thinking about Pendleton Indianna.¹A mob attacked Douglass in Pendleton, Madison County, Indiana, on the morning of 16 September 1843. The previous day, Douglass, William A. White, and George Bradburn had spoken at 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 1843; Lib., 13 October 1843; Mary Howitt, “Memoir of Frederick Douglass,” People’s Journal, 305 (28 November 1846); Samuel Harden, comp., History of Madison County, Indiana, from 1820 to 1874 (Marketville, Ind., 1874), 203–05; John L. Forkner and Byron H. Dyson, eds., Historical Sketches and Reminiscences of Madison County (Anderson, Ind., 1897), 749–53; Lloyd Lewis, “Quaker Memories of Frederick Douglass,” Negro Digest, 5:37–41 (September 1947); J. J. Netterville, Centennial History of Madison County, Indiana, 2 vols. (Anderson, Ind., 1925), 1:321–22; Smedley, History of the Underground Railroad, 187–88. You may remember such a place, and also cirtain events which transpired in that region in the Summer of 1843. All dreams aside I shall never forget those days, and I may add those nights[.] I shall never forget how like two very brothers we were ready to dare-do,²Much Ado about Nothing, act 4, sc. 1, lines 19–21. and even die for each other. Tragic awfully so—yet I laugh always when I think how comic I must have looked when runing before the mob, darkening the air with the mud from my feet. How I looked running you can best describe but how you looked bleeding I shall always remember. You had left home and a life of ease and even luxury that you might do some thing toward breaking the fetters of the Slave and elevating the dispised black man—and this too against the wishes of your father and many of your friends. When I thought I did indeed wish to bleed in your sstead—such noble blood—so warm so generous—was too holy to be poured out by the rough hand of that infernal mob. Dear William—from that hour I you have been loved by Frederick Douglass.

I hold you in grateful and affectionate rememberance—and though I have not written to you before I assure you it has not been for want of the disposition. Among those who stand forth prominently in in behalf of the Antislavery cause, I look to none upon whom I can rely in the trial hour more than yourself. I am with you in spirit, and shall welcome the day which shall again find me by your side in this good cause. I write thus freely to you because I know you to be above the miserable and contemptable predjudices—too common even among those who claim to regard the negro as a brother. I could say many things to you about my journeyings here, but I prefer to write from within rather than from without—but enough.

What is to become of old Massachusetts? I have nearly lost all confidence in her honesty fidelity and love of liberty. Her doom is sealed—her glory has departed. You have labored nobly—and faithfully for her salvation—but there was not enough of moral life within her borders to save her from distruction. The American government is now in the piratical grasp of Texas, and possessing all the money and patronage, our Massachusitts politiceans will follow her in her atrocious robbery of Mexico³The Mexican-American War (1846–48) occurred as the result of a border dispute between the United States and Mexico, but had its roots in the issue of slavery. The Mexican government permitted slaveholding Americans to populate Texas, which was originally part of Mexico, on the condition that they relinquish their slaves. The reluctance of the American settlers to assimilate into Mexican social and political life, in large part due to their adherence to slave labor, resulted in revolution and the creation of the Republic of Texas in 1836. American annexation of Texas became a major issue in the election of 1844. In early 1845 the U.S. Congress voted to annex Texas by a simple majority vote and with the agreement that the new state could split into five separate states at any point in the future. Tension with Mexico soon blossomed when the United States declared the boundary of the new state to extend to the Rio Grande, much farther south than the Nueces River border recognized by the Mexican government. An American army led by General Zachary Taylor set out to enforce this proclamation, resulting in skirmishes with Mexican troops. In May 1846 Congress declared war on Mexico. After a series of successful campaigns by American troops, Mexico surrendered in February 1848. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo formally ended the war and gave the United States not only the disputed territory in Texas, but also land extending to the Pacific Ocean. The existence of slavery in the massive amount of territory formed the crux of national political debate during the following decade. Many abolitionists believed that the Mexican-American War was nothing less than an attempt by southern politicians to acquire more area for the expansion of slavery. Randolph Campbell, An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821–1865 (Baton Rouge, La., 1989); K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (New York, 1974).—like Sharks in the bloody wake of a slave ship. Money and office is the order of the day with them, and for these they seem willing to go to perdition—and if need be drag every one else after them. Who would have believed twelve months ago, that the Whig governer of Massachusitts⁴George Nixon Briggs (1796–1861), a Whig, served in the House from 1841 to 1842 and was governor of Massachusetts from 1844 to 1851. As governor he ordered an investigation of the kidnapping of free black Massachusetts sailors by southern slave catchers, but South Carolina agents detained his agents. He also opposed the Mexican-American War as an attempt to extend slavery, but complied with the federal government’s request to supply troops from Massachusetts. This last action led some abolitionists, including Wendell Phillips, to condemn Briggs as a traitor to antislavery principles. Briggs was active in a number of reform-minded organizations, and at various times after 1846 he served as president of the American Baptist Missionary Union, the American Tract Society, and the American Temperance Union. After his retirement as governor in 1851, Briggs practiced law with his son, was a delegate at the 1853 Massachusetts constitutional convention, and served as a judge of the Court of Common Pleas from 1851 to 1856. DAB, 2:41–42; ANB, 3:539–41. would be seen calling upon the free citizens of that state to leave there homes families and friends to go & fight the plundering battles of Slave holding