FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO HENRY WILSON¹Elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts by a coalition of Free Soilers, Know-Nothings, and Democrats in 1855, Henry Wilson (1812–75) strongly advocated the abolition of slavery as a political goal. In 1862, Wilson introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and as a Radical Republican, he was one of the strongest voices denouncing the Black Codes enacted under Presidential Reconstruction. In 1865 he introduced a bill aimed at nullifying all laws and ordinances discriminating against freedmen and former slaves. Wilson replaced Schuyler Colfax as vice president for Ulysses S. Grant’s second term, but died in office. Ernest McKay, Henry Wilson: Practical Radical (London, 1971), 94–95, 197–98.

Rochester, [N.Y.] 12 Sept[ember] 1866.

MY DEAR SENATOR WILSON:

Your letter just received, alleging that I did you injustice in my speech,
(you do not say in which speech, for I made several in Philadelphia)²At the Southern Loyalist Convention, prominent men such as Douglass spoke numerous times throughout the week, though most of these addresses went unrecorded in the press. Excerpts of at least three addresses by Douglass, however, were reported, including those presented before the New York delegation and the Northern Convention on 4 September and before the Southern Convention on 6 September. In each case, Douglass argued the need for Negro suffrage and made no specific allusions to Henry Wilson or any other contemporary politician. Philadelphia Daily Evening Telegraph, 5 September 1866; New York Herald, 5, 7 September 1866; The Southern Loyalists Convention (New York, 1866), 62; Richard H. Abbott, The Republican Party and the South, 1855–1877: The First Southern Strategy (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986), 66–71. is a

somewhat painful surprise to me. Nevertheless I am obliged to you for it,
as it affords me an opportunity to remove an impression alike painful to
you and unjust to me. Extravagant statements concerning men or things
are not common to me. I would not consciously do wrong to an enemy,
much less to a friend. As a man, a statesman and a philanthropist your
reputation has been highly prized by me, and I would be the last to cast
a doubt upon it, or to allow another to do it unreproved. As to my speech
in Philadelphia, or speeches, I wish to say distinctly—and I do it without
the least fear of contradiction, that you are wholly misinformed. In no
speech made by me, either before the Southern Convention or the New-York Delegation did I mention your name or by inference allude to it.³On 4 September 1866, Douglass addressed the New York delegation but made no mention of Henry Wilson. Philadelphia Daily Evening Telegraph, 5 September 1866.
Ignorant entirely as to whether you were exerting your influence to secure
or avert an indorsement of equal suffrage by the Southern delegates, I
neither commended nor criticized your course.

It is quite true however; and frankness requires me to state it, that the
rumor did reach me on the second day of the Convention that you counseled
Southern men against any declaration on the subject of equal suffrage, and
your speech, made before the New-York delegation,⁴Henry Wilson probably did address the New York delegation, but no record of it could be found in New York or Philadelphia newspapers. The one address by Wilson reported in the press was given at a street rally on the evening of Wednesday, 5 September, where he strongly castigated Andrew Johnson and his policies. Philadelphia Daily Evening Telegraph, 6 September 1866. to which I was an attentive listener, being entirely silent on the subject,⁵It is not clear when Henry Wilson embraced the position of universal black manhood suffrage, but by the spring of 1865 he was advocating the view in speeches and correspondence. That said, Wilson was famously the good-natured “practical radical” who always sought to build political unity and comity among men of diverse interests, avoiding controversy whenever possible. Throughout 1865 and 1866, Wilson commonly trumpeted black suffrage in New England, but he avoided the topic when giving speeches in the lower North, where the issue might have cost Republicans votes. It appears that Wilson, like many other prominent northern Republican politicians present at the Southern Loyalist Convention, did not consider it politically expedient to emphasize black suffrage with crucial congressional elections looming only a few weeks away. Once Republicans held veto-proof majorities in Congress, Wilson was at the forefront of all Radical-led initiatives, including passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted African American men the right to vote. McKay, Henry Wilson; John L. Myers, Henry Wilson and the Era of Reconstruction (Lanham, Md., 2009), 3, 5, 7, 48, 49, 53, 56, 110–12. disposed me to think
there might be some truth in the story, but neither the rumor alluded to, nor
the omission on that occasion to commit yourself to equal suffrage was
considered by me sufficient ground for publically classifying you with the
enemies of that wise, just and necessary measure. Your great services rendered to the cause of Emancipation to say nothing of your personal kindness to me, would make me hesitate to arraign you before any audience
without the most ample evidence, not only merely of a difference of opinion
about measures, but of real moral defection. I am exceedingly glad to have
your contradiction of the statement that you endeavored to present the assertion of equal suffrage by the Convention. Hoping that hereafter as heretofore your voice and vote will be found with right to all and wrong to none.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 202–04L, FD Papers, DLC.