JULIA GRIFFITHS CROFTS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Leeds, [Eng.] 6 Dec[ember] [18]61[.]

MY DEAR FRIEND

It is with much pleasure that I enclose you a bill for £50—which Dr C.¹“Dr. C.” was the Reverend Dr. Henry O. Crofts. has obtained, & which will, I trust, reach you safely;—please acknowledge as speedily as possible, as we shall be anxious until we know it has arrived. The list I enclose, which will show you that we still have a few pounds in hand; to which I expect to add a little more, & to send when we learn this has reached—

The Edinburgh £5—came after the bill was arranged—but I shall insert it, & please acknowledge it in the paper with the others—as that Committee are rather particular about early acknowledgements²In the May 1862 issue of , an acknowledgment appeared for recent donations gathered by Julia Griffiths Crofts for the newspaper. No contribution was listed from the Edinburgh (New) Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. , 4:645 (May 1862).—and 5 weeks will, probably, elapse before we hear from you, in reply to this, sible, to send—& not more, by one mail—I hope the £30 from the Halifax Committee,³The Halifax Committee is recorded in the acknowledgment as the “Halifax Emancipation Society” but might have been the Halifax Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. , 4:645 (May 1862). & Mrs Carpenter’s⁴Mary Browne Carpenter (c. 1824–98) was the wife of the prominent Unitarian minister Russell Lant Carpenter (1819–92). They were married in Bridgwater, Somersetshire, in 1853. She was one of four daughters born to William Browne, a wealth Unitarian merchant, and his wife, Mary. William Browne served as mayor of Bridgwater in 1854. In addition to her support of the antislavery effort, Mary Browne Carpenter was deeply involved in the woman suffrage movement, belonging to one of the more radical suffrage societies in Bridport. She also supported the animal rights and temperance movements. 1841 England Census, Gloucestershire, Bristol, 22; England and Wales Christening Records, 1530–1906 (online); England and Wales, Death Index, 1837–1915 (online); England and Wales, Marriage Index, 1837–1915 (online); England and Wales, Non-Conformist Records Index (online); Elizabeth Crawford, (New York, 2006), 161, 169. £20—will, altogether, enable you to meet emergencies & necessary expenses at the close of the year, comfortably—Please, let the paper list be attended to at once—& see that the 2 new papers, to ,⁵Possibly a reference to the market town of Kelso in the Scottish Borders region, named after the twelfth-century Kelso Abbey. Stewart Cruden, (Edinburgh, Scot., 1960), 60–62. (ordered by Rev. H. Newton,⁶The Reverend Hibbert Newton (1817–92) was an ordained minister in the Anglican Church. In addition to his ministerial duties, Newton wrote several books of poetry on subjects from the Bible. By 1867, Newton was ordained as the vicar of St. Michael’s in Southward, England, where he served until his death. Newton subscribed to British Israelism, which advocated the pseudo theory that Anglo-Saxons were originally descended from the ten Lost Tribes of Israel. He published one tract on the subject in 1874, which was included in a collection of works on British Israelism. C*** M*** [Clarence Linden McCarthal], (London, 1877), 38, 40; Catherine Reilly, Mid-Victorian Poetry, 1860–1879: An to whom I write on the subject,) be sent regularly. He sent me a nice note—Isabel Jennings⁷While in Cork in the fall of 1845, Douglass stayed with Ann and Thomas Jennings and their eight children. One of their daughters, Isabel, served as co-secretary of the Cork Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society and eventually contributed to help Douglass launch the . ., 24 September 1847; Temperley, , 219; Taylor, , 159, 243–44; Ferreira, “Frederick Douglass in Ireland,” 57; Oldham, “Irish Support of the Abolitionist Movement,”
175–80. seems not to wish their name mentioned at all—The Cork money is sent by themselves, for subs: & donations from them, their brothers, & the (London, 2000), 338; Colin Kidd, (Cambridge, Eng., 2006), 204.⁸The family of Richard Dowden (Richard) (1794–1861), who distinguished himself from numerous local Dowdens by the addition of the second Richard to his name, managed a soda-water firm and served as Cork’s mayor in 1845. A Unitarian and an early supporter of temperance, he and two other Protestants, Nicholas Dunscombe and William Martin, led the Cork Total Abstinence Society before the rise of Father Theobald Mathew. Dowden was also a philanthropist, acting as a Poor Law guardian and strongly supporting Daniel O’Connell. In an 1848 letter to Douglass, Dowden identified himself as a Whig-Radical and urged the United States to lead the world by example through its republican institutions. (Cork, Ire., 1842), 26; , 21 April 1848; Ian D’Alton, (Cork, Ire., 1980), 85; Colm Kerrigan, (Cork, Ire., 1992), 46; Paul A. Townend, “Regenerating the Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Cork Total Abstinence Society, 1838–1848” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1999).—During Dr C’s absence last week, our gave Lizzi⁹Probably Elizabeth Ann Crofts (c. 1841–87). Born in Canada, she was the eldest daughter of the Reverend Henry O. Crofts and his first wife, Saley Ann Bucknell, who died in 1854, and was the stepdaughter of Julia Griffiths. Elizabeth Ann Crofts, who never married, died at her stepmother’s home in St. Neots, Huntingdonshire, England. 1861 England Census, Yorkshire, Halifax, 110; 1871 England Census, County Durham, Gateshead, 41; English and Wales Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes, 1837–2005 (online). the news of the Just & “probable war with America”—& some there were placing Placards on all sides—God grant that such a horrible thing may be averted as the possibility of our coming into collision with the —The Cotton party here, I suppose, wish it—but every one else shudders at the thought. For those wretches Mason & Slidell,¹⁰James Murray Mason (1798–1871), a grandson of the revolutionary patriot George Mason, received his education in the Georgetown schools, at the University of Pennsylvania, and at the College of William and Mary. After establishing a law practice at Winchester, Virginia, in 1820, he served in the Virginia House of Delegates, the state constitutional convention of 1829, and the U.S. House of Representatives (1837–39). In 1847, Mason was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he remained until Virginia seceded. Mason supported secession in 1860 and served briefly in the Confederate Congress before being appointed commissioner to England. Educated at Columbia College, John Slidell (1793–1871) had already attempted a mercantile career in his native New York City when scandal prompted his removal to New Orleans. There he established a successful commercial law practice and represented the state in both houses of Congress. Diplomatic missions for Presidents James Polk and Franklin Pierce provided precedent for his appointment to represent the Confederacy in France. On 8 November 1861, while traveling on the British steamer Trent, Mason and Slidell were captured by the U.S. Navy and sent to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. This affair so strained relations between the United States and Great Britain that many feared war would break out. Upon their release in January 1862, Mason and Slidell proceeded to England and France respectively, but their efforts to gain foreign recognition of the Confederacy and intervention on its behalf were unsuccessful. Emory M. Thomas, (New York, 1979), 173–79; Ezra J. Warner and W. Buck Yearns, (Baton Rouge, La., 1975), 169–70; Louis Martin Sears, (New York, 1927), 313–17; Beckles Wilson, (New York, 1932), 3–26; Jon L. Wakelyn, (Westport, Conn., 1976), 388; , 2:93; , 12:364–65, 17:209–11; (online). I wish they could be shut up in prison all their days, until the former repents of framing such an iniquitous Statute as the fugitive slave bill—& the [latter] of all his wickedness!—The Law of the matter is a difficult matter to decide about,—I suppose—I hope, my dear friend, IF terms are not made, you will cross the frontier, with all your household, & —the same paper on the other side of Lake Ontario—I trust, however, that our government will be forbearing—& not press extremes—I send you a London Times—