FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ELIZABETH CADY STANTON

Rochester[, N.Y.] 25 Aug[ust] 1860[.]

DEAR MRS STANTONStanton, Elizabeth Cady

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) was the best-known feminist of her day. Born in Johnstown, New York, and educated at Emma Willard's Troy Female Seminary, Stanton developed an interest in abolition and other reforms during visits to the home of her cousin Gerrit Smith. Stanton became determined to work to advance the status of women when she and other female delegates were barred from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. Eight years later Stanton, along with Lucretia Mott, organized the first-ever women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, where Stanton had settled with her husband, Henry B. Stanton, the antislavery politician. During Reconstruction, she opposed the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments because they granted equal rights and suffrage to black males but ignored all females. She held to this position in the Revolution, the woman suffrage weekly she edited with Parker Pillsbury, and in the platform of the National Woman Suffrage Association, which she and Susan B. Anthony founded in 1869. Besides presiding over the last organization for more than two decades, Stanton wrote numerous articles and several books, including the multivolume History of Woman Suffrage in collaboration with Anthony and Matilda Gage. Alma Lutz, Created Equal: A Biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815-1902 (New York, 1940); Lois W. Banner, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Radical for Woman's Rights (Boston, 1980); NAW, 3:342-47 :

I am much obliged by your letter.¹This letter has not been located. I have been in a half and half condition
about attending that Worcester convention²Following Gerrit Smith’s nomination by the small Radical Abolitionist party at a convention in Syracuse on 29 August 1860, a number of New England Garrisonian abolitionists led by Stephen Foster debated whether to unite with this effort or form a separate new abolitionist political party. Foster and the Liberty party veteran John Pierpont organized a convention that was held in Worcester, Massachusetts, on 19 September 1860. Douglass attended the convention, which organized the “Union Democratic Party.” Although the gathering endorsed no candidate, Douglass persuaded it to adopt a resolution wishing “earnest sympathy and hearty Godspeed” to Smith’s candidacy. ., 31 August, 28 September, 5 October 1860; , 2:344-45, 351 (November 1860); Stanton and Anthony, , 1:438-41; McPherson, , 13. ever since I got the call signed
by Messrs FosterFoster, Stephen Symonds

Born in Canterbury, New Hampshire, radical abolitionist Stephen Symonds Foster (1809-81) studied at Dartmouth College. In 1837, a year before his graduation, he helped to organize the New Hampshire Young Men's Anti-Slavery Society. Foster briefly attended Union Theological Seminary in New York, but by 1839 he had repudiated the ministry. He developed his criticisms of American churches most fully in The Brotherhood of Thieves; or, A True Picture of the American Church Clergy (1843). His practice of interrupting a church service to speak out against complicity with slavery frequently provoked violent reaction. While Foster and his wife, Abby Kelley, whom he married in 1815, were agents for the American Anti-Slavery Society for nearly twenty years, their relationship with the Garrisonians was at best one of strained cooperation. Although Foster believed that the Constitution was a proslavery document, he periodically dabbled in politics. In 1843-44 he endorsed the Liberty party. In the late 1850s, having altered his view of the nature of the Constitution, Foster sought to establish a disunion party "whose avowed aim. . .[would] be the overthrow of the government. . .& whose will. . .[would] be expressed through the ballot box." In the mid-1850s he also argued in favor of slave rebellion in his Revolution the Only Remedy for Slavery (1855). A proponent of distributing land to the freedmen, Foster was disappointed with federal Reconstruction policies. He devoted the last years of his life to agitating on behalf of temperance and women's rights. Parker Pillsbury, Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles (Concord, N.H., 1883), 123-55; Lillie B. Chace Wyman, "Reminiscences of Two Abolitionists," New England Magazine, 27:536-50 (January 1903); Parker Pillsbury, "Stephen Symonds Foster,'' Granite Monthly, 5:369-75 (August 1882); Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, Bound with Them in Chains: A Biographical History of the Antislavery Movement (Westport, Conn., 1972), 191-217; Louis Filler, "Parker Pillsbury: An Anti-Slavery Apostle," NEQ, 19:315-37 (September 1946); ACAB, 2:514-15; NCAB, 2:328-29; DAB, 6:558-59. ³Born in Canterbury, New Hampshire, the radical abolitionist Stephen Symonds Foster (1809-81) studied at Dartmouth College. In 1837, a year before his graduation, he helped organize the New Hampshire Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society. Foster briefly attended Union Theological Seminary in New York, but by 1839 he had repudiated the ministry. He developed his criticisms of American churches most fully in The Brotherhood of Thieves; or, A True Picture of the American Church Clergy (1843). His practice of interrupting a church service to speak out against complicity with slavery frequently provoked violent reaction. While Foster and his wife Abby Kelley, whom he married in 1845, were agents for the American Anti-Slavery Society for nearly twenty years, their relationship with the Garrisonians was at best one of strained cooperation. Although Foster believed that the Constitution was a proslavery document, he periodically dabbled in politics. In 1843-44, he endorsed the Liberty party. He argued in favor of slave rebellion in his Revolution the Only Remedy for Slavery (1855). In the late 1850s, having altered his view of the nature of the Constitution, Foster sought to establish a disunion party “whose avowed aim... [would] be the overthrow of the government... & whose will... [would] be expressed through the ballot box.” A proponent of distributing land to the freedmen, Foster was disappointed with federal Reconstruction policies. He devoted the last years of his life to agitating on behalf of temperance and women’s rights. Parker Pillsbury, A (Concord, N.H., 1883), 123-55; idem, “Stephen Symonds Foster,” , 5:369-75 (August 1882); Lillie B. Chace Wyman, “Reminiscences of Two Abolitionists,” , 27:536-50 (January 1903); Pease and Pease, , 191-217; Filler, “Parker Pillsbury,” 19:315-37; , 2:514-15; , 2:328-29; , 6:558-59. and PeerpontPierpont, John

John Pierpont (1785-1866) was a poet and an activist Unitarian minister of Boston’s Hollis Street Church from 1819 to 1845. Douglass quoted Pierpont’s work in many speeches and writings and published this poem, composed in 1839, in the first issue of the North Star. He misquoted a line from the “The Fugitive Slave’s Apostrophe to the North Star” in a lecture to the New Lyceum in Manchester, New Hampshire, on 24 January 1854. Pierpont also appeared with Douglass and many luminaries of the abolitionist movement at the well-publicized fourteenth anniversary meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society on 9 May 1848 at the Broadway Tabernacle in New York City. NS, 3 December 1847; New York Daily Tribune, 9 May 1848; NASS, 11 May 1848; John Pierpont, The Anti-Slavery Poems of John Pierpont (Boston, 1843), 29-33; DAB, 14:586-87. .⁴John Pierpont. Of course, your letter has taken some
thing from one half and added it to the other. I am now strongly inclined
to go. The only cause of hesitation is, that the difference between myself
and Mr Garrison might render me an unacceptable member to some who
may come from that side of the house, Mr Foster himself, included. I have
always believed in Stephen Foster—and never lifted my heel against him
or against Mr Garrison until compelled to do so in self defense. I may call
to see you on my way to Syracuse next week—and talk matters over with
you. Thank you for your kind invitation

In haste. Yours Very Truly

FREDK DOUGLASS—

ALS: Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, DLC.