FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO MARIA LAMB WEBB¹Born in Northern Ireland, the Quaker Maria Lamb Webb (1804–73) was the corresponding secretary of the Belfast Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society in the 1840s. She exchanged letters with many American abolitionists, including Douglass. She was a cousin of Richard D. Webb, but became a vocal critic of the Garrisonian wing of abolitionism. Her husband, William Webb, relocated the family to Dublin in the late 1840s to work for his brother-in-law Richard Allen, a textile merchant and prominent Irish abolitionist. Although her health declined to the point that she had become housebound by 1860, she authored several well-received works on Quaker genealogy. 1847 Mail Book of the North Star, Financial Papers File, reel 29, frame 399, FD Papers, DLC; , 27:747 (June 1874) 27:754–55 (July 1874), 29:440 (February 1876); Douglas C. Raich, “Richard Davis Webb and Antislavery in Ireland,” in , ed. Lewis Perry and Michael Fellman (Baton Rouge, La., 1979), 159; Legg, Alfred Webb, 83; Taylor, , 297; (Online).

Halifax[,] Yorkshire[, Eng.]. 30 November 1859[.]

MARIA WEBB

MY DEAR FRIEND:

I am not unmindful of your kind note²Webb’s letter to Douglass has not survived. received just before leaving america—in wh[ic]h you kindly welcome me to your dear home when it may be my good fortune to come to Dublin, as I cirtainly hope it will be. You have of course heard of the circumstances under which I was left no alternative but to leave the states or be implicated with John Brown—and perhaps, share his fate. I find here, as in America, some misapprehension as to my relation to that brave and I believe good man. My letter,³Douglass alludes to his letter of 31 October 1859 to the editor of the Rochester Democrat, which appears earlier in this volume. published in reply to the sayings of Mr Cook,⁴John Edwin Cook. published in the American papers did much to set me right before the American people and I have no doubt will do much in the same direction here.

You will have probably met with this letter—and will, I am sure, be glad that I am able to any part of the charges brought against me in connection with the Harpers Ferry Affair. I went to Canada after the troubles at Harpers Ferry, because I had reason to know that measures were in progress to carry me into Virginia—and even if the Courts of that Slave State Should acquit me, as they would not have been very likely to do—I could never hope to get out of that State alive. If they did not kill me for being concerned with Dear Old Brown they would have done so—for my being Frederick Douglass—

My friends here are doing their utmost to counter act the influence of the false Statements of Cook which have found their way into some of the English papers—and to bring me well before the people of Yorkshire. What constant trouble do I give my friends? I hope to justify their kind Solicitude in the end. My good friends Mrs Crofts⁵In 1859, Julia Griffiths married the Methodist clergyman Henry O. Crofts. The couple settled in Halifax, a town in Yorkshire. As was customary for Methodist clergy, Crofts and his family traveled from parsonage to parsonage in northern England for nearly twenty years. Douglass addressed this letter to Salem Parsonage, most likely the residence of Henry and Julia Crofts at this time. McFeely, , 182, 203; Frank E. Fee, Jr., “To No One More Indebted: Frederick Douglass and Julia Griffiths, 1849–63,” , 35:22 (Spring 2011).—and the Doctor⁶Henry O. Crofts (c. 1813–1880), an ordained minister in the Methodist Church, served as a missionary in eastern Canada. Crofts arrived in Canada in 1842 and moved to Montreal the following year, heading several missions in the region. He later served as superintendent of missions for eastern Canada before returning to England in 1852. Crofts’s first marriage, to Saley Ann Bucknell, ended with her death in 1854. Crofts married Julia Griffiths in 1859 and continued to serve as a member of Methodist missionary organizations until his death. Nottinghamshire , 25 May 1854; Colchester (Eng.) , 31 January 1880; Hilary M. Carey, (Cambridge, Eng., 2011), 186; McFeely, , 203. have made me welcome to a home with them while I Stay in the Country. Julia is the Same Zealous, active and untiring worker that She ever was—and you may well suppose that our meeting was a joyous one—I am to lecture here next Wednesday night⁷On 7 December 1859, two weeks after his arrival in England, Douglass spoke to a large audience at Mechanics’ Hall in Halifax. Eight other British reformers addressed the meeting, including Henry O. Crofts. At the conclusion of his address, the audience passed a resolution welcoming Douglass to England. , ser. 1, 3:276.—under the auspices of the Halifax Ladies Anti Slavery Soc:⁸Founded by Julia Griffiths in 1857 to support Frederick Douglass by raising funds and collecting items to sell at antislavery bazaars at Rochester, the Halifax Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society sponsored Douglass's public address at Mechanic's Hall. Halifax Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, 0 (Halifax., Eng., 1860), 1; , ser. 1:xxx-xxxi, 276-300, 613-14; Ripley, , 1:31. M.P.⁹James Stansfield (1820–98), the son of a prominent Halifax lawyer and jurist, graduated from London University in 1844 and soon after entered the legal profession. A Unitarian and a supporter of numerous radical causes, including women’s rights, abolitionism, and Italian unification, he was elected to represent Halifax in Parliament in 1859; he held his seat for the next thirty-nine years. He held minor offices in the governments of Lord Palmerston and Gladstone and was an outspoken supporter of Irish Home Rule. (London, 1899), Part 2:143–44; , 22:122–25. is to take the Chair. Hoping to See you ere many months—

I am, with love to your Dear Husband¹⁰William Webb married Maria Lamb in 1828, and the couple settled in Belfast. The family eventually included six children. Webb was both a business partner in Richard Allen’s textile firm and an active member of the Dublin Anti-Slavery Society. American Anti-Slavery Society, , 107; Legg, , 83. and household Your every grateful friend

FREDERICK DOUGLASS—

ALS: Scrapbook of Maria Webb, Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History.