Halifax[, Eng.] 11 Jan[uary] 1860[.]

MISS MARIA G. PORTER

MY DEAR Miss PORTER:

You know that I never call upon you but when in trouble either with fu-
gitives or with the paper. Listen to me once more: I am now three 3000
miles¹Douglass spent most of December 1859, including Christmas, and January 1860 at Salem Parsonage, the home of the Reverend Henry and Julia Griffiths Crofts in Halifax, Yorkshire, England. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:276–77; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 203.from Canal street,²Maria G. Porter, along with members of her family, resided at 12 Canal Street in Rochester, New York, for over twenty years. Rochester Daily Union Annual City Directory, for 1859 (Rochester, 1859), 222; The Rochester Directory, Containing a General Directory of the Citizens, 304. my unfailing resort in the hour of need—many
reasons might be given why it is not as other times, but let that pass, for a
friend in deed need is a friend indeed³Probably first used in literature in the ancient Roman play by Titus Maccius Plautus: Epidicus, act 3, sc. 3, line 44. John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations: A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature, 17th ed. (1855; Boston, 2002), 86.—and such I have always found you to be, both to mySelf and the paper wh[ic]h I have endeavoured thus long to keep in the Service of the slave and of the free colored people. Well, I am convinced that the paper was never more needed than now—and it was never better deserving support than Since Mr Pryne⁴Abram Pryne. has become its Editor. He is an able man, and what is better Still, he is an honest man. You see just what is coming. I have news from my Son⁵During Douglass’s absence, he seems to have placed his son Lewis in charge of all the paper’s business affairs. Indeed, in February 1860, Frederick Douglass’ Paper published a “Prospectus” for the year that included the terms under which the paper could be subscribed to and the instruction that all “communications, whether on business or for publication, should be addressed to Lewis H. Douglass.” FDP, 17 February 1860.
that despite all efforts to collect from Subscribers the paper still runs Short of Supporting itself—and greatly needs aid from its friends independent of the Subscription list. Now considering the relation Sustained to the Rochester Ladies Antislavery Association⁶In 1850, Julia Griffiths reorganized the Rochester Female Anti-Slavery Society, which had remained little more than a social club since its formation in 1835, into the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. Composed of both a sewing circle and an antislavery association, the society advocated faith in established churches and “morally self conscious politics,” thereby discouraging Garrisonian women from joining. Although the new organization never numbered more than twenty-five members, the group proved remarkably successful at fund-raising meant to assist Douglass. Maria G. Porter and her younger sisters, Almira and Mary Jane, were founding members of the group, and their sister-in-law, Susan Farley Porter, served as the society’s first president. FDP, 4 September 1852; Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:487–88; Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 150–52. the paper—and the understanding that the friends of the Cause have here of the friendliness of the two —and in view of the fact that the Society holds in its hands funds from this side the water—wh[ic]h can be the better increased when it is known that besides helping fugitives on their way to Canada, and holding Anti Slavery meetings and Causing anti slavery addresses to be delivered in Corinthian Hall it also greatly aids in the publication of an Anti Slavery Journal in the city of Rochester.

The point of all this is: I beg that you will, with your kind coworker Mrs Barnes,⁷“Mrs. Barnes” refers to Anna Mott Cornell Barnes (1824–72) of Rochester, New York. Barnes visited the Rochester area with her grandmother Anne Mott and married Aaron Barnes (1819–48) in 1847. Following her husband’s death, Anna Barnes joined the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society and was elected co-secretary; she continued to live in Rochester for several years. She became a constant travel companion of Anne Mott until the latter’s death in 1852. Barnes would sometimes sign her name “A.M.C. Barnes” on official reports for the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. Twelfth Annual Report of the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society (Rochester, 1863), 5; Thomas C. Cornell, Adam and Anne Mott: Their Ancestors and their Descendants (Poughkeepsie, N.Y., 1890), 189–90, 192, 198. move the Rochester Ladies Antislavery society to donate the sum of one hundred dollars—towards the support of my paper—and that you will make the same payable to my son Lewis—in whose honest appropriation of it I have the fullest Confidence.

I have not yet gotten very well a going in my Antislavery Labour—but the prospect begins to brighten a little. The holidays mean a little more here than with us. The week before Christmas and the two weeks succeeding it are weeks of constant party going—and visiting—and John Bull,⁸John Bull, a character reputed to typify the English nation, was first popularized in John Arbuthnot, The History of John Bull (London, 1714). F. P. Wilson, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 3d. ed. (Oxford, Eng., 1970), 412–13. will not even allow his antislavery stand between him and his roast beef and his plum pudding. He is however now—becoming far less intent upon the bread that perisheth and gives me an occasional invitation to talk to him on slavery all of which I improve with right good relish. In a note to Mrs Crofts⁹Julia Griffiths Crofts.—Mrs Barnes ventures the opinion that I can now with Safety return to Rochester. So indeed it would Seem if the Shedding of the blood of the noble old Brown—and his four companions¹⁰Virginia authorities hanged John Brown on 2 December 1859. Two weeks later, four other captured Harpers Ferry raiders were similarly executed: John Edwin Cook; Shields Green (c. 1834–59), actually Esau Brown, an escaped slave from Charleston, South Carolina, who had conducted a house-cleaning business in Rochester, where Douglass had introduced him to Brown; Edwin Coppoc (1835–59), an Ohio-born and Quaker-bred youth who had first met Brown in Iowa; and John A. Copeland (c. 1835–59), a young black man from Oberlin, Ohio. Virginia executed the two blacks and two whites separately. Hinton, John Brown, 487–91, 508–11, 561–64; Oates, To Purge This Land, 218–19, 251–52, 275, 286, 298, 315–16, 328.—could satisfy the alarmed and enraged tyrants of Virginia. But there is no satisfying any such vengeance. While there is the chance of Summoning me as a witness in the trial—of poor Stephens¹¹Among John Brown’s followers at Harpers Ferry, Aaron Dwight Stevens (1831–60) possessed, by far, the greatest amount of military experience. Born in Lisbon, Connecticut, Stevens joined a Massachusetts volunteer regiment at age sixteen and fought in the Mexican War. After returning to Connecticut for a few years, he enlisted in the U.S. Army dragoons in 1851 and saw service on the western frontier. In 1855, military authorities imprisoned Stevens for striking an officer, but he escaped and hid with the Delaware in Kansas Territory. Assuming the name “Charles Whipple,” he joined the free state military forces in the territory and rose to command their Second Regiment, based around Topeka. Stevens served as Brown’s second in command during the slave raid into Missouri and was the drillmaster for the Harpers Ferry raiders. Wounded and captured during the raid, Stevens was housed in the same cell with Brown. Not tried until his health had partially recovered, he was executed on 16 March 1860. Hinton, , 54, 492–99; Noble, , 27, 80, 94–95; Oates, , 219–20, 223, 261, 280–81, 302; Villard, , 224, 486, 679–80.
and Hazlett¹²Among the least known of John Brown’s followers, Albert Hazlett (1837–60) arrived in Kansas Territory from his native Pennsylvania in the winter of 1856–57. After fighting in the free staters’ guerilla forces under James Montgomery, Hazlett joined Brown’s small band in December 1858, just in time to participate in the raid against Missouri to free slaves. During the attack on Harpers Ferry, Hazlett and Osborne P. Anderson garrisoned the captured arsenal building. With Maryland and Virginia militias closing in, Hazlett and Anderson escaped unnoticed across the Potomac River in a stolen boat. Hazlett was later apprehended in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and extradited without due process back to Virginia. Although the other raiders denied any acquaintance with him, Hazlett was tried and convicted in February 1860. Refusing to appeal for clemency, he was executed along with Aaron D. Stevens on 16 March 1860. Hinton, John Brown, 158–59, 312, 383, 388, 410–11; Oates, To Purge This Land, 261, 298, 302, 328–29; Villard, John Brown, 414, 580, 682.—by the United States Court it will not be Safe for me to come to Rochester.

Please remember me very kindly to Miss Jane, Elmira¹³Both Mary Jane Porter (1810–60), who was known as Jane, and Almira B. Porter (1825–79), who also appears as “Elmira” in contemporary records, were sisters of the well-known abolitionists Samuel D. and Maria G. Porter. Together with their stepmother, Mrs. Isabella Callahan Porter, Jane and Almira Porter operated a coeducational school in the basement of Rochester’s Unitarian Church from 1850 to 1859. Upon Mrs. Porter’s retirement in 1859, Jane and Almira Porter opened a school for girls, variously known as the Select School, the Porter School, and the Rochester Seminary for Young Ladies. Following Jane Porter’s death in 1860, her sister accepted an offer to relocate the school to the chapel of Christ Church, and she continued teaching there until shortly before her death in 1879. Almira B. Porter also served on the executive board of the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. 1870 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, 355; Rochester Herald, 14 December 1896; Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:785; Peck, History of Rochester, 1:243.—and to your Dear Mother and Father.¹⁴Douglass is referring to Maria G. Porter’s father, Samuel Porter (1780–1872), and her step-mother, Isabella Callahan Porter (1798–1877). A native of Connecticut, Samuel Porter moved to Bristol, Maine, where he married Mary Drummond in 1804. In 1813, Porter moved his growing family to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Following the death of his first wife, Samuel Porter married Isabella Callahan, a schoolteacher, in 1828. Porter, his wife, and his younger daughters remained in Philadelphia until 1850, when they joined his son and daughter, Samuel D. and Maria G. Porter, in Rochester, New York. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, Rochester, 29; Henry Porter Andrews, The Descendants of John Porter of Windsor, Conn. 1635–9 (Saratoga Springs, N.Y., 1893), 301; Peck, History of Rochester, 1:243.

I Wish them and yourself—a happy new year—

Very Sincerely your grateful friend

FREDERICK DOUGLASS—

ALS: Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society Papers, MiU-C.