FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK T. FRELINGHUYSEN¹Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen (1817–85) was the scion of the most eminent family of Dutch Reformed heritage in the state of New Jersey. At the age of three, on the death of his father, Frederick became the ward of his uncle, Theodore Frelinghuysen, a distinguished attorney and politician. After graduating from Rutgers College in 1836, Frelinghuysen settled in Newark, where he established a successful legal and political career. He served as Newark’s city attorney and councilman in the 1850s, as New Jersey’s attorney general from 1861 to 1866, and as a U.S. senator in two nonconsecutive terms from 1866 to 1877. In the Senate, Frelinghuysen proved to be a Radical Republican, consistently supporting measures that would expand civil and political rights for freedmen. He remained staunchly loyal to the Republican party throughout the 1870s, unlike many Radicals, and was rewarded with the post of secretary of state in the cabinet of Chester A. Arthur from 1881 to 1885. (online); (online).

Washington, D.C. 23 May 1874.

DEAR SENATOR FRELINGHUYSEN:

I give you joy Sir, in the sublime triumph of this morning, and at the same
time I wish to thank you as I certainly do most sincerely, for your large
share in this achievement. You have defended the Civil Rights Bill²Congressional Republicans tried repeatedly to pass a comprehensive civil rights bill during the first half of the 1870s. In May 1870, the Radical Republican senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts introduced the Supplementary Civil Rights Act, which was intended to build on the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Ku Klux Klan Acts of 1870–71. Sumner’s legislation outlawed racial discrimination by transportation carriers, in places of public amusement and accommodation, in public schools, and on juries as well as in churches, cemeteries, and benevolent institutions incorporated by law. Democrats and key moderate Republicans stymied the law’s progress for more than two years. After Sumner’s death in March 1874, the bill’s sponsorship was taken up by New Jersey’s Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, who guided its passage in the Senate, 29–16, in the early-morning hours of May 23, 1874. This event precipitated Douglass’s glowing letter to Frelinghuysen. Unfortunately, House Republicans were unable to pass the bill before the end of the legislative session. When an amended version of Sumner’s bill passed both houses of Congress the following February, it was titled the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Charles W. Calhoun, (Lawrence, Kans., 2006), 36–39, 53–54, 72, 78; Black Americans in Congress, “Legislative Interests,” history. house.gov. not
only from the assaults of its natural enemies, but what was still more trying, you have defended it from the honest doubts of its natural friends. You
have no reason to be ashamed of your work. You have coupled your name
with a great public measure—one which marks an era in the history of
American justice, liberty, and civilization. I slept soundly and rested securely after my first interview. You were opposed in the senate as I knew
would be, by the prejudices of an extinct institution, and by a system of
false reasoning. The colored man was charged with a want of self respect,
a want of race pride, because he asked for this Bill. How absurd. It is precisely because we have this sentiment natural to all men—that we oppose
all discriminations against us on the score of race. But I took my pen only
to thank you in the name of my race.

Very truly yours

FREDK DOUGLASS

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 745, FD Papers, DLC.