FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ELIZABETH KECKLEY

Rochester, [N.Y.] 10 Nov[ember] 1867.

MY DEAR MRS. KECKLEY:

I very easily read your handwriting. With practice you will not only write
legibly but elegantly; so no more apologies for writing. Penmanship
has always been one of my own deficiencies, and I know how to sympathize with you.

I am just home, and find your letter awaiting me. You should have
received an earlier answer but for this absence. I am sorry it will be
impossible for me to see you before I go to Washington. I am leaving
home this week for Ohio, and shall go from Ohio to Washington.¹In November 1867, Douglass delivered the lecture “Self-Made Men” at several locations in Ohio and western Pennsylvania, including Doebler’s Hall in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, on 14–15 November 1867; Turner’s Opera House in Dayton, Ohio, on 19 November 1867; and Farrar Hall in Erie, Pennsylvania, on 22 November 1867. He then traveled to New England, where he lectured in such cities as Lynn, Chicopee, and Reading, Massachusetts, and Hartford and New London, Connecticut, in December 1867. Dayton (Ohio) , 6, 11, 15, 19 November 1867; Erie (Pa.) , 14 November 1867; Williamsport (Pa.) , 16 November 1867; Dayton (Ohio) , 19, 20 November 1867; Erie (Pa.) , 21, 28 November, 5, 12 December 1867; Lynn (Mass.) , 7 December 1867; Hartford (Conn.) , 13, 18 December 1867; New York , 18, 30 December 1867. I shall
be in New York a day or two after my visit to Washington, and will see
you there. Any public demonstration in which it will be desirable for
me to take part, ought to come off the last of this month or the first of
next. I thank you sincerely for the note containing a published letter of
dear Mrs. Lincoln; both letters do credit to the excellent lady.²On 29 October 1867, Mary Todd Lincoln wrote Elizabeth Keckley and enclosed a letter to Frederick Douglass, along with an unidentified “printed letter” to be forwarded to him. On 9 November, Lincoln wrote Keckley to check whether both items had been sent to Douglass. Mary Todd Lincoln to Elizabeth Keckley, 29 October, 7 November 1867, in Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, eds., (New York, 1972), 447–49. I prize
her beautiful letter to me very highly. It is the letter of a refined and
spirited lady, let the world say what it will of her. I would write her a
word of acknowledgment but for fear to burden her with correspondence.
I am glad that Mr. Garnet³Born a slave in Kent County, Maryland, Henry Highland Garnet (1815–82) fled north with his parents in 1824. He attended the African Free School in New York City, the Noyes Academy in Canaan, New Hampshire, and the Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, New York. Garnet was one of the founders of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and a stump speaker for the Liberty party. Licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Troy in 1842, Garnet went to Jamaica in 1852 as a missionary of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland. An early proponent of black immigration to Africa and founder of the African Civilization Society, Garnet, in a speech to the National Negro Convention in Buffalo, New York, in August 1843, sanctioned slave uprisings and praised Madison Washington, leader of the 1842 slave rebellion aboard the Creole. After the Civil War, Garnet was president of Avery College in Pittsburgh and U.S. minister to Liberia (1881–82). Joel Schor, (Westport, Conn., 1977); Dorothy Sterling, ed., (Garden City, N.Y., 1973), 376; Benjamin Quarles, (New York, 1969), 68, 185, 216–17, 226–27; , 8: 735–36. and yourself saw Mr. Greeley,⁴No other source than Keckley corroborates this meeting between Keckley, Henry H. Garnet, and Horace Greeley. Quarles, , 210; Schor, , 210. and that he
takes the right view of the matter; but we want more than right views,
and delay is death to the movement. What you now want is action and
co-operation. If Mr. Brady⁵Not J. H. Brady, but William H. Brady, who was the head of a secondhand jewelry firm, located at 606 Broadway Avenue in New York City, that was assisting Mary Todd Lincoln to raise money by selling some of her valuables. Brady published several letters he had solicited from Lincoln to assist the sale, but this resulted in what was widely dubbed the “Old Clothes Scandal.” Betty Boles Ellison, (n.p., 2014), 194–95; Jean H. Baker, (New York, 1987), 273, 275, 280; Jones, , 66–67. does not for any reason find himself able to
move the machinery, somebody else should be found to take his place;
he made a good impression on me when I saw him, but I have not seen
the promised simultaneous movement of which we spoke when together.
This whole thing should be in the hands of some recognized solid man
in New York. No man would be better than Mr. Greeley; no man in the
State is more laughed at, and yet no man in more respected and trusted;
a dollar placed in his hands would be as safe for the purpose as in the
burglar-proof safe, and what is better still, everybody believes this. This
testimonial must be more than a negro testimonial. It is a great national
duty. Mr. Lincoln did everything for the black man, but he did it not for
the black man’s sake, but for the nation’s sake. His life was given for the
nation; but for being President, Mr. Lincoln would have been alive, and
Mrs. Lincoln would have been a wife, and not a widow as now. Do all
you can, dear Mrs. Keckley—nobody can do more than you in removing

the mountains of prejudice towards that good lady, and opening the way
of success in the plan.

I am, dear madam, very truly yours,

FREDERICK DOUG LASS.

PLSr: Keckley, , 320–23.