LUCINDA HOSMER¹Lucinda Hosmer (1814—?), an abolitionist from Bedford, Massachusetts, was the daughter of Castalio and Ruth (Clark) Hosmer. During the 1840s, she was active in both the New England Anti-Slavery Society and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and contributed money to each organization. During the One Hundred Conventions campaign, which was organized by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1844, she attended the meeting in Bedford and heard Douglass speak. After the convention, she wrote to William Lloyd Garrison, praising Douglass and the success of the society’s campaign in her hometown. In the 1880s, she supported temperance legislation, which proposed a law requiring public schools in Massachusetts to teach “scientific temperance.” ., 15 October 1841, 16 June 1843, 14, 21 June 1844; (Boston, 1885), 170; Abram English Brown, (Bedford, Mass., 1891), 18; (Boston, 1903), 31. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Bedford[, Mass.] 7 June [18]63[.]

LONG-REMEMBERED FRIEND DOUGLASS,

I have often thought of writing to you in these stirring times, and on this
rainy Sabbath morning I feel stimulated to do so, as I heard my sister Reed
tell of meeting you in cars as she was returning from Ill. with her sick son.
She said you had not forgotten some of us, here in the quiet little village of
B.²Settled around 1637 and incorporated in 1729, Bedford is a residential suburb of Boston in Middlesex County. In the nineteenth century, Bedford became know for its production of machinery. Several pre-Revolutionary houses still stand in the area. Cohen, , 1:295. I have so much in me that I would like to say to you, perhaps[s] I may weary your patience.

I live alone with my father³Castalio Hosmer (1787-1869), the son of John Hosmer and Anna (Fosgate) Hosmer, was a shoe manufacturer and a lieutenant in the War of 1812. He married Ruth Clark from Braintree, Massachusetts, on 19 December 1805, and together they had nine children. He moved from Bedford, Massachusetts to New Ipswich, New Hampshire, around 1832, and ran a small foundry. Later, he lived for a brief period on a farm owned by Francis Appleton before returning around 1842 to Bedford, where he remained until he died. Charles Henry Chandler and Sarah Fiske Lee, (Fitchburg, Mass., 1914), 477; Brown, , 18; , 31. now. Last year we lived in Washington, D. C. I and sister Ann⁴Ann Fosgate Hosmer (1808-—?), the daughter of Castalio Hosmer and Ruth (Clark) Hosmer, was from Bedford, Massachusetts. During the 1860s, she operated a boardinghouse in Washington, D.C., located at P South 4 1/2 West. Her brother Castalio Hosmer, Jr., resided at her boardinghouse during this time. Andrew Boyd, (Washington, D.C., 1864), 178, 318; Brown, , 18; , 31. and father went there to live with a brother,⁵Castalio Hosmer, Jr. (1819—?), from Bedford, Massachusetts, was a member of Brook Farm, a transcendentalist utopian community in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, in the 1840s. His wife, Mary Hosmer, and three of his siblings, Charles, Granville, and Laura Hosmer, were also members of the community. During this time, Hosmer, a supporter of antislavery causes, contributed money to the New England Anti-Slavery Society. During the 1860s he lived in Washington, D.C., and resided at a boardinghouse run by his sister Ann F,. Hosmer. In the 1890s, he worked as a clerk in the U.S. Treasury Department. ., 6 June 1845; J. G. Ames, , 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1893), 1:65; Sterling F. Delano, (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), xi, 158, 212, 385n; Boyd, , 178, 318; Brown, History of the Town of
Bedford, 18; V, 31. who had buried his wife, and wished us to take a boarding house with him.

My father,s health was not good there, so I returned to our home with him, last Nov. and he is now enjoying good health, for an old man of 76 yrs. My sister still remains at W. I have two brothers there. If you should ever go there, they would be very glad to see you. I will now tell you where to find them. They live on the Island or, Greenleaf,s Point⁶Located in the southwestern quadrant of Washington, D.C., this area is where the Anacostia and Potomac rivers meet. First known as Buzzard Point, or Turkey Buzzard Point, the area was renamed Greenleaf Point, or Greenleaf’s Point, after James Greenleaf, a land speculator from Massachusetts who purchased the land, among other lots, in the 1790s. During this time, an arsenal was established at this site, and it remained a military post throughout the nineteenth century. In 1878, Douglass purchased “Cedar Hill,” an estate in nearby Anacostia. Robert V. Bruce, (1956; Champaign, III., 1989), 89-90; Allen C. Clark, (Washington, D.C., 1901), 119; David L. Lewis, (New York, 1976), 128; McFeely, , 296. as it is sometimes called. Enquire for Castalio Hosmer at R. B. Clarks store, Corner of 5 1/2 and M. Sts.⁷According to a 1864 Washington, D.C., city directory, Reuben B. Clark owned a grocery store located at 337 4 1/2 West. Boyd, , 126, 332. I heard Wendal Philips lecture there winter before last,⁸As part of a speaking tour, Wendell Phillips gave a pro-emancipation lecture to an immense crowd in Washington, D.C., on 16 March 1862. Although previously labeled a radical abolitionist and disunionist by much of Washington, he was then welcomed to the city as a distinguished antislavery leader. After receiving praise for his abolitionist speech, Phillips was invited to give a second lecture on the following day. He did so, delivering an address on Toussaint L Ouverture, leader of the Haitian slave revolt in the late eighteenth century. ., 21 March 1862; New York , n.d., quoted in , 5:637 (April 1862); Bartlett, , 247-48; Sherwin, 459. and the ere long that , and speak too. When I was there two years before the war broke out, I would not have believed that Mr. W. could have spoken as he did and be applauded too, by a crowded house, in two years from that time.

But so mighty is the power of Christian truth, that it works wonders, and is indeed like the leaven, which will ere long who hope “leaven the lump,”⁹A paraphrase of “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” Gal. 5:9. or raise this Republic to the elevation, were it can see the principles of “loving our neighbor”¹⁰A paraphrase of “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Mark 12:31. without distinction of race or color or country.

After I returned from W. three years ago, I sat down and wrote a long letter to a cousen, who held a slave there, with whom I had a good deal of talk during my visit

I reccollect of saying to her in that letter. “there is an , for But I did not then think it would come upon us so soon; or in my day on the earth.

As Mr Garrison said at Convention “We can recognize the hand of God in this ’’¹¹Garrison delivered a lecture at the Cooper Institute in New York City on 14 January 1862, titled “The Abolitionists and Their Relations to the War.” He discussed a common theme, his belief that God played an active role in the war and the struggle for freedom: “Let us reverently acknowledge the hand of God in this.” ., 24 January 1862. How wonderful it is, to see how mysteriously He brings good out of evil;¹²Possibly a paraphrase of Gen. 50:20. To see the good which will result from this bloody war to the future of America

Oh, how beautifully W. H. Channing¹³William Henry Channing (1810-84), a Unitarian minister, reformer, and author, was born in Boston, Massachusetts. The son of Francis Dana Channing, an attorney, and Susan Higginson, William grew up in privilege. He studied under his uncle William Ellery Channing and attended Boston Latin School. He graduated from Harvard College in 1829 and completed Harvard Divinity School in 1833. He married Julia Allen in 1836, and they had three children. After failing to establish a church in New York City, he served as minister of the First Congregational Church of Cincinnati, Ohio, from 1838 to 1841 while also working as an editor of the Western Messenger. In the 1840s, he connected with a group of transcendentalists and became associated with one of their communities, Brook Farm, for a brief time. During this time, he edited two periodicals, the Present and the Spirit of the Age. In 1854 he moved to England and eventually served as a minister in four Unitarian churches. He returned to the United States after the start of the Civil War, moving to Washington, D.C., where he served as minister to the Unitarian society and later as chaplain to the House of Representatives (1863-64). After the war, he moved back to England, where he lived until his death. During his lifetime, he wrote many articles for periodicals and published sermons and addresses. His most significant work is his three-volume biography of his uncle, (1848). In this letter, Lucinda Hosmer is probably referring to Channing’s sermon delivered in the Senate on 18 January 1863. ., 30 January 1863; David Robinson, “The Political Odyssey of William Henry Channing,’ , 34:178 (Summer 1982); , 4:9-10; , 4: 683-84. spoke in a sermon at the Capitol in W. He tells the large assembly in that Senate Chamber, (whose walls have been little used to ) of the misdeeds it of this nation, and its retribution.

He said “We would not make the , therefore, the Angel of God had passed over and demandinged the first-born of every family” writing blood on their door posts.¹⁴In the Exodus account of the Israelites’ deliverance from Egypt, the Jews could be spared from the tenth plague by sacrificing a lamb and painting its blood upon their doorposts as a sign for God to “pass over” their houses and not kill their firstborn sons. Exod. 12:21-23.

There is no reckoning the amount of good that earnest man, is doing in W. a place which so much .

We attended one of the colored people,s churches, the Sabbath after Slavery was Abolished in D.C.¹⁵On 16 April 1862, Lincoln signed a bill abolishing slavery in Washington, D.C. Lucinda claims that she attended a church on the Sunday after this legislation went into effect, which would have been 20 April 1862. James M. McPherson, (New York, 2008), 85-86; Quarles, , 194. I never shall forget the feelings I had as I saw and heard them rejoice over their emancipation, and giving all the Glory to God and all thanks for “letting his people go”¹⁶Hosmer is paraphrasing the book of Exodus, in which variations of the phrase “let my people go” is used numerous times: Exod. 5:1-11, 7:16, 8:1-2, 8:8, 8:20—21, 8:28-29, 8:32, 9:1-2, 9:7, 9:13, 9:17, 10:3—4, 10:27. They shouted and one of the Speakers leaped for joy, and said it was a day for them to express themselves as their hearts prompted for they were free. Withal they showed more inteligence than I expected to see, as they told their of , and raised their prayers for the Army and the President. We too wept for joy to see them, and our hearts were thankful too: We were more elevated by feeling than we could have been by the deepest Sermon that ever was written My father got up and addressed them in a few words of feeling and sympathy telling them that he signed the Petition for the abolition in the District, which J. Q. Adams presented to Congress,¹⁷While serving in the House of Representatives from December 1831 until his death in February 1848, John Quincy Adams presented numerous petitions to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. Even after Congress adopted the “gag rule” in 1836, tabling all petitions in regard to slavery, he continued to present these appeals made by abolitionists. In early 1842, Southern representatives attempted to censure Adams for his repeated attacks on the gag rule and his insistence on presenting abolitionist petitions. The American Anti-Slavery Society sent a majority of these antislavery petitions to Congress, and Adams often served as the spokesman for its cause. In 1837-38 alone, the society flooded Congress with over 130,000 petitions calling for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in Washington, D.C. As an active Massachusetts abolitionist, Castalio Hosmer likely signed one or more of these. William H. Seward, L, Sixth President of the United States (New York, 1849), 280-82; Nagel, 354-55; Richards, , 3, 95, 99, 120, 126, 139-141. which they had alluded to. X see signature

Truly we can see the wisdom of God in this struggle; never so much in any thing before, in my experience To see how the South has opened the door to “Let the people go free’’¹⁸Possible paraphrase of Exod. 9:1. at the same time they were trying to open a door to shut them up in interminable slavery. How little any of us could see when they first fired at Sumpter,¹⁹On 20 November 1860, Colonel Robert Anderson assumed command of the U.S. Army troops in Charleston. He concentrated them at Fort Sumter, in the center of the city’s harbor, after South Carolina’s secession on 20 December. Southern forces resisted all efforts by the federal government to reinforce the Fort Sumter garrison. Lincoln’s dispatch of a small flotilla to resupply the fort triggered the crisis at Fort Sumter. Anderson surrendered the fort to the Confederates on 14 April 1861 after withstanding thirty-four hours of artillery bombardment from batteries lining the harbor. Mark Mayo Boatner III, , rev. ed. (1959; New York, 1988), 15, 299-300. in what they were slaying their . although we felt that somehow its death-blow was struck. But “we waited for events,” and they have showed us. I never hear Slavery called an Institution without thinking of the way Wendal P. caricatured it, by telling a story of the yankee who had made a pool of spittle about him; and an Englishman came along and turned up his nose at his filthiness. at which the man of the pool replied, “You Britishers have a mighty notion of finding fault with our .”²⁰Phillips’s vignette comes from a speech that he gave on 21 March 1860 at the Cooper Institute in New York City, entitled “Agitation Indispensable to Reform.” Reporters differed in quoting Phillips. For example, the New York Tribune printed: “A Yankee expectorating yards around him, when spoken to on the subject, by an Englishman, will say: “You Britishers are remarkably prejudiced against our institutions.” The reporter for the New York Herald quoted Phillips as saying: “You know Dickens has painted one of his characters on the deck of a Western steamboat in the presence of a Yankee . . . against the too liberal extent of his benefaction—the reply is, “You Englishers are amazing prejudiced against our institutions.’ ’’ While the two reports differed from each other as well as from Lucinda Hosmer’s version, the general theme of Phillips’s metaphor about the American institution of slavery remained the same. New York Herald, 22 March 1860; New York , 22 March 1860.

While I am writring father sits in his armed char reading over again the “Narrative”²¹Published in 1845 by the American Anti-Slavery Society, with accompanying prefatory letters by William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, Douglass’s first autobiography, , was released to the antebellum American public when the author was twenty-seven years old. The Narrative achieved widespread success not only in the United States but also in the United Kingdom and Europe. In the eight years following its initial publication, Douglass’s Narrative was translated into French, German, and Dutch, and was published in over twenty U.S. editions, selling at least 30,000 copies by 1853. , ser. 2, 1:xvii, xxv, xxxlii. of one of the escaped victims of this American . Nowadays I see the Boston papers call him “. Douglass but I believe they used a good while ago to call him “the” nigger Douglass.”

It is his first little book that he put out, when he was so fresh from its “Divinity” that his friends were fearful of his being and caught for letting out its secrets.

Father says he knows of no man that he should be more glad to see than this “same noble fellow—” as he called you. I hope you will find a time to visit Bedford again. I think you would draw a full house now. We women should not have to teaze Church Committees for a place to speak but our new Town Hall²²The new Town Hall in Bedford, Massachusetts, was dedicated at a ceremony on 16 January 1857. The building cost a reported $9,000 to construct. Lowell (Mass.) Lowell , 21 January 1857. would be opened free.

B. Perhaps you and your wife will remember Eliza Bacon (now Porter) and myself taking dinner at your house in Lynn,²³Ann Eliza Bacon Porter (1821-90) was born in Bedford, Massachusetts, to Reuben Bacon and Sarah Clark Bacon. She came from an antislavery family, and was a cousin of Lucinda Hosmer on her mother’s side. She married Joseph K. P. Porter on 21 February 1847 in Lowell, Massachusetts, and together they had four children. Soon after her marriage, she moved to Rock County, Wisconsin, where the couple established a farm. She remained in Wisconsin until her death. Her visit to Douglass’s home, which Lucinda recalls in this letter, most likely took place sometime between late 1841, when Douglass moved to Lynn, and August 1845, when Douglass traveled overseas on a speaking tour of the British Isles. ., 10 November 1837;
(Chicago, 1879), 871; , 10; Chandler and Lee, , 326; McFeely, , 92. and of our singing Lang Syne at the Convention, with Anti-slavery words set to it.²⁴The phrase “auld lang syne” is Scottish for “old long since” or, more loosely, “times past.” The song of that title is commonly sung at the conclusion of dances and revelries in the New Year’s season. The words of the song are attributed to a 1796 Robert Burns poem of the same name. The
music is derived from Scottish folk dance tunes. In 1841, William Lloyd Garrison wrote the lyrics of “Song of the Abolitionist," an antislavery hymn sung to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne.” Garrison’s lyrics were published in the Liberty Bell (1842), a publication of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Fair. Maria Weston Chapman, ed., (Boston, 1842), 64-66; Robert Burns, , ed. John C. Dick (London, 1903), 433; Garrison and Garrison, , 3:42; Brewer, , 82. The first Convention I ever attended was the one at Boston the winter before you came here and stirred up the people.²⁵Lucinda Hosmer claims that she and Ann Eliza Bacon Porter visited Douglass at his home and attended an antislavery convention with him in Lynn, Massachusetts. These two events, which seem to have occurred during the same time period, most likely took place sometime between late 1841 and August 1845. Between these dates, Douglass spoke in Lynn six times: October 1841, 21 August 1841, 28-31 January 1843, 9-11 March 1843, 25-27 April 1844, and 15 August 1845. Gregory P. Lampe, (East Lansing, Mich., 1998), 225, 274, 294, 298-99, 303, 307; McFeely, , 92. That hundred conventions (of which this one was) did Mass. a great deal of good.²⁶The initial proposal to conduct a series of one hundred antislavery meetings in several western states was made at the American Anti-Slavery Society meeting in May 1843. Later that month, the proposal was approved at the New England Anti-Slavery Society meeting, and a board of managers of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society was authorized to organize the campaign. The board chose Douglass as one of the lecturers who would speak at conventions in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. This initial One Hundred Conventions campaign began on 13 July and lasted until 7 December 1843. These meetings were deemed so successful that the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society decided to conduct a similar campaign in the central counties of Massachusetts beginning in early 1844. Once again, Douglass was chosen to speak. Lucinda Hosmer is probably referring to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society meeting as the first convention she ever attended. Chronologically, she explains that she attended this meeting in Boston before Douglass spoke in Bedford. The society met in Boston in January 1844, and Douglass, as part of this statewide One Hundred Conventions campaign, spoke in Bedford for two days beginning on 1 March. Hosmer wrote to Garrison that she believed the meetings “have done good here” and praised Douglass’s speech in Bedford.., 16 June 1843, 15 March 1844; Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:176—80; Lampe, , 171, 196n, 207-08, 215. I presum[e] she has done better service in this war for it. I never shall forget how waked up my brothers were then, and they have always been true abolitionists ever since I felt then as if there was nothing that I could do that should be left undone, and I believe I have done all in my power to [make] people see that, when we stood upon the bodies and souls of millions of living, breathing inteligencies, we had no better foundation than one standing upon the crater of a volcano.

These people who are so shortsighted as to say abolitionists made the war, are doing us great credit, for history will do justice by those who battle for the right. I suppose if the man who sees a fire in the distance and cries out, to wake the people, is to blame for the fire because he sees it first, then the abolitionists are the cause of the war. I was always anti-slavery since I thought of it at all, but never till I saw you did I feel it in my power to do any thing about it.

That nervous brother of mine (whose sympathies were too strong for him to hear the tales you told without speaking out “my God” in the anguish he felt with his colored brother as the flames burned around him) has been in the spirit land thirteen years.²⁷Elias Pool Hosmer (1810-50), Lucinda Hosmer’s brother, was born in Bedford, Massachusetts, and married Harriet Wyman Hosmer on 14 October 1830 in Lexington, Massachusetts. He is buried in Kankakee, Illinois. (Chicago, 1893), 315; (Boston, 1898), 162; , 31; Findagrave.com (online). My sister Laura²⁸Laura Hosmer (1817—?), the daughter of Castalio Hosmer and Ruth (Clark) Hosmer, was from Bedford, Massachusetts. In the 1840s she was involved in the New England Anti-Slavery Society, along with at least four of her eight siblings. She married Leander Clark, a poet from New Ipswich, New Hampshire, on 29 June 1845, and they had five children. ., 14 June 1844; Brown, , 18; , 31, 83; Chandler and Lee, , 326, 477. lives in New Ipswich N. H. she has three daughters. She has often said she would give a good deal to see you. She is a good woman a kind, pleasant mother It seems you have two sons in the 54th reg.²⁹Lewis H. Douglass served as sergeant major of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry regiment. Charles R. Douglass initially enlisted in the same regiment, but illness held him back in the training camp in Readville, Massachusetts, when the unit deployed to South Carolina. Charles ultimately served in the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment. McFeely, , 224-26, 230, 234-35. I suppose those little babbies I saw when at your house are now soldiers. We are thankful the time has come at last when black men can fight for their country and their freedom. Now they are no longer chattels, but U. S. soldiers. What a good discipline it will be for those who could feel no manhood, for they were owned by their fellows.

Thank God we are slowly taking forward steps; but perhaps as fast as we can, for we have to wait for Pulick Opinion to reform before a government can do its duty.

With kind regards to yourself and family I will close

Yours truly Lucinda

HOSMER ALWAYS.

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 817—21, FD Papers, DLC.