THEODORE TILTON¹Theodore 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. His public career never recovered, however, from the notoriety he attracted in 1874 as a result of an unsuccessful lawsuit charging Beecher with committing adultery with his wife. Subsequent journalistic efforts failed, and in 1883 Tilton left the United State for Europe. 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); ACAB, 6:120; DAB, 2:129-35. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

[n.p.] 30 April 1862.

MY DEAR MR. DOUGLASS,

Mr. Beecher²Henry Ward Beecher. and I have had a talk about Contributions to The Independent; the upshot of which is, to add you to the number.

I would be happy to publish, with your name, (as before,) an occa-
sional article which you may feel moved to write, and to pay you the
unworthy sum of Ten Dollars for it.

I make this request not only for your own sake, but for the higher
sake of the cause,—which seems to need, at this crisis, some Expression
from men of the darker skin. I believe that if you were to come occasion-
ally before the 65,000 subscribers of The Independent;³Subscriptions to the Independent fell and rose with the progress of the war. When the Union suffered several losses in 1861, subscriptions fell. By 1862, subscriptions were once again on the rise as Union Army’s achieved several victories in the West. By 1863, subscriptions reached an all time high of 75,000, a number not exceeded until after the war. Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1850-1865 (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), 367-72. with a thought-
ful, careful, striking, eloquent article (such as would make part of a good
lecture or oration)—something to quicken the pulse & stir the heat of the
nation—something of Slavery such as only a man once a slave himself
can know & tell you would add to the number of men who respect you,
and would lend a helping hand to the Good Cause.

Don’t say No, but do it for the sake of Your friend,

THEODORE TILTON.

PS See how I got caught on Monday,—staying to dinner at Beecher’s
county-seat, & missing my lecture in New York that night!⁴Tilton enclosed an undated clipping from the New York Sun: “MISHAP TO A LECTURER—Corinthian Hall in this city had an overflowing audience on Monday night, awaiting a lecture by Theodore Tilton on 'The Latest Questions of the War.’ Th[e] speaker did not arrive at the appointed hour, and nothing was heard from him for twenty minutes when the chairman received and read the following dispatch: 'To the Chairman of the meeting at Corinthian Hall: I am detained at Peekskill by a railroad accident, and cannot reach the city in time to lecture, but I propose to the audience three cheers in advance for the abolition of slavery from every square inch of the Republic.
THEODORE TILTON.’
The reading of this dispatch elicited a storm of applause, and as the audience could not hold a lecturer responsible for a locomotive running off the track, they will doubtless be good-natured enough to fill the Hall with equal numbers on Friday evening, when Mr. Tilton is to make another effort to be present.”

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 718-19, FD Papers, DLC.