FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM BUELL SPRAGUE¹William Buell Sprague (1795-1876), pastor, biographer, and collector, was born in Andover, Connecticut. He attended Yale College and graduated with honors in 1815 and then attended Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1819 he was ordained and became the pastor of the First Congregational Church in West Springfield, Massachusetts, where he remained for ten years. His second pastoral assignment was to the Second Presbyterian Church in Albany, New York. He served there for forty years before resigning. Sprague was one of the most sought-after pastors of his time. He was recognized for his collections. He was believed to have the largest private collection of autographs of his day, including the first complete set of autographs of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He collected other kinds of documents as well, including a substantial number of letters written by George Washington. Sprague’s scholarly interests centered on history and biography; his best-known publishing project was Annals of the American Pulpit, a nine-volume collection of biographies of Protestant ministers. For his production of more than 150 literary works, he received a doctor of divinity from both Columbia and Harvard and a doctor of law in 1869 from Princeton College. , 5:638; , 17:476-77; , 20:501-02.

Rochester[, N.Y.] 1 May 1861[.]

WILLIAM B. SPRAGUE D.D.

DEAR SIR.
I am obliged by your favour, and by a copy your discourse in communica-
tion of the late Hon: John McLean,²Born to a poor farm family, John McLean (1785-1861) rose through the legal and political ranks to the U.S. Supreme Court. He received little formal education in his youth, but nevertheless was permitted to read law in the offices of Arthur St. Clair of Cincinnati, Ohio. McLean practiced law and edited a weekly newspaper in Lebanon, Ohio, until 1812, when he was elected to Congress. Three years later he accepted an appointment to the Ohio Supreme Court. After six years as a judge, McLean served as postmaster general in the administrations of James Monroe and John Quincy Adams. As a reward for his support of Andrew Jackson in the election of 1828, McLean received an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, where his most famous opinion was the dissent in the Dred Scott decision of 1857. Over the years, McLean was seriously considered for a presidential nomination by the Anti-Masons, Free Soilers, Know-Nothings, Whigs, and Republicans. At the 1856 Republican Convention, he finished second in the balloting, behind John C. Frémont. Francis P. Weisenburger, (Columbus, Ohio, 1937); , 2:469-70; , 4:144; , 12:127-28. one of the Justices of the Supreme
of the U. States. I thank you for this token of your respect, and for the
interest you are pleased to manifest in my humble career. I am very glad
to be able to assure you that though the days of my pilgrimage here have
been far from bright, I find life no burden but rather a precious privilege.
The clouds and darkness which surrounded its morning—and which have
brooded over it most of the way, seem now disappearing in the opening
prospects of my long enslaved people. If out of the great evils you depict
in the discourse you have kindly sent me, there Shall come the year of
Jubilee to the Slave, as I hope it will, it will be among the grandest illus-
trations of the truth of the opening remarks of your address. The conduct
of events seems to be taken out of human hands, and beyond the reach
of human calculation or control. We have drifted into the deep current of
Eternal Law—and must be carried where they lead. For once the cause of
the country has become the cause of the slave, and the difficulty of sepa-
rating the one from the other, is a ground of hope that in the almost cirtain
triumph of the Country, the Cause of Justice and freedom to the bondman