FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JAMES HALL¹Born in Cornish, New Hampshire, James Hall (1802–89) graduated from Bowdoin College’s Medical Department in 1822. After practicing medicine in Windsor, Vermont (1822–29), he took a position with the Maryland Colonization Society, partially to recover his health via a voyage to Africa. Hall quickly rose to become governor of that society’s Cape Palmas colony (1833–36). He then returned to the United States and worked as general agent for the Maryland Colonization Society for several decades. He later engaged in mercantile activity in Baltimore. New York , 7 September 1889; Bowdoin College, (Brunswick, Me., 1912), 317.

Rochester[,] N.Y. 10 June 1859[.]

JAMES HALL ESQR.

MY DEAR SIR:

You have made me your debtor for an act of friendship for which, I beg you to believe me, extremely grateful. The curtain dropt between me and Maryland nearly twenty one years ago.²Douglass alludes to his escape from slavery in Maryland in September 1838. Since Then I have been separated from all the dear ones of my youth as if by the shadow of death. Any tidings from the place, the people, the friends, and the objects associated with my youthful days have for me an interest which you can better imagine than I can express. The manumitted persons in the record sent me—are all doubtless my blood relations—but all born Since I left Maryland. Those who were known to me on the Estate are, I have reason to believe all free. Mr Thomas Auld³Thomas Auld.—has shown himself far more benevolent and noble than I supposed him to be—and than I have given him credit for in my earlier speeches and publications. He is doubtless, a much better Christian than many here at the North who call upon slave holders to Emancipate Their Slaves. His sense of Justice cost him Something. It is noble of him to make the sacrafice & to do So in a community where his justice is not popular.

Nevertheless, considering that the average length of human life falls far below therty years.⁴Life expectancy in the 1850s is a subject of dispute among demographers, but Douglass’s estimate seems pessimistic. American whites seem to have lived an average of approximately forty years, and slaves thirty-six years. Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Slavery (Boston, 1974), 126, 260–61; Robert William Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York, 1989), 32–34, 127–32—it Seems to me That his Charity and justice would have appeared to far better advantage had he set an earlier age, as the one at which to emancipate his servants.

I am however immeasurably thankful to God that my old master has thus far put himself in harmony with the spirit of Christ—and the requirements of justice.

William Watkins⁵William J. Watkins.—for whom you inquire still resides in Rochester—but has not been connected with me in the publication of my paper for a year past.

Please write me and say whether I am at Liberty to make any public use of the record with which you have favored me.

I am, Dear Sir, Very gratefully yours,

FREDERICK DOUGLASS—

ALS: Maryland Colonization Society Papers, MdHis.