FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO AMY POST

Buffalo[ N.Y.] 15 Jan[uar]y 1877.

AMY POST.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

After being snowbound, fifteen miles from Corfu¹Corfu was a small farming community in Genesee County, New York, twelve miles southwest of Batavia and twenty-five miles northeast of Buffalo, along the line of the New York Central Railroad. Seltzer, , 449. all night Saturday and
all day Sunday, unable to get East or West. I was able, by the assistance
of seven Locomotives to reach here last night about nine o.clock. My next
point is in Northwestern Michigan but how and when I am to get there I
do not know. I am now about disgusted with my tour—and wish myself
back under your hospitable roof;²Douglass lectured at Rochester’s Corinthian Hall as part of its Athenaeum Course on 12 January 1877, and he spoke the next evening in Corfu. , ser. 1, xxxv. but the idea of duty which has hitherto commanded me is still my master and will compel me to go on. I
leave here to day for Detroit, and thence to Traverse City.³Douglass was scheduled to address an audience in Traverse City, Michigan, on 19 January and then to move on to Chicago and Dixon, Illinois, for speeches on 21 and 22 January 1877, respectively. Please let the
dear Hallowells⁴William and Mary Hallowell. and Willeses⁵Probably a reference to the Rochester family of Sarah Kirby Hallowell Willis (1818–1914), Amy Post’s younger sister. A longtime friend and supporter of Douglass, Sarah was the eighth and last child of Jacob and Mary Seaman Kirby. In 1838 she married Jeffries Hallowell, a distant relation of her niece’s husband, William R. Hallowell. Active in the antislavery movement, Sarah joined the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society in 1842. In 1844 her husband died, leaving huge debts, which the Posts repaid. In 1848, she (along with her sister Amy and Douglass) was one of the signers of the Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls. In 1853 she married her brother-in-law Isaac Post’s nephew and business partner, Edmund P. Willis. Widowed for the second time in 1882, she remained active in the woman suffrage movement as well as a variety of local charitable organizations. Near the end of her life, she endowed a scholarship for women at the University of Rochester. Hewitt, , 73–74, 103, 219, 224, 231, 262, 268–69, 273, 282, 287, 288, 291; Hewitt, , 143, 167, 184, 214, 231; Fought, , 338n; Find a Grave (online). know this, for I had hoped to have spent
some time with them before leaving Rochester during my present tour.
Tell Doctor Tilden⁶A Rochester physician and friend of Amy Post, A. E. Tilden shared Post’s belief in Spiritualism, and the two often addressed the same conventions on the subject. He organized support for the Exodusters in the late 1870s. Hewitt, , 278–29, 285. that I read every word of his able letter—and while,
I admit that he puts Bishop in a bad fix, he does not much help the case
of the Markees.⁷Tilden had perhaps written to take sides in the long-running public controversy in the Rochester region over the authenticity of the séances performed by Elizabeth Compton Markee in the company of her husband. (Memphis, Tenn.), 3: 110–11 (1877); Boston , 42: 2 (30 March 1878); London , 9: 372 (14 June 1878); , 8: 91 (May 1883). I am always so happy to agree with you generally that I
almost regret that I am not a spiritualist and the same feeling makes me
regret that you are one.⁸Amy Post and her husband, Isaac, had been among the very first to embrace the Spiritualist movement and make the public aware of the special powers of the Fox sisters, who received messages in the form of “rappings” from the deceased. Douglass had attended one of the Foxes’ early séances held at the Post home, but rejected Spiritualism as a distraction from the antislavery movement. , ser. 3, 1: 413, 2: 269–71; , 10 June 1859; Hewitt, , 140–41, 154–55. Kind regards to Dear Willie,⁹Probably William Hallowell. Mrs M.¹⁰Eliza J. Smith Mann (?–1908), suffragist and wife of the Reverend Newton W. Mann, the pastor of Rochester’s First Unitarian Church from 1870 to 1888. Hewitt, , 266, 271; Blake McKelvey, “Civil Medals Awarded Posthumously,” , 22: 16 (April 1960). and a
whole heap—or “” to the Doctor.

Always yours truly

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

ALS: Post Family Papers, Rush Rhees Library, NRU.