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

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

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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

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New Haven and London

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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CONTENTS

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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)

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ABBREVIATIONS AND SIGLA

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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).

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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26 April

31 May Summer

November

December

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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TIMELINE OF DOUGLASS’S LIFE

25 September– 9 October

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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].

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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].

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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].

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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].

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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].

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THE FREDERICK DOUGLASS PAPERS Series Three: Correspondence

VOLUME 3: 1866–1880

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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

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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-

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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

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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.

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DOUGLASS ET AL. TO ANDREW JOHNSON, 7 FEBRUARY 1866

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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.

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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

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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

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DOUGLASS TO JAMES D. LYNCH, 13 AUGUST 1866

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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.

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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

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HENRY O. WAGONER TO DOUGLASS, 27 AUGUST 1866

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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

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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

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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

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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

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DOUGLASS TO ANNA E. DICKINSON, 10 SEPTEMBER 1866

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(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

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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

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DOUGLASS TO HENRY WILSON, 12 SEPTEMBER 1866

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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.

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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.

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DOUGLASS TO JOHN C. UNDERWOOD, 14 NOVEMBER 1866

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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

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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

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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.

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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.,

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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.,

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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

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DOUGLASS TO HORATIO C. NEWCOMB, 18 JANUARY 1867

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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).

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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DOUGLASS TO GENTLEMEN OF EASTON, MARYLAND, 23 JUNE 1867

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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

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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

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CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 18 JULY 1867

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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

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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.

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WILLIAM SLADE TO DOUGLASS, 29 JULY 1867

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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

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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.

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DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH, 9 AUGUST 1867

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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

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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

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DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM SLADE, 12 AUGUST 1867

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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.

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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.

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CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 21 AUGUST 1867

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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).

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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-

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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

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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”;

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“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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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-

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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

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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!—

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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.

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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,

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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.

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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.”

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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—

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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.

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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

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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

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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).

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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;

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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.

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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.

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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—

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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GEORGE T. DOWNING TO DOUGLASS, 28 APRIL 1869

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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;

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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

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DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM PURCELL, 29 APRIL 1869

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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

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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.

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CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 25 MAY 1869

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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

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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

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DOUGLASS TO CHARLES WESLEY SLACK, C. MAY 1869

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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

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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.

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DOUGLASS TO JOHN H. HAWES, JULY 1869

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON, 2 DECEMBER 1869

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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).

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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-

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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-

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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,

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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.

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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

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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

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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;

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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

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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,

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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

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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.

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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

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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,

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“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

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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

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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

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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

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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-

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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

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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-

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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.

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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

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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.

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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).

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CHARLES H. HOWARD TO DOUGLASS, 9 JANUARY 1872

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO DOUGLASS, 20 JANUARY 1872

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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,

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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-

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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,

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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.

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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 “ ”

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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

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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),

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.”

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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

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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,

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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.

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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

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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-

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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

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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).

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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).

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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,

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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

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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!

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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.

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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

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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.

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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—

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 colo