FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SYLVESTER ROSA KOËHLER¹ 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 Susanne Jaeger in 1859, and soon after they had three children. He made a meager living by working as a clerk in Hoboken, New Jersey, so the family took in boarders to supplement their income. In 1868 the Koëhlers resettled in Boston, where Sylvester worked as a manager for the engraving firm of Louis Prang. Koëhler wrote regularly on the graphic arts, and he eventually became a curator of the engraving collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and then the Smithsonian Institution. As alluded to in this letter, Koëhler was a close friend of Douglass and an intimate of the German emigré Ottilie Assing. Assing occasionally boarded with the Koëhler family, and Douglass probably became friends with them on his visits with her. Diedrich, , 126, 263, 275-88, 307; DAB, 5, pt. 2, 485-86; ACAB, 3:570.

Rochester[, N.Y.] 9 June [1865.]

MY DEAR MR KOËHLER:

I thank you for your note of advice²This note has not survived. not the less because I did not ask it. In a matter of this kind it is well to know the opinions of others. I have been in the habit of regarding myself as extremely obnoxious to the whites of the South and perhaps, this has land led me to decline invitations thither which in other circumstances I might have accepted. My course has been dictated in the matter also by the thought that my going South might be construed into a taunt—a display of bravado and be made the occasion of violence against me and upon the colored people generally. I have never given any public notice of an intention to make a tour through the South—and I am quite at a loss to know how such announcements as that in the Tribune³The specific announcement in the New York and other newspapers to which Douglass refers to has not been located. On 1 June 1865, the published highly complimentary reports of his address at New York City’s Cooper’s Union concerning Lincoln’s assassination, and those stories might have fanned speculation that Douglass could be a valuable political advocate for the nascent Republican party in Southern states. Douglass lectured twice in Maryland in 1865 but did not venture farther south that year. New York , 1, 2 June 1865; , ser. 1, 4:xx-xxi, 86-95. find their way to that & other papers. The mere fact that the public expect me to go—would not weigh with me—if my judgement or inclination were against it. Giving all proper consideration to what it might think or say I should be likely to pursue my own course. Whenever the Republican Organization through its appointed com: Shall deem my Services valuable to the cause at the South and shall appoint me to “stump”⁴In political parlance, the term “stump” derives from the early nineteenth-century practice of delivering campaign speeches while standing on a tree stump when a more conventional platform could not be located. William Safire, , rev. ed (New York, 2008), 712-13. the southern States—and provide the means as they have done in the case of other speakers I am ready to go.

As the case Stands I Shall make no general tour through the South but only go to a few points this Summer where I am called by special invitation.

My good friend—Miss Assing,⁵Ottilie Assing. is wise in many things—but is sometimes disposed to look at “mole Hills” as mountains.⁶Douglass adapts an idiom that first appeared in English in Nicholas Udall’s translation of The first tome or volume of the Paraphrase of Erasmus upon the newe testamente (1548). , 3d ed. (Oxford, Eng., 1970), 547. She has herself to thank for your assistance in this Southern business—for I only mentioned to her that I thought of going to Georgia, when lo and behold! My thought is magnified into a purpose—and my purpose is trumpited to the world. I must be a little more careful how I whisper my thoughts to my dear Miss Assing— The vehemence of her opposition some times makes it necessary to a just sense of Independence to go straight forward—

With my best Respects to Mrs Koëhler—and your Dear Children⁷ Sylvester Koëhler’s wife was named Amalie, and two of their children were named Hedwig and Walter. Deidrich, , 281.—

Your Friend

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

[P.S.] I shall be glad to have a line from you at any time—

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.