LEWIS TAPPAN TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Brooklyn, [N.Y.] 21 Dec[ember 18]55.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Day before yesterday I recd your letter¹ That letter has not survived.—too late to answer it that day. Yesterday forenoon I went over to the City & called upon the C House Broker with whom I had left the Invoice &c. of the goods contained in the box expected from England. I learned that the vessel had not arrived. All vessels from England at this Season have long passages. I went to 48 Beekman St²The New York City address of the American Abolition Society. & postponed writing to you. Then I found a telegram from you. I answered it immediately & deferred sending until to-day.

Your letter was 3 or 4 days reaching me.

So you see, dear Douglass, that I did not neglect your request—nor will I ever if alive & well.

I am glad to learn what you say about your lecturing tour, & I hope that your lectures that are to follow will be equally successful in sowing good seed & more successful at furnishing you with the .

My wife³The daughter of William Jackson and Mary Woodward, Sarah Jackson Tappan (1807-84) was one of seventeen children. At the age of seventeen, she married Thomas A. Davis, who was elected mayor of Boston but died after only nine months in office. As a widow, Sarah became heavily involved in the Congregational Church and began publishing religious pamphlets for young people. Sarah met Lewis Tappan at an American Missionary Association convention in Worcester less than a year after his first wife, Susan Aspinwall Tappan, died. Tappan courted Sarah for six months before marrying her on 4 April 1854. Sarah’s reception by the Tappan children was cool, perhaps as a result of her attempts to auction off the Aspinwall family heirlooms. While her marriage with Tappan was one of convenience, it has been characterized as a good match. Sarah shared Tappan’s enthusiasm for evangelism, assumed the role of his secretary, and attended him during his travels. Along with her husband, Sarah also became involved in the activities of the Underground Railroad, hiding fugitives in the basement of their house. She continued her charity work after her husband’s death in 1873, but was forced in her final years to curtail her activities after suffering a series of strokes. Boston , 21 August 1884; Wyatt-Brown, , 303-04, 330, 342; , 3:225. wants me to say, the gratification she has derived from reading your history has been very great. She reads it over & over again. Its contents will be laid up on our hearts. And the author we hold very dear. Love to your family.

Yr affec friend

LEWIS TAPPAN

ALS: Lewis Tappan Papers, DLC.