859.) Wont you please, if you have time: to give your attention to this. Mr Sanborn refers to Senate Reports of Committees 36th Congress 1st Session—report of Committees no. 278 for Senator Mason’s15 report on the subject of Harpers Ferry, at the papers I have given Could you possibly get & send to me at my Post Office address a copy of this Book? I think Senator Conkling16 would get it for you. I will pay all expenses. Mr Sanborn says that the testimony of Cume & Blair,17 18 bear directly upon the matter in hand [illegible]. Why was it that you objected to & protested against the capture of Harpers Ferry? Was it because of the increased danger locally of that place above others? or was it because the attack at that place would be in effect making war against the government of the United States? It could not have been the local danger for the original or general plans so early as 1849 had contemplated Harpers Ferry as the place where to initiate the scheme, and I should suppose that it must have been that the attack upon the arsenal & Government works was judged to be equivalent to an attack on the government. Please to let me hear from you With great Regard Truly Yours JOHN COCHRANE

Y8204-Douglass.indb 429

5/17/23 2:35 PM

430

JOHN COCHRANE TO DOUGLASS, 7 MARCH 1878

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 236–38, FD Paper, DLC. 1. Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (1831–1917) was one of the “Secret Six” who financed John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. The son of a farmer from Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, Sanborn was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College. After his graduation, he accepted the invitation of Ralph Waldo Emerson to operate a school in Concord, Massachusetts, where he became part of the literary circle that included Bronson Alcott, William Ellery Channing, and Henry David Thoreau, all of whom became the subjects of books he wrote or edited. Sanborn met John Brown in 1857 and became a supporter of his plans for a violent overthrow of slavery. After Brown’s capture in 1859, Sanborn fled to Canada to avoid testifying about the conspiracy before a U.S. Senate committee. When deputies acting for the Senate attempted to arrest him in Concord in April 1860, townspeople came to his rescue, chasing the deputies out of town and obtaining a writ of habeas corpus from Judge E. R. Hoar. Sanborn later edited the Boston Commonwealth (1863–67) and the Springfield Republican (1868–72), and served on the Massachusetts Board of Charities as secretary, inspector, and chairman. In addition to his works on literary figures, Sanborn wrote biographies of John Brown and Samuel Gridley Howe and published a two-volume autobiography, Recollections of Seventy Years (Boston, 1909). Otto J. Scott, The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement (New York, 1979), 69–70, 227–29, 247–49, 296–97, 317; Robert E. Burkholder, “Franklin Benjamin Sanborn,” in The American Renaissance in New England, ed. Joel Myerson (Detroit, 1978), 160–61; Oates, To Purge This Land, 181–87, 314–16; ACAB, 5:384; DAB, 16:326–27. 2. Octavius Brooks Frothingham. 3. John Brown drew up many of the plans for his raid on Harpers Ferry while residing in Douglass’s Rochester home for three weeks, beginning on 27 January 1858. Oates, Purge This Land, 224–25; Quarles, Allies for Freedom, 38–44. 4. By 18 February 1858, Brown had relocated from Douglass’s residence to Gerrit Smith’s house in Peterboro, New York, for a weeklong stay. In his biography of Gerrit Smith, Octavius B. Frothingham correctly dates the John Brown visit to Peterboro as occurring in February 1858. Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, 238–40; Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, ed., The Life and Letters of John Brown (Boston, 1885), 433–37; Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 395. 5. Rather than July 1858, February 1858 is more plausible as the month when Brown revealed his plans to Gerrit Smith for the Harpers Ferry raid. Brown had conceived of his plot for a guerrillastyle attack on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, by at least by 1857, and he spent the years 1858 and 1859 plotting his operation with the assistance of other abolitionists, prominently the Secret Six, who were Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Samuel Howe, Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns. Smith was present at three key planning meetings leading up to the raid: two gatherings at Smith’s Peterboro residence in February 1858 and April 1859, and another at the Revere House in Boston in May 1858. Moreover, in a letter to his family on 24 February 1858, Brown wrote, “Mr. Smith & family go all lengths with me.” Sanborn, who was in attendance during the February 1858 meeting, recalled Brown as expecting the revolt to take place in slave territory east of the Alleghenies, but not naming Harpers Ferry specifically. What was very clear, though, was Brown’s unwavering intention to instigate a revolt in the slaveholding South. Sanborn recounted a visit to Gerrit Smith paid by John Brown and John Brown, Jr., in the early spring of 1858, when serious planning conversations, including some with Smith’s wife, took place. That said, John Brown, Jr., testified in 1867 that his father had designated Virginia and Maryland merely as potential locations of attack and that he (John Jr.) was caught off guard when he heard about the raid at Harpers Ferry. Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 401–03, 405; Villard, John Brown, 321; Sanborn, Life and Letters of John Brown, 452–53, 463–64, 467. 6. Theodore Parker (1810-60), a Massachusetts reformer and Unitarian minister, was a theologian, abolitionist, and leader of the opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law. He served on Boston’s Committee of Vigilance and worked with the New England Emancipation Aid Society, two groups that aided fugitive slaves. In the early 1850s, Parker helped two of his parishioners, William and Ellen

Y8204-Douglass.indb 430

5/17/23 2:35 PM

JOHN COCHRANE TO DOUGLASS, 7 MARCH 1878

431

Craft, avoid capture by Georgia slave catchers. In 1859, Parker was a member of the secret committee that provided aid for John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry, and he had to flee the country following the failed attack. Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 4:52; ANB, 17:43–44. 7. John Brown wrote his Boston supporters on 25 February 1858, during his stay at Gerrit Smith’s house. Brown “communicated the enterprise” to Higginson, Parker, and Howe, followed by an invitation to visit him in Boston. On 4 March 1858, Brown arrived in Boston and lodged at the American House on Hanover Street. He was joined by the Secret Six, with the exception of Gerrit Smith, and he disclosed the details of the raid he was planning. Harpers Ferry was not specifically mentioned. At this time, every man involved held the conviction that violence seemed to be the only pragmatic solution to the question of slavery, which they viewed as a complete contradiction of the American values of liberty and justice for all. Oates, To Purge This Land, 232–34. 8. On the morning of 8 May 1858, at a schoolhouse in Chatham, Canada West, John Brown held a secret convention attended by a dozen of his followers and by thirty-four local blacks. The meeting framed a constitution for the revolutionary state that Brown proposed to create for liberated slaves in the Appalachian fastnesses. Article 46 of the unanimously adopted constitution denied any intention to overthrow state or federal governments or to cause the dissolution of the Union. The delegates reassembled that evening and elected Brown military commander of the provisional government. When no one would accept the office of the president, the meeting chose a committee of fifteen headed by Brown to perform the duties of that position. Redpath, John Brown, 234–36; Villard, John Brown, 331–36. 9. The report of the Senate select committee that investigated the raid at Harpers Ferry, submitted by Senator James Murray Mason of Virginia, puts the date of the Chatham Provisional Constitutional Convention as Saturday, 8 May 1858. Invasion at Harper’s Ferry, U.S. Senate Report, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., Report no. 278 (Washington, D.C., 1860), 45. 10. Cochrane quotes a line from Frothingham’s biography of Gerrit Smith in which he argues that the New York abolitionists had advance knowledge of Brown’s intentions and some details of his plans. But it is uncertain whether Smith knew the location of the attack ahead of time. Brown’s visit in February 1858 to Smith’s Peterboro residence alerted Smith to Brown’s intention to launch an armed attack on the institution of slavery in the South, which further solidified Smith’s support for Brown. Franklin Sanborn’s biography of Brown points out the likelihood that Smith did not know details of the location. First, Sanborn quotes John Brown, Jr.’s testimony from 1867 claiming his father had not explicitly mentioned Harpers Ferry in a conversation between his father, Smith, and him in the summer of 1859. Moreover, Sanborn cites a letter from Smith dated July 1858 in which he hopes Brown will keep his plans to himself. It was generally agreed among the Secret Six that while they did not hesitate to trust Brown with their money, they did not want to be burdened with the details of his plans. Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, 238–43; Sanborn, Life and Letters of John Brown, 452–53, 463–64, 466–67. 11. James Redpath. 12. Redpath dedicated The Public Life of Capt. John Brown to Wendell Phillips, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau for defending John Brown. John Brown’s widow, Mary A. Brown, and his son Salmon Brown are quoted in the Publishers’ Card section as expressing their approval of Redpath’s authorship of the biography. According to the book, the Chatham Convention commenced on 8 May 1858. But it cites 1859, too, as the year of the convention, possibly accounting for Cochrane’s claim. The “1859” must have been a typesetter’s error, however, since another primary source on the same page lists 1858 as the year the convention took place. Redpath, Public Life of John Brown, 232, 230. 13. Frank A. Rollin’s authorized biography of Martin Robinson Delany incorrectly states that the Chatham Convention occurred in May 1859, not in 1858. Rollin, Life of Martin R. Delany, 83–88. 14. Frederick Douglass most likely did not report on John Brown’s Chatham Convention in Frederick Douglass’ Paper. A plausible explanation was Douglass’s concern not to implicate himself

Y8204-Douglass.indb 431

5/17/23 2:35 PM

432

JOHN COCHRANE TO DOUGLASS, 7 MARCH 1878

and others in John Brown’s raid, especially given the threats hurled at the Secret Six by Colonel Hugh Forbes in the winter of 1857. John Brown first became acquainted with Forbes on a fundraising visit to New York in 1857 and, shortly after, hired Forbes as a military adviser for planning the raid. Forbes was an English engineer and linguist who had fought alongside General Giuseppe Garibaldi before fleeing Italy in 1849. Forbes accused Brown of defrauding him of six months’ pay and threatened to reveal his plans if more money did not arrive soon. Forbes was desperately trying to raise funds to support his family’s immigration to the United States. By early May 1858, Brown’s supporters learned that Forbes was in Washington, D.C., alerting Republican senators to Brown’s plan in varying degrees. Sanborn and Howe had canceled plans to attend the Chatham Convention out of fear of being exposed by Forbes’s revelations. Henry Wilson, a senator from Massachusetts, and other Washington Republicans ultimately discredited the Englishman’s claims and attributed his allegations to a personal quarrel with Brown. This chain of events convinced the Secret Six to persuade John Brown to postpone the raid to 1859. Had Douglass reported on the Chatham Convention in his newspaper, Forbes’s claims would have been granted credibility and given the South warning of Brown’s intentions. Douglass, who had interacted with Forbes in the early spring of 1858, probably perceived him as a threat to the abolitionist plot. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:247; Sanborn, Life and Letters of John Brown, 388–90, 456–64; Invasion at Harper’s Ferry, 14, 176, 178, 193, 253–55; W. E. B. Du Bois, John Brown (Philadelphia, 1909), 266–67; Lida L. Greene, “Hugh Forbes, Soldier of Fortune,” Annals of Iowa, 38:610–11 (Spring 1967). 15. James Murray Mason (1798–1871), grandson of the revolutionary patriot George Mason, received his education in the Georgetown schools and at the University of Pennsylvania and the College of William and Mary. After establishing a law practice in Winchester, Virginia, in 1820, he served in the Virginia House of Delegates, the state constitutional convention of 1829, and the U.S. House of Representatives (1837–39). In 1847, Mason was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he remained until Virginia seceded. Although he had been a presidential elector for Andrew Jackson in 1832, Mason became a close associate of John C. Calhoun and one of the most articulate and effective defenders of southern rights. On 3 January 1850 he “gave notice of his intention . . . to introduce a bill to provide for the more effective execution” of the Constitution’s fugitive slave clause, an intention that was carried out the following day. After months of debate, Mason’s much-amended bill passed in the Senate on 24 August 1851 and in the House on 12 September 1851. Mason supported secession in 1860 and served briefly in the Confederate Congress before being appointed commissioner to England. On 8 November 1861, while traveling on the British steamer Trent, Mason and John Slidell, the Confederacy’s diplomatic representative to France, were captured by the U.S. Navy and sent to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. This affair so strained relations between the United States and Great Britain that many feared war between the two countries would break out. Upon his release in January 1862, Mason proceeded to England, but his efforts to gain British recognition of the Confederacy and intervention on its behalf were unsuccessful. At the close of the war, he went to Canada, where he stayed until 1868. Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865 (New York, 1979), 173– 79; Stanley W. Campbell, The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850–1860 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1970), 15–23; Ezra J. Warner and W. Buck Yearns, Biographical Register of the Confederate Congress (Baton Rouge, La., 1975), 169–70; NCAB, 2:93; DAB, 12:364–65. 16. Roscoe Conkling. 17. Lind F. Currie (born c. 1825) was a farmer and teacher from Maryland. His school was located near Harpers Ferry. During the Senate hearing on John Brown’s attack on the armory, Currie testified that around ten in the morning on 17 October 1859, three white men from Brown’s raiding party, John E. Cook, William Henry Leeman, and Charles Plummer Todd, along with black members of the group, entered the schoolhouse. Terence Byrne, a hostage taken by the raiders, was with them. Under Cook’s leadership, the group announced that it was taking control of the schoolhouse for use as an arms depot. They had a wagon full of long boxes, most likely containing Sharps rifles. The white men had a Bowie knife and Sharps rifles, and the black men had pikes. Cook told Currie

Y8204-Douglass.indb 432

5/17/23 2:35 PM

HENRY O. WAGONER TO DOUGLASS, 23 MARCH 1878

433

that the group’s goal was to free slaves; slave owners who consented to freeing their slaves would be protected, but those who protested would face consequences. Currie was a slaveholder himself, which Cook did not know. Currie dismissed school and accompanied home one of his students, the son of a friend. Currie returned to the schoolhouse, and only Cook and a former slave (now fighter) were present. It occurred to Currie that the slave had told Cook that Currie was a slaveholder. Currie was allowed to leave in the evening, unharmed, on the condition that he not share what he had witnessed. Currie’s testimony concluded by implicating Gerrit Smith and Frederick Douglass as supporters of the raid at Harpers Ferry. 1870 U.S. Census, West Virginia, Jefferson County, 21; Invasion at Harper’s Ferry, 54–59. 18. The Senate report of the investigation of the Harpers Ferry plot reproduces John Brown’s captured correspondence, including several letters mentioning Gerrit Smith’s financial assistance for Brown’s militant antislavery activities. Invasion at Harper’s Ferry, 67–71.

HENRY O. WAGONER TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Denver, [Colo.] 23 March 1878.

Douglass— The news of the death of my dear and only son,1 who was my last great hope of earth, saddens and depresses me byond measure of expression. I have had a long series of these disastrous bereavements, and yet I have held out well in my physical, for one of my age. Other than my mental depression I have’nt a pain nor an ache. I attribute my bodily health and vigor to the fact that from early youth I have strictly conformed to the laws of health and hygienic influences, therefore, having taken very little medicine through life. Always temperate, and never either danced or tried to dance in my life, never having had a fashionable taste in that direction, though I always thought dancing a healthful exercise, if in moderation. After the death of my wife2 I commenced smoking, and in a short time found its effects detrimental, and so quit it at once. But I am reminded that you, as Marshal of the District Columbia, have enough to engage your mind without my troubling you in this way, and so I beg pardon. I do not forget that you once lost a loving and lovable daughter,3 and therefore you can experimentally sympathise with my bereavement. My son had become a Mason in France, in a lodge under what is known there as the Scotch-Right; and, as I understand it, was burried under the auspices of that order. Dr Nelson B. Gregory4 wrote me a good letter which announced the death of my son, and in which letter he gave me such particulars as might be of some interest to you and other friends in Washington, therefore, I here enclose you a copy of said letter which

Y8204-Douglass.indb 433

5/17/23 2:35 PM

434

HENRY O. WAGONER TO DOUGLASS, 23 MARCH 1878

you may have published for information to his Eastern friends. Should you do so, send me some copies. Fraternally H. O. WAGONER 5 ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 241–43, FD Papers, DLC. 1. A letter that Henry O. Wagoner enclosed in this letter to Douglass reveals that his son had died on 4 March 1878 of “violent lung disease,” probably tuberculosis, at l’Hôpital de la Croix-Rousse (the Red Cross Hospital, named for a cross made of reddish stone erected on a hill in the city in the sixteenth century) in Lyon, France. Nelson P. Gregory to Henry O. Wagoner, Sr., 5 March 1878, General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames, 242R–43, FD Papers, DLC. 2. Susan Wagoner died in 1870. 3. Douglass’s youngest child, Annie, died on 13 March 1860 while he was in Great Britain. Fought, Women, 172–73. 4. Nelson Brainard Gregory (1838–94) of Unadilla, New York, was an aspiring dentist who went to France as a young man and became a pioneer in American dentistry; it cannot be determined where or whether he attended medical school. (The census records for 1870 and 1880 list his occupation as a mill laborer and farmer.) Gregory apparently gave up dentistry upon his return to the United States and began farming. In court proceedings from 1895, the year after his death, Gregory is identified as a man who “for a number of years lived in France” and who returned there around 1878, lived with a woman in Lyon, and fathered multiple children. New York State Reporter, Containing All of the Current Decisions of the Courts of Record of New York State, ed. Charles L. Mills (Albany, N.Y., 1895), 69:479; Francis Whiting Halsey, The Pioneers of Unadilla Village, 1784–1840 (Unadilla, N.Y., 1902), 97–98; Find a Grave (online). 5. Wagoner sent Douglass the following two letters concerning his son’s death:

“L’Hospital de la Croix Rousse,” Lyons, 18 February 1878.

My dear Father: It is, indeed, a long time since I wrote you. Your favorite sayings that “no news is good news” and so forth, is like all other old sayings—more often false than true.—If I had written you during that long period of silence I could only have told you of very bad health and embarrassed circumstances. But regret to be obliged to tell you that I am at present in the hospital. In addition to my severe cough which had greatly reduced me in flesh and strength, by a change of the weather about 15 days ago my larynx was suddenly attacked and an entire extinction of voice followed so that I could speak only in a whisper. I called my doctor and remained in my room a week but friends urged me to come to the hospital thinking I would have better care. I yielded to their request and have been here 10 days in the pay Department. It cost but little—2 francs per day. But the food is very coarse and impalatable and one is obliged to obtain many extras. My voice is not yet permanently restored. At times I can talk and others it escapes me and I am compelled to whisper. Besides this my cough is still bad. I have scarcely any force whatever. My legs are those of a perfect skeleton although my face with its full beard is deceptive. It is almost impossible for me promenade the ‘grande Salle’ five minutes so little force do my legs possess. I am not sure how serious me* really is. But I will try to keep you posted of progress although it is difficult for one so ill as I am to write Love to all Your affectionate son HENRY

Y8204-Douglass.indb 434

5/17/23 2:35 PM

ELIZABETH THOMPSON TO DOUGLASS, 23 APRIL 1878

435

*Poor boy, in this objective personal pronoun he betrays a French idiomatic construction, by his habit of speaking French almost constantly. He was the only American employee in the office. I have asked, in a letter, whether his last words were in French or English. This letter is for you, and such private friends as you, in your discretion, may see fit to read it to, or allow them to read it. Lyons, France, 5 March 1878. Dear Mr Wagoner: It is my painful duty to tell you of the fatal termination of your son’s illness. He died yesterday at 8 A M. I at once claimed the body and ordered preparations for funeral, and to-day the Consulate at Paris have sent word to take charge of all. Services will be protestant as that is known to be your belief as well as his. I have little to write you just now as to particulars. He had no suffering. Like all those violent lung diseases the end was sooner than we expected, but, as I wrote you formerly was almost certain. He never considered himself dangerously ill for a moment, and even on Sunday made all sorts of plans to return from, “L’Hospital de la Croix Rousse”—Hospital of the Russian Cross—to his rooms. My assistant ordered him at a Restaurant a tenderloin of beef of which he was so fond for his breakfast, for Monday, but, when kind hands took it he had breathed his last. And I regret to say only surrounded by hospital nurses, although so many warm and kind friends would like to have heard his last words. I will write you again after the funeral, or at any time if I learn anything that will be of interest or use to you. His personal effects will will be properly cared for. And I most earnestly assure you of my deep regret and profound sympathy, & I am Fraternally NELSON B. GREGORY

ELIZABETH THOMPSON1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS [New York, N.Y.]2 23 April 1878[.]

Dear Frederick I need not tell you that yours of 13th was more than wellcome. I wanted to answer it before but thought I should be reasonable as possible. How I hate this restraint—yet they may be useful so I yeald as best I can to those in power—How I wish you were with us. Can you imagine my delight while sitting alone musing over a leaf of lettuce last evening to see little Abby [illegible]3 come pushing in at the door? I really do love her so much of course she talked of all the Washington people in general and some in particular, she is so awfully keen on intuition she almost reads peoples thoughts She said your friend Kate Doggert4 was in the city so I must go and find her—

Y8204-Douglass.indb 435

5/17/23 2:35 PM

436

ELIZABETH THOMPSON TO DOUGLASS, 23 APRIL 1878

Your letter seems a little sad, as is the sadness in my self— What tho’ we never meet in the flesh? does not the soul meet and recognize soul The mountains rise and ocean [illegible] between the material covering a miracle? You & I have lived too deeply & earnestly to imagine because your body may be surrounded by four walls in one city and mine in another then our spirits do not meet and mingle gathering strength & repose by each other—oh no. I send my thoughts to you over all that is selfish or material—they go yonder than they can on the telegraph—and I am sure yours came to me and tho I may not recognize them at the time—I soon feel the influence of soul seeking soul. God bless and keep you strong and useful in all that is right Never despair. God sees and knows all all our wishes and he gives us what is best With that let us you & I be content So let it be ELIZABETH

[P.S.] Write me so often as you have time convenience & believe me ever yours ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 250–52, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Elizabeth Rowell Thompson (1821–99) was born in Lyndon, Vermont, to an impoverished farm family and began work as a house servant at age nine. Her fortunes changed when she married the wealthy Bostonian Thomas Thompson in 1844. Following her husband’s death in 1869, Thompson dedicated her life and fortune to charitable causes. One of her first ventures was support for the resettlement of the urban poor in Colorado and Kansas. For the temperance cause, she wrote a pamphlet titled Figures of Hell; or, The Temples of Bacchus (1878), which presented statistical “evidence” of the costs of drinking to American society. Thompson philanthropically supported science as well. She made major gifts to the American Association for the Advancement of Science as well as a $10,000 grant to Congress in 1878 to investigate the causes of a yellow fever epidemic plaguing the southern states. Upon her death, the remainder of her husband’s fortune went to the workingwomen of the towns of Brattleboro, Vermont, and Rhinebeck, New York. These women, who were mainly seamstresses and shop clerks, shared an estimated $1.3 million. Howard S. Miller, Dollars for Research: Science and Its Patrons in Nineteenth-Century America (Seattle, 1970), 127–29; NAW, 3:452–54; ANB (online). 2. Thompson added “124 Ea 45’ st” to her address. 3. Probably one of Elizabeth Thompson’s known friends, Abby Hutchinson Patton (1829–92), the only female member of the Hutchinson Family Singers. Born in Milford, New Hampshire, she joined her three brothers to form the famous singing quartet. After marrying the New York financier Ludlow Patton in 1849, she retired from the stage, performing with her brothers only on special occasions. Instead, Patton devoted her energies to writing poems and essays, many in support of reform causes. Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore, eds., A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred–Seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All

Y8204-Douglass.indb 436

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE, 25 MAY 1878

437

Walks of Life (Buffalo, N.Y., 1893), 561–62; Mary Sargent Hopkins, “Women Who Have Made the World Better: Abby Hutchinson Patton,” Good Housekeeping, 28:177 (March 1899). 4. Thompson likely refers to Kate Newell Doggett (1828–84), the widow of the Chicago merchant William E. Doggett. A writer on natural science and painting, she was an active member of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Doggett published frequently in Mary Ann Livermore’s reform periodical, the Agitator. Doggett’s declining health led her to take up residence in Havana in her final years. Englishwoman’s Review of Social and Industrial Questions, 15:300 (June 1884); Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 5:335.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE Washington, D.C. 25 May [1878.]

My dear Rosa: Your nameless boy1 is now eight days old. No doubt he is a fine fellow and I should be glad to see him, but he must get a little older before I make him a call. I was once vain enough to want your first boy called “Douglass,” but upon reflection I have given up this vanity: I think the honor belongs to Nathan.2 His first boy should be called Nathan. We are doing pretty well here considering that I neither have Mother3 nor Louisa4 to help me keep house—I wish you could send me one or the other of them by the first of June. Our house is now perfectly clean from top to bottom. A glorious rain came this morning giving a smiling face to my lawn—lettuce & cantelope vines. Lewis has come home from a weeks tour of his postal agency5 He is doing much hard travelling but looks well. He is young, strong and should like his work. I did at his age. But I now begin to like the chimney corner and hate to travel those I want to see and those who want to see me must do the needful travelling I have had enough of it. This will reach you about Thursday and I hope by that time you will be able to scribble me a few lines with your own dear feeble hand. You must tell me all about your grand Boy—If I shall like him as well as I like your girls—he will be very well liked. Love from all here to all in Rochester and especially to yourself— Your father FREDK DOUGLASS ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 58R–59, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Herbert Douglass Sprague (1874–1943) was born on 17 May 1874 in Rochester, New York. He was the sixth of Nathan and Rosetta Douglass Sprague’s seven children, and their only son. Unlike his sisters, he does not appear to have excelled academically, and rather like his father, he instead

Y8204-Douglass.indb 437

5/17/23 2:35 PM

438

DOUGLASS TO PHOTIUS FISK, 15 JULY 1878

pursued a variety of occupations over his lifetime, including chauffeur, house painter, and handyman. For many years he lived in Yonkers, New York, with his wife, Martha, and their seven children, but at the time of his death, Sprague was living on his own in New York City, where he was the caretaker of the lodging house where he lived. He was the final person to be buried in the Sprague family plot in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York. 1915 New York State Census, Westchester County, 30; 1920 U.S. Census, New York, Westchester County, 11B; 1940 U.S. Census, New York, New York County, 13B; Fought, Women, 220, 267, 272, 276, 310; “U.S. World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918,” Ancestry.com. 2. Nathan Sprague. 3. Anna Murray Douglass. 4. Helen Louise “Louisa” Sprague. 5. Lewis H. Douglass was appointed special postal agent (or inspector for the post office) on 13 April 1875 and served in this capacity for two years. Without additional information, it is impossible to determine where his most recent inspection tour took him. Washington Bee, 26 September 1908; James Monroe Gregory, Frederick Douglass the Orator (Springfield, Mass., 1893), 203; Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 22.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO PHOTIUS FISK1 Washington, D.C.2 15 July 1878.

My Dear Mr. Fisk: I am reminded by a letter from our valued friend, Parker Pillsbury, that I have not yet written an answer to your letter inviting me to be present in Muskegon, Mich.,3 on the 1st of August, and assist at the unveiling of the monument which you have nobly caused to be erected over the dust of the late Jonathan Walker.4 I deeply regret that my duties and appointments will compel me to decline your esteemed invitation. Yes, I knew Jonathan Walker, and knew him well,—knew him to love him, and to honor him as a true man, a friend to humanity, a brave but noiseless lover of liberty, not only for himself but for all men; one who possessed the qualities of a hero and martyr, and was ready to take any risks to his own safety and personal ease to save his fellow-men from slavery. It is meet and right that one who was such as he was should have his grave marked as you propose. His name deserves remembrance, and should be mentioned with those of John Brown, Charles T. Torrey,5 William L. Chaplin,6 Elijah P. Lovejoy,7 Thompson, Work, and Barr,8 Calvin Fairbanks,9 Abraham Lincoln, and other noble men who suffered at the hands of the slave power. Jonathan Walker is not less entitled to grateful memory than the most honored of them all. He was one who felt satisfied with the applause of his own soul. What he attempted was not intended to attract public notice. He was on the free, dashing billows of the Atlantic

Y8204-Douglass.indb 438

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO PHOTIUS FISK, 15 JULY 1878

439

when the voices of Nature spoke to his soul with the grandest emphasis of love and truth; and, responsive to those voices, as well as to those of his own heart, he welcomed the panting fugitives from slavery to the safety of his deck,—though in doing so he exposed himself to stocks, prison, branding irons, and it might have been to death. I well remember the sensation produced by the exhibition of his branded hand. It was one of the few atrocities of slavery that roused the justice and humanity of the North to a death struggle with slavery. Looking into his simple, honest face, it was easy to see that on such a countenance as his no trace of infamy could be made by stocks, stripes, or branding irons. “S. S.” meant at the South, Slave Stealer, but was read by the North and all civilized men everywhere as Slave Saviour. His example of self-sacrifice nerved us all to more heroic endeavor in behalf of the slave. My dear sir, I feel it a great deprivation that I cannot be personally present with you on the 1st of August and assist in the ceremonies in honorable memory of true-hearted Jonathan Walker, but I shall be with you in spirit and in purpose. Very truly yours, FRED’K DOUGLASS PLSr: Lyman F. Hodge, Photius Fisk: A Biography (Boston, 1891), 149–51. 1. Photius Fisk (1807–1900) was born in Greece under the name Philipangos Kavasales. Orphaned, he was adopted by an American missionary who gave him his name. Fisk was educated at Amherst College and Auburn Theological Seminary, ordained a Congregational minister, and became a chaplain in the U.S. Navy. He became an abolitionist, freethinker, and active opponent of the flogging of seamen. After retiring from the navy in 1864, he became well known for his generosity toward the poor. Boston Daily Globe, 10 February 1890; Lyman F. Hodge, Photius Fisk: A Biography (Boston, 1891). 2. Douglass added the following to his address: “United States Marshal’s Office.” 3. Muskegon is a small city along Lake Michigan in northwestern Michigan. It became important as both a trading and manufacturing center in the nineteenth century. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1269. 4. Jonathan Walker (1799–1878) was a northern abolitionist honored in antislavery circles for his efforts to help slaves in Florida escape. By turns a seaman, carpenter, and mechanic, Walker grew up on Cape Cod, converted to abolitionism sometime in the 1830s, and lived with his family in Pensacola, Florida, for five or six years before returning to Massachusetts. While on a business trip to Pensacola in the summer of 1844, he agreed to use his boat to transport some slaves to freedom in the Bahamas. The party was intercepted on the Florida Gulf Coast by two southern dredging boats. Walker was returned to Pensacola, where he was convicted of slave stealing, fined about $165, and branded on the palm of his right hand with the initials “SS” (slave stealer). He spent eleven months in jail before northern abolitionists secured his release by paying his fines and court and jail costs. Walker later toured as an abolitionist celebrity, making speeches and displaying his branded palm as evidence of southern barbarity. After two failed attempts at establishing utopian communities in

Y8204-Douglass.indb 439

5/17/23 2:35 PM

440

DOUGLASS TO PHOTIUS FISK, 15 JULY 1878

Wisconsin, Walker settled in Muskegon, Michigan. Over five thousand people attended Walker’s burial in Evergreen Cemetery in Muskegon, Michigan, on 1 May 1878. On 1 August 1878, a monument with a bas-relief of Walker’s injured hand was dedicated at the grave site. Jonathan Walker, Trial and Imprisonment of Jonathan Walker (Boston, 1845); A Short Sketch of the Life and Services of Jonathan Walker, the Man with the Branded Hand (Muskegon, Mich., 1879), 2, 9–11; Louis Filler, The Crusade against Slavery, 1830–1860 (London, 1960), 164; ACAB, 6:329. 5. Born in Massachusetts and educated at Yale, Charles Turner Torrey (1813–46) organized an antislavery society at Andover Theological Seminary while a student there. Later a Congregational minister, Torrey was one of the leaders of the anti-Garrisonian faction in Massachusetts and served as the agent of the Massachusetts Abolition Society and as the first editor of the Massachusetts Abolitionist. Torrey left that paper in 1841 to go to Washington, D.C., as a freelance reporter. In Annapolis, Maryland, the following year, he was arrested as an abolitionist while reporting on a “Convention of Slaveholders” and was acquitted after a brief trial. Returning north for a short while to edit the Albany Patriot, Torrey moved to Baltimore around 1843 to engage in business and carry out his scheme for transporting fugitive slaves to the free states along a prearranged route. It is said that in two years he helped about four hundred slaves from Maryland and Virginia escape. Arrested for this activity in 1844 and defended by Reverdy Johnson, Torrey was convicted and sentenced to six years’ hard labor. He died of tuberculosis in a Baltimore prison. J. C. Lovejoy, Memoir of Rev. Charles T. Torrey, Who Died in the Penitentiary of Maryland, Where He Was Confi ned for Showing Mercy to the Poor (Boston, 1847); Filler, Crusade against Slavery, 163–64; DAB, 18:595–96. 6. In August 1850, William L. Chaplin (1796–1871) was among a group arrested for aiding fugitive slaves. Originally a lawyer, Chaplin left his legal practice in Easton, Massachusetts, to devote himself to the abolitionist movement in New York in the 1830s. He worked for the Liberty party as a lecturer and editor and became an associate of Gerrit Smith. In 1850, Chaplin assisted a group of slaves who had escaped from the Georgia slave owners Alexander H. Stephens and Robert Toombs. Authorities arrested Chaplin and charged him with violating the Fugitive Slave Act in Washington, D.C., and Maryland. Three of Chaplin’s longtime New York abolitionist friends, James C. Jackson, Joseph C. Hathaway, and Theodosia Gilbert, rushed to Washington to attend to Chaplin’s needs while he was jailed. The Free Democrat congressman Joshua Giddings and Senator Salmon P. Chase aided in Chaplin’s legal defense. Opponents of the Fugitive Slave Act, led by Smith, rallied around the case and posted Chaplin’s $25,000 bond. Back in New York in 1851, Chaplin refused to return south for his trial and worked only briefly to raise funds to reimburse those who stood his bail. He drifted away from Gerrit Smith and, together with Jackson and Hathaway, moved into the Free Democratic camp. Chaplin later married Gilbert and joined Jackson in operating a water cure establishment in Glen Haven, New York. Wilson, Slave Power in America, 2:80–82; Stanley Harrold, Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1826–1865 (Baton Rouge, La., 2003), 157–62; Lawrence J. Friedman, Gregarious Saints: Self and Community in American Abolitionism, 1830–1870 (New York, 1982), 123; Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 290–95; Lawrence J. Friedman, “The Gerrit Smith Circle: Abolitionism in the Burned-Over District,” Civil War History, 26:19–37 (March 1980). 7. Elijah Parish Lovejoy (1802–37) was killed at Alton, Illinois, on 7 November 1837 while defending his press from an antiabolitionist mob. The son of a Presbyterian minister from Albion, Maine, and a graduate of Waterville (now Colby) College, Lovejoy moved to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1827 to teach school and edit a Whig newspaper. Five years later he returned east to study at Princeton Theological Seminary. Licensed to preach by the Philadelphia presbytery in 1833, Lovejoy went back to Missouri to edit the St. Louis Observer, a Presbyterian weekly, and to champion gradual emancipation, temperance, and anti-Catholicism. In 1836, his outspokenness on these topics angered many Missourians, and he moved to Alton, Illinois, where prominent citizens welcomed him as “a pious religious editor.” By March 1837, Lovejoy had converted to “immediatism,” joined the American Anti-Slavery Society, and announced his intention to organize local and state abolitionist societies. Already troubled by a recent decline in the local economy, many of Alton’s leading men

Y8204-Douglass.indb 440

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 21 AUGUST 1878

441

were frankly alarmed at the prospect of their town becoming a center of an organized antislavery movement. Agitated by fears of miscegenation, many prominent citizens organized mob violence to silence Lovejoy and his press, the Alton Observer, which was twice dismantled and thrown into the river. When Lovejoy and his supporters replaced the press for a third time, they resolved to protect it by armed force. Lovejoy was mortally wounded by rifle fire when he and another man rushed out of the stone warehouse where the press was being safeguarded to shoot a rioter attempting to set fire to the roof. Abolitionists enshrined Lovejoy as a martyr. On 7 December 1837, the Boston lawyer Wendell Phillips delivered an impassioned defense of Lovejoy’s actions at a packed public meeting in Faneuil Hall. That speech marked Phillips’s unqualified embrace of the abolitionist cause. John Gill, Tide without Turning: Elijah P. Lovejoy and Freedom of the Press (Boston, 1958); Merton L. Dillon, Elijah P. Lovejoy: Abolitionist Editor (Urbana, Ill., 1961); Stewart, Wendell Phillips, 58–63; Leonard L. Richards, “Gentlemen of Property and Standing”: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (New York, 1970), 100–11; Perry, Radical Abolitionism, 75; Mabee, Black Freedom, 38–50; DAB, 11:434–36. 8. Douglass refers to the case of Alanson Work (1799–1879), James E. Burr (1814–59), and George Thompson (?–1893), three seminary students from the Mission Institute in Quincy, Illinois, who were arrested, tried, and convicted in 1841 of assisting Missouri slaves to escape. Abolitionists organized a petition campaign that eventually won the three men’s freedom. New York Times, 8, 28 July 1879; Snodgrass, Underground Railroad, 1:90; Olea Prinsloo, “Domestic Missionaries, Slaveholders, and Confronting the Morality of Slavery: Missouri v. James Burr, George Thompson, and Alanson Work, September, 1841,” Social Science and Missions, 26:59–92 (2013). 9. Calvin Fairbank (1816–98) was a Methodist clergyman and celebrated abolitionist martyr who spent nearly seventeen years in jail in Kentucky for aiding in the escape of slaves. Born in Wyoming County, New York, Fairbank first helped in the flight of a slave while taking a raft of lumber down the Ohio River. Soon thereafter, he became a principal in the Underground Railroad, ferrying fugitives from Kentucky and Virginia to Ohio. While enrolled as a student at Oberlin, he was arrested in Kentucky for aiding the escape of Lewis Hayden. He received a fifteen-year sentence in 1845, but was pardoned by Governor John J. Crittenden in 1849. Fairbank soon resumed his Underground Railroad activities and was captured again in November 1851. Sentenced to another fifteen years in prison, he served until April 1864, during which time he was subjected to many beatings by his guards. Fairbank spent his postbellum years in Ohio, Virginia, and New York, hired by missionary and benevolent institutions to work among the freedpeople. NS, 14 September 1849; FDP, 20 November 1851; Baltimore Ledger, 5 November 1878; Calvin Fairbank, Rev. Calvin Fairbank during Slavery Times: How He “Fought the Good Fight” to Prepare “The Way” (Chicago, 1890); Wilbur H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom (New York, 1898), 157–59, 236; Dwight Lowell Dumond, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1961), 314; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 149–50, 164; DAB, 6:247.

OTTILIE ASSING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Boston[, Mass.] 21 Aug[ust] 1878.

My dear Friend: Your letter, which came this morning, produced a very keen feeling of disappointment and regret among all of us, for your telegram not having reached us, I imagined that you had been detained and would yet arrived some day this week. That hope has now vanished to be superseded by

Y8204-Douglass.indb 441

5/17/23 2:35 PM

442

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 21 AUGUST 1878

unmitigated sorrow, especially since your determination to go home in such hot haste was prompted by the bad condition of your health. So many excursions had been planned and your presence was looked forward to as the great event, the culminating point of the season.1 I think you hardly realize how devoted the Koehlers2 are to you; among the hundreds and thousands who profess friendship for you, none are more genuine more free from any selfish motives though they are less noisy in their demonstrations than many others who will occasionally have an axe of their own to grind.—Unfortunately nothing has yet turned up for Mr. Koehler, although he has written to all publishers and other people through whom he could possibly hope to get an opening. The plan of which I wanted to tell you when you were here, without finding a chance however to do so, consisted in the establishment of an Art Journal, of which Mr. Koehler would have become the chief editor.3 There could not have been an activity more congenial to his tastes and inclinations, but it has come to nought, the publisher whom he addressed on the subject, being afraid of taking the risk in the present unsettled state of business. Today he has made the same proposition to the Harpers,4 in order to omit anything, without however expecting a favorable result. His great mistake was not so much his leaving Mr. Prang’s business, who really seems to be a thoroughly whimsical and unreliable man, but his running away from New-York, where he had quite a secure and well paying position. It would be but little short of a misfortune if they had to go away from Boston and start life again in another place now, after they have taken root here and the children found their associations. Mrs. Werpup5 staid here two days on her way back from Plymouth6 and greatly enjoyed her visit. She staid in the room at the neighbors’ which indeed is as comfortable as any in this house besides being larger and higher. When she left we all felt confident that you would come to occupy it the same evening or the next day at the latest. I regret the more your staying away because I had hoped to persuade you to consult for once Dr. Martin,7 who has done such excellent service to Mr. Koehler, who is suffering from the same complaint. I shall start whenever it will be convenient for you. I don’t fully understand your apprehensions; if they refer to me I have only to remind you of all which I wrote you months ago and which then you thought quite satisfactory. My feelings for you can never change, but if all this, after all, is nothing to you, or if you anticipate for yourself more pain than pleasure, you know that you may shake me off whenever you please. Border State8

Y8204-Douglass.indb 442

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 21 AUGUST 1878

443

is my smallest trouble. I think I have shown my diplomatic tact by getting along with her nearly twenty years without any serious trouble. She is amiable compared to Ludmilla.9 One thing I yet wanted to remind you of since I know how easy-going you are in such matters: Are you sufficiently insured? Love from us all! Write soon again. Yours ever OTTILIA ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 265R–67L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Assing and Douglass did not reunite until September 1878, after a two-year separation. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 338. 2. Sylvester Rosa and Amalie Koëhler. 3. Sylvester Rosa Koëhler worked as the technical manager at Louis Prang from 1868 to 1879, when he left that company to become the editor of the American Art Review, a publication he started with Charles C. Perkins and William C. Prime. He remained as editor from 1879 until 1881, when the periodical ceased publication. Loring, “Koëhler,” 556–58. 4. James and John Harper established the firm Harper & Brothers in New York City in 1817. In 1833 their other brothers, Fletcher and Wesley, joined the business. Initially a book publishing business, the firm paved the way for the industrialization of publishing and the widespread distribution of printed matter in America. The company reached its highest point in the decades surrounding the Civil War, when it also began publishing a series of popular periodicals: Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in 1850, Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization in 1857, and Harper’s Bazaar in 1867. These publications brought politics, lifestyle, and literature into the average home while providing indispensable coverage of current events. The Weekly, a pioneer illustrated magazine, regularly published the political cartoons of Thomas Nast. Frederick Douglass was on the cover of the Harper’s Weekly issue of 14 November 1883. Eugene Exman, The House of Harper: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Publishing (New York, 1967); Hudson, Journalism in the United States, 587, 707–08. 5. Eliza Werpup. 6. Named after the English homeport of the Mayflower, Plymouth was established in 1620 by the Pilgrims. Although it was never officially incorporated as a town, in 1633, the Crown recognized it as the capital of the Plymouth Colony. In 1691, Plymouth Colony was absorbed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the town rapidly fell into obscurity. In 1820, the Pilgrim Society sponsored a bicentennial celebration of Plymouth’s founding, the highlight of which was a speech delivered by Daniel Webster. The festival proved to be such a success that it became an annual event, and an invitation to deliver the keynote address came to be seen as a necessary and significant achievement for both English politicians and orators. The festival sparked increased interest in the history of the Pilgrims as well as a fascination with “Plymouth Rock”—which had been identified by Elder Thomas Faunce in 1741—making Plymouth an important destination for nineteenth-century tourists. Sargent Bush, Jr., “America’s Origin: Remembering Plymouth Rock,” American Literary History, 12:745–56 (Winter 2000); John Seelye, Memory’s Nation: The Place of Plymouth Rock (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 33–35, 534–65; Peter J. Gomes, “Pilgrims and Puritans: ‘Heroes’ and ‘Villains’ in the Creation of the American Past,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 95:1–16 (1983). 7. Assing is probably referring to the prominent Boston physician Henry Austin Martin (1824– 84). Martin was born in London, England, but spent most of his life in Massachusetts. In 1845, he graduated from Harvard Medical School and went into private practice. During the Civil War, Martin was brevetted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and served as the surgeon in chief of the Second Corps of the Army of the Potomac. Influenced by his work with smallpox patients during the war,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 443

5/17/23 2:35 PM

444

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 6 SEPTEMBER 1878

Martin became an expert in vaccines and introduced the use of animal vaccination to the United States in 1870. In 1877 he presented a groundbreaking paper to the annual meeting of the American Medical Association on the use of rubber bandages in the treatment of leg ulcers and other related ailments. Martin was also known for his skill as an orator and was widely published in the leading American and British journals of his day, including the British Medical Journal, the Lancet, and the North American Review. 1880 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Suffolk County, 8; Joseph Jones, Contagious and Infectious Diseases: Measures for Their Prevention and Arrest, (Baton Rouge, La, 1883), 405; Smithsonian Institution, “A Finding Aid to the Sylvester Rosa Koëhler Papers, 1833–1904, bulk 1870–1890, in the Archives of American Art” (online); Howard Atwood Kelly, A Cyclopedia of American Medical Biography, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1912), 2:151–52; ACAB, 4:230. 8. Assing’s nickname for Anna Murray Douglass. 9. Rosa Ludmilla Assing.

OTTILIE ASSING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Boston[, Mass.] 6 Sept[ember] 1878.

My dear Friend: You know by this time that I was here early enough to receive your last good note directly out of the letter carrier’s hands. I have no fear of the “experiment” as far as I am concerned, and the question is only whether and how you will stand it? I know exactly my own feelings, but from all which you have told me about yourself and others I have come to the conclusion that in some respects I am so entirely unlike the majority of men that I cannot well consider myself at all a standard by which to measure the feelings and sensations of others. A queer and unfortunate mixture of earthly and unearthly matter! Last night I made my annual pilgrimage to Mr. Garrison.1 He seemed quite pleased to see me, had thought that it was about time for me to come and the evening was spent in very interesting and animated conversation. He is strong and fresh and looks nearly as he did twenty-four years ago when I saw him the first time.2 He seems to like wonderfully to be—as if it were—interviewed about the political situation and I was delighted to find that we agreed about every question. He too is of opinion that Grant3 is the only man who can save us from a crushing defeat in 1880 unless something quite unexpected should turn up.4 About Butler5 whom he too defended yet a year ago, he thinks now as we do and I think, almost all decent Republicans. I feel satisfied now that he never left the Democratic party for the sake of conviction, and principle, but simply because as a shrewd trickster that he is, he judged it played out and foresaw that further adherence to it would have been a barrier to his success in

Y8204-Douglass.indb 444

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 6 SEPTEMBER 1878

445

Massachusetts in those days.6 Strange that Wendell Phillips—honest and truthful as he is, yet indorses the demagogue and his inflation humbug with which he caters to the illusions and vagaries of the ignorant masses.7 I was allowed to take possession of the house without any formality because Mr. Fehr 8 himself wished me to do so. He is none the worse for it and I am spared a great deal of delay, vexation and expense, since the sale could not take place but six months after the foreclosure and meanwhile the house would stand half empty in its present neglected and unsightly condition without yielding any interest. Even as it is, matters look ugly enough and I don’t expect anything like comfort and quiet until I shall succeed to get rid of this ponderous millstone. Have you noticed what a cruel monster the orthodox are again making of their god on the occasion of the yellow fever calamity?9 A wise and kind father who just for his own private pleasure and amusement inflicts such horrible suffering on his children, and yet notwithstanding all his wisdom and justice is so whimsical and open to outside influences that they hope to coax him by prayer! And yet this is evidently what the Episcopal bishops recently assembled in New-York are trying in ordering a prayer for the occasion.10 Such notions are natural enough for peoples in the infancy of civilization, but in the present state of science and enlightenment! The old prostitute dies hard, but doomed she is none the less. Mary Ann11 must indeed be capable of a degree of devotion for which I should hardly have given her credit. Her assistance will certainly be of great value, for there is not a speck of hope for poor Libbie,12 as Frauenstein13 tells me, and consequently more and more nursing will be needed. The Koehlers14 have now all their children at home. The house is crowded but all are cozy and merry. They all send love to you. A[r]rivederci amico mio!15 Yours ever OTTILIA ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 269–71L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. During a stay with the Koëhlers in Boston, Assing made the acquaintance of Fanny Garrison Villard, William Lloyd Garrison’s daughter. On a visit to the Villard home, Assing spoke with Garrison at length. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 288. 2. Accounts of when Assing and Garrison first met are not explicit. According to one historian, they first met at the American Anti-Slavery Society anniversary meeting in May 1854. But another historian, while confirming that Assing heard Garrison speak at the convention, does not confirm that they met. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 116; Lohmann, Radical Passion, 364. 3. Ulysses S. Grant. 4. In his private correspondence and public statements, Garrison strongly condemned the “Southern policy” of President Rutherford B. Hayes and compared it unfavorably with that pursued

Y8204-Douglass.indb 445

5/17/23 2:35 PM

446

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 6 SEPTEMBER 1878

by President Grant. Garrison died on 24 May 1879 before the serious beginning of the 1880 presidential campaign. William Lloyd Garrison to William E. Chandler, 21 January 1878, in Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 6:7, 9–10, 500, 547–48. 5. Benjamin Franklin Butler. 6. Benjamin F. Butler ran unsuccessfully for the Massachusetts governorship in 1878 and 1879 as an Independent, with the backing of the Greenback party. In 1880 he openly joined the Democratic party and successfully campaigned for the governorship in 1882. West, Lincoln’s Scapegoat General, 365–68; ANB (online). 7. Wendell Phillips was a close friend of Benjamin F. Butler for much of his life, vocally supporting him throughout his post–Civil War political career. In January 1880 the Massachusetts Greenback party nominated Butler for governor and Wendell Phillips for lieutenant governor, but the pair declined to run. Martyn, Wendell Phillips, 386–88; Sacramento Daily Record-Union, 1 Jan 1880. 8. Julius Fehr. 9. In 1878, nearly twenty thousand people died from yellow fever, mostly in the southern region of the United States and particularly in the Mississippi Valley. Molly Caldwell Crosby, The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic That Shaped Our History (New York, 2006), 74–75. 10. At the annual convention of the New York diocese of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Bishop Horace Potter thanked church members for their prayers and “bountiful gifts of mercy” for victims of the yellow fever epidemic in the South. Journal of the Proceedings of the Ninety-fi fth Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New-York, Which Assembled in St. John’s Chapel in the City of New-York, on Wednesday, September 25, A.D. 1878 (New York, 1878), 61–64. 11. Since no one by this name is known to have been a member of Douglass’s family or household, it seems likely that Assing is referring to either Anna Murray Douglass or Louisa Sprague. Both nursed Douglass’s daughter-in-law Libbie during her final illness. Given that Assing’s usual nickname for Anna Murray Douglass was “Border State,” this may be her nickname for Louisa Sprague, but the editors cannot conclusively determine that to be the case. Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Murphy Douglass died on 21 September 1878. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 678; Fought, Women, 223; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 344. 12. Mary Elizabeth Murphy Douglass. 13. Karl Heinrich Gustav Frauenstein (1832–95) was a German national who immigrated to the United States in 1857. After spending several years as a rancher in Texas, he enrolled in Columbia University’s school of medicine in 1865. While attending school, Frauenstein boarded with Assing’s friends the Koëhlers in Hoboken, New Jersey. After graduating from medical school in 1868, he set up a successful private practice in Manhattan, where he remained for the rest of his life. 1870 U.S. Census, New York, New York County, 50; Columbia University, Officers and Graduates of Columbia University: Originally the College of the Province of New York, Known as King’s College; General Catalog, 1754–1900 (New York, 1900), 215; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 275; Lohmann, Radical Passion, 343, 357, 363; “U.S. School Catalogs, 1765–1935,” Ancestry.com;” U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” 14. Sylvester, Rosa, and Amalie Koëhler. 15. In Italian: “Good-bye, my friend.”

Y8204-Douglass.indb 446

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 18 NOVEMBER 1878

447

OTTILIE ASSING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Stamford[, Conn.] 18 Nov[ember] 1878.

My dear Friend: It is with the old feeling of something like homesickness which I always experienced when leaving you after spending a considerable time with you, that I am thinking of you now. Whatever there may be distressing in the conditions under which we only can meet, yet your company for me has such a charm and affords me a gratification the like of which I never feel elsewhere. Aside from other attractions it is such comfort to be allowed to communicate anything and everything to each other, to confide unconditionally without the least reserve or distrust. I might continue yet much longer in variations on this subject, were it not for the fear that you could accuse of using incendiary language in spite of honest intentions and promises to the contrary. The difference of climate is quite conspicuous at this stage of the season, not so much perhaps in temperature as in appearance. The trees are entirely stripped of their foliage and the cold wind and rain of the last two days contribute to give a bleak and winterlike appearance to the landscape. In Hoboken everything is about the same as usual. My Maca flew down from his stand the moment I entered my room, rushed at me— and could find no end of caresses and demonstrations of delight. Though excellently cared for and caressed by the children, he had been perfectly silent all the time, yet almost from the moment he saw me again as his audience he began to talk as finely and distinctly as ever. I really feel almost like doing wrong in leaving him again after so short a stay. All my other friends too are cordial and hearty as always. I saw the Loewenthals,1 Kudlichs2 and Mrs. Werpup,3 yet the whole place has become disagreeable to me on account of that “varmint” of a house. Miss Fehr’s4 failure to take a house in New-York is owing to the disappointment caused her by a young couple who after having engaged themselves to board with her through the winter, deserted her almost at the last moment. To be sure, she can’t risk the experiment without having at least her rent and expenses secured and thus some weeks or months may yet elapse before we shall move over. Dr. Frauenstein5 however is safe for the first of May, and by that time if not before, the way will be clear. Mr. Fehr is getting deeper and deeper entangled and behaves like a madman. His foolish anger against his successor seems to have completely blinded him and may yet lead to some [illegible] catastrophe.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 447

5/17/23 2:35 PM

448

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 18 NOVEMBER 1878

As I shall stay at least a week here I shall as a matter of course expect a letter from you, directed here, care Mrs. Huntingdon,6 Box 105. As the two ladies go to bed with the chickens I hope to do a good deal of letter writing in my long evenings and to manufacture also an article about the Corcoran Gallery.7—I should much rejoice if you would employ your leisure hours in writing the sequel of your autobiography.8 I have no doubt you could make it a highly attractive book. John Brown, political and abolitionist reminiscences, intercourse with prominent men, such as Lincoln, Sumner, Grant,9 etc. deliverance from religious bondage and so many other interesting topics you might treat. The long winter evenings are just favorable for such work and I think that writing would strain your eyes much less than reading. My love to your glorious place and all who walk on it either on two or four legs, to its trees, hills and valleys! I don’t dare to inquire after the poor unfortunate piece of humanity since I expect none but sad news. All good things to you! Yours as much as ever OTTILIA ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 281–83L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Ernst Jonas and Charlotte Knaur Lowenthal had five children: Amalia “Maja,” born in Vermont, and August, Julius, William, and Martha, all of whom were born in New Jersey. August E. Lowenthal (1856–86) followed in his father’s footsteps and became a physician, and his brother William (1862–1954), who Anglicized his surname to Lowell in 1919, became a dentist and oral surgeon. Julius Lowenthal (b. 1860) was a merchant. Amalia Lowenthal (b. 1854) married one of her brother August’s colleagues, Dr. James H. Rosenkrans; her sister Martha (b. 1868) married an engineer named Dana A. Bicknell. 1880 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 205; 1930 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Essex County, 10B; Allen Rosenkrans, The Rosenkrans Family in Europe and America (Newton, N.J, 1900), 167–68, 245; Moss, Edgar Holden, 467–69; “New Jersey, Marriage Index, 1901–2016,” Ancestry.com; Find a Grave (online). 2. Johann “Hans” Kudlich (1823–1917) was born into a peasant family near Lobenstein, in the Austrian Empire. He was educated at the gymnasium college in Troppan, Austria, before being sent to Vienna to study law. While Kudlich was studying for his doctoral exam at the University of Vienna, the revolution of 1848 broke out, and he organized a student revolutionary group that marched on the Landhaus (Austria’s lower provincial diet) on 13 March 1848, demanding freedom for the peasants. In June he was elected to the new general assembly (the Reichstag) in Vienna, and on 8 September 1848 the Reichstag passed a law emancipating the empire’s peasants. The following month, however, a separate revolt in Vienna led to both the collapse of the revolution and the end of parliamentary government. Having been falsely accused of murder, Kudlich, fearing for his life, fled the Austrian Empire, and on 7 March 1849, he arrived in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1853 he graduated from the University of Bern with a medical degree. That same year, he married Luisa “Louisa” Vogt (1827–84). Her father, Philipp Friedrich Wilhelm Vogt, was a professor of clinics at the University of Bern; her brother, Karl Vogt, was a famous biologist, philosopher, and politician; and her uncle was the poet and abolitionist Charles Follens, who became the first professor of German at Harvard University. In 1854 the Kudlichs immigrated to the United States and settled in Hoboken, New Jersey, where

Y8204-Douglass.indb 448

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 2 DECEMBER 1878

449

Kudlich ran a successful medical practice until his death in 1917. In 1925, Kudlich’s remains were transferred to his hometown of Lobenstein (now part of the Czech Republic) and reinterred in the “Hans Kudlich Watch Tower.” Later, a monument dedicated to the “Peasant Liberator” was raised to his memory in Poysdorf, Austria. Hans and Luisa Vogt Kudlich had nine children. 1880 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 62–63; Cornelius Burnham Harvey, ed., Genealogical History of Hudson and Bergen Counties, New Jersey (New York, 1900), 535; Encyclopedia of Revolutions of 1848 (online); “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; Find a Grave (online). 3. Eliza Werpup. 4. Assing is more than likely referring to the elder of two girls, Florence (age twelve) and Louise (age ten), who were listed as residents in the household of Julius Fehr in the 1870 census. Both girls were the children of Mrs. Fehr’s first marriage, to Edmond Broquet. Florence Broquet “Fehr” von Hake (1859-1929), born in Illinois, seems to have moved from her mother and stepfather’s home in Hoboken, New Jersey, to New York City sometime after the death of her mother in 1877. In August 1878, she married Adolph von Hake in Manhattan, and by 1880, she and her husband were living on Garden Street in Hoboken, where he was identified as a druggist in the census. 1860 U.S. Census, Louisiana, Orleans Parish, 73; 1870 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 88; 1880 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 44D; “New York, New York City Marriage Records, 1829–1940,” FamilySearch.org. 5. Gustav Frauenstein. 6. The daughter of George Sumner, a botany professor at Trinity College, and his wife, Elizabeth Putnam, Katherine Brinley Sumner Huntington (1825–1902) was the widow of the very wealthy Hezekiah Huntington (1796–1865), who had been a successful publisher, businessman, and onetime president of the Hartford Fire Insurance Company. Following her husband’s death, Mrs. Huntington spent several years living in Europe with her two children, Katherine and George Sumner, and a companion named Anna de Castro (1806–91), with whom Ottilie Assing was acquainted. Katherine Huntington and her household returned to the United States in 1877, settling in Stamford, Connecticut. In 1882 she moved to Florida, where she purchased a substantial amount of property and established the town of Huntington. She lived there until her death in 1902. 1880 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Fairfield County, 34; Ales Hrdlicka, “George Sumner Huntington, 1861–1925,” National Academy of Sciences: Biographical Memoirs, 18:249–50 (1937); Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 338, 357; Find a Grave (online). 7. Assing’s article “Die Corcoran Galerie in Washington” was published in volume 14 of the Beiblatt zur Zeitschrift fur Bilende Kunst in 1879. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 437–38. 8. Although it is generally believed that Douglass did not begin working on Life and Times until 1879 or 1880, this letter clearly indicates that by 1878, he had at least begun thinking about writing a third autobiography. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 619. 9. Abraham Lincoln, Charles Sumner, and Ulysses S. Grant.

OTTILIE ASSING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Hoboken[, N.J.] 2 Dec[ember] 1878.

My dear Friend: With intense interest I followed you on your wanderings to all those places which are so familiar to me through your descriptions that I am under the impression as if I myself had once seen them in childhood. Your feelings I can perfectly interpret; I know what it is to visit such old haunts from

Y8204-Douglass.indb 449

5/17/23 2:35 PM

450

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 2 DECEMBER 1878

my own experience and should have given a great deal to be the pigtail that hangs behind him during this trip as elsewhere. That you should pick up Perry1 is just like you and natural enough under the circumstances. Among all the leeches that feed on you he is one of the most harmless and least expensive, and since you are wisely going to put him in the little house you will not be greatly troubled by his presence. But how then about the gardener? Shall I answer advertisements and see applicants while the house is occupied at least for the present or do you intend to build another if a suitable man should present himself? Saturday I received a letter from Ludmilla in which she mentions the suicide of her former husband and also the rumor about her stopping a small annuity.2 This she declares untrue and says that it has been contradicted. So much the better for her, yet there remains the disagreeable fact that he would be living today if he had not resigned his position in the army in order to marry her. To be sure, the world does not lose anything in him, but nevertheless I would not be in in her shoes. Queer people the Osbornes!3 When they lived in our neighborhood they did not return my call, and now, when I ignored them they went such a distance to see me. This shows at least that there is no prejudice of color behind, but some people act most strangely when natural, inborn tact clearly points the way. Mr. Lange4 recently furnished a striking illustration in this line. When Dr. Kudlich’s daughter died5 he merely sent a card, the coolest manner in which the most distant acquaintances can manifest their sympathy, although the summer before last, when he was engaged to his wife, the two came almost every fortnight to spend Sunday afternoon with the Kudlichs. I have not seen him since the evening when you were here, but yesterday had a very pleasant call from Franenstein.6 I told him of your glorious place and he said that he would much like to see you there some time in a favorable season. No better prospects yet concerning the disagreeable house, and matters are even so far worse that the druggist who occupies just half of it,7 has not yet paid his rent for November, and if then he could not pay fifty dollars, I don’t see how he will raise a hundred now. I don’t anticipate to get anything from him and don’t judge him a conscientious man, else he would not have taken the larger and elegant upper story, furnished it in fine style and even bought a piano that his wife might thump and jingle for the edification of mankind. This is too much in the style of Charles8 and of Mr. Beneck to expect much good. We both acted differently in former days. A most painful disappointment it is to me that under

Y8204-Douglass.indb 450

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 2 DECEMBER 1878

451

the circumstances I have yet to postpone buying cigars for you. It has always been endless gratification to me to see you smoke and enjoy them and I feel the deprivation most keenly. On Saturday I called on Mrs. Nickert.9 The old lady bears the weight of her ninety-four years remarkably well. If only she could have a little more company and be free from care, but Mrs. Nickert’s earnings fall shorter every year, and all which I can do for the present is to give them a few articles of clothing. Need everywhere! Everything good to you! Yours ever OTTILIA ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 286–88, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Perry Downs. 2. At age fifty-one, Ludmilla married an Italian officer twenty years her junior, Gino (or Cino) Grimelli (1841–78) in 1873. While many of Ludmilla’s closest friends disapproved of the marriage, Ottilie wrote to her sister: “I keep repeating my hope that Grimelli will prove as true, as faithful, and as thoroughly good and noble as Douglass.” Two months after their marriage, Ludmilla and Grimelli were separated. Ludmilla wrote to her sister that her husband was abusive and a philanderer. They were divorced a year later. In 1878, Grimelli committed suicide. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 312–13, 321. 3. Possibly a reference to Byron Osborne (b. 1832), a ship’s carpenter who lived in Hoboken, at 183 Bloomfield, for a few years in the 1870s with his wife, Elenor (b. 1838), his sister Charlotte, and several children. 1850 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Monmouth County, 218A; 1880 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Monmouth County, 403; 1900 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Monmouth County, 7B; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” 4. Johannes “John” Daniel Lange. 5. Hans and Luise Kudlich had a large family of nine children: Helene, William Tell, Paul, Herman, Lenora (Leona), Cora, Edith, Hans, and Matilda. Mathilde “Matilda” R. Kudlich died at age fifteen in October 1878. “New Jersey, Deaths and Burials Index, 1798–1971”, Ancestry.com. 6. Karl Heinrich Gustav Frauenstein. 7. Probably a reference to Dr. Julius Fehr. 8. Charles R. Douglass’s financial struggles were a source of constant tension with his father and frequently led to serious strains in their relationship. In 1870, after just two years in Washington, D.C., Charles was already in debt to his father by over one thousand dollars, and the situation only worsened in the years that followed. By the middle of the decade, Douglass was routinely being hounded by Charles’s creditors, who threatened both father and son with legal action, not to mention embarrassing publicity, unless Douglass agreed to pay his son’s ever-growing debts. In one striking case from early 1876, Douglass was asked to cover a debt of $175 that Charles had somehow managed to run up while serving as a member of his local school board. Although his financial difficulties could be partially explained by the relatively low wages that Charles earned in the government clerical jobs he held during much of his early career in Washington, D.C., a history of making bad investments, combined with a rather extravagant lifestyle, clearly exacerbated the situation and further strained his father’s patience. Pierre Islam, Perplexing Patriarchs: Fatherhood among Black Opponents and White Defenders of Slavery (Wilmington, Del., 2019), 126–27; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 551, 570–71; Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War, 205. 9. Although Assing refers to Mrs. Nickert, given her advanced age (ninety-four), it is more likely that she meant her mother’s cousin, the French-born Anna M. Reihl (1784–1882). Reihl immigrated

Y8204-Douglass.indb 451

5/17/23 2:35 PM

452

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 10 DECEMBER 1878

with her daughter Emilie Reihl Nickert (c. 1823–79) and son-in-law, the Reverend Peter Nickert (b. 1825), to the United States in 1852. The family initially settled in Buffalo but within a few months of their arrival were living in Lancaster (also in Erie County, New York), where Nickert became pastor of a small German American church. By 1865, Reihl, along with her now-widowed daughter and granddaughter, Marie, or “Mary,” was living in Rochester, New York, where her daughter supported the family as a French teacher. In the early 1870s the three women moved to Brooklyn, New York, where Mary Nickert (1855–90) married a Russian immigrant named Theodore Walpulski (b. 1847), in 1873. All three women lived in Brooklyn until their deaths. 1855 New York State Census, Erie County, 36; 1865 New York State Census, Monroe County, 14; Lohmann, Radical Passion, 336, 346, 360, 361–62, 364n; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 99–100, 111, 115, 128, 341; Find a Grave (online).

OTTILIE ASSING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Hoboken[, N.J.] 10 Dec[ember] 1878.

My dear Friend: Anything in the line of success or praise and acknowledgement you win, very naturally gives me pleasure and consequently I felt gratified in reading the article of the Eastern Gazette,1 although I think that aside from that part which treats exclusively of you the author takes a view by far too sanguine and rosy of the condition of the South and the prospects for the future. True, we are rid of slavery, but that is about all and no likelyhood of any progress for many years to come. A solid South,2 the Republican party there virtually dead, the Blacks virtually disfranchised even where they form the majority, ku-kluxed, defrauded, really without any rights which white men are bound to respect,3 there is indeed no cause to boast and crow over. Your own position is entirely an exceptional one, owing to your exceptional gifts, to your being a unique specimen of mankind, a y. m. in short, yet we know very well that just on that account you are the more a thorn in the flesh of every good Democrat. Yet the article is well intended, friendly to you and that is always to be appreciated. I anticipated nothing better on the part of the Pitts set and those connected with them. Mrs. Pitts4 is a crafty, plotting woman, not at all better or less unscrupulous than any of the Colman family.5 I only wish you will not hesitate to take possession of the land which they have bought with your money. Lending is a bad business anyhow and far from making friends and earning thanks those whom you have obliged are but too ready to turn against you the moment they find that you don’t mean to make them a present of the amount. The falling off in Mrs. Pitts’ visits I should however consider a gain at any rate. There is a distressing lack of genuineness about her, which I imagine even to notice in her face. I should

Y8204-Douglass.indb 452

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 10 DECEMBER 1878

453

rejoice anyhow to see you keep aloof from anybody and anything at all connected with that infamous Alpha.6 If you had read it as I have, notwithstanding my disgust, just for the sake of having a right to denounce it, you would agree with me that no good and pure-minded woman can advocate those monstrous doctrines, allow her imagination to run always in that same channel, read all that obscene stuff hidden under religious cant without being shocked unless she is so incurably and irredeemably stupid as to be considered altogether irresponsible. If it were not for the proximity of the fatal house,7 I should be quite satisfied with my interim state. To be sure, the house and the street are far inferior to 300 Washington Street,8 but what a contrast between warmhearted, kind and cordial Mrs. Cronemeyer9 and empty, shallow, indolent and selfish Mrs. Heyne!10 Indeed, I almost wonder now how patiently I stood company so entirely uncongenial to me for so many years merely out of friendship for Mrs. Werpup.11 The children too are quite amiable and never disturb by their presence like young Heynedom. Mr. Fehr12 is running into debt in New-York and seems doomed to ruin. It is a pity; there are so many truly good and noble qualities in him but so much mixed up with folly, confusion in his ideas and the like that he makes either enemies or is laughed at. I keep yet on good terms with him, although he has ruined me.— Mr.  Lange13 has forfeited his claim to atheistic saintship by consenting to be married by a clergyman. Queer that a sensible man should allow himself to be thus henpecked by such an inferior woman! I rejoice that your menagery is so well provided and I thank you in their name. Any kindness done to animals I feel personally thankful. My Maca is the favorite of the children and allows them to play with him. If the poor little piece of humanity should live, it will be chiefly owing to Madam’s and Louisa’s care.14 —It is a great thing that you can yet write without spectacles, though I don’t know whether you would not benefit your eyes by wearing them. Yours ever OTTILIA ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 297L–99L, FD Papers, DC. 1. Assing refers to an article about Douglass that appeared in the 30 November 1878 edition of Talbot County, Maryland’s Republican newspaper, the Easton Gazette. The article described Douglass’s first visit to his birthplace since his escape from slavery. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 180–97; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 839n. 2. The term “Solid South,” referring to a single Democratic voting bloc on the national level, was popularized by a former Confederate general, John Singleton Mosby, who used it in a widely

Y8204-Douglass.indb 453

5/17/23 2:35 PM

454

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 10 DECEMBER 1878

circulated letter regarding the Tilden-Hayes election. Mosby, who shocked his peers by endorsing Rutherford B. Hayes in the 1876 presidential election, had questioned what Hayes’s response would be if he were elected with a “solid South against him.” The term was picked up and widely used by numerous newspapers and periodicals. William Safire, Safire’s Political Dictionary (1968; New York, 2008), 680. 3. Assing alludes to language used in the Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) U.S. Supreme Court decision. 4. Assing appears to refer to Helen Pitts’s aunt, Emily Frances Post Pitts (1824–?). The daughter of Grove and Nancy Woodbridge Post, Frances Post Pitts was born in Rutland, Vermont, but grew up in Oneida County, New York, where her father moved sometime before June 1830. By 1855 the family was living on a 100-acre farm in Cattaraugus County, New York, where they remained for many years. In 1856 she married Hiram Pitts (1802–1901), and the couple moved to a small farm in Rock Island County, Illinois. Within a few years, they relocated to the District of Columbia, and Hiram Pitts found long-term employment as a clerk in the Treasury Department. By 1880 the Pittses had adopted a daughter, Lillian (1868–1960), who also worked as a clerk for a governmental agency. Lillian Pitts later married an engineer named John Kennedy Butler (1853–1927). The Pittses purchased property adjacent to Douglass’s home, Cedar Hill, and built a large house that was eventually known as Butler Heights. Frances Post Pitts was still living at Butler Heights with her daughter’s family in 1910. She died sometime before 1920. 1830 U.S. Census, New York, Oneida County, 293; 1855 New York State Census, Cattaraugus County, 15; 1860 U.S. Census, Illinois, Rock Island County, 328; 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 43C; 1910 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 12B; Louis Mitchell, The Woodbridge Record; Being an Account of the Descendants of Rev. John Woodbridge of Newbury, Mass. (New Haven, Conn., 1883), 121; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 654; Fought, Women, 240, 368n. 5. Douglass had a long friendship with Lucy N. Colman, a Rochester reformer, but no connection can be established between her family or any other Colmans and the Pitts family. Fought, Women, 62, 138, 171. 6. This is a reference to the Alpha, a feminist newspaper published by the Moral Education Society of Washington, D.C. Edited by the society’s president, Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, the Alpha began publication in 1875 and ran for thirteen years. Scholars have long associated Douglass’s future wife, Helen Pitts, with this publication, but Assing is clearly linking the Alpha with her aunt, Frances Post Pitts, who was a member of the Moral Education Society and served as its recording secretary from 1882 to 1884. Willard and Livermore, Woman of the Century, 791; Fought, Women, 368n; George B. H. Swayze, “Sanitary Social Clearance,” Medical Times, 39:36 (February 1911). 7. This is probably a reference to the building at 128 Bloomfield in Hoboken that Assing reluctantly took ownership of in repayment of the loan she had made to the Fehrs. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 340; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” 8. The son-in-law and daughter of Assing’s former landlady, Mrs. Werpup, lived at 300 Washington Street. “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” 9. A native of Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany, Ida Fehr Cronemeyer (1834–1911) was Dr. Julius Fehr’s sister and the wife of a toy importer and fellow German named Wilhelm Gustav Cronemeyer (1832–93). Ida Fehr immigrated to the United States in 1855. She and Gustav Cronemeyer were married in Manhattan in 1865, after which they settled in New Jersey. By 1878, they, along with their three young children (Charles R., Dorothy, and Albert L. Cronemeyer, ages ten, seven, and four, respectively), were living at 237 Bloomfield in Hoboken. In 1900, Mrs. Cronemeyer and her children were living in Manhattan, but by 1910 she was living with her surviving son (Albert) and daughter in Philadelphia, where she died the following year. 1880 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 32; 1900 U.S. Census, New York, New York County, 284A; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; “Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Church and Town Records, 1669–2013,” Ancestry.com; “New Jersey, Birth and Christenings, 1670–1980,” FamilySearch.org.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 454

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 18 DECEMBER 1878

455

10. Christened Georgine Auguste Elwire Sophie, “Ella” Werpup Heyne (1841–?) was the only surviving child of John D. and Eliza Werpup. A native of Bremen, Germany, she arrived alone in New York City on 18 April 1864. Under the name Elwire Werpup, she married Prussian-born Johannes Fredrich Heyne on 30 August 1865 in Hoboken, New Jersey. In the 1880 census, her husband, mistakenly identified as Robert, was listed as a broker, and the household, at 300 Washington Street, included three children ranging in age from six to thirteen, along with Eliza Werpup, who was Assing’s former landlady as well as Mrs. Heyne’s mother. By 1910, the widowed Mrs. Heyne was living with her daughter’s family at 217 Washington Street in Hoboken. 1880 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 32D; 1905 New Jersey State Census, Hudson County, 11B; 1910 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 9B; Lohmann, Radical Passion, 345, 347, 353, 364n; “New York, Passenger Lists, 1820–1957,” Ancestry.com; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; “U.S., Dutch Reformed Church Records in Selected States, 1639–1989”; “Deutschland Geburten und Taufen, 1558–1898.” 11. Eliza Werpup. 12. Julius Fehr. 13. Johannes D. Lange. 14. Assing probably alludes to Anna Murray Douglass and her granddaughter Alice Louisa Sprague, who were at that time attending the grievously ill Mary Elizabeth Murphy Douglass, Charles R. Douglass’s wife, who died early the following year. Lohmann, Radical Passion, 365.

OTTILIE ASSING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Hoboken[, N.J.] 18 D[e]c[ember] 1878.

My dear Friend: I am glad to learn that notwithstanding the election frauds and outrages in the South, notwithstanding the virtual disfranchisement of the Blacks you are yet capable of taking a hopeful view of the political situation, since thus far I have always found you a trustworthy barometer, quite as reliable—to say the least, as the men in the houses “where the weather is made” which we can see from your hill. Although I cannot entirely share it I find it a comfort that you don’t despair of the future. The other day I had a talk with Mr. Wehle,1 whom—though he is by no means a man of deep intellect, I have thus far found correct in his political anticipations, and consequently felt alarmed to learn that he is by no means confident about our power to carry the next Presidential election, and what outrages and abominations will be perpetuated before that time by a Congess with a Democratic majority in both houses!2—Did I tell you that I am again a regular reader of the Tribune and that we are on the very best terms? Is Whitelaw Reed3 still the Chief Editor? I never thought Charlotte Forten4 more than one of the half and half ones who may always be made to crowd back to the old sheep pen if brought under retrograde influences. It is on this account that I never can

Y8204-Douglass.indb 455

5/17/23 2:35 PM

456

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 18 DECEMBER 1878

assent to anything short of unconditional, radical unbelief. If you leave the smallest backdoor, nay, a mere rathole open for the old faith you always risk that the whole devil with horns and hoofs, Trinity, hell salvation and all the other entities of the old gospel shop will again force his way in. I wish you will remain faithful to your good resolution not to lend money again. When I saw all those little scraps of promissory notes I knew that they were no more than so many pieces of waste paper, Mr. Osgood’s5 of all others since he knew very well that you would not strip him of the old rag carpets, boot jacks and cloth horses which he has pledged as security. As for feeding the other hangers on, who claim relationship, I should not object if only I felt certain that you were laying by enough to dispense entirely with lecturing even if your term of officeholding should come to an end with that of the present Administration. Provided you have enough through life I shall neither worry about the rest since I too feel convinced that all that you have acquired by your labor will be squandered without benefit to anybody.—No improvement concerning the fatal house. The store still arrear and the druggist does not pay his rent. The other day I have had to pay hundred dollars taxes out of my pocket, making an irretrievable loss of 550 dollars since the first of May. Miss Fehr6 can have a convenient house in New-York whenever she chooses, and is determined to take it by the first of May at the latest, and even earlier if she finds some other boarders before that time. You are mistaken in supposing that Dr. Frauenstein7 had any plans about going to Washington this winter. He told me and I wrote you that he might possibly think of such a trip by next spring. The inclosed pictures are for the two little girls in the place of the pictures that I used to cut for them or to draw on the slate. They are not too much spoiled yet to be amused by such trifles. My Maca sends his best thanks to Mrs. Douglass8 for the walnuts and is passionately fond of them. He was silent all the time I was absent and has been talking charmingly from the moment I came back. He is convinced that I belong to him exclusively; what do you think of it? My love to my four legged good daughter, Rock and Nellie Grant9! Yours ever OTTILIA ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 299R–301L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Charles Wehle (1827–1900) was born in Budapest, Hungary, and immigrated to the United States in 1850. He became a naturalized citizen in 1854 while living in Hoboken, New Jersey. In 1858 he married Emily Arend (1838–1922), a German immigrant, with whom he had ten children. Wehle initially worked as a business agent, but by 1870 he was a successful attorney with a practice based in Manhattan. By 1880, he and his family were living in Manhattan, where he remained for the rest of

Y8204-Douglass.indb 456

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO RICHARD J. HINTON, 20 FEBRUARY 1879

457

his life. 1860 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 25; 1870 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, 7; 1880 U.S. Census, New York, New York County, 519C–519D; “U.S., Passport Applications, 1795–1925”; “New York, New York, U.S., Extracted Death Index, 1862–1948.” 2. In the Forty-fifth Congress (1875–79), Republicans had the majority in the Senate, and the Democrats in the House. During the 1878 midterm elections, Democrats gained control of the Senate yet lost their House majority, thanks to the election of several third-party candidates. Since Democrats retained a plurality of House members, they stayed in control of the chamber. “Party Divisions of the House of Representatives, 1st Congress–73rd Congress (1789–1935),” history.house.gov; “Party Divisions in the Senate,” senate.gov. 3. William Whitelaw Reid. 4. Charlotte Forten married the black Presbyterian minister Francis J. Grimké in December 1878. The new couple moved to Jacksonville, Florida, but returned to Washington, D.C., in 1889. Janice Sumler-Edmond, “Charlotte Forten Grimké,” in Darlene Clark Hine, ed., Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (New York, 1993): 1:505–07. 5. The editors have not been able to identify Mr. Osgood or confirm that he owed money to Douglass. By December 1878, Douglass had lived in Washington, D.C., for nearly eight years, and his former house in Rochester had burned in the summer of 1872. Therefore, it seems most likely that Mr. Osgood was someone both Douglass and Assing knew either in Washington, D.C., or Hoboken, New Jersey, where Assing lived. While the editors have been unable to locate anyone by this name in the Hoboken city directories during the relevant time period, three men named Osgood were residing in Washington, D.C., in the late 1870s: Worth Osgood, William C. Osgood, and James B. Osgood. Worth Osgood and James B. Osgood can easily be eliminated as Douglass’s debtor: Worth Osgood was a successful patent attorney, and James B. Osgood, a clerk in the auditor’s office, had sufficient wealth to employ two servants. The third man, William C. Osgood, a clerk in the patent office, remains a candidate for the man who owed Douglass money, but this identification is speculative at best. 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 11; Wirt Robinson, ed., Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. (Saginaw, Mich., 1920), 6A:141; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 588, 606; Fought, Women, 213; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; “U.S., Register of Civil Military, and Naval Services, 1863–1909,” Ancestry.com. 6. Eliza Broquet Fehr. 7. Gustav Frauenstein. 8. Anna Murray Douglass. 9. Nellie Grant is likely one of Douglass’s horses. In a letter dated 22 April 1879, Assing notes that Douglass had been having difficulties with Nellie Grant, even though he “treated her gently.” She also mentions that Nathan Sprague was the animal’s original owner and implies that he may have taken advantage of his father-in-law in the transaction. Rock is probably another horse, although the editors cannot confirm that. Ottilie Assing to Douglass, 22 April 1879, General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 328R–30, FD Papers, DLC.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO RICHARD J. HINTON1 Wash[ington, D.C.] 20 Feb[ruar]y 1879.

My Dear Hinton: Richard Realf 2 is about the only man of John Brown’s men that I do not know something about. I have it is true, heard Capt Brown speak of Realf— as an able and brave man—but I never saw him. You are mistaken about my attending the John Brown Convention at Chatham. Captain Brown left

Y8204-Douglass.indb 457

5/17/23 2:35 PM

458

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 19 MARCH 1879

my house in Rochester3 to attend that convention and warmly urged me to go—but I could not see the wisdom of that measure. It seemed to me a means of advertising our plans in advance. Conventions did not seem just the place to put an important secret for safe keeping. I shall be very glad to see your face once more—Come round to the City Hall Very truly yours FREDK DOUGLASS ALS: James Eldridge Manuscripts, Henry E. Huntington Library. 1. London-born Richard J. Hinton (1830–1901) had learned the stonecutter trade in his native country but decided to seek greater educational and economic opportunity in the United States in 1851. He became a printer and then a reporter for newspapers in New York City and Boston. Opposed to slavery, Hinton traveled to the Kansas Territory, where he reported sympathetically on the free-state cause. He served as an officer of a black Union army regiment in the Civil War and then as an inspector for the Freedmen’s Bureau. Hinton held a series of minor federal government appointments in later decades, but he devoted considerable energy to researching and writing John Brown and His Men: With Some Account of the Roads They Traveled to Reach Harper’s Ferry (1894), which warmly defended its subject. He also wrote on behalf of the labor movement and campaigned for Henry George for New York City mayor in 1886. Hinton had befriended a fellow English expatriate named Richard Realf in Kansas, whose poetry he collected and published, along with a short memoir, in Poems by Richard Realf: Poet, Soldier, Workman (1898). McKivigan, Forgotten Firebrand, 80, 174; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 5:63; William E. Connelley, “Col. Richard J. Hinton,” Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society, 1901–1902, 7:486–93 (1902). 2. A follower of John Brown, Richard Realf (1832–78) was born in Framfield, East Sussex, England, and immigrated to the United States in 1854. He traveled to the Kansas Territory in 1856, where he briefly worked as a reporter for several East Coast newspapers. Realf accompanied Brown to Canada in an effort to recruit free blacks for the proposed raid on the South. When Brown’s raid was postponed, Realf returned to England and then went to Texas, where he was arrested at the time of the Harpers Ferry raid in October 1859. After being questioned by federal authorities about his role in Brown’s plot, Realf was eventually released. He served in the Civil War and became an officer of a black regiment after the war. He resigned from the army in 1870 and became a journalist in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A talented poet, Realf named Hinton his literary executor at the time of his suicide in Oakland, California, where he had moved after a divorce. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopedia and Annual Register of Important Events of the Year 1899 (New York, 1900), 202, 431; ANB (online). 3. John Brown resided at Douglass’s Rochester house for three weeks beginning on 27 January 1858. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:236, 824–25.

OTTILIE ASSING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Hoboken[, N.J.] 19 March 1879.

My dear Friend: As a matter of course your description of the sensible funeral which you gave to the poor little piece of humanity1 has been highly gratifying to me

Y8204-Douglass.indb 458

5/17/23 2:35 PM

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 19 MARCH 1879

459

although in fact I did not expect anything less of my dear, enlightened boy. It never occurred to me that you might feel tempted to make humiliating concessions to superstition and prejudice; I felt perfectly sure of you and have been right in my anticipations as almost always. You will remember how frequently I told you that even in respect to worldly success—entirely aside from the gratifying consciousness of intellectual and moral independence—you would make your career just as well outside as inside of the Church, no matter whether denounced or blessed by the pious and now you are the “bloated officeholder!” appointed even by a praying President2 and the more honored for your moral courage by all sensible, enlightened people. It is a great grief and serious source of care to me that your financial condition should nevertheless be in so unsatisfactory and precarious a condition. I had hoped that these four years in office would be amply sufficient to secure to you a modest independence and freedom from financial cares for the remainder of your life and I still think that you might have accomplished it if it were not for all the hangerson and parasites who abuse of your kindness either on the plea of relationship or on that of being allies in opinion. No opening yet for Charles3 I suppose? How much longer does he expect to be supported in idleness? No, you really wrong me in supposing that I underestimate the ailments of others and yours in particular. It is just the reverse, for since I consider physical suffering the greatest, most absolute and unconditional evil for which there is no compensation whatsoever, I feel deeper pity with those afflicted in that line than with any others. When after waiting most anxiously I received your note in which you informed me that though yet suffering from a cold, you expected to be all right again within a few days I rejoiced of course to learn that it was nothing worse. If then you yourself underestimated your ailment, I am heartily sorry for it, yet could not anticipate it. You give expression to a thought which I have entertained for some time without uttering it thus far: yes, war would be the best thing to save us from another edition of the bad old times! In my opinion it would also be the only means for preventing the final dissolution of the Union, since I don’t see any possibility of a solid North and solid South of living together peaceably in the long run under the conditions now existing which redress can only be had through another war. I am truly delighted to see you take such a hopeful view of the political outlook, for I trust your judgment and need it to brace me up, since I feel almost despondent in view of a Congress Democratic in both branches with vast powers for mischief.4

Y8204-Douglass.indb 459

5/17/23 2:35 PM

460

OTTILIE ASSING TO DOUGLASS, 19 MARCH 1879

A note from Mr. Koehler5 to Dr. Kudlich6 announces his arrival toward the end of the week. He adds that there is now a prospect of for the realization of his favorite plans. That would be a great thing, too good indeed to conceive great hopes, since in the case of failure the disappointment too would be the more bitter. I shall have a severe strain on my time. The other day Willy Loewenthal7 came to me and told me that he was going to leave the public school, that there was no discipline, that he had no respect for his teachers and consequently wasted his time without learning anything. He therefore asked me to teach him the languages for a while previous to and in preparation for his entering some kind of business. All this winter I have devoted a whole evening of the week to him, but in the future I shall have to give him another for I cannot well refuse under the circumstances, especially since the dear fellow has an unbounded confidence in my ability as well as in my friendship for him and in that confidence he must not be disappointed. He is indeed like a faithful comrade to me. Good [illegible] health and all other good things to you! Yours ever OTTILIA ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 319R–21, FD Papers, DLC. 1. This is most likely a reference to the funeral of Douglass’s grandson Edward Arthur Douglass (1877–79), who died at Cedar Hill on 13 March. Fought, Women, 310. 2. During his presidency, Rutherford B. Hayes and his wife, Lucy Webb Hayes, were known to set aside time each morning for a prayer session and Bible reading, which always concluded with a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. Mrs. Hayes also hosted a weekly hymn singing at the White House. Hans L. Trefousse, Rutherford B. Hayes (New York, 2002), 102; Richard Norton Smith, “The Gold in the Gilded Age,” in The White House: Actors and Observers, ed. William Seale, (New York, 2002), 80–82. 3. Following the death of his wife in September 1878, Charles R. Douglass left his children with his parents at Cedar Hill and took his wife’s body back to New York to be buried near her family home. It appears that he remained in New York for many months after the funeral, during which he was unemployed, as his father noted in a letter to Amy Post in April 1879. Douglass to Amy Post, 14 April 1879, Post Family Papers, NRU; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 606; Fought, Women, 223. 4. At the beginning of the Forty-sixth Congress, which lasted from 4 March 1879 to 4 March 1881, the Republican party controlled the Senate, 38–36, while the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, 145–136. By the end of the session, however, Democrats controlled both houses: 42–31 in the Senate, and 146–129 in the House. Kenneth C. Martin, The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress, 1789–1989 (New York, 1989), 133–34; Kenneth C. Martin, The Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts, 1789–1983 (New York, 1982), 113–14. 5. Sylvester Rosa Koëhler. 6. Johann “Hans” Kudlich. 7. William Tell Lowenthal.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 460

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO AMY POST, 14 APRIL 1879

461

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO AMY POST Washington, D.C. 14 April 1879[.]

Amy Post. My dear friend: I am truly sorry to know that our friend Sojourner Truth, is still in need of help and equally sorry that I am so little able to help her.1 I was pretty well off in Rochester and had a dollar or two to put in whenever the friends of brave Sojourner were pleased to hand around the hat for her. But now, as I have said, I can do but little in this line. Washington has been a financial misfortune. I lost ten thousand dollars by my news paper Enterprize2 and have losing in other directions ever since. I have now three families to support. Three of Rosa’s children, 3 a part of of Charley’s whose wife is dead4—and my old sick brother Perry and his daughter.5 Brother Perry has been on the Doctor’s hands all winter and is still very feeble. I do not think he will even be able to make his own living again. Slavery got about all the work there was in him and he has come to me to spend his last days. He is a dear old fellow and I am glad to have a shelter for him. My position here exposes me to an unceasing stream of applications for help and I try to respond favorably to most of them—but I have now about touched bottom. I bought property when I came here when it was dear—and have it now on my hands when it is nearly worthless, except in prospect. Please find one dollar within for the Sojourner Truth fund. I wish it were ten, but half the dear old Lady’s friends will do as much she will have many hundreds to smooth her declining years. I too regret that I cannot see and hear more of you. I am glad to hear from you always—and shall be glad to help you in any good work which may engage your hand and heart—though it be ever so little—for I know your justice as well as your benevolence. You say nothing of Willie.6 I should be delighted to see him and his bride.7 Your hand writing implies soundness of body and mind—and gives me hope that you may yet live long to bless the the needy and unfortunate. Remember most kindly of Mrs Titus8 I should have been glad of a word about all your dear circle William9 and Mary10 Mrs Titus and sister Sarah.11 I expect to forget many things before I die—but never you or the dear members of your family. Anna12 is still pretty well, and I feel pretty strong though official life is making me a little too fat. With kindest regards Yours truly always FREDK DOUGLASS

Y8204-Douglass.indb 461

5/17/23 2:35 PM

462

DOUGLASS TO AMY POST, 14 APRIL 1879

ALS: Post Family Papers, Rush Rhees Library, NRU 1. Sojourner Truth, along with her biographer Frances Titus, toured New York and the Midwest in 1878 to promote the recently published expanded version of the iconic abolitionist’s A Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Truth used the Post home in Rochester as her base during the New York portion of her tour. Margaret Washington, A Sojourner Truth’s America (Urbana, 2009), 217, 276, 370–71; Hewitt, Radical Friend, 273, 275. 2. Douglass alludes to the closure of the Washington New National Era. 3. At one point or another, four of Rosetta Douglass Sprague’s surviving children (Annie Rosine, Harriet Bailey, Estelle Irene, and Fredericka Douglass) resided with Douglass and his wife at Cedar Hill for long stretches of time. Indeed, Annie and Harriet lived with their grandparents for such extended periods that they were more or less considered members of Douglass’s household. It is therefore likely that Douglass refers here to some combination of three of the four Sprague sisters. 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 3; Fought, Women, 267, 310. 4. Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Murphy Douglass died on 21 September 1878. At least one of Charles and Libbie Douglass’s children, Julia Ada, was still living with Douglass the following year. 1880 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington; Fought, 310. 5. Douglass most likely refers to Anna Downs, but Perry Downs and his wife, Maria, had four children, so another daughter might be the niece in question. In 1869, Anna Downs (c. 1856) was living with and working for a family named Fisher in Buffalo, New York. In October of that year, Anna’s employer wrote a letter asking Douglass to contact other family members, in particular her sister Isabella, to let them know where she was living. The following year, however, Anna was listed as a member of her uncle’s Rochester household in the 1870 census and described as a domestic servant. Anna Downs to Douglass, 5 October 1869, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 497–99, FD Papers, DLC; 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 15. 6. Willet “Willie” Edmund Post (1847–1917) was Isaac and Amy Kirby Post’s youngest child. Born in Rochester, New York, he was educated at the Union Springs Friends Academy, a boarding school in Cayuga County, New York. After graduating from Union Springs, he returned to his parents’ home and began working as a clerk in his father’s drugstore. Like his parents, he was a spiritualist and supported both the abolitionist and woman suffrage movements. In 1884 he served as secretary of a meeting of the New York State Woman Suffrage Society held in Rochester. In later life he joined the Rochester Unitarian Church and took over as druggist at the family’s drugstore. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 22; 1900 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 73A; 1910 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 8A; Hewitt, Radical Friend, 114–15, 219, 231, 238, 245–46, 250, 261, 271, 273, 276, 284–85; Find a Grave (online). 7. Josephine Wheeler Post (1848–1929) was born in Cayuga County, New York. Her father, Edward Wheeler, was a wealthy farmer who at different times owned farms in both Cayuga and Monroe counties. In November 1877 she married Willet “Willie” Edmund Post and moved into the Rochester home of her widowed mother-in-law, Amy Kirby Post. She and her husband had three children, including Ruden Wheeler Post (1879–1955), who eventually succeeded his father as druggist at the family’s drugstore. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Cayuga County, 203; 1860 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 23; 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Cayuga County, 16; 1920 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 8A; Find a Grave (online). 8. Frances Walling Titus (1817–94) was born in Vermont to a Quaker family. In 1844, she married Richard Titus (c. 1802–68), a kinsman of Isaac Post and a fellow member of the Society of Friends. Titus spent his youth at sea, eventually becoming captain of a commercial ship that sailed to the West Indies and South America. After their marriage, Captain Titus retired from his career as a sailor and moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, where he owned and operated a flour mill. In Battle Creek, Frances Titus became active in the woman suffrage and antislavery movements and frequently hosted abolitionist speakers, such as Parker Pillsbury, when they came to town. In 1867 she organized a school for African American adults that met twice a week in city hall. In the 1870s, she befriended Sojourner Truth, and in 1875, she underwrote the cost of publishing a new edition of Truth’s 1850

Y8204-Douglass.indb 462

5/17/23 2:35 PM

ELIZABETH THOMPSON TO DOUGLASS, 14 APRIL 1879

463

Narrative and oversaw the inclusion of new material (including “Ar’n’t I a Woman?”) that was collectively known as Truth’s “Book of Life.” In 1877 and 1878 she accompanied Truth on a series of speaking engagements across Michigan to promote the book, serving as her business manager, travel companion, and secretary. In 1878–1879 she traveled with Truth on a six-month speaking engagement on the East Coast, and from September through December 1879, she went with Truth to Kansas, where both women volunteered with the Kansas Freedmen’s Relief Association. Following Truth’s death in 1883, Titus oversaw publication of a final edition of Truth’s Narrative (1884). 1860 U.S. Census, Michigan, Calhoun County, 80; 1880 U.S. Census, Michigan, Calhoun County, 31; Carleton Mabee, Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend (New York, 1993), 147; John Ernest, “The Floating Icon and the Fluid Text: Rereading the Narrative of Sojourner Truth,” American Literature, 78:462 (September 2006); Find a Grave (online). 9. Arriving in Rochester in 1841, William R. Hallowell (1816–82) ran a woolen mill and leather business. In 1843, he married Isaac Post’s daughter Mary. He was a member of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society and of the board of education in Rochester. Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, 2:1243–44; Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 61. 10. Mary Post Hallowell (1823–1913) was the daughter of Isaac Post and his first wife, Hannah Kirby (the elder sister of her stepmother, Amy). Mary and her husband, William Hallowell, were numbered among Douglass’s circle of friends in Rochester and actively participated in the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society. She was also a member of local temperance and women’s rights organizations and acted as an agent for the National Anti-Slavery Standard in 1865. Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 61, 131, 163, 209–10. 11. Sarah Kirby Hallowell Willis. 12. Anna Murray Douglass.

ELIZABETH THOMPSON TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS New York[, N.Y.] 14 April [18]79[.]

Dear Mr Douglas Could you not arouse the people of the North to the awful situation of the colored people all through the South and in this way raise many to enable all the colored people who wish to leave that part of the country to do so?1 Could we not in some way help them to settle in colonies? Think how they must suffer in their poverty and helplessness helpless ignorance when separated from each other. Could you realize how my heart aches not only for these poor creatures but for every thing that can think or feel you would not wonder that I am tired of life and ask no other future than annilation. Who can wish to live forever? I have lived enough— But this is bluer in tone than in color, so I will change the subject You can use my name whenever & whereever it will do any good or give any strength to the [illegible]—except in the praises of many, in this I must always be consulted—Pardon my being a little divided in this, but I have been so awfully bit so many times because I was too impulsive and

Y8204-Douglass.indb 463

5/17/23 2:35 PM

464

DOUGLASS TO LEE CRANDALL, 24 MAY 1879

too unguarded in my remark, that it makes me overcautious perhaps when there is no reason for it—but you at least will not misunderstand me. I wish you would write me so often as you can find time and inclination. I am always more than glad to see your hand writing May you live long and be both happy and useful through this life and the life to come2 With best wishes I am as ever Sincerely E THOMPSON ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 377–79L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Elizabeth Thompson alludes to the “Colored Exodus” issue, which consumed Douglass’s attention during much of the year. 2. Thompson outlived Douglass and died on 20 July 1899 in Littleton, New Hampshire. NAW, 3:452–54.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO LEE CRANDALL1 [n.p. 24 May 1879.]

E DITOR OF THE NATIONAL VIEW : Sir: I cheerfully accept your offer of a limited space in your columns, in which to state the grounds of my opposition to the so-called colored exodus.2 I am, briefly, opposed to that movement, because it is not the proper solution of the Southern question. That question will not be solved and cannot be solved until the constitutional provisions guaranteeing equal rights shall be peacefully executed in every State of the Union, South as well as North. I am opposed to this exodus, because it is a wretched substitute for the fulfillment of the national obligations by which the Government is held and firmly bound to protect every American citizen, of whatever color, upon any and every part of the American domain. I am opposed to the exodus, because it is an untimely concession to the idea that colored people and white people cannot live together in peace and prosperity unless the whites are a majority, and control the Legislation and hold the offices of the State. I am opposed to this exodus, because it will cast upon the people of Kansas and other Northern States a multitude of deluded, hungry, homeless, naked, and destitute people, to be supported in a large measure by alms. I am opposed to this exodus, because it will enable our political adversaries to make successful appeals to popular

Y8204-Douglass.indb 464

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO LEE CRANDALL, 24 MAY 1879

465

prejudice, (as in the case of the Chinese.) on the ground these people, so ignorant and helpless, have been imported for the purpose of making the North solid by outvoting intelligent white Northern citizens. I am opposed to this exodus, because rolling stones gather no moss, and I agree with Emerson,3 that the men who made Rome, or any other locality worth going to see staid there. There is in my judgment no part of the U. S. where an industrious and intelligent colored man can serve his race more wisely and efficiently than upon the soil where he was born and reared and is known. I am opposed to this exodus, because I see in it a tendency to convert colored laboring men into traveling tramps, first going North because they are persecuted, and then returning South because they have been deceived and disappointed in their expectations: who will excite against themselves and against our whole race an increased measure of popular contempt and scorn. I am opposed to this exodus, because I believe that the condition of existence in the Southern States are steadily improving, and that the colored man there will ultimately realize the fullest measure of liberty and equality accorded and secured in any section of our country. It is all nonsense (and perhaps something worse) and almost beneath contempt to compare the evils (great as they are) from which the colored man is now fleeing to the North with those endured by colored men in the time of slavery. The men who make this comparison with a view to convict me of inconsistency know that there is nothing analogous in the two situations. There the black man was a chattel; now he is a man and a man among men. Then the black man was a slave; now he is a free man. Then the black man had no legal or constitutional rights which anybody was bound to respect; now he has all the legal and constitutional rights which are guaranteed to the most exalted citizen of the republic. It is true that these rights have been in many instances cloven down by violence, and that for the present the Constitution is inoperative; but shall we, who have borne so many hardships and outrages and seen so many changes in our favor, now throw up the sponge, abandon our vantage ground of possession, which is nine points of the law,4 and go among strangers in pursuit of homes in a cold and uncongenial climate, rather than remain on the soil of our birth, where we may live down persecution and oppression. If there is any part of the U. S. to which the negro has a stronger claim for peaceful residence than any other, that part is that lying south of Mason and Dixon’s line.5 Whatever the South is in point of wealth and civilization the negro has made her. His labor has converted the Southern wilderness into fruitful fields, and dotted them about with comfortable

Y8204-Douglass.indb 465

5/17/23 2:35 PM

466

DOUGLASS TO LEE CRANDALL, 24 MAY 1879

homes. His arm has leveled her forest, extracted the stumps, reclaimed her waste places, graded her roads, supported her commerce, developed her resources; in a word tilled her soil with his hard hands moistened with sweat, and enriched it with his blood, and has a claim to remain on her soil against all comers. Armed as the negro is now with legal and constitutional guarantees, and being the muscular and laboring arm of the South, I cannot yet believe that with these advantages he is so destitute of mutual power, that he cannot make living terms with those who want his labor, and who must have it or accept poverty and ruin instead. My counsel to him, therefore, is to bide his time to labor and wait, in the full assurance time and events will sooner or later, establish his rights in the South upon enduring foundations. I have seen many attempts to lash colored men into schemes of emigration. I am old enough to remember the Haytian emigration scheme fifty-four years ago;6 another to the British West Indies forty years ago7 another still to Central America sixteen years ago;8 and they only served to unsettle the minds of the colored people, deranging their plans of enterprise for home improvements, and were transient, as I believe this one will be. The hundreds may go, but the millions will stay behind, and will finally have their wisdom in so doing rewarded with peace and prosperity. FREDERICK DOUGLASS PLSr: Fort Scott (Kans.) Colored Citizen, n.d. 1. Lee Crandall (1832–1926) was the editor and proprietor of the National View, a weekly political newspaper published in Washington, D.C. Born in New Berlin, New York, Crandall moved to Louisiana and became a merchant and a newspaper editor. He served as a colonel in the Confederate cavalry. After the war, he settled in Washington and edited the National View from 1879 to 1884. Crandall was a Greenback propagandist of some fame. He was the national secretary of the thirdparty Greenback-Labor movement in the early 1880s. He then moved to Arizona and became a mine operator. A free-silver advocate, Crandall later supported the Populist party. He eventually returned to Washington and worked for the early Internal Revenue Service. Meriden (Conn.) Daily Republican, 15 September 1880; Washington Evening Star, 2 August 1880; Washington National Republican, 16 April 1881; New York Times, 8 June 1881; Bruce S. Allardice, Confederate Colonels: A Biographical Register (Columbia, Mo., 2008), 113. Crew, Centennial History of Washington, D.C., 463–64. 2. In early 1879, waves of African Americans migrated from the South to Kansas, initiating the great Kansas Fever Exodus. This group—known as Exodusters—formed the most significant migration in the United States following the Civil War. Around six thousand Exodusters traveled to Kansas, largely from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, during the course of a few months. Kansas appealed to the Exodusters for a variety of reasons. The state had long been associated with radical abolitionists, such as the militant John Brown, and many viewed it as an ideal refuge to escape the newly enforced Black Codes in the South, which denied blacks civil liberties. There was also an effort by the federal government to populate the prairie states, and advertisements promoting Kansas ran

Y8204-Douglass.indb 466

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO LEE CRANDALL, 24 MAY 1879

467

widely in the South. While the harsh climate and lack of jobs in Kansas made life difficult for many of the Exodusters, migration steadily continued well into 1881. Charlotte Hinger, Nicodemus: PostReconstruction Politics and Racial Justice in Western Kansas (Norman, Okla., 2016), 3, 42; Painter, Exodusters, 146, 184, 187, 191, 200; Athearn, In Search of Canaan, 4, 7, 202; John G. Van Deusen, “The Exodus of 1879,” JNH, 21:111, 124 (April 1936). 3. Ralph Waldo Emerson. 4. The sources for this adage are obscure, but it is often attributed to a Scottish expression “Possession is eleven points in the law, and they say there are but twelve.” It first appeared in print in Colley Cibber’s play Woman’s Wit, or, The Lady in Fashion (1697), act 1. 5. Disputes between Pennsylvania in the North and Maryland and Virginia in the South were resolved when the English surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon marked the precise borders between these colonies in 1763–67. Hubertis M. Cummings, The Mason and Dixon Line: Story for a Bicentenary, 1763–1963 (Harrisburg, Pa., 1962). 6. Two events can be considered catalysts for the Haitian emigration scheme of the 1820s. First, when Haiti won its independence from France in 1804, its constitution abolished slavery. Second, discussions regarding colonization were amplified following the founding of the American Colonization Society in 1816. While a large majority of whites in the society promoted Africa as the ideal African American colony, many free blacks viewed Haiti as the preferable location for migration. Haiti was closer to the United States, and its revolution had established it as a black republic, which many viewed as a country where they could find true freedom and equality. Supported by prominent black church leaders and endorsed by the Haitian president Jean-Pierre Boyer, who pledged financial aid to immigrants, six thousand to eight thousand African Americans immigrated to Haiti during the early 1820s. Problems soon arose. Social differences between African Americans and Haitians became insurmountable, especially regarding religion and language. Furthermore, rural life in a tropical climate proved difficult for many new settlers. After the Haitian government ended financial support to the immigrants in May 1825, thousands returned to the United States. Chris Dixon, African America and Haiti: Emigration and Black Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century (Westport, Conn., 2000), 15–52; Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Setting Down the Sacred Past: African-American Race Histories (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), 110–11, 119–123, 126; Eric Anderson, “Black Émigrés: The Emergence of Nineteenth-Century United States Black Nationalism in Response to Haitian Emigration and Colonization, 1816–1840,” 49th Parallel, 1:1–8 (Winter 1999) (online). 7. Douglass perhaps alludes to proposals made in the late 1830s by the Reverend Lewis Woodson of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In a series of letters to the New York Colored American, Woodson denounced the racism that free blacks as well as slaves endured in the United States. He endorsed African American immigration to Canada and the British West Indies, declaring, “I had rather be a living freeman, even in one of these places, than a ‘dead nigger’ in the United States.” Woodson denied that such emigration would mean abandoning brethren trapped in slavery, but rather promoted it as an effort to undermine that institution by demonstrating the productive potential of free black labor “in a colony of our choice.” Woodson’s proposal set off a debate among African American leaders of that era and influenced the next generation of emigrationists, including Henry Highland Garnet and Martin R. Delany. Miller, Search for a Black Nationality, 94–105. 8. In August 1862, President Lincoln—who had entertained the idea of black colonization during his entire public career up to that time—met with a committee of black leaders at the White House to discuss potential colonization projects. He understood that some might be hesitant to settle in Africa and instead offered a site in the Chiriquí province of Panama, which was still part of Colombia at the time. Ambrose Thompson, a speculator who wished to sell this bit of land to the U.S. government, promoted it as an area rich in coal. Lincoln and others promoted the Chiriquí province as a desirable location where colonists would quickly establish themselves economically, based on coal production. By September 1862, five hundred blacks had signed up for this colonization plan, with another four thousand on the waiting list. Ultimately, it was discovered that the coal

Y8204-Douglass.indb 467

5/17/23 2:35 PM

468

DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL D. PORTER, 25 JUNE 1879

in the province was nearly worthless, leaving Lincoln to distrust Thompson altogether. Also, several Central American countries protested against the Chiriquí project, and by October the plan had been abandoned. Paul D. Escott, “What Shall We Do with the Negro?”: Lincoln, White Racism, and Civil War America (Charlottesville, Va., 2009), 53, 58; Richard Striner, Lincoln and Race (Carbondale, Ill., 2012), 41–42; Warren A. Beck, “Lincoln and Negro Colonization in Central America,” Abraham Lincoln Quarterly, 6:166, 169, 171–74, 180–81 (September 1950); Paul J. Scheips, “Lincoln and the Chiriquí Colonization Project,” JNH, 37:416–19 (October 1952).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL D. PORTER Washington, D.C. 25 June 1879.

Sam.l D. Porter Esqr. My dear Sir: I am extremely obliged to you for your kind and timely letter which came this morning detailed as it was on a sick bed (from which I hope you may soon recover), for it was a relief from a real cause of embarrassment. When first I read of the formal unveiling and the presentation of my Bust to the City of Rochester,1 the speeches made on the occasion by eminent gentleman—notably the remarks of Doctor Anderson,2 the honored President of Rochester University an Institution—which has done so much to make the name of the city illustrious, I felt an almost irrepressible in impulse to do or say something, out of the common way, to some one of my old friends and fellow citizens, which should express however crudely, something of the grateful sentiment stirred in my breast, by this distinguished honor. But as no one of the respected gentlemen active in the procurement of the Testimonial, said anything to me about it—and treated me as if I were out of the world as all men should be when they are once reduced to marble, I began at last to think that silence on my part was perhaps, the best way for me to observe the proprieties of the occasion. Now however I am relieved. You have made it easy for me to speak to express my warmest acknowledgements to the Committee gentlemen having this matter in charge and who have conducted it to completion. Incidents of this character in my life do much amaze me. It it is not however, the height to which I have risen but the depth from which I have come that most amazes me. It seems only a little while ago when a child, I might have been seen fighting with old “Nep” my mother’s dog, for a small share of the few crumbs that fell from the kitchen table when I slept on the hearth, covering my feet from the cold with the warm ashes and covering my head with a corn bag: only a little while ago dragged to prison to be sold to the highest bidder exposed for

Y8204-Douglass.indb 468

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL D. PORTER, 25 JUNE 1879

469

sale like a beast of burden: later on put out to live with Covey3 the negro breaker—beaten and almost broken in spirit—having little hope either for my self or my race: yet here I am alive and active—and with my race enjoying citizenship in the freest, and prospectively the most powerful nation on the globe. In addition to this you and your friends, while I am yet alive, have thought it worthwhile to preserve my features in marble and to place them in your most honored institution of learning to be viewed by present and future generations of men. I know not my friend, how to thank you and the gentlemen who have acted with you for this distinguished honor. My attachment to Rochester—my home for more than a quarter of a century will endure with my life. Very gratefully and truly yours, FREDK DOUGLASS— ALS: Frederick Douglass Papers, NRU. 1. A reference to the bust sculpted by Mundy Johnson, which Douglass had sat for several years earlier. The statue was publicly unveiled and installed in Sibley Hall on the University of Rochester campus on 16 June 1879. Among the speakers were Dr. Martin Brewer Anderson, president of the university; Frederick Augustus Whittlesey, a wealthy local lawyer and merchant; and Cornelius R. Parsons, the mayor. The statue’s pedestal was also provided by Mr. Sibley. Boston Folio, 8:70 (March 1873); Rochester Union and Chronicle, 17 April 1879. 2. Martin Brewer Anderson (1815–90) was born in Brunswick, Maine, and graduated from Waterville (now Colby) College in 1840. He remained there for another decade, teaching rhetoric and modern history. From 1850 to 1853, he edited the New York Recorder, a weekly Baptist newspaper. Anderson served as president of the University of Rochester from its founding in 1853 until his retirement in 1889. In addition to his work as an educator, he published numerous articles on a variety of topics, including ethnology, history, and religion. Martin B. Anderson, Papers and Addresses of Martin B. Anderson, ed. William C. Morey, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1895); William Cathcart, ed., The Baptist Encyclopedia: A Dictionary of the Doctrines, Ordinances, Usages, Confessions of Faith, Sufferings, Labors, and Successes, and of the General History of the Baptist Denomination in All Lands (Philadelphia, 1881), 33–35; NCAB, 12:243–44; DAB, 1:269–70. 3. Edward Covey (c. 1806–75) began as a poor tenant farmer in Talbot County, Maryland, but managed to accumulate $23,000 worth of real estate by 1850. Covey’s reputation as a slave breaker enabled him to rent or receive the free use of field hands from local slave owners wanting to have their slaves taught proper discipline. Harriet Lucretia Anthony, the great-granddaughter of Aaron Anthony, remembered, “Mr. Covey was really noted for his cruelty and meanness.” Inventory of the Estate of Edward Covey, 15 May 1875, Talbot County Inventories, TNC#3, 578, MdTCH; Harriet L. Anthony, annotated copy of Bondage and Freedom, folder 93, 203, Dodge Collection, MdAA; 1850 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 240; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 117–31.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 469

5/17/23 2:35 PM

470

DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL D. PORTER, 30 JUNE 1879

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL D. PORTER Washington, D.C. 30 June 1879.

S. D. Porter Esqr My dear sir: I am again your debtor; but the obligation is light and pleasant. The article to which you refer me in the Democrat, is full of Soul, written with the skill and power of a veteran. I was vain enough to read it twice and have it out for a Scrap Book.1 My two sons, Fredk and Lewis,2 though never very enthusiastic were very glad over it—and perhaps I may say proud. Thanks for your gentle warning. It was like you to give it and I honor your fidelity. The perils are abundant in every part of the voyage of life—and are as abundant when nearing the shore as when in mid ocean. I can only promise to keep a man at the “mast head”3 and a sharpe look out and a firm hand upon the helm. Some degree of safety is assured by a knowledge of danger at hand. I see that Mrs Porter 4 is again your awareness—Please let me know how you are getting along. I have always looked upon you as remarkably endowed, singularly free from every thing to which disease can attach, good at least for five and eighty and I shall be glad to think so still. You are several years my senior—I appear much older.5 My head is white my eyes are a trifle dim—but I write in the day time without glasses—and walk in the street with firm and elastic step—My young people tell me that I walk too fast for them—so despite my sixty two or three years (I know not which) I am still moving about the world with the young and strong. Please say to your sister Maria6 that I still remember her many good works for my oppressed people. She was always happy when I called upon her for money to pay the passage to Canada of another fugitive slave. To here her, business on the underground Rail Road could never be too lively. Should any one related to you come to Washington it will give me pleasure to serve him in any way I can. Since I have been in office I have been visited by many of my English friends—most of them young— people, children of good people whose acquaintance I made during my visit thirty four years ago—I usually take them to the White house7 and introduce to the Pres.t and sometimes Mrs. Hayes8—and they go away delighted with the warmth, cordiality and simple dignity of the president and his household and equally well pleased to find one treated with re-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 470

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL D. PORTER, 30 JUNE 1879

471

spect and confidence by the Chief of the Nation. My best wishes for your speedy recovery—Please over look imperfections Very truly yours FREDK DOUGLASS—

[P.S.] Mrs Porter, will be glad to know that I often have good letters from she that Miss Griffiths9 that was—and that as usual she is active in works of charity. She often speaks in her letters of approaching the sunset of life in peace. F. D. ALS: Porter Family Manuscripts, NRU. 1. Porter sent Douglass an article published in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle in response to the recent unveiling of the statue honoring him. The unsigned article, containing numerous spelling errors, praised the former Rochester resident effusively: “Douglass must rank as among the greatest men, not only of this city; but of the nation as well—great in gifts, greater in utilizing them, great in his inspiration, greater in his efforts for humanity, great in the persuasion of his speech greater in the purpose that informed it.” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 28 June 1879. 2. Frederick Douglass, Jr., and Lewis H. Douglass. These two, along with their brother Charles  R. Douglass, eventually assembled a series of scrapbooks of newspaper clippings and handwritten documents regarding their father’s post–Civil War career. The material was preserved by the Africana collector Walter O. Evans. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, lxxx–lxxxv. 3. The term is often used interchangeably with “crow’s nest,” the spot on a ship’s tallest mast where a lookout kept watch for other ships, whales, land, etc. Joseph P. O’Flynn, Nautical Dictionary: Over 3800 Terms (Boyne City, Mich., 1992), 62. 4. After her marriage to the land agent Samuel D. Porter in 1835, Susan Farley Porter (1812–80) moved from Waldoboro, Maine, to Rochester, New York, where she became one of the city’s most active reformers. Among the founders of the Bethel Free Church, Rochester Orphan Asylum Association, and Rochester Female Anti-Slavery Society, she was also a member of the Rochester Female Charitable Society, an author of the constitution for the Home for Friendless and Virtuous Females, and president of the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 92; FDP, 11 March 1852; Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 55–56, 59–60, 111, 119, 126–27, 147–48, 152, 159, 191, 230. 5. As nearly as can be determined, Douglass was born in February 1818, making him approximately sixty-one at the time of this letter. Ledger books kept by his master, Aaron Anthony, contain a table, “My Black People,” with the notation “Frederick Augustus son of Harriott Feby 1818.” In his last autobiography, Douglass reveals that when he had a reunion with his former owner, Thomas Auld, in St. Michaels, Maryland, in June 1877, Auld relayed that information to him. Douglass Papers, ser. 2:3:347; Aaron Anthony Ledger B, 1812–26, folders 95, 165, Dodge Collection, MdAA; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 31–34, 218. 6. The social activist Maria G. Porter (1805–96) was born in Bristol, Maine. At twenty, she moved with her family to Rochester, New York, where she remained until her death. Maria helped found the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Sewing Society and served as its treasurer for many years; her sister Almira B. Porter (1825–79) served on the society’s executive board. Maria also ran a boardinghouse in Rochester that was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Almira taught young women at a school in Rochester. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 57; FDP, 26 February 1852; Rochester Herald, 14 December 1896; New York Times, 15 December 1896; Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig & Courier, 17 December 1896; The Rochester Directory, Containing a General Directory of

Y8204-Douglass.indb 471

5/17/23 2:35 PM

472

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM ALLING, 8 JULY 1879

the Citizens, a Business Directory, and the City and County Register for the Year Beginning July, 1 1880 (Rochester, 1880), 58; Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, 1:243. 7. In his final autobiography, Life and Times, Douglass reported that during his tenure as U.S. marshal under President Rutherford B. Hayes, “I have many times during his administration had the honor to introduce distinguished strangers to him, both of native and foreign birth, and never had reason to feel myself slighted by himself or his admirable wife.” Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:333. 8. Rutherford B. and Lucy W. Hayes. 9. Julia Griffiths Crofts.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM ALLING1 Washington, D.C. 8 July 1879[.]

My dear Sir: I cannot send you “fifty or one hundred dollars” to aid in paying for the new zion church. Your letter asking for such a donation is only one of a score of the same sort that reach me nearly every week in the year. My purse is light and the demands upon it heavy—I give when I can and refuse when I must. You have called upon me at an unfortunate moment—when our Extra Confederate Brigadier Congress2 has cut off my resources—my best wishes for Zion. Yours truly FREDK DOUGLASS— ALS: Frederick Douglass Papers, NRU. 1. William Alling (1811–90) was born in Ballston, New York, and settled in Rochester in 1826. He worked as a clerk for Elihu F. Marshall, who owned a small publishing and stationery business. In 1834, Alling bought the business from Marshall and partnered with his son William S. and his cousin David Cory in 1859, forming the Allings & Cory Paper Co. Following his son’s death in 1872, the company became the Alling & Cory Paper Co. The company became the largest printing-paper supplier in Rochester, with warehouses throughout the state of New York and in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Alling oversaw the operations of Alling & Cory until his death in 1890. Beyond his business ventures, Alling was a prominent member of the Presbyterian church. In 1844, he became a ruling elder of the Washington Street Church in Rochester. He was also the president of the Monroe County Bible Society during the 1880s. William Alling’s youngest son, Joseph Tilden Alling (1855–1937), is reported to have acted as superintendent of the Rochester A.M.E. Zion Church’s Sunday schools for a number of years. Rochester Daily Democrat, 10 January 1852; Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 27 August 1885; Ingrid Overacker, The African American Church Community in Rochester, New York, 1900–1940 (Rochester, 1998), 180; One Hundred Twenty-Five Years in the Paper Business, 1819–1944, Being a Brief History of the Founding of the Paper Business of the Alling & Cory Company (Rochester, 1944). 2. In 1878 the Democratic party took control of the U.S. Senate. While in control, Democratic senators attempted several times to roll back some of the civil rights acts that had been passed during Reconstruction by attaching repealing provisions to routine appropriation bills. Hayes consistently

Y8204-Douglass.indb 472

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO FRANKLIN B. SANBORN, 4 SEPTEMBER 1879

473

vetoed such underhanded legislation, in order to protect African American rights. But as a result, parts of the government went underfunded or unfunded at times. This included the U.S. marshals, who were ordered by the Enforcement Acts to protect voting rights across the nation. The Democrats sought to limit their power in this by either eliminating the Enforcement Acts or ensuring they went unfunded. Charles W. Calhoun, From Bloody Shirt to Full Dinner Pail: The Transformation of Politics and Governance in the Gilded Age (New York, 2010), 64; DeSantis, Republicans Face the Southern Question, 85.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO FRANKLIN B. SANBORN Washington[,] D.C. 4 Sept[ember] 1879[.]

Frank B. Sanborn Esqr My paper on the Exodus1 will be sent to your address tomorrow. I am sorry not to have been able to send it to you sooner. I hardly think I shall be able to reach Saratoga before the 10th— I dont like the announcement in the Tribune that I am to debate the question with Prof: Greener.2 I hope to meet you in the spirit of social science and not in a spirit of controversy. Very truly yours FREDERICK DOUGLASS—

[P.S.] 41 years to day I became a freeman.3 It is my birth day though I am more than forty one years old. ALS: Alfred W. Anthony Manuscripts, NN. 1. Douglass first criticized the Exoduster movement in a speech in Baltimore in May 1879, and he subsequently faced a barrage of accusations of callousness from other black leaders. When the American Social Science Association offered Douglass a chance to present a detailed explanation of his position at its annual general meeting in Saratoga, New York, on 12 September 1879, he readily accepted. Three days before the scheduled session, however, Douglass canceled his appearance, pleading the press of duties as marshal of the District of Columbia. He sent his paper to the meeting with permission for it to be read and published. The New York Times reported that the audience displayed “great disappointment” when it was announced that Professor Francis Wayland of New Haven, Connecticut, would present Douglass’s paper. New York Times, 13 September 1879; Douglass to Francis B. Sanborn, 9 September 1879, in Joseph A. Borome, ed., “Some Additional Light on Frederick Douglass,” JNH, 38:219 (April 1963); Douglass, “The Negro Exodus from the Gulf States,” Journal of Social Science, 11:1–21 (May 1880); Billie D. Higgins, “Negro Thought and the Exodus of 1879,” Phylon, 32:39–52 (Spring 1971). 2. Richard T. Greener. 3. Douglass fled slavery in Baltimore, arriving in New York City on 4 September 1838. Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 156.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 473

5/17/23 2:35 PM

474

LOLA FULLER TO DOUGLASS, 31 DECEMBER 1879

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO FRANKLIN B. SANBORN Washington[,] D.C. 9 Sept[ember] 1879[.]

Frank B. Sanborn Esqr My dear Sir: I regret that my duties here will not permit me to be present at the meetings of the American Social Science Association. This I am sure will be more my loss than of those who will attend. If the paper I send you on the Negro Exodus can in any wiht be made serviceable, you are quite at liberty to use it.1 Be good enough to correct any grammatical errors you may find in it. It was sent in my absence by my clerk. Best wishes for the success of your meeting. Very truly yours, FREDK DOUGLASS ALS: Alfred W. Anthony Collection, NN. Other text in Borome, “Some Additional Light on Frederick Douglass,” 219. 1. In the spring of 1879, Douglass entered into the public controversy over the migration of blacks from the South to the prairie states. His criticism of this movement provoked several other prominent black figures to accuse him of being indifferent to the problems of blacks in the postReconstruction South. Douglass took the opportunity of an invitation from the annual meeting of the American Social Science Association, scheduled for Saratoga, New York, in September 1879, to prepare a detailed explanation of his position. When Douglass read press reports that the association had converted the occasion of his speech into a debate with one of his critics, Richard T. Greener of Howard University’s law school, he canceled his appearance. Douglass’s original paper was read to the meeting by an old friend, Francis Wayland, after which Greener delivered a defense of the Exodus movement. Douglass’s and Greener’s papers were subsequently published by the journal of the American Social Science Association. Frederick Douglass, “Southern Questions: The Negro Exodus from the Gulf States,” Journal of Social Science, 11:1–21 (May 1880); R[ichard] T. Greener, “The Emigration of Colored Citizens from the Southern States,” Journal of Social Science, 11:22–35 (May 1880); Painter, Exodusters, 3–68, 234–61; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 299–302.

LOLA FULLER1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS New York[, N.Y.]2 31 Dec[ember] 1879.

Hon. Fred. Douglass Dear Sir:— I am about to make a most extraordinary request of you and in all probability you will laugh at it; but remember, you are not to share your amusement or interest, or the lack of it, with any one, but keep this note and its contents to yourself: for business is not interesting to parties unconcerned,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 474

5/17/23 2:35 PM

LOLA FULLER TO DOUGLASS, 31 DECEMBER 1879

475

and this is a simple matter of business. By the time you have finished reading this you will remember me, so I will not begin by explanation to recall myself to your memory. I am writing a novel. One of my characters is a philosopher and the day that I met you and we had such a long conversation, you said many things which reminded me of the character which I had outlined. I made up my mind a few days after, that if I could not go to Washington this winter I would write you before I took up my writing again and voila, I am doing it. You spoke of Victor Hugo’s3 works on that day. It has never been my fortune to meet many Americans who cared for Hugo as I do myself. Your analysis of his various works quite charmed me; and your inclination of mind and reasoning upon any subject upon which we touched is quite in accord with the character which in my book I am endeavoring to portray. Now such characters are rare. Of course I have only had glimpses of them here and there: and although I have treasured up quite a number of their words, and ideas, I could still have a great deal more before I have all I want. Will you do this for me:—put a sheet of fools-cap in some safe place and for several weeks note down all the ideas, reasonable, unreasonable, peculiar and ordinary, which run through your mind relative to the people and the age we live in. And when you think you have bestowed all the attention you can share upon it, please send the paper to me. Perhaps you will not do this; but if you will, I shall be more than obliged for it and will make good use of it. Now by this time you remember me and hoping you will grant my request I am Yours very truly MISS LOLA FULLER—ARTIST ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 379R–80, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Lola Fuller, born circa 1847 in New York, was an artist living in New York City in the late nineteenth century. Fuller spent several years in Europe and exhibited portraits in several New York galleries during her lifetime. Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Eagle-News, 13 January 1885; 1900 U.S. Census, New Jersey, Bergen County, 208A. 2. Fuller added that her address was “254 W. 21st St.” 3. Victor-Marie Hugo (1802–85) was born in Besançon, France, to Joseph-Léopold Sigisbert Hugo and Sophie-Françoise Trébuchet. Hugo’s father was a high-ranking officer in the army, and the family traveled frequently throughout Europe during Hugo’s childhood. In 1818, Hugo’s parents legally separated, and he stayed in the care of his mother. Hugo began to pursue a literary career at a young age, receiving an award for his poetry at age fifteen. Two years later, he and his brothers Eugène and Abel founded a literary journal, Le Conservateur littéraire (The literary conservative), where Hugo published over one hundred articles and twenty poems during the journal’s two years

Y8204-Douglass.indb 475

5/17/23 2:35 PM

476

ELIZABETH THOMPSON TO DOUGLASS, C. 1879

of publication. (Many romantic writers were, somewhat paradoxically, royalist in politics.) Hugo’s first published volume of poetry, Odes et Poésies diverses (Odes and other poems), was so successful and celebratory of the French monarchy that King Louis XVII granted Hugo an annual subsidy. This allowed Hugo to marry his lover, Adèle Foucher. Throughout the 1820s and 1830s, Hugo published prolifically, but became disillusioned with the monarchy because of Charles X’s extreme conservatism. In 1831, Hugo published his popular novel Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). In 1848, Hugo was elected to the Assemblée Constituante (constitutional convention) of the Second French Republic. Hugo openly opposed the conservative Right and announced himself a liberal Republican in 1851. That same year, Hugo was forced to leave France following a political coup by Louis-Napoleon; Hugo and his family eventually settled in Guernsey, an island in the English Channel. While in exile, Hugo continued to write, publishing political tracts and satirical poems against Louis-Napoleon. In 1862, Hugo published his most famous novel, Les Misérables, to great success. Hugo returned to France in 1870, following the fall of the Second Empire, and was elected to the National Assembly in 1871 and to the Senate of Paris in 1876. A stroke in 1878 left him unable to write; however, he continued to be active in politics and was reelected to the Senate in 1882. David Falkayn, Guide to the Life, Times, and Works of Victor Hugo (Honolulu, 2001); Graham Robb, Victor Hugo: A Biography (New York, 1999); Laurence M. Porter, Victor Hugo (New York, 1999).

ELIZABETH THOMPSON TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS [n.p. c. 1879]

My dear friend Douglass Your letters are all received.1 You know I trust you fully, so say no more about that point. I only want the money used to inspire others to do something for these poor people— I do think the South is more cruel and unjust than I ever imagined human beings could be, one toward the other. Do they ever realize how little time we have to stay in this world, or how glad we may yet be of a favor from some one of these poor creatures? I should like to be there, but I am needed here, and I know I could be of little or no use there. Tell those poor souls that it is by sorrow & suffering that the heart is made strong and self reliant as you and I know— Now my friend don’t you be too sensitive about any thing I say or do. You know I believe in you more than I do in my self—you also know I am not a diplomatist. Were I, our dear little Abby2 and I should get along better than we do. She likes people to obey and I can’t. You ask where they are I think they are in this big city of N. Y. but I have not seen them. I love the dear little thing dearly, but I can’t dance whenever every one chooses to pipe—I could not do this even for you—

Y8204-Douglass.indb 476

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL MULLIKEN, 7 FEBRUARY 1880

477

yet I should be “awful glad” to see you and went to Saratoga last summer more for the sake of seeing and hearing you speak than for any thing else, but like others I was disappointed—you ought to have seen the people leave the hall when it was announced that you would not speak, but that was months ago and perhaps you have forgotten all about the [illegible] time, place, or subject3 Now you be good and take me just as I mean and not as I happen to say With the kindest regard, and best wish I am always Yours most truly and sincerely E THOMPSON ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 265–67, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Douglass’s letters to Thompson have not survived. 2. Abby Hutchinson Patton. 3. Frederick Douglass was advertised as a speaker at the annual general meeting of the American Social Science Association on 12 September 1879, where he was to defend his position opposing the ongoing African American mass exodus from the South. After initially making his position public in a speech in Baltimore, Maryland, on 4 May 1879, he was asked to present a detailed explanation at the Saratoga meeting. Douglass accepted the invitation and prepared a well-researched address suitable for the group’s well-educated audience. When Douglass learned that the session was designed to be a point-counterpoint debate with Richard T. Greener, the first black graduate of Harvard and dean of Howard University’s law school, he developed second thoughts. Three days before the scheduled presentation, Douglass canceled his appearance, claiming that his duties as marshal kept him in the District of Columbia, and instead released a lengthy paper to be read in his absence by Professor Francis Wayland of Yale University. The New York Times reported “great disappointment” when audience members learned that the anticipated debate would not occur. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:510–11; New York Times, 13 September 1879; Higgins, “Negro Thought and the Exodus of 1879.”

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL MULLIKEN1 Washington City, D.C.2 7 February 1880.

Samuel Mulliken, Esq Chief Clerk. &c— Sir: Your letter of the 3d inst. asking information in regard to the number of Bailiffs, Criers and Messengers, employed in the U.S. Courts for this District for the fiscal year commencing July 1st 1866 and ending June 30, 1867, is at hand, and in reply: I find there was employed during that time one Crier whose pay for that period amounted to $1,390.00 Twelve Bailiffs

Y8204-Douglass.indb 477

5/17/23 2:35 PM

478

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM E. MATTHEWS, 14 FEBRUARY 1880

whose gross pay amounted to $10,227.00. Nine Messengers whose gross pay was $2,019.00. Making in the aggregate $13,636.00 paid to those officers for that period.3 I am very Respectfully, FREDK. DOUGLASS, U.S.M.

by L. P. Williams,4 Deputy. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 325–29, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Samuel Mulliken (?–1887) served as the chief distributing clerk in the Department of Justice, resigning in 1882. New York Times, 12 November 1882; Biographical Record Class of 1891 Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (n.p., 1907), 79. 2. Douglass wrote this letter on stationery with the printed letterhead: “United States Marshal’s Office.” 3. Douglass possibly relied on the official register to supply details on the employees and salaries of the courts in the District of Columbia more than a decade before his appointment as marshal. Official Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval, in the Service of the United States, on the Thirtieth September, 1867 (Washington, D.C., 1868), 172, 321–22. 4. L. P. Williams (c. 1831–?) was the deputy U.S. marshal under Douglass. A former newspaper editor from La Porte, Indiana, Williams served in the Union army during the Civil War, attaining the rank of major. In 1865 he moved permanently to Washington, D.C., living near Howard University. Williams became an assistant clerk in the District’s court system before accepting the position of Douglass’s deputy marshal on 20 March 1877. In Life and Times, Douglass describes Williams as very “capable, industrious, vigilant, and careful.” Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:334, 931; 1870 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 738; Washington Evening Star, 19 March 1877; New York Times, 20 March 1877; Packard, History of La Porte County, 76; Daniels, History and Biographical Record of La Porte County, 248–49; Zevely, “Old Residences and Family History.”

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM E. MATTHEWS1 [n.p. 14 February 1880.]

My Dear Matthews:— I regret that I cannot be with you to-night in Baltimore.2 The cause which you are to plead to-night in company with other eloquent friends is plainly enough a righteous cause. There is every reason in the world why colored teachers should be employed to teach colored schools, and there is no good reason for the discrimination against them now practiced in Baltimore. I am in favor of such teachers because colored teachers are not employed to teach white schools, and because white teachers may be fairly presumed to share the common prejudices of their race against colored people. I hold that nothing can be well done that is not lovingly done; that the painter cannot make his picture beautiful unless he does

Y8204-Douglass.indb 478

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM E. MATTHEWS, 14 FEBRUARY 1880

479

his work lovingly; that the preacher cannot successfully preach unless he loves his congregation; that the physician cannot so well administer to his patient, or the lawyer attend the case of his client unless he has a direct interest in the welfare of patient and client, and that this principle applies pre-eminently to teachers and pupils. I am in favor, secondly, of employing colored teachers for colored schools because such teachers are abundantly qualified by their attainments to teach, and are eager for the work. Thirdly, I am in favor of the employment of such teachers because there are so few avocations opened to colored persons, and especially to the educated class. Fourth[l]y, I am in favor of the employment of colored teachers because blood is thicker than water, and such teachers have everything in common with such pupils, and must fail or flourish with them, and because their work as teachers is in the line of their race pride, race love, and race ambi[t]ion, and these elements enter largely in the work of education. Fifth, I am in favor of the employment of such teachers because their non-employment brands them with the stigma of unfitness to teach, and degrades them in their own eyes, and in the eyes of the children of their race, and instead of teaching them to respect themselves, it tends to make them despise themselves[.] Sixth, I am in favor of employing colored teachers, because I am for giving all an equal chance in the race of life, and for hindering none. As I told the people of Baltimore, when in company with you I spoke to them on this subject, I tell them now that Baltimore is too great to be small; she has advanced too far in the cause of liberty and equal rights to keep longer alive the prejudice inherited from a by-gone condition, and that she should make haste to put herself in harmony with the civilization of the age, and with the Constitution of the United States, which makes no discrim[i]nation against men on account of race or previous condition. Please say to the meeting that they are wise in continuing this agitation; that the powers that be in Baltimore, though slow to act, are still open to the influence of a just public sentiment, and, sooner or later, will yield to the righteous claim you are now making. Very truly yours, (SIGNED.)

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

PLSr: Washington People’s Advocate, 14 February 1880. 1. William E. Matthews (1845–94) was a free black born in Baltimore, Maryland. Before obtaining a law degree from Howard University in 1873, Matthews was a principal speaker for the Gailbraith Lyceum, a real estate agent, and the first black person appointed to a clerkship in the U.S. Post Office (1870). In 1881 he opened a real estate and broker’s office in Washington, D.C. Matthews

Y8204-Douglass.indb 479

5/17/23 2:35 PM

480

JULIA M. BOARDMAN TO DOUGLASS, 16 FEBRUARY 1880

managed Douglass’s finances before the latter went to Europe in 1866. In several letters to Matthews, Douglass alluded to tensions and differences between them, but always considered the bond of their common cause decisive. Their political collaboration was long-standing; both men were members of the delegation of blacks who interviewed President Andrew Johnson on 7 February 1866. Douglass to William E. Matthews, 20 September 1882, 1 July 1889, General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 635–36, reel 5, frames 415–16, FD Papers, DLC; Simmons, Men of Mark, 246–51. 2. On the night of 13 February 1880, a meeting convened at the Presbyterian Church on Madison Street regarding the employment of black teachers in the segregated schools of Baltimore, Maryland. This event was part of a long campaign; Douglass had spoken in its behalf at the Bethel A.M.E. Church the previous December, along with many other notable speakers, including J. D. Kennedy of New Orleans, and William E. Matthews and Wyatt Archer of Washington, D.C. Those not in attendance who offered letters endorsing the gathering included John W. Cromwell, editor of the Washington People’s Advocate; Howard University professor Richard T. Greener; and Douglass. Matthews read Douglass’s letter to the assembled crowd. Washington People’s Advocate, 29 November 1879, 31 January, 14 February 1880; Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 1 January 1880.

JULIA M. BOARDMAN1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS New Milford[, Conn.] 16 Feb[ruary 1880.]

My dear friend, Thanks for your assurance that “letters or otherwise” I am not likely to be forgotten. I find I am not capable of dealing with such subtlety and wit and truthfulness as are manifested in your last letter—I suppose you might have told me that the bridges were burned George Washington to the contrary notwithstanding2 even when they had not been, but believe me I do fully appreciate your candor, and the delicate compliment implied in not doing as I asked. Yes, I think I should like to spend quite as much time in shopping if I was in Washington now as when I was there a month ago. I am happy to know that you are not breaking your heart over your friends loss, and I suppose a small bowl of water to be sufficient to cover all her sorrows— Still judging by myself I should think she might find the consolation she most needs in the locality I mentioned in my last—Don’t you think she would find comfort in her loneliness there? I imagine I shall get about as satisfactory answer to this question as I did about her age; however you were right to reply by saying that the question, was so intensely womanlike; and, by using various other witty expressions, avoid giving a direct answer, so intensely manlike— Nevertheless, I highly approve your gallantry in not betraying what is considered the dearest secret of a womans heart after she reaches a certain age—so do right in saying that you have thought of your friend for a

Y8204-Douglass.indb 480

5/17/23 2:35 PM

JULIA M. BOARDMAN TO DOUGLASS, 16 FEBRUARY 1880

481

long time, but always as belonging to another—but she is free now. I fear there would not be breathing room for me, even in the City of “magnificent distances”3 if “the dear lady” were there at the same time. Enclosed I send a notice of a course of lectures to be delivered by Mr. John Fiske,4 one of my very best friends, and one whom I have known for many years as we are both from Middletown Connecticut altho his home has been in Cambridge and mine in New Milford during the last twelve years. We have had occasional correspondence and he has always sent me his books as they were published, his “Cosmic Philosophy” and others. I wish if you can conveniently you would go and hear him, I think you might be interested, and I should like to know how you like my friends manner. I regret that he was not in Washington while I was there—You do not say that you are better—I sincerely hope that you are so—Tell the “red beauty” that she is not to take another lady to ride, stopping to rest frequently, merely because she is called by my name. Do you think April a pleasant month, and are the roads good in the vicinity of Capital hill at that time of the year? You know that if my shipping excursions are too frequent, those with whom I exchange articles of value, will find it necessary to give only the slightest hint of their wishes in the matter. Don’t you think you had best part with the lines for which I ask? I shall leave it to your judgement to decide, believing that you will judge right. Very truly yours J. A. B. ALI: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 607–09L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Probably Julia Maria Boardman (1843–88), who appears in the 1880 federal census for New Milford, Connecticut. She was one of several boarders in the household of the physician J. Knight Bacon and his wife, Sophia. Boardman is listed as a widow, age forty-three, but her tombstone gives her birth date as 1843. 1880 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Litchfield County, 567D; Find a Grave (online). 2. During the American Revolution, General George Washington (1732–99), commander of the Continental Army and later first president of the United States, ordered his troops to harass the British and make their advance more difficult, particularly by burning bridges whenever possible. Boardman may have been familiar with the 1834 edition of Washington’s writings, in which this policy appears in detail. Jared Sparks, ed., The Writings of George Washington, 12 vols. (Boston, 1833–39), 4:158; Frank E. Grizzard, George Washington: A Biographical Companion (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2002), 50. 3. This mocking description of Washington, D.C., dates to the early nineteenth century. Its authorship is disputed; Congressman John Randolph of Virginia is sometimes credited, but others attribute the phrase to the Portuguese minister plenipotentiary to the United States during James Madison’s administration, José Correia de Serra. He established his nation’s mission in the more cultured city of Philadelphia and visited Washington only out of necessity. George Morgan, The Life of James Monroe (Boston, 1921), 441.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 481

5/17/23 2:35 PM

482

DOUGLASS TO AUGUSTUS H. GARLAND, 19 FEBRUARY 1880

4. John Fiske (1842–1901), a historian who made the concepts of evolutionary science accessible to the public, was born Edmund Fisk Green in Hartford, Connecticut. Because of family financial problems, at the age of one, he was sent to live with his grandparents in Middletown, Connecticut, where he lived until matriculating at Harvard College in 1860. After his father’s death in 1855, he legally changed his name to “Fisk,” adding the e some years later. Fiske became fascinated by Herbert Spencer’s writings on the science of evolution and published a two-volume commentary on the subject in 1874. Placed on annual retainer to produce works of history by the Houghton Mifflin Company in 1888, Fiske researched and wrote multiple volumes, including The Critical Period of American History, 1783–1789 (1888), The Beginnings of New England (1889), and The American Revolution, 2 vols. (1891). Paul Lawrence Farber, The Temptations of Evolutionary Ethics (Berkeley, Calif., 1998), 53–54; ANB (online).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO AUGUSTUS H. GARLAND1 Washington, D.C. 19 February 1880.

Hon. A. H. Garland: Sir: I have the honor to inform you that I have carefully read and duly considered your bill for amending the charter of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, and for other purposes.2 It is in my judgment a wiselydrawn bill. It covers the whole ground of the present situation of that institution. Its enactment by Congress would be a credit to the national sense of justice, and would bring speedy though small relief to a class of persons to whom the nation cannot be too just or too generous. Many of the newlyemancipated class put their money into this bank, believing it to be—like the Freedman’s Bureau—a government institution, and about as safe as the government itself. Though the misapprehension of these poor people cannot be entirely cured by any present action of Congress, it does appeal to Congress to exert what power it may to help them and to restore their broken confidence. In respect to the details of your bill, I am not sure that you have made the commissioner’s bond quite large enough. The property is large and his power over it is large, and while I do not attach great importance to bonds as a guarantee of honest management, the bond in this case should be large. I see, too, that the approval of a majority of the trustees of the company is required in the appointment of the commissioner. I do not know that any positive harm can come of this feature of the bill, but I think it an unnecessary provision of the bill. There has been no regular meeting of the trustees, as required by the charter, this five years, and it may be fairly questioned if to-day any such an organization as a board of trustees of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company exists.3 If the thing can be legally

Y8204-Douglass.indb 482

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS TO AUGUSTUS H. GARLAND, 19 FEBRUARY 1880

483

done, I would for my own part prefer to have the government, in form as well as in fact, take the assets of the defunct institution into its own hands. I believe the creditors will have nothing to lose by this absolute possession. If the clause is retained, it may cause some delay in getting the approval of the trustees, and for one I am anxious that the depositors shall get something out of this institution without delay. Your bill recommends itself strongly in substituting one for three commissioners, for while I esteem the three present commissioners as honest and honorable men, I cannot think there is work enough to justify their retention.4 At the outset, when the affairs of the bank were much entangled, there may have been work for them all; but I think it is to their credit that they have in five years placed the affairs of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company in a condition to be easily managed by one commissioner. I have been informed that neither of the present commissioners wishes to be retained in his position, and this is well, for since there has been some want of harmony between them I am inclined to think that your bill should be so shaped that a new man shall be put in charge, and this without prejudice to either of the outgoing commissioners. It was not supposed when they were placed in charge of the Freedman’s Bank six years ago that they were to continue there indefinitely. Their continuance, in part or in whole, will lead to unfriendly comments. Economy here is sufficiently strong to commend your bill at this point. I see that you make it the duty of the Solicitor of the Treasury, under the direction of the commissioner, to institute civil and criminal proceedings against trustees and managers of the bank for mismanagement and fraud. I hope this will be found unnecessary. The assets of the bank should not be further diminished by litigation from which no money can be recovered. The trustees who may be charged with mismanagement are poor, and nothing could be got out of them. Mind, however, I do not object strongly to this feature of the bill. On the score of justice, I should like to see the guilty exposed and punished; but in the interest of saving something from the wreck, I am for keeping out of the courts. Suffice it to say in conclusion that I like your bill as a whole. Respectfully yours, FRED’K DOUGLASS PLSr: U.S. Congress, Senate, Select Committee to Investigate the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, Report, 46th Cong., 2d sess., 2 April 1880, Senate Report 440 (Serial 1895), appendix, 45–46. 1. Augustus Hill Garland (1832–99) began his career as a Whig politician in Little Rock, Arkansas, before representing his state in the Confederate Congress. He was elected to the U.S. Senate

Y8204-Douglass.indb 483

5/17/23 2:35 PM

484

PETER H. CLARK TO DOUGLASS, 22 MARCH 1880

in 1867, but was not seated, since Arkansas had not yet been readmitted to the Union. Garland served as governor of Arkansas (1874–76) and was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 1876 and again in 1883. From 1885 to 1889, he served as Grover Cleveland’s attorney general. Garland then returned to Little Rock and private law practice. William B. Hesseltine and Larry Gara, “Arkansas’ Confederate Leaders after the War,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 9:259–69 (1950); DAB, 4: 150–51. 2. Garland introduced Senate Bill 711 on 21 June 1879 to amend the charter of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company. It substituted a single commissioner, the comptroller of the currency, for an existing panel of three. Despite Douglass’s suggestions in this letter, the initial bill required a majority of the bank’s trustees to approve the commissioner’s appointment and required that officeholder to post a $25,000 bond. Oversight for dispersing the institution’s assets was vested in the commissioner, not the federal government. Garland’s bill retained provisions for potentially bringing criminal and civil proceedings against trustees and managers, possibly including Douglass. Senator Blanche K. Bruce, chair of the select committee, introduced an amended version of the bill on 2 April 1880 to reduce the commissioner’s bond to $20,000. U.S. Senate, Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company (Washington, D.C., 1880), appendix, 46–47, 67–68. 3. There are no records of a board of trustees for the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company after the comptroller of the currency, John Jay Knox, took control of liquidating the bank’s assets and reimbursing depositors. The comptrollers who succeeded Knox continued in this line until the bank’s affairs were settled in 1920. Knox apparently initially planned to try to prosecute the trustees, but no legal action was ever taken. Abby L. Gilbert, “The Comptroller of the Currency and the Freedman’s Savings Bank,” JNH, 57:125–43 (April 1972). 4. Managing the bankruptcy proceedings of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company were the commissioners John Angel James Creswell, Robert H. T. Leipold, and Robert Purvis. Creswell (1828–91), a Maryland politician, served in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, as U.S. postmaster general, and as U.S. counsel before the Alabama Claims Commission (1874–76). Leipold (1841–1921), a German immigrant, was a Washington, D.C., attorney and possibly a former clerk in the Treasury Department. Purvis (1810–98), the only African American commissioner, was a prominent Philadelphia abolitionist. U.S. Senate, Report of the Select Committee, 1–2; F. Colburn Adams,“White Man Bery Unsartin” (Washington, D.C., 1878), 22; 1900 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 13; George W. Williams, History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880, 2 vols. (New York, 1883), 2:509–10; Washington, District of Columbia, City Directory, 1914 (Washington, D.C., 1914), 1874; Bacon, But One Race, 7; DAB, 4:541.

PETER H. CLARK TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Cincinnati[, Ohio.] 22 March 1880[.]

Hon Frederick Douglass My dear Sir: In a talk with John G. Fee1, a few days ago, he asked me to write to you something about Berea,2 to the end that you may be induced to visit that place at its next commencement day. Berea is in some aspects one of the most remarkable places in the country. You approach it by a road call the Big Hills’ Pike, upon this road

Y8204-Douglass.indb 484

5/17/23 2:35 PM

PETER H. CLARK TO DOUGLASS, 22 MARCH 1880

485

was fought a bloody and to the Union troops disastrous battle.3 As you ride over this road many points of interest will be shown—Twelve miles away is the town of Richmond,4 the county town—The desperate character of the people of the town and vicinity—is shown in this, that the meetings of the court are almost always accompanied by scenes of bloody violence. In the court house yard at least a dozen men have been shot dead in the course of the relentless vendettas, which have given this part of Kentucky a reputation as lurid with murder as that of Sicily itself.5 Yet in the midst of this literally Dark and Bloody ground stands Berea a wonder of wonders—on Commencement day, upon its campus there assembles thousands of men and women white and black—who listen to speeches made from the most radical anti-slavery stand-point by colored men and white men; who behold colored students and white students, male and female, mingling freely upon the platform, in the boarding halls and in the chapels of the school. They see and hear all this and yet no disturbance has ever marred the perfect propriety of annual exercises. Now to see such a sight in Kentucky will pay you I am sure for the fatigue of the visit—Mr. Fee says the Trustees will pay the cost of the trip if you will come.6 To this I will add that I will arrange for you with re-liable men for lectures, 3 or 5, or more if you desire them, so that you will be compensated for your trip pecuniarily as well as morally—the exercises to which your presence is desired are in the latter part of June. If you can come and will notify me I will foreward the precise date and proceed to arrange for the lectures of which I have spoken. In the course of the past winter I have lectured five times to lyceums in the city and vicinity—my theme being Frederick Douglass as a Man and as an Orator—7 In the preparation of my lectures I was much embarrassed by the fact that there is no published volume of your speeches. Do you not think that a volume of your speeches and selections from your writings would sell? You have of course heard of the election of George Williams to the Ohio legislature.8 You knew him before I did and probably better than I do, so it will not surprise you when I tell you that he could not be again elected and that he has closed the way for any other colored man until his shortcomings are forgotten— My wife,9 who sits beside me as I write, bids me send much love to you and Mrs. Douglass—10

Y8204-Douglass.indb 485

5/17/23 2:35 PM

486

PETER H. CLARK TO DOUGLASS, 22 MARCH 1880

My daughters11 are well—Ernestine12 is living happily with her husband and my son13 has been for three years pushing his fortune in the South as a teacher. Respectfully yrs PETE H. CLARK ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 61–62, FD Papers, DLC; and Frederick Douglass Manuscripts, Berea College. 1. John Gregg Fee (1816–1901), a Kentucky-born reformer and minister, trained at Lane Theological Seminary in Ohio, where he embraced racial equality and abolitionism. In 1848, when the New School Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky forced Fee from the organization because of his antislavery views, he sought support for his ministry through the abolitionist-led American Missionary Association. Considered radical by the standards of most white Kentucky residents, Fee proposed immediate emancipation and advocated educational opportunities and integration for all blacks. In 1854, Fee moved to central Kentucky and founded the town of Berea in Madison County. Fee was forced to flee to the North following John Brown’s attack on Harpers Ferry in the fall of 1859. He returned to Kentucky as a chaplain to black Union army soldiers at Camp Nelson. After the Civil War, Fee resumed his connection to Berea College. Victor B. Howard, The Evangelical War against Slavery and Caste: The Life and Times of John G. Fee (Selinsgrove, Pa., 1996); Elizabeth S. Peck, Berea’s First Century, 1855–1955 (Lexington, Ky., 1955), 2–6; Johnson, “American Missionary Association,” 125–31, 455–61; DAB, 6:310–11; NCAB, 24:301–02; ANB (online). 2. In 1853, John G. Fee founded an antislavery congregation at Berea in Madison County, Kentucky. Two years later, he founded Berea College on land donated by the antislavery politician Cassius M. Clay as an anticaste, coeducational institution that required only that students be of “good moral character.” Although Clay withdrew his support after Fee decided to admit black students, Fee guided the institution until the panic following the Harpers Ferry raid. Classes resumed after the war, and the college remained an integrated institution until state laws forced its segregation in 1904. Peck, Berea’s First Century; Richard Allen Heckman and Betty Jean Hall, “Berea College and the Day Law,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 66:35–52 (1968). 3. On 29–30 August 1862, Union and Confederate forces fought on the road between Big Hill and Richmond, Kentucky. This engagement is now referred to as the Battle of Richmond. Major General William Nelson’s Union forces were routed by Confederates under Major General E. Kirby Smith. Of the approximately 5,600 soldiers lost, 4,900 were Union forces. American Battlefield Protection Program, “Battle of Richmond,” CWSAC Battle Summaries, nps.gov. 4. Richmond became the county seat of Madison County, Kentucky, in 1798 after the state legislature approved a change from the original seat at Milford. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1578; Richmond County Visitors Center, “History of Richmond KY,” richmondkytourism.com. 5. In 1860, Italian revolutionary forces invaded the island of Sicily, forcing its incorporation into the new centralized kingdom. By 1876, resulting problems with violence and criminality in the subdued island led to two investigators being dispatched to find out what accounted for this particularly dangerous region. Their report constituted the first published confirmation of a new form of criminal enterprise throughout the area, the “mafiosi.” By 1880, the story of this notorious region had reached America, appearing on the pages of even relatively small-town newspapers. “The Mafiusi of Sicily,” Logansport (Ind.) Journal, 14 February 1877; Alexander Stille, Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic (New York, 1995), 14–18. 6. No surviving record indicates that Douglass delivered a commencement address at Berea College. Douglass did help with a fund-raising drive for the college in 1885. Richard Sears, A Utopian Experiment in Kentucky: Integration and Social Equality at Berea (Westport, Conn., 1996), 138.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 486

5/17/23 2:35 PM

PETER H. CLARK TO DOUGLASS, 22 MARCH 1880

487

7. Clark regularly spoke in the Cincinnati area on a number of subjects. No available source, however, confirms that Clark gave a series of speeches on Douglass during this period. The historian and biographer Nikki Marie Taylor notes the problem of trying to confirm the content of his orations; see America’s First Black Socialist: The Radical Life of Peter H. Clark, 15. 8. George Washington Williams, a Union army veteran, self-styled as a colonel, was the first African American elected to the Ohio legislature. He served one term (1880–81). After the Civil War, Williams attended Howard University and then the Newton Theological Institution in Massachusetts. He served as pastor in Baptist churches in Boston and Cincinnati. He attended the Cincinnati Law School and won admission to the Ohio bar. President Chester A. Arthur nominated Williams to serve as minister to Haiti, but political wrangling prevented him taking the post. Williams spent a large portion of his life writing, and speaking, on the atrocities of slavery and inequality. He was one of the people responsible for bringing to light the horrors of the Belgian Congo. John Hope Franklin, George Washington Williams: A Biography (Chicago, 1985); Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (New York, 1998), 102–05; Ohio History Connection [formerly Ohio Historical Society], “George W. Williams,” Ohio History Central, ohiohistorycentral.org; DAB, 20:263–64; ACAB, 6:522. 9. Peter Clark’s wife was Frances Ann Williams (1830–1902). They had three children, Ernestine (1855–1928) a vocalist and teacher married to John Nesbitt, Cincinnati’s first African American postal carrier; Herbert (1859–1927), a teacher and government worker; and Consuelo (1861–1910), the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in Ohio. Taylor, America’s First Black Socialist, 73–74. 10. Anna Murray Douglas. 11. Consuelo A. Clark Stewart (1861–1910), the youngest of Peter and Frances Clark’s children, was born in Cincinnati. She graduated from the McMicken School of Art with a high school certificate and a drawing certificate. Consuelo was one of the first African American women to study at the Boston University School of Medicine (1880–84). Consuelo returned to Cincinnati and began a rather successful medical practice. Sometime between 1884 and 1890 she married William Richard Stewart, a prosperous lawyer. The couple moved to Youngstown in 1890. 1880 Census, Ohio, Hamilton County, 216B; J. Richey Honer, ed. American Institute of Homoeopathy: Transactions of the SixtyFifth Session (n.p., 1910), 409; Frank Lincoln Mather, ed., Who’s Who of the Colored Race (Chicago, 1915), 255; Ruth Neely, ed., Women of Ohio: A Record of Their Achievements in the History of the State, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1900), 1:413; Simmons, Men of Mark, 382. 12. Ernestine L. Clark Nesbit (1855–1928) was the Clarks’ eldest child. She graduated from her father’s Gaines High School in Cincinnati and later the Cincinnati Normal School. Ernestine was reportedly the first woman of color to be admitted to the latter school “without denying her race.” She returned to Gaines High School as a teacher after receiving her teaching certificate. In 1879, Ernestine married John S. Nesbit, a mail carrier, and the couple had numerous children, the only grandchildren Peter and Frances Clark would have. She and John moved to St. Louis, as did Peter, and they took care of him in his old age. While in St. Louis, she taught piano. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 14 April 1928; 1880 U.S. Census, Ohio, Hamilton County, 50; 1900 U.S. Census, Ohio, Hamilton County, 167A; Gould’s St. Louis Directory for 1910 (St. Louis, 1910), 2595; William Melanchthon Glasgow, The Geneva Book (Philadelphia, 1908), 257; Simmons, Men of Mark, 382. 13. Herbert A. Clark (1858–?) was born in Cincinnati. He attended Gaines High School, became an educator himself, and was also a successful newspaper man. In 1883–84 he served as a deputy sheriff in Cincinnati. Around that time, Herbert married Lenna Young, a woman from Mississippi who appears to have been living with the family in 1880. After that, the couple seems to have moved from place to place. In the early 1890s, Herbert was working for the Afro-American in Columbus. In 1900 they were in Boone County, Missouri, but by 1902 he was teaching at Alcorn University in Mississippi. In 1914 he was running the Wagoner American paper near Muskogee, Oklahoma, where his wife, Lenna, was the musical director of the school. It is unclear when he died, though it was

Y8204-Douglass.indb 487

5/17/23 2:35 PM

488

ELIZABETH THOMPSON TO DOUGLASS, 11 JUNE 1880

sometime before 1925. Indianapolis Leader, 12 February 1881; Omaha (Neb.) Daily Bee, 7 July 1904; Salt Lake City (Utah) Broad-Ax, 7 March 1914; Minneapolis Twin City Star, 26 June 1915; 1880 Census, Ohio, Hamilton County, 216B; 1900 Census, Missouri, Boone County, 164B; Americus V. Williams, Williams’ Cincinnati Directory, 1884 (Cincinnati, 1884), 280; Simmons, Men of Mark, 382.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JOHNSON M. MUNDY Washington[,] D.C. 23 March 1880.

My dear Sir: I am obliged by your note and the Photographs of the Bust.1 They are excellent. The more I look at the Bust the better I like it. There is a a fullness and a completeness about it which I have not often found in that class of work. Its aged truth strikes at once—and I am content to be made known through this specimen of your Art to all who may live after me and who may wish to know how I looked in the world. I saw our friends on Capitol Hill a day or two ago—spoke kindly of you—and spoke sincerely, no doubt— With Great Respect Yours Truly FEDK. DOUGLASS.

Johnson M. Mundy Esqr. Order for the 1. dozen of the Photos. Will send the cash on delivery— ALS: Frederick Douglass Papers, NRU. 1. Probably a photograph of the plaster cast of Mundy’s bust of Douglass taken by the Rochester photographer John Howe Kent. John Stauffer, Zoe Trodd, and Celeste-Marie Bernier, eds., Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American (New York, 2015), 84.

ELIZABETH THOMPSON TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS New York[, N.Y.] 1 11 June [1880.]

Dear Mr Douglas, I seams a very long time since I saw your hand-writing— I know—, I said in my last—do not write me until you cant help it—but, Oh dear! I did not think it would be so long before I should hear a word from you—so now I am forced to pocket my pride, and cry aloud for a real good old fassioned letter such as you used to write me—Perhaps

Y8204-Douglass.indb 488

5/17/23 2:35 PM

ELIZABETH THOMPSON TO DOUGLASS, 11 JUNE 1880

489

you think I did not appreciate them or you—but you know how easily we decived or mistaken— I have thought often of you in these days of political excitement. Are you pleased with Garfields nomination?2 I hope you & he are friends—I should like to propose your name for Vice President—next to your Bruces3—this is due to your people and to the country now keep this in your mind and in the right time, place & way get this idea before the world and into the minds of the people. You know all things must start in a thought and then have time to take root— I suppose you should like me better if I never did foolish things, such as wasting my money on things you do not approve—Well! I am not so perfect as some smart little creatures who believes that the end and aim of life is to “have a cent worth worth of yeast and something to love” but I think I am a very true loyal friend, who love little and long after others have burned out— I often read your letters—they always give me new courage to work, wait and hope So now good by with all my hearts best wishes for your self and all your intrests Now sit right down and write me an old fassion letter As Ever E THOMPSON ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 244–46, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Thompson added the following information to her address: “Four Seasons 149 West 41st.” 2. James Abram Garfield (1831–81) lost his father at an early age and worked at numerous jobs to finance an education that culminated with his graduation from Williams College in 1856. Three years later, while principal of Hiram Institute in Ohio, he won election to the state senate as a Republican. During the Civil War, Garfield received a rapid series of promotions but resigned from the Union army in December 1863 with the rank of major general in order to accept election to the first of eight terms in Congress. Initially aligned with Radical Republicans on Reconstruction issues, his views moderated after passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. At the 1880 Republican convention, Garfield was serving as John Sherman’s floor manager when the deadlocked gathering turned to him as their presidential nominee on the thirty-sixth ballot. Garfield triumphed over Winfield Scott Hancock in the general election. Garfield’s administration suffered from heated disputes over patronage with supporters of former president Grant, led by Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York. Charles Guiteau, a delusional, disappointed office seeker, shot Garfield on 2 July 1881 in Washington, D.C., and the president died after lingering for eleven weeks. As a Stalwart, Douglass had preferred that Grant be nominated for a third term in 1880, but he loyally campaigned for Garfield. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:566–81; Margaret Leech and Harry J. Brown, The Garfield Orbit (New York, 1978); Allan Peskin, Garfield: A Biography (Kent, Ohio, 1978); ACAB, 2:599–605; DAB, 7:145–51. 3. Blanche Kelso Bruce.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 489

5/17/23 2:35 PM

490

DOUGLASS ET AL. TO GEORGE F. HOAR, 22 JUNE 1880

FREDERICK DOUGLASS ET AL. TO GEORGE F. HOAR1 Washington, D.C. 22 June 1880[.]

Hon: George F. Hoar, Sir: The undersigned colored citizens of the United States who have long held you in very high esteem, and have observed with heartfelt satisfaction your course as a Statesman in the National Senate, upon questions involving the welfare of the colored race, notably in respect of National education, wish now to congratulate you upon the high honors you have justly won, by the able, impartial, and every way admirable manner in which you discharged the onerous duties imposed upon you as the President of the late National Republican Convention,2 in the Exposition building3 at Chicago. They, however in this communication, desire to do more than this. They wish to express to you their unbounded satisfaction with your ringing words to the Senate and the Nation, upon what they believe to have been a dastardly outrage upon Cadet Whittaker4 at West Point, and they more, especially, and in the most marked and emphatic manner, wish to express to you a sense of their sincere gratitude for, and high appreciation of your noble conduct in calling Hon. B. K. Bruce,5 the colored Senator from Mississippi, and worthy representative of our race, to share with you the high honor of presiding over the most august National Political Convention ever assembled in the United States. Acts like these are more eloquent than words, and will greatly tend to weaken the force of the popular prejudice, the product of slavery, by which we have been for ages oppressed and proscribed. FREDERICK DOUGLASS RICHARD T. GREENER, DEAN, LAW DEPT. HOWARD UNIV. J. H. MERIWETHER6 A. T. AUGUSTA M. D.7 ROBERT PARKER8 LEWIS H. DOUGLASS FREDERICK DOUGLASS JR. CHAS. B. PURVIS MD 9 CHAS. H. PETERS.10 E. B. WELBOURNE 11 M HOWARD, MISS. SHERIFF, [ILLEGIBLE] 12 JAMES HILL13 GEO. C. SMITH 14

Y8204-Douglass.indb 490

5/17/23 2:35 PM

DOUGLASS ET AL. TO GEORGE F. HOAR, 22 JUNE 1880

491

ALS: George Frisbie Hoar Papers, MHS. 1. A member of an important Massachusetts political family, George Frisbie Hoar (1826–1904) was the son, brother, father, and uncle of U.S. congressmen. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Hoar practiced law in Worcester, Massachusetts. Originally a Whig, he helped organize the Republican party in Massachusetts. After terms in the state house (1852) and state senate (1857), he won four consecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1869–77), where he was one of the managers of the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. Elected to the Senate in 1877, Hoar held that office for the remaining twenty-seven years of his life. BDUSC (online); ACAB, 3:220; DAB, 9:87–88. 2. Hoar was elected president of the Republican National Convention on its second day, Thursday, 8 June 1880. Eugene Davis, Proceedings of the Republican National Convention, held at Chicago, Illinois, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday, June 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th, 7th and 8th, 1880 (Chicago, 1881), 15, 22. 3. Located on the Lake Michigan shore along Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago, the Interstate Industrial Exposition Building was dedicated in 1872. It housed numerous exhibitions and two national political conventions. The building was razed in 1893 to make way for the construction of the Chicago Art Institute. Encyclopedia of Chicago (online). 4. Johnson C. Whittaker was the second African American cadet admitted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. In April 1880, Whittaker was found tied to his bed, unconscious, with lacerations to his face and earlobes. The commandant of West Point conducted an inquiry, concluded that Whittaker had done this to himself, and used it as justification for the exclusion of all further nonwhites from the military academy. Hoar raised this issue, though not mentioning Whittaker by name, during debate in the Senate on 20 May 1880 when proposing an amendment requiring that no preference be given to potential cadets on the basis of race. That proposal was defeated. Hoar also spoke in public denouncing the treatment of Whittaker. Indianapolis Leader, 8 May 1880; Congressional Record, 46th Cong., Rec. 10, no. 4, S3548–3549; Stewart Rapalje and Robert L. Lawrence, eds., “Calligraphy and the Whittaker Case,” Criminal Law Magazine, 2:145–49 (1881). 5. Blanche K. Bruce served as a vice president of the convention for the state of Mississippi. He served at one point as the temporary chair of the convention and was a nominee for vice president of the United States. Davis, Proceedings of the Republican National Convention, 21, 42, 293. 6. James H. Meriwether (1847–1906) was a wealthy African American in Washington, D.C., considered one of the wealthiest black men in the area by 1895, with an estimated worth of $60,000. Born in Kentucky, Meriwether was among the first graduates of Howard University and practiced law in the District of Columbia. He was an annual supporting member of the National Association for Rate Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children. Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color; U.S. House of Representatives, 54th Cong., 2d sess., Annual Report of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia for the Year Ended June 30, 1896 (Washington, D.C., 1896), 246–55. 7. Alexander Thomas Augusta (1825–90) was born a free black in Norfolk, Virginia. Starting out as a barber, he learned to read and write as a young man before moving to Philadelphia, where he became a doctor’s assistant. When he had earned enough money, Augusta moved to Toronto to enter the medical college at the University of Toronto, where he earned his medical degree. During the Civil War, Augusta wrote to Lincoln, asking to be assigned as a surgeon in one of the African American regiments being formed, and he eventually attained the rank of lieutenant colonel, the highest rank achieved by any person of color during the war. He was put in charge of the Freedmen’s Hospital in the District of Columbia, making him the first black hospital administrator in the nation’s history. After the war, Augusta was appointed one of the first professors in the medical school at Howard University. He served as a trustee of the Freedmen’s Bank during Douglass’s brief tenure as its president. After being denied membership in the District of Columbia chapter of the American Medical Association, he joined other African American physicians in organizing the National Medical Society. Whyte, Uncivil War, 293; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 2:211.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 491

5/17/23 2:35 PM

492

DOUGLASS ET AL. TO GEORGE F. HOAR, 22 JUNE 1880

8. The identity of this individual cannot be confirmed. The city directory for Washington, D.C., lists two Robert Parkers in 1880, one a painter and the other a barber. Two years later, a Robert Parker was among the six pallbearers at the funeral of Anna Murray Douglass. Baltimore Sun, 8 August 1882; William H. Boyd, Boyd’s Directory of the District of Columbia . . . 1881 (Washington, D.C., 1881), 587. 9. Probably Charles Burleigh Purvis (1842–1929), the son of the famous abolitionist Robert Purvis. Born in Philadelphia, at eighteen he entered Oberlin College. Purvis then attended the Western Reserve Medical School in Cleveland, graduating in 1865. He enlisted with the Union army and served as an acting surgeon until his enlistment expired. From 1869 to 1881, Purvis was the assistant surgeon at the Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. In that capacity, he attended to the wounds of President James A. Garfield. The next president, Chester Arthur, appointed Purvis surgeon-incharge at the Freedmen’s Hospital. He also was a member of the medical faculty at Howard University and a member of the District Board of Health. Purvis joined Alexander T. Augusta in organizing the National Medical Society to protest racial discrimination in the American Medical Association. He generated some controversy in the District’s black community by marrying a white woman. He later moved to Boston and practiced medicine. Jacqueline M. Moore, Leading the Race: The Transformation of the Black Elite in the Nation’s Capital, 1880–1920 (Charlottesville, Va., 1999), 30; Whyte, Uncivil War, 293; Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color, 167–268. 10. Charles H. Peters. 11. Eugene B. Welborne (sometimes spelled Welborn or Wilburn) was a prosperous black farmer from Mississippi who rose in politics following the Civil War, starting out as a state representative in the 1870s. In 1875, when tensions were heating up between whites and blacks in Mississippi, Welborne joined the militia formed by fellow state senator Charles Caldwell. On Election Day 1875, tension spilled over into violence in Clinton, Mississippi, where Welborne and other blacks were attacked by a group known as the “White Line.” Sometime after that, Welborne moved to Washington, D.C., and was employed by the pension office as a clerk. William H. Boyd, Boyd’s Directory of the District of Columbia . . . 1880 (Washington, D.C., 1880), 774; Register of the Department of the Interior: Containing Appointees of the President and of the Secretary of the Interior, 1877–1909 (Washington, D.C. 1909), 177; Eugene DeFriest Bétit, Collective Amnesia: American Apartheid; African Americans’ 400 Years in North America 1619–2019 (n.p., 2019). 12. Merrimon Howard (1821–?), a former slave, was freed in the 1850s. Before attaining his freedom, Howard worked as a house servant and a carriage driver. After the Civil War, he represented Jefferson County in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1870 to 1872 and served as county sheriff. Additionally, Howard helped found the first school for African Americans in Jefferson County. In January 1877, Howard testified before a U.S. Senate committee on the denial of elective franchise experienced by African Americans in Mississippi during the elections of 1875 and 1876. Howard had been targeted by death threats from Mississippi Democrats in Fayette following his direct confrontation with “White Liners” in a massive procession. Despite his position as a special federal marshal, Howard fled to Washington, D.C., before the 1876 elections in Mississippi. In Washington, Howard was appointed a messenger in the Treasury Department but lost his position in 1886 as a result of Mississippi representative Ethelbert Barksdale’s request for Howard’s removal. His son Michael Howard was one of four black cadets admitted to West Point in 1870. But the younger Howard failed the entrance examination and was sent home. During his brief time at West Point, Howard roomed with James Webster Smith, the first black cadet admitted to the institution. Washington Post, 9 November 1987; Testimony as to Denial of Elective Franchise in Mississippi at the Elections of 1875 and 1876, Taken Under the Resolution of the Senate of December 5, 1876, U.S. Senate, 44th Congress, 2nd Session (Washington, D.C., 1876), 157–58, 163, 176; Justin Behrend, Reconstructing Democracy: Grassroots Black Politics in the Deep South after the Civil War (Athens, Ga., 2015), 207–234, 242; Flipper, Colored Cadet at West Point, 290–91; Monroe N. Work et al., “Some Negro Members of Reconstruction Conventions and Legislatures and of Congress,” JNH, 5:74 (January 1920).

Y8204-Douglass.indb 492

5/17/23 2:36 PM

MARTHA WALDO GREENE TO DOUGLASS, 3 JULY 1880

493

13. James Hill (1845–?) was a former slave of one J. Hill from near Holly Springs, Mississippi. He received no formal education but was taught to read and write by the daughters of his master. During the war, he served as a valet to Hill’s sons in the Confederate army. After his emancipation, he maintained quite warm relations with his former masters, visiting often and even aiding them financially when they fell on hard times. During Reconstruction, Hill joined the Republican party and became a state representative, Speaker of the Mississippi House, and finally secretary of state of Mississippi (1874–78). He was well respected and well liked, working cordially with both Democrats and Republicans in Mississippi. In 1880, he served as one of the delegates from Mississippi to the Republican National Convention in Chicago. He was well respected by Republicans in Washington, D.C., and visited several times, at least once in 1872. George A. Sewell and Margaret L. Dwight, Mississippi Black History Makers (Jackson, Miss., 1984), 48-49; Samuel Shapiro, “A Black Senator from Mississippi: Blanche K. Bruce (1841–1898),” Review of Politics, 44:87 (January 1982): 87; Ruth Watkins. “Reconstruction in Marshall County,” Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, 12:172 (1912). 14. George C. Smith (c. 1822–?) was an African American Republican member of the Mississippi state senate in 1874–75 from Coahoma County. Born in Ohio, he moved south after the Civil War. He was the Louisiana state superintendent of education and then moved to Washington, D.C., and worked for many years as a private secretary to Blanche K. Bruce. After Bruce’s death, Smith worked for the Treasury Department. Jackson Daily Mississippi Pilot, 10 October 1875; Canton (Miss.) Mail, 5 February 1876; Ralph R. Crowder, John Edward Bruce: Politician, Journalist, and Self-Trained Historian of the African Diaspora (New York, 2004), 53; Moore, Leading the Race, 26.

MARTHA WALDO GREENE TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS [East Greenwich, R.I.] 1 3 July 1880.

My dear Friend I am sorry at the delay in my response to your favor of Saturday last—I went to Providence on Monday, and Gertie2 was to forward my letters. I expected to stay a week—Your letter3 and one from Miss Pitts4 came together & Gertie forwarded them as agreed. Miss Pitt’s contained a change in her programme which required such a change in time, that it did not impress itself upon me that my letter to you should reach you before Sunday & could not, if not sent from Prov. The change in the plans of Miss Helen & Miss Eva5 was this—instead of going to Providence from N. York, making their visit there first they had decided to come by Boat to Fall River6 direct, reaching here Sunday May the 3d—The delay of sending the letter to me in Providence, made it impossible for me to return any word as early as they expected, and this I fear will cause some inconvenience but I could do nothing else but send a Postal immediately and then come back myself and be in readiness to meet them tomorrow morning—So I am alone—quite alone—with, G. & children are gone to N. Bedford to spend the 4th—and Bluff Cottage7

Y8204-Douglass.indb 493

5/17/23 2:36 PM

494

MARTHA WALDO GREENE TO DOUGLASS, 3 JULY 1880

holds me to night its sole occupant—all the friends in Providence hailed me most graciously—at the Union8 they have taken no action on my resignation sent when in Washington and individually expressed the hope of seeing me back again in the fall—I did not go about & saw but few. I went directly to Cushing st—where they are hoping to see you—Every one I did see asked for you most kindly. [illegible] accidently happened in, and then came again and brought your letter for me to see—I am very sorry you do not hold out in being in better health—I have a little place for you when you come up East, to consult a very celebrated Physician in Providence, who gives no medicines but after “close examinations,” will prescribe a “bill of fare”—suited to the peculiarities of the case, which restores the balance in the system and sets the machinary to work in order and in harmony—That is what you need I am quite sure, and I can speak of it, as one having authority—I will write you again soon as I learn what arrangement Miss Helen has about being here. Could you come before the 1st of August? As our Jean (maid of all work)9 is to be gone through July, and will be at back by the 1st of August, it would have given me more leisure to be polite, if their visit could have been postponed, but I understood from them that they wished to come before going to Honeoye, so I could only do the next best thing— Hoping your trip away, will have been beneficial to you, and that the cool delightful rain we have had for 2 days has refreshed you. I am as always very truly MARTHA ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 415R–17, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Greene added “14 Taylor St.” to her address. 2. Martha Gertrude “Gertie” Greene Sherman. 3. This letter has not survived. 4. Helen Pitts. 5. Eva Pitts (1849–?) was Helen’s youngest sister, born on the family’s farm near Honeoye, New York. She was among the first women to graduate from Cornell University, where she eventually earned a master’s degree in literature. She taught for a time in Huntington, Indiana. Eva initially sided with her father in disapproving of Helen’s marriage to Douglass but eventually accepted it; she stands with the new couple in a photograph preserved by the National Park Service. Fought, Women, 230, 232, 240, 242, 245. 6. Located approximately seventeen miles from Providence, Rhode Island, and fifty-three miles from Boston, Fall River, Massachusetts, was initially settled in 1659 under the name Freetown. In the colonial period, it was best known as the site of a British raid on 25 May 1778 that was successfully repelled by the local militia. In 1804 the town’s name was changed to Troy, and in 1834 it was changed to Fall River. In the nineteenth century, Fall River became an important textile-manufacturing center, but today it is best known as the lifelong home of Lizzie Borden (1860–1927) and the site of the infamous axe murders of her father and stepmother, which took place in their residence on 4 August 1892. Terry M. Mays, Historical Dictionary of the American Revolution, 3d ed. (New York,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 494

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CHARLES B. PURVIS TO DOUGLASS, 5 JULY 1880

495

2019), 123; Michael Newton, The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes (New York, 2004), 41–44; Rob Lewis, Images of Fall River (Charleston, S.C., 1995), 7–8, 91–92; Henry M. Fenner, comp., History of Fall River Massachusetts (Fall River, Mass., 1911), 15–39. 7. Apparently, this was the name that Martha W. Greene gave the Fall River residence she shared with her daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren at 14 Taylor Street. 1850 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 225A; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.” 8. Founded in 1870, the Union for Christian Work was a literary, educational, and benevolent society based in Providence, Rhode Island. The union operated a 4,000-volume library and reading room at 151 Broad Street, which was open to anyone over the age of sixteen, along with three branch libraries in other locations in the city. The main library and reading room, which were open on weeknights and Sundays, provided “games, books, and kind influences” to “street boys” on Saturday nights during the winter months. The union also ran a flower mission that provided fresh flowers to the sick each Saturday. Martha W. Greene served as the union’s president in 1879. Richard M. Bayles, ed., History of Providence County, Rhode Island, 2 vols. (New York, 1891), 1:531–32. 9. Martha W. Greene’s maid “of all work” in 1880 was a Canadian named Jean “Jennie” M. Blair (c. 1857–?). 1880 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 225A.

CHARLES B. PURVIS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS [n.p.] 5 July 1880.

Mr. Douglass Dear Friend, Your very kind letter was received this morning.1 I shall mail it to my father.2 I know he will be pleased to receive it. I want to thank you for the complimentary allusions you made to Dr. Shadd3 about me. I am not quite sure I deserved them all. I have tried to do my whole duty; to be a credit to my family & to those with whom I am identified. I donot say I have not made mistakes but they are of the head not of the heart: I am not well to day. I will confess to being sick of heart. I am tired of the abuse that is being heaped upon me day by day & for what I donot know. I cannot see why man who has come to me time & time again for help should now seek to blow a blot upon me. I find consolation in the fact that you, Messrs Lynch,4 Bruce,5 Smalls6 & others of a representative character see me as I am. Dr. Shadd says you expect to see Mr. Lamar7 soon. When you do see him I stand ready to have every act of my official life looked into—I dont know that I should care as long as Presidents & Secretaries the same, & even [illegible] charges made against them, but I do. Sometimes I feel that it doesnot pay to be fighting for the elevation of the colored people, they seem to have no appreciative sense. I didnot start to write a letter & will not disturb you more. Yours truly C. B. PURVIS

Y8204-Douglass.indb 495

5/17/23 2:36 PM

496

CHARLES B. PURVIS TO DOUGLASS, 5 JULY 1880

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 410–11, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Douglass’s letter to Charles Burleigh Purvis has not survived. Purvis implies that Douglass wrote in support of him in an unidentified controversy. At that time, Douglass was a trustee of Howard University, and Purvis was a member of its medical department faculty as well as head surgeon of the Freedmen’s Hospital, which was attached to it. If the criticism Purvis was receiving concerned either of these roles, it did not prevent his elevation to director of that hospital within a few years. More likely the controversy stemmed from the April 1880 publication of the report of a U.S. Senate committee, headed by Blanche K. Bruce, that looked into the financial problems behind the failure of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Bank in 1874. Both Douglass and Purvis were called to testify and answer questions. One of the commissioners initially charged with settling the affairs of the closed bank, Robert H. T. Liepold, criticized a loan that the bank had made to Purvis while he was its vice president. Purvis, in turn, had criticized many of the bank’s past officers and trustees after the bank’s collapse, probably generating hard feelings. U.S. Senate, Report of the Select Committee, 177–191, 254–57; Logan, Howard University, 42, 90; Muller, Lion of Anacostia, 77; Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 206. 2. Charles Burleigh Purvis was the son of Robert Purvis. 3. Born in Washington, D.C., Furmann Jeremiah Shadd (1852–1908) was the son of Absalom W. and Eliza J. Shadd and a close relative of Mary Ann Shadd Carey. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Chatham, Canada West, where they remained through the Civil War. After returning to Washington, D.C., in 1866, Shadd was among the earliest students enrolled at Howard University. After completing his A.B. in 1875, Shadd was hired as a teacher in Howard’s normal school, serving as its principal from 1879 to 1881. While working at the normal school, he was also a student at Howard’s medical school, and he graduated from it in 1881. Later that same year he was appointed assistant surgeon and resident physician at the Freedmen’s Hospital, and also served on the faculty of the medical school. In 1889 he graduated from dental school. In 1891 he was made a full professor at Howard University’s medical school; he applied for membership in the local chapter of the American Medical Association, but was rejected because of his race. In 1895, Shadd resigned his post at the Freedmen’s Hospital and went into private practice. But he maintained his affiliation with Howard University, serving as secretary and treasurer of the medical department from 1896 until his death. Shadd spent most of 1906 studying in Europe, particularly under the German Nobel Prize winner Dr. Robert Koch, who discovered the organisms that cause anthrax, tuberculosis, and Asiatic cholera. Shadd died in Washington, D.C., in 1908. 1900 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 203A; Daniel Smith Lamb, ed., Howard University Medical Department: A Historical, Biographical and Statistical Souvenir (Washington, D.C., 1900), 126–27; George Hendrick and Willene Hendrick, Black Refugees in Canada: Accounts of Escape during the Era of Slavery (London, 2010), 67–68; Mary Maillard, ed., Whispers of Cruel Wrongs: The Correspondence of Louise Jacobs and Her Circle, 1879–1911 (Madison, Wisc., 2017), 187n. 4. Probably John R. Lynch. 5. Blanche K. Bruce. 6. One of the first black heroes of the Civil War, Robert Smalls (1839–1915) was born a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina. When his master moved to Charleston in 1851, Smalls was brought to that city and permitted to hire himself out as a sail rigger and sailor. At the beginning of the war, Confederate authorities impressed Smalls into service aboard the Planter, a Charleston harbor steamer. On the night of 12 May 1862, Smalls and other black crewmen, together with their families, sailed the vessel past Confederate defenses and delivered themselves to the Union fleet blockading the harbor. The Northerners appointed Smalls pilot and later captain of the Planter and used his knowledge of South Carolina coastal waters to great advantage. In August 1862, General David Hunter sent Smalls to Washington, where he attempted to persuade Lincoln to enlist runaway slaves in the Union army. After the war, Smalls became a leading Republican in South Carolina, serving in the state constitutional convention of 1868, the state legislature (1868–74), and the U.S. House of Representatives

Y8204-Douglass.indb 496

5/17/23 2:36 PM

DOUGLASS TO CHARLES JERVIS LANGDON, 9 AUGUST 1880

497

(1875–79, 1882–83, 1884–87). Appointed customs collector of the port of Beaufort in 1889, he held that position, except during Grover Cleveland’s second administration, until 1913. Okon Edet Uya, From Slavery to Public Service: Robert Smalls, 1839–1915 (New York, 1971); Benjamin Quarles, “The Abduction of the ‘Planter,’ ” Civil War History, 4:5–10 (March 1958); Christopher, Black Americans in Congress, 38–54; DANB, 560–61; ACAB, 5:553–54; DAB, 17:224–25; BDUSC (online). 7. Purvis’s handwriting makes the identification of this individual impossible to determine with high confidence. It is possible that it was Blanche K. Bruce’s colleague in the U.S. Senate, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar (1825–93). After graduating from Emory College in 1845, Lamar was admitted to the Georgia bar but moved to Mississippi two years later. Lamar served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1857 until December 1860, when he resigned to take part in his state’s secession. A staunch defender of the Confederacy, which he served in military, diplomatic, and judicial roles, Lamar later espoused sectional reconciliation. In 1873 he returned to a seat in the House of Representatives, where he delivered a memorable eulogy on Charles Sumner. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1876, Lamar also served as President Cleveland’s secretary of the interior (1885–88) and as associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1888–93). James B. Murphy, L. Q. C. Lamar: Pragmatic Patriot (Baton Rouge, La., 1973); ACAB, 3:598–99; NCAB, 1:37; DAB, 10:551–53; BDUSC (online).

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO CHARLES JERVIS LANGDON1 Washington, D.C. 9 August 1880.

C. J. Langdon Esqr My dear Sir: I am obliged by your kind and thoughtful note. I did not need the assurance it gave me, for I think I know you. Besides, I was told on my arrival the true situation. Nevertheless I thank for your note. Doctor Krakowizer 2 and his amiable wife waited for my arrival till after midnight I am told— but dust covered and travelled stained as I was, I did not feel that I ought to go among strangers. You see, I am a little more modest than I sometimes get credit for—I caught a glimpse of your mother 3 at Livonea4 and was delighted to see one near and dear to you, who was kind and friendly to me when friends were few and foes were many. I never pass through Millford5 without its calling up the youthful forms and faces of your father and mother—I went through the Church at Elmira with all the more interest after seeing the face of your father there.6 I am hopeful that we shall elect Garfield and Arthur7 and shall work for it from now until election. I go to Indiana 1st September, but shall hold myself ready for work in our state of New York in Oct.8 With sincere regard Always truly yours FREDK DOUGLASS

Y8204-Douglass.indb 497

5/17/23 2:36 PM

498

DOUGLASS TO CHARLES JERVIS LANGDON, 9 AUGUST 1880

ALS: Research Library Acquisitions, Nock Farm Library, Hartford, Conn. 1. Possibly Charles Jervis Langdon (1849–1916). Langdon, born to the wealthy coal merchant Jervis Langdon of Elmira, was the brother of Mark Twain’s wife Olivia. In 1870 he took over the family coal business and expanded into other enterprises. Langdon was an active Republican and served as a delegate to the 1880 Republican National Convention, where he was one of the 306 Stalwarts who unsuccessfully attempted to nominate Ulysses S. Grant for a third term. Smith and Bucci, Mark Twain’s Letters, 2:63–64, 287, 378; LeMaster and Wilson, Mark Twain Encyclopedia, 440; NCAB, 16:31. 2. Emil Washington Krakowizer (1852–1924) was born in Williamsburg (now a Brooklyn neighborhood), New York, the son of Ernest Krakowizer, a successful doctor, and his wife, Emilie. He began his medical studies at Harvard in 1874, and later moved to Leipzig, Germany, where he completed his degree in 1876. He returned to New York to open a private practice in the city of Elmira, and in 1879 he married Elizabeth Partridge (1854–98), with whom he had four children. Krakowizer was also involved in newspaper publication and teaching. In 1884 he attended the Cook County Normal School (later the Chicago Normal School) and graduated in 1885. The same year, he was appointed superintendent of schools in Marinette, Wisconsin. In 1899 he worked for the Milwaukee Sentinel newspaper and later the Boston Herald. In 1907 he was director of boys’ clubs for the Educational Alliance of New York. Seventh Report of the Class Secretary of the Class of 1874 of Harvard College, June 1874–June 1899 (Boston, 1899), 134–35; Ninth Report of the Class Secretary of the Class of 1874 of Harvard College, June 1874–June 1909 (Cambridge, Mass., 1909), 111–12. 3. Olivia Lewis Langdon (1810–90) was the mother of Charles Langdon and Olivia Langdon Clemens. Olivia Lewis married Jervis Langdon on 23 July 1832, and they resided as shopkeepers in Millport, a town approximately twenty miles from Elmira. They eventually settled in Elmira in 1845, and by 1860, Jervis Langdon was one of the wealthiest merchants in town. The husband and wife were actively involved in abolitionism, were friends with the abolitionist Beecher family, financially supported the Underground Railroad in Elmira, and left the Presbyterian Church in 1846 because of its refusal to condemn slavery. Susan K. Harris, The Courtship of Olivia Langdon and Mark Twain (Cambridge, Mass., 1996), 2, 37, 175. 4. Livonia is a town in Livingston County, New York, that contains a village also named Livonia. This resort town sits at the eastern boundary of the county, bordering Lake Conesus. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1068. 5. Milford is a town in Otsego County, New York. It is located northeast of Oneonta. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1203. 6. Elmira is located in Chemung County, New York, near the Pennsylvania border. Douglass delivered an address in Elmira on the afternoon of 3 August 1880 as part of the city’s daylong combined celebration of West Indian emancipation and the Emancipation Proclamation. The day’s activities began at dawn with a gun salute, followed by prayer meetings at the African Union Methodist Protestant Church and the A.M.E. Zion Church at ten. These meetings were followed by another gun salute at eleven and a procession from Temperance Hall to Hoffman’s Grove, the site of Douglass’s address. Fifteen delegations, including the Colored Veterans of the Civil War, the Elmira Colored Y.M.C.A., and the Masons, marched with Douglass to the grove. The Reverend M. E. Collins opened the program with a prayer. John W. Jones, the presiding officer, called the assembly to order and introduced William H. Lester, who delivered a dramatic reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. Jones then introduced Douglass, who spoke for two hours, ending the afternoon’s exercises. Having spent the previous night in Elmira, Douglass departed by train immediately after his speech, since he was scheduled to deliver a campaign address in Rochester the next day. Elmira (N.Y.) Advertiser, 23, 30, 31 July, 3 August 1880; Washington People’s Advocate, 7 August 1880; Holland, Frederick Douglass, 348.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 498

5/17/23 2:36 PM

FRANCIS E. LEUPP TO DOUGLASS, 21 SEPTEMBER 1880

499

7. In 1880 the Republican party selected James A. Garfield (1831–81) and Chester A. Arthur (1829–86) as its candidates for president and vice president. Arthur was a lawyer, born in Vermont. President Ulysses Grant had appointed Arthur collector of the Port of New York—a patronage position responsible for collecting import duties on foreign goods. When Grant lost his bid for a third term, his supporters succeeded in nominating Arthur for vice president. When Garfield was assassinated a few months into his term, Arthur became the twenty-first president. His administration is remembered for promoting federal civil service reform, reducing tariffs, and restricting immigration, particularly through the Chinese Exclusion Act. Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey, The Presidents of the United States of America, 17th ed. (2006), 44–47. 8. Throughout the early weeks of September 1880, Douglass toured Indiana, speaking in Noblesville, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Evansville, and Columbus. After a speaking trip to North Carolina, he gave a speech entitled “Great Bodies Move Slowly” in New York City on 25 October 1880. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xi, 581–87; Indianapolis Leader, 4, 11 September 1880.

FRANCIS E. LEUPP 1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Syracuse, N.Y. 21 Sept[ember 18]80.

To/Hon: Fredk Douglass. Dear Sir: I am collecting a few historical data respecting the famous “Jerry rescue”,2 which occurred here, I believe, on the 1st of October, 1851. I have been informed in one quarter that you were present in the city either on the occasion or shortly before it, & made a speech which did much toward inspiring the stroke for human rights.3 Will you kindly inform me if this is true? I am further informed that you once accepted the challenge of a certain white man in New York city to debate, he declaring that no colored man could argue with a white; and that, when you had disproved his brag, Sam Ward4 accepted the challenge—the white man having declared that you were ruled out by reason of the white blood in your veins.5 Will you kindly write me whether this is true; what the subject of debate was; and what was the name of your antagonist and challenger. I should not trespass on your valuable time to ask these questions, but for the fact that so many conflicting particulars are afloat that I am driven to original sources for accurate statements wherever such sources can be reached. In haste, I am Very sincerely yours— FRANCIS E. LEUPP

Y8204-Douglass.indb 499

5/17/23 2:36 PM

500

FRANCIS E. LEUPP TO DOUGLASS, 21 SEPTEMBER 1880

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 64–66, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Francis Ellington Leupp (1841–1918) graduated from Williams College in 1862. He went into the field of journalism and for many years was the Washington correspondent for the New York Evening Post. He also served as the editor of Good Government, a publication promoting civil service reform. Theodore Roosevelt appointed him the nation’s Indian commissioner (1904–09). Leupp wrote popular biographies of Roosevelt and George Westinghouse. New York Times, 20 November 1918; Bruce E. Johansen and Barry M. Pritzker, eds., Encyclopedia of American Indian History, 4  vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2008), 1:768–69. 2. One of the most famous acts of resistance to the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, the “Jerry Rescue” occurred in Syracuse, New York, on 1 October 1851. William Henry, commonly known as Jerry, a runaway slave from Missouri residing in Syracuse, was arrested and brought before the local fugitive-slave commissioner. But abolitionists attending a Liberty party convention rescued Jerry from his captors and spirited him away to Canada. Although several of the rescuers, including Gerrit Smith, Samuel J. May, and Charles A. Wheaton, were indicted, only one was found guilty, and the rest of the cases were dropped. Abolitionists considered the Jerry Rescue a great victory and commemorated its anniversary with public speeches and festivals until the Civil War. Earl E. Sperry, The Jerry Rescue: October 1, 1851 (Syracuse, N.Y., 1924); Larry Gara, The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad (Lexington, Ky., 1961), 42, 111–12, 128, 132; Campbell, Slave Catchers, 101, 154–57. 3. Douglass was not present in Syracuse at the time of the Jerry Rescue. He was speaking at a Methodist meetinghouse in Belfast, a small community in southwestern New York, with the local abolitionist Asahel N. Cole. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 2:xxx. 4. The parents of Samuel Ringgold Ward (1817–c. 1866) carried him along on their escape from slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore around 1820. The family settled six years later in New York City, where young Ward received an elementary education. In 1833 he embraced religion and was ordained in 1839. His two New York congregations, at South Butler (1841–43) and Cortland (1846–51), were predominantly white, but Ward vigorously agitated for the rights of slaves and free blacks. The American Anti-Slavery Society appointed Ward a lecturing agent in 1839. As one of the earliest black supporters of political abolitionism, Ward acted as spokesman for the Liberty party after 1844. Ward studied law and medicine briefly, also trying his hand at editing during the late 1840s. His Impartial Citizen, published in Syracuse, and another newspaper venture failed financially. In 1851, Ward’s leading role in the Jerry Rescue caused him to fear arrest and to immigrate to Canada. There, he launched the Provincial Freeman in 1853 and acted as agent for the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. In the latter capacity, Ward journeyed to Britain in 1853 on a fund-raising tour. In 1855, Ward published his Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro and accepted a British Quaker’s gift of fifty acres of land in Jamaica. He lived his last decade on that island, farming, writing, and ministering to a small Baptist congregation. NS, 2 February 1849; Robin W. Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History, 2nd ed. (New Haven, Conn., 1997), 206–08, 227, 265–66, 361, 395; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 79, 98, 133, 138, 210. 5. Leupp seems to refer to the famous invasion on the 1850 annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York City by a proslavery mob led by the Tammany Hall politician Isaac Rynders. When Douglass responded to the racist remarks of one of the mob members, a certain “Dr. Grant,” his eloquence was attributed by the crowd to his white father. Samuel Ringgold Ward then arose and asked, “What do you think of me, then?” Rynders replied, “That’s the genuine article, and no mistake!” Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 2:235–36.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 500

5/17/23 2:36 PM

DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL D. PORTER, 4 OCTOBER 1880

501

MARSHALL JEWELL1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS New York, [N.Y.] 22 Sept[ember] 1880.

Hon. Frederick Douglass, Washington, D. C. My Dear Mr. Douglass: Many thanks for your esteemed favor of the 20th inst.2 I am glad you are at home: glad you are resting: glad to learn that your voice will soon be all right again: for, when the Republican party looses “Fred.” Douglass’ voice, it will meet with a heavy loss, and may the time be long [illegible] before [illegible] calamity shall overtake the friends of [illegible]. I have written Mr. Sherman3 to-day in accordance with your suggestions, asking him to give leave of absence to Mr. William H. Green, 4 which I hope he will do. I trust you will soon be able to enter the field again. Very truly yours, MARSHALL JEWELL ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 424, FD Papers, DLC. 1. The son of a New Hampshire tanner, Marshall Jewell (1825–83) was trained in his father’s trade but abandoned it to become one of the earliest telegraph operators. He returned to partner with his father in the leather industry and became wealthy as a result. Turning to politics as a Republican, Jewell won election as Connecticut governor (1869–73). He served President Grant first as minister to Russia (1873–74) and then as postmaster general (1874–76). An unsuccessful candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1876, Jewell chaired the Republican National Committee (1880–83). Sobel and Raimo, Governors of the United States, 1:180; ACAB, 10:431–32. 2. Douglass’s letter to Jewell has not survived. 3. John Sherman. 4. William H. Green is listed as a customs inspector working for the U.S. Treasury Department in New Orleans. He was an active Republican leader in Louisiana. The United States Treasury Register, Containing a List of Persons Employed in the Treasury Department (Washington, D.C., 1979), 121; Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers, 114.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL D. PORTER Washington[,] D.C. 4 Oct[ober] 1880[.]

S. D. Porter Esqr.1 My dear sir. May I tell you that I deeply feel the sad event that has lately come to your heart and home—I can hardly realize the fact that Mrs S. D. Porter is dead.2 The last time I met her she seemed the picture of health. This

Y8204-Douglass.indb 501

5/17/23 2:36 PM

502

DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL D. PORTER, 4 OCTOBER 1880

impression is so vivid that my feeling at the moment refuses to accept what my reason tells me is true. The bereavement to you and yours must be keen. May heaven help you to bear it. Sorrow is its solace, mourning its own comforter. I know your heart, my friend, is tender but it is strong as well. You have need of all the strength of your well stored mind to bear you up and support you in this great affliction, for you are alone and lonely. You comforted me when my heart was sore of the loss of a precious child.3 I wish I could lift from your heart one shadow now. I have sacred memories of Mrs Porter and yourself. I have seen you walking together for more than thirty years. When I came to your city to start my paper, when friends were few you both befriended. Mrs Porter though keenly sensitive to popular disapproval was ever ready to go where her sense of duty led—though that were in the face of public opinion. I remember how bravely but noiselessly she supported our earlier antislavery sewing circles4 —how she threw open her parlour for accommodation of all would come and work for emancipation and to assist the slave on his way to Canada.5 I could write much, my dear sir, in the spirit of gratitude to your dear departed one—The but I must not. Her good deeds and beautiful life rise before me. The poor children in Rochester have indeed lost a friend6 —and the cause justice and liberty has lost a friend—and I have lost a friend. There is some consolation in the thought that you two dear people were permitted to walk hand in hand so long in the world— Pardon this seeming intrusion upon your sacred grief—and believe Truly yours FREDERICK DOUGLASS ALS: Porter Family Manuscripts, NRU. 1. Samuel D. Porter. 2. Susan Farley Porter died on 24 September 1880 at sixty-eight years old. She was buried at the Mount Hope Cemetery. Find a Grave (online). 3. Douglass’s youngest child, Annie, died on 13 March 1860, while he was overseas in Great Britain. The Douglass family had not made burial provisions for the death of any of their children. Annie’s body was interred in the mausoleum of the family of Samuel D. and Susan F. Porter. Fought, Women, 172–73. 4. Susan Porter was the first president of the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Sewing Society. The society sponsored lecturers and philanthropic events with notable speakers such as Frederick Douglass and Ralph Waldo Emerson. These events collected funds, gathered signatures, raised awareness, and assisted antislavery publications. Finding Aids, Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society Papers, 1851–1868, William L. Clements Library, Manuscripts Division, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 502

5/17/23 2:36 PM

DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON, 5 OCTOBER 1880

503

5. The Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society (the group had dropped “sewing” from its name by 1855) provided small amounts of cash to fugitive slaves to aid them on the last leg of their trip to Canada. The annual reports for 1855 and 1856 show that 136 fugitive slaves were aided by the society. The Rochester group’s diligence spurred a connection with Harriet Tubman in later years. Finding Aids, Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society Papers, 1851–1868, William L. Clements Library, Manuscripts Division. 6. Susan Porter was a leader in the Rochester Orphan Asylum Association, an organization that focused on the well-being of local disadvantaged children. She personally obtained six hundred seventeen signatures in a door-to-door campaign to petition Congress for funds for an orphan asylum. Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 90–91.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON Washington[,] D.C. 5 Oct[ober] 1880.

My Dear Theodore. I am happy in the thought that you are again safely on your native soil and give you joy in the marriage of your precious Florence.1 I remember her as a thoughtful and lovely child one who would be especially observed among ten thousand children greatly resembling yourself—I need not tell you that my warmest wishes to Heaven are such that her marriage may be happy and a balm to your own brave heard heart now and always for our friendship knows no pause this side death and will not then if another life remains for us. I have read and reread your volume of Poems2—with ever increasing interest and admiration. Several of them according to my judgement take rank with best of our day and Language. I do not think you will agree with me but I will venture to say you never wrote anything more touching and beautiful than those lines on the grave on the Praire. “Thou and I” is one of my best beloved volumes. It echoes more that I have heard sounding in my soul for many years, than any Book that I can now think of. We have here a reading circle the members of which meet weekly. Each reads from his favorite author. I have read from “Thou and I” several times—but fear that in no instance, I brought out your full meaning. I have done the best I could. Should you come to Washington this winter,3 I do wish you could manage to give me one day of your precious time. I know this is asking a great deal—but you will not blame, though it be too much. I can never entertain you as you can me. I am deep just now in Politics—Last week I was in North Carolina.4 This week I go to Indiana, where I have already spent two or three week on the stump.5 I Shall be glad when the campaign closes—but shall work

Y8204-Douglass.indb 503

5/17/23 2:36 PM

504

BURTON F. BLACKALL TO DOUGLASS, 16 OCTOBER 1880

on Since the war, I have not felt that a Republican victory was more important and desirable than now. Please when you write to Mrs Pelton6 mention me kindly to her—and do me the like favor to all your dear ones. I suppose you will now spend your life much upon the ocean—winter in this country and summer in London. Should I be turned out of office which I almost hope will be the [case] you will see me in England. I wish to visit that country once more before I finish my piece on the stage of life. Let what will come I am always inflexibly yours FREDK DOUGLASS ALS: Charles Roberts Manuscripts, PHC. 1. Douglass probably refers to Tilton’s daughter Florence (1858–1920), who married William Halsey Pelton (1856–91), a native of Louisiana, on 10 September 1880. The Peltons lived in Europe. After William died of a morphine overdose, Florence returned to Brooklyn, where she operated the Pelton School of Music for over thirty years. The couple’s only child, Agnes L. Pelton, became a renowned modernist painter. J. M. Pelton, A Genealogy of the Pelton Family in America (Albany, N.Y., 1892), 584; Don R. Severson, Finding Paradise: Island Art in Private Collections (Honolulu, Hawaii, 2002), 120. 2. Tilton’s Thou and I: A Lyric of Human Life was published in 1879 by the New York City firm owned by Richard Worthington. Douglass refers to one of the major poems in that book, “The Grave on the Prairie.” Theodore Tilton, Thou and I: A Lyric of Human Life, with Other Poems (New York, 1879), 99–110. 3. Tilton might have visited the United States following his daughter’s wedding in London on 17  September 1880. Pelton, Genealogy of the Pelton Family, 584. 4. On 1 October 1880, Douglass spoke at the Annual Exposition of the Colored People of North Carolina in Raleigh. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xxxvii. 5. Throughout the early weeks of September 1880, Douglass toured Indiana, speaking in Noblesville, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Evansville, and Columbus. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:xi; Indianapolis Leader, 4, 11 September 1880. 6. Probably Florence Tilton Pelton.

BURTON F. BLACKALL1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Rochester, N.Y. 16 Oct[ober] 1880.

Fredk Douglass Dear friend. Enclosed please find draft for $123.00 covering Mrs Collins2 interest, and rent of Bond st. property.3 Mrs Collins was a month behind. and the party living in your house cannot pay rent until they receive a remittance of $4000 which was left them by a relative living in Michigan. It will be

Y8204-Douglass.indb 504

5/17/23 2:36 PM

BURTON F. BLACKALL TO DOUGLASS, 16 OCTOBER 1880

505

along as soon as they can get a discharged mortgage from Dakotah territory4 which will be along inside of two weeks. We had one of the longest torchlight processions here last night5 that I ever saw—They walked 8 abreast, and it took 25 mins to pass a given point. It was exciting to see the rockets and Roman candles shoot into the air amidst the booming of cannon on Court St. Bridge. and the whole procession singing “John Browns body lies mouldering in the ground, but his soul goes marching on”6 —And then the men all marched with such a steady military tread, and went through such evolutions that would make any military regiment proud if they could do as well: Such men as D W Powers,7 A S Mann8 & John Van Voorhis9 in the procession—one colored company numbering about 40.10 I enclose an article from the Dem & Chron, which if not pleasant, may interest you to read. Remember me to all the folks. Yours &c B. F. BLACKALL ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 425–26L, FD Papers, DLC. 1. Burton F. Blackall (c. 1833–1901), an expert electrician based in Rochester, was married to Sarah Coleman Blackall, a friend of Susan B. Anthony. Blackall gained a national reputation for his technical skills and worked for a number of electrical businesses, including the Gamewell Fire Alarm Company. In 1875, the Blackalls moved to Rowley Street in Rochester after purchasing a lot from Douglass’s daughter, Rosetta Douglass Sprague. Throughout his lifetime, Douglass remained a close friend of the Blackalls, particularly their daughter Gertrude, who received from Douglass the gold pen that he used to write Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 1 May 1901; Victoria Sandwick Schmitt, “Rochester’s Frederick Douglass, Part Two,” RH, 67:1–55 (Fall 2005). 2. A “Mrs. Collins” living on either Bond or Hamilton Street cannot be located in Rochester city directories, tax records, or U.S. Census documents. 3. The Bond Street property was officially listed as “271 Hamilton Street at Bond.” Douglass purchased the property in 1855 and later gave it to his daughter, Rosetta, and her husband, Nathan Sprague, as a residence. Even after Rosetta moved to her father’s home in Washington, D.C., in 1877, the house was still deeded in Sprague’s name, according to Rochester city records, and Douglass was listed as a boarder. Most likely, Douglass continued to own the house so that he would still be able to vote in Rochester, but rented it to tenants after the departure of the Spragues. O’Keefe, Frederick and Anna Douglass, 86–87. 4. Created by congressional legislation in March 1861, the Dakota Territory originally included all of the original Louisiana Purchase north of Nebraska and west of Minnesota. Its geographic extent was reduced to the size of modern North and South Dakota in 1864. The territorial capital in 1880 was Yankton. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 2116. 5. Late on the evening of 15 October 1880, a military parade for the “Mounted Boys in Blue” regiment, among many other New York, Ohio, and Indiana regiments, marched in Rochester. In addition to Chinese lanterns spelling out “Indiana” and 100-gun salutes for the soldiers, “pyrotechnics and illuminations” were set off all over Rochester. The procession consisted of a reported 2,581

Y8204-Douglass.indb 505

5/17/23 2:36 PM

506

DOUGLASS TO HARRIET L. LLOYD, 18 OCTOBER 1880

people. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle mentioned every house that was decorated, as well as many houses that were not. According to the paper, John Van Voorhis had “fine decorations and splendid fireworks”; Daniel W. Powers had “lanterns” decorating his house, property, and the street the march went through; and Abram S. Mann had prominent decorations. The parade included a torchlight procession, the “largest Rochester has ever seen.” This procession and celebration was described as so brilliant and exciting that “Democrats who did not decorate were not equal to the task of keeping from their doors and windows.” The Democrat and Chronicle also gives honorable mention to many other names for having “spectacular fireworks.” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 16 October 1880. 6. When first published in 1861 by Oliver Ditson, the well-known Civil War ballad “John Brown’s Body” was given the title “Glory, Hallelujah.” “Old John Brown,” possibly the same tune, was named by Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson as a popular song in his black regiment in South Carolina. William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, Slave Songs of the United States (1867; New York, 1951), 3; Miles Mark Fisher, Negro Slaves Songs in the United States (1953; New York, 1968), 118–19, 134, 158; David Ewen, ed., American Popular Songs: From the Revolutionary War to the Present (New York, 1966), 204. 7. A native of Batavia, New York, Daniel William Powers (1818–97) abandoned farming to become a clerk in a hardware business in Rochester at age nineteen. In the 1850s, Powers became a successful banker who developed an entire block of prime commercial real estate in Rochester known as the Powers Block, which included stores and a hotel. Peck, History of Rochester and Monroe County, 512–13. 8. Abram S. Mann operated a prosperous dry-goods business, specializing in women’s clothes, located on the Powers Block in central Rochester. The Industries of the City of Rochester: A Resume of Her Past History and Progress (Rochester, N.Y., 1888), 130. 9. Born in Otsego County, New York, John Van Voorhis (1826–1905) settled in Elmira, where he practiced law and supported the Republican party. Van Voorhis served three interrupted terms in Congress (1879–83, 1893–95). Between and following his congressional service, he practiced law in Rochester. BDUSC (online). 10. Within the Republican campaign procession, a company of fifty black men within the Boys in Blue, led by Captain B. Williams, and a thirteen-piece black band also marched. Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 16 October 1880.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO HARRIET R. LLOYD1 Washington[, D.C.] 18 Oct[ober] 1880[.]

Mrs H. R. Lloyd Dear Madam, I have been obliged by absence from home and incessant labors on the stump to leave your letter unanswered until now. I am glad to know that it is your purpose to publish life and letters of your father2 the late John H. Raymond.3 Unhappily for me, I have no letters of his which can be of service to you. I knew him well while he was Professor in Rochester University. It was at a critical and trying time in the history of the struggle between freedom and slavery in our country. The fugitive slave bill4 had

Y8204-Douglass.indb 506

5/17/23 2:36 PM

DOUGLASS TO HARRIET L. LLOYD, 18 OCTOBER 1880

507

just been enacted, making the whole North slave hunting ground and every American citizen a slave-hunter, had but lately become a law. The effort to make that law respectable was immense. Press, pulpit and official position, all clamored for its enforcement. To speak and write against that law was to brand one’s self in public estimation as a lawbreaker and such a law-breaker I confess myself to have been, both in theory and practice, for I assisted as many as I could in their escape from slavery, and no man more than your father in Rochester more cheerfully gave me countenance and support in my efforts to secure a safe conduct of the many fugitives from slavery who came through Rochester on their way to Canada. He freely gave his time, his influence, and his voice on the side of humanity.5 No so-called law, interest or logic, could blind him to the stupendous wickedness of slavery, and he had the courage to be known and read of all men in that dark hour of our history as an inflexible friend to the cause of emancipation. Many have been the words of kindness and consolation which he addressed to me when the way seemed dark and difficult, and I retain a vivid recollection of his benevolent face and his amiable manners and bearing, though it is more than a quarter of a century since I saw him. It is just possible that Saml D. Porter of Rochester may have valuable letters of his. They were warm personal friends and it might be well for you to write to Mr. Porter on the subject. Truly Yours FREDK DOUGLASS PLSr: Harriet Raymond Lloyd, Life and Letters of John Howard Raymond (New York, 1881), 268–69. 1. Born in Hamilton, New York, Harriet Raymond Lloyd (1842–90) was the eldest of four children born to John H. and Cornelia E. Raymond. She married Harlan Page Lloyd, a Union army veteran and lawyer, and resided with him in Cincinnati, Ohio. Obituary Records of Graduates of Yale University, Deceased from June, 1900, to June, 1910 (New Haven, 1910), 1271; Find a Grave (online). 2. Born in New York City, John Howard Raymond (1814–78) graduated from Union College, in Schenectady, New York. He abandoned the pursuit of the Baptist ministry for professorships in Hebrew, first at Madison (later renamed Colgate) University and then the University of Rochester. He later helped found the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute, serving as its president. In 1865 he became president of Vassar College. ACAB, 5:193–94; DAB, 15:412–13. 3. Harriet Raymond Lloyd edited and published The Life and Letters of John Howard Raymond (New York, 1881). 4. Replacing a 1793 federal law, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, part of that year’s infamous sectional compromise, created a federal position of commissioner, who was authorized to issue arrest warrants for fugitives and to certify the removal of captives to the South. The law stimulated a growth in antislavery sentiment in the North. Opposition centered on the inherent bias of the commissioners,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 507

5/17/23 2:36 PM

508

DOUGLASS TO MARY R. CLARKE, 14 NOVEMBER 1880

who were paid ten dollars each time they ordered the removal of a fugitive, but only five dollars if they judged that the captive was not a fugitive slave. Many also objected to the creation of a bureau of federal officials to enforce the property rights of slave owners in the South. Campbell, Slave Catchers, 23–25; Randall M. Miller and John David Smith, eds., Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery (New York, 1988), 275–76. 5. Witnessing the rendition of the escaped slave Henry Long in 1851 moved Raymond to more actively oppose slavery. He contributed an essay, “A Plea for Free Speech,” to the 1853 edition of Autographs for Freedom, a gift book edited by Julia Griffiths to raise funds for Douglass’s newspaper. Lloyd, Life and Letters of Raymond, 262–63, 269–72.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO MARY R. CLARKE1 Washington[,] D.C. 14 Nov[ember] 1880.

Dear friend: I know that words are tame, that sorrow is its own solace, that mourning is its own comforter, that the lesson of death is silence and resignation, and yet ever since I read the sad announcement of of the death of Dear Doctor Clarke,2 my heart has ached to tell you how deeply touched by that sad event I was and am. I have felt that one of the truest and best friends has departed. It is a consolation that I saw him so recently. I shall not soon forget the quiet Sunday afternoon spent with you both,3 and his last words to me “Frederick” when you come again to Fall River come to our house—and make it your house. No dream at that moment crossed me that I was seeing the face and hearing the voice of dear Doctor Clarke for the last time in this life. The great age attained by his father4 and his own regular and quiet life led me to hope that he would yet live many years— and at first it was not easy to bring my feelings to accept the conclusions of my reason— There is sunshine as well as shadow in the valley of death5 although we are compelled to see it through fast flowing tears. The body is gone but the spirit is near. You are to my vision still together. I see you as in the days when the cause of the slave had few friends, cheering me on in my work by the silent influence of your presence and your sympathy—and so I shall always see you. The living friends of those days are fast disappearing—the circle is dissolving—and you and I are in a grand procession marching toward the sunset. We are not far behind our loved ones—and though no man can tell what there is beyond there is reason to trust that the Almighty power that has called us into existence will do all things well in all Eternity. May

Y8204-Douglass.indb 508

5/17/23 2:36 PM

DOUGLASS TO MARY R. CLARKE, 14 NOVEMBER 1880

509

you, my friend, have a large share of this all sustaining trust, in your present bereavement. And yet I sorrow with you. Respectfully and Truly yours FREDK DOUGLASS ALS: Fall River Historical Society, Fall River, Mass. 1. Mary R. Robinson Clarke (1811–1900). 1870 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 56; Find a Grave (online). 2. John L. Clarke (1812–80), a physician from Massachusetts, was born in Scituate, Rhode Island. In 1854 he graduated from the Homoeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania and that same year moved to Fall River in Bristol County, Massachusetts, where he became a prominent physician in the community. A former member of the Society of Friends, Clarke actively opposed slavery from the earliest days of the abolitionist movement. Lib., 10 October 1845; 1870 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 56; Herbert C. Clapp, “Obituary, John L. Clarke, M.D.,” New England Medical Gazette, 16:31–32 (January 1881); I. T. Talbot, “Homoeopathic Directory,” New England Medical Gazette, 5:155–61 (March 1870). 3. As revealed in his correspondence with Martha W. Greene, Douglass visited Massachusetts sometime in August 1880 and probably visited the ailing Clarke at that time. Martha W. Greene to Douglass, 31 July 1880, General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 415–17, FD Papers, DLC. 4. Peleg Clarke (1784–1875), a physician from Coventry, Rhode Island, was active in reform movements, including temperance and abolitionism. The longtime president of the Rhode Island State Anti-Slavery Society, Clarke left the Quaker church to protest the denomination’s lack of support for antislavery activities. His daughter Lydia Clarke was the president of the Coventry AntiSlavery Society. Clarke was nationally known as a leader of the associationist movement, which located socialist “phalanxes,” or communities, in New York, Pennsylvania, and areas of the Midwest. Most were tied to the philosophies of the French socialist Charles Fourier. Clarke served as a vice president of the New England Fourier Society in the 1840s and represented Rhode Island at the first convention of the American Union of Associationists in 1844. Clarke was also among those responsible for the creation of the Providence Affiliated Union in 1847. The Rhode Island Fourierists had close ties with the abolitionist community, and many members were active in antislavery reform. Although the group managed to open a Fourierist-inspired retail cooperative, no phalanxes were established in Rhode Island. Clarke practiced homeopathic medicine in the state for over sixty years and championed temperance as well as abolitionism. William Harvey King, History of Homeopathy and Its Institutions in America, 4 vols. (New York, 1905), 1:181; Deborah B. Van Broekhoven, Devotion of These Women: Rhode Island in the Antislavery Network (Amherst, Mass, 2002), 65–67, 69, 97, 101–02; Charles R. Crowe, “Utopian Socialism in Rhode Island,” Rhode Island History, 18:20–26 (January 1959). 5. Pss. 23:4.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 509

5/17/23 2:36 PM

510

ROSCOE CONKLING TO DOUGLASS, 23 DECEMBER 1880

ROSCOE CONKLING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS Washington[, D.C.]1 23 Dec[ember] 1880.

My Dear Sir: Two days had not gone between your note2 and my answer, but for no end of things including more than a foot deep of letters needing quick reply. I do not want you “removed” as marshall,3 and I can tell why to all who need telling—you do not need it. Now, it will embarrass me at this moment to write a letter to the gentleman you name touching any appointment to office, or retention in it. Presently, and seasonably, it will not embarrass me to utter my voice for you in any presence. You will apprehend me I am sure. I have excused myself in all cases, from writing now in such matters. If however you know any reason why another method [some what], but not too much, later on, will not as well avail you, please feel quite to so signify, and always feel free to tell me how I can usefully signify the regard and esteem in which I hold you. Your friend ROSCOE CONKLING ALS: Martha Waldo Greene and William R. Sherman Collection, Brown University. 1. Conkling added “Senate Chamber” and “Personal” to the heading of this letter. 2. Douglass’s letter to Conkling has not survived. 3. With James Garfield’s election as president the previous month, all incumbent political appointees of Rutherford B. Hayes, including Douglass, faced potential replacement. This was made all the more likely because Douglass had supported the nomination of former president Ulysses S. Grant—not Garfield—as the Republican candidate. In his third autobiography, Douglass asserts that Conkling had gotten Garfield’s commitment to retain Douglass as marshal of the District of Columbia. Instead, Garfield replaced Douglass as marshal and appointed him to the less prestigious but more lucrative post of recorder of deeds for the District. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:383–87; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 613–14.

Y8204-Douglass.indb 510

5/17/23 2:36 PM

Calendar of Correspondence Not Printed

This calendar summarizes the remainder of Douglass’s correspondence for the period covered by this volume. Letters are organized chronologically and, when multiple letters were published or written on the same day, by the sender’s last name. The day and month, when known or ascribed, of each entry appear in the left-hand column. The right-hand column lists the correspondent(s), sigla describing the format of the letter, sources, and a brief synopsis. The project editors have attempted to provide the most complete information for each letter. Any information provided by the editors has been deduced through internal information in the letter, information in other letters, or information from other scholarly sources. Brackets enclosing a date indicate that the editors have assigned that date. The need to ascribe a date occurs because no date appeared in a handwritten letter or the original date was incorrect as a result of scrivener or typographer errors. When a letter from a newspaper does not include a date, and none can be inferred, the newspaper publication date is given in brackets, and the letter is listed after other letters of that date. Full names of months are silently supplied. If a date is followed by an asterisk, then the editors have ascribed the year. When a letter includes or has been assigned a month only, the letter appears at the end of the entries for that month. If the only date attributed to the letter is the year, then the entry for that letter appears at the end of the section for that year. Correspondents are listed at the start of the right-hand column, sender(s) followed by recipient(s). When a name or a portion of one appears in brackets, the editors have supplied the bracketed information. In a few instances, a letter does not contain enough information to allow the correspondent to be inferred, so “Unknown” appears instead of a name. Some correspondents use pseudonyms. When known, the correspondent’s name appears in brackets after the pen name. After the correspondents’ names, the source note appears. The sigla used to describe the format of the calendared letters are the same as for the published letters. If two or more dates precede the month of publication, the letter was originally published in installments. 511

Y8204-Douglass.indb 511

5/17/23 2:36 PM

512

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

Each entry concludes with a synopsis of the letter. Because of the scale of this calendar, providing complete summaries is impracticable. Synopses highlight the major points discussed, and include the names of people and places only when they are crucial to the meaning of the letter. Content that occupies brief portions of calendared letters may not be mentioned in the synopses. 1866 30 January

27 February

9 March

9 April

28 May

31 May

[11] July

16 July

Y8204-Douglass.indb 512

Calvin Fairbanks to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 182L, FD Papers, DLC. Sends invitation to lecture in Dansville, New York. FD to Frank W. Tracy. PLSr. Springfield Daily Illinois State Journal, 27 February 1866. Declines invitation to speak in Springfield, Illinois. Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 184R–88L, FD Papers, DLC. Sends contributions from English abolitionists for freedmen’s education. FD to Eusley Moore. ALS: SC 417 Douglass, Frederick, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. Responds to an article Moore wrote about Andrew Johnson. FD to [Unknown]. PLSr. NASS, 2 June 1866. Explains his absence at the American Anti-Slavery Society’s annual meeting. FD to Susan B. Anthony. PLe. Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 2, appendix, 917. Regrets that he cannot attend the Boston Equal Rights Convention. Rosine Amé Droz to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 192R–96, FD Papers, DLC. Pleased to hear that he is considering a trip to Europe. Julia G[riffiths] Crofts to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 188R–92L, FD Papers, DLC. Recalls their labors together in Rochester and invites him to Great Britain to restore contact with abolitionists there.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

30 August

11 September

12 September

17 September

7 October

7 October

9 October

15 October

19 October

29 October

Y8204-Douglass.indb 513

513

FD to [Unknown]. PLSr: NewYork Tribune, 31 August 1866. Accepts nomination as a delegate to the Southern Unionist Convention in Philadelphia. Henry Vincent to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 199, FD Papers, DLC. Says he received a parcel for him from a friend of Douglass and is forwarding it to him by Express. Anna Dickinson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 200–01, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses the Southern Loyalist Convention, where both were speakers. FD to R[ichard] J. Hinton. ALS: Alfred W. Anthony Collection, NN. Informs Hinton that he cannot attend the Pittsburgh Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Convention, but may be able to meet him in Pittsburgh. Martha W. G[reene] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 204R–06, FD Papers, DLC. Complains about a former Confederate colonel originally from Russia who will be teaching in Worcester. James A. Henrietta to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 207–08, FD Papers, DLC. Sends a photograph of Henrietta’s father; praises his work for black rights. Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 209–15L, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses European travels and encourages him to visit England. Martha W. Greene to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 218–20L, FD Papers, DLC. Hopes he will visit soon; continues to discuss the former Confederate colonel teaching in Worcester. FD to Cha[rle]s Sumner. ALS: Charles Sumner Manuscripts, MH-H. Praises Sumner for his address at the Music Hall in Boston and compliments his speech on behalf of black rights. Lewis H. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 220R–22L, FD Papers, DLC. Considers the prospect of Colorado being admitted to

5/17/23 2:36 PM

514

October

2 November

11 November

28 November

14 December

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

the Union and mentions a belief that denying the right of suffrage to blacks may affect its admission. [Julia Griffiths Crofts] to FD. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 215R–17, FD Papers, DLC. Tells him about her travels, her family, and English friends of theirs. E[?] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 222R–24L, FD Papers, DLC. Thanks him for his letters and wishes for them to meet soon. Ticknor & Fields to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 224R, FD Papers, DLC. Accepts his article for publication in the Atlantic. FD to Edwin Studwell. ALS: Alfred W. Anthony Collection, NN. Accepts invitation to lecture at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 225–26, FD Papers, DLC. Sends news of the family in Rochester; updates Douglass on letters Charles has received for him. Rosine Amé Droz to FD. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 791R–93L, FD Papers, DLC. Comments on the wretched state of Ireland’s people. 1867

4 January

22 January

10 February

Y8204-Douglass.indb 514

Rosine Amé Droz to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 230–32, FD Papers, DLC. Comments on his arduous life and prays he is able to rest soon; encloses a note to Rosetta. Rosine Amé Droz to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 233–43, FD Papers, DLC. Sends blessings to him and Rosetta; hopes the Reverend George B. Cheever has been in Rochester; discusses their mutual friend Russell L. Carpenter. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 182R–84L, FD Papers, DLC. Writes about the harsh winter weather, animals, and the family in Rochester.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

24 February

3 March

15 March

26 March

22[?] April

24 April

25 April

29 April

30 April

2 May

Y8204-Douglass.indb 515

515

Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 246–47, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses the harsh weather and informs him of the taxes liens against them. Thomas Coote to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 244–45, FD Papers, DLC. Sends encouragements for the tribulations endured by blacks. FD to Mr. Phillips. ALS: Whelpley Manuscripts, Ohio History Connection. Offers 2 May as the only available date for a lecture. Nathan Sprague and Rosetta Sprague to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 248–50L, FD Papers, DLC. Consider trading their farm for a new house in the city and discuss financial burdens. Rosine Amé Droz to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 255–57, FD Papers, DLC. Invites him to Europe, discusses the Carpenters, and promises to write him and Rosetta again soon. [Rosetta] Douglass to FD. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 258–60, FD Papers, DLC. Speaks of her mother Anna’s illness and gives an account of the letters she has received for him in Charles’s absence. H. D. Washburn to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 261–62, FD Papers, DLC. Asks him to visit Vinnie Ream, an artist in New York, so she can make a bust in his image. Anna Dickinson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 263–65L, FD Papers, DLC. Seconds the request of her friend Mr. Pugh to invite Douglass to speak in Philadelphia on 14 May. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 265R–66, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses his new first-class clerkship position and mentions Radicals running a black man for councilman in the upcoming June election. Horace H. Thomas to FD. ALS: William G. Brownlow Papers, Letterbooks, Tennessee State Library and

5/17/23 2:36 PM

516

9 May

17 May

25 May

28[?] May

24 June

14 July

29 July

6 August

Y8204-Douglass.indb 516

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

Archives. Invites him to speak in the political campaign in Tennessee. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 267–68, FD Papers, DLC. Explains current financial situation in relation to his new job at the Freedmen’s Bureau; requests a loan to purchase a lot and house. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 269–71, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses his position at the bureau as well as loans he has received from Douglass; asks again for a loan to purchase a lot and house. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 272–73, FD Papers, DLC. Responds to letter turning down his request for a loan. Rosine Amé Droz to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 274–78, FD Papers, DLC. Announces the death of their friend Elizabeth Rawson and says she has just read that surviving forms of bondage have been abolished in the western territories. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 283R–84, FD Papers, DLC. Tells him that Libbie gave birth to a boy, Charles Frederick Douglass. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 285–86, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses his position at the bureau and asks Douglass to send his things by freight. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 289, FD Papers, DLC. Reports the safe arrival of Libbie and the baby and notes their belongings. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 292–93, FD Papers, DLC. Writes about the new house in Washington, D.C., and mentions that James M. Langston claims not to have spoken ill of Douglass despite a recent report.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

10 August

12 August

12 August

14 August

16 August

19 August

22 August

2 September

10 September

Y8204-Douglass.indb 517

517

Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 297–98, FD Papers, DLC. Explains why he did not send money in his last letter. FD to G. A. Taney. ALS: Gilbert Tracy Collection, New Jersey Historical Society. Responds to an inquiry about My Bondage and My Freedom and regrets to inform him that it is out of print. Gerrit Smith to FD. ALS: Gerrit Smith Collection, Barrett Library, University of Virginia. Plans to say something to the public about their old friend J[ohn] B[rown]. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 301–02, FD Papers, DLC. Asks him to sell the furniture he left behind in Rochester. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 303–04, FD Papers, DLC. Hopes he will come to Washington during the visit of the Pythians of Philadelphia; discusses apprehension and confusion over Perry Downs. FD to Gerrit Smith. ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. Acknowledges receipt of Smith’s circular regarding John Brown. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 309, FD Papers, DLC. Mentions rumors regarding the removal of General Howard as head of the bureau and writes about the upcoming Pythians game. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 310–11, FD Papers, DLC. Conveys rumors regarding Henry H. Garnett becoming head of the bureau; notes that John M. Langston desired the position but reluctantly declined when Charles showed him Douglass’s letter. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 312L, FD Papers, DLC. Encloses an article regarding the appointment of the commissioner of the bureau.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

518

19 September

27 September

4 October

10 October

10 October

11 October

25 October

29 October

30 October

6 November

Y8204-Douglass.indb 518

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

FD to Gerrit Smith. ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. Mentions a note to Theodore Tilton, declining the Freedmen’s Bureau position, that was not meant for publication. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 312R–14, FD Papers, DLC. Mentions Douglass’s visit to Washington, D.C., the previous day. FD to [Unknown]. ALS: Ebenezer Douglass Manuscripts, Minnesota Historical Society. Confirms a speaking engagement at Woonsocket, Rhode Island, on 6 December. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 315, FD Papers, DLC. Comments on the election and Andrew Johnson; discusses the poor state of the country; mentions a letter from Lewis, who expects to be sent north soon. FD to Isaac W. Russell. ALS: Miscellaneous Manuscripts, Oberlin College. States terms for delivering a lecture. Julia G[riffiths] Crofts to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 720R–22L, FD Papers, DLC. Considers their letter exchanges and asks about his family. Rosine Amé Droz to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 316–22, FD Papers, DLC. Expresses disappointment that she has not heard more information about the opportunity to teach African American children in New York. FD to Elizabeth Keckley. PLSr. Keckley, Behind the Scenes, 317–20. Discusses fundraising for Mary Todd Lincoln and suggests ways to advertise a public meeting for that cause at the Cooper Institute. FD to Elizabeth Keckley. PLSr. Keckley, Behind the Scenes, 320. Notes that he will not be able to meet with her because of a change in speaking itinerary. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 323, FD Papers, DLC. Informs him that the baby has a severe cold; acknowl-

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

7 December

8 December

519

edges unspecified problems he is having with Nathan and Frederick Jr. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 324, FD Papers, DLC. Requests the donation of any history books on African Americans that he would be willing to part with for the Freedmen’s Bureau Library. R[osine] Amé Droz. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 325–33, FD Papers, DLC. Informs him of her address change and says she is going to Plymouth to be a governess. 1868

16 January

26 January

27 January

14 February

24 February

29 February

Y8204-Douglass.indb 519

FD to [Sallie ?] Holley. PLSr: NASS, 15 February 1868. Pledges $50 in support of the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 334–40, FD Papers, DLC. Appreciates his last letter and is glad to hear about his brother Perry; mentions a lecture on freedmen that she recently attended; wants to know when he will be returning to England. R[ussell Lant] Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 341–43L, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses antislavery newspapers and asks him to visit his brother, Dr. Philip Carpenter, if he ever travels to Montreal, Canada. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 345R–46, FD Papers, DLC. Comments on the correspondence between President Johnson and General Grant and notes that he prefers Chase to Grant for president. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 347–48, FD Papers, DLC. Believes Johnson will soon be impeached; notes that Lewis is with him and all is well. Gerrit Smith to FD. PLSr: NASS, 29 February 1868. Acknowledges Douglass’s preference for General Grant

5/17/23 2:36 PM

520

19 April

24 April

29 April

5 May

6 May

25 May

29 May

5 June

9 June

Y8204-Douglass.indb 520

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

as president and notes his own admiration for Chief Justice Chase. Rosine Amé Droz to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 358R–64, FD Papers, DLC. Sends £5 she collected for his work; says the Carpenters wish for him to visit England soon; adds that she would like to hear about Rosetta and the children. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 367–69L, FD Papers, DLC. Mentions Johnson’s impeachment trial and discusses the cost of living in Washington, D.C. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 371–73L, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses his financial situation in Washington, D.C., and mentions his desire to buy a lot and house. FD to [Sylvester R.] Koëhler. ALS: FD Manuscripts, NRU. Notes he will not be relocating to Vineland, New Jersey, and intends to stay in Rochester. FD to Rosine Amé Droz. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 373R–75L, FD Papers, DLC. Writes about his brother Perry, who is now free from slavery; and appreciates their friends the Carpenters. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 375R–76, FD Papers, DLC. Encloses a photograph of the new baby; informs Douglass that he has moved to a new address in Washington, D.C. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 377–78, FD Papers, DLC. Comments on the upcoming election; says that he does not support Chase, and would vote for Grant and Colfax. Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 641–43L, FD Papers, DLC. Wishes he would come to England; mentions that Rosine Amé Droz has been visiting. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 379–80, FD Papers, DLC. Wants to see the bust being made of Douglass in

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

11 June

23 June

25 June

2 July

6 July

14 July

17 July

18 July

Y8204-Douglass.indb 521

521

Cincinnati; mentions he has obtained a life-size photograph of him; says that Lewis is still there and has good job prospects. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 381, FD Papers, DLC. Acknowledges receipt of a check; says that Mayor Sayles J. Bowen promises Lewis a position. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 382–83, FD Papers, DLC. Requests a reply on behalf of Orindatus S. B. Wall regarding the offered position as a director of the Howard Fraternal Union; notes that Miss Ottilie Assing and Mrs. Nickert are visiting. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 384–85L, FD Papers, DLC. Thanks him for the loan toward the purchase of two lots; writes about a visit to Mt. Vernon with Ottille Assing the previous day. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 385R, FD Papers, DLC. Thanks him again for the loan; notes that the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill has become law without the president’s signature. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 386–87, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses the new lots he helped him purchase; sends a list of items he would like forwarded to him from Rochester. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 388–90L, FD Papers, DLC. Requests $250 toward the purchase of a house; affirms that his job in the Educational Department is secure. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 390R, FD Papers, DLC. Sends a picture of his son Freddie. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 391–92L, FD Papers, DLC. Explains his employment prospects; says he became familiar with several senators at the impeachment trial

5/17/23 2:36 PM

522

21 July

27 July

6 August

6 August

12 August

20 August

28 August

1 September

2 September

7 September

Y8204-Douglass.indb 522

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

and can now call on them directly for tickets to the Senate chamber. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 392R–93L, FD Papers, DLC. Expresses disappointment in not receiving more funds; discusses plans for his future house. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 393R, FD Papers, DLC. Acknowledges receipt of his trunk; states that he has eight days’ leave from the bureau to get his new house in order. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 394–95L, FD Papers, DLC. Presents financial concerns regarding the construction of his house. FD to [Theodore] Tilton. ALS: Gratz Collection, case 8, box 8, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Plans to send an article for publication in the Independent. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 395R, FD Papers, DLC. Wonders whether he would like to make a statement regarding the education of freedmen in the South; encloses a report from the Freedmen’s Bureau. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 396–97L, FD Papers, DLC. Compliments his father’s article in the Independent; discusses the death of Thaddeus Stevens. FD to Gerrit Smith. ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. Thinks he caught a glimpse of Smith in Geneva, New York, the previous day. FD to Gerrit Smith. ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. Contemplates Salmon P. Chase and his role regarding African American suffrage. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 397R–99L, FD Papers, DLC. Requests another loan to finish the construction of his house. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 399R–400, FD Papers, DLC.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

11 September

18 September

22 September

29 September

8 October

20 October

27 October

12 November

Y8204-Douglass.indb 523

523

Thanks him for the loan; comments on Douglass’s recent illness as well as his son’s and mentions the high mortality rate of children in the area. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 401–03L, FD Papers, DLC. Complains about his brother-in-law, Nathan, who intends to sell Charles’s things; makes threats to arrest him if he does. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 403R–05L, FD Papers, DLC. Claims he would hate to go to the law over Nathan seizing his property; regrets to decline an invitation to visit Rochester because of the travel expenses. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 405R–06, FD Papers, DLC. Believes Grant’s election would result in his personal success; appreciates Douglass’s support. M[artha] W. Greene to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 407–09, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses family troubles; plans to buy and rent out a house in the city with the hope of turning a profit. Rosine Amé Droz to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 410–14, FD Papers, DLC. Talks about her family; discusses her friend Mary Browne Carpenter; sends love to Rosetta; hopes he will write her soon. FD to Mr. Miles. ALS: Miscellaneous Manuscripts, University of Chicago. Lets him know he will be giving the lecture “William the Silent” in Boston before he visits. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 415–16, FD Papers, DLC. Says he has moved into his house; tells him Frederick Jr.’s store is nearly complete and many African American families in the area are eager for it to open. Martha W. Greene to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 417–19L, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses William’s ailments; hopes to see Douglass soon; sends regards to Rosetta.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

524

22 December

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

E[lizabeth] Pierson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 419R–21, FD Papers, DLC. Regrets being unable to visit for the holidays; expresses concern for his well-being. 1869

21 January

18[?] February

23 February

28 February

February

12 March

25 March

29 March

Y8204-Douglass.indb 524

Rosetta Douglass Sprague to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 424–25L, FD Papers, DLC. Reports on the family in Rochester; discusses newspaper articles about his lectures. Rosetta Douglass Sprague to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 429R–30, FD Papers, DLC. Describes the financial situation at home; hopes to hear from him soon. Rosetta Douglass Sprague to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 431–32L, FD Papers, DLC. Mentions Harriet Tubman; informs him that several letters have arrived inviting him to lecture. Martha [W. Greene] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 434R–37L, FD Papers, DLC. Considers moving; writes about William’s health. FD et al. to [Gerrit Smith]. PLSr: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. Announces intentions to establish a weekly journal in Washington, D.C., to advocate for the Republican party. D[avid D.] Evans to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 437R, FD Papers, DLC. Apologizes for the treatment Douglass received while visiting Danville, Illinois. Rosetta D[ouglass] Sprague to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 472R–74L, FD Papers, DLC. Explains the contents of a letter she sent that he did not receive; says the tax collector called; updates him on the family in Rochester. David Jones to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 443–45L, FD Papers, DLC. Admires his accomplishments; talks about his own life as

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

[March]

4 April

7 April

9 April

10 April

10 April

12 April

13 April

Y8204-Douglass.indb 525

525

a father and a former slave; considers the struggles of the race. Rosetta Douglass Sprague to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 208–10, FD Papers, DLC. Says Nathan is going to Washington, D.C., to see his father; gives updates about family life; notes ridicule of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the press. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 447R–49, FD Papers, DLC. Hopes for a new clerkship position by the first of May; tells him the fence around his property is now complete. R. A. Bacon to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 452–54, FD Papers, DLC. Seeks help in procuring a clerkship for his father, Reuben Bacon. FD to George Ellwanger. ALS: General Manuscripts, NRU. Thanks him for the copy of the Eighth Annual Proceedings of the Board of Supervisors of Monroe County. FD to Clara Barton. ALfS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 455–56L, FD Papers, DLC. Responds to her letter; asks whether there is anything he can do to help her establishment in Washington employ impoverished African American women. FD to James Redpath. ALS: Miscellaneous Manuscripts, University of Illinois at Chicago Library. Allows Redpath to arrange his speaking appointments in New England for the coming season. FD to “Miss Pauline”[?]. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 456R, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates her on her new appointment as postmistress. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 458–60L, FD Papers, DLC. Explains why he was discharged from the clerkship at the Educational Department; details Langston’s involvement.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

526

13 April

17 April

20 April

22 April

4 May

6 May

7 May

24 May

25 May

6 June

Y8204-Douglass.indb 526

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

FD to [Ebenezer Bassett]. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 457, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his new appointment as U.S. minister to Haiti. James Redpath to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 461, FD Papers, DLC. Requests  terms, letters, and lectures for speaking appointments. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 462–63, FD Papers, DLC. Thanks him for sending money; announces his new position as first class clerk in the Third Auditor’s Office. Julia G[riffiths] Crofts to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 347–52L, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses friends and family; requests his lecture “William the Silent”; reminisces about her time in Rochester. FD to [Theodore] Tilton. ALS: Autographs, NNPML. Tells him to ignore George Downing’s note in the paper. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 476–78, FD Papers, DLC. Sends news of Lewis and Frederick Jr.; decides to stay out of politics in Washington, D.C. FD to Miss [E.] Hanford. ALS: General Manuscripts, Rochester Pulblic Library. Thanks her for giving William Winston another opportunity to enter the second grade. FD to Edward McPherson. ALS: Edward McPherson Papers, vol. 13, reel 2, frames 479–80, FD Papers, DLC. Praises the late Thaddeus Stevens. FD to Oliver Johnson. ALS: Frederick Douglass Correspondence, MB. Regrets that he must decline the invitation to the meeting at Longwood. Martha W. Greene to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 483R–85L, FD Papers, DLC. Informs him that they have bought some land in Missouri.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

3 July

6 July

3 August

5 August

5 August

9 August

10 August 20 August

20 August

August

1 September

Y8204-Douglass.indb 527

527

Ebenezer Bassett to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 485R–87, FD Papers, DLC. Describes his life and work as the U.S. minister to Haiti. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 488–89, FD Papers, DLC. Announces the birth of their new baby boy, Joseph Henry; discusses Libbie’s weak condition and his own ill health; says the garden is flourishing. John Johnson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 490, FD Papers, DLC. Invites him to speak at a celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation on 22 September. FD to H. Clay Naill. PLSr: Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser, 20 August 1869. Writes that he will meet the speaking appointment at Frederick, Maryland, as long as $100 can be raised in advance. FD to H. Clay Naill. PLSr: Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser, 20 August 1869. Declares that he will attend the meeting at Frederick, Maryland. FD to H. Clay Naill. PLSr: Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser, 20 August 1869. States in a telegram that he will meet Naill on 17 August. Gerrit Smith to FD. ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NHi. Praises his recent lectures. FD to H. Clay Naill. PLSr: Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser, 21 August 1869. Inquires about a telegram he received requesting him not to go to Frederick, Maryland. H. Clay Naill to FD. PLSr: Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser, 21 August 1869. Tells him he knows nothing of the telegram. FD to Amy Post. ALS: Post Family Papers, NRU. Apologizes for not being home to receive the invitation  to meet two Spititualists, Mrs. F. O. Hyzer and Mrs. Hazen. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 493–94, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses finances and Lewis’s upcoming wedding.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

528

9 September

22 September

23 September

5 October

16 October

16 October

29 October

30 October

1 November

5 November

Y8204-Douglass.indb 528

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

FD to Cha[rle]s Sumner. ALS: Charles Sumner Manuscripts, MH-H. Apologizes for not having copies of his speech to send; offers advice regarding the late Senator William P. Fessenden. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 495–97L, FD Papers, DLC. Doubts he can afford to go with Lewis to Rochester for the wedding; discusses local real estate and crimes. FD to T[homas] B[urnett] Pugh. ALS: Charles Roberts Collection, PHC. Accepts invitation to lecture at Pugh’s “Star Course.” Anna Downs to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 497R–99L, FD Papers, DLC. Niece wishes to hear from him and to get in touch with other relatives. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 501–02, FD Papers, DLC. Sends word that he has returned safely from Rochester; mentions that his baseball team lost a game. Martha W. Greene to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 503L–05L, FD Papers, DLC. Shares information regarding William’s prolonged ill health; asks about his family. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 505R, FD Papers, DLC. Sends a photograph of Douglass and requests an autograph for the Chief Clerk; wonders whether he will deliver the lecture “Our Composite Nationality” in Washington, D.C. FD to J[ames] O[liver] P[erry] Burnside. ALS: Douglass Collection, CtY. Schedules his lecture “Our Composite Nationality” for 24 January 1870. James Redpath to FD. ALS: Redpath Chautauqua Collection, IaU. Provides a schedule, a route, and prices for his lectures. James Redpath to FD. ALS: Redpath Chautauqua Collection, IaU. Informs him that his schedule is full; hopes to book him for more lectures in February.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

9 November

17 November 18 November

29 November

29 November 8 December

23 December

26 December

28 December

529

FD to James Redpath. ALS: Redpath Chautauqua Collection, IaU. Says he is pleased with Redpath’s work, but cannot schedule more lectures in February because of other engagements. James Redpath to FD. ALS: Redpath Chautauqua Collection, IaU. Sends lecture dates for December. E[dward] F[itch] Bullard to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 506, FD Papers, DLC. Talks about the Fifteenth Amendment and his recovery from illness. James Redpath to FD. ALS: Redpath Chautauqua Collection, IaU. Discusses changes to his lecturing schedule. James Redpath to FD. ALS: Redpath Chautauqua Collection, IaU. Updates his lecturing schedule. Rosetta Douglass Sprague to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 507–08L, FD Papers, DLC. Sends news of the family in Rochester; reviews his mail. Rosetta Douglass Sprague to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 510R–12L, FD Papers, DLC. Promises to write more; reports on the mail; sends wishes for a merry Christmas. Martha W. Greene to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 512R–14L, FD Papers, DLC. Wishes him a happy New Year; regrets that she has not heard from him. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 514R–15, FD Papers, DLC. Defends Libbie’s decision to visit her mother; comments on Edwin M. Stanton’s funeral. 1870

5 January

Y8204-Douglass.indb 529

Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 519–20, FD Papers, DLC. Tells of his visit to the president and vice president on New Year’s Day; notes that Frederick Jr. is fighting the Printers Union for work.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

530

26 February

15 March

17 March

5 April

8 April

15 April

17 April

18 April

6 May

Y8204-Douglass.indb 530

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

A[my] Post to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 523–24, FD Papers, DLC. Informs him that African Americans in the area are preparing a jubilee to celebrate the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment; reports on visiting lecturers. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 525–26, FD Papers, DLC. Looks forward to his father’s relocation to Washington, D.C.; muses on real estate in the area. Julia Griffiths Crofts to FD. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 527–30, FD Papers, DLC. Expresses relief that he has returned home safely; hopes he will not have to travel so far west again; reports on her religious views. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 531, FD Papers, DLC. Assures him that Anna and Libbie have arrived safely; intends to write an article for the New Era. D[aniel] M. Marshall to FD. ALS: Thomas Riley Marshall Collection, Indiana State Library. Returns papers from Mary Clary’s case regarding the pension of the deceased James Bryant. A. Cade to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 534R–35, FD Papers, DLC. Reminisces about a previous visit and hopes to visit him again soon; commends his efforts on black rights. George Baltimore to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 536–37, FD Papers, DLC. Extends an invitation to speak in Troy, New York, on 28 April 1870. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 538–53G, FD Papers, DLC. Asks for assistance in buying a carriage so that he can take Anna sightseeing in Washington, D.C. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 540–42, FD Papers, DLC. Defends William and attacks the ungrateful Nathan Sprague for taking financial advantage of Douglass.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

10 May

1 June

2 June

2 June

9 June

13 June

16 June

16 June 18 June

Y8204-Douglass.indb 531

531

Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 543–45R, FD Papers, DLC. Apologizes for his previous letter regarding Nathan and explains himself further to avoid any misunderstandings or hard feelings. Wendell Phillips to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 545L–46, FD Papers, DLC. Notifies him that he is the beneficiary of Margaret Blydenbury’s will and discusses her estate. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 547–48, FD Papers, DLC. Acknowledges his refusal to write a recommendation letter for William, a former family employee; comments on the construction of Frederick Jr.’s house; promises to send his mortgage payment soon. E[dward] M[orris] Davis to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 547–48, FD Papers, DLC. Considers articles in the press; says Robert Purvis and May have just visited. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 551–53, FD Papers, DLC. Hopes to gain William admittance to Howard University; believes Sprague may have lied about William’s theft from Douglass; recalls sharing his home with Frederick Jr. and Lewis during their unemployment. William E. Lloyd to FD. ALS: Douglass Collection General Correspondence, reel 2, frames 554–55, FD Papers, DLC. Introduces himself as secretary of the Dallas St. Church in Baltimore and invites him to lecture there to help raise money for a new church building. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 556–57, FD Papers, DLC. Talks about his quarrels with William and Nathan Sprague; reviews financial issues. FD to Miss Schofield. ALS: Frederick Douglass Manuscripts, ICHi. Looks forward to their next meeting. Ottilie Assing to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 558, FD Papers, DLC. Announces that she will be arriving in Rochester soon.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

532

18 June

7 July

10 July

14 July

29 July

9 August

6 October

18 October

9 November

Y8204-Douglass.indb 532

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

E[dward] M[orris] Davis to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 559–60, FD Papers, DLC. Mentions that he had hoped to receive a reply in the press; talks about the reception of Douglass’s article. FD to Martha W. G[reene]. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 563–67, FD Papers, DLC. Writes about summertime; gives publishing details for his book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. William E. Lloyd to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 12–14L, FD Papers, DLC. Appreciates his plans to lecture in Baltimore to help raise funds for the new land and church. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 571L, FD Papers, DLC. Admits he is sorry that Douglass’s name was ever connected with the New Era. Martha [W. Greene] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 571R–73L, FD Papers, DLC. Claims his last letter brought more pain than pleasure; talks about him helping her family financially. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 573R–74, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses collecting a debt owed to Douglass; says he will take furniture for compensation and encloses a list; reports on the local reception of Franco-Prussian War news. FD to Reception for Ebenezer Bassett. PLSr: NNE, 20  October 1870. Praises Minister Bassett and applauds President Grant and the United States for the diplomatic recognition of Haiti. FD to Abby Kelly Foster. ALS: Abby Kelly Foster Manuscripts, American Antiquarisn Society. Regrets that he cannot go to Worcester; sends her a copy of the week’s paper; claims that if the New National Era survives, he will improve it in every way. FD to [Olivia Lewis] Langdon. ALS: Mark Twain Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California,

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

Unknown

Unknown

533

Berkeley. Pays his respects to the widow of Jervis Langdon. Sarah A. Locke Hadcock to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 575–81, FD Papers, DLC. Complains that he has not helped her family financially since the death of her father, Joseph J. Locke. Julia G[riffiths] Crofts to [FD]. ALfS: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 744–46, FD Papers, DLC. Wonders whether he meets often with Gerrit Smith; wishes Rochester and Petersboro were closer together. 1871

13 April

3 May

8 May

16 May

May

6 June

Y8204-Douglass.indb 533

O[liver] O[tis] Howard to FD. ALS: Oliver Otis Howard Papers, MeB. Asks him to write an article to supplement the American Missionary Association’s Advance. FD to Sojourner Truth. PLSr: Olive Gilbert and Frances W. Titus, Narrative of Sojourner Truth (Boston, 1875), 265. Sends her wishes of continued health, happiness, and success. Edwin L. Stanton and FD to Columbus Delano. ALS: RG48, DNA. Recommends Henry Johnson for the board of trustees of Colored Schools in Washington, D.C. R[ussell] L[ant] Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 590–92L, FD Papers, DLC. Inquires about William Hardy, who thinks himself a martyr. [Julia Griffiths Crofts] to FD. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 768R–72L, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses church, death, students, and friends, including one friend whom she cannot trust because of the friend’s clandestine correspondence with a young man. FD to Hamilton Fish. ALS:. RG 59, Box 3, Entry 339, DNA. Encloses a resignation letter to President Grant

5/17/23 2:36 PM

534

15 June

17 June

20 June

20 June

23 June

4 July

5 July

22 July

July

Y8204-Douglass.indb 534

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

for his position on the Legislative Council of the District of Columbia. Russell L[ant] Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 592R–94, FD Papers, DLC. Informs him of the state of the people of Ireland and England. Hamilton Fish to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 595, FD Papers, DLC. Acknowledges receipt of his resignation letter. F[rancis] H. Smith to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 596, FD Papers, DLC. Transmits a copy of a resolutions statement passed by the  Legislative Council in regard to Douglass’s resignation. F[rancis] H. Smith to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 597, FD Papers, DLC. Sends routine resolutions from the Legislative Council. FD To S[amuel] G[ridley] Howe. ALS: Institute of American Thought, IUPUI. Agrees to meet with him and Henry B. Blackwell in New York for an interview with Alexander T. Stewart. FD to M[ary] A[nn] Shadd Cary. ALS: M. A. Shadd Cary Manuscripts, Library and Archives Canada, Windsor, Ontario. Promises to include an article announcing her southern tour in the following week’s New National Era. FD to M[ary] A[nn] Shadd Cary. ALS: M. A. Shadd Cary Manuscripts, Library and Archives Canada, Windsor, Ontario. Expresses gratitude for her willingness to help extend the circulation of the New National Era. Martha W. Greene to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 604–05, FD Papers, DLC. Admits to having anxiety while awaiting his letters; inquires about Rosetta and her family; claims to be too old to wholly identify with Western life. [Unknown] to [FD]. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 603, FD Papers, DLC. Reports

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

7 August

[13] August

6 September

19 September

28 September

4 October

7 October

9 October

23 October

Y8204-Douglass.indb 535

535

on stepfather’s death; comments on foreign political affairs. Theodore D. Weld to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 608–10L, FD Papers, DLC. Requests a lecture to help fund a free public library in Hyde Park, Massachusetts. Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 610R–12, FD Papers, DLC. Contemplates old age and retirement; comments on his photograph. Stanislas Goutier to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 614–15, FD Papers, DLC. Inquires about missing issues of the New National Era related to Haiti; begs him to persuade the people to reelect Ulysses S. Grant as president. O[liver] O[tis] Howard to FD. ALS: Oliver Otis Howard Papers, MeB. Implores Douglass to fulfill a promise to his brother by writing an article on Santo Domingo for the American Missionary Association’s Advance. Geo[rge] Johnson et al. to FD. PLSr: NNE, 19 October 1871. Thanks him for his support; forwards the successful California Republican party’s ticket. FD to Charles Sumner. ALS: Charles Sumner Manuscripts, MHH. Apologizes for the derogatory article regarding John Lothrop Motley in the New National Era; assures that it would not have been published had he been present in the office. C[aroline] F. Putnam to FD. PLIr: NASS, 7 October 1871. Discusses the political struggle in Virginia and entreats Douglass to campaign. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 616–18, FD Papers, DLC. Sends interest payment; appreciates his encouragement; comments on family and home life. G[eorge] T[hompson] Ruby to FD. PLSr: NNE, 2 November 1871. Includes a response to an article in the Chicago Tribune and hopes for its publication in the New National Era.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

536

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

1872 30 January

7 February

16 April

9 May

10 May

10 May

10 May

21 May

May

20 June

Y8204-Douglass.indb 536

M[elvil] Bloncourt to FD. ALS: General Correspondence Files, reel 2, frames 626–27, FD Papers, DLC. Writes via the Constitution newspaper, addressing him as a “brother of [the] race” and expressing concerns over living conditions in his native Guadeloupe.  FD to [Rosetta Douglass Sprague] “My Dear Daughter.” ALS: General Correspondence Files, reel 9, frame 207R, FD Papers, DLC. Expects to arrive in Rochester on the twelfth or thirteenth of the month. FD to Henry Clews and E[dwin] D. Morgan. PLSr: box 94, “Campaign of 1872,” box 94, vol. 4, 97, Edward McPherson Papers, DLC. Notes he will not be able to attend the campaign meeting. FD to W[illia]m R. Hallowell. ALS: Mary and Amy Post Manuscripts, Charles L. Blockson, Temple University Library, Philadelphia. Regrets that he cannot be present at the funeral of Hallowell’s father-in-law. FD to N[athaniel] P. Chipman. ALS: RG48, DNA. Recommends the reappointment of Charles King to the board of trustees for the Colored Schools in the District of Columbia. FD to [Columbus Delano]. ALS: RG48, DNA. Endorses the reappointment of Charles King to the board of trustees for the Colored Schools. FD to Jacob R. Post. ALS: Post Family Papers, NRU. Regrets that he cannot attend the funeral of Post’s father, Isaac. Martha W. Greene to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 628–30L, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses family matters; says she is sorry the New National Era has not been a financial success. FD to Frederick Douglass, Jr. PLe: NNE, 23 May 1872. Responds to the news that his friend Asa Anthony of Rochester has passed away. T[?] Mitchell to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 630R–32L, FD Papers, DLC. Expresses sympathy for the recent loss of his home

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

1 July

3 July

8 July

18 July

15 August

16 August

11 September

14 September

16 September

16 September 25 September

Y8204-Douglass.indb 537

537

and possessions after reading about the fire in the newspaper. FD to Gerrit Smith. ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. Accepts $5 to send to Osborne P. Anderson, who is on his deathbed; details financial loss from the house fire and admits difficulty in giving up his home. Gerrit Smith to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 632R–33L, FD Papers, DLC. Wishes other newspapers would reprint articles from the New National Era. FD to Gerrit Smith. ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. Promises to publish Smith’s speech in the New National Era. [Unknown] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 112–14L, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses letters being forwarded; praises him for his work on Ulysses S. Grant’s reelection. FD to S. B. Morgan. ALS: Robert Babcock, Wells College. Agrees to meet with the editor of the Times when he is next in New York; declares his political support of Ulysses S. Grant and Henry Wilson. FD to E[dwin] D. Morgan. ALS: Edwin D. Morgan Papers, New York State Library. Accepts an invitation from the National Republican Committee to speak in Maine for two weeks. FD to Gerrit Smith. ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. Says he bears no grudge against Grant and continues to support him. [Unknown] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 633R, FD Papers, DLC. Invites him to speak at a mass meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio. FD to [William E. Chandler]. ALS: William E. Chandler Manuscripts, New Hampshire Historical Society. Declines an invitation to visit Arkansas during the presidential campaign. FD to Mr. Childes. ALS: MB. Claims to have no definite knowledge of the Knights of the Golden Circle. J. Milton Turner to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 634–35, FD Papers, DLC. Offers

5/17/23 2:36 PM

538

2 November

2 November

7 November

20 December

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

admiration and says he would like to set up a time and place for them to meet. FD to O[rville] E. Babcock. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 637L, FD Papers, DLC. Appreciates the flowers Babcock sent and hopes to put them in his garden. FD to G[ilbert] H. Reynolds. ALS: Unknown Collection, NRU. Promises to bring the case of William Jones to the president’s attention. FD to Samuel D. Porter. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 637R, FD Papers, DLC. Decides to publish the suggested correspondence. James Redpath to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 640R, FD Papers, DLC. Sends his lecturing schedule for January. FD to [George W.] Pepper. PLe: George W. Pepper, Under Three Flags: Or, The Story of My Life As Preacher, Captain in the Army, Chaplin, Consul, with Speeches and Interviews (Cincinnati, 1899), 121–22. Discusses Pepper’s lecture on Ireland by remembering an encounter with two Irishmen who first told him that “God never made a man to be a slave.” Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. ALe/f: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 650L–54L, FD Papers, DLC. Invites him to England; says she is glad his newspaper is in no need of aid but nevertheless offers to raise funds to assist it. A. H. Christie to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 665–66L, FD Papers, DLC. Thanks him for copy of My Bondage and My Freedom. 1873

12 January

13 January

Y8204-Douglass.indb 538

Martha W. Greene to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 641–42L, FD Papers, DLC. Says she cannot travel to meet with him. FD to U[lysses] S. Grant. ALS: RG59, DNA. Recommends C. L. de Randamie for the mission to Liberia in light of Jamer Milton Turner’s resignation.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

20 January

31 January

3 February

3 March

12 March

23 March

29 March

30 March

2 April

Y8204-Douglass.indb 539

539

C[harles] O. Shepard to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 646R–48, FD Papers, DLC. Asks for support regarding his application for the position of consul general to Japan. L[ewis H.] Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 649–50, FD Papers, DLC. Speaks of Rosetta’s illness; shares relief that he has left Omaha. Rosine Amé Droz to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 651–59L, FD Papers, DLC. Comments on the loss of his home in Rochester; wishes  Rosetta would write to her; and hopes to see him soon. I[saiah] C. Wears to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 664, FD Papers, DLC. States that the publication of his article “Race Action” in the Recorder will be delayed by one week and should appear in the next issue. H[enry] O. Wagoner to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 660R–61, FD Papers, DLC. Invites him to give two lectures in Denver. Jon[athan] R. Paxton to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 662–63, FD Papers, DLC. Recollects a man who declared himself a preacher; sends him a copy of a book of sermons. FD to D[eWitt]. C. Ellis. ALS: General Manuscripts, Rochester Public Library. Apologizes for the delayed response and attaches a letter of recommendation. Henry Cliff to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 665–66L, FD Papers, DLC. Asks whether he will put him on the free list for his paper; says he cannot afford to pay for it because of an injury to his arm. Abby Hutchinson Patton to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 649–50, FD Papers, DLC. Implores Douglass to get a letter from President Grant requesting that her adopted son, Dr. Joseph Howe, be transferred from Charity Hospital to Bellevue Hospital.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

540

6 April

10 April

4 May

26 May

5 June

18 June

18 June

20 June

30 June

Y8204-Douglass.indb 540

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

Martha W. Greene to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 668R–69L, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses her upcoming travels and hopes to cross paths with him. H. J. Traver to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 671–73, FD Papers, DLC. Requests a response regarding the invitation for him to lecture in Denver; discusses financial terms. G[ustav] Frauenstein to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 676–78L, FD Papers, DLC. Responds to two of his letters; refers to his support in  a  vague matter; notes that Ottilie Assing is recovering. FD to Rosetta [Douglass Sprague]. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 14R–15L, FD Papers, DLC. Shares relief that she returned to Rochester safely; assures her that her daughter Hattie is doing well with him in Washington, D.C. O[liver] O[tis] Howard to FD. ALS: Oliver Otis Howard Papers, MeB. Wishes to consult with him regarding fund-raising for Howard University. FD to H[oratio] G[ates] Warner. ALS: Warner Family Manuscripts, NRU. Responds to inquiries about his land in Rochester and states that he is willing to sell outright. Nathan Sprague to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 684L, FD Papers, DLC. Reports a rumor that some parties are having doubts about the Farmers and Mechanics Bank and are withdrawing their money. FD to Rosetta [Douglass Sprague]. ALS: FD Manuscripts, NHi. Sends news of the family; tells her that he should be in Rochester in July. R[ussell] L. Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 684R–86, FD Papers, DLC. Thanks him for the kind remembrances in the New National Era and requests a copy containing his address at the Congregational Church.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

2 July

13 July

23 August 28 August

31 August

22 September

16 October

13 November 15 November

23 November

Y8204-Douglass.indb 541

541

FD to H[oratio] G[ates] Warner. ALS: Warner Family Manuscripts, NRU. Plans to discuss the details of his land for sale in Rochester with Warner on 18 July. Julia Foster Lagendorf to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 687–89L, FD Papers, DLC. Hopes he can help her obtain a clerkship at the Treasury Department. FD to L. Prang & Co. ALS: FD Manuscripts, CtY. Praises the lithograph sent to him. FD to [Rosetta Douglass Sprague]. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 15–16, FD Papers, DLC. Writes that he is preparing a speech for the Tennessee Agricultural Fair in Nashville in September; praises Rosetta for helping Nathan make his way in the world. Martha W. Greene to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 689R–91L, FD Papers, DLC. Worries about him; reminisces about departed loved ones. Gerrit Smith to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 691R, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his recent speech at Nashville. FD to [Rosetta Douglass Sprague]. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frame 20, FD Papers, DLC. Says Ottilie Assing will be leaving soon; tells Rosetta that he is preparing the lecture “Our National Capital,” but his heart is not in it. FD to Orville Babcock. ALS: Orville Babcock Manuscripts, Newberry Library. Thanks him for the flowers. M[ary] A[nn] Rawson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 692–93, FD Papers, DLC. Sends some leaves and grasses; says to write only if it is not a burden. Rosine Amé Droz to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 694–99, FD Papers, DLC. Writes that she had hoped to be in Italy by now; discusses friends, social class, and European politics; sends her love to Rosetta.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

542

12 December

23 December

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

Julia G[riffiths] Crofts to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 703R–07, FD Papers, DLC. Requests news on family and friends; asks him to send his “William the Silent” lecture; comments on the news of his recent house fire. William H. Furniss to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 711R, FD Papers, DLC. Extends an invitation on behalf of the faculty of Alcorn University to deliver the annual commencement address on 10 July 1874. 1874

11 January

27 January

16 February

21 February

28 February

6 March

6 March

Y8204-Douglass.indb 542

E. Nash to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 714, FD Papers, DLC. Encloses a letter of complaint he addressed to R. D. Beckley regarding an article that Beckley published in the New National Era and asks for his judgment on the matter. FD to S[amuel] R. Thompson. ALS: Brookfellow Foundation Manuscripts, Kankanee Community College. Assures Thompson that he will reach Mercer, Illinois, in time for his lecture on 5 February. E[dward] H[enry] Fairchild to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 720, FD Papers, DLC. Hopes he will accept the invitation to address the assembly at the commencement on 1 July at Berea College, Kentucky. FD to H. A. Gordon. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 721L, FD Papers, DLC. Acknowledges receipt of his letter. Paul Molyneaux Hewlett to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 722–23, FD Papers, DLC.  Requests assistance in obtaining a messenger position. FD to Francis D’Arusmond. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 726, FD Papers, DLC. Responds to his letter opposing woman suffrage. FD to W[illiam] H. Furniss. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 727, FD Papers, DLC.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

7 March

17 March

18 March

19 March

30 March

30 March

15 April

26 April

15 May

20 May

Y8204-Douglass.indb 543

543

Declines invitation to speak at Howard University’s commencement. W[illiam] B. Downing to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 728, FD Papers, DLC. Proposes to furnish all materials necessary in the renovation of his house for the sum of $3,700. Jonathan H. Smyth to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 729, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his new position as president of the Freedmen’s Savings Bank. I[ssac] C. Wears to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 21–22, FD Papers, DLC. Commends him for his speech delivered at the Metropolitan Church in Washington, D.C. FD to Henry Highland Garnet. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 730L, FD Papers, DLC. Appreciates Garnet’s congratulations on his position as president of the Freedmen’s Savings Bank. FD to S. L. Harris. ALS: Alfred W. Anthony Collection, NN. Believes that the Freedmen’s Savings Bank and its branches will continue to be a good service. FD to [Unknown]. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 732, FD Papers, DLC. Wants to keep the Freedmen’s Savings Bank open; opposes John M. Langston’s proposal to shut it down. FD to R[obert] B[rown] Elliott. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 738R, 793L, FD Papers, DLC. Thanks Elliot for his eloquent eulogy of Charles Sumner. Harriet H. Greenough to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 45–46, FD Papers, DLC. Extends an invitation to meet with her so that she can introduce him to her son-in-law, the Danish minister to the United States. FD to [William James] Potter. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 743, FD Papers, DLC. Regretfully declines an invitation to attend the Free Religious Association convention. FD to [Russell Lant] Carpenter. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 744L, FD Papers, DLC.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

544

23 May

23 May

23 May

25 May

25 May

1 June

7 June

9 June

17 June

4 July

Y8204-Douglass.indb 544

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

Acknowledges receipt of copies of the Inquirer; comments on his article regarding Charles Sumner; compliments his outlook on American affairs. O[liver] O[tis] Howard to FD. ALS: Oliver Otis Howard Papers, MeB. Sends a letter of introduction on behalf of his friend, a retired army officer. FD to [George F. Edmunds]. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 746L, FD Papers, DLC. Shares joy regarding the Senate’s passage of the Civil Rights Bill. FD to [Roscoe] Conkling. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 744, FD Papers, DLC. Thanks Conkling and George Edmunds for their work on the Civil Rights Bill. Adelbert Ames to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 747, FD Papers, DLC. Requests suggestions for suitable candidates for the presidency of Alcorn University. D[aniel] D. Pratt to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 748, FD Papers, DLC. Expresses happiness upon earning his approval. FD to [Ottilie Assing]. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 749L, FD Papers, DLC. Thanks her for the cigars; comments on the sad affair of her sister. Anna E. Dickinson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 23R–25L, FD Papers, DLC. Asks him to do her the favor of parting with some furniture for Robert Purvis. FD to Anna E. Dickinson. ALS: Anna E. Dickinson Papers, DLC. Tells her that he would gladly do her any favor; discusses a round table previously owned by Charles Sumner. FD to O[liver] O[tis] Howard. ALS: Oliver Otis Howard Papers, MeB. Says that a poem about the late Charles Sumner will be presented on Sunday at the Congregational Church. FD to Anna E. Dickinson. ALS: Anne E. Dickinson Papers, DLC. Decides to keep Charles Sumner’s round table; hopes she has a safe journey to Europe.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

[July]

20 September

23 September

13 October

12 November

12 December

25 December

Unknown

545

Anna E. Dickinson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 756–58, FD Papers, DLC. Asks whether Robert Purvis secured the furniture he wanted; continues to discuss her travel plans. Gerrit Smith to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 759, FD Papers, DLC. Takes pleasure in finding him a copy of American Slavery As It Is and hopes it finds him safely. FD to H[enry] A. Ward. ALS: Henry A. Ward Manuscripts, NRU. Supports Wilberforce University; recommends calling on Gerrit Smith for donations. I[saac] C. Wears to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 760, FD Papers, DLC. Expects him to visit while he is in Philadelphia. FD to Samuel Pomeroy. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 761–62, FD Papers, DLC. Introduces Marianna Gibbons and writes a letter of recommendation to help her secure a position on the board of trustees at Howard University. Julia G[riffiths Crofts] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 201–06, FD Papers, DLC. Remembers Anna Douglass’s tea and Maryland biscuits; refers to the case of their friend Henry Ward Beecher, declares Tilton to be a wretch, and asks for his opinion on the scandal. FD to Gerrit Smith. ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. Thanks Smith for his letter advocating justice; discusses the suspension of the New National Era. FD to Harriet H. Greenough. AL: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frame 44, FD Papers, DLC. Assures her that her children were pleasant during his visit. 1875

15 January

11 February

Y8204-Douglass.indb 545

O[liver] O[tis] Howard to FD. ALS: Oliver Otis Howard Papers, MeB. Discusses an article in the Chicago Tribune about the Freedmen’s Bureau. Mary Baker to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 765L, FD Papers, DLC. Informs

5/17/23 2:36 PM

546

9 March

13 April

April

6 June

14 July

22 July

28 July

3 August

Y8204-Douglass.indb 546

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

him that a payment was not received for a house he bought at auction and wants to know the bank to which he should send the draft for collection. Mary Baker to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 765, FD Papers, DLC. Confirms the receipt of payment for the house and states that she plans to release the deed as soon as possible. FD to [Rosetta Douglass Sprague]. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 25–26, FD Papers, DLC. Notes that he plans to leave the following day for the Centennial Celebration at Philadelphia. Mary Baker to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 765R, FD Papers, DLC. Tells him that the owner of property he purchased at auction died in January and that he should call on the deceased’s attorney to obtain the deed to the house. [Elizabeth Pierson] to FD. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 772–76, FD Papers, DLC. Shares her thoughts on the sadness in his last letter; mentions an article she read titled “Wasted Sorrow”; congratulates him on the birth of Rosetta’s son. George W. Williams to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 779R, FD Papers, DLC. Asks to borrow $14 to pay for his board. FD, J. A. Emerson, and F[rederick] G. Barbadoes to Peter H. Clark. PLSr: Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 19 August 1875. Endorses call for a national convention of representative men. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 780–83L, FD Papers, DLC. Says he is being pursued by an angry creditor; blames himself but hopes his father will not be too quick to pass judgment. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 783–85, FD Papers, DLC. Claims a fever has kept him from settling in the new house; apologizes for his bad investments; feels responsible for Douglass’s losses.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

23 August

1 October

16 October

12 December

21 December

[1875]

547

FD to [Rosetta Douglass Sprague]. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 32–33, FD Papers, DLC. Says a camp meeting full of stupidity, ignorance, and superstition left him depressed for the future of his people; wants to see a school for African Americans where the children are neat, clean, and intelligent. FD to [Unknown]. ALS: Lee Kohns Manuscripts, NN. Responds to the recipient’s persistent efforts to persuade him to write back. Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 795–803L, FD Papers, DLC. Says a circular has put the old antislavery zeal back in England; mentions Rosine Amé Droz’s visit the previous summer; hopes he will come to Europe soon. Allan Pinkerton to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 803R, FD Papers, DLC. Sends him a reminiscence of John Brown. Julia G[riffiths] Crofts to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 804–08, FD Papers, DLC. Tells him that she directs a large day school with three resident governesses; updates him on the health of friends of theirs; sends regards to his family. FD to [Blanche K.] Bruce. ALS: B. K. Bruce Manuscripts, OFH. Praises Bruce’s first speech in the U.S. Senate. 1876

7 February

17 February

27 February

Y8204-Douglass.indb 547

W[alter] B. Shaw to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 809–12L, FD Papers, DLC. Complains that Charles Douglass has failed to repay a considerable debt. FD to [Rosetta Douglass Sprague]. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 57–58L, FD Papers, DLC. Reports on his good health while lecturing in the West. Julia G[riffiths] Crofts to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 812R–14, FD Papers,

5/17/23 2:36 PM

548

28 February

15 March

22 March

30 March

15 April

17 April

28 April

29 April

29 April

Y8204-Douglass.indb 548

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

DLC. Describes her day school and discusses her aunt’s affairs. B[rainard] H. Warner to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 815L, FD Papers, DLC. Proposes a business transaction. FD to Charles E. Crain. ALS: Miscellaneous Manuscripts, University of Chicago. Declines the invitation to deliver his John Brown lecture in Milwaukee. E. F. Strickland to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 817–18L, FD Papers, DLC. Extends an invitation to lecture at the Chelsea Woman Suffrage Club in Massachusetts. F[anny] M. Jackson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 818R–22L, FD Papers, DLC. Appreciates Douglass’s comments regarding her eulogy of George Whipple. George S. Boutwell to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 822R–23, FD Papers, DLC. Compliments his oration at the unveiling of the Freedmen’s Monument in memory of Abrahan Lincoln in Washington, D.C., the previous day. Elias Boman to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 824–26, FD Papers, DLC. Includes an excerpt from the Savannah Colored Tribune regarding the kidnapping of Joe Morris by the Ku Klux Klan. E. Francis Riggs to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 827, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses property taxes and mortgage. Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 828–30L, FD Papers, DLC. Thanks him for his November letter; sends information about friends of theirs; comments on the government’s attempts to regulate prostitution in England. [Rosine Amé Droz] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 830R–34, FD Papers, DLC. Thinks a visit to Switzerland would do him good and invites him to go with her; discusses their friends, including the Rawsons and the Carpenters.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

1 May

2 May

3 May

19 May

25 May

30 May

5 June

8 June

13 June

25 June

Y8204-Douglass.indb 549

549

FD to B[rainard] H. Warner. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 835–37L, FD Papers, DLC. Complains about a business deal with E. Francis Riggs; encloses a check for $1,500—$500 less than the requested amount—to purchase lots. B[rainard] H. Warner to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 837R, FD Papers, DLC. Asks that he come and get his returned check. George W. Williams to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 838–39, FD Papers, DLC. Appreciates his hospitality; documents daily life and work. FD to C[ulver] C[hanning] Sniffen. ALS: GilderLehrman Collection, NPML. Accepts an invitation to come to the White House. FD to [William B.] Snell. ALS: Collection 420 Fogg v. 42, Maine Historical Society, Portland. Writes a letter of introduction for William E. Matthews. Mrs. S. H. Benson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 840–41, FD Papers, DLC. Applauds his oration at the unveiling of the Freedmen’s Monument; informs him that a friend of theirs defected to the Democratic party. FD to W[illiam] F. Phillips. ALS: William W. Layton Collection, NHPRC. Declines an invitation to lecture in Cincinnati while attending the National Republican Convention. Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 643–47L, FD Papers, DLC. Thanks him for the letter and photograph; compliments his oration given at the Freedmen’s Monument dedication; expects a visit from Julia Griffiths Crofts. R[osine] Amé Droz to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 844R–48, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses a friend of theirs; says she is looking forward to a lecture. Annie [Clapp] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 849–52L, FD Papers, DLC. Sends

5/17/23 2:36 PM

550

25 July

21 August

1 September

20 September

29 September

3 October

4 October

17 October

29 October

Y8204-Douglass.indb 550

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

an account of the sickness and death that has afflicted her family over the past year. Ottilie Assing to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 854, FD Papers, DLC. Lets him know she has reached Europe. FD to J[ames] M. Dalzell. ALS: James M. Dalzell Manuscripts, Henry E. Huntington Library. Declines an invitation to attend a national reunion of Union army soldiers at Caldwell, Ohio. Martha W. Greene to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 858–59, FD Papers, DLC. Comments on his attempt to give up smoking; inquires about his campaigning in Maine; provides instructions on traveling there by boat. FD to S[amuel] C[harles] Blackwell. ALS: Blackwell Family Papers, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Cambridge, Mass. Responds to an inquiry about race and gender; says he will be campaigning in Indiana and believes that the results will influence the rest of the country. L[aura] Wheeler [Moody] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 866–67, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses family matters; mentions a visit to Rosetta during which she saw Lewis for the first time in many years. Julia G[riffiths] Crofts to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 868–70L, FD Papers, DLC. Feels that she and Anna Douglass would be good friends if they could meet again; talks about English friends of theirs, her day school, and financial issues. Eliza Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 870R–71L, FD Papers, DLC. Considers her financial circumstances; shares travel plans. FD to [Unknown]. ALS: FD Manuscripts, NRU. Comments on the controversy regarding the enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 871R, FD Papers, DLC.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

30 October

27 November

3 December

18 December

28 December

31 December

551

Writes a letter of introduction for his friend Charles A. Fraser, who is visiting the United States from Puerto Plata. Charles A. Fraser to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 872, FD Papers, DLC. Sends a walking stick as a gift on behalf of his Sunday school in Puerto Plata; notes that Charles Douglass has often visited and addressed the school. Julia G[riffiths] Crofts to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 873–76, FD Papers, DLC. Inquires about Rosetta’s marriage; considers moving away from Gateshead; states she is ashamed of the British government’s difficulties in the East. E[lizabeth] Thompson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 252–54L, FD Papers, DLC. Says she is changing the way she handles her money and will not be sending him $50. George T. Downing to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 880–82L, FD Papers, DLC. Worries over reports of his illness; wishes to visit him in Washington but cannot because of travel expenses. Martha W. Greene to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 882R–84L, FD Papers, DLC. Sends New Year’s greetings; talks about family; hopes to hear from him soon. Martha W. Greene to FD. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 884R–85, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses travel plans; shares news of her family. 1877

5 January

23 January

Y8204-Douglass.indb 551

Ottilie Assing to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 1–4L, FD Papers, DLC. Warns that Nathan Sprague cannot be trusted; describes her visit to Rome. E[lizabeth] Pierson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 4R–6, FD Papers, DLC. Sends a fork to commemorate twenty-one years of

5/17/23 2:36 PM

552

29 January

11 February

16 February

February

15 March

16 March

16 March

17 March

17 March

Y8204-Douglass.indb 552

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

their friendship; discusses politics; plans to visit when it is convenient for him. E[lizabeth] L. Hammond to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 7–9L, FD Papers, DLC. Asks him to help her son, a wounded veteran, obtain a government position in Chicago. Ottilie Assing to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 9R–12L, FD Papers, DLC. Says she is glad that he does not need glasses; continues to recount her trip to Rome; plans to travel to New York in August. Julia G[riffiths] Crofts to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 12R–015L, FD Papers, DLC. Describes being robbed at the Gateshead railway station; tells him about the house she bought; shares her plans to take over management of the school where she teaches; invites him to visit England. Frank T. Howe to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 17–18, FD Papers, DLC. Informs  him that he has been elected an honorary member of the Young Men’s Republican Club in Washington, D.C. William W. Hanna to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 19–20L, FD Papers, DLC. Inquires whether he delivered a series of lectures in Belfast, Ireland, in 1856 or 1857. E[rasmus] D. Hudson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 20R, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal. Theodore Tilton to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 21–23, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him and sees his nomination as marshal as an indication of human progress. George A. Bassett to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 24–26L, FD Papers, DLC. Recommends Graham P. Hopkins for the position of deputy marshal. William Brown to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 26R–27, FD Papers, DLC. Thanks

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

17 March

18 March

18 March

18 March

18 March

19 March

19 March

19 March

19 March

Y8204-Douglass.indb 553

553

him for what he has accomplished for the African American race. Unknown to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 33R, FD Papers, DLC. Happy to learn of his appointment as U.S. marshal. “Colored Citizen” to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 28–29L, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal; appreciates Rutherford B. Hayes for serving the American people. John A. Gray to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 29R–30L, FD Papers, DLC. Sends congratulations regarding his appointment as marshal and promises to help in any way he can. Arthur Jones to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 32R–33L, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal. Lizzie Shearer to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 34–38, FD Papers, DLC. Sends congratulations regarding his new position as marshal and hopes that he can help her find employment in Washington, D.C. FD to [Charles Devens]. ALS: Department of Justice, District of Columbia, Source and Chronological File, RG 60, DNA. Confirms that he has taken the required oath for the position of marshal of the District of Columbia. William S. Drew to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 41, FD Papers, DLC. Offers sincere congratulations regarding his appointment as marshal. Joseph V. Meigs to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 43R, FD Papers, DLC. Writes to congratulate him on his appointment as marshal. S[amuel] D. Porter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 44–45, FD Papers, DLC. Rejoices in the knowledge of his appointment as marshal; admits that the new president has grown in his favor.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

554

20 March

20 March

20 March

21 March

21 March

21 March

22 March

22 March

22 March

24 March

Y8204-Douglass.indb 554

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

Helen Ford Douglas to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 46–48L, FD Papers, DLC. Extends congratulations on behalf of her and her family for his appointment as marshal. H[enry] N. Hudson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 50, FD Papers, DLC. Offers congratulations on his appointment as marshal. B[ela] C. Perry to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 52R–53L, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal; hopes he remains physically well enough to perform his duties. FD to S[amuel] D. Porter. ALS: Porter Family Manuscripts, NRU. Appreciates the congratulations regarding his appointment as marshal. Catherine A. F. Stebbins to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 55–57, FD Papers, DLC. Writes that his appointment as marshal is a moral victory for his race. [Unknown] to FD. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 53R–54, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his new appointment; focuses on the idea of reforming the federal civil service. Henry Highland Garnet to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 58–60L, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal and sends best wishes. Jerome F. Manning to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 60R, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal and expresses confidence that he will do well in the position. M[ichael] E. Strieby to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 63R–64L, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal. C[harles] C. Burleigh to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 64R–66L, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal; presents the case of Julia Weed in hopes that he can help her find a job.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

24 March

24 March

24 March

25 March

26 March

26 March

26 March

26 March

27 March

Y8204-Douglass.indb 555

555

Geo[rge] W. Clark to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 66R–67, FD Papers, DLC. Expresses satisfaction regarding President Rutherford B. Hayes; congratulates Douglass on his appointment as marshal. Charles W. Slack to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 68–69, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal; promises to buy him dinner the next time he comes to Boston. Helen Stowall to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 70–71, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal. J[ames] N. Luce to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 51–52L, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal. R[ussell] L[ant] Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 72–75, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal; compares the British and U.S. governments regarding appointments and elections. Geo[rge] W. Clark to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 76–77L, FD Papers, DLC. Asks for help on behalf of his daughter, Eliza, who is in need of a job. FD to F[ranklin] S. Stebbins. ALS: FD Manuscripts, OFH. Thanks him for the note congratulating him on his appointment as marshal; shares his confidence in Rutherford B. Hayes. Henry N. Hall to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 79R–80L, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal; requests aid on behalf of a friend who is looking for a job in business. Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 84R–86, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal; discusses their friends Julia Griffiths Crofts and Rosine Amé Droz; mentions her nephew, who

5/17/23 2:36 PM

556

28 March

28 March

29 March

30 March

[March]

March

1 April

2 April

3 April

Y8204-Douglass.indb 556

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

was recently married and plans to honeymoon in the United States. [James A.] Handy to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 87, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal. J. Wainwright Ray to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 88–89, FD Papers, DLC. Encloses an article written in tribute to both his character and his appointment as marshal; asks for help in acquiring professional work. Sylvester H. Clarke to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 90–92L, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal; reminisces about old abolitionist days. J[ohn] H. Burkhalter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 92R–93, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal; wants to see a copy of his autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom; would like to subscribe to his newspaper. Francis M. Adlington to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 568–69, FD Papers, DLC. Sends poem on Abraham Lincoln. Jacob A. Prime to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 96R–97, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal; praises Rutherford B. Hayes. Mary G. Wright to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 98–100, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal. FD to [Jonathan Baldwin] Turner. ALS: Jonathan Baldwin Turner Collection, Bradley University, Peoria, Ill. Responds to his letter of congratulations. FD to Charles Devens. ALS: Department of Justice, District of Columbia, Source and Chronological File, RG 60, DNA. Informs him of the referral of a certain matter to the warden of the jail of the District of Columbia.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

6 April

10 April

10 April

16 April

18 April

19 April

19 April

30 April

8 May

9 May

12 May

Y8204-Douglass.indb 557

557

W[illia]m Thomas to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 104–06L, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal; says Wendell Phillips recently lectured in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Robert Ernst to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 106R–08, FD Papers, DLC. Offers a confidential assessment of the deputy marshal. FD to Sylvester H. Clarke. ALS: Frederick Douglass Miscellaneous Papers, Kansas Historical Society, Topeka. Thanks him for his kind letter of congratulations. FD to [William King] Rogers. ALS: R. B. Hayes Manuscripts, OFH. Requests an interview with the president on behalf of Mr. Hicks. FD to W[illiam] F[rederick] Wakeman. ALS: Frederick Douglass Project. NRU. Thanks him for sending a copy of his “John Brown” lecture. A[lmon] M. Clark to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 109, FD Papers, DLC. Complains that one of Douglass’s former employees is attacking his office in the press. F. M. Jackson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 110–14, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal and sees great things in his future. Charles D. Fraser to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 177–18, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal; sends regards to the family. B[urton] F[rancis] Blackall to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 119, FD Papers, DLC. Encloses money collected from his property in Rochester. FD to W[illia]m R. Hallowell. ALS: FD Manuscripts, NRU. Regrets being unable to attend Hallowell’s father’s funeral and offers his condolences. FD to [Henry Post Godwin]. PLSr: Washington National Republican, 13 May 1877. Declines to allow

5/17/23 2:36 PM

558

12 May

14 May

21 May

22 May

24 May

3 June

5 June

5 June

10 June

Y8204-Douglass.indb 558

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

newspaper to publish the text of his recent lecture on Washington. James Fishback to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 120–21, FD Papers, DLC. Comments on the attacks that occurred after his Baltimore lecture and offers sympathy and support; assures Douglass that he has a friend in Colonel L. D. Ingersoll of the Chicago Post. John Forbes to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 127, FD Papers, DLC. Requests that he address a meeting at the statue of Lincoln in Union Square on Decoration Day. John L. Sears to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 129, FD Papers, DLC. Asks him to help Robert Cathcart obtain a patronage job. Geo[rge] C. Jent to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 128, FD Papers, DLC. Draws his attention to a list of names petitioning his removal from office. John L. Sears to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 130L, FD Papers, DLC. Requests his endorsement for the Baltimore appointment of Robert Cathcart as U.S. marshal of Maryland. M[artha] W. G[reene] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 132–34L, FD Papers, DLC. Says one of the letters sent to Greenwich was mistakenly opened by another person; asks for his opinion regarding President Hayes; describes a funeral. Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 134–38L, FD Papers, DLC. Informs him of the death of Philip Carpenter; worries that his new position as marshal will keep him from visiting England. R[ussell] L[ant] Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 138R–40, FD Papers, DLC. Provides more information regarding the death of his brother. Eva Webster to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 141–43, FD Papers, DLC. Tells him

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

13 June

24 June

25 June

26 June

26 June

29 June

2 July

3 July

5 July

Y8204-Douglass.indb 559

559

she has completed his portrait and he should receive it soon; asks him to forward it to an exhibition to be held in the fall in support of female artists in New York. Martha W. Greene to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 144–46L, FD Papers, DLC. Thinks his government position may be keeping him from speaking on social issues; asks about the portrait from Chicago. J. Prince to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 146R–47, FD Papers, DLC. Considers the controversy over his lecture on Washington. [Burton Francis Blackall] “Frank” to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 148, FD Papers, DLC. Mentions that an agent has agreed to help Rosetta; offers to sell him property in Rochester. FD to Charles Devens. ALS: Department of Justice, District of Columbia, Source and Chronological File, RG 60, DNA; Miscellany File, reel 31, frames 320–22, FD Papers, DLC. Acknowledges receipt of a letter; aims to perform the duties suggested in a way that will result in his approval. J. Prince to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 149–51L, FD Papers, DLC. Describes problems he is having with a person whom Douglass turned down for the position of deputy marshal. William E. Lloyd to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 151R–52, FD Papers, DLC. Updates him on the city of Baltimore; shares information regarding the construction of a new church; discusses friends and family. William Neil to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 155–57L, FD Papers, DLC. Encloses poetry and congratulates him on his life’s work. FD to [George W. McCrary]. ALS: National Archives, Secretary of War Applications, 1847–87. Recommends the editor of the Washington, D.C., Plain Dealer, for a federal job. Julia Griffiths Crofts to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 155–57L, FD Papers, DLC.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

560

11 July

14 July

16 July

16 July

21 July

25 July

1 August

3 August

5 August

Y8204-Douglass.indb 560

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

Pleased about his appointment as marshal; describes her new residence. FD to Charles Devens. ALS: Department of Justice, District of Columbia, Source and Chronological File, RG 60, DNA; Miscellany File, reel 31, frames 323–24, FD Papers, DLC. Refers to the order of President Rutherford B. Hayes that notes an opposition to officers partaking in the management of political organizations. Rosine Amé Droz to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 160R–63, FD Papers, DLC. Congratulates him on his appointment as marshal; informs him of the death of Mary Carpenter. Cornelia D. Adams to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 164–65, FD Papers, DLC. Expresses joy after learning he plans to visit soon; notes that he is always welcome. B[urton] F[rancis] B[lackall] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 166, FD Papers, DLC. Encloses a deed for the two lots in Hamilton Place and sends a bill for city taxes. [Annie Clapp] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 167–70L, FD Papers, DLC. Describes an article she read in the Boston Commonwealth; wishes he would visit; tells him she is getting married. FD to Charles Devens. ALS: Department of Justice, District of Columbia, Source and Chronological File, RG 60, DNA. Applies for a leave of absence for the month of August. B[urton] F[rancis] Blackall to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 170R, FD Papers, DLC. Encloses a check; notes that only one person has shown interest in renting the house. William Robb to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 171–72, FD Papers, DLC. Reminisces about Douglass’s visit to his home in England thirty years prior; congratulates him on his appointment as marshal. Rosine Amé Droz to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 786–94, FD Papers, DLC.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

17 August

31 August

3 September

5 September

29 September

11 October

14 October

23 October

Y8204-Douglass.indb 561

561

Tells him she wants to teach African American girls; suggests that he meet her friends the Reverend Thomas Pattison and his wife if he ever travels to New Haven, Connecticut. [Burton Francis Blackall] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 174, FD Papers, DLC. Reports that he has rented out Douglass’s property in Rochester; acknowledges that he paid his city taxes. Charles R. Douglass to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 175–77, FD Papers, DLC. Warns him of a Haitian general who might try to contact him; encloses a picture of three Haitian revolutionary generals who conspired to overthrow the government, one of whom became the president of Haiti. Minor M[cGowen?] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 178–81, FD Papers, DLC. Sends newspaper article concerning a patronage controversy in New York. William Witherspoon to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 182–83, FD Papers, DLC. Talks about his children; explains that he is in financial distress. B[urton] F[rancis] Blackall to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 184–85L, FD Papers, DLC. Encloses a check; discusses rental issues in regard to the current tenant in Rochester. Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 185R–89, FD Papers, DLC. Sends him a book written by the late Mary Carpenter; says Russell Lant Carpenter has been ill; discusses the congress at Geneva. [Annie] Clapp to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 190–92, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses her recent marriage and her life in Homer, Nebraska. FD to Amy Post. ALS: Post Family Papers, NRU. Regrets that he cannot attend the Liberal League meeting in Rochester; shares relief that he has not lost her confidence after becoming an officeholder.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

562

24 October

23 November

7 December

8 December

9 December

23 December

28 December

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

M[ary] A[nn] Taylor to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 193–94L, FD Papers, DLC. Sends a picture sketched by her son while accompanying the Santo Domingo Commission in Haiti. William B. Baihout Campbell to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 194R–95, FD Papers, DLC. Recalls meeting Douglass in Paisley, Scotland, in 1845. Abby H. Patton to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 196, FD Papers, DLC. Forwards a request on behalf of Grace Greenwood, asking him to write her whenever an important trial or speech is made in his courtroom. Julia G[riffiths] Crofts to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 197–200, FD Papers, DLC. Sends Christmas greetings to him and his family; says she is happy with her old-fashioned house; asks whether he continues to like the president. E[lizabeth] Thompson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 257–59L, FD Papers, DLC. Wants to know what she can do to help the poor children of Washington, D.C. Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 207, FD Papers, DLC. Introduces a visiting friend. C[arl] Schurz to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 212, FD Papers, DLC. Asks him to visit his office at the Department of the Interior the following morning. FD to Charles Devens. ALS: Department of Justice, District of Columbia, Source and Chronological File, RG 60, DNA. Requests the removal of the guard Thomas Young for issues of neglect. 1878

10 January

Y8204-Douglass.indb 562

John Mercer Langston to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 213–14, FD Papers, DLC. Thanks him for sending a photograph.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

16 January

22 January

1 February

9 February

26 February

26 February

7 March

11 March

27 March

Y8204-Douglass.indb 563

563

FD and the Trustees of Howard University to R[utherford] B. Hayes. ALS: R. B. Manuscripts, OFH. Requests an interview to discuss the Freedmen’s Hospital. Ellen Richardson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 217–19, FD Papers, DLC. Says she reread My Bondage and My Freedom; discusses slavery; reminisces about their meeting in 1846; talks about his age, his life’s work, and his position as marshal. Tho[ma]s [L.] Sears to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 225, FD Papers, DLC. Provides details regarding his mother’s funeral and hopes to see him there. B[urton] F[rancis] B[lackall] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 228–9L, FD Papers, DLC. Sends rent collected on his property in Rochester. John Brown, Jr., to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 234R–35, FD Papers, DLC. Informs Douglass that he has requested publication of his letter relating his knowledge of Gerrit Smith’s involvement with John Brown. FD to [William King] Rogers. ALS: R. B. Hayes Manuscripts, OFH. Requests a meeting between President Hayes and Josiah Henson, the Uncle Tom of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. John Cochrane to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 236–38, FD Papers, DLC. Mentions a disagreement regarding when John Brown’s provisional constitution was drawn up at Gerrit Smith’s house; requests a book containing reports on Harpers Ferry. Amos Farnham to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 239–40, FD Papers, DLC. Recommends Whitefield McKinlay, a graduate of Avery Normal Institute, for a teaching position. B[urton] F[rancis] Blackall to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 244–45L, FD Papers,

5/17/23 2:36 PM

564

3 April

8 April

10 April

11 April

26 April

22 May.

17 June

22 June

15 July

Y8204-Douglass.indb 564

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

DLC. Sends rent collections; offers general information about Douglass’s property in Rochester. Elizabeth [Thompson] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 245–47, FD Papers, DLC. Regrets leaving Washington before she was able to see him; notes that she is headed to New York; wishes him to write her a personal letter. FD to [Unknown]. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 248, FD Papers, DLC. Admits that much of his past writing would be impossible for him to obtain; advises the correspondent to gather any useful information from newspapers. FD to Edward McPherson. ALS: Edward McPherson Papers, DLC. Thanks him for a copy of his argument presented before the Committee on Banking and Currency. Elizabeth [Thompson] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 249, FD Papers, DLC. Requests a reply to a letter she wrote the week before. B[urton] F[rancis] Blackall to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 254–55L, FD Papers, DLC. Encloses a deed and some bills related to his property in Rochester; notes that the rent money will arrive late. B[urton] F[rancis] Blackall to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 255R, FD Papers, DLC. Needs his signature on a statement regarding his property in Rochester. B[urton] F[rancis] Blackall to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 256, FD Papers, DLC. Sends a receipt of payment in relation to his property in Rochester. Sara Jane Clarke to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 257–58, FD Papers, DLC. Praises his speech; tells him that she will be leaving for England soon. FD to [Amy Post]. ALS: Amy Post Papers, NRU. Appreciates the invitation and assures her that he will visit Thursday evening.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

16 July

12 August

20 August

29 August

7 September

12 September

14 September

14 September

24 September

8 November

Y8204-Douglass.indb 565

565

Margarett Barbour to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 259–60, FD Papers, DLC. Requests his assistance in obtaining money that is owed her. B[urton] F[rancis] Blackall to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 261, FD Papers, DLC. Sends a receipt for him to sign and date; states that a tenant is late on rent and has a balance. B[lanche] K. Bruce to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 262–65L, FD Papers, DLC. Provides details about his travels in Europe. [Unknown] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 267R–68, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses the possible extension of the repayment term of a loan. William E. Chase to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 271R–74L, FD Papers, DLC. Replies to a report that he was withdrawing his recommendation of Chase. FD to William J. Rhees. ALS: William J. Rhees Manuscripts, CSmH. Recommends Frances Barrier for a teaching position. Ottilie Assing to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 274R–76L, FD Papers, DLC. Expresses disappointment that she has not received a letter from him; plans to depart soon for Stamford, Connecticut, to visit a friend; discusses the Koehler family and Frothingham’s biography of Gerrit Smith. FD to William J. Rhees. ALS: William J. Rhees Collection, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Appreciates his response to the recommendation letter he sent earlier. B[urton] F[rancis] Blackall to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 276R, FD Papers, DLC. Updates him on his properties in Rochester. FD to John Mercer Langston. ALS: Wyndham Robertson Library, Hollins College Archives. Tells him he has put Langston’s portrait up in his house; discusses the 1880 election.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

566

28 November

5 December

8 December

26 December

Unknown

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

Ottilie Assing to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 283R–85, FD Papers, DLC. Announces she has left Stamford, Connecticut, and is now in Hoboken; notes that Sylvester R. Koëhler is looking for employment; shares news of friends. Julia G[riffiths] Crofts to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 289–93, FD Papers, DLC. Discusses family issues and the war with Afghanistan; says England and Scotland are in a poor state; believes the second coming of Christ is near. Martha [W. Greene] to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 294–97L, FD Papers, DLC. Expresses joy in knowing that her friends will be visiting him; responds to some articles he sent her; comments on Rosetta and Nathan. Ottilie Assing to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 301R–03, FD Papers, DLC. Tells him about her Christmas holidays with the Loewenthals and the Kudlichs; discusses a recently deceased German friend; offers advice regarding the treatment of animals. FD to “Dear Sir.” ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 766–69, FD Papers, DLC. Explains why he must be paid in advance for his lectures. 1879

29 January

12 February

13 February

Y8204-Douglass.indb 566

Ottilie Assing to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 309R–11L, FD Papers, DLC. Advises him not to lend money to friends; discusses politics; comments on Sylvester R. Koëhler’s continuing search for employment; complains that the druggist is not paying rent. Ottilie Assing to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 311R–14L, FD Papers, DLC. Rants about Tilden and the Republican party; compares Douglass to King Lear because of the demands of his children; considers moving to New York. [Unknown] to FD. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 314R, FD Papers, DLC. Replies to his let-

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

24 February

21 March

25 March

26 March

March

1 April

14 April

18 April

16 May

Y8204-Douglass.indb 567

567

ter seeking to recover bonds that were lost in the house fire. Ottilie Assing to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 317R–19L, FD Papers, DLC. Understands that he is unable to help Sylvester R. Koëhler obtain a job; discusses her plans to leave Hoboken; comments on the Democrats’ attempt to repeal election laws. Elizabeth Thompson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 322–24L, FD Papers, DLC. Appreciates his letter; muses on life. FD to F[ranklin] G[eorge] Adams. PLSr: Colored Citizen, 5 April 1879. Regrets that he cannot contribute any volumes to the library of the Kansas State Historical Society because a fire destroyed his newspaper. Martha L. Dorsey to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 324R–25, FD Papers, DLC. Says hello; reflects on the past. Elizabeth Thompson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 326–28L, FD Papers, DLC. Proposes a visit to Niagara Falls in the spring; sends a circular for him to critique. Ottilie Assing to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 328R–30, FD Papers, DLC. Reports she is in the process of moving to New York, but for the time being will remain in Hoboken; updates him on Sylvester R. Koëhler’s affairs. Elizabeth Thompson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 377–79L, FD Papers, DLC. Recommends that Douglass support the Exodusters. Elizabeth Thompson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 331–35, FD Papers, DLC. Sends a temperance tract for him to critique; asks him to help her find someone to write another, similar pamphlet. Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 343R–47L, FD Papers, DLC. Says her nephew William Lant Carpenter is on his way to the United States; reports that Russell Lant

5/17/23 2:36 PM

568

23 May

24 May

29 May

14 June

16 June

16 June

14 July

15 July

18 July 28 July

Y8204-Douglass.indb 568

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

Carpenter has been preparing a memoir of his brother Philip; and notes Rosine Amé Droz has been visiting Bridport. FD to Samuel Chapman Armstrong. ALS: Carter Woodson Collection, DLC. Forwards a misdirected letter; comments favorably on Anna Douglass, who was mentioned within. FD to F. H. C. Reynolds. ALS: FD Manuscripts, CtY. Apologizes for being unable to contribute to his stamp collection; provides information about the consul general of Liberia. FD et al. to R[utherford] B. Hayes. ALS: R. B. Hayes Manuscripts, OFH. Extends an invitation to the president to a memorial meeting in honor of William Lloyd Garrison. R[ussell] L[ant] Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 347R–48, FD Papers, DLC. Mentions his nephew; introduces relatives of a friend of theirs in England. FD to A[lbert] G[allatin] Riddle. ALS: FD Papers, ICHi. Thanks him for a copy of his book, Bart Ridgeley; A Story of Northern Ohio, and compliments his literary skills. Julia B. Nelson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 349–51L, FD Papers, DLC. Wishes she could have spoken with him longer and considers him now to be a good friend; hopes he can find the time to write. A[nnie] Clapp to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 351R–53, FD Papers, DLC. Informs him of the death of her father, who died in June. FD to Mary A. Bosbyshell. ALS: Gilder-Lehrman Collection, NPML. Wishes he could provide the postage stamps she requested; offers a few suggestions on whom she might contact instead. FD to A[lbert] D. Hagen. ALS: FD Papers, ICHi. Promises to send his photograph in the near future. Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 354–57L, FD Papers, DLC.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

31 July

10 August

20 September

19 October

5 November

6 November

7 November

10 November

Y8204-Douglass.indb 569

569

Recognizes that he is now the patriarch of a large family; appreciates his address on the Exodus; mentions that Russell Lant Carpenter has finished his memoir of Philip Carpenter. B[urton] F[rancis] Blackall to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 357R, FD Papers, DLC. Sends receipts of Rochester properties; notes that Mrs. Dickinson has been evicted; says he hopes to find a new tenant soon. Rosine Amé Droz to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 358–66L, FD Papers, DLC. Informs him that she is staying with the Carpenters; says she is disappointed that he has not replied to her letters; requests a photograph. FD et al. to R[utherford] B. Hayes. ALS: R. B. Hayes Manuscripts, OFH. Recommends Sayles J. Bowen for the board of commissioners of the District of Columbia. FD to Edward McPherson. ALS: Edward McPherson Papers, DLC. Forwards a manuscript by Marianna Gibbons and regrets the delay in its arrival. H[enry] C[lark] Corbin to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 368, FD Papers, DLC. Invites him to a meeting of the Committee on Reception on behalf of Judge Arthur MacArthur. FD to [Unknown]. ALS: W. K. Bixby Manuscripts, Missouri Historical Society. Regrets that he is unable to supply any autographs of John Brown or Abraham Lincoln. R[osine] A[mé] Droz to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 369–76, FD Papers, DLC. Reminisces in the room he occupied twenty years before; thanks him for the photograph; insists he must see Switzerland. FD to [Unknown]. ALS: FD Manuscripts, DHU-MS. Apologizes for missing a speaking appointment in November and explains that the conductor of his train refused to stop or slow down to let him off.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

570

12 December

December

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

FD to Sylvester R. Koëhler. ALS: FD Manuscripts, NRU. Wishes him luck in editing the American Art Review. E[lizabeth] Thompson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 259R–60, FD Papers, DLC. Informs him that she was not offended by his last letter and wants to put any past disagreements aside. FD to C. C. Pelfey. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frame 138, FD Papers, DLC. Says he is not the president of any society of emigration, but wishes well to African Americans leaving the gulf states for Oklahoma. E[lizabeth] Thompson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 261–63, FD Papers, DLC. Tries to engage his support in a colonization plan for the poor. E[lizabeth] Thompson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 264–65L, FD Papers, DLC. Invites him to come to Concord, Massachusetts, for a lecture. 1880

2 January

6 January

7 January

13 January

Y8204-Douglass.indb 570

E[lizabeth] Thompson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 381–83L, FD Papers, DLC. Responds to his note discussing their friendship and requests that he burn all of her badly written letters. FD to John F. Edmund. ALS: FD Manuscripts, NRU. Writes a letter of introduction for Henry A. Griswold, a gentleman interested in the extension of the Anacostia Street Railway. FD to [William King] Rogers. ALS: R. B. Hayes Manuscripts, OFH. Recommends Mr. Cox of Auburn for an interview with the president. Mary Browne and R[ussell] L[ant] Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 383R–87L, FD Papers, DLC. Reflects on the wars in

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

18 January

25 January

January

5 February

11 February

26 February

7 March

20 March

Y8204-Douglass.indb 571

571

Asia and Africa; announces the publication of Russell Lant Carpenter’s memoir of his brother, Philip; and looks forward to seeing him in England in 1881. Julia M. Boardman to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 602–03L, FD Papers, DLC. Announces her safe arrival home from her visit to Washington. Julia M. Boardman to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 603R–05L, FD Papers, DLC. Misses Washington; wants him to write her often. Julia M. Boardman to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 611R–12, FD Papers, DLC. Requests a signed photograph; encloses money for the freedmen. B[urton] F[rancis] B[lackall] to FD. ALI: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 387R–88L, FD Papers, DLC. Updates him on issues related to his property in Rochester; announces that he is now a grandfather to a baby girl named Grace. J[ulia] M. B[oardman] to FD. ALI: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 605R–06, FD Papers, DLC. Thanks him for his letter; provides details about how she spends her time; inquires about Julia Griffiths Crofts. J[ulia M. Boardman] to FD. ALI: General Correspondence File, reel 8, frames 609R–11L, FD Papers, DLC. Tells him she is glad he met and liked her friend and cousin, John Fiske; asks whether she is writing too often. E[lizabeth] Thompson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 238R–39, FD Papers, DLC. Encloses a letter from her friend General Albert Pike; requests a letter on Douglass’s views on life. J. Rob[er]t Davis to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 390–91R, FD Papers, DLC. Requests information regarding his position as president of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company on behalf of George W. Williams for a historical reconstruction.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

572

25 March

12 April

17 April

29 April

11 May

13 May

19 May

27 May

Y8204-Douglass.indb 572

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

B[urton] F[rancis] Blackall to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 391R–92L, FD Papers,  DLC. Informs him that his tenants are moving out. Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 392R–96L, FD Papers, DLC. Apologizes for being unable to send a copy of Mr. Carpenter’s memoir and promises to secure a copy for him if they run a second edition; encloses a check to aid poor African Americans. FD to James Monroe. ALS: James Monroe Papers,  Oberlin College. Thanks him for a copy of his speech. George Alfred Toussaint to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 396R, FD Papers, DLC. Sends him a copy of a book he published about the Eastern Shore of Maryland; requests an autographed letter to put in his copy of Douglass’s book. A[nnie] Clapp to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 397–99, FD Papers, DLC. Thanks him for the photograph; appreciates the invitation to visit him in Washington. B[urton] F[rancis] Blackall to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 400–01L, FD Papers, DLC. Includes receipts from his property in Rochester; discusses politics; declares that he is financially unable to visit him. B[urton] F[rancis] Blackall to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 401R–02L, FD Papers, DLC. Resends the statement of his property in Rochester; talks about the boat race in Washington, his successor, his granddaughter, Grace, and the son of the African American man who was hanged at Harpers Ferry. Martha W. Greene to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 402R–04, FD Papers, DLC. Regrets that she will not be able to attend his lecture in Greenwich and hopes the newspapers will report on the occasion.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

9 June

15 June

24 June

30 June

29 July

17 August

18 August

25 August

22 September

26 September

Y8204-Douglass.indb 573

573

J. C. Hazeby to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 407R–08, FD Papers, DLC. Sends an African almanac for him to read at his leisure. FD to M[inot] J[udson] Savage. PLSr: Farewell Dinner to Francis Ellingwood Abbot (Boston: Geo H. Ellis, 1880), p. 48. Appreciates the invitation to the dinner honoring Francis E. Abbot and hopes to be able to attend; praises Abbot for his editorial work. Edward Blyden to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 409, FD Papers, DLC. Accepts his invitation to dinner. E[lizabeth] Thompson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 9, frames 247–49, FD Papers, DLC. Has retired from city life; wants him to visit her in New Hampshire. Mary Browne Carpenter to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 413–15L, FD Papers, DLC. Plans to send copies of the second edition of Russell Lant Carpenter’s memoir to the Smithsonian; requests a list of other institutions that he thinks should have copies. Marshall Jewell to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 418L, FD Papers, DLC. Sends a copy of an article in advance of its publication in the International Review. Edward M. Johnson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 418R, FD Papers, DLC. Asks whether he would be willing to speak at the Republican party meetings in New York. Clinton C. Riley to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 419L–20, FD Papers, DLC. Provides a detailed schedule of his campaign appointments in Indiana. Emma Haskins to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 419R–23, FD Papers, DLC. Inquires about his campaigning in Indiana; worries his efforts may affect his health. FD to C[linton] C. Riley. ALS: FD Manuscripts, Moorland-Spingarn Library, Howard University.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

574

9 November

16 November

12 December

19 December

22 December

28 December

Y8204-Douglass.indb 574

CALENDAR OF CORRESPONDENCE NOT PRINTED

Promises to return to the campaign in Indiana in October. FD to J[ames] M. Dalzell. ALS: Autographs, NNPML. Celebrates James A. Garfield’s election; plans to meet Dalzell at the inauguration. B[urton] F[rancis] Blackall to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 426R–27L, FD Papers, DLC. Sends receipts for property in Rochester; shares elation over Garfield’s election; notes that he recently saw Lewis in Albany. [Unknown] to FD. ALf: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 427R–29L, FD Papers, DLC. Chats about friends and activities; mentions that she attends meetings at the Woman’s Club on Mondays. E[lizabeth Pierson] to FD. ALI: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 429R–31L, FD Papers, DLC. Reminisces about the past; discusses a recent visit to Rochester. Nathaniel P. Banks to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 431R, FD Papers, DLC. Asks him to present the enclosed letter, regarding a small claim, to the managers of the Freedmen’s Savings Bank. W[illiam] K[ing] Rogers to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 432R, FD Papers, DLC. Asks Douglass to visit him at the White House at his convenience. Elizabeth Thompson to FD. ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 405–07L, FD Papers, DLC. Invites him to attend a lecture with her in Concord.

5/17/23 2:36 PM

Index

Page numbers in italics indicate detailed biographical sketches. Abbot, Francis E., 573 Abbott, Lyman, 318n Abell, Arunah S., 386n abolitionists: African Americans as, 4n, 38n, 102n, 261n, 405n; in Albany, N.Y., 206n, 313n; arrested in South, 440–41nn; in Baltimore, Md., 38n, 271n, 440n; Baptists as, 274n, 364, 364–66nn; bazaars of, 42n, 103n; in Boston, 12n, 53n, 92n, 183n; in Brooklyn, N.Y., 318n; in Canada, 38n, 190n, 431n, 500; oppose capital punishment, 382n; churches and, xxx, 12n, 82n, 164, 206nn, 355; churches criticized by, xxx, 38n, 164, 365n; in Cincinnati, Ohio, 17n, 27n, 111n, 173n; Civil War and, 29n, 50n; colonization opposed by, 38n, 54n; comeouterism and, 355n, 365n; Congregational Church and, 22n, 69n, 115n, 169n, 313n, 318nn, 365n, 379n, 439–40nn; conventions of, xxix, 89n, 132, 133n, 181n, 445n, 500n; critics of, 10; disunionism and, 53n; Douglass as, xxii–xxiii, xxix, 26, 42n, 64n, 74n, 89n, 367n, 378n, 406n, 512; in Dublin, Ire., 381; farmers as, 29n, 37n; Fifteenth Amendment endorsed by, 132. 133n, 315n; Fourteenth Amendment opposed by, 29n; in France, 46–47, 49n, 51n, 261n, 370n; free blacks as, xxx, 4n, 18n, 31n, 49n, 51n, 64n, 73n, 92–93nn, 97, 102n, 261n, 317n, 347n, 406–07nn, 462n, 484n, 500; free labor colonies of, 26; Freedmen’s Bureau and, 89n; freedmen’s rights and, xxii; Fugitive Slave Law (1850) opposed by, 37n, 440n, 500n, 506–07, 507n; fugitive slaves aided by, 82n; in Great Britain, xxiii, 4n, 8n, 13n, 36–38nn, 46–47n, 48, 49–51nn, 92n, 103n, 177n, 206n, 271n, 288, 365n, 369n, 407n, 470–71, 512, 547; in Halifax, Eng., 37n, 79, 193; in Illinois, 440–41n, 449; immigrants as, 26n; in Indiana, 88n, 99n; international conferences of, 47–48, 49n; in Ireland, 381–82, 381n, 383n, 538; in Kansas Territory, 37–38nn, 201n,

423n, 425–26n, 466; in Kentucky, 182n, 193n, 441n, 486n; labor unions and, 53n; lawyers as, 27n, 440n; leaders of, xxiii; Lincoln criticized by, 29n, 305n; in London, Eng., 8n, 103n, 369n; in Maine, 169n, 181n; manufacturers as, 38n, 368n; in Massachusetts, 9n, 12n, 29n, 38n, 53n, 323n, 378nn, 379n; memorials of, 438; Methodist Episcopal Church and, 235n, 441n; in Michigan, 99, 462n; ministers as, 82n, 93n, 115n, 169n, 317–19nn, 355, 355n, 364, 364–65nn, 382n, 439n, 441n; missionary societies and, 205, 206nn, 316, 486n; in Missouri, 441n; mobs attack, 87, 88n, 382n, 440–41nn, 500n; Native American rights and, 53n; in New Hampshire, 29n, 63n; in New York City, xxix, 9n, 22n, 89n, 92n, 103n, 133–34nn, 181n, 206n, 277n, 290n, 347n, 365n; in New York State, xxix, 22n, 82n, 89n, 92–93nn, 100, 102–03nn, 133–34nn, 181n, 206n, 235n, 268n, 277n, 290n, 317–18nn, 330n, 347n, 365n, 406n, 498n, 500n; newspapers of, 1, 18n, 29n, 36n, 38n, 80n, 91n, 93n, 103n, 133–34nn, 177, 365nn, 380, 382n, 426n; in Ohio, 27n, 67n, 99n, 380, 382nn, 441n, 486n; pacifism and, 53n, 82n, 102n, 133n, 382n; in Pennsylvania, 134n, 181n, 279n, 382n; petitions of, 441n; in Philadelphia, Pa., 181n, 362n, 405–07nn; in Pittsburgh, Pa., 63n, 426n; poems of, 232n, 237n, 295n, 379n, 381n; political actions of, xxiii, 365n; in Portland, Me., 51n, 169nn, 232n; Presbyterians as, 318–19n, 382n, 498n; professors as, 448n; Quakers as, 88n, 181n, 381n, 407n, 462n, 509n; Reconstruction and, 53n, 80n, 445–46n; Republican party and, xxix, 200n, 305n; in Rhode Island, xxiii, 509; in Rochester, N.Y., 28n, 30–31n, 36–37n, 63n, 74, 74n, 100, 102–03nn, 140n, 156n, 238n, 249n, 267n, 345n, 462n, 471n; seaman as, 439n; singers as, 31n, 288, 288n; slave revolts and, 430n; slave trade abolished by, 575

Y8204-Douglass.indb 575

5/17/23 2:36 PM

576 abolitionists (continued) 13n; slave escapes aided by, 63n, 82n, 282n, 439–40nn, 500n; in South, 201n; in Spain, 49n, 240; spiritualism and, 323n, 345nn; in Syracuse, N.Y., 82n, 102n, 318n, 500n; temperance movement and, 29n, 38n, 53n, 288n, 365n; in the Unitarian Church, 12n, 50n, 82n, 362n, 369n, 379n, 430n; U.S. Constitution and, 11, 13n, 38n, 53n, 223n, 275; violent tactics and, 37n, 63n, 73n, 424–28, 430–31nn; in Virginia, 26n, 316, 318n, 369n, 425n; women as, xxiii, 8n, 21–22n, 30n, 37n, 80n, 99n, 100, 102–03nn, 181n, 267n, 323, 362, 378n, 380–82nn, 405–06nn, 462n, 471nn, 502, 502n; women’s rights and, 21–22n, 29n, 53n, 382n; in Worcester, Mass., 323n. See also Garrisonians; Liberty party; Underground Railroad. Academy of Music, Brooklyn, N.Y., 141n Academy of Music, Philadelphia, Pa., 52–53, 221n, 235nn, 239n Accomack County, Va., 347n Actaeon, 372n Adams, Cornelia D, 560 Adams, Franklin G., 567 Adams, George, 395n Adams, Lydia Ann Stowe, 417, 418n Adams, Mary H., 323n Adams, Robert, 418n Addison, N.Y., 62, 64n, 69n “Address to Ministers and Pastors of All Christian Denominations throughout the United States, An,” 51n Adirondack Mountains, N.Y., 365n Adlington, Francis M., 556 Advance (New York City), 533, 535 Afghanistan, 566 Africa: agricultural products of, 315; colonization efforts in, 161n, 261n, 304n, 315; emigration to, 73n, 317n, 426n; European colonies in, 304n, 315, 326n, 487n, missionaries to, 93n, 115n, 206n, 318n; native tribes of, 300, 394n African Americans: as actors, 102n; as architects, 216n; as bakers, 41n; as Baptists, 415n, 487n; as barbers, 19n, 60n, 148n, 214, 216n, 240n, 492n; Black Codes oppress, 14n; as brick makers, 234; as chauffeur, 438n; churches of, 415n; civil rights of, 277n, 280n, 293n; as clerks, 43, 44n, 115n, 127,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 576

INDEX 128n, 138, 139n, 209, 248n, 332n, 526; in Colorado, 8n, 16–17, 18–19nn, 83, 84–85nn, 87n, 243n, 539; as Congregationalists, 216; in Connecticut, 260–61nn; as consuls, 128n, 331–32, 331–32nn, 353; conventions of, xxxi, 2n, 293n, 321n, 541; as Democrats, 320n; disenfranchisement of, 455n; Douglass as leader of, xxix; economic condition of, xxiii, xxv, 3n, 39; educational opportunities of, xxiii, 11; as entrepreneurs, 17n, 234; Exodus from South of, xxxiii–xxxiv, 61n, 465, 466–67n, 570; as farmers, 41n, 314n; Fifteenth Amendment celebrations by, 530; Freedmen’s Bureau and, 43, 44n, 66, 88–89, 104, 111n, 114, 128n, 426n, 516, 519, 521–22, 525; as gardeners, 109; as hack drivers, 39, 41n, 77n, 84n; as hoteliers, 45n; as house painters, 438n, 492n; imprisoned, 41n; in insurance industry, 407n; labor unions of, xxix, 4n; as lawyers, 43n, 102n, 401n; leaders of, xxiii-xxiv; as masons, 248n, 433; as merchants, 44n; as ministers, 316, 457n, 487n; missionaries to, 441n; mobs attack, xxxi, 120n, 288–89, 289n, 292, 293n, 298; newspapers of, 16n, 29n, 59n, 67n, 79–80nn, 97n, 119, 128n, 134n, 142n, 179n, 182n, 203n, 208n, 320–21, 321n, 330n, 353n, 463n, 487nn, 519, 530, 548; in Pennsylvania, 76n, 115n, 248n; as pharmacists, 46n; as physicians, 487n, 491–92nn; population of, 304n; as professors, 67n, 314n; racial discrimination against, xxv–xxvi, 5, 11, 39; as Republicans, 307n, 320–21n, 328n, 355n, 357, 358n, 401n, 490n, 506n; as restaurateurs, 2n, 277n, 346n, 363n; schools for, 209, 210n, 403n, 533; as sculptors, 67n; as seamstresses, 108; as sheriffs, 289n; as shoemakers, 315n; social clubs of, 333n; as socialists, 320n; in state legislatures, 485; suffrage of, 5, 7n, 20, 23, 24nn, 67n, 71n, 90, 133n, 513, 522; as tailors, 260n; as teachers, 43n, 79, 102n, 224n, 248n, 287n, 292, 314n, 426n, 478–79, 486, 487n; as U.S. ambassadors, 114, 116n, 127n, 129, 121, 130–31nn, 134–35, 135n, 137–38, 351n, 357, 401n, 527; as waiters, 56n African Civilization Society: black critics of, 1n; Theodore Bourne and, 316, 317n; Douglass opposes, 1n; Henry H. Garnet leads, 1n, 73n, 317nn African Colonization Society, 161n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX African Free School, New York City, 73n, 92–93n African Methodist Episcopal Church: bishops of, 161n; churches of, 161n, 480n; founding of, 166–67nn; in Kentucky, xxxiii, 353n; in Maryland, 480n; ministers of, 16n, 154nn, 167n; newspapers of, 15, 16n, 161n, 330n, 403n, 539; in Pennsylvania, 161n; periodicals on, 330n, 403n; schools of, 167n African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church: bishops of, 248n; ministers of, 102n, 248n, 333n, 472, 472n; in New York State, 102n, 248n, 498n; in Rochester, N.Y., 472n; Sunday schools of, 472n African Union Methodist Protestant Church, Elmira, N.Y., 498n Agitator (Chicago, Ill.), 437n Aiken, Frederick A. 399, 399n Akron, Ohio, 75–76nn, 214n Alabama: Democratic party in, 348n; mob violence in, 293n; Reconstruction in, 293n, 348n; Republican party in, 348n Alabama claims, 133n, 136–37, 137n, 187n, 484n Alaska, 2n Albany, N.Y., 226n, 305n: abolitionists in, 206n, 313n; Douglass speaks in, xxvii, 28, 29n; newspapers of, 440n; schools in, 40n Albany and Rochester Packet Line, 42n Albany Law School, Albany, N.Y., 182n Albany Patriot, 440n Albion, Me., 440n Alcorn University, Alcorn, Ala., 59n, 154n, 487n, 542, 544 Alcott, Bronson, 418n, 430n Alcott, Louisa May, 418n Alexander II (czar of Russia), 211n Alexander, John H., 277n Alexander Street Methodist Church, Rochester, N.Y., 341n Alexandria, Pa., 155n Alexandria, Va., 181n: government of, 210n; mob violence in, 11, 14–15n; newspapers in, 26, 27n Alexandrovich, Alexi (grand duke of Russia), 209, 211n Alida (ship), 103n Alleged Massacre of 1641, The (Webb), 383n Allen, Richard, 166n Allen, William, 49n Allen, William G., 306n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 577

577 Allen University, Columbia, S.C., 358n Alling, Joseph T., 472n Alling, William: Douglass writes, xiv, 472–73, 472n Alling, William S., 472n Allison, William B., 346, 347n Alpha (Washington, D.C.), 453, 454n Alton, Ill., 107n: Douglass speaks in, 78n; free blacks in, 7n; Elijah Lovejoy murdered in, 440–41nn Alvord, John W., 114, 115n Amadeo I (king of Spain), 241n American Abolition Society, 318n American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society: founding of, 73n, 93n, 206n; free blacks and, 73n, 93n; officers of, 73n, 206n, 313n, 318n, 365n American Anti-Slavery Society: agents of, 28n, 179n, 182n, 365n, 378n, 382n, 500n; conventions of, xxix, 89n, 132, 133n, 445n, 500n; disbanding of, 80n; Douglass and, xxix, 89n, 406n, 512; Fifteenth Amendment and, 132, 133n; founding of, 38n, 93n, 206n, 237n, 365n, 406n; free blacks and, 64n, 93n, 406–07nn, 500n; Garrison and, 38n, 80n; lecturers of, 64n, 379n, 382n; mobs attack, 500n; newspapers of, 29n, 67n, 79–80nn, 97n, 119, 133–34nn, 142n, 179n, 182n, 203n, 440n, 463n; officers of, 9n, 12n, 74n, 80n, 169n, 206n, 323n; pacifism and, 53n; Wendell Phillips leads, 9n, 53n, 80n; on Reconstruction, 445–46n; schism of, 38n; women in, 28n, 323n American Art Review (Boston), 443n, 570 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 436n American Baptist Anti-Slavery Convention, 365n American Baptist Free Mission Society, 364, 365–66n American Baptist Home Mission Society, 365n American Baptist Missionary Union, 365n American Bible Society, 206n, 356n American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 206n American Colonization Society: abolitionists oppose, 38n, 206n; free blacks oppose, 2n, 54n, 91n, 407n, 467n; Gerrit Smith and, 36n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

578 American Equal Rights Association: conventions of, 29n, 52, 54n, 141n, 180; dissolution of, 181n; Douglass addresses, xxvii–xxix, 29n; Douglass supports, 54n; Fourteenth Amendment opposed by, 29n; organization of, 9n, 29n American Free Produce Society, 181n American Freedmen’s Friend Society, 319n American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, 190n American Freedmen’s Union Commission, 49n American Historical Association, 194n American Home Missionary Society, 206n American House, Boston, Mass., 431n American Jubilee (New York City), 365n American Medical Association, 444n: racism in, 491n, 496n American Missionary (New York City), 317n American Missionary Association: abolitionists and, 205, 206nn, 316, 486n; blacks criticize, 206n, 316, 317n, 319n, 329; Congregational Church and, 206n, 311, 313n; Douglass supports, 319n, 329–30, 330n; free blacks support, 4n, 93n; freedmen’s aid work of, 4n, 49n, 206n; fundraising by, 317n, 329; Howard University and, 311, 316; sends missiona ries, 205, 318nn; officers of, 205n, 312, 313n, 318nn, 329, 330n; periodicals of, 330n, 533, 535; schools of, 206n, 311, 317–18nn, 329 American Missionary Magazine (New York City), 330n American Moral Reform Society, Philadelphia, Pa., 3n American Notes (Dickens), 215n American Purity Alliance, 179n American Revolution: abolitionists recall, 10–12; battles of, 396n; blacks fight in, 404, 407n; Continental Army, 378n, 380n, 481; Continental Congress in, 395n, 481n; debts from, 395n; Declaration of Independence and, 111n; France and, 279n; free black soldiers in, 63n, 216n; in Massachusetts, 294n, 395n; in Pennsylvania, 79n, 279n, 395n; principles of, 12, 298, 368; prisoners during, 404; protests lead to, 294n; in Virginia, 432n; George Washington in, 101n “American Scholar, The” (Emerson), 315n American Seaman’s Friend Society, 365n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 578

INDEX American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (Weld), 281–82, 282–83nn; Douglass praises, 545 American Social Science Association, xxxiv, 473–74nn, 474, 477n American Tract Society: abolitionists and, 115n; supporters of, 206n American Union of Associationists, 509n American Woman Suffrage Association, 182n: Douglass and, ix; Douglass writes, 180–83; founded, 180n; Lucy Stone leads, 180–81n Ames, Adelbert, 336, 338–39n; writes Douglass, 544 Ames, Blanche B., 339n Ames, Jesse, 338 Ames, Martha, 338n Amherst, Mass., 42n Amherst, N.H., 54n Amherst College, Amherst, Mass., 115nn, 439n Amistad case: 206n Amphion (ship), 407n Anacostia Street Railway, Washington, D.C., 570 Anderson, Martin B., 231n, 469n Anderson, Osborne P., xxxi, 537 Andersonville Prison, Ga., 52, 55n Andover Theological Seminary, 29n, 440nn Andrew, John A., 199–200n: Reconstruction policies of, 198, 200 animal rights, 49n Ann Arbor, Mich., 43n Annapolis, Md.: abolitionists in, 440n; state capitol in, 34n Anne Arundel County, Md., 416n Annual Exposition of the Colored People of North Carolina, Raleigh, N.C., xxxiv, 504n Anthony, Aaron: death of, 33n; as Douglass’s owner, 299, 471n; family of, 204n; slaves of, 33n, 204n Anthony, Andrew Skinner, 32, 33nn, 35n Anthony, Ann Wingate, 35n Anthony, Asa, 536 Anthony, Emmett, 242n Anthony, Harriet Lucretia, 35n, 469n Anthony, John Planner, 32, 33n, 35n, 68, 69n Anthony, Lucretia. See Auld, Lucretia Anthony Anthony, Richard Lee, 32 Anthony, Susan B., 28–29n: as abolitionist, 28n; in American Equal Rights Association, 28n; Beecher-Tilton affair gossiped by, 239n;

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Douglass and, xxiv; Douglass writes, 512; Fifteenth Amendment opposed by, 99, 99– 100n, 133n; Fourteenth Amendment opposed by, 28, 29n; National Woman Suffrage Association led by, 180, 182n; press attacks on, 525; as Rochester resident, 28, 249n, 505n; Gerrit Smith and, 250, 251n; works with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 9n, 28n; woman suffrage supporter, 28n, 419n; as teacher, 28n; voting attempted by, 140n, 251n; writes Douglass, vii, x, xxiv, 28–29, 232–33 anthrax, 496n Anti-Caste (Street, Eng.), 383n anti-Catholicism, 440n Antietam, Md., Battle of, 13n, 309n, 339n antiextensionism: Free Soil party endorses, 27n; Republicans support, 128n, 193n anti-imperialism, 305n, 328n Antisemitism, 409–10, 411n Anti-Slavery Bugle (Salem, Ohio), 134n, 380, 382n Anti-Slavery Conference, Paris, Fr., 46–48, 49n Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women (1837), 181n Anti-Slavery League, 51n Anti-Slavery Society of Canada, 500n Anti-State Church Association (Eng.), 273n Appalachian Mountains, 63n: John Brown and, 428n, 431n; poverty in, 2n, 37n Appeal (Walker), 63n “Appeal for Impartial Suffrage, An” (Douglass lecture), 32n Appeal to the People of England on the Recognition and Superintendence of Prostitution by Governments (Butler), 325n Arabian Peninsula, 395n Arapaho County, Colo., 18n Archer, Wyatt, 480n Argument on United States Citizenship, An (Hooker), 182n Arizona, 466n Arkansas, 320n: Reconstruction in, 339n; Republican party in, 537; Whig party in, 483n Arlington Cemetery, Alexandria, Va., xxx Arlington Street Unitarian Church, Boston, Mass., 82n Armitage, Evelyn M., 381n Armstrong, Samuel S., 568 Army of the James, 106n Army of Northern Virginia, 303n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 579

579 Army of the Potomac, 191n: officers of, 443n; second corps of, 443n Army of Tennessee (Union), 2n “Art of Using the Mind, The” (Tilton), 126n Artemis (goddess), 372n Arthur, Chester, 205n, 334n: appointments by, 264n, 487n, 492n; in Election of 1880, 499n; as Stalwart, 499n Arthur Bonicastle (Holland), 77n Ashland, Ohio, 347n Ashtabula, Ohio, 423n Asiatic cholera, 496n “Assassination and Its Lesson, The” (Douglass lecture), 4n, 41n Assing, Assur David, 63n Assing, Ludmilla, 63n, 410, 412n, 443: marriage of, 450, 451n, 544 Assing, Ottilie, 63n: as atheist, 95n; befriends Douglass’s children, 63n, 158n, 521; as correspondent, 63n; as Douglass’s houseguest, 322; Douglass writes, 327, 409, 412, 441, 544; Lewis H. Douglass and, 85n; European travels of, 327, 550–51; friends of, 93–94, 94n, 158–59nn, 412–13, 540; intimacy with Douglass, xxvi, 63n, 323n, 443, 449, 551; as journalist, 448, 449n; as landlord, 450, 456, 566; religious views of, 411–12n; resides in New Jersey, 157–59n, 262, 447, 567; suicide of, 63n; travels with Douglass, xxxii, 62, 63n; visits Douglass’s home, 220, 531, 541; writes Douglass, ix, xi–xiii, xxii, 93, 94n, 157–59, 261–63, 327–29, 409–12, 441–60, 531, 550, 552, 565–67; writes introduction for My Bondage and My Freedom, 63n Assing, Rosa Maria Antoinette Pauline, 63n Association for the Advancement of Women, 183n Assumption Parish, La., 376n atheism, 95n Athenaeum, Dubuque, Iowa, 105n Athenaeum Course, Rochester, N.Y., 345n Athenaeum Hall, Marietta, Ohio, 41n Athol, N.Y., 364n Atkinson, William A., 45n Atlanta, Ga., 360n: Civil War and, 244n, 385n; slaves in, 401n Atlantic Monthly (Boston, Mass.), 24, 25n, 237n, 315n, 514 Auburn, Me., 360n Auburn, N.Y., 28, 30n, 98n, 570

5/17/23 2:36 PM

580 Auburn Theological Seminary, Auburn, N.Y., 439n Augusta, Alexander, 490, 491–92n Auld, Hugh, Jr.: Douglass resides with, 58n; manumits Douglass, 285n; as ship carpenter, 16n Auld, Hugh, Sr., 204n Auld, John Murray, 255, 255n Auld, Lucretia Anthony, 204n, 416n Auld, Rowena Hambleton, 408n Auld, Thomas, 204n: as captain, 58n; children of, 408n, 416n; death of, xxxiii; as Douglass’s owner, xxxiii, 58n, 203, 299; Douglass visits, xxxiii, 204n, 411n, 471n; family of, 204n; health of, 408n; resides in St. Michaels, xxxiii, 58n, 204n, 408n, 411n; slaves of, 58n, 204n Auld, Zipporah, 204n Austin, Tex., 176n Austro-Hungarian Empire: revolutions in, 448n Autobiography of a Female Slave (Griffith), 182n Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro (Ward), 500n Autographs for Freedom: articles in, 508n; Julia Griffiths edits, 508n Avery College, Pittsburgh, Pa., 73n, 563 Azua, Dominican Republic, 190n Babcock, Orville, 183n, 190, 191n, 538, 541 Bacon, J. Knight, 481n Bacon, R. A., 525 Bacon, Reuben, 525 Báez, Buenaventura, 183n, 190n, 191n, 332n Bahamas Islands, 333n, 439n Bailey, Arianna, 33–35nn Bailey, Betsey, 25n, 32, 33n Bailey, Eliza, 34n, 204n Bailey, Gamaliel, 120, 120n, 386n: Douglass criticizes, 121n Bailey, Harriet (Douglass’s mother), 32, 33nn, 204n, 471n Bailey, Isaac, 32 Bailey, Kitty, 33–35nn Bailey, Perry. See Downs, Perry Bailey, Sarah, 34n Baker, Mary, 545–46 Ballitore, Ire., 383 Ballston, Me., 472n Balsey, A. H.: Douglass writes, ix, 121–25

Y8204-Douglass.indb 580

INDEX Baltimore, Garnet Douglass, 216n Baltimore, George, 530 Baltimore, Peter, 216n Baltimore, Md.: abolitionists in, 38n, 271n, 440n; African Americans in, xxix, 148n, 386n; churches of, 49n, 82n, 154n, 531, 559; criminals in, 371n; Democratic party in, 386n; Douglass resides in, 15, 16n, 26, 58n, 239n, 471n; Douglass speaks in, xxix, xxxiii, 49n, 201n, 385, 386n, 387–90, 390n, 392–96, 473n, 477n, 532; free blacks in, 16n, 42n; labor unions in, xxix; merchants in, 16n, 416n; newspapers in, 18n, 38n, 144–46, 385–86, 386–87nn; political conventions in, 218n; racism in, 15, 16n; schools in, 478–79, 479–80nn; ship building in, 15, 16n; slave escapes from, 440n, 471n; slaves in, 16n, 42; Unitarians in, 80, 82n Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser, 144, 145–46n, 385, 386n Baltimore clipper ships, 16n Baltimore Daily Exchange, 387n Baltimore Gazette, 385n Baltimore National Leader, 18n Baltimore Sun, 385, 386–87n Bancroft, George, 192, 199 Bangalore, India, 50n Bangor, Me.: Douglass speaks in, 236, 237n, 336n Bangor Daily Whig & Courier, 335n Bank of England, 269, 272nn Bank of the United States, 391n Banks, George Linnaeus, 20n Banks, Nathaniel Prentiss, 284n, 574 Baptist Church: abolitionists in, 274n, 364, 364–66n; in Connecticut, 365n; free blacks, 4n, 58; in Illinois, 364n; in Indiana, 88n; in Iowa, 364n; in Kentucky, 356n; in Massachusetts, 364–65nn; in Michigan, 365n; ministers of, 284n, 356n, 364–66nn; missionaries of, 365–66nn; in New York State, 364–65nn; newspapers of, 469n; in Ohio, 40n, 364–65nn; in Rhode Island, 364n; slaveholders as members, 365n; in Washington, D.C., 85n, 365n, 391n, 415n, 543; in Wisconsin, 364n Barbadoes, Frederick G., 546 Barbados, 358n Barber, Alexander E., 223, 227n Barksdale, Ethelbert, 492n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Barnum Hotel, St. Louis, 216n Barrier, Frances, 565 Barry’s Farm, Washington, D.C., 210–11nn Bart Ridgeley: A Story of Northern Ohio (Riddle), 568 Barton, Clara: Douglass writes, 525; writes Douglass, viii, 105–07 Barwick, White, 33n, 35 Baseball, 229n, 517, 528 Bassett, Ebenezer Don Carlos, 115–16nn: Douglass writes, 526, 532; as U.S. ambassador to Haiti, 114, 127n, 129, 130–31nn, 134–35, 135n, 527; writes Douglass, 527 Bassett, George A., 552 Batavia, N.Y., 345n, 506n Batavia, Ohio, 312n Baton Rouge, La., 229n Baton Rouge Courier, 229n Baton Rouge Grand Era, 229n Battle Creek, Mich., 103n, 462n Bauer, Seraphine, 121–23, 123n Bavaria, Ger., 411n Bay Path (Holland), 77n Bayard, James A., 303n Bayard, Thomas F., 299, 303n Bayon, Jerome, 229n Beaufort, S.C., 404, 496n Beaver County, Pa., 362n Beaver River, 362n Beckley, R. D., 542 Bedford, N.H., 334n Beecher, Catherine, 182n Beecher, Harriet Porter, 182n Beecher, Henry Ward, 411n: affair with Elizabeth Tilton, 239n; in Brooklyn, N.Y., 318n; New York Independent edited by, 69n; Theodore Tilton’s charges against, 22n, 69–70n, 182n, 188n, 545; as women’s rights supporter, 54n Beecher, Lyman, 182n, 313n Beecher family, 182n Behind the Scenes; Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (Keckley), 71n Beiblatt zur Zeitschrift fur Bilende Kunst, 449n Belchertown, Mass., 77n Belfast, Ire., 552 Belfast, N.Y., 500n Belgium, 487n Belknap, William, 296n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 581

581 Bell, John, 146n Bell, Philip A., 91n: Douglass praises, 90; Douglass writes, viii, 89–93 Belleville, Ill., 385n Belle Isle Prison, Richmond, Va., 52, 55n Bellevue Hospital, New York City, 539 Beloit, Wisc., 423n Benezet, Anthony, 407n Bengal, India, 49n Benson, George W., 103n Benson, S. H., 549 Berea, Ky., 193n, 484–85 Berea College, Berea, Ky., 486nn, 542 Berkeley County, W.V., 60n Berks County, Pa., 95n Berkshire Medical College, Springfield, Mass., 77n Berlin, Ger., 158n, 178, 385n Berlin, Ohio, 382n Bermuda Hundreds, Va., 106n Berwick-on-Tweed, Eng., 201n Besançon, Fr., 475n Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, Pa., 161n, 164–65, 166–67nn Bethel A.M.E. Church, Baltimore, Md., 480n Bethel Baptist Church, Washington, D.C., 391n Bethel Free Church, Rochester, N.Y., 471n Bethesda Congregational Church, New York City, 317n Bible: Abraham, 395n; David, 170; Deuteronomy, 13n; Ephesians, 165, 167n; Galatians, 165, 167n; Genesis, 9n; Great Flood in, 9n; Hagar, 395n; Herod, 170; Ishmael, 395n; Jesus Christ, 170; Jude in, 166n; Luke, 7n, 369n; Mark, 7n; Matthew, 7n; Moses in, 65, 171n, 375; Nehemiah, 339n; Paul, 48, 50n; Pharoah, 170, 375; Ram’s Horn in, 164; Satan, 170; shofar in, 167n Bicknell, Dana A., 448n Bicknell, Martha L., 448n Biddeford, Me., 288n, 335n Big Rapids, Mich., 237n Billings, Edward C. 224, 228n Billings, Liberty, 148n Binghamton, N.Y., 248n Birchard Hall, Fremont, Ohio, 120n Birney, James G., 27n, 120n, 369n Bixby, W. K., 569 Black, Chauncey F., 60n Black, Jeremiah, 60n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

582 Black Laws (Codes), 7n, 14n, 23n, 215–16n, 466n Blackall, Burton F., 505n: as Douglass’s property manager, 504–06, 557, 560–61, 563–65, 569, 572, 574; writes Douglass, xiv, xii, 504–06, 557, 559–61, 563–65 Blackall, Gertrude, 505n Blackall, Sarah Coleman, 505n: Blackwell, Henry, 415n, 534 Blackwell, Samuel C., 550 Blaine, James G., 334–35, 334–35n, 375, 401n Blair, Francis P., 97n Blair, Jean “Jennie,” 495 Blake (Delany), 426n Bloncourt, Melvil, 536 Bloomer, Amelia, 28n Bloomfield Academy, Bloomfield, N.J., 318n Blue Ridge Mountains, 63n Blue Ridge Railroad, 406n Blyden, Edward, 573 Blydenbury, Charles, 530 Boardman, Julia M., 481n: Douglass writes, 480n; writes Douglass, xiv, 480–82, 571 Bolivar County, Mass., 402n Bolton, Mass., 156n Boman, Elias, 548 Book and Slavery Irreconcilable by a Citizen of Virginia, The (Bourne), 318–19n Boone County, Mo., 487n Booth, Edwin T., 157, 159n Booth, John Wilkes, 122–23, 125n, 159 Booth, Junius Brutus, 159n Borden, Lizzie, 494n Border States: abolitionists in, 38n, 182n, 271n, 316, 440–41nn; African Americans in, xxix, xxxiii, 148n, 352–53, 353n, 358n, 386n; Civil War in, 33n, 71n, 146n, 227n, 244n, 356n, 485, 486n; Democratic party in, 155–56nn, 186n, 244n, 303n, 386n, 484n; emancipation in, 13n; free blacks in, xxvi, 16n, 18–19nn, 33–34nn, 42n, 78n, 92n, 161n, 204n, 248n, 353n, 432n, 480n, 491n; Liberal Republicans in, 198n; immigrants in, 18n; racism in, 15, 16n; Reconstruction in, 193n, 358n; Republican party in, 142n, 146n, 149n, 155n, 225n, 353n, 356n, 386n, 453n; segregation laws in, 486n; slaveholders in, xxxiii, 16n, 32, 33–35nn, 42n, 58n, 69n, 71n, 78n, 182n, 193n, 203, 204nn, 299, 416n, 471n; slavery in, 32, 33–35nn, 41n, 57, 73n, 78n, 98n, 161n, 193n,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 582

INDEX 204n, 227n, 284, 285n, 471n, 486; slaves in, xxxiii, 14n, 16n, 19n, 32, 33–35nn, 42n, 58n, 69–70nn, 78n, 182n, 193n, 203, 204nn, 228n, 299, 416n, 441n, 471n; Underground Railroad in, 18n, 98n, 353, 441n; Unionists from, 386n; Whig party in, 155n, 193n, 386n, 440n Bosbyshell, Mary A., 568 Boston, Mass., 88n, 343, 351n, 385–86nn, 436n, 478n, 494n: abolitionists in, 12n, 92n, 183n; African Americans in, 492n; American Revolution and, 294n, 393, 395n; Baptists in, 487n; churches of, 4n, 12, 82n, 487n; Civil War and, 212n; climate of, 328n; Congregationalists in, 115n; Douglass in, xxvii–xxviii, 201n, 262; free blacks in, 4n, 30n, 212n, 246n, 359n; Free Soil party in, 116n, 190, 199nn; fugitive slaves in, 12n, 92n; German Americans in, 94n; lawyers in, 116n, 182n, 199n; manufacturing in, 53n, 94, 373n; merchants in, 12n, 206n, 372–73nn; newspapers and magazines of, 24, 25n, 38n, 82n, 133n, 142n, 190n, 231n, 237n, 315n, 443n, 458n, 514, 570; physicians in, 492n; publishers in, 25n, 94; Quakers in, 20n; Republican party in, 142n, 199–200n, 337n; schools of, 30n, 142n, 246n; as seaport, 194n; Underground Railroad in, 12n; Unitarians in, 50, 82nn, 315n; woman suffrage movement in, xxviii, 52, 512 Boston American Manufacturer, 237n Boston Christian Recorder, 82n, 539 Boston Christian Soldier, 133n Boston Commonwealth, 142n, 190n, 430n, 560 Boston Crystal Glass Works, 373n Boston Daily Journal, 142n Boston Equal Rights Convention, 512 Boston Folio, 231n Boston Herald, 498n Boston Lyceum Bureau, 52, 237n Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 94–95nn Boston University, 246n, 487n Boston Vigilance Committee, 12n, 430n Bourbon dynasty, 241n Bourne, George, 316, 318–19n Bourne, Theodore: writes Douglass, xii, 315–19 Boutwell, George S., 128, 301, 548 Bowdoin College, 2n, 199n, 205n, 226n, 232n Bowen, Betsy, 418 Bowen, Henry C., 188n, 277n Bowen, Sayles J., 521, 569

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Bower, S. Fr. See Bauer, Seraphine Bowling Green, Ky., 19n Boyer, Jean-Pierre, 467n Boyle, Anna, 398–99, 399n Boynton, Charles B., 86n, 173n Boynton, Henry V., 173n Bradburn, George, 88n Bradford, Sarah Hopkins, 98n Brady, J. H., 73n Brady, William, 72, 73n Bragg, William H. 304n Brattleboro, Vt., 413n, 436n Brattleboro Hydropathic Establishment, Brattleboro, Vt., 413n Brazil: slavery in, 49n, 516; U.S. relations with, 124n, 130–31, 131nn, 139 Brazos County, Tex., 33n Breck, William: writes Douglass, xii, 336–39, 337n Bremen, Ger., 158n, 455n Breslau, Ger., 95n Bridgeport, Conn., 281, 281n Bridgetown, Barbados, 358n Bridgewater, Eng., 49–50nn, 81n, 327n Bridport, Eng., 47, 272n Bridport (Eng.) News, 272n Bright, John, 273n Bristol, Eng., 46–48, 49–50nn: abolitionists in, 79; schools in, 325, 435n; Unitarians in, 325n Bristol, Me., 102n, 471n Bristol College, Bristol, Eng., 50n, 271n Bristol County, Mass., 509n Bristol Grammar School, Bristol, Eng., 325 British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 49n: Douglass and, 367n British Medical Journal (London, Eng.), 443n Brittany, Fr., 268n Broken Hill Proprietary Mine, 95n Brooke, Samuel, 382n Brookline, Mass., 128n, 372n Brooklyn, Conn., 362n Brooklyn, N.Y., 342, 498n: abolitionists in, 318n; churches of, 69n, 318n, 514; Douglass speaks in, 36n, 238; free blacks in, 240n, 246n, 319n; newspapers in, 344n; schools in, 69n, 141n, 240n Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 344n Brooklyn Theatre, 343–44n Brooklyn’s Woman Club, 181n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 583

583 Brooks, Noah, 71n Broquet, Edmond, 449n Brouse, Charles W., 88n writes to Douglass, viii, 87–88 Brown, George T., 105, 106n Brown, Henry K., 231n Brown, John, Jr., xiii, 422, 423n: in Kansas Territory, 37n, 423n; Gerrit Smith and, 423n, 425, 430–31nn, 563; writes Douglass, 425n, 563 Brown, John, Sr., 37n: admirers of, 200, 315n, 369n; biographies of, 201n, 423n, 424, 427–29, 430–31nn, 547, 565; in Boston, 431n; in Canada, 457–58, 458n; children of, 243n; Douglass eulogizes, xxxi, 98, 141–42, 256n, 260, 261n, 438, 448, 548, 557; Douglass recruits for, 63n; Douglass supports, 62; Douglass visited by, 430–32nn, 457, 458n; Douglass visits, 420, 422, 422n, 425, 428, 457; Ralph Waldo Emerson eulogizes, 369, 431n; execution of, 368, 379n, 425, 427n; family of, 37n; followers of, 457, 458n; free blacks’ support for, 7n, 18n, 63n, 319n, 424–25, 426–27n; William Lloyd Garrison and, 36, 369n; Harpers Ferry Raid and, 37n, 62, 63nn, 77n, 248n, 315n, 319n, 379n, 420–21, 421–22nn, 424–25, 428n, 430n, 432–33n, 486n, 563; in hiding, 379n; in jail, 379n; in Kansas Territory, 37n, 190n, 201n, 423n, 424, 425n, 457–58, 466n; memorialization of, 222n; Wendell Phillips eulogizes, 369n, 431n; Republicans and, 432n; Secret Six support, 36, 36–38n, 190n, 368, 369n, 421n, 428, 430–31nn; slaves freed by, 18n, 421, 424–25, 428n; Gerrit Smith and, 36–37, 60, 62, 63n, 291n, 379n, 420–21, 421–22n, 424–28, 430nn; songs about, 381n, 505, 506n; violent tactics advocated by, 63n, 421n, 424–25, 430n; statues of, 369n; Henry David Thoreau eulogizes, 431n; trial of, 37n; Henry A. Wise and, 121 Brown, Marshal, 210n Brown, Mary Anne Day, 431n Brown, Mary Hodges, 420n Brown, Roland Greene, 419n Brown, S. K., 230n Brown, Salmon, 431n Brown, Sarah J., 323n Brown, Solomon G., 209n Brown, William, 552–53

5/17/23 2:36 PM

584 Brown, William G.: Douglass meets, 225n; writes Douglass, x, 223–30 Brown, William Wells, 287n: as abolitionist, 90; in Great Britain, 92n Brown University, Providence, R.I., 190n Brown’s Marble Hotel, Washington, D.C., 1n Browne, Albert Gallatin, 182n Browne, Charles, 82n Browne, Lucy, 46, 49n, 82n Browne, Mattie Griffith, 180, 182n Browne, William, 49n Brownsville, Tex., 176n Bruce, Blanche K., 402n, 489, 493n: Douglass writes, 547; elected to U.S. Senate, 490; Freedman’s Bank and, 484n, 496n; writes Douglass, xxiv, 565; writes Rutherford B. Hayes, 491n Bruckberg, Ger., 411n Bruff, Beverly, 408n Bruff, Louisa, 408n: writes Douglass, xiii, 408 Bruff, Sarah Louisa Auld, 408n Bruff, William H., 408n Brunswick, Me., 469n Buchanan, James, 185, 191, 193n: appointments by, 56n, 285n, 336, 338nn; Dred Scott decision and, 14n; Fort Sumter crisis and, 309n; political allies of, 166n; responds to Harpers Ferry Raid, 124n Buckingham, William A., 309n Bucks County, Pa., 45n Budapest, Hung., 456–57n Buffalo, N.Y.: African Americans in, 462n; businesses in, 42n; churches in, 4n; Douglass visits, 74, 344; free blacks in, 4n, 73n, 347n; German Americans in 452n; newspapers in, 141; Republicans in, 141n Buffalo Express, 141n Bull Run, Va., First Battle of, 2n, 338n Bullard, Edward F., 529 Bullard, Enoch, 181n Bullard, Laura Curtis, 180, 181n Bunker Hill, Boston, Mass., 393, 395n Burch, Charles, 228n Burch, James H., 224, 228–29n Burchard Hall, Fremont, Ohio, 123n Burgundy, 125n Burkhalter, John H., 556 Burleigh, Charles C., 554 Burlingame-Seward Treaty, 168n Burlington, Iowa, 237n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 584

INDEX Burlington, Vt., 2n Burns, Robert: poetry of, 225n, 236n, 294n Burnside, James, 528 Burr, James E. 438, 441n Burritt, Elihu, 315n, Burton, Allan A., 187n Burwell, Armistead, 70n Bush, Charles P., 114n Bush, George W., 399n Bush Hall, Penn Yan, N.Y., 64n Bushman (San), 300, 304n Busti, N.Y., 76n Butler, Benjamin, 106n, 192: Civil Rights Act (1875) and, 302n; in Civil War, 121, 124n; as commander in Louisiana, 124; in Congress, 105; “contraband” termed by, 13n; as Democrat, 444; Wendell Phillips supports, 374n, 445, 446n; as Radical Republican, 230n, 444 Butler, George, 326n Butler, John Kennedy, 454n Butler, Josephine, 324, 326n Butler, Lillian Pitts, 454n Butler, Matthew C., 358, 360–61n Butler, Pierce Mason, 360n Butler, William, 360n Butler Heights, Washington, D.C., 454n Bryant, James, 530 Bryant, William Cullen, 295n, 397n Byrne, Terrance, 342n Cabral, José Maria, 332–33n Cade, A., 530 Caicos Islands, 333n Cairo, Ill., 216n Caldwell, Charles, 411n, 492n Caldwell, Ohio, 550 Calhoun, John Caldwell, 432n California: annexation of, 194n; Chinese immigrants in, 168n; Democratic party in, 168n; free blacks in, 19n, 89–91, 91n, 363n; gold rush to, 19n, 91n, 363n; newspapers of, 89–90, 91n, 278n; nickname of, 91n; racism in, 91n; Republican party in, 91n, 131n, 535 Cambridge, Mass., 102n, 153n, 267–68nn, 481 Cambridge University, 77n Cambridgeport, Mass., 82n Cambridgeshire, Eng., 367n Cameron, Simon, 166n, 346, 348n Cameron Parish, La., 226n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Camp Speight, Millican, Tex., 33n Campbell, Anthony, 161n Campbell, Catherine, 161n Campbell, Jabez Pitt, 160, 161–62n, 171n Campbell, Mary Ann, 161n Campbell, William B, 562 Canaan, Conn., 73n Canaan Baptist Church, 415n Canada: abolitionists in, 38n, 190n, 431n; John Brown in, 457–58, 458n; Confederates in, 432n; emigration to, 3n, 467n; free blacks in, 3n, 18n, 19n, 407n, 424, 425–27nn, 429, 431–32nn, 457, 458n, 496n; fugitive slaves in, 82n, 92n, 102, 102n, 470, 500nn; Methodists in, 103n; newspapers in, 18n, 500n; as refuge to Secret Six, 430n; U.S. relations with, 111n Canajoharie, N.Y., 28n Canastota, N.Y., 203n Canfield, Ohio, 382n Canonsburg, Pa., 406n Canton, Miss., 336, 337nn Cape Cod, Mass., 439n capital punishment: abolitionists and, 382n; opposition to, 54n, 382n Cappahosic, Va., 314n Caribbean Sea, 333n Carpenter, Joseph Estlin, 48, 50n Carpenter, Lant, 49–50nn. 271n, 325n Carpenter, Mary, 47, 49–50n, 270, 272n, 325; death of 560–61 Carpenter, Mary Browne, 49n: as abolitionist, 49n; Douglass writes, xxiii, 324, 325n; Julia Griffiths Crofts and, 549, 555; Rosine Amé Droz and, 523, 547–48, 555, 560, 569; prostitution reforms and, 548; as woman suffrage advocate, 49n; writes to Douglass, vii, xxii– xxiii, 46–51, 271, 512–13, 519–20, 535, 538, 547–48, 558, 561–62, 567–70, 572–73 Carpenter, Minnie M., 271–72n Carpenter, Phillip, 272–73n, 558 Carpenter, Phillip P., 269, 271–73nn, 519, 568–70 Carpenter, Russell Lant, 50n: as abolitionist, 48–49, 50n; as Douglass’s friend, xxiii, 50n, 269, 514, 520; Douglass writes, 268, 543–44; family of, 49n, 272n; health of, 47, 561; marries, 49n; as minister, 47–48, 269; visits U.S., 79, 81n, 32, 326–27n5; writes to Douglass, viii, xi–xii, xxiii, 79–80, 268–73, 324–27, 533–34, 540, 555, 558, 568, 570; writes biog-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 585

585 raphy of brother, 568–70, 572–73; writes for Inquirer, 324–25, 544 Carpenter, William Benjamin, 50n Carpenter, William Lant, 567–68 Carpenter & Worthing, London, Eng, 270, 272n Carpetbaggers: critics of, 316, 319n, 328n; in Louisiana, 4n, 229n; in Mississippi, 59, 336–37, 402n, 493n; in South Carolina, 359n, 406n; in Texas, 174; in Virginia, 27n; in Washington, D.C., 393 Carroll, Charles, 204n Carroll, John P., 360n Carroll County, Md., 178, 179n Carrollton, Tex., 174n Carter, George W., 223, 226n, 229n Carthage, Ill., 237n Casey, Emma Dent, 225n Casey, James F, 223, 225n, 228n Casey, Samuel L., 225n Cass, Lewis, 338n Castle Pinckney, Charleston, S.C., 309n Castro, Anna de, 449n Catacazy, Konstantin, 187n Cathcart, Robert, 558 Cattaraugus County, N.Y., 454n Cayuga County, N.Y., 462n Cazenovia, N.Y., 242n Cedar Hill, Washington, D.C., xxxiii, 33n, 43n, 419n, 428, 454n, 460n: Helen Pitts Douglass preserves, 222n, 395n Centennial celebrations, 369n Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia, Pa., xxxii, 321n, 328n, 387; Douglass attends, 391n, 392, 546 Centerville, Ind., 112n, 215n Central Methodist Episcopal Church, Newark, N.J., 71n Central Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, Pa., 167n Chamberlain, Daniel H., 272n, 357–58, 364, 375 Chambersburg, Pa., 62, 63nn: John Brown and, 420, 422, 422n, 425; free blacks in, 426n Champ de Mars, Paris, Fr., 50n Champaign, Ill., 210n, 214n Champney, J. Wells, 326n Chancellorsville, Va., Battle of, 2n, 309n, 328n Chandler, Charles P., 226n Chandler, William E., 537

5/17/23 2:36 PM

586 Chandler, Zachariah: Douglass writes, xii, 335–36; writes Douglass, xii, 334–35 Channing, William Ellery, 430n Channing, William Henry, 421n Chaplin, William L., 438, 440n Chapman, Maria Weston, 80n Charles V (Holy Roman emperor), 125n Charles X (king of France), 476n Charleston, S.C.: in Civil War, 243n, 309–10n; Douglass visits, 187nn; schools in, 156n, 405; slaveholders in, 406n Charleston South Carolina Leader, 359n Charlotte, N.C., 4n Chase, Salmon P., 27n, 41n, 112n: as chief justice, 4n, 84, 86n; in Congress, 440n; Democratic party nomination sought by, 96, 97n; Douglass criticizes, 97n, 522; Douglass recommended by, 1, 25; as Free Soiler, 440n; impeachment of Johnson and, 84, 85–86nn; opposes Kansas-Nebraska Act, 27n; rival with Lincoln for presidency, 27n, 305n; Republicans criticize, 84, 86n; Gerrit Smith praises 96, 97n, 219, 520; as secretary of treasury, 27n Chase, William E., 565 Chatham, Ont., 243n: convention at, 424, 425–27nn, 429, 431–32nn, 457, 458n; free blacks in, 426–27nn, 431n, 496n Chatsworth, Ill., 364, 364n Chattanooga, Ga., Battle of, 328n Chautauqua County, N.Y., 87n Cheever, George Barrell, 22n, 514 Chelsea Woman Suffrage Club, 548 Cheltenham, Eng., 326n Chemung County, N.Y., 498n Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company, Baltimore, Md., 16n Chestertown, Md., 156n Cheyenne, Wyo., 20n, 77n, 84n, 85, 87n Chicago, Ill., 417, 419n, 552: African Americans in, 403n, 407n; conventions in, 490, 491n; Douglass lectures in, 18n, 44n, 76n, 154n, 201n, 205, 214n, 345n; Douglass visits, 35, 63n, 75, 153, 211n; exhibitions in, 71n; free blacks in, xxvi, 7n, 18n, 243n; Great Fire in, 7n; hotels in, 211n; immigrants in, 102n; lawyers of, 259n, 403n; merchants of, 242n; newspapers of, 35–36, 37n, 61, 63n, 154n, 243n, 396, 397–98nn, 423nn, 437n, 535; Republicans in, 398n; schools in, 243n, 498n;

Y8204-Douglass.indb 586

INDEX suburbs of, 291n; Underground Railroad in, 18n Chicago Art Institute, 491n Chicago Daily News, 398n Chicago Evening Journal, 396, 398n, 423n Chicago Historical Society, 259n Chicago Inter-Ocean, 396, 397n Chicago Normal School, 498n Chicago Post & Mail, 396, 398n Chicago Republican, 397n Chicago Tribune, 243n, 423n, 535: reports on Douglass, 154n; Freedmen’s Bureau criticized by, 545; Gerrit Smith sues, xxviii, 35–36, 37n, 61, 63n, 423n Chickamauga, Battle of, 244n Chicopee, Mass., 73n Chief Joseph, 2n Child, Lydia Maria, 80n child labor, 81n Chile, 131n Chillicothe, Ohio, 248n China: immigrants from, 167, 168–69n, 228n, 394, 465; nicknames for, 394, 395n; U.S. relations with, 237n, 336, Chipman, Nathaniel, 536 Chiriqui Province, Panama, 467–68n Christ College, Cambridge University, 77n Christian (Todd) County, Ky., 54n Christian Recorder (Philadelphia, Pa.), 15, 16n, 330n, 403n, 539 Christian Sanitary Commission, 115n Christie, A. H., 538 Christine, or, Woman’s Trials and Triumphs (Bullard), 181n Church of England: Dissenters and, 270, 273n; ministers of, 326n Church of the Puritans, New York City, 54n churches: abolitionists and, 172; abolitionists criticize, 171–72; African Americans and, 164–66; proslaveryism of, 165, 171–72. See also individual denominations Cincinnati, Ohio, 155n, 411n: abolitionists in, 17n, 111n, 173n; African Americans in, 320, 320–21nn, 487nn; Baptists in, 365n, 487nn; churches in, 173n, 365n, 369n, 487n; conventions in, xxxii, 320, 321n, 323n, 328n, 335n, 549; Douglass speaks in, 105n, 111n, 323n, 328n, 335n, 537; Douglass visits, xxxii, 41n, 549; free blacks in, 320n, 382n; free soilers in, 320n; fugitive slaves in, 17n; lawyers

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX in, 17n, 487n, 507n; lyceum speakers visit, 51, newspapers in, 120n, 173n, 292n, 320n, 396, 398n; physicians in, 120n; Republicans in, 323n, 335n, 549; schools of, 182n, 320n, 382n, 396, 398n, 487n; socialists in, 321n Cincinnati Anti-Slavery Convention (1852), 112n Cincinnati Commercial, 292n Cincinnati Gazette, 173n, 396, 398n Cincinnati Law School, Cincinnati, Ohio, 487n Cincinnati Normal School, Cincinnati, Ohio, 487n City Point, Va., 212n Civic Protective Association, Kansas City., Mo., 222n Civil Rights Act (1866), 10, 14n, 215n, 305n Civil Rights Act (1875): African Americans endorse, 212n, 293n; Democrats resist, 264n, 273, 277n, 299, 302n, 304n, 472n; Douglass endorses, 211n, 213, 264, 293n, 297–302, 544; Grant endorses, 295n; enforcement of, 472–73n; passage of, xxxii, 273–75, 302n; Radical Republicans and, 142n, 213, 215n, 264, 264–65n, 277n, 302n, 544; suits filed under, 426n; Charles Sumner and, 116n, 211n, 215n, 264n, 277n, 302n, 304n civil rights movement, xxiv, 67n, 283, 285 civil service reform: operation of, 400, 402n, 499n, 554; opponents of, 305n; proponents of, 328n Civil War, xxii, 4n, 368: abolitionists and, 21n, 37–38nn; battles of, 2n, 13n, 131n, 244n, 309n, 328n, 338–39n, 484–85; black soldiers in, 6n, 8n, 11, 18n, 28n, 38n, 46n, 59n, 64n, 67n, 102n, 131n, 148n, 152n, 210, 212n, 225n, 289, 301, 348n, 357, 404, 407n; Border States in, 131n, 386–87n; Boston and, 212n; conscription in, 96n; Democratic party and, 96n; Douglass recruits soldiers for, 38n, 154n, 369n; emancipation and, 195n, 348n; in Florida, 2n; in Georgia, 81n, 303n, 385n; German Americans in, 328n, 385n; Great Britain and, 37n, 50n, 133n, 136–37, 137n, 187n, 391n; in Illinois, 18n, 259n; illustrations of, 95n; in Kentucky, 244n, 356n, 485, 486n; in Louisiana, 19, 124, 224–25n, 228, 376n; in Maryland, 33n, 142n; medals awarded in, 88n; in Mississippi, 54n, 339n, 385n; in Missouri, 227n; in New Orleans, 121, 124n, 224n; political generals in, 106n; New York State and, 41n, 96n, 174n, 290n; nurses in, 106n,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 587

587 378–79nn, 404; Ohio and, 67n; opposition to, 387n; reporters during, 387n; slaves freed by, 13n, 33n; in South Carolina, 97n, 137n, 201n, 272n, 308, 309–10n, 405n, 407n, 496n, 506n; in Tennessee, 6n, 65n, 131n, 191n; Unionists in, 386n; U.S. Navy in, 391n; veteran organizations of, 88n; in Virginia, 97n, 124n, 303n; women’s rights movement during, 9n. See also individual military units Clapp, Almon M., 140, 141n, 150, 152n, 386n Clapp, Annie, 549–50, 560–61, 568, 572 Clarendon, Lord, George William Frederick Villiers, 137n Clark, Almon, 557 Clark, Consuelo, 487n Clark, Eliza, 555 Clark, Frances Ann Williams, 485, 487n Clark, George W., 555 Clark, Herbert A. 486, 487–88n Clark, Lenna Young, 487n Clark, Peter Humphries, 319, 320–22nn: grandchildren of, 487n; lectures about Douglass, 485, 487n; write Douglass, 484–90 Clark, William, 320n Clarke, Deborah B., 362n Clarke, John, 320n Clarke, John L., 508, 509n Clarke, Lydia, 509n Clarke, Mary R., 509n: Douglass writes, xiv, 508–09 Clarke, Peleg, 508, 509n Clarke, Sara Jane, 564 Clarke, Sylvester H., 556–57 Clarke, Thaddeus, 362n Clarkson, N.Y., 140n Clary, Mary, 530 Claus, Adolph, 392n Clay, Cassius M.: Douglass writes, x, 191, 196–98; supports John G. Fee, 496n; as Liberal Republican supporter, 198n; photograph of, xxxvii; doubts about Reconstruction, 197–98n, 199; writes Douglass, x, 191–96 198–99 Clay, Henry, 116n, 391 Cleveland, Grover: administration of, 483n; appointments by, 247n, 303n, 360n, 497n; election of 1884 and, 334n Cleveland, Ohio: conventions in, 421n; Douglass visits, 74; free blacks in, l; fugitive slaves in, 92n; racism in, 74

5/17/23 2:36 PM

588 Clews, Henry, 536 Cliff, Henry, 539 Clifton, Eng., 48 Clinton, Miss., 492n Clinton, N.Y., 179n Clotel; Or, The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (Brown), 92n Clough, John A., 241, 242n Clyde & Co., 332n Coahoma County, Miss., 493n Coburg, Canada, 42n Cochrane, Cornelia Smith, 421n Cochrane, John, 421n: John Brown, Jr., and, 423n, 424, 427–28, 428n; Martin Delany writes, 424; Douglass writes, 422, 424, 424n; as Octavius B. Frothingham attacked by, 420, 423n, 424, 427–29, 431n, 563; Gerrit Smith’s nephew, 290n, 421n; writes Douglass, xiii, 420–22, 422–33, 563 Coffin, Anna Folger, 30n Coffin, Levi, 49n Coffin, Thomas, 30n Coker, Daniel, 167n Colby College, 440n, 469n Colchester, Conn., 156n Colfax, Schuyler, 4n, 363n: election of 1868 and, 96, 97n, 112n, 520; election of 1872 and, xxviii, 4n Colfax, La., xxxi, 294n Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y., 507n College of the City of New York, New York City, 78n College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va., 432n Collins, John Anderson, 29n Collins, M. E., 498n Colman, Lucy D., 452, 454n Cologne, Ger., 328n Colombia, 467n colonization: abolitionists oppose, 38n, 54n; to Africa, 161n, 304, 315, 487n; to Central America, 486–87n; Douglass opposes, 54n; free blacks oppose, 2n, 54n, 91n, 93n, 407n; Horace Greeley and, 54n; Andrew Johnson advocates, 6; Lincoln’s support for, 467–68n; Gerrit Smith and, 36n; Unitarians support, 82n Colorado, 20n: admission as state, 513–14; African Americans in, xxvi, 8n, 16–17,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 588

INDEX 18–19nn, 76n, 83, 84–85nn, 87n, 141n, 243n, 513, 539; black suffrage in, 513; free blacks in, xxvi, 16–17; economic conditions in, 17, 436n; lawyers of, 60n; newspapers in, 242n; Republican party in, 19n Colorado School of Mines, Denver, Co., 242n Colored American (New York City): Douglass praises, 90; editors of, 92–93nn, 317n; founding of, 90, 91–92nn; letters to, 467n Colored Men’s Shipyard, Baltimore, Md., 15, 16n Colored National Convention, Nashville, Tenn., 321n, 541 Colored National Labor Union: leaders on, 4n, 150 Colored Orphan House, New Orleans, La., 31n Colored Orphan’s House, Louisville, Ky., 353n Columbia Institution for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, Washington, D.C., 391n Columbia Typographical Union, Washington, D.C., 140, 141nn Columbia University, New York City, 187n, 446n Columbian College, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., 89n Columbian Harmony Society Cemetery, Washington, D.C., 85n Columbiana County, Ohio., 381 Columbus, Ind., 499n, 504n Columbus, Ohio, 356n: African Americans in, 487n; Douglass speaks in, 210n Columbus (Ohio) Afro-American, 487n Colver, Nathaniel, 364, 364–65n Combe, George, 160, 161n comeouterism, 355n, 365n Comité Français d’Émancipation, 49n Committee of Thirteen, New York City, 347n communitarianism, 509n Compendium of Irish Biography, The (Webb), 383n compensated emancipation, 315n Compromise of 1850: Henry Clay and, 116n; Free Soil party opposes, 27n, 116n Compromise of 1877, 363n, 376n Concord, Mass., 315n, 430n, 570 Concord, N.H., 29n, 226n, 574 Concord (N.H.) Independent Statesman, 226n Concert Hall, Philadelphia, Pa., 89n Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered (Delany), 426n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Condition of the South, The (Schurz), 326n Confederate Army: generals of, 124nn, 303n, 329n, 359–60nn, 376n, 453–54n, 486n; immigrants serve in, 513; slaves accompany, 493n; soldiers in, 309n, 466n; veterans of, 15n, 225n, 360n Confederate States of America, xxxiii: Border States and, 71n; seeks British diplomatic recognition, 187n; congress of, 432nn, 483n; disenfranchisement of, 215n, 348n; foreign agents of, 432n; seeks French diplomatic recognition, 432n; government of, 54n; judiciary of, 497n; navy of, 56, 496n; political generals of, 124n; post war reconciliation with, 328n; as prisoners, 55n; prison camps of, 52, 55n; soldiers of, 33n, 309n, 466n. See also Davis, Jefferson Congo, 487n Congregational Church: abolitionists and, 22n, 69n, 115n, 169n, 318n, 379n, 439–40nn; African Americans as, 216; American Missionary Association and, 206n, 311, 313n; free blacks in, 316, 317n; in Massachusetts, 379n; ministers of, 22n, 81n, 86n, 115n, 169, 316, 318n, 439n; in New York State, 69n, 318n, 379n; in Ohio, 81n; missions of, 311; newspapers of, 69n; Plan of Union and, 69n, 81n; temperance and, 69n; in Washington, D.C., 84–85, 86n, 172, 173n, 313n, 540, 544 Conkling, Roscoe, 363n, 429: Civil Rights Act of 1875 supported by, 544; recommends Charles R. Douglass, 128n; Douglass writes, 580; defends Douglass’s U.S. marshal appointment, 350n, 353n, 580; dispute with President Garfield, 489n; supports Santo Domingo annexation, 185n; as U.S. Senator, 301, 346; writes Douglass, xiv, 510 Connecticut, 140: African Americans in, 260, 260–61nn; Baptists in, 365n; Democratic party in, 308–09nn; Douglass speaks in, xxxii, 73n, 280, 281n; farmers in, 99n; free blacks in, 58n, 76n, 92n, 115n; fugitive slaves in, 73n; German Americans in, 95; governors of, 501n; Married Women’s Property Act, 182n; Republican party in, 21n, 308–09nn, 501n; schools in, 73n; woman suffrage movement in, 182n Conner, Alexander, 32n Conococheague River, 63n Conroe, Tex., 43n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 589

589 Conroe Normal School, Conroe, Tex., 43n Conservateur littéraire, Le (Paris, Fr.), 475–76n Conservative party (Eng.), 273n Constantinople, 178 Constitution of Man (Comb), 160 Constitution Violated, The (Butler), 326n Constitutional Convention (1787), Philadelphia, Pa., 279n Constitutional Union party, 226n, 285n Contagious Diseases Acts (1864–69), 324, 326n Continental Army, 481n Continental Congress, 395n Contraband Relief Association, Washington, D.C., 70n Convention of Colored Newspapermen, Cincinnati Ohio, 320–21, 321n Conway, Monecure, 368, 369–70n Conway, Thomas, W., 283, 284n, 285 Cook, John Edwin, 432n Cook County Normal School, Chicago, Ill., 498n Cooke, Henry D., 251n, 297n Cooke, Jay, 297n Cooper, Peter, 295n, 335n Cooper Institute, New York City: Douglass speaks in, xxvii–xxvii, 178; Lincoln speaks in, 295n; meetings in, 292, 295n, 518; Republican rally in, 328n; school at, 240n Coote, Thomas, 515 Copenhagen, Den., 268n Corbin, Henry C., 569 Corcoran, William W., 388, 391n, 399n Corcoran & Riggs, Washington, D.C., 391n Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C., 448 Corfu, N.Y., 344, 345n Corinthian Hall, Rochester, N.Y.: Douglass speaks in, xxviii, xxxii, 256n, 345n Corliss, Hiram, 364, 365n Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 156n, 183n, 359n, 494n Cornish, Samuel E., 90, 91–92n, 92n, 317n Corning, N.Y., 64n, 341n Corona, N.Y., 44n, 128n Corpus Cristi, Tex., 175–76nn Cory, David, 472n Costa Rica, 130 Cotton, Phebe C., 377, 379–80 cotton: in Louisiana, 309n; postwar production, 348n; textile mills and, 414n Council Bluffs, Iowa, 237n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

590 County Down, Ire., 42n County Kildare, Ire., 383n Courtland, N.Y., 500n Courtship of Miles Standish, The (Longfellow), 232n Coushatta, La., 291, 293–94n Coventry Anti-Slavery Society, R.I., 509n Covey, Edward, 469, 469n Covington, Ky., 356n Covington, N.Y., 138n Craft, Ellen, 430–31n Craft, William, 430–31n Crain, Charles E., 548 Cramer, John, 200n Cramer, Mary Frances Grant, 200n Crandall, Lee: Douglass writes, xiv, 464–68, 466n Crandall, Prudence, 82n Crédit Mobilier scandal, 4n Creole (ship) slave revolt, 73n, 111n Creswell, John A., 141n, 148, 148n, 484n Crimea, 367n Crimean War, 367n Crittenden John C., 441n Crocker, Alpheus. 43, 45n Crocker, Nathan Scudder Prince, 43, 45n Crocker, Newall, 43, 45n Crofts, Henry O., 103n, 367: as abolitionist, 37n; marries Julia Griffiths, 37n; as Methodist minister, 367n; hosts Douglass, 101 Crofts, Julia G. See Griffiths, Julia Cromwell, John W., 480n Cronemeyer, Ida Fehr, 453, 454n Cronemeyer, William Gustav, 454n croquet, 322 Crosby, Peter, 289n, 294n Cuba, 211n: emancipation in, 240–41nn; insurgents seek independence of, 132–33nn, 168, 169n, 187, 192, 194–95n, 196, 199, 213n, 239–40, 240–41n, 252–53, 253n; minerals of, 378n; refugees from, 331; slavery in, 49n, 187n, 239–40, 240–41n, 516; Spanish American War and, 403n Cuban Anti-Slavery Society, 240n Culpepper, Va., 222n Cumberland County, Me., 82n Cummings, Alexander, 186n Cunningham, James, 39, 42n Curaçao, 63n, 190n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 590

INDEX Currie, Lind F., 429, 432–33n Curtis, George W., 397n Curtis, Jeremiah, 181n Curtis, Joseph, 153, 156–57n Curtis, Lucy Winslow, 181n Curtis, Mary Braithwaite Fish, 153 Dakota Territory, 351n, 505 Dall Street Church, Baltimore, Md., 531 Dalzell, James M. (“Private”), 50, 574 Damariscotta, Me., 238 Dana, Charles A., 397n Dana, Richard Henry, 186n Dansville, N.Y., 512 Danville, Ill., 60n, 105n, 524 Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., 169n, 318n, 337n, 365n, 391n D’Arusmond, Francis, 542 Daughters of Temperance, 28n David (king of Israel), 171n Davidson County, Tenn., 102n Davis, Benjamin O., 278n Davis, Edmund J., 175n, 176n Davis, Edward M., 531–32 Davis, Henry G., 346, 348n Davis, J. Robert, 571 Davis, Jefferson, 54n, 192: imprisonment of, 37n, 52, 54n–55n, 195n Davis, John, 1n Davis and Elkins College, Elkins, W.V., 348n Davis Hotel, Washington, D.C., 1n Dawson, James A. 244n Day, Benjamin, 186n Dayton, Ohio, 73n Decatur, Ill., 107n Declaration of Independence: as antislavery document, 10, 111n; Douglass quotes, 10, 13n; principles of, 298, 368; signing of, 379n Decorah, Iowa, 154n Decoration Day celebration, xxx, xxxiii Dedham, Mass., 418n Delany, Martin R., 426n: John Brown and, 424–25, 426–27n; co-edits North Star, 426n Delaware: Democratic party in, 303nn; free blacks in, 92n, 161n; government of, 303n; slaveholders in, 35n; slaves in, 161n Delphi, Ind., 227n Democratic party: in Alabama, 348n; antislavery members of, 36n; in Baltimore, 386n;

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX John C. Calhoun and, 432n; in California, 168n; Salmon P. Chase and, 27n, 219, 219n; Civil Rights Act (1875) and, 264n, 273, 276, 277n, 299, 302–04nn, 472n; Civil War and, 276; in Connecticut, 308–09nn; conventions of, 97n, 218n; in Delaware, 303n; disloyalty of, 276; Stephen A. Douglass and, 328n; in Election of 1868, 27n, 95–96, 97n; in Election of 1872, 217–20, 219n, 235n, 278n, 537; in Election of 1876, 284, 285n, 334, 354n, 359–60nn, 454n, 567; Emancipation Proclamation opposed by, 13n; in Georgia, 303–04nn; Grant denounced by, 185, 292n; support Horace Greeley, 188n, 218n; “Hunker” faction of, 96n; in Illinois, 156n; in Indiana, 112n, 215n; Andrew Jackson’s legacy on, 124n, 432n; Liberal Republicans and, 188n, 218n, 276, 327; Lincoln attacked by, 186n, 303n, 338n, 391n; in Louisiana, 224n, 227–28nn, 293–94nn, 296n, 307, 309, 328n, 360n, 376n; in Maryland, 156n, 186n, 484n; in Massachusetts, 22n, 128n, 446n; in Mississippi, 54n, 339n, 492–93nn, 497n; in Missouri, 155n; in New York City, 87n, 194n; in New York State, 42n, 87n, 96n, 155n, 194n, 200n, 284n, 421nn; newspapers of, 71n, 186n, 292n; in Ohio, 17n, 292n, 306n; oppose Douglass as U.S. marshal, 355; “Peace” faction of, 303n, 306n; in Pennsylvania, 155n, 338n; racism of, 276, 304n; Reconstruction opposed by, 292n, 295n, 303–04nn, 306n, 328n, 391n; in Rochester, N.Y., 42n, 133n, 138n, 140n, 341n; “Solid South” of, 453–54n; in South Carolina, 357, 358–60nn; states’ rights and, 292n, 295n, 432n; in Tennessee, 6n; in Texas, 175n; union supported by, 391n; in U.S. Congress, 6n, 54n, 85n, 106n, 134n, 153, 156–57nn, 254n, 277n, 285n, 301, 303–04nn, 306n, 348n, 360–61nn, 421n, 432n, 455, 457n, 459, 460n, 472, 472–73n, 483n, 484n, 492n, 497nn; Martin Van Buren as party leader, 96n, 285n, 391; in Virginia, 67n, 124n, 431n, 432n; “War” faction of, 306n, 391n, 421n; in Washington, D.C., 55, 166n, 391n; in West Virginia, 348n DeMortia, Louisa, 30, 31n Denmark, 200n, 543 Dent, Ellen, 372n Denton, Md., 42n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 591

591 Denver, Colo., 20n, 60n, 540: African Americans in, 8n, 18–19nn, 85n, 87n, 539; U.S. Grant visits, 241, 242n; railroads and, 17 Denver Daily Rocky Mountain News, 242n Department of the Gulf (Union Army), 227n, 296n De Ruyter, N.Y., 155n Des Moines, Iowa, 268n Desdemona (fictional character), 399n Detroit, Mich.: African Americans in, 358n; Douglass speaks in, 78n, 344; lawyers in, 358n; newspapers in, 18n, 358n; Republicans in, 334n; Whigs in, 334n Detroit Advocate, 358n Detroit Plaindealer, 18n Devens, Charles E., Jr., 370–71n, 553, 556 ; Douglass writes, xii, 370–71, 559–60, 562 Devens, Charles E., Sr., 370n Devens, Mary L., 370n Dewey. D. M., 231n Dial (Boston, Mass.), 315n Dibble, Henry C., 223, 227–28n Dick, Elizabeth “Eliza” Griffiths, 36n, 101, 103n, 366, 367n Dick, John, 36n, 103n Dickens, Charles, 215n Dickinson, Anna E., 21–22n: as civil rights supporter, xxiv, xxvii; Douglass writes, vii, 21, 51–55, 544; as lyceum lecturer, 22n, 40, 43n, 51, 52n; as Republican party orator, 21n; speaks at Southern Loyalist Convention, 21, 21–22n; women’s rights advocated by, 40, 43n, 54n; writes Douglass, 51n, 513, 515, 544–45 Dickinson, John, 22n Dickinson, Mary E., 22n, 51–52 Dickinson, Susan, 22n, 51–52 Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa., 149n Dimick, Albert W., 414n Dinwiddle, Va., 70n Diplomatic and Consular Appropriation Bill (U.S. Congress), 399, 401n Discourse on Slavery in the United States (May), 82n Disraeli, Benjamin, 273n District of Columbia: African American residents of, xxv, 60n, 61, 85n, 102n, 116–18, 118n, 150, 210n, 245–47, 248n, 255, 274, 277n, 293n, 314n, 347n, 363n, 388, 401n, 404–05, 415n, 457n, 491–92nn, 496n, 523,

5/17/23 2:36 PM

592 District of Columbia (continued) 525, 533, 536, 562; African American suffrage in, 2n, 20, 30, 31n, 55–56n; Board of Health of, 67n; criminals in, 371n; Douglass as U.S. marshal of, xxv, xxxiii, 59, 60n, 348, 348n, 353n, 353–54, 357, 362n, 370, 371n, 384, 386n, 392, 398n, 433, 477–78, 477n; emancipation in, 23n; governor of, 251n, 297n; jail of, 556; legislative council of, xxv, xxx, 8, 8n, 60n, 189, 189n, 209, 210–11nn, 236n, 533–34, 569; national guard of, 351n; recorder of deeds of, 402n, 510n; territorial government of, 351–52nn. See also Washington, D.C. disunionism, 53n Dix, John A., 284 Dixon, Jeremiah, 467n Dixon, Ill., 345n Dodge, Grenville M., 348n Doebler’s Hall, Williamsport, Pa., 73n Doggett, Kate Newell, 435, 437n Doggett, William E., 437n Dominican Republic: annexation proposal of, 86n, 133n, 185n, 332n; Baez government of, 190, 190–91n, 332–33n; Charles Douglass in, 331, 332n; Haiti and, 190n, 333n; revolution in, 331, 332–33nn; Spain recolonizes, 190n, 332n; U.S. commission to, xxiv–xxv, 183n, 201n; U.S. relations with, 115n, 127n, 331, 443n. See also Santo Domingo Donaldsonville, La., 376n Doncaster, Eng., 102n Doniphan (Kans.) Crusader of Freedom, 201n Dorsey, Martha L., 567 Douglas, Helen Ford, 554 Douglas, James, 32n Douglas, John, 32n Douglas, Samuel, 32n Douglas, Stephen A., 328n Douglass, Anna Murray, 42n, 45n, 60, 66–67, 147, 367, 485, 568: Ottilie Assing and, 63n, 442–43, 446n, 456; biography of, 40n; born free, 42n; children of, 8n, 18n, 40n, 44n, 63n, 111, 209; cooking skills of, 545; death of, 43n, 63n, 323n, 492n; Rosetta Douglass writes, 314; as grandmother, 321, 437n; Julia Griffiths and, 545, 550; health of, 39, 44, 78n, 461, 515; illiteracy of, 111; nicknames for, 158, 442, 446n, 453; religious activities of, 234; as Rochester resident, 39, 55, 76, 81n,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 592

INDEX 109, 203n, 267n; Gerrit Smith and, 60, 279, 281; as Washington resident, 221, 233, 259, 311, 453, 454n, 530 Douglass, Annie, 43n: death of, 433, 434n, 502n Douglass, Annie Elizabeth, 246n, 332n Douglass, Charles Frederick, 86n: birth of, 101n, 516; health of, 85, 104, 111, 112n, 151, 152n, 235n, 332n, 518, 523; photograph of, 520–21 Douglass, Charles Remond, 44n, 83: borrows from father, 151, 332n, 450, 451n, 516, 521, 523, 526, 531, 535, 546; brick making business of, 234; children of, 115n, 233, 246n, 315n, 331, 332n, 461n, 518; as clerk, 43, 44n; as consul, 331n; Douglass writes, xxii, 43, 55, 66, 76n, 84, 110, 114, 138, 150, 153, 332; education of, 44n; financial problems of, 516, 546–47; at Freedman’s Bureau, 43, 44–45nn, 66, 88–89, 104, 111n, 114, 128n, 516, 519, 521–22, 525; friends of, 352; gardening of, 140; health of, 153; Lincoln discharges, 51n; marries, 45n; marital problems of, 245–47; military service of, 44n, 51n; named for free black abolitionist, 44n, 63n; as New National Era correspondent, 128n, 203n, 208n, 530; as New National Era editor, 174; photograph of, xxxv; Pierson family and, 246, 248n; racial discrimination against, xxv-xxvi, 153n; as Republican, 139, 234, 520, 523, 529; as Rochester resident, 514–15, 517; assists Santo Domingo Commission, 128n, 208n; school construction supervisor, 209, 210n; siblings and, 109, 340; feuds with Nathan Sprague, 109n, 110–11, 523, 530–31; as Treasury Department clerk, 115n, 127, 128n, 138, 139n, 209, 248n, 332n, 526; unemployed, 459; U.S. counsel at Puerto Plata, 128n, 331–32, 332n, 353; in Washington, D.C., xxii, xxv–xxvi, xxx, 44, 44–45nn, 55–56, 114, 127, 128n, 138–39; as widower, 461; writes to Douglass, vii–x, xii, xxii, 43–44, 55–56, 59–60, 66–67, 84–89, 104–05, 110–12, 114, 127–29, 138–41, 150–57, 209–12, 233–36, 245–49, 331–32, 514–22, 525, 527, 529–32, 535, 546, 550–51, 561 Douglass, Edward Arthur, 458, 460n Douglass, Eliza, 550 Douglass, Frederick: as abolitionist, xxii–xxiii, xxix, 26, 42n, 64n, 74n, 89n, 367n, 378n, 406n, 512; as actor, 414; as African American

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX suffrage advocate, 23, 24n, 29n, 54n; in American Equal Rights Association, 29n, 54n; American Missionary Association and, 319–20, 330n; Ottilie Assing and, xxvi, xxxii, 60, 62, 63n, 220, 322, 323n, 327–28, 328n, 409–10, 411–12n, 443, 449, 531, 536; Hugh Auld and, 16n, 58n, 285n; Thomas Auld and, 58n, 203, 204n, 299, 409, 411, 421n; autobiographies of, 35n, 63n, 267, 416n, 510, 517, 532, 538, 556, 562; in Baltimore, 15, 16n, 26, 58n, 204n, 239n, 385–86, 386n, 471n; Bible and, 161n; birthdate of, 470, 471n; black suffrage supported by, xxvii, 71n, 105n, 132, 148n, 161n, 164; in Boston, xxvii– xxviii, 201n, 262; John Brown and, xxxi, 62, 63n, 98, 141–42, 256n, 260, 261n, 420, 422, 422–23nn, 425, 428, 430–32nn, 438, 448, 457, 548, 557; Russell Lant Carpenter and, xxiii, 50n, 269, 514, 520; Cedar Hill residence of, xxxiii, 33n, 43n, 222n, 395n, 454n, 469n; attends Centennial Exhibition, 391n, 392, 546; children of, xxii, xxv–xxvi, xxxi, 8n, 18n, 39–40, 40n, 43–44nn, 48, 63n, 83, 101, 117, 203n, 322; defends Chinese immigration, 167, 169n; churches criticized by, xxx; as cigar smoker, 544, 550; promotes Civil Rights Act (1875), 211n, 213, 264, 293n, 297–302, 544; in Connecticut, xxxii, 73n, 280, 281n; Cuban insurrection and, 194–95n, 239–40, 240–41n, 253n; death’s meaning to, 310–11; Martin Delany and, 426n; discrimination against, 74, 212n, 289–90; as District of Columbia council member, xxv, 189, 189n, 236n, 534; Dominican Republic toured by, xxiv–xxv, 86n, 184n; Douglass’ Monthly and, 91n; Perry Downs and, xxviii, 33–35nn, 58, 58–59n, 68, 69n, 450, 461, 462n, 519–20; Election of 1872 and, xxviii, xxxi. 217–20, 219n, 235n, 537; Election of 1880 and, 489n, 497, 499n, 503, 504n, 506, 573–74; emigration opposed by, 426n, 466; escapes slavery, 42n, 58n, 204n, 238–39nn, 284, 285n, 448, 473, 473n; on Exodusters, xxxiii–xxxiv, 407n, 464–47, 473–74, 473n, 477n, 567, 569–70; celebrates Fifteenth Amendment, 161n, 164, 167n; financial condition of, 461; Fourth of July and, 10–12, 12n, 59n, 330n; France toured by, 18n; Frederick Douglass’ Paper edited by, 91n, 429, 431–32n; as Freedmen’s Bank president, xxv, xxxiv, 115n,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 593

593 262–63, 263n, 265n, 266, 268–69, 268n, 279, 297n, 325, 543, 571; friends of, xi, 18n, 84n, 241–43, 253, 256–57, 323, 396–98, 523, 566; as fugitive slave, 203; William Lloyd Garrison and, xxiii, 177n; Garrisonians and, xxiii, 53n, 64n, 74n, 81n, 177n, 382n, 406n; grandchildren of, 43n, 48, 101n, 221; Ulysses S. Grant, and, xxiv, xxxi, 97n, 191, 196, 198n, 199, 208n, 217, 218n, 219, 282, 448; grave of, 249n; in Great Britain, xxiii, 36n, 42n, 51n, 81n, 103nn, 124n, 268n, 301, 324, 327n, 366, 434n, 502n, 504, 512–13, 563; Julia Griffiths Crofts and, xxiii, 35, 36–37n, 48, 103nn, 366, 367n, 512, 526, 542; as U.S. ambassador to Haiti, 116n, 129, 132, 137–38; Harpers Ferry Raid and, xxviii, 62, 63n, 124nn, 142, 420, 422–24nn, 429, 431–432n; health of, 83, 83–84n, 111n, 154, 441n, 459, 501, 547, 551; hired out, 469; horses of, 456, 457n; house burns, 203n, 217n, 221, 249, 249n, 281, 536–37, 539, 542, 567; Howard University and, xxv, xxxi, xxxii, 86n, 250, 251n, 252, 269, 280, 311–12, 312–13nn. 407n, 496n, 542; in Illinois, xxvii–xxviii, 105n, 210n, 212n, 235n, 237–38nn, 323n; in Indiana, xxxiii, 32n, 43, 335–36nn, 497, 498n, 550; Independent and, 22n, 97n, 132, 133n, 149n, 166n, 169, 198n, 522; as Andrew Johnson critic, xxvii, 5–6, 7n, 30n, 36n, 64n, 69; as journalist, xxi, xxiii–xxiv, xxxi, 89–90, 116–18, 132, 174, 382n; in Kentucky, xxix, xxxi, xxxiii, 244n; labor movement and, xxx; as landlord, xxii, 504, 505n; feuds with John M. Langston, 111n, 209, 212n, 348–49, 351n, 516, 565; opposes Liberal Republican movement, xxiv, 217n, 219; Life and Times of Frederick Douglass by, 283n, 448, 449n, 505n; Abraham Lincoln and, xxviii, xxxii, 51n, 324, 325n, 548; at Lincoln’s second inaugural, 51n; lyceums and, xxii–xxiii, xxvii–xxxiii, 35, 44n, 51–52, 53n, 73n, 101n, 106, 110, 111n, 112, 118, 120n, 125, 132, 143, 144n, 149, 201, 203–04nn, 210, 210–11nn, 217n, 220–21, 221–22nn, 234, 237n, 238, 244n, 314, 323, 323n, 344, 345nn, 409, 456, 512, 514–15, 525–26, 528–30, 538, 547; in Lynn, Mass., 18n, 40n; in Maine, xxxi, 218n, 237n, 334, 335n, 537, 550; manumission of, 285n, 416n; marriage to Helen Pitts, 78n, 147n, 494n; in Maryland, xxxiii, 57, 145, 411n; in

5/17/23 2:36 PM

594 Douglass, Frederick (continued) Massachusetts, xxvii, xxxi, 8n, 36n, 40n, 73n, 201n, 262, 344n; as military recruiter, 38n, 154n, 369n; mob attacks, 87–88, 167nn, 500n; mother of, 32, 33nn; My Bondage and My Freedom, 63n, 517, 538, 556, 562; neighbors of, 454n; in New Bedford, Mass., 8n, 40n; New Era and, 4n, 116–21, 118n, 132n, 143, 144n, 532; in New Hampshire, xxxii, 336n; New National Era edited by, xxi, xxiv, xxx, 44n, 174, 175n, 202–03nn, 253, 260n, 532, 540, 542, 545; in New York City, xxvii, xxix, xxxiii, 42n, 72, 103n, 239n, 328n, 473n, 499n; in New York State, xxvii–xxix, xxx– xxxiv, 28, 29n, 42n, 72, 96n, 103n, 120n, 149n, 155n, 178, 200n, 218n, 239n, 256n, 284n, 328n, 345n, 355, 397n, 421nn, 473n, 497n, 499n, 573; in North Carolina, xxxi, xxxiv, 449n, 503, 504nn; North Star edited by, 74n, 91n, 167n, 177n, 337n, 426n; as novelists, 92n; in Ohio, xxix, xxxii, 36n, 72, 73n, 75n, 120n, 149n, 210n, 214n, 232n; patronage recommendations by, 282; in Pennsylvania, xxx, xxxi-xxxiii, 36n, 73n, 120n, 149n, 167; photograph of, 443n, 528, 535, 568, 571; political action and, 64n; possible postmastership for, 139, 140n, 148; racism denounced by, 467n; as Radical Abolitionist, 121n; Reconstruction proposals of, xxvii, 11–12, 117; as Recorder of Deeds, 510n; religious views of, 94, 95n, 160, 163–67, 411n, 449, 547; remarries, 63n, 78n; Charles Lenox Remond and, 44n, 63n; Republican Party and, xxiii, xxviii, xxxi–xxxiv, 52, 196, 298, 320n, 335–36nn, 501, 504, 573; in Rochester, xxii, xviii, xxxi–xxxii, 33n, 36n, 40n, 43–44, 52, 59n, 63n, 68, 74, 81n, 103n, 177n, 201n, 202–03, 203n, 217–18, 233n, 237n, 256n, 267n, 314, 321, 326–27, 337n, 344, 469, 502, 505n, 533, 536, 564; supports Santo Domingo annexation, 183, 184n, 186n, 201n; works for Santo Domingo Commission, 44n, 145n, 184n, 187, 187n, 190n, 201n, 219n, 562; in Scotland, 562; siblings of, xxviii, 32, 33n, 35n, 68, 204n; as slave, 57–58, 58n, 68, 203, 284, 285n, 299, 377, 468–69, 473; Gerrit Smith and, vii, xi, xxviii, 36n, 62, 219, 422n, 423; social equality and, 31–32, 299; speeches of, xxix, xxx–xxxiii, xxxiv, 32n, 36n, 41n, 62, 71n, 100, 101n, 105n, 121–25,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 594

INDEX 142, 149, 149n, 154n, 169n, 205, 205n, 214n, 221, 221–22nn, 235n, 239n, 260, 261n, 395n, 418, 464n, 473–74, 521, 526, 528, 541–42, 548–49, 557; spiritualism and, xxiv, xxviii, 344, 345nn; as “Stalwart,” 510n; statues of, xxxiii, 110, 111n, 141–42, 230–31, 231n, 328n, 468–69, 471n, 488, 488n, 515, 520–21; friendship with Charles Sumner, 184n, 185, 186n; temperance, xxiv, 92n; in Tennessee, xxxi, 516; Thirteenth Amendment and, xxvii, 7n; Theodore Tilton and, ix, xxx, 21, 22n, 69n, 126, 132; Harriet Tubman and, viii, 97–98; as Underground Railroad conductor, 507; U.S. Constitution and, 11, 232–33, 233n; as U.S. marshal, xxxiii, 348, 348n, 350n, 352, 353n, 353–54, 357, 362n, 366, 368, 371, 374–75, 377n, 384, 411n, 443, 472–73nn, 477, 477n, 510n, 552–57; violent abolitionist tactics and, 63n; in Virginia, xxviii, xxxi, 53n, 58, 58n, 69n, 218n; Henry O. Wagoner and, xi, 18n, 84n, 241–43, 253, 256–57; in Washington, D.C., xxii, xxiv, xxx, xxxiii– xxxiv, 3n, 42n, 144n, 151, 175n, 179n, 189n, 219, 222n, 256n, 284n, 342, 395n, 419n, 457n, 503, 530, 552, 572; supports woman’s suffrage, ix, xxiv, xxviii-xxix, 8n, 52, 92n, 98–99, 141n, 180–83, 181n, 345n, 512 Douglass, Frederick, Jr., 18–19n, 198, 518: as Colorado resident, 17, 83, 84n, 243n; Douglass writes, x, 17, 213–16, 536; friends of, 352n; marries, 19n, 100, 102n, 147n; New Era and, 132n; New National Era and, 153n, 175n, 203n, 208n, 271, 273n; as printer, 18n; as proud of father, 470, 471n; Recorder of Deeds office rejects, 152n; as Republican, 490; siblings and, 107; feuds with Nathan Sprague, 107–08; typographer’s union rejects, 529; Henry O. Wagoner and, 17, 18n, 84n; as Washington, D.C. resident, xxv–xxvi, 102n, 104, 114, 138, 152n, 210n, 221n, 245, 253, 526, 531; writes Charles Douglass, 331; writes Douglass, 75, 153, 233; in Wyoming, 85, 87n Douglass, Frederick III, 19n Douglass, Frederick Aaron, 102n Douglass, Helen Amelia Loguen, 8n, 147, 147n, 246, 248n: as housekeeper, 311 Douglass, Helen Pitts: Cedar Hill preserved by, 222n, 395n; family of, 454n, 494n; family disapproves of marriage, 494n; marries

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Douglass, 78n, 494n; visits Great Britain, 37n, 268n Douglass, Joseph Henry, 115n, 152n, 332n, 527 Douglass, Julia Ada, 235n, 246n, 331, 332n: in Washington, D.C., 462n Douglass, Lewis Henry, 8n, 75–76, 83–84, 129, 209, 518, 550: Ottilie Assing and, 158n; as civil rights advocate, 2n; as Colorado resident, 17, 76n, 84–85nn, 141n, 243n, 513; as Colored National Labor Union officer, 150; as District of Columbia legislator, 8, 189n, 210–11nn; Douglass writes, 129, 131n; health of, 221, 248n; as New Era compositor, 117, 118n, 132n; assists in editing New National Era, 8n, 203n, 208n, 321; education of, 8n; in Fort Wagner battle, 407n; Government Printing Office employs, 138, 150; marriage of, 8n, 147, 248n, 527–28; military service of, 8n, 248n, 325, 407n; in Nebraska, 539; New National Era and, xxiv, 175n, 271, 273n; as proud of father, 470, 471n; racial discrimination against, xxv–xxvi, 141n, 152n; relationship with father, 322; as Republican, 490; in Rochester, 76n, 340, 574; siblings and, 76–77n, 342n; as typographer, 18n, 138, 141n; typographical union membership disputes, 140, 150, 152n; as U.S. Post Office agent, 437, 438nn; Henry O. Wagoner and, xxvi, 17, 141n; Henry O. Wagoner assists, 17, 18n, 84n; as Washington, D.C. resident, xxv–xxvi, 84, 114, 138, 253, 342n, 437n, 519–20, 526, 531; writes to Douglass, 513, 539; writes Andrew Johnson, 5–6, 7n Douglass, Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Murphy, 44, 45n, 56, 84, 114, 154, 529: children of, 233, 235n, 331, 516; death of, 460n, 461, 462n; in Dominican Republic, 331; health of, 66, 104, 221, 445, 453, 455n, 527; marital difficulties with Charles Douglass, 245–47; as Washington, D.C. resident, 530 Douglass, Mary Louise, 315n, 333 Douglass, Maud Ardelle, 408n Douglass, Rosetta, 40n, 367, 534, 550: children of, 42–43nn, 48, 101n, 256, 310–11, 461–62n, 546; debts of, 323n, 339, 515, 524; Douglass writes, x–xiii, xxii, 76n, 113, 220–22, 310–12, 314–15, 321–22, 437–38, 536, 540–41, 547; Rosine Ame-Droz writes, 48, 514–15, 539; Julia Griffiths and, 101, 551; health of, 539; marriage of, 40n, 107–09, 113,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 595

595 265, 323, 323n, 342, 515, 525, 541, 566; in New Jersey, xxviii; resides in Rochester, 39n, 76, 77n, 83, 107–08, 111, 203n, 221n, 313–14, 314n, 323n, 339, 341n, 437n, 505n, 524, 529, 540; as Washington, D.C. resident, xxv–xxvi, 40n, 44, 246, 314n, 323n, 341n, 505n; writes to Douglass, vii–viii, xxii, 39–42, 75–78, 107–109, 112–116, 314, 339–42, 515, 524, 529 Douglass, Virginia L. Molyneaux Hewlett, 102n, 147n, 246; as teacher, 102n, 150–51, 153nn Douglass Hall, Washington, D.C., 235 Douglass Institute, Baltimore, Md., 386n Douglass’ Monthly (Rochester, N.Y.): Douglass edits, 91n; finances of, 91n; subscribers to, 91n Downe, Brouse, Butler, & Co., Indianapolis, Ind., 88nn Downey, James E., 88n: writes to Douglass, viii, 87–88 Downing, George T., 114: as abolitionist, xxiii; attends black conventions, 105n; as civil rights advocate, 1, 3–4nn, 5–6, 105n, 274, 277n; Douglass writes, ix, xxiii, 134–35; family of, 345–46, 347n; financial problems of, 551; labor movement and, 151n; New Era and, 117, 118n, 354, 355n; recommends Douglass as Haitian ambassador, 127n, 130n, 134–35, 526; as restaurateur, 2n, 346; woman’s rights and, 54n; writes Douglass, vii, ix, xii, 1–4, 135–36, 245–48, 353–55; writes Andrew Johnson, 5–6, 7n Downing, Thomas, 1n, 347n Downing, William B., 543 Downs, Anna, 462n, 528 Downs, Ben, 33n Downs, Charles, 33n Downs, Daniel, 33n Downs, Henry, 32 Downs, Isabella, 462n Downs, Maria, 32, 33n, 35n, 462n Downs, Perry (Perry Bailey), 64n: Charles R. Douglass and, 517; Douglass reunites with, xxviii, 33–35nn, 58, 58–59n, 68, 69n, 450, 461, 462n, 519–20; wife of, 32, 462n; writes to Douglass, 32–35; as slave, 35n Drake, Charles D., 153, 155n Dred Scott decision (1857): African American declared not citizens by, 14n, 153; Buchanan influences, 14n; Douglass condemns, 11; quoted, 11

5/17/23 2:36 PM

596 dress reform, 183n Drew, William S., 553 Driggs, George W., 332, 333–34n Droz, Rosine Amé, 49n: Douglass writes, 520; befriends Rosetta Douglass, 48, 514–15, 523, 539, 541; freedmen’s aid efforts of, 518, 520; in Great Britain, 46, 48, 49n, 519, 547; writes Douglass, xxii, 512, 514–15, 518–19, 523, 539, 541, 548–49, 560–61, 569 Drury Lane, London, Eng., 159n Dublin, Ire.: abolitionists in, 381; churches of, 50n, 325n; Quakers in, 381n, 383n; schools in, 383n Dubuque, Iowa, 105n, 120n, 347n, 356n Dubuque Pacific Railroad, 347n Dubuque Times, 356n Dunbar High School, Washington, D.C., 248n Dunstable, Mass., 391n Dunn, Oscar J., 212n, 226nn, 229n Durell, Edward H., 224, 226n, 228n, 229n Dutch Reformed Church, 264n, 316n, 318n Dutcher, M. V., 44, 46n East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society, Baltimore, Md., 42n East Baton Rouge Parish, La., 229n East Greenwich, R.I., 419n East Hampton, Conn., 115n Easton, Md., vii, xxxiii, 58n: Douglass writes “Gentlemen” of, 57–58; jail in, 57, 58n Easton, Mass., 440n Easton (Md.) Gazette, 452, 453n Eato, Christopher R., 331, 333n Eato, Edward V., 331, 333n Eato, Timothy, 333n Ecce Homo: A Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ (Seeley), 75, 77n Ecclesfield, Eng., 49n Ecuador, 130 Edgefield County, S.C., 361n Edmund, John F., 570 Edmunds, George, 300, 305n, 306n: Civil Rights Act (1875) and, 544; Douglass writes, 544; supports Santo Domingo annexation, 185n Education and Employment of Women, The (Butler), 326n Effingham, Ill., 214, 216n Effingham County, Ill., 216n Egg Buckland, Eng., 49n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 596

INDEX Egypt, 50n, 205n Eire Canal, 84n Election of 1824: Henry Clay as candidate, 391n Election of 1828: Andrew Jackson as candidate, 391n Election of 1832: Democratic ticket in, 432n Election of 1840: Democratic party in, 391n; Whig party in, 124n Election of 1852: Democratic party in, 285n, 292n; Free Soil party in, 112n, 254n; Whig party in, 155n Election of 1856: Democratic party in, 193n; Republican ticket in, 193n, 413n Election of 1860: John Bell as candidate in, 146n; Constitutional Union party in, 285n; Republican ticket in, 60n, 309n, 413n; secession follows, 309n, 387n Election of 1864: Chase-Lincoln rivalry, 27n, 305n; opposition to Lincoln’s re-nomination and, 6n, 421n; Republican ticket in, 65n, 356n Election of 1866: Andrew Johnson and, 518 Election of 1868: Salmon P. Chase and, 84, 86n, 96, 219, 219n; Democratic party in, 27n, 95, 96–97nn, 186n, 227n; Republican ticket in, 96, 97n, 101, 112n, 196, 520, 523; Horatio Seymour in, 186n Election of 1872: Douglass campaigns in, xxviii, xxxi, 16n, 217nn; Greeley as candidate in, 127n, 188n, 217nn, 278n; Liberal Republicans in, 232n, 287n, 421n; Republican ticket in, xxviii, 4n, 59n, 335n, 536–37; Henry Wilson and, 23n, 401n; Victoria Woodhull and, xxxi Election of 1876: Democratic ticket in, 284, 285n, 334, 354n, 359–60nn, 454n; Douglass campaigns in, xxxii–xxxiii; Electoral Commission for, 305n, 343n, 354–55, 567; Republican party in, xxv, xxxii–xxxiii, 285n, 334n, 342, 354–55n, 359–60n, 501n; Grant sought reelection in, xxv; “Solid South” emerges during, 454n Election of 1880: Democratic ticket in, 489n; Douglass campaigns in, 489n, 497, 499n, 503, 504n, 506, 573–74; Grant seeks third term in, 444, 489n; Republican party and, 305n, 334n, 401n, 455, 488, 488n, 489, 497, 499n, 501, 574 Election of 1884: Democratic ticket in, 334n; Republican party and, 305n, 334n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Election of 1888, 22n: Republican party and, 305n, 348n Election of 1896: Republican party and, 348n Election of 1904: Democratic ticket in, 348n; Republican party and, 348n Eliot, Thomas Dawes, 88, 89n Elkins, Stephen E., 348n Ellicott, N.Y., 76n Elliot Grammar School, Boston, Mass., 142n Elliott, Robert B., 357, 358n, 359n, 543 Ellis, DeWitt C., 539 Ellswanger, George, 525 Elmira, N.Y., xxxiv, 20n, 43n, 203n, 220n, 341n, 497, 498nn Elmira Free Academy, 341n emancipation: Civil War push for, xxii, 195n, 348n; in Cuba, 240–41n; in French colonies, 261n; in Louisiana, 13n; positive consequences of, 465; Republicans promote, 23, 53n, 392n; in Tennessee, 13n; in Washington, D.C., 23n; in West Indies, xxxix, 79, 81n, 498n; women campaign for, 9n. See also gradual emancipation; Thirteenth Amendment Emancipation Proclamation: abolitionists praise, 13n, 379n; Border States and, 13n; celebrations of, 10, 13n, 143n, 369n, 498n, 527; Democrats oppose, 13n; Douglass praises, xxvii; Lincoln issues, xxviii, 13n, 29n, 379n; opposition to, 13n Emancipator, The (New York City), 365n Emerson, J. A., 546 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 53n, 314, 315n, 418n, 465n, 502n: supports John Brown, 369n, 431n; resident of Concord, Mass., 430n emigrationism: to Africa, 73, 317n, 421n; African Civilization Society and, 315n; to Canada, 3n, 467n; to Central America, 466, 467–68n; conventions for, 426n; Martin R. Delany and, 426n; Douglass opposes, 426n, 466; free blacks and, 54n, 73n, 93n, 426n; to Haiti, 317n, 466; to Jamaica, 466, 500n; Lincoln supports, 467–68n Emory College, Atlanta, Ga., 497n English Traits (Emerson), 315n Ense, Karl Varnhagen von, 412n Epes Grammar School, Salem, Mass., 405n “Equal Rights for All” (Douglass), xxviii Equal Rights League, Calif., 91n Equal Rights party: Douglass and, xxxi; Victoria Woodhull as candidate of, xxxi

Y8204-Douglass.indb 597

597 Erie, Pa., 73n Erie Canal, 96n, 249n Ernest, Robert, 557 Espaillat, Ulises Quinones, 332n Essence of Christianity, The (Feurbach), 95n, 411n Estlin, John, 367n Evangelical Alliance: Douglass addresses, 51n Evans, D., 524 Evans, Walter O., 471n Evanston, Ill., 242n Evansville, Ind., 499n, 504n Evarts, William M., 348n, 384, 385n, 400: as U.S. senator, 401n “Exile’s Departure, The” (Whittier), 237n Exodusters: African American supporters of, 407n; causes of, 284n, 345n; Douglass’s opinion of, xxxiii–xxxiv, 407n, 464– 67, 473–74, 473n, 477n, 567, 569–70; white supporters of, 361n, 463, 567 Exposition Building, Chicago, Ill., 490 Exposition Building, Cincinnati, Ohio, xxxii Exposition Universelle, Paris, Fr., 47, 50n Factory Act (Eng,), 81n Facts of Reconstruction, The (Lynch), 403n Fair Oaks, Va., Battle of, 2n Fairbank, Calvin, 441n, 512 Fairbanks, Charles, 348n Fairchild, Edward H., 542 Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, Pa., 391n Fall Creek, Ind., 88n Fall River, Mass., 82n, 343, 344n, 414n, 418–19nn, 493, 494n, 509n; Douglass in, 508 Falmouth, Mass., 267n, 317n Faneuil, Peter, 294n Faneuil Hall (Boston), 291, 294n, 441n Farmers and Mechanics Bank, Rochester, N.Y., 540 Farmington, Me., 226n Farnham, Amos, 563 Farrar Hall, Erie, Pa., 73n Faunce, Thomas, 443n Federalist party, 276, 278n Fee, John Gregg, 193n, 487n; heads Berea College, 484–85; Cassius M. Clay protects, 496n Fehr, Eliza B., 262, 263n, 456 Fehr, Florence, 447, 449n Fehr, Julius, 263n, 445, 449n, 453, 454nn Fehr, Louise, 447, 449n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

598 Fell, William, 16n Fells Point, Baltimore, Md., 15, 16n Female Guardian Society, 318n Fenians, 383n Fenton, Reuben E., 85, 86–87n Ferdinand (king of Spain), 124n Fernandina, Fla., 240n Ferry, Thomas W., 347n Fessenden, Deborah C., 169n Fessenden, Samuel, 168, 169n Fessenden, William Pitt, 169n, 528 Feuerbach, Bertha Löw, 411n Feuerbach, Leonore, 411n Feuerbach, Ludwig, 95n, 410, 411n Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 374n Field, James: Douglass writes, vii, 24–25 Fifteenth Amendment: abolitionists endorse, 132, 133n, 148n, 315n; black (male) suffrage and, xxiv, 376n; celebrations of, xxxi, xxxiii, 148n, 161, 164, 167n, 530; controversy over, xxiv, 30n, 133n, 487n; courts weaken, 375; Douglass supports, 105n, 132, 148n, 161n, 164; enforcement of, xxx, 195n, 376n, 472–73, 550; ratification of, xxix, 133n; Republicans support, 24n, 369n; suffrage campaign and, xxiv, 24n, 133n; U.S. Supreme Court weakens, 376n; woman suffrage leaders oppose, 99, 99–100n, 133n. See also Ku Klux Klan Act Fifteenth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, 370n Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C.: African American convention in, 2n; Douglass speaks in, xxvii, 261n; Douglass family attends, 234; freedmen’s aid by, 70n; ministers of, 4n, 235n Fifth Amendment, 14n Fifth Kentucky Infantry Regiment, 244n Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment: Charles R. Douglass in, 44n, 46n, 210; enlisted men in, 46n, 210, 212n; officers of, 359n; in Texas, 46n, 212n; in Virginia, 46n, 212n Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment: Douglass’s sons serve in, 8n, 41n, 44–45nn, 407n; Fort Wagner assault by, 407n; recruiters for, 38n, 64n Figures of Hell; or, the Temples of Bacchus (Thompson), 436n Finney, Charles G., 81n First Colored Presbyterian Church, New York City, 92n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 598

INDEX First Confiscation Act (1861), 13n First Congregational Church, Washington, D.C., 84–85, 86n: Douglass speaks at, 540; O. O. Howard and, 173n, 313n, 544 First Nebraska Infantry Regiment, 348n First Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C., 4n, 85n, 92n First Texas Cavalry Regiment (Union Army), 176n First Three Gospels, The (Carpenter), 50n First Unitarian Church, Washington, D.C., 81–82n First Vatican Council, Rome, Italy (1869–70), 173n Fish, Hamilton, 187n, 234: Alabama claims and, 194–95n; Cuban independence and, 133n, 169n, 187n, 192, 194–95n, 196, 199, 240, 240–41n; Dominican Republic annexation issue and, 133n, 185n; Douglass writes, x, 187, 533–34; politics of, 192; Reconstruction and, 194n; as secretary of state, 133n, 187, 194–95nn, 331; writes Douglass, 534 Fish, Henry L., 42 Fishback, James, 558 Fisk, Photius: Douglass writes, xiii, 438–41; writes Douglass, 438 Fiske, John M., 481, 482n, 571 Fitzhugh, Ann Carroll. See Smith, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Fitzhugh, William, 204n Five Points House of Industry, New York City, 318n Flipper, Henry O., 277n Florence, Italy, 412n Florida: African Americans in, 43n; Civil War in, 2n; Election of 1876 in, 343n; government of, 333n; real estate investors in, 449n; Quakers in, 30n; Reconstruction in, 148n; Republicans in, 148n, 240n; schools in, 43n; slaves escape from, 439n Floyd, Richard, 152n Flushing, N.Y., 401n Fogg, Samuel C., 100, 102–03n, 109 Follansbee, George: Douglass writes, xi, 291–96 Fond du Lac County, Wisc., 333n Foord, Sophia, 418n Foote, Henry S., 254n Forbes, Hugh, 432n Forbes, John, 558 Force Act, First (1870): xxx, 192

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Force Act, Third (1871), xxx, 293n, 376n Ford, Henry, 140n Ford’s Theatre, Washington, D.C., 65n, 125n Forney, Daniel C., 302n: Douglass writes, xi, 297–306 Forney, John W., 89n, 166n: Douglass writes, ix, 163–67; as newspaper editor, 302 Forrester, Nick, 242n Fort Donelson, Tenn., 131n Fort Kearney, Neb., 19n Fort Moultrie, S.C., 309n Fort Sumter, S.C.: Battle of (1861), 97n, 137n, 308, 309n Fort Wagner, Battle of: black soldiers fight in, 407n Fort Warren, Mass., 432n Fort Wayne, Ind., 499n Forten, Charlotte L., 405n: Ottilie Assing criticizes, 455–56; writes Douglass, xiii, 404–08 Forten, Harriet, 405n Forten, Mary W., 405n Forten, Robert Bridges, 405n, 407n Fortress Monroe, Va., 55n Forty-third Colored Infantry Regiment, 407n Foster, Abby Kelly, 532 Foster, Stephen S., 9n Fourier, Charles, 509n Fourierism, 54n, 509n Fourteenth Amendment: African American citizenship and, 14n; drafting of, 128n, 164n; opponents of, 8n, 28–29nn; ratification of, xxviii, 28; U.S. Supreme Court and, 277n Fourteenth New York Infantry Regiment, 290n Fourth Kentucky Cavalry Regiment, 356n Fourth of July Celebrations: Douglass addresses, xxviii, 10–12, 12n, 57–58, 59n, 69n, 567, 569–70; in Massachusetts, 9n, 12–13nn; in Virginia, xxviii, 69n Foushee, Matthew, 376n Fox, Kate, 345n Fox, Margaret, 345n Framingham, Mass., 9n, 12–13nn France: abolitionists in, 46–47, 49n, 51n, 261n, 370n; African colonies of, 261n, 315; American Revolution and, 279n; army of, 475n; blacks in, 261n; Douglass visits, 184; emancipation by, 261n; Franco-Prussian War and, 532; immigrants from, 123n; monarchs of, 476n; Napoléon III and, 476n; Protestants in, 125n; royalists in, 476n; Second Empire of, 476n; Second Republic of, 476nn; Third

Y8204-Douglass.indb 599

599 Republic of, 476n; U.S. Civil War and, 391n; U.S. expatriates in, 503; U.S. relations with, 401n Franco-Prussian War, 532 Frankfort, Ky., 356n, 391n Frankfort (Ky.) Argus of the West, 391n Franking privilege, 167, 168n Franklin, Benjamin, 279, 279n Franklin, William B., 191n Franklin, Vt., 191n Franklin County, Mass., 370n Fraser, Charles A., 551, 557 Frauenstein, Karl Heinrich Gustav, 263n, 445, 446n, 447, 450, 456, 540 Frederick, Md., 142, 143n, 144–45, 147n, 527 Frederick Douglass Building, University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y., 231n Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association, 222n Frederick Douglass’ Paper: contributors to, 93n, 103n, 176–77; Douglass edits, 91n, 429, 431–32n; finances of, 90, 91n, 103n, 267n, 502; Liberty Party and, 177n; Gerrit Smith and, 36n; staff of, 320n Fredericksburg, Va., Battle of, 309n, 339n Free Academy (City University of New York), New York City, 22n free blacks: as abolitionists, xxx, 4n, 18n, 31n, 49n, 51n, 63–64nn, 67n, 73n, 90, 92–93nn, 97, 102n, 216n, 261n, 317n, 347n, 406–07nn, 462, 484n, 500; in Albany, N.Y., 40n; in Alton, Ill., 7n; American and Foreign AntiSlavery Society and, 93n; American Missionary Association and, 4n, 93; in American Revolution, 63n, 216n; as bakers, 212n; as Baptists, 4n, 58; in Baltimore, Md., 16n, 42n; as barbers, 148n, 154nn, 212n, 214n, 216n,240n, 426n, 491n; in Boston, 4n, 30n, 212n, 246n, 359n; in Brooklyn, N.Y., 240n, 246n, 319n; John Brown supported by, 7n, 18n, 63n, 319n, 424–25, 426–27n; in Buffalo, 4n, 73n, 347n; in California, 19n, 89–91, 91n, 363n; in Canada, 3n, 18n, 19n, 407n, 424, 425–27nn, 429, 431–32nn, 457, 458n, 496n; as carpenters, 76n; as caterers, 347n; churches of, xxx, 166–67nn; in Cincinnati, Ohio, 224n, 320n, 382n; in Cleveland, Ohio, 1; colonization opposed by, 2n, 54n, 91n, 407n; in Colorado, xxvi, 8n, 16–17, 18–19nn, 85n, 87n, 539; as Congregationalists, 316, 317n; in Connecticut, 58n, 76n, 92n, 115n,

5/17/23 2:36 PM

600 free blacks (continued) 317n; conventions of, 2n, 7n, 73n, 91n, 240n; in Delaware, 92n, 161n; discrimination against, 40n; as dressmakers, 71n; education of, 1n, 16n, 19n, 73n, 91n, 93n; emigration plans of, 73n, 426n; as freemasons, 347n; Free Soil party supported by, 320n; as gardeners, 41n; as Garrisonians, 64n, 484n; in Georgia, 224n, 403n; as grocers, 3n, 92n; visit Great Britain, 4n, 51n, 92n, 63n, 359n, 407n; Haitian emigration and, 317n, 466; in Hartford, Conn., 81n, 260n; as hoteliers, 1n; in Illinois, xxvi, 7, 7n, 16n, 18n; in Indiana, 16n, 31–32, 154n; in Jamaica, 224n, 359n; in Kentucky, 19n, 491n; land grants to, 36; as laundress, 45n; as lawyers, 67n; Liberty party and, 73n, 93n, 317n, 500n; literary accomplishments of, 91n; in London, Eng., 4n, 178, 300; in Louisiana, 19n, 212n; in Lynn, Mass., 40n, 42n; in Maryland, xxvi, 18n, 33n, 42n, 78n, 204n, 248n, 480n; in Massachusetts, 4n, 30n, 40n, 42n, 63n, 212n, 246n, 279, 359n, 405n; as merchants, 319n; Methodist Episcopal Church and, 16n, 166n, 426n; as ministers, 4n, 16n, 58n, 73n, 102n, 154n, 166–67n, 235, 248n, 317n, 426n, 500n; as musicians, 212n; in Nashville, Tenn., 6nn; Native Americans and, 67n; in New Bedford, Mass., 8n, 40n; in New Hampshire, 16n; in New Haven, Conn., 115n; in New Jersey, xxviii, 92n, 224n; in New Orleans, 31n, 212n; in New York City, 1n, 317n, 1, 4n, 42n, 91–93nn, 317n, 347nn; in New York State, 1, 4n, 8–9nn, 40n, 42–43nn, 45n, 78n, 91–93nn, 102nn, 210n, 212n, 246n, 248n, 317n, 319n, 500n; newspapers of, 3n, 16n, 18n, 90, 92–93nn, 120, 317n, 426n, 467n, 500n; in North Carolina, 7n, 154n; novels by, 92n, 426n; as officers in army, 225n, 426n; in Ohio, 18n, 67n, 154n, 248n, 353n, 369n, 493n; as painters, 45n; in Pennsylvania, xxx, 3n, 16n, 40n, 45n, 92n, 115n, 161n, 166–67nn, 240n, 261n, 319n, 347n, 404, 405–07nn, 491–92nn; in Peterboro, N.Y., 421n; in Philadelphia, Pa., xxx, 3n, 16n; in Pittsburgh, Pa., 426n; in Presbyterian Church, 73n 92n, 500n; as printers, 8n, 92n; in Protestant Episcopal Church, 347n; as recruiters for Union Army, 38n, 64n, 154n, 225n, 369n; Republican party and, 1n, 96n; as restaurateurs, 1n, 363n; in Rhode Island,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 600

INDEX 1n, 347n; in Rochester, N.Y., 8n, 40n, 43n, 45n, 78n, 212n; as sailmakers, 407n; as sailors, 239n; in Salem, Mass., 63n; schools of, 102n, 206n, 317n, 402n, 426n; in Scotland, 93n; as shoemakers, 92n, 212n, 317n; societies of, 3n; as stewards, 224n, 363n; in Syracuse, N.Y., 248n, 500n; as tailors, 7n, 260n; in Talbot County, Md., 32n, 35n, 204n; as teachers, 19n, 40n, 248n, 405n; temperance movement and, 67n, 91–92nn, 406n; in Troy, N.Y., 9n, 210n; in Underground Railroad, 92n, 97n, 317n, 353n, 406n; Union Army recruits, 6n, 8n, 11, 38n, 46n, 59n, 64n, 67n, 102n, 131n, 148n, 152n, 210, 212n, 225n, 289, 301, 348n, 357, 407n; vigilance committees of, 92–93nn, 317n, 407n; violent antislavery tactics advocated by, 73n; in Virginia, 31n, 67n, 426n, 491n; as waiters, 212n; in Washington, D.C., 43n, 56n, 70n, 78n; women’s rights and, 93n, 406n free love, 188n Free Mission Visitor (Kirtland, Ohio), 364n Free Religious Association, 29n, 323, 323–24n, 342, 343n, 421n, 543 Free Soil party: antiextensionism endorsed by, 27n; antislavery Democrats and, 365n; in Boston, 116n, 190, 199nn; candidates of, 254n; Compromise of 1850 opposed by, 27n, 116n; conventions of, 27n; Douglass and, l, 25; in Election of 1852, 112n, 254n; founding of, 36n, 365n; free blacks support, 320n; in Indiana, 112n; Kansas-Nebraska Act opposed by, 27n, 111n; in Kansas Territory, 115n; Liberty party and, 27n; in Massachusetts, 22n, 38n, 115–16nn, 190n, 199nn, 379nn; in New Hampshire, 254n; in New York State, 231n, 397n, 440n; newspapers of, 120n, 190n, 320n, 397n; in Ohio, 27n, 111n, 320n, 440n; in U.S. Congress, 17n, 27n, 111n, 116n, 254n, 440n; Whig party and, 365n free trade, 53n, 398n Free Trade Hall, Manchester, Eng., 51n freedmen’s aid movement: abolitionist support for, 4n, 49n, 206n; British support for, 4n, 81n, 318n, 320n; Freedmen’s Bureau and, 2n; Presbyterians, 80n; schools supported by, 79; in South Carolina, 81n, 404, 405n; Union Army and, 82n; Unitarians and, 80, 81n; in Washington, D.C., 70n, 99n, 104, 406n. See also individual aid societies Freedmen’s Aid Society (Great Britain), 4n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Freedmen’s Bureau: agents of, 212n, 228n, 284n, 458n; army officers in, 174n, 205n, 426n; bill to establish, 2–3nn; 65n, 521; British support, 4n, 512; closing of, 105n; critics of, 545; Charles Douglass works for, 44–45nn, 66, 85, 88–89, 104, 111n, 114, 128n, 516, 519, 521–22, 525; Douglass asked to head, xxviii, 59, 61, 64, 66, 67n, 68; Douglass praises, 10; Ulysses S, Grant and, 3n; O. O. Howard heads, 1, 2–3nn, 61, 65n, 66, 67n, 68, 88–89, 105n, 114, 115n, 173n, 284n, 312, 517, 545; Andrew Johnson opposes, 2–3nn, 60n, 64–66, 68, 81n, 86n, 284; John Mercer Langston and, 65n, 67n, 88, 89n, 114–15nn, 517, 525; Republicans support, 156n; U.S. Army and, 65n; schools of, 59n, 81n, 86n, 104n, 115n, 321; 319n, 391n; women agents on, 99n Freedmen’s Hospital, Washington, D.C., 491–92n, 496nn, 562 Freedmen’s Institute, Richmond, Va., 365n “Freedmen’s Monument to Abraham Lincoln, The” (Douglass speech), xxxii, 549 Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company: branches of, xxv, 3n, 263n, 272n, 353n; Congress investigates, 402n; corrupt practices at, 271n, 287n, 297, 297n, 312, 496n; creation of, xxvii-xxviii, 263n; depositors partially reimbursed, 286, 287n, 482–83; Douglass as president, xxv; xxxiv, 115n, 262–63, 263n, 265n, 266, 268–69, 268n, 279, 297n, 325, 543, 571; failure of, xxv, xxxii, 261, 263nn, 265–66, 265n, 268n, 270–71, 271n, 279, 281n, 287n, 296, 297n, 353n, 491n, 574; headquarters of, xxxvii, 263n, 287n; O. O. Howard and, 296–97, 297n, 312; officers of, 115n; 297n Freedom’s Journal (New York City), 92n Freeman, John J.: Douglass writes, 286–87 Freeman, William, 58n Freeman’s Journal (Dublin, Ire.), 383n freethinkers, 323n, 439n Frémont, John C.: alternative to Lincoln in 421n; as Republican candidate in 1856, 193n Fremont, Ohio, 120n, 121n Fremont (Ohio) Journal, 121–25 Friend of Man (Utica, N.Y.), 365n Friends Burial Grounds Cemetery, Dublin, Ire., 381n Friends of Human Progress: Douglass addresses, xxviii Frothingham, Octavius Brooks, 27n, 290n, 421n: as John Brown biographer, 420, 423n,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 601

601 424, 427–28, 430–31nn, 565; John Cochrane attacks, 420, 423n, 424, 427–28, 563; writes New York Tribune, 423–24nn Fryeburg, Me., 169n Fugitive Slave Law (1850): abolitionists oppose, 37n, 440n, 500n, 506–07, 507n; arrests under, 440n; legal cases under, 372n, 507–08n; James Murray Mason proposes, 432n; U.S. Constitution permits, 42n, 432n fugitive slaves: abolitionists aid, 82n, 102n, 430n; in Boston, 12n, 92n; in Canada, 82n, 92n, 102, 470n, 500n; in Cincinnati, Ohio, 17n; in Cleveland, Ohio, 92n; in Connecticut, 73n; from Georgia, 431n, 440n; in Kansas Territory, 402n; from Kentucky, 92n; from Louisiana, 4n; in Massachusetts, 4n, 12n, 92n, 430–31n; in Michigan, 4n; from Missouri, 18n, 500n; name changes by, 102nn, New York City, 4n, 42n, 73n, 239n, 347n, 473n, 500n; in New York State, 4n, 41–42nn, 63n, 73n, 82n, 92n, 102n, 230n, 239n, 248n, 282n, 347n, 473n, 500n, 502, 503n, 507; in Ohio, 17n, 92n, 441n; rescues of, 102n, 499, 500n; rendition of, 508n; in Rochester, 41n, 63n, 102n, 230n, 502, 503n, 507; stars guide, 177; in Syracuse, N.Y., 82n, 102n, 248n, 500n Fuller, Lola, 475n: writes Douglass, xiv, 474–76 Fulton, Charles Carroll: Douglass writes: ix, 144–46, 145–46n G. P. Putnam’s Sons Publishers, 421n Gaffield, Thomas, 372 “gag rule,” 111n Gage, Matilda Joslyn, 9n Gaines High School, Cincinnati, Ohio, 487nn Galen, New York, 155n Galena, Ill., 18n, 193n, 216n, 241, 259n Gallaudet College, Washington, D.C., 391n Galveston, Tex., 175n Gamewell Fire Alarm Company, Rochester, N.Y., 505n Gangloff, J. J., 19n Gannett, William Channing, 81n Gardiner, William, 16n Garfield, James, 489n: African American rights and, 358n; appointments of, 205n, 334n, 510n; assassination of, 489n, 492n; civil service reform by, 305n; in Election of 1880, 401n, 489, 489n, 499n, 574 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 432n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

602 Garland, Augustus Hill, 483n: Douglass writes, xiv, 482–84; Freedmen’s Bank and, 482–83, 484n Garland County, Ark., 320n Garner, William, 376n Garnet, Henry Highland, 73n, 554: as abolitionist, 73n; as civil rights advocate, 179n; leads African Civilization Society, 1n, 317n; Cuban Anti-Slavery Society and, 240n; Douglass disagrees with, 1n; Freedmen’s Bureau and, 517; Mary Todd Lincoln and, 71n, 72; writes to Douglass, 543 Garrison, William Lloyd, 38–39n, 182n, 236n, 378n: abolitionists criticize, 29n, 80–81n, 206n; as American Anti-Slavery Society president, 38n, 80; Ottilie Assing and, 444, 445n; John Brown and, 36, 369n; children of, 445n; churches criticized by, 38n; supports civil rights, 285; death of, xxxiii, 568; Douglass breaks with, xxiii, 177n; as editor of Liberator, 38n, 133n, 206n; family of, 103n; supports Fifteenth Amendment, 148n; followers of, xxiii, 102n, 379n; free blacks and, 63–64nn, 102n; freedmen’s aid and, 49n; Ulysses Grant supported by, 444; in Great Britain, 38n; hydropathy and, 92n; Benjamin Lundy and, 38n; Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and, 64n; mobs attack, 11; pacifism and, 53n; Wendell Phillips and, 53n; Parker Pillsbury criticizes, 29n, 80–81n; retirement of, 38n; Santo Domingo annexation and, 185; George Thompson and, 38n; U.S. Constitution and, 13n, 38n; women’s rights and, 38n; World’s AntiSlavery Convention and, 53n. See also Garrisonians, Liberator Garrisonians: abolitionist critics of, 206n, 231n, 364n, 365nn, 440n; bazaars of, 103n; capital punishment opposed by, 382n; Maria W. Chapman and, 80n; churches and, 38n; disunionism and, 53; Douglass breaks with, xxiii, 53n, 64n, 74n, 81n, 177n, 382n, 406n; Douglass criticized by, xxiii, 37n, 64n; free blacks and, 63–64n, 102n, 405–06nn, 484n; in Great Britain, 51n, 63n; Julia Griffiths (Crofts) attacked by, 37n; in Ireland, 381nn; in Massachusetts, 53n, 364n, 378n; in New York State, xxiii, 74n; in Ohio, 382n; newspapers of, 29n, 38n, 63n, 67n, 79–80nn, 91n, 97n, 119, 133–34nn, 142n, 179n, 182n, 203n,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 602

INDEX 206n, 380, 381–382nn, 405–07nn, 463n, 519; pacifism and, 53n, 102n, 133n, 382n; Parker Pillsbury criticizes, 29n; Quakers and, 381n; in Rhode Island, xxiii; in Rochester, xxiii; temperance and, 382n; U.S. Constitution and, 53n; Wendell Phillips as, 53n; in western states, 99n, 382nn; women as, 405n; women’s rights and, 53n, 382nn Gateshead-on-Tyne, Eng., 291n, 551–52 Gay, Sydney H., 80n, 134n, 397n Gelpcke, Herman, 347n Gelpcke v. City of Dubuque (1862), 347n Genesee County, N.Y., 345n Genesee River, 338n Geneva, N.Y., 231n, 290, 341n, 522 Geneva, Switz., 106n, 561 Geneva Treaty, 106n Genius of Temperance, 365n Genius of Universal Emancipation (Baltimore, Md.), 38n George, Henry, 458n Georgetown, D.C., 56n, 145n, 189n, 210n, 371n, 391n, 432n Georgetown University, 391n Georgia: African Americans in, 274, 401n, 548; British travelers in, 326n; Civil War in, 81n, 303n, 385n; Democratic party in, 303–04nn; free blacks in, 224n, 403n; fugitive slaves from, 431n, 440n; government of, 304n; Ku Klux Klan in, 195n, 224, 303n, 360n, 403n, 548; lawyers in, 497n; mob violence in, 101, 290; newspapers in, 401n, 548; racism in, 274, 401n; Reconstruction in, 81n, 101, 115n, 290, 303–04nn, 360n, 401n; Republicans in, 400, 401n, 403n; Sea Islands of, 81n; secession of, 360n; slaveholders in, 224n, 303n, 403n, 440n; slavery in, 81n, 302n; slaves in, 401n, 403n, 431n, 440n Gerard, Balthazer, 122–23, 125n German Americans, xxvi: in Boston, 94n; in Buffalo, N.Y., 452n; in Civil War, 328n, 385n; in Connecticut, 95n; in Louisiana, 230n; in Massachusetts, 94–95nn; in Missouri, 328n, 385n; in New Jersey, 446n, 454n; in New York City, 158n, 446n, 452, 455n; in New York State, 95n, 63n, 341n, 452n; prejudice against, 276; Republican party and, 327, 328n; in Rochester, N.Y., 63n, 341n, 452n; in Texas, 446n; in Union Army, 385n; in Wisconsin, 328n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Germany: immigrants from, 7n, 18n, 63n, 94–95nn, 158nn, 230n, 341n, 385n, 452n, 454n, 456n, 484n; revolutions in, 328n, 385n, 413n; fight Romans, 376n; U.S. relations with, 401n Gerrit Smith: A Biography (Frothingham), 420, 421n–22nn, 422, 430–31nn Gettysburg, Pa., Battle of, 2n, 309n, 328n, 339n Gibbons, Marianna, 545, 569 Giddings, Joshua Reed, 110, 111n, 440n Gilbert, Olive, 103n Gilbert, Theodosia, 440n Gilded Age: politics of, xxiv; scandals of, 70n Gilmanton Theological Seminary, Gilmanton, N.H., 29n Gilmore, Hiram S., 320n Gist, William H., 309n Gladstone, William E., 273n Glasgow, Scot.: Methodists in, 255 Glen Haven Water Cure, Glen Haven, N.Y., 440n Glenwood Cemetery, Washington, D.C., 371n Gloucester, James A., 319n Gloucester, James N., 316, 319n Gloucester Agricultural and Industrial Institute, Gloucester, Va., 314n Gloucestershire, Eng., 82n Godding, William W., 351n Godey’s Ladies Book (Philadelphia, Pa.), 362n Godwin, Henry F., 557 Golden Rule, 368, 389n Good Government (New York City), 599n Goodell, William, 364, 365n Goodman, Charles, 370, 371n Gordon, H. A., 542 Gordon, John B., 299, 303n, 304n, 358 Goutier, Stanislas, 535 Government Printing Office. See U.S. Government Printing Office Governor’s Guard Hall, Denver, Co., 241, 242n gradual emancipation, 193n: churches and, 440n; in Puerto Rico, 241n Grafton, Mass., 365n Graham, Joseph, 57, 58n Grand Army of the Republic, 88n, 106, 107n Grand Union Hotel, Saratoga, N.Y., 411n Granite Building, Rochester, N.Y., 41n Grant, Julia Dent, 225n, 372n Grant, Ulysses S., 97n, 241, 242n, 391n: administration of, xxiv, xxix, 97n, 105, 128n,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 603

603 187n, 191n, 296n, 529; appointments of, xxix, 67n, 115n, 127–28nn, 129, 138, 141n, 146n, 149n, 155nn, 187n, 189n, 194n, 208n, 228n, 259n, 318n, 333–34nn, 360n, 372n, 401n, 403n, 501n, 532–33, 538–39; black rights protected by, 105n, 133n, 199, 401n; James Buchanan and, 193n; Civil Rights Act (1875) supported by, 295n; as Civil War officer, 97n, 121, 191n, 193n, 296n, 385n; corruption allegations against, 112n, 191n, 195–96n, 318n, 373; Cuban insurgency and, 194–95n, 196, 240, 240–41n; Democratic opponents of, 185, 292n; Douglass meets, xxx; Douglass supports, xxiv, xxxi, 97n, 191, 196, 198n, 199, 208n, 217, 218n, 448; Douglass writes, x, 169, 401n, 538; Election of 1868 and, 87n, 96, 97n, 101, 104, 144n, 520; Election of 1872 and, xxviii, xxxi, 16n, 23n, 97n, 535; Election of 1876 and, xxv, 97n; Freedmen’s Bureau and, 3n; William Lloyd Garrison supports, 444; inauguration of, 110, 112n, 133n; Andrew Johnson and, 112n, 519; Ku Klux Klan suppressed by, 195n; Liberal Republicans criticize, 112n; in Mexican War, 97n; mob violence suppressed by, 289n, 292, 293–95nn, 299; Native Americans and, 296n, 318n; nepotism accusations against, 195n, 197, 199, 200n, 208n, 372n; as president, xxx; protectionism and, 207n; racial attitudes of, 219; Reconstruction policies of, xxx, 97n, 199, 289n, 294–95nn, 305n, 307, 328n; reelection of, xxiv, xxviii, 536–37; Santo Domingo annexation desired, xxx, 128n, 133n, 146n, 183n, 185n, 201n, 219–20, 219n, 232n, 241, 333n; feuds with Charles Sumner, xxiv, 184–85, 184n, 216, 219n, 232n; third term sought by, 220n, 444, 489n, 498–99nn, 510n Grant, Ulysses, Jr., 191n Grant Parish, La., 291, 294n Granvelle, Antoine Perrenot de, 123, 125n Granville, Cardinal. See Granvelle, Antoine Perrenot de Gray, John A., 553 “Great Bodies Move Slowly” (Douglass), 499n Great Britain: abolitionists in, xxiii, 4n, 8n, 13n, 36–38nn, 46–47n, 48, 49–51nn, 92n, 103n, 177n, 206n, 271n, 288, 365n, 369n, 407n, 470–71, 512, 547; African colonies of, 315; Alabama claims dispute of, 133n, 136–37,

5/17/23 2:36 PM

604 Great Britain (continued) 137n, 187n, 194–95n, 484n; Americans revolt against, 279n, 407n; army of, 326nn; census of, 49n; Civil War and, 37n, 50n, 133n, 136–37, 137n, 187n, 391n; colonies of, 326n, 333n; Conservative party of, 273n; Crimean War and, 367n; Creole case and, 111n; Douglass in, xxiii, 36n, 42n, 51n, 81n, 103nn, 124n, 268n, 301, 324, 327n, 366, 434n, 502n, 504, 512–13, 563; free blacks visit, 4n, 51n, 92n, 63n, 359n, 407n; Dissenters in, 270, 273n; immigrants from, 248n, 458nn; imperial growth of, 551, 566, 571; Liberal party of, 81n, 273n; Methodists in, 103n, 255, 376n; merchants in, 49n; ministers in, 47–48, 269; newspapers and magazines in, 50n, 79, 80n, 270, 272–73nn, 324, 424–25, 443n, 444, 544; parliament of, 13n, 79n, 81n, 326n; postal system of, 168n; Presbyterian Church in, 92n; prostitutes in, 326nn; Quakers in, 77n, 248n, 500n; Reform Bill in, 79; religious conflict in, 79, 273n; Roman Catholic Church in, 78; schools in, 37n, 49n, 325, 435n; slave trade abolished by, 13n; suffrage in, 79, 81n; temperance movement in, 49–50n, 271n; Unitarians in, 47–48, 49–50nn, 80, 80n, 269n, 272n, 325n, 369n; U.S. relations with, 194n, 279n, 303n, 363n, 401n, 432n; in War of 1812, 278n; Whig party of, 81n; women’s rights in, 49n, 362 Great South, The (King), 326n Greece, 180n, 439n Greeley, Horace, 54n, 126: abolition opposed by, 195n; advocates Civil War peace negotiations, 192; as congressman, 127n; Jefferson Davis and, 52; Democratic party and, 188n, 218n; Mary Todd Lincoln, 72; New York Tribune and, 54n, 195n, 201n, 397n; presidential campaign of, 127n, 188n, 217n, 278n; Reconstruction policies and, 195n; recommends leniency for Jefferson Davis, 37n, 55n; Republican party and, 54n, 127n, 196n; Whig party and, 195n Green, Edmund Fisk, 481n Green, Shields, 63n Green, William H., 501, 501n Greenback party, 335n, 374n, 445, 446n, 466n Greene, John, 323n Greene, Martha Gertrude “Gertie.” See Sherman, Martha “Gertie” Green

Y8204-Douglass.indb 604

INDEX Greene, Martha W., 323n, 420n: as abolitionist, xxiii, 323; as Douglass confidante, 323, 523, 566; visits Douglass, 419n; Douglass visits, 509n; Douglass writes, xiii, xxii, 413–15, 493, 532; Helen Pitts writes, 493n; residence of, 493, 495n; writes Douglass, xii–xiv, xxii, 322–24, 342–44, 417–20, 493–95, 513, 523–24, 526, 528–29, 532, 534, 536, 538, 540–41, 550–51, 558–59, 566, 572 Greene, Mary (“Minnie”), 417–18, 419n Greene, Mary Hodges, 323n Greene, William Arnold, 323n Greene County, N.C., 7n Greener, Richard T., 404, 407n, 473, 473–74nn, 477n, 480n, 490 Greenough, Annie L. See Moulton, Annie G. Greenough, Harriet H., 267n: visits Douglass, 545; writes Douglass, xi, 266–68, 543 Greenough, William H., 267n Greenville, Ill., 210n Greenwich, R.I., 417, 572 “Greenwood Grace.” See Lippincott, Sarah Jane Clarke Gregory, Nelson B., 433, 434n Grey, Hannah, 326n Grey, John, 326n Griffing, Charles S., 99n Griffing, Josephine S. W., 99n: Douglass writes, viii, 98–100 Griffiths, Anne J., 244n Griffiths, Eliza. See Dick, Elizabeth “Eliza” Griffiths Griffiths, George Washington: Douglass writes, x, 243–44 Griffiths, Julia, 36–37n, 571: abolitionist activity of, xxiii, 37n, 100, 471; Autographs for Freedom edited by, 508n; Douglass writes, 35; Douglass’s children and, 101, 545, 550–51; Douglass’s friendship with, xxiii, 35, 36–37n, 48, 103nn, 366, 367n, 512, 526, 542; family of, 48, 562, 566; friends of, 549, 555; fundraising by, 44, 508n; Garrisonians criticize, 37n, 406n; marries, 37n; North Star and, 1, 36n; religious views of, 530; resides in Rochester, 45n, 100, 526; school of, 547–48, 552; Gerrit Smith and, 290, 291n, 533; writes to Douglass, viii, xii, xxii, 100–103, 366–67, 471, 513, 518, 526, 530, 533, 542, 545, 548, 550–52, 559–560, 562 Griffiths, Thomas, 244n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Grimes, Leonard A., 85n Grimké, Angelina, 369n Grimké, Francis J., 235n, 405n, 457n Grimké, Sarah, 369n Griswold, Henry A., 570 Grosvenor, Cyrus Pitt, 364, 365n Grosvenor-Dale Cotton Manufacturing Company, 414n Guadeloupe, 261n, 536 Guernesey, 476n Guiteau, Charles, 489n Guthrie, James, 391n habeas corpus, 303n Hadcock, Sarah A., 533 Hagen, Albert D., 568 Hagerstown, Md., 18n, 156n, 204n, 256n Hahn, Michael, 228n Haiti, 535: emigration to, 201n, 317n, 466, 467nn; Dominican Republic and, 190n, 333n; missionaries to, 206n; revolution against French rule over, 467n, 561; slavery in, 467n; U.S. ambassadors to, 67n, 114, 115–16, 116n, 126, 127n, 129, 130–31nn, 132, 134–35, 135n, 137–38, 351n, 357, 526, 532; U.S. recognition of, 201n; U.S. relations with, 401n, 487n Haitian Emigration Bureau, 201n Hake, Adolph von, 449n Hake, Florence Fehr von, 449n Hakodadi, Japan, 144n Hale, John Parker, 254, 254–55n Halifax, Eng.: abolitionists in, 37n, 79, 103n; churches in, 103n, 269, 272n; Douglass in, 324; Methodists in, 103n; Unitarians in, 272n Hall, Henry N., 555 Halliday, Samuel B., 316, 318n Hallowell, Jeffries, 345n Hallowell, Mary Post, 28n, 238n, 461, 463n Hallowell, William R., 237n, 344, 345n, 461, 463n; Douglass writes, 536, 557 Hambleton, John, 204n Hambleton, Samuel, 204n Hamburg, Ger., 63n, 410 Hamilton, Alexander, 396–97nn Hamilton, William T., 153, 156n Hamilton, N.Y., 507n Hamilton, Ontario, 212n Hamilton College, Clinton, N.Y., 1n, 26n, 421n “Hamlet” (Shakespeare), 159n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 605

605 Hammond, Abram A., 131n Hammond, Charles A., 355–56n, 398n: writes Douglass, xx, 355–36 Hammond, Elizabeth L., 552 Hampton, Charles, 359n Hampton, Wade II, 359n Hampton, Wade III, 357–58, 359–60n, 375 Hampton Falls, N.H., 430 Hancock, Winfield Scott, 489n Handy, James A., 556 Hanford, E., 526 Hankow, China, 338n Hanna, William W., 552 Hardin, Benjamin, 19n Hardin, Caroline, 19n Hardin, Nellie Davidson, 19n Hardin, William Jefferson, 17, 19n Hardy, Neal, 88n Hardy, William, 5333 Hargreaves, James, 381n Harlow, Desire, 377, 378n Harlow, Ephraim, 377, 378n Harlow, Zilpha, 377, 378n Harmony Grove, Framingham, Mass., 13n Harper, Fletcher, 443n Harper, James, 443n Harper, John, 443n Harper, Wesley, 443n Harper & Brothers Publishers, 442, 443n Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (New York City), 443n Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization (New York City), 443n Harpers Ferry Armory, 63n Harpers Ferry Raid (1859): blacks as raiders, 572, John Brown leads, 37n, 62, 63nn, 77n, 248n, 315n, 319n, 420–21, 421–23nn, 424–25, 428n, 430n, 432–33n, 458n, 486n; James Buchanan’s response to, 124n; congressional investigation of, 38n, 432–33n, 563; Douglass and, xxviii, 62, 63n, 124nn, 142, 420, 422–24nn, 429, 431–432n; Hugh Forbes and, 432n; Robert E. Lee and, 124n; Republicans respond to, 432n; “Secret Six” and, 190n, 369n, 430–31nn; slave response to, 433n; Gerrit Smith and, xxviii. 33–37nn, 35–36, 62, 63n, 420–21, 421–22n, 424–26, 428n, 432–33nn; tactics of, 425, 425–26n, 430nn Harris, Ira, 53n Harris, James H., 152n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

606 Harris, Jonathan, 150 Harris, S. L., 543 Harrisburg, Pa., 406n Harrisburg (Pa.) Telegraph, 406n Harrison, Benjamin, 227n, 246n, 335n, 403n Harrison, William H., 124n Hartford, Conn., 482n: Douglass speaks in, 73n; free blacks in, 81n, 260n; merchants of, 260n; schools of, 182n, 449n Hartford Convention (1814), 278n Hartford Female Seminary, 182n Hartford Fire Insurance Company, Hartford, Conn., 449n Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass., 82nn, 369n, 421n Harvard Gymnasium, Cambridge, Mass., 102n Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Mass., 259n, 359n, 370n, 385n, 491n Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Mass., 190n, 426n, 443n, 498n Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.: faculty of, 102n, 116n 194n, 232n, 448; Charles Follens and, 448n; students of, 12n, 53n, 82nn, 116n, 156n, 228n, 351n, 370n, 378–80nn, 407n, 421n, 430, 477n, 482n, 491n Haskins, Emma, 573 Hathaway, Joseph C., 441n Haussman, Georges-Eugène, 50n Havana, Cuba, 437n Haverhill Academy, Boston, Mass., 237n Hawaiian Islands, 401n Hawes, John H.: Douglass writes, ix, 143–44 Hawkins, Jacob, 224, 228n Hawkinstown, Va., 425n Hawley Street School, Binghamton, N.Y., 248n Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 232n Hay, John, 363n Hayden, Lewis, 441n Hayes, Lucy, 460n, 470 Hayes, Rutherford B., 328–29n, 391n, 470, 553, 563: abolitionists criticize, 445–46n; administration of, 370, 370n, 385n, 560, 562; appointments of, xxv, xxxiii, 115n, 141n, 305n, 327, 328–29nn, 351nn, 399–401, 403n, 569; character of, 366, 368, 369n; civil service reform by, 305n, 328n, 369n, 400; in Civil War, 369n; appoints Douglass marshal, xxv, xxxiii, 348, 348n, 350–51nn, 352, 354, 356, 362n, 374, 384, 386n, 397n, 459, 472n, 510n, 554–56; Douglass writes, xiii,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 606

INDEX 399–400, 563, 568; Election of 1876 and, 335, 343n; hard currency policies of, 369n; as Ohio governor, 306n, 369n; Wendell Phillips criticizes, 373n; ends Reconstruction, 229n, 328–29n, 354, 354–55n, 357–58, 359–60nn, 369n, 373n, 375, 409; religious faith of, 460n; as Republican party leader, 322, 355n; Southern supporters of, 454n; vetoes by, 472–73n; writes Douglass, xii, 374 Hayman, J. J., 19n Hazeby, J. C., 573 Heath, Mass., 365n Hebron, Conn., 99n Heidingsfeld, Ger., 413n Helper, Hinton, 369n Henrietta, James A., 513 Henrietta, N.Y., 78n Henson, Josiah, 563 Herald of Freedom (Concord, N.H.), 29n Herald of Freedom (Wilmington, Ohio), 320n Herkimer County, N.Y., 26n, 235n Herod, 171n Herwig, Philip F., 223, 225n Hesse-Darmstadt, Ger., 454n Heureaux, Ulises, 332n Hewett, R. C.: Douglass writes, xi, 291–96 Hewlett, Aaron M., 102n Hewlett, Emanuel Molyneaux, 102n, 245, 246n Hewlett, Paul Molyneaux, 102n, 542 Hewlett, Virginia J., 102n, 151 Heyne, “Elle” Werpup, 453, 455n Heyne, Johannes F., 455n Hiawatha (Longfellow), 77n Higginson, Thomas W., 159n: in Civil War, 506n; Free Religious Association and, 323n; supports Harpers Ferry Raid, 430–31nn Higginson School, Salem, Mass., 405n Hill, Edward, 80n Hill, James, 490, 493n Hillsborough, Md., 32, 204n, 210–11nn, 416n Hillsdale, D.C., 329 Hillsdale School, Washington, D.C., 102n, 210n Hilton, Henry, 409, 411n Hindus, 47, 49n Hinton, Richard J.: Douglass writes, xiii, 457–58, 513 Hiram, Ohio, 97n, 488n Hiram Institute, Ohio, 488n Historical Jesus and the Theological Christ, The (Carpenter), 50n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (Wilson), 417, 419n History of the United States (Bancroft), 194n History of Western Massachusetts (Holland), 77n History of Woman Suffrage (Stanton, Anthony, and Gage), 9n Hoar, E. R., 430n Hoar, George Frisbie, 491n: Douglass writes, xiv, 490–93 Hoboken, N.J., 85n, 93–4, 94–95nn, 157, 158n, 262–63, 263n, 413n, 448–49nn; immigrants in, 456n; Ottilie Assing resides in, 327, 450n, 453, 454n, 566 Hodges, George P., 45n Hodges, Lucretia, 417, 420n Hoffman, John T., 192, 194n, 199, 200n Holbrook, Alva M., 229n Holden, William W., 175n Holland, Josiah Gilbert, 75, 77n Holley, Myron, 249n Holley, Sally, 519 Holme Hill Farm, Talbot County, Md., 33n Holy Roman Empire, 125n Home Life (Ware), 82n Home Missionary Society, London, Eng., 51 “Home Rule” (Hayes policy), 355n Homer, Neb., 561 Homer, Winslow, 95n Homer Academy, Homer, N.Y., 155n Homoeopathic Medical College, Philadelphia, Pa., 509n Honeoye, N.Y., 365n, 494n Hooker, Isabella Beecher, 180, 182–83n Hooker, John, 182n Hopkins, Graham P., 552 Horticultural Hall, Philadelphia, Pa., xxx, 160, 164, 167n Hospital of the Russian Cross, Lyon, Fr., 434–35nn Hoswell, Charlotte P. Rhodes, 415n Hoswell, Charlotte R., 414, 415n Hoswell, William, 415n Hot Springs, Ark., 319n Hottentot (hoikhoi), 300, 304n Houghton Mifflin and Company, Boston, Mass., 25n Hours of Thought on Sacred Things (Martineau), 325n Houston and Central Railroad, 33n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 607

607 Howard, Charles H.: writes Douglass, x, 205–06 Howard, Merrimon, 490, 492n Howard, O. O., 2n, 84–85, 105, 151n: American Missionary Association and, 533, 535; as civil rights supporter, xxiv; in Civil War, 544; Congregational Church and, 84–85, 86n, 169–70; court martial of, xxxii; recommends Charles R. Douglass, 114; Cuban rebels supported by, 252; Douglass writes, ix, xi, 171–74, 296–97, 544; family of, 205n; Freedman’s Bank and, 296–97, 297n; Freedmen’s Bureau headed by, 1, 2–3nn, 61, 65–66, 67n, 68, 85, 86n, 88–89, 114, 115n, 173n, 251n, 517, 545; as Howard University president, 2n, 86n, 250, 251n, 311–12, 313nn, 540; as lyceum speaker, 110, 111n; Native Americans and, 2n; photograph of, xxxviii; Gerrit Smith and, 252; writes Douglass, ix, xi, 169–71, 288–89, 296, 297n, 533, 535, 545 Howard, William E., 210, 212n Howard Fraternal Union, Washington, D.C., 521 Howard University, Washington, D.C., 102n: administration of, xxxii, 85n, 311–12, 312– 13nn, 318n, 415n, 545; American Missionary Association and, 311, 316; Congregational Church and, 311–12, 313n; Congress charters, 313n; criticism of, 316; Douglass speaks at, 239n; Douglass supports, xxv, xxxi–xxxii, 86n, 250, 251n, 280, 311–12, 312–13nn, 330n, 407n, 496n, 542; faculty of, 251n, 313n, 407n, 474n, 480n, 490, 492n, 496nn; financial crisis in, 313nn, 540; founding of, 251n, 313n; Freedmen’s Hospital and, 562; O. O. Howard and, 2n, 86n, 250, 251n, 311–12, 313nn, 540; landholdings of, 313n, 395n; John M. Langston and, 67n, 114–15nn, 211n, 251n, 280, 313nn; law department of, xxxi, 67n, 114, 115nn, 243n, 260n, 313n, 358n, 407n, 474n, 477n, 479n, 490; medical department of, 46n, 491–92nn, 496nn; Miner School and, 406n; neighborhood of, 478n; Gerrit Smith supports, 250, 252–53, 253n, 280; students of, 248n, 259, 260n, 358n, 487n, 491n, 496n, 531; white administrators dominate, 251n, 313n, 415n Howe, Frank T., 552 Howe, Joseph, 539 Howe, Julia Ward, 190n, 369n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

608 Howe, Samuel Gridley, 190n: biography of, 430n; Douglass writes, x, 190, 534; supports Harpers Ferry Raid, 430–32nn; on Santo Domingo Commission, 183n, 190, 190n Howitt, William, 367n Hudson, Erasmus D., 552 Hudson, Henry N., 54 Hudson, Ohio, 37n, 423n Hughes, Robert B., 370, 371n Hugo, Abel, 485n Hugo, Adèle Foucher, 476n Hugo, Eugène, 475n Hugo, Joseph-Leopold, 475n Hugo, Sophie-Françoise, 475n Hugo, Victor, 475, 475–76n Huguenot Institute, New York, N.Y., 316n Hull, Eng., 333n Humboldt, Alexander von, 377, 378n Hunter, David, 496n Huntingdonshire, Eng., 366n Huntington, Hezekiah, 449n Huntington, Katherine S., 448, 449n Huntington, Ind., 494n Huntington, La., 449n Huntington County, Pa., 155n Huntsville, Ala., 321n Huron County, Ohio, 356n, 428n Hutchinson, Abigail, 288n, 415n, 476 Hutchinson, Asa, 288n Hutchinson, John W.: as abolitionist, 288; tour with Douglass, 288n; Douglass writes, xi, 287–88 Hutchinson, Judson, 288n Hutchinson Family Singers, 287, 415n, 436n Hyde Park, Mass., 535 hydropathy, 92n, 413n, 440n Hyperion (Longfellow), 232n Hyzer, F. O., 527 Idaho, 2n Idaho Springs, Co., 242n Illinois: abolitionists in, 440–41nn, 449n; African Americans in, 403n, 407n; Baptists in, 364n; Black Laws in, 7n, 215–16n; Civil War and, 18n, 259n; Democratic party in, 156n; Douglass in, xxvii–xxviii, 10n, 18n, 35, 44n, 63n, 75, 76n, 153, 154n, 201, 205, 209n, 211–12nn, 214n, 345n; Douglass lectures in, 78n, 210n, 235n, 237–38nn, 323n; free blacks in, xxvi, 7n, 10n, 18n; lawyers of, 60n, 107n,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 608

INDEX 156n, 259n, 403n; Liberal Republican party in, 51n, 156n; mob violence in, 441n; newspapers of, 35–36, 37n, 61, 63n, 154n, 243n, 396, 397–98nn, 423nn, 437n, 535; racism in, 213, 216n; Republican party in, 60n, 107n, 156n; schools in, 213, 243n, 498n; Underground Railroad in, 7n, 18n; Whig party in, 51n, 259n Illinois Central Railroad, 214, 216n immigrants, 102n: as abolitionists, 26n; from China, 167, 168–69n, 228n, 394, 395n, 465; in Confederate Army, 513; from England, 77n, 102n, 248n, 458n; from France, 123n; from Germany, 7n, 18n, 63n, 94–95nn, 158n, 230n, 341n, 385n, 452n, 454n, 456n, 484n; from Greece, 439n; from Hungary, 456n; in Illinois, 102n; from Ireland, 42n, 382n; from Jamaica, 255, 255n, 260n; in Louisiana, 228n, 402n; in Maryland, 18n; in New Jersey, 95n, 446n, 454n, 456n; in New York City, 95n; in New York State, 42n, 63n, 95n, 102–03; restrictions against, 499n; in Rochester, N.Y., 63n, 102–03; from Scotland, 107n, 418n; from Switzerland, 200n; from Wales, 244n Impartial Citizen (Syracuse, N.Y.), 500n Impey, Catherine, 383n In the Courts of Memory (Moulton), 268n Independent (New York City), 67n, 68, 263n: articles in, 135, 166n, 277n; Henry Ward Beecher edits, 69n; Henry C. Bowen owns, 277n; Douglass writes for Joshua Leavitt and, 365n; Theodore Tilton edits, 22n, 53n, 69n, 126, 127n, 132, 133–34nn, 149n, 188n, 522, 526 India: education in, 47, 49–50n, 325; missionaries in, 50–51nn; Sepoy Rebellion in, 367n; U.S. relations with, 336 India Contagious Diseases Acts (1864), 326n Indian National Congress, 383n Indian Ocean, 367n Indian Queen Hotel, Washington, D.C., 1n Indiana,: abolitionists in, 99n; Baptists in, 88n; Civil War in, 215n; Democratic party in, 112n, 215n; Douglass speaks in, xxxiii, 32n, 43, 335–36nn, 497, 498n, 550; Douglass mobbed in, 87; Douglass speaks in, 88n, 210n, 214n, 323n, 503, 504nn, 573–74; free blacks in, 16n, 31–32, 154n; Free Soil party in, 112n; government of, 32n; Know Nothing

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX party in, 4n; lawyers in, 112n, 131n, 215n; newspapers in, 4n, 32n; Quakers in, 88n, 112n; Republican party in, xxxiii, 4n, 32n, 111n-12, 131n, 215n, 503, 505n; schools in, 154n, 226n, 335n; Unitarians in, 112n; Whig party in, 4n, 112n, 131n Indianapolis, Ind., 32n, 44n, 87, 88nn, 131n, 504n Indians. See Native Americans industrial schools. See manual-labor colleges Ingersoll, L. D, 558 Ingraham, James H., 22, 225–26n Inquirer (London, Eng.), 79, 80n, 324 Institute for Colored Youth, Philadelphia, Pa., 248n Institute Hall, Jamestown, N.Y., 76n Institution for the Education of Colored Youth, Washington, D.C., 406n International Abolitionist Federation, 326n Interstate Industrial Exposition Building, Chicago, Ill., 491n Invasion at Harpers Ferry, U.S. Senate Report, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., Report no. 278 (1860), 429 Iowa: Baptists in, 364n; Douglass speaks in, 36n, 105n, 129n, 154n, 237–38nn; farmers of, 360n; government of, 348n; newspapers of, 356n; railroads in, 216n; Republican party in, 347–48nn; schools in, 360n Ireland: abolitionists in, 381–82, 381n, 383n, 538; Home Rule and, 273n, 383n, 534; immigrants from, 42n, 382n, 383n; nationalism in, 201n; Quakers in, 381n, 383nn; Protestantism in, 383n; Unitarians in, 325n Irish Americans: as abolitionists, 382n; as farmers, 382n, in New York State, 138; in Ohio, 382n; prejudice against, 276; in Rochester, 42n; as slave overseers, 402n Irish Monthly (Dublin, Ire.), 383n Irish Protestant Home Rule Association, 383n Irving, Washington, 231n, 415n Irvington, Indianapolis, Ind., 88n, 112n Isabella (queen of Spain), 2n, 124n Islam, 394, 395nn Israel, 171n Italy, 7n, 46–47: Spanish possessions in, 125n; unification of, 486n Ithaca, N.Y., 156n Ives, H. C., 341n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 609

609 Jabez Pitt Campbell College (Jackson State University), Jackson, Miss., 161n Jackson, Andrew, 399n: appointments by, 391; Democratic supporters of, 124, 285n, 391n, 432n; in War of 1812, 376n Jackson, F. M., 557 Jackson, Fanny M., 548 Jackson, James C., 440n Jackson, Miss., 161n, 337n, 402n Jackson (Miss.) Colored Citizen, 16n, 59n Jacksonville, Fla., 43n, 240n, 405n, 457n Jamaica: free blacks in, 224n, 359n; emigration to, 500n; immigrants from, 255, 255n; missionaries to, 73n, 206n, 255n James Cunningham Son & Company, Rochester, N.Y., 42n James Martineau, Theologian and Teacher: A Study of His Life and Thought (Carpenter), 50n James River, 55n Jamestown, N.Y., 75, 76n, 87n Japan, 56n, 144n, 539 Japanese Commission, 56n Jefferson, Joseph, 413–14 Jefferson, Thomas, 396n Jefferson City, Mo., 43n Jefferson College, Cannonsburg, Pa., 406n Jefferson County, Miss., 492n Jefferson County Board of Health, Louisville, Ky., 243n Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Pa., 120n Jent, George C., 558 Jericho, N.Y., 74n Jerry Rescue, Syracuse, N.Y.: abolitionists and, 82n, 282n, 500n; Douglass and, 499, 500n; free blacks and, 102n; Gerrit Smith and, 281, 282n, 500n Jerry Rescue celebrations: Douglass speaks at, 282n; Gerrit Smith speaks at, 280; in Syracuse, N.Y., 282, 500n Jersey (ship), 407n Jerusalem, 394 Jewell, Marshall, 501n: Douglass writes, 501; writes Douglass, xiv, 501, 573 Jews, 123n, 323n Jo Daviess County, Ill., 242n Jocelyn, S. S., 206n “John Brown” (Douglass lecture), xxxi–xxxii, 260, 261n, 548, 557

5/17/23 2:36 PM

610 John Brown and His Men (Hinton), 458n “John Brown’s Body” (song), 381n, 505, 506n “John Brown’s March” (Webb), 381n Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md., 158n Johnson, Andrew, 6–7n, 185, 229n, 512: African Americans write, 5–6; Alabama claims negotiations and, 137n; appointments by, 56n, 65n, 97n, 141n, 194n, 225n; colonization advocated by, 6; Democrats support, 71n; Douglass criticizes, xxvii, 5–6, 7nn, 30n, 36n, 64n, 69; Douglass writes, vii, 5–8; meets Douglass, 1n, vii, xxvii, 480n; Election of 1866 and, 518; Freedmen’s Bureau and, 203nn, 60n, 64–66, 68, 81n, 86n, 284n; Ulysses S. Grant and, 112n, 519; impeachment trial of, xxviii, 7n, 84, 85–86nn, 89, 89n, 122, 128n, 155–56nn, 195n, 318n, 491n, 519–21; as Lincoln’s vice president, 356n; likens himself to Moses, 65; pardoning policy of, 81n; racism of, 5–6, 7n, 26; Reconstruction policies of, 21n, 55n, 166n; Radical Republicans oppose, 6–7nn, 21n, 24n, 52, 97n, 106–07n, 141n, 166n, 215n, 259n, 348n; Edwin Stanton removed by, 6n, 85n, 97n; as Tennessee War Governor, 65n; vetoes by, 14n, 31n, 65n; as vice-presidential candidate, 65n Johnson, Edward, 573 Johnson, George, 535 Johnson, John, 527 Johnson, Mundy M., xxxiii, 30–31, 231n Johnson, Oliver, 80n, 132, 133n: Douglass writes, 526; edits Anti-Slavery Bugle, 382n; Free Religious Association and, 323n; edits National Anti-Slavery Standard, 80n, 134n Johnson, Reverdy, 137n, 363n, 440n Johnson, William P., 90, 92n Johnson-Clarendon Treaty. See Alabama claims Johnstown, N.Y., 8n, 356n Jones, Absalom, 166n Jones, Arthur, 553 Jones, Benjamin S., 382n Jones, Davis, 524 Jones, Jane H., 382n Jones, John, 7–8n: writes to Douglass, 109; writes Andrew Johnson, 5–6 Jones, John W., 498n Joy Street Church, Boston, Mass., 4n Juba, Harriet, 406n Judaism, 394

Y8204-Douglass.indb 610

INDEX Judea, 171n Julian, George W., 110, 112n, 128n Julian, Laura Giddings, 110, 111–12n Juliet (fictional character), 399n Junius, N.Y., xxviii Juvenile Anti-Slavery Society, 378–79nn Kaaba, 395n Kagi, John Henri, 63n, 424–25, 425–26 Kansas (state): African Americans in, 315n; Exodus of African Americans to, xxxiii, 464, 466–67n; Civil War and, 423n; economic conditions in, 436n Kansas City, Mo., 222n Kansas Freedmen’s Relief Association, 463n Kansas State Historical Society, 567 Kansas Territory: abolitionists in, 37n, 201n, 423n, 425–26n, 466n; admission as a free state, 166n; African Americans in, 463n; John Brown in, 37n, 201n, 423n, 424, 425n, 457–58, 466n; free state struggle in, 37n, 115n, 166n, 190n, 201n, 423n, 424, 425–26n, 457–58nn; fugitive slaves in, 402n; newspaper reporters in, 201n, 425–26nn, 458nn; Republican party in, 115n Kansas-Nebraska Act: Free Soil party opposes, 27n, 111n; Missouri Compromise repealed by, 13n; Republican party opposes, 13n, 215n, 385n; Whig party and, 4n Katharina: Her Life and Mine, in a Poem (Holland), 75, 77n Kauffman, Samuel F., 395n Kavasales, Philipangos, 439n Keckley, Elizabeth, 70–71n: Douglass assists xxviii; Douglass writes, viii, 70–73, 518; photograph of, xxxvi; writes Douglass, 72–73 Keckley, James, 70n Kelley, William D., 52, 53n: labor movement and, 151n; recommends Charles R. Douglass, 114, 128, 151 Kellogg, William Pitt: Republican faction led by, 224–26nn, 228–29nn, 302–03n, 307n, 309n; resignation of, 293–94nn Kellogg v. Warmouth et al, 229n Kendall, Amos, 388, 391n Kendall, George W., 229n Kendall, James, 377, 379n Kendall, Julia, 377, 379n Kennan, Jarius, 356n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Kennebec. Me., 334n Kennedy, J. D., 480n Kensington, Ill., 291n Kent, John Howe, 488n Kent County, Md., 73n Kent House, East Greenwich, R.I., 419n Kentucky: abolitionists in, 182n, 193n, 441n, 486n; African Americans in, xxxiii, 352–53, 353n, 358n; Baptists in, 356n; British travelers in, 326n; Civil War in, 244n, 356n, 485, 486n; Democrats in, 244n; Douglass in, xxix, xxxi, xxxiii, 243–44, 244n; feuds in, 485; free blacks in, 19nn, 353n, 491n; fugitive slaves from, 92n; governors of, 441n; lawyers in, 356n; legislature of, 193n; Liberal Republicans in, 198n; Methodists in, 200n; newspapers in, 182n, 193n, 243, 244n, 353n, 391n; Presbyterians in, 486n; Reconstruction in, 193n, 358n; Republicans in, 225n, 353n, 356n; schools in, 60n, 226n, 244n, 353n, 358n, 486n; segregation laws in, 486n; slaveholders in, 71n, 182n, 193n; slavery in, 92n; slaves in, 19n, 182n, 193n, 441n; Underground Railroad in, 353, 441n; Whig party in, 193n Kenyon, Archibald: writes Douglass, xii, 364–66 Kerr, Cunningham & Company, Rochester, N.Y., 42n Ketchum, Edgar, 316, 318n Key, David M., 328n King, Charles, 636 King, Edward, 326n King, William H. C., 229n Kingston, Jamaica, 255n Kirby, Jacob, 345n Kirby, Mary, 345n Kirkbride, Ann, 350n Kirkbride, Joseph J., 350n: writes Douglass, xii, 348–52 Kirkbride, Thomas T., 350n Kiukiang, China, 338n Knights of the Golden Circle, 537 “Know-Nothing” party: in Indiana, 4n; in Massachusetts, 23n, 509n; in Missouri, 155n; in Virginia, 124n; Whig party and, 4n Knox, John Jay, 484n Knoxville, Tenn., 191n Koblenz, Ger., 385n Koch, Robert, 496n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 611

611 Koëhler, Amalie Susanne Jaeger, 94, 94–95nn, 445 Koëhler, Hans Jaeger, 95n Koëhler, Hedwig Jaeger, 95n Koëhler, Sylvester Rosa, 85n, 94n, 158n: Douglass writes, viii, ix, 93–96, 162–63, 520, 570; as Ottilie Assing’s friend, 93, 94–95nn, 442, 445, 446n, 460, 565–67 Koëhler, Walter Jaeger, 95n Krakowizer, Elizabeth P., 497, 498n Krakowizer, Emil W., 497, 498n Krakowizer, Ernest, 498n Ku Klux Klan: in Georgia, 195n, 303n, 360n, 403n, 548; in Mississippi, 195n; mob violence led by, 292, 376n; in North Carolina, 195n; in Ohio, 101; in South Carolina, 195n; in Texas, 33n; violence of, 548 Ku Klux Klan Act (1871), xxx, 155n, 197, 215n, 264n, 376n Kudlich, Johann Hans, 447, 449n, 450, 460, 566 Kudlich, Luisa Vogt, 447, 449n, 451 Kudlich, Mathilde, 450, 451n L. Prang & Company, Boston, Mass., 93, 95n, 162, 163n, 442, 443n Labor Bureau, 152n labor unions: abolitionists and, 53n, 458n; of African Americans, xxix, 4n, 150, 151n; conventions of, 4n, 150–52; Douglass and, 150, 152n; in Maryland, xxix; in Massachusetts, 374n; national organizations of, xxx, 151–52, 320n; racism in, 151n, 529; women oppose, 22n Ladies’ Land League, Ireland, 383n Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, 326n Ladies’ Visitor, and Drawing Room Companion (New York City), 181n Lafayette, Ind., 43, 44n Lagendorf, Julia Foster, 541 Lake Erie, 92n, 428n Lake Onondaga, N.Y., 208n Lamer, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, 497n Lamon, Ward Hill, 59, 60n Lancaster, N.Y., 452n Lancet (London, Eng.), 444n Lane, Henry S., 215n Lane Seminary Debate, 120n, 313n, 382n, 486n Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio, 120n, 313n, 382nn

5/17/23 2:36 PM

612 Langdon, Charles J., 498n: Anna Dickinson visits, 43n; Douglass writes, x, xiv, 219–20, 497–99; as Mark Twain’s brother-in-law, 220n; writes Douglass, 497 Langdon, Jervis, 220n, 498n Langdon, Olivia Lewis, 43n, 220n, 497, 498n, 532–33 Lange, Alvina W. Bartels, 158n Lange, Johannes, 157, 158–59n, 450, 453 Lange, Linda B., 158n Langston, John Mercer, xxxii, 67n, 384: as American Missionary Association critic, 330; Charles R. Douglass and, 114, 115n, 209, 212n, 525; Douglass campaigns for Grant with, 218n; as Douglass critic, 111n, 209, 212n, 348–49, 351n, 516; Douglas writes, 565; labor movement and, 151n; Freedmen’s Bureau and, 65n, 67, 88, 89n, 114–15nn, 517, 525; as Freedmen’s Savings Bank critic, 543; Howard University and, 67n, 114, 115nn, 211n, 251n, 280, 313n; portrait of, 565; as Republican, 400; as U.S. minister to Haiti, 351n, 357; writes Douglass, 562 LaPorte, Ind., 395n, 478n Laredo, Tex., 175n Latrobe, Benjamin, 350n Laws of Kindness (Montgomery), 80 Leavitt, Joshua, 364, 365n Lebanon, Conn., 362n Lebanon, Ill., 385n Lecompton, Kansas, 423n LeDroit Park, Washington, D.C., 313n Lee, Henry “Light Horse,” 124n Lee, Robert E., 121 Leeds, Maine, 2n Leeman, William Henry, 432n Leipold, Robert H. T., 469n, 484n Leipzig, Ger., 94n Lester, William H., 498n “Let the Negro Alone” (Douglass speech), xxix Leupp, Francis E., 500n: writes Douglas, xiv, 499–500 Lewis, Edmonia, 67n Lewis, James, 224, 228n Lewis Mead Unitarian Church, Br istol, Eng., 49n Lewiston, Me., 237n Lexington, Ky., 71n, 92n, 193n, 356n Lexington (Ky.) True American, 193n Lexington, Mass., 418n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 612

INDEX Lexington Normal School, Lexington, Mass., 418n Liberal party (Great Britain): founding of, 81n; Election of 1874 and, 273n; leadership of, 273n Liberal Republican party: conventions of, 421n; Cassius M. Clay supports, 198n, 219; ally with Democrats, 188n, 217n, 276, 327; Douglass opposes, xxiv, 217n, 219; supports free trade, 207n; opposes Grant administration, xxiv, 112n; Greeley as candidate of, 127n, 156n, 196n, 198n, 217n, 278n; in Kentucky, 198n; in Louisiana, 226–28nn, 309n; newspapers support, 188n; opposes Santo Domingo annexation, 184n; Carl Schurz and, 327, 328n; Charles Sumner supports, xxiv, 216–17n; Theodore Tilton supports, 188n Liberation Society, Eng., 270, 273n Liberator (Boston, Mass.): agents of, 63n, 91n; articles in, 378n; financial contributions to, 206n, 406–7nn; free blacks and, 63n, 91n, 406–07nn; Garrison as editor, 38n, 133n, 206n; Oliver Johnson and, 133n; subscribers to, 380n; writers for, 133n, 405n. See also Garrison, William Lloyd Liberator (London, Eng.): 270, 273n Liberia: U.S. ambassadors to, 73n, 139n, 401n, 538, 568. See also American Colonization Society; colonization Liberty party: candidates of, 169n, 254n, 365n; conventions of, 500n; free blacks and, 73n, 93n, 317n, 500n; Free Soil party and, 27n; lecturers for, 440n; in Maine, 169n, 181n; in Massachusetts, 38n; in New York State, 26n, 231n, 500n; newspapers of, 177n, 365n; in Ohio, 27n; Gerrit Smith and, xxiii, 36n, 233n, 440n Liberty Party Paper (Syracuse, N.Y.), 177n Liblar, Ger., 328n Library Hall, Chicago, Ill., 76n Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., xxi Lichfield, Eng., 103n Life of Abraham Lincoln from His Birth to His Inauguration as President, The (Lamon), 60n Life and Letters of John Brown (Sanborn), 431n Life and Letters of John Howard Raymond (Lloyd), 507n Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delany (Rollin), 424, 427n, 429, 431n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Douglass): Ottilie Assing advises its writing, 448, 449n Life in Palestine When Jesus Lived (Carpenter), 50n Lincoln, Abraham, 21n, 51n, 156n, 166n: abolitionists criticize, 29n, 305n; abolitionists lobby, 48, 51n, 103n; appointments of, 26–27n, 59, 60n, 61n, 131n, 144n, 155n, 328n, 336, 338n, 348n, 351n; assassination of, 6n, 60n, 65n, 72, 122, 125n, 159n, 399n; Clara Barton and, 106n; biographies of, 77n; black prisoners of war and, 51n; black soldiers accepted by, 496n; cabinet of, 27n; colonization plans of, 467–68n; as commander-in-chief, 227n; debates Stephen Douglas, 60n, 423n; Democratic critics of, 186n, 303n, 338n, 391n; Douglass criticizes, 548; Douglass meets, 51n; Douglass memorializes, xxviii, xxxii, 324, 325n, 448, 548; in Election of 1860, 4n, 60n, 309n; in Election of 1864, 27n, 305, 356n, 421; Emancipation Proclamation and, xxviii, 13n, 29n, 379n; emigration supported by, 467–68n; Fort Sumter and, 309–10nn; Freedmen’s Bureau and, 3n; habeas corpus suspended by, 303n; as lawyer, 107n, 259n; memorials to, xxxii, 142n; newspapers and, 386n; Radical Republicans criticize, 27n; religion and, 170–71; second inauguration of, 51n; slavery issue and, 51n; speeches of, 377n; statues of, 558; encourages Unionists, 6n; as a Whig, 51n Lincoln, Mary Todd, 71n: Douglass raises funds for, xxviii, 70–73, 518; Elizabeth Keckley and, xxviii, 70–73; financial distress of, 71n, 72; press criticizes, 70, 71n; resides in White House, 65n, 70n; writes Douglass, 72, 73n Lincoln, Robert Todd, 60n Lincoln, Thomas “Tad,” 65n Lincoln Hall, Danville, Ill., 105n Lincoln Hall, Washington, D.C., 235n Lincoln Institute, Jefferson City, Mo., 43n Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tenn., 2–3n, 330n Lippincott, Sarah Jane Clarke (“Grace Greenwood”), 362n: defend “Our National Capital” lecture, 396–97, 397n; Douglass writes, xii–xiii, 396–98; photograph of, xxxviii; writes Douglass, xiii, 361–63, 398–99; writes

Y8204-Douglass.indb 613

613 for New York Times, 362, 396, 397n, 409, 411n Litchfield, Conn., 115n, 182n Litchfield, Ohio, 99n Little Pilgrim (Philadelphia, Pa.), 362n Little Rock, Ark, 483n, 483–84n Littlefield, Milton S., 175n, 304n Livermore, Mary Ann, 437n Livermore, Me., 259n Liverpool, Eng., 359n: churches in, 325–26nn; as seaport, 103n, 367n; Unitarians in, 325n; U.S. consul at, 360n Livingston County, Ill., 364n Livingston County, N.Y., 497n Livonia, N.Y., 497, 498n Lloyd, Edward V, 32, 34n Lloyd, Harlan P., 507n Lloyd, Harriet R., 507n: Douglass writes, xiv, 506–08 Lloyd, Sally Scott Murray, 34n Lloyd, William E., 531–32, 559 Lobenstein, Czech., 448–49n Locke, Joseph J., 533 Lockport, N.Y., 77n, 83, 248n Lodge Federal Elections Bill (1891), 305n Logan, John A., 230n Logue, David, 102n Logue, Jarm, 102n Loguen, Catherine Storum, 248n Loguen, Helen Amelia. See Douglass, Helen Amelia Loguen Loguen, Jermain Wesley: British contributions to, 100; children of, 8n, 248n; visits Washington, D.C., 210 London, Eng., 268n, 270, 443n: abolitionists in, 8n, 103n, 369n; churches of, 80n, 369n; Douglass visits, 103n, 366; free blacks visit, 4n, 178, 300; merchants of, 378n; newspapers and magazines of, 59, 79, 80n, 270, 272–73nn, 324, 326n, 444, 544; schools of, 50n, 271n; theaters of, 159n; Unitarians in, 369n London Inquirer, 50n, 79, 80n, 272–73nn, 544 London Missionary Society, 50n Long, Henry, 508n Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 77n, 231, 232n Longstreet, James, 227n “Lost Arts, The” (Phillips), 371, 373n Louis XVII (king of France), 476n Louisa County, Va., 67n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

614 Louisiana, 504n: African Americans in, 4n, 15n, 212n, 224–25nn, 227n, 284n, 290, 302n, 306; Black Code of, 466n; carpetbaggers in, 4n, 229n; Chinese immigrants in, 228n; Civil War in, 19n, 121, 124, 224–25n, 228nn, 376n; Constitutional Union party in, 226n; cotton and, 309n; Democratic party in, 224n, 227– 28nn, 293–94nn, 296n, 307, 309, 328n, 360n, 376n; Douglass in, xxxi, 225n, 271n; free blacks in, 19n, 31n, 212n; Election of 1876 in, 343n, 360n; emancipation in, 13n; exodus from, 466n; Freedmen’s Bureau in, 212n, 284n; fugitive slaves from, 4n; government of, 212n, 225–26nn, 230, 277n, 302n, 376n; immigrants in, 228n, 230n, 402n; lawyers in, 226nn, 228n, 376n; Liberal Republicans in, 226–28nn, 309n; merchants in, 466n; militia, 228n; mob violence in, 5n, 224n, 290–92, 293–96nn; New Orleans, 15n, 212nn, 290, 309n; newspapers in, 154n, 224, 224n, 226n, 229, 229–30n, 466n; Reconstruction in, 15n, 212n, 223–30, 224nn, 227–28nn, 284n, 290, 293–96nn, 306–07, 309n, 328n, 355n, 368, 375, 376n; Republicans in, 15n, 222–30, 293n, 296n, 302–03n, 306–07, 328n, 501n; schools in, 4n, 212n, 284n, 293–96n, 302n, 360n; slaveholders in, 226n, 406n; slavery in, 13n, 402n; Unionists in, 226n; U.S. Army in, 328n, 355; Whig party in, 226n; White Leagues in, 292, 293–95nn, 307n, 309n Louisiana Purchase, 505n Louisville, Ky., 51n, 181n: African American in, 352–53, 353n; churches of, 353n; Democrats in, 244n; Douglass in, xxxi, xxxiii, 243–44; free backs in, 353n; newspapers of, 182n, 193n, 243, 244n, 353n; physicians of, 243n; Republican party in, 353n; Underground Railroad in, 353n; schools in, 60n, 244n, 353n Louisville and Nashville Railroad, 244n, 360n Louisville Champion, 353n Louisville Commercial, 243, 244n Louisville Courier, 182n Louisville Evening Ledger, 243, 244n Louisville Herald, 244n Louisville Kentuckian, 353n Louisville True American, 193n Lovejoy, Elijah, 53n, 438, 440n Low, Seth, 240n Lowell, Charles W., 223, 226n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 614

INDEX Lowell, James Russell, 401n Lowell, Perceval, 226n Lowenthal, August E., 448n Lowenthal, Charlotte K., 413n, 448n Lowenthal, Ernst J., 413n, 447: children of, 448n; as Ottilie Assing friend, 566; writes Douglass, xiii, 412–13 Lowenthal, Julius, 448n Lowenthal, William, 448n Lowenthal, William Tell, 460 Loyal Leagues Convention, Utica, N.Y., 421n Lubeck, Ger., 158n Lucan, Ire., 383n Luce, James N., 555 Lumsden, Francis A., 229n Lundy, Benjamin, 38n Luperón, Gregorio, 331, 332–33n lyceum industry: Anna E. Dickson speaks in, 22nn, 51, 52n; Douglass speaks in, 35, 44n, 51–52, 53n, 73n, 101n, 106, 110, 111n, 112, 118, 120n, 125, 132, 143, 144n, 149, 201, 203–04nn, 210, 210–11nn, 217n, 220–21, 221–22nn, 234, 237n, 238, 244n. 314, 323, 323n, 344, 345nn, 409, 456, 512, 514–15, 525–26, 528–30, 538, 547; Wendell Phillips speaks in, 51, 53n; James Redpath organizes, xxii, 52n, 144n, 201n, 237n, 525–26, 528, 538; Theodore Tilton speaks in, 22n, 51, 53n, 125, 126n Lynch, James D., 16n: Douglass writes, vii, 15–16; as newspaper owner, 59n Lynch, John Roy, 400, 402–03n, 495 Lynchburg, Va., 309n Lyndon, Vt., 436n Lynn, Mass., 232n: abolitionists in, 42n; Douglass resides in, 18n, 40n; Douglass speaks in, 73n, 287; free blacks in, 40n, 42n; shoe industry in, 23n, 40n Lynn Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, 42n Lyon, Fr., 18n, 243n, 434nn: U.S. consul at, 384, 385n, 435n Lyons, Iowa, 143n Lyons Mirror, 143n Lyons Union School, Ohio, 155n MacArthur, Arthur, 569 “Macbeth” (Shakespeare), 157–58, 419n Machiavelli, Niccolò, 7n Macon, Ga., 224n, 401n Macon (Ga.) American Union, 401n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Madge Vertner (Griffith), 182n Madison, James, 481n Madison County, Ind., 88n Madison County, Ky., 486nn Madison County, Miss., 337n, 339nn Madison County, N.Y., 155 Madison (Wisc.) Patriot, 333n Madras, India, 50n Madras National Congress, 383n Mahan, Asa, 81n Maine, 26, 207n: abolitionists in, 51n, 169n, 181n, 232n; Bangor in, 236, 237n, 336n; Civil War and, 2n, 360n; Democrats in, 335n; Douglass speaks in, xxxi, 169n, 218n, 236, 237n, 334, 335–36nn, 537, 550; lawyers in, 169n; Liberty party in, 169n, 181n; newspapers in, 334–35nn; Republican party in, 169n, 334–35nn; temperance movement in, 95n Maine Laws, 95n. See also temperance Maine Wesleyan Seminary, Kent Hills, Me., 259n Málaga, Spain, 401n Malden, Mass., 420n Manchester, Eng., 51n, 325n Manchester College, Manchester, Eng., 50–51nn, 325n Mankato, Minn., 4n Mann, Abram, 505, 506n Mann, Elizabeth J. Smith, 344, 345n Mann, Newton W., 345n Mannheim, Ger., 385n Manning, Jerome F., 554 Marble, Manton, 186n Marie of Hesse, 211n Marietta, Ohio, 40–41nn Marietta Baptist Church, Marietta, Ohio, 40n Marietta College, Marietta, Ohio, 40–41nn Marinette, Wisc., 498n Marius, Gaius, 375, 376–77n Markee, Elizabeth C., 344, 345n Marshall, D. M., 530 Marshall, Elihu F., 472n Marshall, Thomas Lethbridge, 80n Martin, Alexander, 386n Martin, Evelyn Clark, 4n Martin, Henry A., 442, 443–44n Martin, J. Sella, 4n: as abolitionist, 49n, 51n; Douglass writes, viii, ix, xxiii, 118–21; in Great Britain, 51n; as minister, 235; as New Era editor, 4n, 116–18, 118n, 130, 132n, 144n,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 615

615 146–47, 175n, 235n; in Washington, D.C., 1, 118, 235n; writes Douglass, ix, 116–18, 129–32, 146–47 Martin, Josephine Sarah, 147n Martin, Sarah Ann Lattimore, 147n Martin, Thomas C., 33n, 35n Martineau, Elizabeth, 325n Martineau, Harriet, 425n Martineau, Helen Higginson, 325n Martineau, James, 50n, 272n, 324, 325–26n Martineau, Thomas, 325n Maryland: abolitionists in, 38n, 271n, 316, 440n; African Americans in, xxix, 148n, 386n; border disputes of, 467n; British travelers in, 326n; Civil War in, 33n, 146n; Democratic party in, 156n, 186n, 386n, 484n; Douglass relatives in, 32, 33–35nn; Douglass resides in, 15, 16n, 26, 57, 58n, 239n, 471n; Douglass speaks in, vii, xxix, xxxiii, 49n, 145, 201n, 385, 386n, 387–90, 390n, 392–96, 473n, 477n, 532; Douglass visits, 441n, 453n; Eastern Shore of, 33n, 500n, 572; farmers in, 34n, 432n; free blacks in, xxvi, 16n, 18n, 33n, 42n, 78n, 204n, 248n, 480n; Harpers Ferry Raid and, 432n; immigrants in, 18n; labor unions in, xxix; lawyers in, 156n; legislature of, 34n, 149n, 156n; newspapers of, 18n, 38n, 144–46, 385–86, 386–87nn, 452, 453n; racism in, 15, 16n; Republican party in, 142n, 146n, 149n, 386n, 453n; slaveholders in, xxxiii, 16n, 32, 33–35nn, 42n, 58n, 69n, 78n, 203, 204nn, 299, 416n, 471n; slaves in, 32, 33–35nn, 41n, 57, 73n, 78n, 98n, 204n, 227n, 284, 285n, 471n; schools in, 142n, 478–79, 479–80nn; slaves escape from, 440n, 453n, 471n, 500n; slaves in, 16n, 32, 33–34nn, 41–42n, 57, 58n, 73n, 78n, 98n, 204nn, 227n, 284, 285n, 416n, 471n; Underground Railroad in, 18n, 98n; Unionists from, 386n; Unitarians in, 80, 82n; War of 1812 in, 16n; Whig party in, 386n Maryland Agricultural Society, 34n Maryland School for the Deaf and Dumb, Frederick, Md., 142n Marysville, Ohio, 75n Maryville, Ky., 131n Mason, Charles, 467n Mason, George, 432n Mason, James Murray, 429, 431n, 432n Mason and Dixon Line, 465

5/17/23 2:36 PM

616 Mason County, Ky., 131n Massachusetts, 509n: abolitionists in, 9–12, 12–13nn, 29n, 38n, 64n, 92n, 183n, 236, 279n, 323n, 378–80nn, 418n, 441n; African Americans in, 102n, 492n; American Revolution in, 294n, 393, 395n; Baptists in, 364–65nn, 487n; churches in, 4n, 12, 82n, 487n; civil rights bill of, 302n; Civil War and, 18n, 212n, 351n, 370n; Congregational Church in, 115n, 379nn; Democratic party in, 22n, 128n, 446n; Douglass resides in, xxviii, 8n, 40n; Douglass speaks in, xxxi, 36n, 73n, 201n, 262, 344n; farmers in, 236n; free blacks in, 4n, 8n, 30n, 40n, 42n, 63n, 212n, 246n, 279, 359n, 405n; Free Soil party in, 22n, 115–16nn, 190, 199nn, 379nn; fugitive slaves in, 4n, 12n, 92n, 430–31n; German Americans in, 94–95nn; governors of, 128n, 446n; Greenback party in, 446n; KnowNothing party in, 22n; labor movement in, 374n; lawyers in, 89n, 102n, 116n, 182n, 199n, 228n, 370n, 378–79nn, 440n, 491n; legislature of, 89n, 142n, 236, 237nn, 370n, 379n, 491n; Liberty party in, 38n; manufactures of, 38n, 53n, 94, 373n, 379n; Mexican War and, 116n; militia of, 370n, 380n; newspapers of, 24, 25n, 38n, 82n, 133–34nn, 142n, 190n, 231n, 237n, 315n, 379n, 430n, 440n, 443n, 458n, 514, 570; physicians in, 77n, 492n; publishers in, 25n, 94; Quakers in, 20n, 28n, 236n; racism in, 63n, 280n, 302n; Republican party in, xxxi, 22n, 38n, 89n, 116n, 128n, 142n, 199–200n, 228n, 337n, 379n, 491n; schools in, 30n, 37n, 95n, 142n, 246n, 302n, 373n, 405n, 418n; Underground Railroad in, 12n, 379–80nn, 418n; Union Army units raised in, 8n, 36n, 41n, 44–46nn, 64n, 210, 212n, 359n, 407n; Unitarian Church in, 50, 80, 82n, 315, 379n, 430n, 515n; Whig party in, 89n, 145n, 491n; woman suffrage movement in, 52, 418n, 512, 548 Massachusetts Abolition Society, 440n Massachusetts Abolitionist (Plymouth, Mass.), 379n, 440n Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society: agents of, 64n; conventions of, 13n; free blacks and, 64n, 92n; officers of, 12n, 379n Massachusetts Bay Colony, 443n Massachusetts Board of Charities, 430n Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., 95n, 373n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 616

INDEX Massie, James William, 48, 49n, 50n Maston, Sarah Tharp, 35n Matthews, George W., 4n Matthews, William E.: Douglass writes, xiv, 478–80, 549 May, Samuel Joseph, 82n: as abolitionist, 80, 100, 102n; autobiography of, 80; as Garrisonian, 82n; Jerry Rescue trial and, 82n, 500n; as Unitarian minister, 82n; women’s rights and, 82n May, Thomas P., 29n Mayer, Julius, 95n Mayflower (ship), 372n, 443n Mayo, James H.: writes Douglass, xii, 74, 371 Mayo, James L., 371n Mayo, Laura A., 371n McClellan, George B., 21n McClelland, William F., 17, 20n McCook, Edward, 244n McCorkell, Robert, writes Douglass, xi, 255–56 McElrath, Thomas, 397n McEnery, John, 224n, 294n McHenry, William “Jerry,” 282n, 499, 500n McKay, Ferdinand C., 268n McKeever, Helen, 415n McKeown’s Hotel, Washington, D.C., 1n McKinlay, Whitefield, 563 McKinley, William B., 228n: appointments by, 247n, 305n, 403n; imperialist policies of, 305n McMicken School of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio, 487n McNamara, Charles, 44, 45n McNamara, Michael, 44, 45n McNary, John M., 45n McPherson, Edward, 526, 564, 569 McPherson, James, 2n Mecca, Saudi Arabia, 394, 395n Mechanics’ Hall, Halifax, Eng., 103n Mechanicsville, Iowa, 43, 44n Medal of Honor, 88n Medford, Mass., 37n Medina, N.Y., xxix Meigs, Joseph V., 553 Melbourne, Aus., 95n Melrose, Mass., 323n Melvil-Bloncourt, Sainte Suzanne, 260, 261n Memoirs of the Life and Work of Philip Pearsall Carpenter (Carpenter), 50n Memoirs of the Life of the Rev. Lant Carpenter, LL.D. (Carpenter), 50n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Memorial Day, 82n Memphis, Tenn., 11, 14–15n Mercer, Ill., 542 “Merchant of Venice, The” (Shakespeare), 414 Meriwether, James H., 490, 491n Merrimack County, N.H., 351n Merrimon, Augustus S., 299, 304n Methodism: in Canada, 103n; in Great Britain, 103n, 255; in Jamaica, 255, 255n; in Montreal, Quebec, 103n, in Scotland, 255. See also: African Methodist Episcopal Church; African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion; Methodist Episcopal Church Methodist Episcopal Church: abolitionists in, 235n, 441n; African Americans and, 81n, 341n; Douglass and, 16n, 94, 166n, 426n; founding of, 166n; free blacks and, 16n, 166n, 462n; in Kentucky, 200n; ministers of, 131n; 235n, 341n; in Mississippi, 16n, 154n; in New Jersey, 71n; in New York State, 235, 341n, 500; proslavery views in, 81n; racial discrimination in, 166n; temperance and, 235n; in Virginia, 369n Metropolitan Baptist Church, Washington, D.C., 356n, 543 Metropolitan Club, Washington, D.C., 363n Metropolitan Hotel, Washington, D.C., 2n Mexican National Railway, 175n Mexican War: abolitionists oppose, 193n; beginning of, 391n; Ulysses S. Grant in, 97n; Massachusetts and, 116n; newspapers report, 386–87nn; opposition to, 116n; Winfield Scott in, 124n; volunteer soldiers in, 193n, 356n; Whig party and, 111n Mexico: mining in, 95n, 361n, 378n; U.S. relations with, 131n, 338n Mexico City, Mex., 175n Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, 215n Michelangelo, 166n Michigan, 207n, 439n: abolitionists in, 99, 462n; African Americans in, 358n, 462n; Baptists in, 365n; Douglass lectures in, 44n, 78n, 84, 235n, 237–38nn, 344; fugitive slaves in, 4n; government of, 358n; newspapers in, 18n, 358n; Republican party in, 334n, 358n; schools in, 43n; Whig party in, 334n; women’s rights movement in, 462n Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vt., 399n Middlesex County, Mass., 95n Middletown, Conn., 155n, 481 Milford (Mass.) Practical Christian, 134n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 617

617 Milford, N.H., 436n Milford, N.Y., 497 Mill Hill Chapel, Leeds, Eng., 50n Miller, Charles Dudley, 290n Miller, Elizabeth Smith, 204n, 290n: in dispute with Octavius B. Frothingham, 420, 422; writes Douglass, xi, 289–90 Miller, Perry, 428n Miller, Samuel F., 277n Millican, Robert, 33n Millican, Tex., 33n Millport, N.Y., 498n Millson, Francis E., 272n Milton, John, 236n Milwaukee, Wisc., 211n, 548 Milwaukee Sentinel, 498n Miner, Myrtilla, 406n Miner Normal School, Washington, D.C., 256n, 406n Minneapolis, Minn., 113n, 120n Minnesota, 505n: Douglass speaks in, 36n, 95n, 94, 105n, 112, 120n, 235n, 237–38nn Minot, Me., 395n Miscegenation, 300: civil rights lead to, 304n; fears of, 441n; laws against, 280n Misérables, Les (Hugo), 476n Mississippi, 26, 254n: African Americans in, 16n, 153, 336, 487n, 492–93nn; Carpetbaggers in, 59n, 336–37, 402n, 493n; Civil War in, 54n, 339n, 385n; Democratic party in, 34n, 54n, 339n, 492–93nn, 497n; exodus from, 466n; farmers in, 492n; Freedmen’s Bureau in, 59n; lawyers in, 228n, 403n; Ku Klux Klan in, 195n; legislature of, 59, 402–03nn, 492–93nn; Methodists in, 16n, 154n; mob violence in, 288–89, 289n, 293n, 403n, 492n; newspapers in, 16n, 59n; Reconstruction in, 16n, 154n, 288–90, 289n, 293n, 336, 339n, 493n; Republican party in, 16n, 59n, 153, 154n, 293n, 336, 339n, 403n, 490, 492–93nn; schools in, 492n; secession of, 497n; slaveholders in, 224n; slaves in, 54n, 224n, 228n, 492–93nn; White League in, 403n, 492n Mississippi River, 13n, 228n, 242n, 363n Missouri, 226n, 526: abolitionists in, 441n; John Brown raids, 18n; Civil War in, 227n; Democratic party in, 155nn; Douglass speaks in, 35; fugitive slaves from, 18n, 500n; government of, 155n; Know-Nothing party in, 155n; lawyers in, 155n, 227n; legislature

5/17/23 2:36 PM

618 Missouri (continued) of, 155n; Republican party in, 155n; slaves in, 14n, 70n, 228n, 441n; Underground Railroad in, 441n; Whig party in, 155n, 440n Missouri Association of Colored Girls, 222n Missouri Compromise: Douglass speaks in, 36n; Dred Scott decision and, 14n; slavery contained by, 13n. See also Kansas-Nebraska Act Mitchell, Eliza Bailey. See Bailey, Eliza Mitchell, Harriet, 248n Mitchell, Mary Douglass, 315n Mitchell, Peter, 204n Mitchell, T., 536 Mobile, Ala., 52 Monotessaron, A (Carpenter), 50n Monroe, James, 572 Monroe County, N.Y. See Rochester, N.Y. Monroe County, Pa., 226n Monroe County Courthouse, Rochester, N.Y., 41–42n Monroe County (N.Y.) Bible Society, 474n Monroe County Office Building, Rochester, N.Y., 42n Montana Territory, 356n Montgomery, George Washington, 80, 82n Montgomery, James, 425n Montgomery, Ala., 55n Monticello, Minn., 112, 113n Montreal, Quebec, 50n, 103n, 272n, 519 Moody, Laura Wheeler, 550 Moore, Eusley, 512 Moore, Gloria, 399n Moore, Thomas, 325n Moore, W. Eugene, 399n Moors, 124n Moral Education Society, Washington, S.C., 454n Morant, Fanny, 159n Morgan, Edwin Dennison, 536 Morgan, S. B., 537 Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser (Stuttgart, Ger.), 63n Morley, Samuel, 273n Mormons, 22n Morris, Charles Satchell, 43n Morris, Evalina, 353n Morris, Horace: writes Douglass, xii, 352–53, 353n Morris, Joe, 548 Morris, Shelton, 353n Morris, Wilhelmina C., 353n Morris, William, 82n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 618

INDEX Morris Island, S.C., 240n Morrison’s Opera House, Indianapolis, Ind., 32n, 88n Morristown, N.J., 318n Morse, Samuel F. B., 391n Morton, Abigail, 377, 379n Morton, Edwin, 377, 379n, 421n Morton, Ichabod, 377, 379n Morton, Oliver P., 185n, 215n Mosby, John Singleton, 453–54n Moses, Franklin J., 272n Mosher, Angeline M., 266, 268n Mosher, Charles, 268n Mosquito Isle, Fla., 191n “Mother’s Letter to a Daughter on Woman Suffrage, A” (Hooker), 182n Motley, John Lothrop, 101n, 125n, 535 Mott, Abigail, 28n, 40n Mott, Lucretia: as abolitionist, 381n; Free Religious Association and, 323n; relatives of, 30n; women’s rights and, 8n Mott, Lydia, 40n Moulton, Annie G., 268n Moulton, Charles, 268n Moulton, Lillie S., 268n Moulton, Nina, 268n Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester, N.Y., 78n, 212n, 249, 249–50n, 438n, 502n Mount Pleasant, S.C., 41n Mount Pleasant, Washington, D.C., 414, 415n Mount Vernon, Ohio, 318n Mount Zion School, Washington, D.C., 210n Mowrey, Angelina, 365n Mowry, William H., 364, 365n Mozart Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio, 105n Mulberry Street School, New York City, 1n Mulliken, Samuel, 478n: Douglass writes, xiv, 377–78 Mumford, George H., 109, 109–10n Mundy, Johnson M.: sculpts Douglass, 230–31, 231n, 469n, 488, 488n; Douglass writes, xiv, 488; writes Douglass, 488 Munich, Ger., 409–10, 411n Munich Academy, Munich, Ger., 411n Murphy, Joseph, 45n, 114n Murphy, Malinda, 114, 114n Murphy, Sarah Ann, 45n, 114n Murray, Bambarra, 42n Murray, Mary, 42n Murtaugh, William Jay, 385–86n: Douglass writes, 387–92; writes Douglass, xiii, 385–87

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Music Hall, Boston, Mass., 513 Muskegon, Mich., 438, 439–40nn Muskogee (Okla.) Wagoner American, 487n Muslims, 49n My Bondage and My Freedom (1855): German language edition of, 63n; out of print, 517; readers praise, 538, 556, 562 Myers, Isaac, 16n: labor movement and, 151n Mystery (Pittsburgh, Pa.), 426n Naboth’s Vineyard (Sumner), 185–86n Nagles, John, 43n Nagles Meat Market, Rochester, N.Y., 39, 43n Nahant, Mass., 231–32 Naill, Henry Clay: Douglass writes, ix, 142–43, 145, 627 Naoroji, Dadabhai, 383n Napoleon III (emperor of France), 50n, 261n, 268n, 476n Napoleonville, La., 376n Narrative of Sojourner Truth, A (Titus), 462–63nn Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Douglass): emotional impact of, 267; publication of, 532 Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself (Brown), 92n Nash, E., 542 Nashville, Tenn.: African Americans in, 321n; Civil War and, 65n; Douglass speaks in, xxxi, 51, 251, 252n, 516, 541; free blacks in, 65n; lawyers in, 124n; Republican party in, 65n Nast, Thomas, 443n Natchez, Miss., 403nn Nation (New York City), 38n, 423n National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York City), 67n, 79n, 119, 142n, 203n: agents of, 463n; American Anti-Slavery Society and, 80n; Maria W. Chapman edits, 80n; Lydia Maria Child edits, 80n; Douglass contributes to, 519; Douglass writes for, 97n; Sydney Howard Gay edits, 80n, 134n; Oliver Johnson edits, 80n, 134n; novels serialized in, 182n; Parker Pillsbury edits, 29n, 80n; Aaron M. Powell edits, 179n National Association for Rate Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children, 491n National Association of Colored Women, 222n, 406n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 619

619 National Botanic Gardens of Ireland, Dublin, Ire., 383n National Convention of Colored Citizens (1853), Rochester, N.Y., 7n National Convention of Colored Men (1866), Washington, D.C., 2–3nn, 7n National Convention of Colored Men (1869), Washington, D.C., xxix, 104, 105n National Convention of Colored People (1864), Syracuse, N.Y., Douglass presides at, 240n National Convention of Colored People (1872), New Orleans, La., xxxi, 217n, 225n National Emigration Aid Society, 284n National Equal Rights League, 67n National Era (Washington, D.C.): agents of, 175n; Gamaliel Bailey founds, 120, 120–21nn; Douglass criticizes, 121n; finances of, 175n; Grace Greenwood writes for, 362n; mobs attack, 254n; publishes Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 120n, 386n; staff of, 362n, 386n; Lewis Tappan and, 121n National Federation of Colored Men, 358n National Freedmen’s Relief Association, 99n National Labor Union, 320n: conventions of, xxx National Medical Society, 491–92nn National Museum of Ireland, Dublin, Ire., 383n National Negro Convention (1835), Philadelphia, Pa., 3n National Negro Convention (1843), Buffalo, N.Y., 73n, 347n National Temperance Advocate (New York City), 179n National Theater, Washington, D.C., 399n National Union party, 196n National View (Washington, D.C.), 464, 466n National Woman Suffrage Association, 9n, 30n, 99n, 182n; founding of, 180n, 182n; officers of, 181–83nn, 437n National Women’s Rights Convention (1866), New York City, 9n Native Americans: abolitionists and, 53n, 374n; conflicts with, 175n; endangered, 375; federal government and, 500n; free blacks intermarry, 67n; U.S. Grant and, 296n, 318n; mistreatment of, 2n; in Oregon, 2n; in poetry, 232n; reservations for, 2n, 205n; U.S. Army treatment of, 2n, 296n; in Washington State, 2n Native Races and War (Butler), 326n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

620 nativism, 95n. See also “Know-Nothing” party “Naturalization Laws: No Discrimination on Account of Color” (Sumner), 168–69n Nature (Emerson), 315n Nebraska: African Americans in, 77n, 83, 84n, 539; Civil War and, 348n; Douglass lectures in, 234, 235n, 236, 237–38nn Nebraska Territory, 19n, 425n, 505n “Negro Exodus from the Gulf States, The” (Douglass speech), xxxiv, 464n, 473–74 Neil, William, 559 “Nellie Grant” (horse), 456, 457n Nelson, Julia B., 568 Nelson, Thomas H., 130, 131n Nelson, William, 486n Nesbit, Ernestine L. Clark, 486, 487n Nesbit, John, 487n Netherlands: colonies of, 304n; navy of, 386n; revolts from Spain, 101n, 125n Neuchâtel, Switz., 49n Nevada, 155n Nevada City, Nev., 155n Nevada County, Calif., 155n New Bedford, Mass., 493: Douglass resides in, 8n, 40n; free blacks in, 8n, 40n; Republican party in, 89n; Whig party in, 89n New Berlin, N.Y., 466n New Brighton, Pa., 361, 362–63nn New Brunswick, N.J., 231n New Carlisle, Ind., 4n New College, Manchester, Eng., 50n New England: abolitionists in, 9–12, 12–13nn, 29n, 38n, 51n, 54n, 63–64nn, 92–93nn, 133n, 169n, 181n, 183n, 232n, 236, 279n, 323n, 378–80nn, 418n, 441n; African Americans in, 102n, 260, 260–61, 492n; Baptists in, 364–65nn, 487n; Civil War and, 2n, 18n, 212n, 351n, 360n, 370n; Congregational Church in, 115n, 379nn; Democratic party in, 22n, 128n, 308–09nn, 335n, 446n; Douglass resides in, xxvii–xxix, 8n, 40n; Douglass speaks in, xxxi–xxxii, 36n, 73n, 149, 169n, 201n, 218n, 236, 237n, 262, 280, 281n, 334, 335–36nn, 344n, 537, 550; free blacks in, 1n, 4n, 8n, 16n, 30n, 40n, 42n, 58n, 63n, 76n, 92n, 115n, 212n, 246n, 279, 359n, 405n; Free Soil party in, 22n, 115–16nn, 190, 199nn, 254n, 379nn; fugitive slaves in, 4n, 12n, 73n, 92n, 430–31n; Greenback party in, 446n; Liberty party in, 38n, 169n, 181n; Know-

Y8204-Douglass.indb 620

INDEX Nothing party in, 22n; labor movement in, 374n; Quakers in, 20n, 28n, 236n, 462n; racism in, 63n, 280n, 302n; Republican party in, xxxi–xxxii, 1n, 21–22nn, 38n, 89n, 116n, 128n, 142n, 169n, 199–200n, 228n, 305n, 308–09nn, 334–35nn, 337n, 379n, 413n, 491n, 501n; Underground Railroad in, 12n, 379–80nn, 418n; temperance movement in, 95n; Unitarian Church in, 50, 80, 82n, 315, 379n, 430n, 515n; Whig party in, 89n, 145n, 491n; woman suffrage movement in, 52, 182n, 418n, 512, 548 New England Anti-Slavery Convention, 54n New England Anti-Slavery Society: agents of, 82n, 93n, 133n; founding of, 38n, 379n New England Emancipation Aid Society, 430n New England Fourier Association, 509n New England Freedmen’s Union Commission, 404, 405n, 407n New England Railroad, 420n New Era (Washington, D.C.): Douglass purchases, 4n, 132n, 143, 144n; Douglass writes for, 118n; Frederick Douglass, Jr., and, 153n, 175n, 203n, 208n, 271, 273n; Lewis Douglass as compositor, 117, 132n; George T. Downing and, 117, 118n, 354, 355n; finances of, 117–18, 143, 146, 532; supports labor movement, 152n; J. Sella Martin edits, 4n, 116–18, 118n, 130, 132n, 144n, 146–47, 235n; Republican party supported by, 524; staff of, 143n, 146–47 New Garden, Ohio, 382n New Hampshire, 228n, 573: abolitionists in, 29n, 63n; Douglass visits, xxxii, 336n; free blacks in, 16n; Free Soil party in, 254n; legislature of, 351n; newspapers in, 19n, 226n; Republican party in, xxxii, 21n; schools in, 169n, 318n, 337n, 365n, 391n; tanners in, 501n New Haven, Conn., 115n, 228n, 473n, 561 New Haven Railroad, 420n New Jersey: Ottilie Assing resides in, 157–59n, 262, 447, 567; Douglass in, xxviii; Rosetta Douglass in, xxxviii; free blacks in, xxviii, 92n, 224n; German Americans in, 446n, 454n; immigrants in, 95n, 446n, 454n, 456n; lawyers in, 264n; Methodist Episcopal Church in, 71n; Presbyterians in, 92n; Republican party in, 264n, 413

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX New London, Conn., 73n New Mexico, 131n New Milford, Conn., 481 New National Era (Washington, D.C.): articles in, 186n, 211n, 225n, 258, 268, 271n, 279n, 281n, 358n, 534–35, 537, 542; closure of, xxxii; Douglass edits, xxi, xxiv, xxx–xxxi, 44n, 153n, 174, 175n, 202–03nn, 209, 253, 260n, 532, 542, 545; Douglass brothers and, xiv, xxxi, 8n, 44n, 128n, 153n, 174, 175n, 202n, 203, 202–03nn, 208n, 250, 265, 271, 273n; failure of, 462n, 545; financial problems of, xxiv, 175n, 202–03nn, 250–51, 251n, 253, 265, 461n, 536, 538; founding of, xxix; Grant supported by, 217n; Liberal Republican movement opposed by, 217n; J. Sella Martin leaves, 175n; pro-Republican party, 208n; staff writers for, 207; favors protective tariffs, 208n New Orleans, La., 52, 480n: African Americans in, 224–25nn, 227n, 290; black conventions in, 217n; Benjamin Butler in, 121, 124n; Civil War in, 121, 124n, 224n; customs house of, 224–25nn, 227–29nn, 359n, 501n; Douglass in, xxxi, 217n, 225n; free blacks in, 31n, 212n; fugitive slaves from, 4n; German Americans in, 230n; government of, 228n; lawyers in, 228n; mob violence in, 224n, 291–92, 293n; newspapers in, 224n, 229–30nn; Reconstruction in, 309n; Republicans in, 224–26nn, 228n; schools in, 31n, 224n, 227n, 229n; as state capital, 293n; in War of 1812, 278n, 376n New Orleans As I Found It (Durell), 228n New Orleans Bee, 224, 229 New Orleans Democrat, 229n New Orleans German Gazette, 224, 229 New Orleans Louisianan, 224n New Orleans National Republican, 224, 229 New Orleans Picayune, 224, 229 New Orleans Republican, 224, 226n, 229 New Orleans Times, 224, 229n New Orleans Times-Democrat, 229n New School Presbyterian Church, 319n, 382n, 486n New South Investigated, The (Straker), 358n New York African Society for Mutual Relief, 347n New York and New England Railroad, 418, 420n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 621

621 New York Anti-Slavery Society, 206n New York Central College, McGrawville, N.Y., 365n New York City, 475n: abolitionists in, xxix, 9n, 22n, 89n, 92nn, 103n, 133–34nn, 181n, 206n, 277n, 290n, 317n, 330n, 347n, 365n; African Americans in, 59n, 116n, 317n, 333n, 407n; “Anniversary Week,” 148, 159n; bankers in, 415n; Battery in, 103n; boroughs merge, 240n; Broadway in, 347n; churches in, 4n, 54n, 92n, 317n; Congregationalists in, 317n; corruption in, 87n, 285n, 397n, 421n; Democratic party in, 87n, 194n, 397n; Douglass speaks in, 178; Douglass visits, xxvii–xxviii, xxx, xxxiii, 42n, 72, 103n, 178, 239n, 328n, 473n, 499n; draft riots in, 318n; free blacks in, 1, 4n, 42n, 91–93nn, 317n, 347nn; Free Soilers in, 397n; fugitive slaves in, 4n, 42n, 73n, 239n, 347n, 473n, 500n; German Americans in, 158n, 446n, 452, 455n; government of, 87n, 194n, 407n, 421n; hospitals in, 539; hotels of, 178, 179n; immigrants in, 95n; jewelers in, 73n; lawyers in, 182n, 187n, 228n, 318n, 385n, 397n, 456n; mayors of, 458n; merchants of, 206n, 267n, 323n; newspapers and magazines of, 8n, 18n, 21–22nn, 24n, 29n, 38n, 44n, 53–54nn, 56n, 67n, 68, 69n, 71n, 77n, 79–80nn, 90, 91–93nn, 97n, 119, 126, 127n, 132, 133–34nn, 142n, 149n, 166n, 169, 173n, 179n, 181–82nn, 184n, 185, 186n, 188, 188n, 195n, 198n, 201n, 203n, 206n, 263n, 277n, 286, 287n, 289n, 295n, 306, 306n, 312n, 317n, 330n, 338n, 362n, 365n, 383n, 396, 397–98nn, 398, 409, 422, 423–24nn, 428n, 455, 457, 457n, 473, 473n, 500, 500n, 519, 522, 533, 535n, 537, 599; physicians in, 446n, 498n; police of, 155n; Presbyterians in, 4n, 92n, 472n; Protestant Episcopal Church in, 347n; racism in, 103n, 177n, 179n; Republican party in, 4n, 22n, 328n, 397nn; restaurants in, 347nn; schools in, 1n, 22n, 73n, 91n, 93n, 179n, 240n, 287n, 500n; seaport, 332n, 367n; Tammany Hall in, 194n, 397n; theaters of, 159n; Tweed Ring in, 285n, 397n, 421n; Underground Railroad in, 92–93n, 347n; Union Square in, 557; vigilance committee of, 92–93n, 347n; Whig party in, 187n, 397n; women’s rights conventions in, 9n, 52 New York City Free School, 91n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

622 New York Emancipator and Journal of Public Morals, 92n, 365n New York Evangelist, 306n New York Evening Post, 295n, 312n, 398, 423n, 500n New York Genius of Freedom, 92n New York Golden Age, 188, 188n New York Herald, 184n: Douglass writes, 263n; Mary Todd Lincoln and, 71n New York Manumission Society, 92n New York Mirror of Liberty, 92n New York Nation, 383n New York Observer, 22n New York Post, 396, 397–98n New York Progressive American, 286, 286–87n New York Recorder, 469n New York Society for the Promotion of Education among Colored Children, 317n New York State: abolitionists in, xxix, 22n, 82n, 89n, 92–93nn, 100, 102–03nn, 133–34nn, 181n, 206n, 235n, 268n, 277n, 290n, 317–18nn, 330n, 347n, 365n, 406n, 498n, 500n; African American suffrage in, 30, 87n; African Americans in, 59n, 116n, 179n, 317n, 333n, 340n, 342n, 407n; British travelers in, 326n; Brooklyn, 342, 498n; churches in, 4n, 54n, 69n, 92n, 317–18nn; civil rights legislation of, 179n; Civil War and, 41n, 174n, 290n; Congregational Church in, 317–18nn; constitution of, 18, 29n, 54n; Constitutional Unionist party in, 285n; corruption in, 87n, 285n, 397n, 421n; Democratic party in, 87n, 194n, 397n; Douglass in, xxvii–xxviii, xxx– xxxiv, 42n, 72, 96n, 103n, 155n, 178, 200n, 239n, 284n, 328n, 355, 397n, 421nn, 473n, 499n; Douglass speaks in, xxvii–xxviii, xxxii, 28, 29n, 120n, 149n, 178, 218n, 256n, 345n, 497n, 573; farmers in, 45n, 179n, 290n, 434n, 462n, 506n; Fifteenth Amendment ratified by, 133n; free blacks in, 1, 4n, 42n, 91–93nn, 102nn, 246n, 317n, 319n, 347nn; Free Soil party in, 231n, 397n, 440n; fugitive slaves in, 4n, 41–42nn, 63n, 73n, 82n, 92n, 102n, 230n, 239n, 248n, 282n, 347n, 473n, 500n, 502, 503n, 507; German Americans in, 95n, 63n, 158n, 341n, 446n, 452n, 455n; government of, 86–87n, 140n, 194n, 285n, 421n; immigrants in, 42n, 95n; lawyers in, 155n, 182n, 187n, 228n, 268n, 305n, 318n, 359,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 622

INDEX 385n, 397n, 421nn, 456n; legislature of, 28n, 30, 42n, 96n, 341n; letters written to, 420, 422–23nn; Liberty party in, 26n, 231n, 500n; merchants in, 268n; Methodist Episcopal Church in, 235n, 341n, 500n; newspapers and magazines of, 8n, 18n, 21–22nn, 24n, 29n, 38n, 44n, 53–54nn, 56n, 64n, 67n, 68, 69n, 71n, 74n, 77n, 79–80nn, 90, 91–93nn, 97n, 119, 126, 127n, 132, 133–34nn, 141–42nn, 149n, 166n, 169, 173n, 179n, 181–82nn, 184n, 185, 186n, 188, 188n, 195n, 198n, 201n, 203n, 206–07nn, 263n, 277n, 286, 287n, 289n, 295n, 302n, 306, 306n, 312n, 317n, 330n, 338n, 344n, 362n, 365n, 383n, 396, 397– 98nn, 398, 409, 422, 423–24nn, 428n, 440n, 455, 457, 457n, 473, 473n, 500, 500n, 519, 522, 533, 535n, 537, 599; Poughkeepsie, N.Y., 63n; Presbyterian Church in, 4n, 73n, 92n; Protestant Episcopal Church in, 347n, 446n; Quakers in, 29–30n, 103n, 179n; racism in, 54n, 74, 82n, 103n, 177n, 179n; railroads in, 42n; Republican party in, xxxi, xxxiv, 4n, 21–22nn, 29n, 86–87n, 155n, 200n, 283, 305n, 328n, 350n, 353n, 385n, 397nn, 421n, 573; schools in, 1n, 22n, 40n, 73n, 78n, 82n, 91n, 93n, 102n, 156n, 179n, 183n, 240n, 248n, 287n, 359n, 365n, 494n, 500n, 507n; slaves in, 103n; Spiritualists in, xxviii, 344, 345n, 462n; temperance movement in, 82n, 268n, 567; Underground Railroad in, 92–93n, 347n, 397n, 498n; Unitarian Church in, 82n, 462n; Whig party in, 54n, 187n, 200n, 397n; women’s rights movement and, 8–9n, 28, 462n New York State Anti-Slavery, 93n New York State Equal Rights Association, 9n New York State Woman Suffrage Association, 462n New York Sun, 185, 186n New York Times, 18n: founding of, 397n; reportage of, 13n, 56n, 263n, 362, 362n, 398, 409, 473n, 537 New York Tribune: articles in, 173n, 289n, 396, 397n, 422, 423–24nn, 428n, 473; Douglass defended by, 397n; Douglass praised by, 21n; Horace Greeley edits, 54n, 133n, 195n, 201n, 397n; Whig party and, 397n; Whitelaw Reid edits, 455, 457 New York Weekly Advocate. See Colored American

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX New York World, 71n, 185, 186n, 338n New Zealand, 103n Newark, N.J., 70, 71n, 264n Newbury, S.C., 403n Newburyport (Mass.) Free Press, 38n, 237n Newburyport (Mass.) Herald, 38n Newcastle, Eng., 367n Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Eng.: Douglass visits, 36n Newcomb, Horatio C., 32n: Douglass writes to, vii, 31–32 Newport (Ky.), News, 320n Newport, N.H., 337n Newport, R.I.: free blacks in, 1n, 347n newspapers: of abolitionists, 1, 8n, 18n, 29n, 36n, 38n, 63n, 67n, 74n, 79–80nn, 91n, 93n, 97n, 103n, 119, 133–34nn, 142n, 167n, 176–77, 177n, 179n, 182n, 203n, 206n, 267n, 320n, 337n, 365n, 378n, 380, 382n, 405–07nn, 426n, 429, 431–32n, 463n, 502, 519; of African Americans, xxv–xxvi, 40n, 44, 246, 314n, 323n, 341n, 505n; in Baltimore, Md., 18n, 38n, 144–46, 385–86, 386–87nn; in California, 89–90, 91n, 278n; in Canada, 18n, 500n; in Colorado, 242n; of Congregationalists, 69n; of Democratic party, 71n, 186n, 292n; Douglass edits, xxi, xxiv, xxx–xxxi, 1, 8n, 18n, 36n, 44n, 74n, 91n, 93n, 103n, 153n, 167n, 174, 175n, 176–77, 177n, 202–03nn, 209, 253, 260n, 267n, 320n, 337n, 382n, 426n, 429, 431–32n, 502, 532, 542, 545; of free blacks, 3n, 16n, 18n, 90, 92nn, 120, 317n, 426n, 500n; of Free Soil party, 120n, 190n, 320n, 397n; of Garrisonians, 29n, 38n, 63n, 67n, 79–80nn, 91n, 97n, 119, 133–34nn, 142n, 179n, 182n, 203n, 206n, 380, 382n, 378n, 405–07nn, 463n, 519; in Georgia, 401n, 548; in Great Britain, 50n, 79, 80n, 270, 272–73nn, 324, 424–25, 443n, 444, 544; in Illinois, 35–36, 37n, 61, 63n, 154n, 243n, 396, 397–98nn, 423nn, 437nn, 535; in Indiana, 4n, 32n; in Iowa, 356n; in Kentucky, 182n, 193n, 243, 244n, 353n, 391n; of Liberty party, 177n, 365n; in Louisiana, 154n, 224, 224n, 226n, 229, 229–30n, 466n; in Maine, 334–35nn; in Maryland, 18n, 38n, 144–46, 385–86, 386–87nn, 452, 453n; in Massachusetts, 24, 25n, 38n, 82n, 133–34nn, 142n, 190n, 231n, 237n, 315n, 379n, 430n, 440n, 443n, 458n, 514, 570; in Michigan, 18n, 358n;

Y8204-Douglass.indb 623

623 in Mississippi, 16n, 59n; in New Hampshire, 19n, 226n; in New York State, 8n, 18n, 21–22nn, 24n, 29n, 38n, 44n, 53–54nn, 56n, 64n, 67n, 68, 69n, 71n, 74n, 77n, 79–80nn, 90, 91–93nn, 97n, 119, 126, 127n, 132, 133–34nn, 141–42nn, 149n, 166n, 169, 173n, 179n, 181–82nn, 184n, 185, 186n, 188, 188n, 195n, 198n, 201n, 203n, 206–07nn, 263n, 277n, 286, 287n, 289n, 295n, 302n, 306, 306n, 312n, 317n, 330n, 338n, 344n, 362n, 365n, 383n, 396, 397–98nn, 398, 409, 422, 423–24nn, 428n, 440n, 455, 457, 457n, 473, 473n, 500, 500n, 519, 522, 533, 535n, 537, 599; in North Carolina, 152n; in Ohio, 120n, 121–25, 173n, 292n, 320n, 356n, 396, 398n, 487n; in Pennsylvania, 15, 16n, 24n, 89n, 123n, 133n, 145n, 166n, 186n, 330n, 362n, 403n, 406n, 426n, 458n, 539; of Presbyterians, 440n; of Republican party, 54n, 89n, 397n; in Rochester, N.Y., 21n, 28n, 36–37n, 102n, 133n, 137–38, 138n, 156n, 250n, 268n, 271n, 336, 336n, 396, 398n, 470, 471n, 505, 506n; of temperance movement, 179n, 365n; of Unitarians, 50, 79, 80nn; in Vermont, 399n; in Virginia, 25–26, 27n; in Washington, D.C., xxiv, xxix–xxx, 1, 30, 31n, 116–18, 118n, 120–21nn, 166nn, 175n, 189n, 254n, 291, 292–93nn, 297–306, 330n, 362n, 385–86, 386n, 387–90, 390n, 392–96, 399n, 453, 454n, 480n, 559; of Whig party, 4n, 54n; in Wisconsin, 333n; of women’s rights movement, 8n, 181n, 453, 454n Newton Theological Institution, Newton, Mass., 487n Nez Percé, 2n Niagara County, N.Y., 84n Niagara Falls, 283n, 567 Niagara Movement, 407n Nicholls, Francis T., 360n, 375, 376n Nichols, Charles H., 351n Nicholson, Eliza J., 229n Nickert, Emilie Reihl, 452n, 521 Nickert, Peter, 452n Niger River, 426n Ningho, China, 338n Nixon, William P., 398n Noah (Bible character), 9n Noblesville, Ind., 504n nonresistance. See pacifism Norfolk, Va., 53n, 56n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

624 North American Review (Boston, Mass.), 444n: Douglass publishes in, 24, 25n; editorials in, 378n North Carolina: African Americans in, xxxiv, 152n, 175n, 504n; British travelers in, 326n; Democratic party in, 304n; Douglass campaigns in, xxxi, xxxiv, 218n, 499n, 503, 504nn; free blacks in, 7n, 154n; government of, 304n; Ku Klux Klan in, 195n; newspapers in, 152n; railroads in, 175n, 304n; Reconstruction in, 304n; Republican party in, 152n, 175nn, 503; slaves in, 152n, 248n; slaves run away from, 4n North Dakota, 505n North Star (Rochester, N.Y.): 177n, 337n Northampton, Mass., 194n Northampton Association of Education and Industry, Florence, Mass., 92n, 103n Northern Pacific Railroad, 297n Northgate End Unitarian Chapel, Halifax, Eng., 272n Northumberland, Eng., 326n Northwest Ordinance of 1781, 13–14nn Norton, Emery E., 223, 226–27n Norwalk, Ohio, 356n Norwich, Conn., 58n, 92n, 183n Norwich, Eng., 325n Norwood, Thomas M., 301, 304–05n Notre-dame de Paris (Hugo), 476n Now-a-days! (Curtis), 181n Noyes, Crosby Stuart: Douglass writes, xiii, 392–96 Noyes Academy, Canaan, N.H., 73n Nullification Crisis, 124n Numidia, 376n Nürnberg, Ger., 410 Nye, James W., 153, 155–56n Oakfield Road Unitarian Church, Bristol, Eng., 50nn Oakland, Calif., 458n Oberlin, Ohio, 81n: free blacks in, 67n, 248n Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio: blacks attend, 40n, 67n, 79–80, 81n, 152n, 492n; contributors to, 206n; faculty of, 313n; graduates of, 115n, 248n, 313n, 318n, 356n; Lane Rebels attend, 313n, 382n; women attend, 81n, 248n Observations about American Slavery after a Year’s Tour in the United States (Carpenter), 81n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 624

INDEX Odd Fellows, 179n Odes et Poésies diverses (Hugo), 476n Ogden, N.Y., 43, 45n Ohio: abolitionists in, 17n, 67n, 99n, 111–12nn, 173n, 382nn, 441n, 486n; African Americans in, 320–21, 320n, 485, 487nn; Baptists in, 40n, 364–65nn; British travelers in, 326n; Civil War and, 67n; Columbus in, 210n, 365n, 487n; Congregational Church in, 81n; Democratic party in, 17n, 292n, 306n; Douglass speaks in, xxix, xxxii, 36n, 41n, 72, 73n, 75n, 105n, 111n, 120n, 149n, 210n, 214n, 323n, 328n, 335n, 537; farmers in, 382n, 423n; free blacks in, 18n, 67n, 154n, 248n, 353n, 369n, 493n; Free Soil party in, 27n, 111n, 320n, 440n; fugitive slaves in, 17n, 92n, 441n; governors of, 27n, 328n, 369n; Irish Americans in, 382n; Ku Klux Klan in, 101; lawyers of, 67n, 305–06nn, 356n, 487n; legislature of, 292n, 485, 487n, 489n; Liberty party in, 27n; newspapers of, 120n, 121–25, 173n, 292n, 320n, 356n, 396, 398n, 487n; physicians in, 120n, 487n; Prohibition party in, 356n; Quakers in, 382n; racism in, 74, 74n, 101; Republican party in, xxxi, 27n, 111n, 123n, 183n, 186n, 193n, 195n, 305n, 323n, 328n, 335n, 347n, 356n, 398n, 488–89nn, 505n, 549; Roman Catholic Church in, 121, 123n; schools in, 40–41nn, 154–55nn, 182, 320n, 382n, 487–88nn; temperance movement in, 67n; Underground Railroad in, 99n, 353n; Whig party in, 27n, 111n, 193n, 356n Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, 120n Ohio Mutual Fire Insurance Company, 382n Ohio River, 13n, 441n Ohio State Anti-Slavery Society, 67n Old Colony Memorial (Plymouth, Mass.), 378n Old Colony National Bank, Plymouth, Mass., 380n Oliver, William, 45n, 111, 112n, 154 Olivet Baptist Church, Olivet, Ill., 154n Omaha, Neb., 19n, 41n, 77n, 109n, 539; Douglass speaks in, 235n, 236, 237n; U. S. Grant visits, 242n One Hundred and Seventy-Sixth New York Infantry Regiment, 174n Oneida County, N.Y., 305n, 333n, 454n Oneida Institute, Oneida, N.Y., 73n, 313n Oneonta, N.Y., 498n Ong, Thomas, 223, 226n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Opera House, Minneapolis, Minn., 105n Opera House, St. Paul, Minn., 105n Opinions of Some Protestant Regarding Their Irish Catholic Fellow Countrymen, The (Webb), 383n Orange, N.J., 338n Orangeburg, S.C., 238n Oration by Frederick Douglass Delivered on the Occasion of the Unveiling Freedmen’s Memorial Monument to Abraham Lincoln (Douglass), 324, 325n, 548 Ordway, Albert, 348, 351n Ordway, Nehemiah, 348, 351n Oregon: Election of 1876 in, 343n; Native Americans in, 2n Orleans County, La., 228n Ormond, Fla., 339n Osborne, Byron, 450, 451n Osborne, Charlotte, 451n Osborne, Elenor, 451n Osburn, Nehemiah, 41n Osburn House Hotel, Rochester, N.Y., 39, 41n Osgood, James B., 456, 457n Osgood, William, 456, 457n Osgood, Worth, 456, 457n Osterhaus, Peter J., 384, 385n “Othello” (Shakespeare), 167n Otsego County, N.Y., 498n, 506n Ottawa County, Ohio, 428n “Our American Cousin” (play), 125n “Our Composite Nationality” (Douglass lecture), xxix, 149, 149n, 154n, 169n, 221n, 239n, 528 Our Famous Women, 181n “Our National Capital” (Douglass lecture), xxxiii, 390n; criticism of, 385–86, 386n; defenders of, 396, 397nn, 558–59; manuscript texts of, 395n, 541; newspapers on, 557–58 Our Paper: Thirty Years Singing! (Hutchinson), 288n Overend Gurney Crisis, 272n Owega Academy, Owega, N.Y., 228n Owensboro, Ky., 182n Owings Mills, Md., 416n Oxford, Eng., 326n pacifism: abolitionists and, 53n, 102n, 133n, 382n; William Lloyd Garrison and, 53n; Garrisonians and, 53n, 102n, 133n, 382n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 625

625 Packard, Stephen B.: in Election of 1876, 3; Republican faction led by, 224n Packer Institute, Brooklyn, N.Y., 69n Paine, Thomas, 279n Paisley, Scot., 562 Palestine, 50n Palmerston, Lord Henry John Temple, 81n Pan American Railway Committee, 348n Panama, 367n Panama City, 367n Paramirabo, Suriname, 333n Paris (Fr.), 4n, 183n, 268n, 410: abolitionists in, 46–48, 49n; African Americans in, 18n, 243n; Douglass visits, 22n; expositions in, 47, 50n; race relations in, 178, 300; schools in, 261n; Theodore Tilton resides in, 22n, 70n, 503; U.S. embassy in, 243n, 255n, 257–60, 292n, 435n Park City, Utah, 20n Parker, Alton B., 348n Parker, Robert, 490, 492n Parker, Theodore, 430–31n: John Brown and, 428, 430–31nn; as minister, 12n, 421n Parker Fraternity Lecture Course, Boston, Mass., xxvii Parliament (Great Britain): Irish members of, 383n; legislation of, 79, 81n; Quakers in, 383n; suffrage reform by, 81n Parson, Cornelius R., 469n Partridge Military Academy, Middletown, Conn., 155n Patterson, James J., 404 Patterson, Mary Jane, 246, 248n Pattison, Thomas, 561 Patton, Abigail Hutchinson, 415n, 435, 436n, 539, 562 Patton, Ludlow, 414, 415n, 436n Patton, Marion M., 415n Patton, William W., 415n Paul Quinn College, Waco, Tex., 315n Paxton, Jonathan R., 539 Payne, Daniel A., 16n Pearl incident, 254n Peelites (Great Britain), 81n Pelfey, C. C., 570 Pelham, Peter, 30n Pelton, Agnes, 504n Pelton, Florence Tilton, 504. See Tilton, Florence Pelton, William H., 504n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

626 Pendleton, Ind., 87, 88n Penn, Davidson B., 308, 309n Penn Yan, N.Y., 62, 64n, 69n Penn Yan (N.Y.) Yates County Chronicle, 64n Pennsylvania: abolitionists in, 134n, 181n, 279n, 363n, 382n; African Americans in, 76n, 115n, 248n; American Revolution and, 79n, 279n, 395n; border disputes of, 467n; British travelers in, 326n; churches in, xxix, 161n, 166–67n, 319n; Democratic party in, 155n, 338nn; Douglass in, xxvii–xxx, xxxiii, 22–23, 328n, 387, 416n, 515, 528n, 545–46; Douglass speaks in, 36n, 39, 41n, 44, 73n, 88, 89n, 120n, 149n, 161n, 164, 167n, 221n, 237n, 361, 363n; farmers in, 226n, 348n, 423n; free blacks in, xxx, 3n, 16n, 40n, 45n, 92n, 115n, 161n, 166–67nn, 240n, 261n, 319n, 347n, 404, 405–07nn, 467n, 491–92nn; government of, 338n; lawyers in, 53n, 155n, 338n; legislature of, 338, 406nn; newspapers and magazines of, 15, 16n, 24n, 89n, 123n, 133n, 145n, 166n, 186n, 330n, 362n, 403n, 406n, 426n, 458n, 539; Presbyterians in, 167n, 319n; Quakers in, 21–22nn, 30n, 181n, 350n, 407n; racism in, 52n, 363n; Republican party in, 21n, 53n, 89n, 155n, 166n, 348n; schools of, 16n, 30n, 40n, 53n, 115n, 120n, 181n, 248n, 338n, 350n, 407n, 432n, 509n; Underground Railroad in, 3n, 407n; Union party in, 155n; Whig party in, 338n, 348n Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, 181n, 406n Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., 1n Pennsylvania Freeman (Philadelphia, Pa.), 134n Pennsylvania Railroad Company, 155n Pensacola, Fla., 211n, 439n Peoria, Ill., 105n, 109 Peoria and Oquawka Railroad, 364n Pepper, George W., 538 Pepperell, Mass., 318n Perkins, Charles C., 443n Perkins, Jeremiah, 45n Perkins, William, 45n Perry, Bela C., 554 Perry, John Edward, 222n Personal Memoirs (Grant), 193n Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade (Butler), 326n Perth, Scot., 50n Peru, 378n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 626

INDEX Peterboro, N.Y.: John Brown visits, 421n, 430–31nn; free blacks in, 41n; Free Church in, 355n; Gerrit Smith and, 62, 203, 203n, 252, 284n, 289–90, 355, 421n, 428, 431n, 533; Charles Sumner visits, 203n Peters, Charles H., 490 Petersburg, Va., 70n, 106n Peterson, William, 125n Philadelphia, Pa., 53n, 56n, 131n, 481n: abolitionists in, 181n, 362n, 405–07nn; African Americans in, 115n, 248n; American Revolution and, 395n; Anti-Masonic party in, 338n; Centennial Exhibition in, xxxii, 321n, 328n, 387, 391n, 392, 546; churches in, 161n, 166–67n, 319n; conventions in, 20, 21n, 336, 337n; Douglass speaks in, 88, 89n, 161n, 164, 167n, 221n, 237n; Douglass visits, xxx, xxxii, 22–23, 25, 328n, 387, 416n, 515, 528, 545–46; free blacks in, 3n, 16n, 40n, 115n, 161n, 166–67nn, 240n, 319n, 347n, 404, 405–07nn, 491–92nn; government of, 53n; lawyers in, 53n, 338n; lyceum lectures in, 372, 373n; merchants of, 416n; mobs in, 167n; newspapers and magazines of, 15, 16n, 24n, 89n, 133n, 145n, 166n, 186n, 330n, 362n, 403n, 539; Presbyterians in, 167n, 319n, 440n; Quakers in, 21–22nn, 30n, 181n, 350n, 407n; racism in, 52n; Republican party in, 53n, 89n, 166n; schools in, 16n, 30n, 40n, 53n, 115n, 120n, 181n, 248n, 407n, 509n; theaters in, 414n; Underground Railroad in, 407n; Whig party in, 338n Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, 186n Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, 181n Philadelphia National Reformer, 3n Philadelphia Presbytery, 440n Philadelphia Republic, 133n Philadelphia Vigilance Society, 407n Philanthropist (Cincinnati, Ohio), 120n Philanthropist (New York City), 179n Philharmonic Hall, Winona, Minn., 95n Philip II (king of Spain), 124–25nn Philippines, 403n Phillips, George W., 395n Phillips, Wendell, 53n: as abolitionist, 9n, 53n, 378n; African American suffrage and, 54n; in Boston, 54n; praises John Brown, 369n, 431n; Benjamin F. Butler and, 374n, 445, 446n; supports civil rights, 285, 274n; supports Cuban independence, 132; Douglass’s

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX opinion of, 281, 372; William Lloyd Garrison and, 53n; labor movement and, 53n, 374n; as lecturer, 51, 53n, 372, 373nn, 557; murder of Elijah Lovejoy and, 53n, 440n; Native Americans and, 374n; temperance and, 374n; woman suffrage and, 9n, 53n, 374n; writes Douglass, 531 Phillips, William F., 549 Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, N.H., 194n, 430 Phrenology, 423n Piatt, Donn, 292–93n: Douglass writes, xi, 291–96 Pierce, Franklin, 185: appointments of, 55n, 292n, 391n; in Election of 1852, 285n Pierce, Isaac N. 131n Pierce, Rachel, 181n Pierce, Rosemond, 235n Pierson, Elizabeth “Lizzie,” 75, 77n, 246, 321, 551; writes Douglass, 524, 546, 574 Pierson, Hannah Smith, 77n, 248n Pierson, Mary Ann, 77n, 246, 248n Pierson, Thomas, 77n, 248n Pike, Albert, 571 Pile, William A., 130, 131n Pilgrims, 378n, 442n Pillsbury, Parker, 29–30n: as abolitionist, 29n, 438, 462n; in American Equal Rights Association, 29n; criticizes Garrison, 29n, 80–81n; as lecturer, 29n; religion and, 29n; women’s rights and, 8n, 28 Pinchback, Bismarck, 310n Pinchback, Napoleon, 310n Pinchback, Nina, 310n Pinchback, P. B. S., 224–25n, 321–22nn: as acting governor, 224–25nn; allies of, 224n, 228–29nn; Douglass endorses, 225n, 299; Douglass meets, 225n; Douglass writes, xi, xxiv, 308–10, 319–21; chosen as U.S. Senator, 222n, 225n; Republican faction led by, 224– 25nn; writes Douglass, xi–xii, 306–08, 319 Pinchback, Walter A., 310n Pinchback, William B., 224n Pinkerton, Allan, 547 Pitts, Emily Frances Post, 452, 454nn Pitts, Helen, 393, 394n. See also Douglass, Helen Pitts Pitts, Hiram, 454n Pittsburgh, Pa.: abolitionists in, 363n, 426n; Douglass speaks in, 39, 41n, 44, 361, 363n;

Y8204-Douglass.indb 627

627 free blacks in, 467n; newspapers of, 123n, 458n Pittston, Pa., 22n Pius V (pope), 124n Pius IX (pope), 173n Planter (ship), 496n Planter’s House, St. Louis, 213–14, 215n Platt, Thomas C., 305n “Plea for Free Speech, A” (Raymond), 508m Pleasant Green Academy, Ga, 360n Plymouth, Eng., 443n, 519 Plymouth, Mass., 378–80nn, 442, 557 Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N.Y., 514 Plymouth Colony, 443n Plymouth Cordage Company, Plymouth, Mass., 378n Plymouth (Ohio) Journal, 123n Plymouth Rock, Plymouth, Mass., 443n Poems (Emerson), 315n Poems . . . Now First Collected (Griffith), 182n Poems on Slavery (Longfellow), 232n Poems Written during the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States (Whittier), 237n Poinsett, Joel P., 338n Polaris (star), 177 Polk, James K.: appointments by, 376n; cabinet of, 194n; plan to extend slavery, 96n Pomeroy, Samuel Clarke, 114, 115n, 128n Pompeii, N.Y., 362 Pony Express, 386n Pope and Bindon, Bristol, Eng., 50n Populist party, 156n, 466n Port Deposit, Md., 149n Port Mahon, Spain, 399, 401n Port Royal, S.C., 81n, 405n Port Royal Commission, 405n Porter, Almira, 43n, 471n Porter, Maria, G., 102n, 470, 471n: as abolitionist, 100, 102n; as boarding home operator, 40, 43n, 102n; as Underground Railroad conductor, 102n Porter, Samuel D., 230–31n: as abolitionist, 30–31n; Annie Douglass and, 502n; Douglass writes, x–xi, xiv, xxii, 230–31, 249–50, 468–72, 501–03, 537; as Hicksite Quaker, 2, 8n; as realtor for Douglass’s property, 249, 250n; Underground Railroad and, 507; writes Douglass, 53. 470

5/17/23 2:36 PM

628 Porter, Susan Farley, 28n, 230n, 470, 471n death of, 501, 502n; Annie Douglass and, 502n Portland, Me., 82n: abolitionists in, 51n, 169nn, 232n; Douglass in, 169n, 335n Portsmouth, Va., 58–59nn, 69n Portugal, 315, 481n Post, Amy, 74n: children of, 238n, 462n; Douglass writes, viii, x, xii–xiii, xxii, 74–75, 217–18, 238–39, 344–45, 460n, 460–62, 527, 561, 564; family of, 345n, 462n; as Garrisonian abolitionist, xxiii, 74n; as Hicksite Quaker, 28n; as spiritualist, 344, 345nn, 462n, 527; as Sojourner Truth’s friend, 461, 462n; as woman rights supporter, 74n, 239n, 345n; writes to Douglass, xxii, 530 Post, Grove, 454n Post, Hannah Kirby, 463n Post, Isaac, 74, 238n, 345n: children of, 462–63nn; death of, 536; as druggist, 74n; family of, 462n; as Garrisonian abolitionist, xxiii; as Hicksite Quaker, 28n Post, Jacob R., 536 Post, Josephine W., 462n Post, Nancy, 454n Post, Reuben Wheeler, 462n Post, Willet, “Willie,” 461, 462n Potomac and Piedmont Coal and Railway Company, 348n Potomac River, 362, 396n Pottawatomie Creek, Kans., 37n Pottawatomie Massacre, 423n Potter, William J., 543 Poughkeepsie, N.Y., 63n Powell, Aaron M., 151n: Douglass writes, ix, 178–80 Powers, Daniel W., 505, 506n Powers Block, Rochester, N.Y., 506n Poysdorf, Aus., 449n Practical Christian (Milford, Mass.), 134n Prang, Louis, 94, 95n, 442, 443n, 541 Pratt, Daniel D., 544 Presbyterian Church: abolitionists and, 318– 19n, 382n, 498n; African Americans in, 4n, 92n, 118n, 457n; free blacks in, 73n, 92nn, 500n; in Great Britain, 92n; in Kentucky, 486n; ministers of, 73n, 118n, 319n, 382n, 440n; in New Jersey, 92n; New School and, 319n, 382n, 486n; newspapers of, 440n; in New York State, 4n, 92, 472n; in Pennsylvania, 167n, 319n, 440n; Plan of Union and,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 628

INDEX 69n, 81n; in Scotland, 73n, 92n; in Virginia, 318n; in Washington, D.C., xxvii, 2n, 4n, 70n, 85, 85n, 92n, 118n, 234, 235n, 261 Presidential Reconstruction, 23n Price, Walter, 16n Prime, Jacob A., 556 Prime, William C., 443n Prince, J., 559 Prince George’s County, Md., 41n, 78n Prince Hall Masons, 333n Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, N.J., 440n prison reform, 53n, 92n Progressive Friends, 323n Prohibition party: old abolitionists support, 355; Douglass opposes, xxiv Prospective Review (London, Eng.), 325n prostitutes, 326n, 548 “Protest against American Slavery, by One Hundred and Seventy Unitarian Ministers” (Sargent), 12n Protestant Episcopal Church, 445 Protestant Reformation, 122 Providence, R.I., 417, 493, 494n: Douglass visits, 414; physicians in, 494; schools in, 415n Providence Affiliated Union, Providence, R.I., 509n Provincial Freeman (Toronto, Ont.), 500n Prussia, 95n, 194n, 378n, 385n, 412n Public Life of Captain John Brown, The (Redpath), 424, 426n, 429, 431n Puerto Plata, Santo Domingo, 44n, 128n, 331–32, 332nn, 353n, 551 Puerto Rico, 241n, 551 Pugh, Catherine Jackson, 181n Pugh, Jesse, 181 Pugh, Sarah, 180, 181–82n Pugh, Thomas B., 51, 52–53n, 239n, 528 Pultneyville, N.Y., 341n Purcell, William: Douglass writes, ix, 137–38 Purvis, Charles B., 492n: Douglass writes, 495, 496n; family of, 495, 496n; Freedmen’s Bank and, 496n; as Republican, 490; writes Douglass, xiv, 495–96 Purvis, Robert, 185, 406n, 531: as abolitionist, 261n, 484n; children of, 492n, 495, 496n; as Charlotte Forten’s uncle, 404; Freedmen’s Bank and, 484nn; as Garrisonian, 484n; wealth of, 544–45 Purvis, William, 406n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Put-in-Bay, Battle of, 428n Put-in-Bay, Ohio, 428n Putnam, Caroline F., 535 Putney, Vt., 365n Quakers: as abolitionists, 88n, 181n, 381n, 407n, 462n, 509nn; abolitionists quit, 509n; in Florida, 30n; in Great Britain, 77n, 248n, 500n; in Indiana, 88n, 112n; in Ireland, 381n, 383n; in Massachusetts, 20n, 28n, 232n; in New York State, 29–30nn, 103, 179n; in Ohio, 382n; in Parliament, 383nn; in Pennsylvania, 21–22nn, 30n, 181n, 350n, 407n; in Philadelphia, Pa., 21–22nn, 30n, 181n, 350n, 404n; in Rochester, N.Y., 28n; spiritualism and, 462n; as teachers, 22n, 28n; in Vermont, 462n; in Virginia, 181n; woman’s rights and, 462n Quarles, John F., 399–400, 401–02n Quarles, Marie J., 401n Queens Insurance Company, 333n Quincy, Ill., 441n Quincy, Edmund, 80n, 382n racism: in American Medical Association, 491n, 496n; in Baltimore, Md., 15, 16n; in California, 91n; in churches, 82n; Civil Rights Act (1875), addresses, 264n, 274; in Cleveland, Ohio, 74; in colleges, 317n; colonization and, 6; in Connecticut, 317n; of Democratic party, 276, 304n; free blacks battle, 467n; in Georgia, 274, 401n; in hotels, 178, 274; in Illinois, 213, 216n; of Irish Americans, 410; of Andrew Johnson, 5–6, 7n, 26; of labor unions, 151n; in legal system, 302n, 304n; in marriage laws, 280n; in Maryland, 15, 16n; in Massachusetts, 63n, 280n, 302n; in New York City, 103n, 177n, 179n; in New York State, 64, 74, 82n, 103n, 177n, 179n; in North, 79; in Ohio, 74, 74n, 100–101; in Pennsylvania, 52n, 363n; in Philadelphia, Pa., 52n; on railroads, 74, 274, 302n; Republican party tolerates, 276; in Rochester, N.Y., ln, 31n; in St. Louis, Mo., 212n, 214, 215n; in schools, 82n; of slaveholders, 5; as related to slavery, 5, 10, 299, 467; in South, 5, 7n, 11, 79; on stages, 52; on steamboats, 363n; in trade unions, 141n; in U.S. Congress, 301; in Washington, D.C., xxxiii, 120–21nn, 172, 173n, 274, 386n, 388–89, 406n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 629

629 Radical Abolitionist party, 121n Radical Republicans: black suffrage supported by, 23n, 348n; Benjamin Butler as, 230n, 444; Salmon P. Chase and, 27n; Civil Rights Act (1875) and, 142n, 213, 215n, 264, 264– 65n, 277n, 302n, 544; in Congress, 230n; Cuban rebels supported by, 253n; Democrats denounce, 133n; Fifteenth Amendment supported by, 24n, 369n; Andrew Johnson opposed by, 6–7nn, 21n, 24n, 52, 97n, 106–07n, 141n, 166n, 215n, 259n, 348n; Ku Klux Klan opposed by, 376n; in Missouri, 155n; mob violence denounced by, 293n; newspapers of, 186n; Reconstruction plans of, 22–23nn, 27n, 142n, 155n, 176n, 259n, 303n, 328n, 369n Raines, George, 340 Raleigh, N.C., xxxiv, 6n, 152n: Douglass speaks in, 218n, 504n; slaves in, 248n Ramirez, Fernando, 332n Ramses (pharaoh of Egypt), 375 Randamie, C. L. de, 538 Randolph, John, 480, 481n Rationale of Religious Inquiry (Martineau), 325n Rawson, Elizabeth, 516 Rawson, Mary Anne, 541, 548 Ray, Charles B., 315–16 Ray, J. Wainwright, 556 Ray, John, 223, 226n Raymond, Cornelia E., 507n Raymond, Henry J., 397 Raymond, John Henry, 506, 507n Read, Elizabeth, 49n Reading, Mass., 73n Realf, Richard, 457, 458n Ream, Vinnie, 515 Reason, Charles L.: as civil rights advocate, 179n Rechenberg, Ger., 411n “Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict” (Douglass lecture), xxxi, xxxiii, 221, 221–22nn, 235n Recollections of a Busy Life (Greeley), 54n Recollections of a Minister to France, 1869– 1877 (Washburne), 259n Recollections of Seventy Years (Sanborn), 430n Reconstruction: abolitionists and, 53n, 80n, 445–46n; African American suffrage and, 11–12; in Alabama, 293n, 348n; John Andrew and, 198, 200; in Arkansas, 339n; Black

5/17/23 2:36 PM

630 Reconstruction (continued) Codes passed during, 14n, 466n; Carpetbaggers in, 4n, 59n, 174, 303n, 316, 319n, 328n, 336–37, 355, 359n, 402n, 493n; churches and, 102n; Cassius M. Clay and, 197–98n, 199; Confederate states in, 53n; conservative Republicans in, 198, 200, 200n, 295n; Democratic opponents of, 292n, 295n, 303–04nn, 306n, 328n, 391n; Douglass’s position on xxvii, 11–12, 117; economic conditions during, xxv; failure of, xxvi; in Florida, 148n; Force Acts of, xxix–xxx; in Georgia, 81n, 101, 115n, 290, 303–04nn, 360n, 401n; Grant enforces, xxx, 97n, 199, 289n, 294–95nn, 305n, 307, 328n; Hayes’s policies end, 229n, 328–29n, 354, 354–55n, 357–58, 359–60nn, 369n, 373n, 375, 409; Andrew Johnson opposes, 21n, 55n, 166n; in Kentucky, 193n, 538n; Ku Klux Klan during, 303n; in Louisiana, 15n, 212n, 223–30, 224nn, 227–28nn, 284n, 290, 293–96nn, 306–07, 309n, 328n, 355n, 368, 375, 376n; in Mississippi, 16n, 154n, 288–90, 289n, 293n, 336, 339n, 493n; mob violence in, xxxi, 11, 14–15n, 33n, 101, 132, 288–89, 289n, 360n; in North Carolina, 304n; northern support for wanes, 107n; Radical Republican plans for, 22–23nn, 27n, 142n, 155n, 176n, 259n, 303n, 328n, 369n; schools created during, 206n; in South Carolina, xxxi, 81n, 156n, 201n, 269, 272n, 328n, 355n, 357, 359–60nn, 375; in Texas, 33n, 46n, 174, 175–76nn, 296n; U.S. Army and, 33n, 328n, 355n; in Virginia, 16n, 124n “Reconstruction” (Douglass article), 25n Red Cross, 106n Red Oaks, Iowa, 237n Red River Parish, La., 293–94n Red Sea, 65n, 395n Red Shirts, 360n Red, White, and Blue Mining Company, Denver, Colo., 8n, 84–85nn Redpath, James, 201n: as abolitionist, 237n; as Bleeding Kansas reporter, 426n; Douglass writes, x, 200–01, 525, 529; promotes Haitian emigration, 201n; as lyceum manager, xxii, 52n, 144n, 201n, 237n, 525–26, 528, 538; memorializes John Brown, 424, 426n, 429, 431n; writes Douglass, 526, 528–29, 538 Reed, William B., 336, 338n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 630

INDEX Reese, Hiram, 376n Reflections on the Life and Times of Toussaint L’Overture (Straker), 358n Reform Bill, First (Great Britain), 79, 81n Reid, William Whitelaw, 397n, 455, 457n Reihl, Anna M., 451–52n Reimelli, Gino, 412n, 450, 451n Reminiscences of the Civil War (Gordon), 303n Remond, Charles Lenox, 63n: as abolitionist, 63–64n, 405n; in American Equal Rights Association, 29n; Douglass and, 44n, 62, 63–64n; family of, 405n; Garrisonians and, 63n; in Great Britain, 64n; as lecturer, 63–64n; as military recruiter, 64n Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 216n Representative Men (Emerson), 315n “Republican Government vs. One Man Power” (Douglass lecture), 71n Republican party: abolitionists and, xxx, 200n, 305n; African Americans in, 307n, 320–32n, 328n, 355n, 357, 358n, 400, 401n, 490, 506n; in Alabama, 348n; antiextensionist position of, 128n, 193n; in Arkansas, 537; in Boston, 142n, 199–200n, 337n; in California, 91n, 131n, 535; candidates of, xxiv, xxviii; Salmon P. Chase as, 84, 86n; in Cincinnati, Ohio, 323n, 335n, 549; Civil Rights Act (1875) and, 297–98, 305n; in Colorado, 19n; in Connecticut, 21n, 308–09nn, 501n; conservatives in, 196n; conventions of, xxxii, 59n, 111n, 199, 219–20nn, 228n, 323n, 335n, 358n, 385n, 401n, 421n, 489n, 490, 491n, 493n, 498n, 501n, 549; Anna Dickinson supports, 31n; Douglass and, xxiii–xxiv, xxviii, xxxi–xxxiv, 52, 196, 298, 320n, 335–36nn, 501, 504, 573; in Election of 1856, 193n, 413n; in Election of 1860, 60n, 309n, 413n; in Election of 1864, 65n, 356; in Election of 1868, 96, 97n, 101, 112n, 196, 520, 523; in Election of 1872, 59n, 335n, 537; in Election of 1876, xxv, xxxii–xxxiii, 285n, 334n, 342, 354–55n, 359–60n, 501n; in Election of 1880, 305n, 334n, 401n, 455, 488, 488n, 489, 497, 499n, 501, 574; in Election of 1884, 305n, 334n; in Election of 1888, 305n, 348n; in Election of 1904, 348n; emancipation and, 23, 53n, 392; Fifteenth Amendment supported by, 24n, 369n; in Florida, 148n, 240n; free blacks and, 1n, 96n; in Georgia, 400, 401–02nn; German

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Americans in, 327, 328n; Grand Army of the Republic and, 107n; Ulysses S. Grant and, xxiv, 208n; Horace Greeley and, 54n, 196n; “Half-Breed” Faction of, 305n, 334n; Harpers Ferry response of, 432n; Rutherford B. Hayes leads, 327, 355n; in Illinois, 51n, 60n, 107n, 156n; in Indiana, xxxiii, 4n, 32n, 111–12nn, 131n, 215n, 503, 505n; in Iowa, 347–48nn; in Kansas Territory, 115n; Kansas-Nebraska Act opposed by, 13n, 215n, 385n; in Kentucky, 225, 353n, 356n; Liberal Republican faction of, xxiv, 207n, 327, 421n; Abraham Lincoln leads, 51n; in Louisiana, 15n, 222–30, 293n, 296n, 302–03n, 306–07, 328n, 501n; in Maine, 169n, 334–35nn; in Maryland, 142n, 146n, 149n, 386n, 453n; in Massachusetts, xxxi, 22n, 38n, 89n, 116n, 128n, 142n, 199–200n, 228n, 337n, 379n, 491n; in Michigan, 334n, 358n; in Mississippi, 16n, 59n, 153, 154n, 293n, 336, 339n, 403n, 490, 492–93nn; in Missouri, 155n; national committee of, 334–35nn; in Nevada, 155n; in New Bedford, Mass., 89n; in New Hampshire, xxxii, 21n; in New Jersey, 264n, 413; in New York City, 4n, 22n, 382n, 397n; in New York State, xxxi, xxxiv, 4n, 21–22nn, 29n, 54n, 86–87n, 141n, 155n, 200n, 283, 305n, 328n, 350n, 353n, 385n, 397nn, 421n, 573; newspapers of, 54n, 89n, 397n; in North Carolina, 152n, 175nn, 503; in Ohio, xxxi, 27n, 111n, 123n, 183n, 186n, 193n, 195n, 305n, 323n, 328n, 335n, 347n, 356n, 398n, 489n, 505n, 549; in Pennsylvania, 21n, 53n, 89n, 155n, 166n, 348n; in Philadelphia, Pa., 53n, 89n, 166n; principles of, 298; protective tariffs and, 208n; racism tolerated by, 276; Radical faction of, 22n, 89n, 128n, 175nn, 186n, 259n, 305n, 489n; in Reconstruction, 89n, 259n, 298, 355n, 489; in Rochester, N.Y., 20, 21n, 140n, 231n, 341n, 505, 505–06nn; Santo Domingo annexation and, 333n; William H. Seward and, 54n, 196n; Gerrit Smith supports, 96, 219n, 276, 284n; in South Carolina, 156n, 272n, 328n, 357, 358–60nn, 406n, 426n, 496n; Stalwart faction of, 220n, 489n, 498–99nn, 510n; Charles Sumner and, xxiv, 216–17n, 219n; tariffs supported by, 53–54n; in Tennessee, 53n, 65n; in Texas, 174, 176n; Union party and, 65n; in Vermont, 305n, 413n; in Virginia, 26–27nn, 67n, 218n, 535;

Y8204-Douglass.indb 631

631 Thurlow Weed and, 194n; in Washington, D.C., 139, 155, 348, 351n; Whigs join, 328n; woman suffrage and, 112n Republican party (Jeffersonian), 278n, 391n Revels, Hiram R., 153, 154–55n; portrait of, 162, 163n Revere House, Boston, Mass., 430n Revolution (New York City), 8n, 181n Reynolds, F. H. C., 568 Reynolds, Gilbert H., 538 Rhees, William J., 565 Rhinebeck, N.Y., 436n Rhode Island: abolitionists in, xxxiii, 133n, 509n; African Americans in, 347n; in banks of, 347n; Baptists in, 364n; churches in, 318n; Douglass visits, 518, 572; free blacks in, 1n, 347n; legislature of, 182n, 417; physicians in, 494, 509nn; schools in, 1n, 190; temperance movement in, 509n; Underground Railroad in, 1n; women’s rights in, 182n, 415n Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society, 133n, 509n Richards, Daniel, 148n Richardson, A. H., 17, 19n Richardson, Ellen, 563 Richardson, William M., 391n Richland County, Ohio, 123n Richmond, Ind., 154n, 210n Richmond, Ky., 355n, 485, 486n Richmond (Ky.), Battle of, 485, 486n Richmond, Va., 52, 60n: Baptists in, 365n; merchants in, 351n; newspapers in, 27n; prison camps in, 55n; schools in, 77n, 365n Riddle, Albert G., 568 Riggs, E. Francis, 548–49 Riggs, George W., 391n Rights of All (New York City), 92n Riley, Clinton C., 573–74 “Rip Van Winkle” (play), 415n Ripley, George, 421n Ripon, Wisc., 76 Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, The (Davis), 55n Rise of the Dutch Republic (Motley), 101n Robb, William, 560 Roberson, Frank, 216n Roberson, William, 214, 216n Robinson, Emily R., 380–81, 382n Robinson, Marius R., 380–81 Robinson, William. See Roberson, William Rochester, Nathaniel, 204n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

632 Rochester, N.Y.: abolitionists in, 28n, 30–31n, 36–37n, 63n, 74, 74n, 100, 102–03nn, 140n, 156n, 238n, 249n, 267n, 345n, 462n, 471n; African Americans in, 33n, 35n, 39, 39n, 41n, 59n, 76, 76n, 77n, 83, 107–09, 111, 114n, 202, 203n, 221n, 313–14, 314–15n, 323n, 339–40, 341n, 437–38, 437–38nn, 462n, 514–15, 517, 472n, 530, 574; banks of, 540; boarding houses in, 471n; British travelers in, 326n; carpenters in, 45n; cemeteries of, 249n, 438n, 502n; churches of, 80, 82n, 341n, 471–72nn; Democratic party in, 42n, 133n, 138n, 140n, 341n; Douglass in, xxii, xxviii, xxxi–xxxii, 33n, 36n, 40n, 43, 44, 52, 59n, 63n, 68, 74, 81n, 103n, 177n, 201n, 202–03, 203n, 217–18, 233n, 237n, 256n, 267n, 314, 321, 326–27, 337n, 344, 469, 502, 505n, 533, 536, 564; Douglass’s family in, 39, 39n, 43n, 44, 55, 75–76, 76–77nn, 81n, 83, 107–09, 109n, 111, 202, 203n, 221, 221–22n, 249n, 267n, 313–14, 314n, 322, 323n, 339–40, 341n, 437n, 505n, 514–15, 517, 524, 529, 540, 574; Douglass’s rental property in, 109n, 203n, 311, 340, 341–42n, 504–05, 505n, 557, 559–61, 563; Douglass speaks in, xxviii, xxxii, 256, 328n, 345n, 498n; Fifteenth Amendment celebrations in, 530; founding of, 204n; free blacks in, 7–8nn, 40n, 43n, 45n, 78n, 212n; fugitive slaves in, 41n, 63n, 102n, 230n, 502, 503n, 507; German Americans in, 63n, 341n, 452n; government of, 42n; Julia Griffiths in, 45n, 100, 526; hotels in, 41n; immigrants in, 63n, 102–03nn; lawyers in, 21n, 109n, 140n, 337n, 341n, 506n; manufacturers in, 42n, 140n, 238–39nn, 472n, 504n; merchants of, 506nn; Methodists in, 341n; ministers in, 114n; National Negro Convention in, 7n; newspapers of, 21n, 28n, 36–37n, 102n, 133n, 137–38, 138n, 156n, 250n, 268n, 271n, 336, 336n, 396, 398n, 470, 471n, 505, 506n; pharmacists in, 462n; physicians in, 344, 345n; postmaster of, 139, 140–41n, 148; Quakers in, 2, 8n, 28n; racism in, 1n, 31; real estate in, 30n, 49, 229–30nn, 249, 250n, 471n, 506n, 540, 559; Republican party in, 20, 21n, 140n, 231n, 341n, 505, 505–06nn; restaurants in, 41n; schools in, 8n, 40n, 238n, 452n, 463n, 471n; spiritualism in, 344, 345nn, 462n, 527; statue of Douglass in, xxxiii, 230–32, 231n, 471n; stores in, 41n; temperance movement in, 28n;

Y8204-Douglass.indb 632

INDEX Underground Railroad in, 74n, 102n, 177n, 230–31n, 470, 471n, 502, 507; Unitarians in, 80, 156n, 345n, 462n; Universalists in, 82n; women’s rights convention in, 28 Rochester Anti-Slavery Fair, 36n Rochester Democrat and American, 250n, 336, 396: articles in, 398n, 470, 471n, 505, 506n Rochester Express, 271n Rochester Female Anti-Slavery Society, 471n Rochester Female Charitable Society, 471n Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society: hosts bazaar, 103n; Douglass addresses, 502n; aids Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 267n, 502; founding of, 102n; Julia Griffiths organizes, 100; officers of, 471nn, 502n Rochester Orphan Asylum Association, 471n, 502, 503n Rochester Transportation Company, 42n Rochester Union and Advertiser: Douglass writes, 137–38; management of, 138n, 156n Rock Island County, Ill., 454n Rockland, Me., 338n Rockville, Ind., 131n Rocky Mountains, 13n Rodenbeck, Adolph, 339–40, 341n Rodenbeck, Jennie S., 341n Rodenbeck, Margaret G., 341n Rodenbeck, William, 339–40, 341n Rogers, William, 557, 563, 570, 574 Rollin, Frances Ann, 426–27n Roman Catholic Church: Douglass criticizes, 121–22; in Great Britain, 78; Immaculate Conception proclamation of, 173n; infallibility of popes of, 171, 173n; Inquisition of, 121, 123n, 166n; Rome as center of, 394; in Spain, 124–25nn Roman Republic, 375, 376–77n Rome, Italy, 122, 125n, 268n, 551: race relations in, 178; as religious center, 394 Roosevelt, Theodore, 348n: appointments of, 500n; biographies of, 500n Rosenkrans, Amalia L., 448n Rosenkrans, James H., 448n Ross, Arminta. See Tubman, Harriet Ross, Benjamin, 98n Ross, Harriet Greene, 98n Round Hill School, Northampton, Mass., 194n Rouse Hall, Peoria, Ill., 105n, 110n Roxbury, Mass, 94–95nn Roy, Rannohun, 49n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Royal Botanical Gardens, Dublin, Ire., 383n Royal Dublin School of Art and Design, 383n Royal Luis (ship), 407n Royal Navy, 407n Ruggles, David, 90, 92n Russell, George, W., 377, 379n Russell, Isaac W., 518 Russell, Lord John, 81n Russell, Philemon R., 379n Russell, Thomas, 377, 379n Russia: Crimean War and, 367n; immigrants from, 513; nobility of, 209, 211n; U.S. relations with, 187n, 197, 348n, 401n, 407n, 501n Russwurm, John, 92n Rutland, Vt., 454n Rynders, Isaiah, 499, 500n sabbatarianism, 38n St. Bernard Parish, La., 226n St. Catharines, Ont., 98n St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C., 349, 351–52n St. George’s Church, Philadelphia, Pa., 166–67n St. Helena Island, S.C., 405n St. Joseph (Ind.) Valley Register, 4n St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Fremont, Ohio, 121, 123n St. Joseph’s College, Bardstown, Ky., 155n St. Louis, Mo., 50n: abolitionists in, 51n; African Americans in, 214, 216n, 321n, 487n; conventions in, 156n; Douglass speaks in, 35, 36n, 44n, 212n, 215n, 236, 237–38nn; German Americans in, 385n; hotels in, 213–24, 215–16nn; U. S. Grant visits, 242n, 372n; newspapers in, 36n, 213, 215n, 440n; physicians in, 372n; racism in, 212n, 214, 215n; Republican party in, 131n; schools in, 321n; slaves in, 70n St. Louis (Mo.) Daily Missouri Democrat, 36n, 213, 215n St. Michaels, Md.: Douglass revisits, xxxiii, 408n, 411n; houses of, 408; shipbuilding in, 204n; slaveholders in, 58n, 204n, 408, 411n; slaves in, 58n, 204n St. Neots, Eng., 103n, 291n, 366 St. Paul, Minn., 51, 53n, 105n, 113n: Douglass speaks in, 236, 237n, 386n St. Paul Library Association, St. Paul, Minn., 53n St. Paul’s Lyceum Course, Baltimore, Md., 386n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 633

633 St. Peter’s. See Vatican St. Petersburg, Rus., 178 St. Phillip’s Episcopal Church, New York City, 347n St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, Pa., 166n, 167n Salem, Mass., 40n, 405n Salem, Ohio, 380–81 Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society, Salem, Mass., 405n Salem Normal School, Salem, Mass., 405n Salford, Eng., 50n Salvation Army in Switzerland, The (Butler), 326n Samaj, Brahmo, 49n San Francisco, Calif., 411n: economic conditions in, 348n; as seaport, 367 San Francisco Elevator, 89, 287n San Francisco Pacific Appeal, 91n Sanama Bay, Dominican Republic, 183n Sanborn, Franklin B., 421n, 430n: John Brown and, 428, 430–32nn; Douglass writes, xiv, 473, 474 Santana, Pedro, 190n Santo Domingo: annexation of, xxx, 128n, 133n, 146n, 183, 184–85n, 185–86nn, 191n, 201n, 219–20, 219n, 232n, 241, 333n; Douglass lectures on, xxxi, 205–06nn, 214n; U.S. commission to, xxx, 44n, 128n, 145–46nn, 187, 187n, 190n, 201n, 183, 185n, 187n, 190, 201n, 219n, 236n, 362. See also Dominican Republic Santo Domingo Commission, 44n: Congress authorizes, 185n; controversy of Grant’s dinner for, 219–20, 219n, 232n; Charles Douglass works for, 128n; Douglass serves on, 44n, 145–46nn, 187, 187n, 190n, 201n, 219n, 236n, 362; members of, 146n, 183, 190, 190n “Santo Domingo” (Douglass lecture), xxx, 205, 205n, 214n Sarah Sands (ship), 103n, 367, 367n Saratoga, N.Y., xxxiv, 411n, 473, 473–74nn, 477n Saratoga Springs, N.Y., 147 Sargent, Aaron A., 419n Sargent, John T., 12n: Douglass writes, vii, 9–15 Saulsbury, Willard, 299, 303n Saunders, Amos, 260n Saunders, Elizabeth, 260n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

634 Saunders, Elveta, 260, 261n Saunders, Prince Henry Boyer, 260n Saunders, Thomas P., 260–61: writes Douglass, xi, 260–61 Saunders, William U., 152n: writes Douglass, ix, 147–49 Sauvinet, C. S., 227n Savage, Minot J., 573 Savannah, Ga., 115n, 304n, 403n Savannah (Ga.) Colored Tribune, 548 Savings Bank of Newport, R.I., 347n Sawyer, Frederick W., 153, 156n Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (Bradford), 98n Schenectady, N.Y., 507n Schurz, Carl, 328n, 412–13: Ottilie Assing criticizes, 327, 409; Reconstruction and, 326n; writes Douglass, 562 Science and Art Museum, Dublin, Ire., 383n Scituate, R.I., 509n Scotland: abolitionists in, 93n; Douglass in, 562; free blacks in, 93n; immigrants from, 107n, 418n; literature of, 160; Methodists in, 255 Scott, Dred, 14n Scott, John, 153, 155n Scott, Winfield, 124n Scottron, Samuel R., 240n: Douglass writes, x, 239–41 Screven County, Ga., 403n Scribner, Charles, 77n Scribner’s Monthly (New York City), 77n Sea Islands, 79, 81n Sear, Robert, 91–92n Sears, Amanda Auld, 416n: death of, 563; Douglass visits, 416, 416nn, 417 Sears, Edward, 416n Sears, John L., 416n: writes Douglass, xiii, 416–17, 558 Sears, Thomas E., 416n, 563 Seat of Authority on Religion (Martineau), 325n Second Confiscation Act (1862), 13n Second Kentucky Cavalry, 244n “Secret Six,” 430–32nn Seeley, John Robert, 77n Selden, George B., 139, 140n Selden, Henry R., 139, 140n “Self-made Men” (Douglass lecture), xxviii, 73n, 221n, 252n “Self-Reliance” (Emerson), 315n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 634

INDEX Seligman, Joseph, 411n Seminole Wars, 2n, 376n Seneca Falls, N.Y.: Amy Post and, 74n; women’s rights convention at, 8n, 30n, 34n, 74n Seneca Lake, N.Y., 290n Seneca Stone Company, 115n Senigallia, Italy, 173n Sergeant, John, 338n Serra, José Correia de, 481n Sevenoaks (Holland), 77n Seventh Kansas Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, 423n Seward, William H., 51n: Andrew Johnson supported by, 196n; Horace Greeley and, 54n; as secretary of state, 196n; Thurlow Weed and, 54n; as Whig, 54n, 193, 196n Seward Seminary, Rochester, N.Y., 40n Seymour, Horatio, 96, 96n: Douglass criticizes, 97n; as presidential candidate, 227n Shackleton, Lydia, 382, 383n Shadd, Absalom, 496n Shadd, Eliza, 496n Shadd, Furmann J., 495, 496n Shadd, Mary Ann Cary, 496n: Douglass writes, 534; writes for New National Era, 534 Shakers, 19n Shakespeare, William: plays of, 157–58, 159n, 167n, 399nn, 414, 419n Sharman, William, 82n Sharp, Alexander, 371, 372–73n Sharps rifles, 432n Shaw, Walter B., 547 Shearer, Lizzie, 553 Shepard, Charles O., 539 Shepherd, Alexander, 352n, 395n Shepherd, Arthur, 352n Sheridan, Phillip, 292, 296n, 307–08n Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 325n Sherman, Alice Louise, 344n, 413, 414–15n, 419–20nn Sherman, Charles Greene, 419n, 420n Sherman, Harold F., 419n Sherman, John, 301: Douglass writes, xii, 349; endorses Douglass for U.S. marshal, 348n; in Election of 1880, 489n, 501 Sherman, Martha “Gertie” Greene, 323n, 343, 344n, 414n Sherman, William H., 344n, 414n, 419n Sherman, William Tecumseh, 2n, 385n Shield (London, Eng.), 326n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Shiloh Presbyterian Church, New York City, 4n Shylock (fictional character), 414 Sibley Hall, University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y., 231n, 469n Sibley’s Department Store, Rochester, N.Y., 41n Sicily, 485, 486n Simmons, George, 245, 247n Simmons, William H., 245, 247n Simpson’s Hall, Omaha, Neb., 235n Singapore, 336, 337–38nn Slack, Charles Wesley: Douglass writes, ix, 141–42; writes Douglass, 555 Slade, Josephine, 65n Slade, William, 61n: death of, 84, 85n; Douglass writes, viii, 64–65, 66n; as White House valet, 61n, 65n; writes Douglass, viii, 60n, 61, 66 Slaughter Neck, Del., 161n Slaughterhouse Case (1874), 274, 277n, 279, 279n “slave power” ideology, 13n slave trade: in Alabama, 57; Atlantic and, 49n; Great Britain opposes, 13n; in Kentucky, 57; in Maryland, 57; opposition to, 10; in United States, 13n, 34n slaveholders: African American suffrage opposed by, 11; Baptists as, 365n; in Border States, 13n, 61n; character of, 122; in Delaware, 35n; in Georgia, 224n, 303n, 403n, 440n; in Kentucky, 71n, 182n, 193n; in Louisiana, 226n, 406n; manumit slaves, 152n, 182n, 193n, 320n, 347n; in Maryland, xxxiii, 16n, 32, 33–35nn, 42n, 58n, 69n, 78n, 203, 204nn, 299, 416n, 471n; in Mississippi, 224n; property right claims of, 508n; racism encouraged by, 5; in St. Michaels, Md., 58n, 204nn, 416n, 469n; sexually abuse slaves, 302n; in South Carolina, 359, 469n; in Texas, 175n; in Virginia, 17n, 67n, 321n slavery: in Brazil, 49n, 516; in Cuba, 49n, 187n, 239–40, 240–41n, 516; in Dominican Republic, 190n; in Georgia, 81n, 302n; in Haiti, 467n; historical studies of, 487n; in Kentucky, 92n; in Louisiana, 13n, 402n; overseers in, 402n; political disputes regarding, 96n; racism and, 5, 10, 299, 467; in South Carolina, 359n, 496n; in Tennessee, 13n; in Texas, 32, 33n; as unconstitutional, 11, 233n; as inherently violent, 160; in Virginia, 13n, 17n, 58n, 67n, 321n; wealth derived from,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 635

635 466; in West Indies, 79; in Washington, D.C., 210n, 389 in western territories, 10 slaves: autobiographies by, 182n, 500n; in Baltimore, Md., 16n, 42n; in Civil War, 280, 493n; in Delaware, 161n; escapes of, 42n, 58n, 62, 63n, 73n, 98n, 440n, 471n; in Florida, 439n; in Georgia, 401n, 403n, 431n, 440n; hiring out of, 58n, 469n, 496n; as house servants, 492n; in Kentucky, 19n, 182n, 193n, 441n; manumission of, 152n, 182n, 193n, 320n, 347n; in Maryland, 16n, 32, 33–34nn, 41–42n, 57, 58n, 73n, 78n, 98n, 204nn, 227n, 284, 285n, 416n, 471n; as masons, 248n; as ministers, 401n; in Mississippi, 54n, 224n, 228n, 492–93nn; in Missouri, 14, 70n, 228n, 441n; in New York State, 103n; in North Carolina, 4n, 152n, 248n; productivity of, 465; purchase freedom, 70n, 204n, 248n; rapes of, 300; rebellions of, 73n, 430n; revolts by, 37–38nn, 254n; as seamstresses, 70n; sexual abuse of, 70n; in South Carolina, 172n, 359n, 405n, 496n; as stewards, 227–28nn; in Talbot County, Md., 32, 204n, 210n, 469n; as teamsters, 492n; in Tennessee, 13n, 102n; Union Army and, 38n, 51n; in Virginia, 58n, 70n, 347n, 402n, 426n; women as, 70n, 300 slavetraders, 122 Slidell, John, 432n Smith, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh, 203, 204n, 279, 282: John Brown and, 430n; children of, 204n; health of, 253, 253n; as widow, 290 Smith, Charles G., 291n Smith, Clark, 76n Smith, E. Kirby, 486n Smith, Edward P., 313n, 316 Smith, Eugene, 76n Smith, Francis, 534 Smith, George C., 490, 493n Smith, Gerrit, 36n: as abolitionist, 8n, 36n, 102n, 254, 277n, 364; Susan B. Anthony and, 250, 251n; biographies of, 290n, 355n, 420– 21, 421–22nn, 424–28, 430nn; John Brown and, 36–37nn, 60, 62, 63n, 291n, 420–21, 421–23nn, 424–25, 428, 428n, 430–31nn, 517, 563; John Brown, Jr., and, 423n, 425, 430–31nn, 563; supports Salomon P. Chase for President, 96, 97n, 219, 520; Chicago Tribune sued by, xxviii, 61, 63n, 423n; children of, 290, 290n, 379n, 420, 421n, 423n; Civil Rights Act of 1875 supported by, 177–80;

5/17/23 2:36 PM

636 Smith, Gerrit (continued) John Cochrane and, 290, 421n; advocates colonization, 36n; Jefferson Davis and, 37n, 52, 55n; death of, xxxii, 289, 290n; Douglass aided by, xxiii, 202, 545; Douglass visits, 533; Douglass writes, vii–viii, x–xi, xxii, 35–39, 61–64, 96–97, 202–04, 219, 250–51, 278–82, 284–85, 422n, 518, 522, 524, 537, 545; family of, 290, 421; Frederick Douglass’ Paper and, 36; Free Churches and, 355n; opposes Horace Greeley for president, 219; Julia Griffiths and, 290, 291n, 533; Harpers Ferry Raid and, xxviii, 35–36, 36–37nn, 62, 63n, 420–21, 421–22n, 424–26, 428n, 432–33nn; Howard University supported by, 250, 252–53, 253n, 280; insanity alleged, 37n; Jerry Rescue and, 281, 282n, 500n; Liberty party and, xxiii, 36n, 233, 440nn; New National Era and, 202, 545; Peterboro home of, 62, 203, 203n, 252, 284n, 289–90, 355, 421n, 428, 431n, 533; photograph of, xxxix; public letters of, 284n; recommends leniency for Jefferson Davis, 37n, 55n; Republican party and, 96, 219n, 276, 284n; Elizabeth Cady Stanton and, 8n; Charles Sumner and, 203, 203n; temperance movement and, 36n, 290n; U.S. Constitution and, 233n, 275; wealth of, 202n; writes Douglass, xi, xxii, 96, 202n, 252–53, 273–78, 280, 517, 519, 527, 537, 541, 545 Smith, Green Clay, 255, 356n Smith, Greene, 290, 290n, 421n Smith, Hiram, 76n Smith, James McCune, 93n: as abolitionist, 93n; colonization opposed by, 54n, 93n; as contributor to Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 93n; emigration opposed by, 54n, 93n; as journalist, 93n; pen name of, 93n; as physician, 93n; Weekly Anglo-African and, 93n Smith, James Webster, 171, 172–73n, 492n Smith, Lizzie, 245 Smith, Louise Olive, 75, 76n Smith, Peter Skennandoah, 421n Smith, Rhonda Adams, 76n Smith, Roswell, 77n Smith, W. Scott: Douglass writes, xi, 311–13 Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 94n, 210n Smyth, Jonathan H., 543 Snell, William B., 549

Y8204-Douglass.indb 636

INDEX Sniffen, Cuiver C., 549 social equality, 31–32, 299–302 socialism, 201n, 509n Sociedad Abolicionista Española, 49n Society of Odd Fellows, 88n Society for the Prevention on Crime in New York, 316n Society of the Sons of New York, 333n Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Convention, Pittsburgh, Pa., 513 Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict (May), 82n Song of Hiawatha, The (Longfellow), 22n Sonnets to the Memory of Frederick Douglass (Tilton), 22n Sons of Temperance, 356n Sophocles, 385n Sorosis, 181n, 183n “Sources of Danger to the Republic” (Douglass lecture), xxvii, 32n, 36n, 41n South: African Americans flee, xxxiii–iv; Black Codes passed in, 14n, 466n; as Democratic party bastion, 453–54n; mob violence in, 14–15n, 33n, 132, 291, 293n, 298, 452, 455, 465; racism in, 5, 7n, 11, 79; Reconstruction in, 33n; Republican party in, 52; violent mobs in, 548. See individual states South Africa, 304n, 326n South America, 462n, See also individual countries South Bend, Ind., 4n South Britain, Conn., 318n South Butler, N.Y., 500n South Carolina: African Americans in, xxx, 172n, 357, 358–59n, 404, 407n, 426n, 496n; carpetbaggers in, 359n, 406n; Civil War in, 97n, 137n, 201n, 272n, 308, 309–10n, 405n, 407n, 496n, 506n; Democratic party in, 357, 358–60nn; Election of 1876 in, 343n, 359–60n; free blacks in, 403n; freedmen schools in, 81n, 404, 405n; Freedmen’s Bureau in, 426n; government of, 358–60nn, 496n; Ku Klux Klan in, 195n; lawyers in, 358–59nn, 407n; mob violence in, 360n; newspapers in, 359n; railroads in, 406n; Reconstruction in, xxxi, 81n, 156n, 201n, 269, 272n, 328n, 355n, 357, 359–60nn, 375; Republican party in, 156n, 272n, 328n, 357, 358–60nn, 406n, 426n, 496n; schools in, 201n, 404, 405n; Sea Islands of, 81n; secession of, 309–10n, 359–60nn; slaveholders in, 359n,

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX 496n; slaves in, 172n, 359n, 405n, 496n; U.S. Army in, 328n, 355n, 370n South Carolina College, Columbia, S.C., 359–60nn South Da kota, 216n, 505n South Union Shaker Community, Auburn, N.Y., 19n Southampton, Mass., 115n Southern Loyalist Convention, Philadelphia, Pa.: African American suffrage debated at, 21; Douglass attends, xxvii, 20–21, 21n, 22–23, 24n, 25, 27n, 513; Andrew Johnson opponents organize, 21n; New York State delegation to, 23 Southern Pacific Railroad, 176n Southwestern Christian Advocate (New Orleans, La.), 154n Spain, 101n; abolitionists in, 49n, 240; African colonies of, 315; defeats Cuban independence insurgency, 133n, 169n, 194–95n, 240–41n; 253n, recolonizes Dominican Republic, 190n, 332n; Inquisition in, 124n; monarchy of, 2n, 124–25nn, 241n; Moors in, 124n; republic established in, 240; Roman Catholic Church in, 124–25nn; U.S. relations with, 131n, 133n, 254n, 328n, 401n; wars in the Netherlands, 101n, 121, 125n Spanish American War, 339n, 361n, 403n Spelman, James J., Douglass writes, viii, 58–59 Spencer, George E., 346, 348n Spencer, Herbert, 482n spiritualism: abolitionists and, 323n, 345nn; conventions of, xxviii; Douglass and, xxiv, xxviii, 344, 345n; Fox sisters and, 345n; Amy Post and, 344, 345n, 462n, 527; Quakers and, 462n; Theodore Tilton on, 188n Spoleto, Italy, 173 Spooner, Bourne, 378–79n Spooner, Nathaniel Bourne, 377, 378n Spooner, Zilpha H., 378n Sprague, Alfred, 109n Sprague, Alice Louise, xi, 101n, 109n: death of, 341n; in Rochester, 221, 222n; as Washington, D.C., resident, 256, 453, 455n; writes Douglass, 256 Sprague, Annie Rosine, 39, 42–43n, 51n, 76, 101n: in Rochester, 77n, 109n, 221; in Washington, D.C., 462n Sprague, Emma Brown, 78n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 637

637 Sprague, Estelle, 78n, 314, 314–15n: in Syracuse, N.Y., 340; in Washington, D.C., 314n, 321, 462n Sprague, Fredericka, 43n, 222n: resides with grandparents, 222n; in Kansas, 315n; in Rochester, 221; as teacher, 222n; in Washington, D.C., 462n Sprague, Harriet “Hattie” Bailey, 39–40, 43n, 51n, 101n: Douglass writes, 314; in Kansas, 315n; in Rochester, 77n, 109n, 221; in Washington, D.C., 462n, 540 Sprague, Helen Louise “Louisa,” 43n, 75–76, 78n, 314: lacks education, 108; resides in Douglass household, 78n, 221, 233, 321, 437n, 446n; sues Douglass, 78n Sprague, Herbert Douglass, 437, 437–38n Sprague, Kate Chase, 41n Sprague, Lewis, 78n, 109n Sprague, Martha, 438n Sprague, Nathan, 41n: children of, 42–43n, 109n, 222n, 314–15n, 437n; Douglass writes, xi, 265; father of, 525; financial difficulties of, 76, 107–08, 112–13, 339–40, 341n, 343, 515, 551; Frederick Douglass, Jr., feuds with, 107–08; as gardener, 109, 109n; as hack driver, 39; horses of, 456, 457n; in jail, 314n, 323n, 341nn, 343; marries Rosetta Douglass, 40–41nn, 323, 566; military service of, 41n; in Nebraska, 76, 77n, 83, 84n, 222n; resides in Rochester, 39, 43n, 44, 75, 107–09, 109n, 202, 203n, 221, 221n, 249n, 322, 505n; as slave, 78n; sues Douglass on sister’s behalf, 78n; writes to Douglass, viii, 310, 540 Sprague, Rosabella, 43n, 315n Sprague, Rosetta Douglass. See Douglass, Rosetta Springfield, Ill.: Douglass speaks in, xxviii, 512 Springfield, Mass., 77n: African Americans in, 240n Springfield (Mass.) Republican, 77n Stafford County, Va., 369n Staffordshire, Eng., 103n Stamford, Conn., 449n, 565–66 Stamford Street Chapel, London, Eng., 80n Stanley, William, 238n Stansfield, James, 326n Stanton, Edwin L, 533 Stanton, Edwin M.: death of, 529; Douglass writes, vii; removal by Andrew Johnson, 6n, 85n, 97n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

638 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 8–9n: in American Equal Rights Association, 29n; as ally of Susan B. Anthony, 9n, 28n; articles on, 181n; Douglass and, xxiv; Douglass writes, 8–9; Fifteenth Amendment opposed by, 99, 99–100n, 133n; National Woman Suffrage Association led by, 180n, 182n; press attacks on, 525; racist views of, 99n; Gerrit Smith and, 8n; Sojourner Truth and, 103n; as woman suffrage advocate, 8–9n, 28, 30, 54n, 290n; writes to Douglass, vii, 30–31 Stanton, Henry B., 8n State Normal and Industrial School, Huntsville, Ala., 321n State Regulation of Vice (Butler), 326n Staunton, Mass., 352n Stearns, George L.: aids John Brown, 36, 430n; as manufacturer, 368n; recruits for Union Army, 369n; wife of, 367, 367n Stearns, Mary E., 368–69n: writes Douglass, xii, 368–70 Stebbins, Catherine A. F., 554 Stebbins, Franklin S., 555 Steinway Hall, New York City, 133n Stephens, Aaron Dwight, 440n Stephens, Lemuel, 377, 379n, 380n Stephens, Sarah, 380n Steuben County, N.Y., 62, 64n, 248n Stevens, Aaron Dwight, 425n Stevens, Thaddeus, 230n, 522, 526 Stevenson, Louis W.: writes Douglass, ix, 174–76 Stewart, Alexander T., 534 Stewart, Carter A., 59, 60n Stewart, Consuelo A. Clark, 486, 487n Stewart, Eliza, 224n Stewart, Gideon T., 355, 356n Stewart, Petreshe H., 356n Stewart, Thomas F., 356n Stewart, William M., 153, 155n Stillman, James W., 180, 182n Stockholm, Swed., 268n Stone, Frederick W., 103n Stone, Lucy, 9n: in American Equal Rights Association and, 29n, 180–81n; American Woman Suffrage Association led by, 180–81n; marriage to Henry Blackwell, 415n Stonewall (ship), 56n Stowall, Helen, 555 Stowe, Harriet Beecher: Sojourner Truth and, 103n; writes Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 120n, 386n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 638

INDEX Stowe, Lydia A., 418n Straker, Annie C., 358n Straker, David A., 358–59: writes Douglass, xii, 356–61 Stratford, Conn., 365n Strickland, E. F., 548 Strieby, Michael E., 316, 318n: Douglas writes, 12, 329–30; writes Douglass, 329 Strong, Cyrus, 242n Study of Religion, A (Martineau), 325n Sturge, Joseph, 367n Sturgis, Mich., 84, 85n submarines, 386n suffrage: of African Americans, xxiv, 2n, 5, 7n, 11–12, 20–21, 23, 24nn, 29n, 30, 31n, 54–56nn, 67n, 71n, 87n, 90, 133n, 348n, 376, 513, 522; in Connecticut, 182n; of free blacks, 28n, 30; of freedmen, xxvii, 1n, 5, 10, 28n; in Georgia, 79, 81n; in Great Britain, 49n, 81n; in New York State, xxvii, 30, 87n, 462n; of women, ix, xxviii, 9n, 28, 28n, 30n, 49n, 52, 53–54nn, 98, 99–100nn, 112n, 180–83, 180–82nn, 201n, 290n, 417, 418–19nn, 437n, 462n, 512, 548 sugar, 309n Suliot, James W., 381, 382n Suliot, Theodore E., 382n Sulla, Lucius Cornelius, 377n Summers, Mark W., 292n Sumner, Charles, 114, 116: African Americans praise, 352; Alabama claims and, 136–37, 137n; as civil rights advocate, xxiv, xxxii, 116n, 211n, 215n, 264n, 277n, 302n, 304n, 392n, 401n, 513; censure of, 237nn; Cuban insurgency supported by, 196; death of, xxxii, 258, 259n, 302n, 497n, 543–44; Douglass breaks with, xxiv, 216, 231–32; Douglass defends, 184n, 185, 186n, 236; Douglass eulogizes, 259–60n, 448; Douglass writes, ix–x, 136–37, 167–69, 183–86, 209, 513, 528, 535; Douglass supported by, 127n, 129, 130–31n, 209, 211–12n; emancipation advocated by, 392n; free blacks and, 135; opposes Ulysses S. Grant, xxiv, 184–85, 184n, 216, 219n, 232n; as Liberal Republican, xxiv, 216–17n, 219n; photograph of, xxxvi; opposes Santo Domingo annexation, 183, 184n, 191n; Gerrit Smith and, 203n; speeches of, 167, 168n; writes Douglass, x, 184, 216–17, 231–32 Sumner, Elizabeth P., 449n Sumner, George, 449n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Sumner High School, Washington, D.C., 259, 388, 392n, 405n Sunderland, Byron, 85n Swatow, Chine, 337–38nn Swepson, George W., 175n, 304n “Swindling Congress, The” (Phillips), 53n Switzerland, 47, 49–50nn, 261n, 401n, 448n, 548, 569 Syracuse, N.Y.: abolitionists in, 82n, 100, 102n, 318n, 500n; African Americans in, 340n, 342n; churches in, 248n, 318n, 355; Congregationalists in, 318n; Douglass in, 240n, 355; free blacks in, 248n, 500n; fugitive slaves in, 82n, 102n, 248n, 500n; Jerry Rescue in, 82n, 102n, 282n, 499, 500n; lawyers in, 355n; manufacturing in, 208n; newspapers in, 207n, 302n, 500n; schools in, 102n, 248n; Underground Railroad in, 102n, 248n; Union Army recruits from, 102n; Unitarians in, 82n Syracuse Fugitive Aid Society, Syracuse, N.Y., 102n Syracuse Journal, 302n Syracuse Post, 207n Talbot County, Md.: agriculture of, 469n; Auld family in, 411n; Douglass relatives in, 57; free blacks in, 32, 35n, 204n; newspapers of, 453n; sheriff of, 58n; slaveholders in, 58n, 204nn, 416n, 469n; slaves in 32, 204n, 210n, 469n Tallahatchie County, Miss., 402n Talliaferro, James G., 227n Tammany Hall, New York City, 194n, 397n Taney, G. A., 516 Taney, Roger B.: Dred Scott decision by, 14n; quoted, 454n Tanner, Benjamin T., 403n Tappan, Arthur, 206n, 365 Tappan, Lewis, 206n: as abolitionist, 121n, 318n, 365; leads American and Foreign AntiSlavery Society, 318n; American Missionary Association and, 205, 206n, 318n tariff, 207n, 499n Taylor, Bayard, 397n Taylor, Mary Ann, 562 Taylor, Nikki Marie, 487n Taylor, Zachary, 2n, 385n temperance: abolitionists and, 29n, 38n, 53, 288n, 365, 347n, 382; churches and, 12n; Congregationalists advocate, 69n; Douglass and, xxiv, 92n; free blacks and, 67n, 91–92n,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 639

639 406n; in Great Britain, 49–50nn, 271n; in Massachusetts, 12n, 38n, 379n; in Maine, 95n; Methodists advocate, 235n; ministers support, 82n; in New York State, 82n, 168, 567; newspapers of, 179n, 365n; in Ohio, 67n; Prohibition party and, xxiv, 355, 356n; in Rochester, N.Y., 28n; Gerrit Smith and, 36n, 290n; Unitarians in, 82n; Whig party and, 4n, 28n; women advocate, 28n, 182n, 436n, 567 Ten Years’ War, 194–95n Tennessee, 156n, 382n: African Americans in, xxxi, 321n; British travelers in, 326n; Civil War in, 6n, 65n, 131n, 191n; Democratic party in, 6n; Douglass speaks in, xxxi, 51, 251, 252n, 516, 541; emancipation in, 13n; free blacks in, 65n; government of, 6n; Andrew Johnson and, 65n; Republican party in, 53n, 65n; slavery in, 13n; slaves in, 13n, 102n Tennessee Agricultural Fair, Nashville, Tenn., 541 Tennessee Colored Agricultural and Mechanical Association, xxxi, 252n Tennyson, Alfred Lord: quoted, 225n Tenure of Office Act (1867), 6–7n, 85n Terre Haute, Ind., 131n Texas, 408n, 458n: admission of, 111; African Americans in, 43n, 176, 176n, 315n; annexation of, 254n; carpetbaggers in, 174; Civil War in, 33n; Democratic party in, 175n; exodus from, 466n; freedpeople in, 32; German Americans in, 446n; government of, 176n; Ku Klux Klan in, 33n; lawyers in, 176n; railroads in, 174; Reconstruction in, 33n, 146n, 174, 175–76nn, 296n; Republican party in, 174, 176n; schools in, 43n, 175–76nn, 315n; secession of, 175–76nn; slavery in, 32, 33n, 175; Unionists in, 176n Texas Central Railroad, 176n Thailand, 206n Thanksgiving (holiday), 100 Theism in Medieval India (Carpenter), 50n Third Maine Infantry Regiment, 2n Third Regiment Louisiana National Guard, 19n Thirteenth Amendment: celebrations of, xxvii, 10; Civil Rights Act (1875) expands, 264n; enforcement of, 7n; women campaign for, 9n Thomas, Anna S., 378n Thomas, Charles, 49n Thomas, Herbert William Russell, 82n Thomas, Horace H., 315–16

5/17/23 2:36 PM

640 Thomas, Isabella, 378n Thomas, John, 378n Thomas, John B., 380n Thomas, Joshua, 378n Thomas, Mary H., 389n Thomas, Sarah S., 378n Thomas, William, 378: Douglass writes, xii, 377–80; writes Douglass, 377, 557 Thompson, Ambrose, 467n Thompson, Elizabeth, 436n: Douglass writes, 435–36, 476, 567; philanthropy of, 436, 476–77, 551, 562; photograph of, xxxix; as temperance advocate, 567; writes Douglass, xiii–xiv, xxii, 435–37, 463–64, 476–77, 488–89, 551, 562–63, 567, 570–71, 573 Thompson, George (Eng.): as abolitionist, 367n; Douglass and, 367n Thompson, George (U.S.), 438, 441n Thompson, Samuel R., 542 Thompson, Thomas, 436n Thoreau, Ralph Waldo, 418n, 430–31nn Thou and I (Tilton), 503, 504n Three Years in Europe; Or, Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met (Brown), 92n Thurman, Allan, 215n, 301 Thutmose (pharaoh of Egypt), 171n Tichnor, William Davis: Douglass writes, vii, 24–25 Ticknor and Fields Publishing Company, 25n, 514 Tilden, A. E., 344, 345n Tilden, Samuel, 284, 284n: in election of 1876, 335n, 343n, 359n Tilton, Alice, 69n Tilton, Carroll, 69n Tilton, Elizabeth Richards, 69, 69n, 181–82nn, 188: affair with Henry Ward Beecher, 188n, 239n; divorce controversy of, 239n Tilton, Florence, 69n, 503, 504n Tilton, Paul, 69n Tilton, Ralph, 69n Tilton, Theodore, 22n: as abolitionist, 69n; Henry Ward Beecher and, 69–60n, 182n, 238, 239n, 545; as civil rights supporter, xxiv, xxvii; divorce controversy of, 238, 239n; Douglass writes, ix–x, xiv; 68–69, 125–26, 132–34, 149, 188, 503–04; Douglass’s friendship with, ix, xxx, 21, 22n, 69n, 126, 132; as expatriate in France, 22n, 70n, 503; edits Golden Age, 188, 188n; edits Independent,

Y8204-Douglass.indb 640

INDEX 22n, 53n, 69n, 126, 127nn, 132, 133–34nn, 149n, 188n, 522, 526; as Liberal Republican supporter, 188n; as lyceum speaker, 22n, 51, 53n, 125, 126n; photograph of, xxxv; as poet, 503; remarries, 503; speaks at Southern Loyalist Convention, 21, 21–22n; spiritualism and, 188n; supports woman suffrage, xxx, 181n; writes Douglass, ix, 68, 126–27, 552 Titcomb, Timothy (pseudonym), 77n Titus, Frances, W., 461, 462–63n Titus, Richard, 462n Titusville, Pa., 76n “To the Depositors of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company” (Douglass’s public letter), 287n Todd, Charles Plummer, 432n Toledo, Ohio, 123n Toledo (Ohio) Commercial, 356n Tomogoro, Ono, 56n Toombs, Robert, 440n Toronto, Ont., 36n, 103n Torrey, Charles T., 438, 440n Torrington, Conn., 37n Toussaint, George A., 572 Tracy, Frank W., 512 transatlantic cable, 137n Transylvania University, Lexington, Ky., 54n, 356n Traver, H. J., 242n, 540 Traverse City, Mich., 344, 345n Tremont Hall Hotel, Chicago, Ill., 211n Tremont Temple, Boston, Mass., 200: Nathaniel Cover at, 364n; Douglass speaks in, xxvii, Trent (ship), 391n, 432n Trent Affair, 391n, 432n Trinity (Washington) College, Hartford, Conn., 449n Trobriand, Régis de, 296n Troy, N.Y.: Douglass speaks in, 530; free blacks 9n, 216n; schools in, 216n; Underground Railroad in, 216n Troy Female Seminary, Troy, N.Y., 8n Trumbull, Lyman, 107n, 153, 156n Trumbull County, Ohio, 155n Truth, Sojourner, 92n, 101, 103n, 461, 462–63nn: Douglass writes, 533 tuberculosis, 496n Tubman, Harriet, 98n biography of, 97; Douglass writes, viii, 97–98; in Rochester, 503n, 524

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Tucker, Henry St. George, 124n Tulane University, New Orleans, La., 227n Turkey, 190n Turks Island, 332 Turner, Henry M., 400, 403n Turner, James Milton, 537–38 Turner, Jonathan B., 556 Turner Hall, St. Louis, Mo., 36n Turner’s Opera House, Dayton, Ohio, 73n Tuscola, Ill., 212n, 213: Douglass speaks in, 214n Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Ala, 43n Tuttle, Gaffield and Company, 373n Twain, Mark, 43n Tweddle Hall, Albany, N.Y., 29n Tweed, William A., 194n, 285n, 397n Twelfth Baptist Church, Washington, D.C., 85n Twelfth Maine Infantry Regiment, 360n Twelfth Street Meeting House, Philadelphia, Pa., 181n Twenty-fourth U.S. Infantry Regiment, 339n Twitchell, Marshall, 293–94n Tybee (ship), 331, 332n Tyler, John: appointments by, 124n; as vicepresidential candidate, 124n Tyne River, 367n Types of Ethical Theory (Martineau), 325n Ugly Club, New York City, 333n Ulster County, N.Y., 103 Unadilla Forks, N.Y., 182n, 434n Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe): characters in, 563; published in National Era, 120n, 386n; Harriet Beecher Stowe writes, 120n, 386n Underground Railroad: in Boston, 12n; in Chicago, 18n; Douglass as conductor of, 507; free black conductors of, 92n, 97n, 317n, 353n, 406n; in Illinois, 7, 18n; in Kentucky, 353n, 441; in Maryland, 18n, 98n; in Massachusetts, 12n, 379–80nn, 418n; in Missouri, 441n; in New York City, 92–93n, 347n; in New York State, 74nn, 92–93n, 347, 365n, 397n, 498n; in Ohio, 99n, 353n; in Pennsylvania, 3n, 407n; in Philadelphia, Pa., 407n; Maria G. Porter as conductor of, 102n; Samuel D. Porter and, 507; in Rhode Island, 1n; in Rochester, N.Y., 74n, 102n, 177n, 230– 31n, 470, 471n, 502, 507; in Syracuse, N.Y., 102n, 248n; Harriet Tubman and, 97–98, 98n; women as conductors of, 102n, 470, 471n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 641

641 Underwood, John C., 26–27n: Douglass writes, vii, 25–27 Union Army, 507n: black units in, 44n, 46n, 102n, 148n, 205n, 210, 225–26nn, 240n, 359n, 403n, 407n, 426n, 457–58nn, 486n, 487n, 491–92nn, 506n; black scouts for, 98n; camps of, 179n; chaplains in, 131n, 154n, 403n; departments of, 227n, 296n; free blacks in, 6n, 8n, 11, 38n, 46n, 59n, 64n, 67n, 102n, 131n, 148n, 152n, 210, 212n, 225n, 289, 301, 348n, 357, 407n; generals of, 338n, 348n, 421n, 486n, 489n, 496n; German American in, 385n; hospitals of, 82n, 106n; nurses in, 407n; officers of, 174n, 201n, 205n, 292n, 296n, 351n, 356n, 359–60nn, 370n, 395n, 399n, 421n, 423n, 428n, 443n, 478n, 486n, 489n, 491n, 506n; pensions for, 402n; political generals in, 259n, 285n; as prisoners of war, 52, 244n; provost marshal of, 142n; racial discrimination in, 38n, 67n; recruiting for, 38n, 64n, 67n, 102n, 152n, 154n, 225n, 244n; reporters accompany, 201n; slaves recruited for, 38n, 51n; surgeons in, 373n, 491–92nn; sutlers with, 240n; in Texas, 33n; veteran organizations of, 88n, 106, 107n, 237n, 250. See also Army of the Potomac Union Chapel, Cincinnati, Ohio, 322n Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., 421n, 507n Union for Christian Work, Providence, R.I., 494, 495n Union League, 143n, 148n Union League Hall, Washington, D.C., 105n, 151n Union Missionary Society, 93n. See also American Missionary Association Union Pacific Railroad, 17, 19n, 77n, 84n, 87n Union Park Congregational Church, Chicago, Ill., 205n, 214n Union party, 65n, 155n Union School Fund, Jamestown, N.Y., 76n Union Springs Friends’ Academy, N.Y., 462n Union Square, New York City, 557 Union Theological Seminary, New York City, 316n Union Village, N.Y., 365n Union Woman’s Suffrage Association, 180: founding of 181n Uniontown Shakespeare Club, Washington, D.C., 414

5/17/23 2:36 PM

642 Unitarian Church: abolitionists in, 12n, 50n, 326n, 369n, 379n, 430n; in Baltimore, 80, 82n; in Boston, 50, 82n, 315n; freedmen’s aid work of, 80, 81n; in Great Britain, 47–48, 49–50nn, 80, 80n, 269n, 272n, 325n, 369n; in Indiana, 112n; in Ireland, 325n; in Massachusetts, 50, 80, 82n, 315, 379n, 430n, 515n; ministers of, 12n, 46, 48, 50n, 80, 80–82nn, 345n, 369n, 379n, 421n, 430n; newspapers of, 50, 79, 80nn; in Ohio, 369n; in New York State, 28n, 80, 82n, 156n, 345n, 462n; pacificism and, 82n; in Rochester, 80, 156n, 345n, 462n; temperance and, 82n; in Washington, D.C., 80, 81–82n, 369n Unitarian South Place Chapel, London, Eng., 369n University College, London, Eng., 50n United Confederate Veterans, 360n United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, 73n Universal Franchise Association, 99n Universalist Church, 82n University of Bern, Bern, Switz., 448n University of Bonn, Bonn, Ger., 328n University of Frankfort, Frankfort, Ger., 378n University of Georgia, Athens, Ga., 360n University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scot., 93n University of Gottingen, Gottingen, Ger., 378n University of London, London, Eng., 50n, 271n University of Louisville, Louisville, Ky., 60n, 244n University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich., 43n University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa., 115n, 338n, 350n, 432n University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y., xxxiii, 341n, 345n, 469nn, 507n University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont., 4, 91n University of Vienna, Vienna, Aust., 448n University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisc., 158n U.S. Army: paymasters in, 373n; in Spanish American War, 403n U.S. Capitol, 3n, 348, 350n U.S. Coast Survey, 156n U.S. Comptroller Office, 263n U.S. Congress: black members of, 67n, 153, 154n, 162, 299, 302–03n, 359n, 402–03nn, 496n; chaplains of, 85n, 173n; Civil Rights Act of 1866 and, xxxii, 10, 14n, 215n; Civil Rights Act of 1875 and, 215n, 264, 264–65n, 273–74, 277n, 302n, 304n, 544; clerks for, 166n; Committee on the Conduct of the

Y8204-Douglass.indb 642

INDEX War of, 71n; confirms Douglass’s marshal appointment, 357; corruption of, 53n, 313n; Democratic party in, 6n, 54n, 85n, 106n, 134n, 153, 156–57nn, 254n, 277n, 285n, 301, 303–04nn, 306n, 348n, 360–61nn, 421n, 432n, 455, 457n, 459, 460n, 472, 472–73n, 483–84nn, 492n, 497nn; District of Columbia and, 56n, 210n; Douglass visits chambers of, 488; franking privilege, 167, 168n; Free Soil party in, 17n, 27n, 111n, 116n, 254n, 440n; Freedmen’s Bank and, xxxiv, 287n, 482–83, 484; Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and, 2–3nn, 65n, 85, 86n, 89n; galleries in, 209; Harpers Ferry Raid investigated by, 190n, 430–32, 563; impeaches Andrew Johnson, xxviii, 84, 85n, 89, 89n, 122, 128n, 155–56nn, 195n, 318n, 491n, 519–21; Joint Committee on Reconstruction of, 128n; Know Nothing party in, 4n; Ku Klux Klan Acts, 195n, 303n; Republican party in, 4n, 20–21n, 22–23, 27n, 53n, 85n, 89n, 97n, 106n, 110, 111–112nn, 115–16nn, 128n, 131n, 149n, 153, 154n, 155nn, 187n, 215n, 254n, 259n, 277n, 301, 302n, 305–08n, 328n, 334n, 346, 347–48nn, 356n, 359n, 369n, 402–03nn, 406n, 419n, 432n, 457n, 460n, 489n, 490, 491n, 496n, 506n; restaurant of, 1n, 3n, 277n, 346, 347n; Santo Domingo annexation rejected by, 183n, 185n, 191n; sergeant of arms of, 107n, 351n; slave trade abolished by, 13n, 34n; speakers of House in, 4n; Whig party in, 4n, 89n, 111n, 124n, 187n, 259n, 348n; woman suffrage debated in, 182n, 417, 419n U.S. Constitution: abolitionists and, 11, 13n, 38n, 53n, 223n, 275; as antislavery document, 232–33, 233n; checks and balances in, 279–80n; civil rights protected under, 232–33, 233n, 479; Douglass on, 11, 232–33, 233n; Fifteenth Amendment to, xxix–xxx, 8n, 10, 24n, 105n, 132, 155n, 167n, 264n; Fifth Amendment to, 14n; Fourteenth Amendment to, xxviii, 8n, 10, 14n, 29n, 128n, 264n, 277n; fugitive slave clause in, 432n; Garrisonians and, 233n; guarantee clause of, 36n; Liberty party and, 233, 233n; as proslavery document, 11, 124n, 233n, 275n; Thirteenth Amendment to, 7n, 9n, 10, 149n, 264n; woman suffrage amendment proposed, 419n U.S. Court of Claims, 155n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX U.S. Department of the Interior, 144n U.S. Department of Justice, 478n U.S. Department of the Navy, 403n U.S. Department of State, 400, 402n U.S. Government Printing Office, 8n, 141n U.S. Marine Hospital, Louisville, Ky., 353n U.S. Military Academy (West Point), West Point, N.Y., 2n, 54n, 97n, 124n, 155n, 191n, 376n: discrimination at, 171, 172–73n, 275–76, 277–27n, 279, 401n, 490, 491–92nn U.S. Mint, Denver, Colo., 19–20n U.S. Mint, Philadelphia, Pa., 21n U.S. Naval Academy, 194n U.S. Navy: chaplains in, 439n; in Civil War, 432n; Trent Affair and, 432n U.S. Pension Bureau, 44n, 128n U.S. Post Office, 8n, 285n, 391n: clerks of, 41n, 114, 148, 479n; mail carriers of, 487n; secretary of, 484n, 501n U.S. Railroad Commission, 360n U.S. Sanitary Commission, 190n, 318n U.S. Supreme Court: African Americans practice before, 246n; chambers of, 350n; chief justices of, 4n, 84, 86n; Dred Scott decision by, 11, 14n, 153, 454n; Fifteenth Amendment weakened by, 376n; justices of, 17n, 219n, 277n, 376n; Slaughterhouse Decision of, 274, 277n, 279, 279n U.S. Treasury Department, 112n: clerks at, 358n, 404–05, 405–06nn, 454n, 484n, 493nn, 541; Charles Douglass clerks for, 43–44nn, 127–29; Douglass’s bonds from, 217, 218n; inspectors for, 501n; internal revenues service of, 466n; patronage appointments at, 142n, 207–08n, 235n, 248n, 402n; secretary of, 27n, 128n, 156n, 391n; solicitor of, 483 U.S. vs. Reese, 376n U.S. War Department, 156n: pensions from, 492n U.S.S. Tennessee, 187n Utah, 20n Utica, N.Y., 96n, 102n, 305n, 382n Vallandigham, Clement L., 306n Van Buren, Martin: as Democratic party leader, 96n, 285n, 391; Douglass writes, vii, 20–21; as Free Soiler, 285n Van Voorhis, John, 20–21n: as Republican, 505, 506n Vance, Zebulon, 304n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 643

643 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 55n Vashon, George B., 105n, 151n Vatican, 164, 166n, 173n Vaughan, John C., 193n Venezuela, 131n Vermont: Douglass speaks in, 149; hospitals in, 43n; lawyers in, 399n; newspapers in, 399n; Quakers in, 462n; Republican party in, 305n, 413n Vickers, George, 153, 156n Vicksburg, Miss.: battle at, 131n, 385n; mob violence in, 288–89, 289n, 294n; schools in, 77n Victoria Magazine (Manchester, Eng.), 181n Vienna, Aust., 178, 448n Villard, Fanny Garrison, 445n Villard, Henry, 423n Vincent, Henry, 513 Vineland, N.J., 520n Virginia, 359n, 371n: abolitionists in, 316, 318n, 369n, 425n; African Americans in, 314n; Alexandria, 11, 14–15n, 181n, 210n; American Revolution in, 432n; Baptists in, 365n; border disputes of, 467n; British travelers in, 326n; John Brown tried by, 37n; Civil War in, 46n, 97n, 124n, 212n, 303n, 309n, 339n; colleges of, 67n; Democratic party in, 67n, 124n, 431n, 432n; Douglass speaks in, xxviii, xxxi, 53n, 58, 58n, 68, 69n, 218n; emancipation in, 13n; farmers in, 315n; free blacks in, 31n, 67n, 426n, 491n; free labor colonies in, 26n; government of, 124n, 432n; Harpers Ferry Raid upon, 124n; Know-Nothing party in, 124n; lawyers in, 432n; Methodists in, 369n; mob violence in, 11, 14–15n; newspapers in, 25–26, 27n; political influence of, 26; Presbyterians in, 318n; Quakers in, 181n; Reconstruction in, 16n, 124n; Republican party in, 26–27nn, 67n, 218n, 535; schools in, 314n, 425n, 432n; secession of, 124n, 432n; slaveholders in, 17n, 67n, 321n; slavery in, 13n, 58n; slaves in, 58n, 70n, 347n, 402n, 426n; slaves escape from, 440–41nn Virginia Military Academy, Lexington, Va., 309n Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute, Petersburg, Va., 67n Vladivostok, Russia, 407n Vogt, Karl, 448n Vogt, Philipp F., 448n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

644 voting rights. See suffrage Voyage aux Regions Équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, Le (Humboldt), 378n Wade, Benjamin, 86n, 183n, 230n Wade, Edward C., 401, 403n Wagoner, Henry O., 18n: born in Galena, Ill., 242; Douglass writes, 17, 256; as entrepreneur, 16–17; friendship with Douglass, xxvi, 18n, 84n; supports Santo Domingo annexation, 241; trains Douglass’s sons, 17, 141n; writes to Douglass, vii, x–xi, xiii, 16–21, 241–43, 256–57, 433–46, 539; writes to Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 176–77 Wagoner, Henry O., Jr., 18n, 242, 243n, 253–54: death of, 259n, 433, 434–35nn; Douglass assists, 257, 159n; as U.S. diplomat, 255n, 257n; writes Douglass, 257–60, 383–85 Wagoner, Sarah, 17, 19n, 253 Waite, Morrison, 376n Wakeman, William F., 557 Waldosborough, Me., 231n, 471n Wales, 243n Walker, David, 63n Walker, Jonathan, 438, 439–40n Wall, O. S. B., 521 Wallach, Richard, 85n, 210–11n War of 1812: battles of, 278n, 376n, 428n; Blacks serve in, 347n; Federalists oppose, 276, 278n; Andrew Jackson in, 376n; in Louisiana, 278n, 376n; in Maryland, 16n; U.S. Navy in, 428n; Washington, D.C. attacked during, 350n Ward, Henry, 545 Ward, Lester Frank, 235n Ward, Samuel Ringgold, 500n: as editor, 500n; as fugitive slave, 500n; Liberty party and, 500n; as minister, 500n Ware, John F. W., 80, 82n Warmouth, Henry Clay, 212n, 223, 227n: allies of, 226n, 229n; impeachment of, 224–27nn; Republican faction of, 224–28nn Warner, Brainard H., 548–49 Warner, Horatio G., 540–41 Warner, Joseph, 207–08n: writes Douglass, x, 207–08 Warner, N.H., 351n Warrington, Eng., 271n Warsaw, N.Y., 268n Washburn, H. D., 515

Y8204-Douglass.indb 644

INDEX Washburne, Elihu B., 258 Washington, Booker T., 240n Washington, D.C., 184n, 187n, 454n: abolitionists visit, 51n, 362n; African Americans in, xxii, xxv–xxvi, xxx, 1, 40n, 44, 44–45n, 55–56, 60n, 61, 84, 85n, 102n, 104, 114, 116–18, 118n, 127, 128n, 138–39, 150, 152n, 210n, 221n, 235n, 245–47, 248n, 253, 255, 274, 277n, 293n, 314n, 323n, 341–42nn, 347n, 363n, 388, 401n, 404–05, 415n, 437n, 457n, 491–92nn, 496n, 505n, 519–20, 523, 525–26, 530–31, 533, 536, 562; African American suffrage in, 20, 55–56nn; Anacostia in, 153n, 210n, 235n, 256n; architecture of, 394; Baptists in, 85n, 365n, 391n, 415n, 543; Barry Farm in, 247n, 255; British travelers in, 326n; Capitol Hill in, 151; cemeteries of, 371n; churches in, 2n, 4n, 84–85, 86n, 261n; churches of, 83n, 85n, 172, 173n, 391n, 415n, 457n; clerks in, 457n; climate of, 327; Congregationalists in, 84–85, 86n, 172, 173n, 313n, 540, 544; conventions in, xxx, 2n; criminals in, 371n; Democrats in, 55, 166n, 391n; district council of, 189n; Douglass children reside in, xxii, xxv–xxvi, xxx, 8n, 40–41nn, 44, 44–45nn, 55–56, 77n, 84, 114, 127, 128n, 138–39, 246, 253, 314n, 323n, 341–42nn, 437n, 505n, 519–23, 526, 531; Douglass criticizes, 282, 385–90, 390n, 392–96; Douglass resides in, xxii, xxiv, xxx, xxxiii–xxxiv, 3n, 42n, 144n, 151, 175n, 179n, 189n, 219, 222n, 256n, 284n, 342, 395n, 419n, 457n, 503, 530, 552, 572; Douglass speaks in, xxviii, xxxi–xxxii, xxxiv, 4n, 86n, 259n, 261n, 329, 330nn, 395n, 415n; Douglass visits, xxvii, xxix, 3n, 26, 27n, 72, 145, 147n, 518; elections in, 55; emancipation in, 23n; former Confederates in, 55; free blacks in, 43n, 56n, 70n, 78n; freedmen’s aid work in, 70n, 99n, 104, 406n; Freedmen’s Savings Bank headquarters in, 263; in, 1n, 8n, 104; government of, 189n, 210n, 247n, 251n, 386n, 395n, 526; Hillsboro in, 247n; hospitals in, 82, 349, 351–52n, 491–92nn, 496n, 562; hotels in, 1–2n, 45n, 56n, 210n, 363n; infrastructure of, 395n, 481; journalists in, 423n; labor union convention in, 150; labor unions in, 140, 141n; lawyers in, 246n, 349n, 361n, 386n, 399n, 401n, 457n, 484n, 491n; mayor of, 84, 85n, 210–11n; mobs in, 254n;

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX newspapers in, xxiv, xxix–xxx, 1, 30, 31n, 116–18, 118n, 120–21nn, 166nn, 175n, 189n, 254n, 291, 292–93nn, 297–306, 330n, 362n, 385–86, 386n, 387–90, 390n, 392–96, 399n, 453, 454n, 480n, 559; opposition to Douglass as marshal of, 355, 377, 399n, 409, 558; Potomac City in, 151, 153n; Presbyterians in, xxvii, 2n, 4n, 85, 85n, 92n, 118n, 234, 235n, 261, 261n; racism in, xxxiii, 120–21nn, 172, 173n, 274, 386n, 388–89, 406n; real estate in, 8n, 41n, 44n, 151, 391n, 478n, 528, 530; Republicans in, 139, 15n, 348, 351n; schools in, 27n, 102n, 104, 106n, 150–51, 209, 210n, 235n, 248n, 255, 256n, 388, 391–92nn, 404, 406n, 432n, 515, 533, 536, 552; slavery in, 210n, 389n; stores of, 388–89, 391n; summer heat of, 217, 218n; theaters in, 399n; Unitarians in, 80, 81–82n, 369n; women’s rights movement in, 98, 99n, 102n, 417, 419n, 453, 454, 454n; War of 1812 and, 350n; George Washington and, 394 Washington, George, 480, 481n: biographies of, 500n; District of Columbia and, 395n; as revolutionary, 101n, 395n Washington, George A., 287n Washington, Madison, 73n Washington (state): Native Americans in, 2n Washington Capitol, 291, 293n Washington Club, Washington, D.C., 56n Washington College, Washington, Pa., 124n, 334n Washington County, N.Y., 365n Washington Daily Chronicle, 1, 7n, 166n, 297–306, 387 Washington Daily Morning Chronicle, 189n, 390–91n Washington Evening Star, 390n; Douglass writes, 392–96; staff of, 395n; reports on Douglass, 395n, 411n Washington Globe, 30, 31n Washington Herald, 399n Washington National Republican, 56n, 141n, 293n, 330n, 351n, 391n: Douglass writes, 387–90 Washington Peace Convention (1861), Washington, D.C., 124n Washington People’s Advocate, 480n Washington Street Presbyterian Church, Rochester, N.Y., 472n Washington Tribune, 291, 292n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 645

645 Washington Union, 166n Washington (Washington and Lee) College, Lexington, Va., 124n Waterloo, Pa., 406n Watertown, N.Y., 379n Waterville College (Colby College), Waterville, Me., 440, 469n Watkins, N.Y., 64n Wayland, Francis, 473–74nn, 477n Wayne County, Ind., 215n Wayne County, N.Y., 42n “We Are Not Yet Quite Free” (Douglass speech), xxix Wears, Isaiah C., 539, 543, 545 Weaver, David B., 314–15n Webb, Alfred, 381, 383n Webb, Deborah, 381n: writes Douglass, xii, 380–83 Webb, Hannah, 381n, 383n Webb, Maria Lamb, 381n Webb, Richard D.: as abolitionist, 381n, 383n Webb, Wilhelmina, 381, 383n Webb, William (British), 383n Webster, Daniel, 393, 395n, 443n Webster, Eva, 558 Webster, N.Y., 43, 45n Weed, Julia, 554 Weed, Thurlow: as Republican, 194n; as Whig, 54n, 194n Weekly Anglo-African (New York City): Martin R. Delany and, 426n; James McCune Smith and, 93n Wehle, Charles, 455, 456–57n Wehle, Emily Arend, 456n Welbourne, Eugene B., 490, 492n Weld, Theodore Dwight, 283n, 382n: writes Douglass, 535 Werpup, Eliza, 157, 159n, 262, 442, 447, 453, 454–55nn Werpup, Georgina, 159 Werpup, John D., 159n, 455 Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., 317n Wesselhoeft, Robert, 413n West Brookfield, Mass., 359n West Brownsville, Pa., 334n West Indies: commerce of, 462n; emancipation in, xxix, 79, 81n, 498n; emigrations to, 201n, 317n, 466, 467n, 500n; immigrants from, 260n; slavery in, 79

5/17/23 2:36 PM

646 West Indies Emancipation Day Celebrations, xxxiv: Douglass speaks on, xxix, xxxiv, 498n; in Medina, N.Y., xxix; in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., 63n West Virginia, 26n, 348n West Wexford, Ire., 383n Westbrook Seminary, Portland, Me., 360n Westbury-on-Tyne, Eng., 82n Western Anti-Slavery Society, 99n, 382n Western Female Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio, 182n Western Lecture Association, 154n Western Literature Research Institute, 56n Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, 238n, 345n, 463n; agents of, 92n; Susan B. Anthony and, 28n; Julia Griffiths and, 37n; Porter family and, 230n Western Reserve College, Hudson, Ohio, 347n, 492n Westminster, Md., 178, 179n Westville (Ind.) Free Press, 395n Wheatly Provident Hospital, Kansas City, Mo., 222n Wheaton, Charles, 500n Wheeler, Laura. See Moody, Laura Wheeler Wheeling, W.V.: Douglass speaks in, 41n Whig party (Great Britain): 81n Whig party (U.S): antislavery members of, 36n, 111n, 254n; in Arkansas, 483n; Henry Clay and, 116n; Compromise of 1850 and, 116n; in Illinois, 51n, 259n; in Indiana, 4n, 112n, 131n; Kansas-Nebraska Act and, 4n; in Kentucky, 193n; Know-Nothingism and, 4n; in Massachusetts, 89n, 145n, 491n; Mexican War and, 111n; in Missouri, 155n, 440n; in New Bedford, Mass., 89n; in New York City, 187n, 397n; in New York State, 54n, 187n, 397n; newspapers of, 4n, 54n; in Ohio, 27n, 111n, 193n, 356n; in Pennsylvania, 338n, 348n; in Philadelphia, Pa., 338n; Republicans court, 328n; William H. Seward and, 193; temperance and, 4n, 28n Whipper, William, 1, 3n: Douglass writes, ix, 160–62; writes Andrew Johnson, 5–6 Whipple, George, 206n, 313n: death of, 548; as Howard University president, 312, 313n, 317 White, Andrew, 183n White, Andrew Dickson, 324 White, Catherine, 402n White, Horace, 37n, 422, 423–24nn, 424

Y8204-Douglass.indb 646

INDEX White, Martha Todd, 71n White, William, 166n White, William A., 88n White Leagues, 292, 293–95nn, 307n White Mountains, New Hampshire, 62, 63n White Plains, N.Y., 156n, 376n Whiteley, Richard H., 401n Whitesboro, N.Y., 73n Whiting, William E., 316, 318n Whitman, Alice, 378n Whitman, Ann S., 378n Whitman, Elizabeth, 378n Whitman, Isabella, 378n Whitman, William M., 378n Whittaker, Johnson C., 401n, 490, 491n Whittier, John G., 404–05: Douglass writes, x, 236–37 Whittlesey, Elisha, 469n Wickoff, Henry, 71n Wilberforce, William, 13n, 36n Wilberforce College, Wilberforce, Ohio, 161n: faculty of, 71n, 93n Wilbour, Charles E., 183n Wilbour, Charlotte, 183n Wilbraham, Mass., 183n Willard, Emma, 8n William of Nassau, 101n, 121–23, 125 “William the Silent” (Douglass lecture), xxix, 100, 101n, 105n, 121–25, 418, 521, 526, 542 Williams, George Washington, 485, 487n, 546, 549, 571 Williams, L. P., 392, 395n, 478n Williams College, Williamstown, Mass., 489n, 500n Williamsport, Pa., 73n Willis, Edmund, 345n Willis, Sarah Kirby Hallowell, 344, 345n, 461 Wilmington, N.C.: Douglass speaks in, 218n Wilson, Henry, 23n, 129: Clara Barton and, 107n; John Brown and, 432n; advocates civil rights, 153; advocates emancipation, 23; Douglass campaigns with, 218n; Douglass writes, vii, 22–24; Election of 1872 and, 401n, 537; as historian, 419n; criticizes Andrew Johnson, 24n, 52; as Know-Nothing, 23n Wilson, William J., 151n Wilson Teacher College, Washington. D.C., 406n Winchester Cathedral, Westchester, Eng., 326n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

INDEX Winchester, Va., 60n, 432n Windham, Me., 199n Winslow, Caroline B., 454n Winston, William, 526 Winter Garden Theater, New York City, 159n Winton, William, 45n, 111, 112n Wisconsin: abolitionists in, 439n; Baptists in, 364n; Civil War and, 333n; German Americans in, 328n; newspapers in, 333n Wise, Henry A., 121, 124n Witherspoon, William, 561 woman suffrage, 201n: African Americans support for, 102n; Susan B. Anthony and, xxiv, 9n, 98, 99–100n; in Connecticut, 182n; conventions for, xxiv, xxviii, xxx, 54n, 98, 99n, 417; divisions among supporters, 180–83; Douglass supports, xxiv, xxviii–xxix, 54n, 180–83, 542; Fifteenth Amendment and, xxiv, 99–100n; Elizabeth Cady Stanton supports, 8–9n; Theodore Tilton supports, xxx. See also American Woman Suffrage Association; National Woman Suffrage Association Woman’s Industrial Congress, Berlin, 181n Woman’s Loyal National League, 9, 99n, 182–83nn Womanhood: Its Sanctities and Fidelities (Hooker), 182n women: as abolitionists, 8n, 21–22n, 30n, 37n, 80n, 99n, 100, 102–03nn, 181n, 267n, 323, 362, 378n, 380–82nn, 405–06nn, 462n, 471nn, 502, 502n; as actresses, 22n; Civil War and, 9n, 99n; as Douglass’s correspondents, xxii; labor unions and, 22n; as lecturers, 22n; as milliner, 19n, 436n; as painters, 475n; petitions from, 503n; as playwrights, 22n; as shop clerks, 436n; as slaves, 70n, 300; support temperance, 28n, 182n, 436n, 567; as Underground Railroad conductors, 102n, 470, 471n. See also woman suffrage; women’s rights women’s rights: abolitionists and, 8n, 21–22n, 28, 29n, 53n, 387n; Susan B. Anthony and, 9n; Henry Ward Beecher and, 54n; conventions of, xxviii, 8n, 30n, 54n, 74n, 98n; Anna Dickinson advocates, 40, 43n, 54n; Douglass supports, xxviii, 54n; dress reform and, 290n; free blacks and, 93n, 406n; Garrisonians and, 38n, 53n, 82n, 382n; in Great Britain, 49n, 326n; in Michigan, 462n; Lucretia Mott

Y8204-Douglass.indb 647

647 supports, 8n; in New York State, 5, 8–9n, 52, 74n, 290n, 462n; newspapers of, 8n, 181n, 453, 454n; religion and, 12n; in Rhode Island, 182n, 415n; speakers supporting, 22n; Elizabeth Cady Stanton and, 8–9n, 54n; in Washington, D.C., 98, 99n, 102n, 417, 419n, 454, 454n Woodcote, Eng., 46 Woodhull, Victoria: as president candidate, xxxi; publicizes Beecher-Tilton affair, 239n; Theodore Tilton and, 188n Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly (New York City), 239n Woodson, Lewis, 467n Woonsocket, R.I., 518 Worcester, Mass., 194n, 513, 532: abolitionists in, 323n; government of, 370n; lawyers in, 491n Work, Alanson, 438, 441n “Work and Incidents in Army Life” (Barton), 107n Workingmen’s party, Cincinnati, Ohio, 321n World’s Anti-Slavery Convention (1840), London, Eng.: American abolitionists attend, 38n, 63n, 181n, 365n; free blacks attend, 63n; Garrison attends, 53n; women’s rights and, 8n, 38n, 53n, 181n World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Ill., 71n World’s Labor Congress, Paris, Fr., 4n Wormley, James, 46n, 55, 363n: Douglass writes, xii, 363; as hotelier, 56n Wormley, James Thompson, 46n, 55 Wormley, Mary, 363n Wormley, Pere Leigh, 363n Wormley Hotel, Washington, D.C., 363n Worthington, Richard, 504n Wright, David, 30n Wright, Martha Coffin., 28, 30n Wright, Mary G., 556 Wright, Silas, 285n Wright, Theodore S., 90, 93n Wyoming: African Americans in, 20n, 85, 87n Wyoming County, N.Y., 441n Yale Theological Seminary, New Haven, Conn., 318n Yale University, New Haven, Conn.: faculty of, 477n; graduates of, 359n, 385n; students at, 115n, 140n, 155n, 228n, 365n, 440n

5/17/23 2:36 PM

648 Yangtze River, China, 337n Yankton, S.D., 505n Yazoo City, Miss., 225n yellow fever, 436n, 445, 446n Yonkers, N.Y., 438n York College, York, Eng., 50n, 271n Yorkshire, Eng., 77n, 102n Young, Charles, 277n Young, Thomas, 370, 371n, 562 Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society, Philadelphia, Pa., 407n

Y8204-Douglass.indb 648

INDEX Young Men’s Christian Association, 32n, 76n, 297n, 333n Young Men’s Library Association Course of Lectures, Winona, Minn., 53n, 95n Young Men’s Republican Club, Washington, D.C. Younger, Edward C., 406n Youngstown, Ohio, 487n Zamzam, 395n Zanesville, Ohio, 39, 40n, 44n

5/17/23 2:36 PM