FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JOHN C. UNDERWOOD¹John Curtis Underwood (1809–73) was an abolitionist with a national reputation gained from many years of residence and activity in Virginia. Born in Herkimer County, New York, and educated at Hamilton College, he conducted a successful legal practice despite losing local and congressional elections as a Liberty party candidate. Throughout the 1850s, Underwood promoted and participated in several schemes to establish “free labor colonies” across northern and western Virginia, which were designed to demonstrate the superiority of free-labor economic principles. Populated mostly by New Yorkers and European immigrants, all these settlements had failed by 1860 because of local opposition. More enduring were Underwood’s efforts to establish the Republican party in Virginia, which proved crucial to the creation of the state of West Virginia during the Civil War and the implementation of Reconstruction policies afterward. Appointed judge of the federal court for the Eastern District of Virginia by Lincoln in 1863, Underwood led Republican efforts in the state to overthrow the entrenched power of the slaveholder class and establish equal legal rights for African Americans and poor whites, until his death in 1873. By the early twentieth century, Underwood had largely disappeared from public memory except in Virginia, where he was reviled as a Yankee carpetbagger. Stanley Harrold, The Abolitionists and the South, 1831–1861 (Lexington, Ky., 1995), 107–20; Richard Lowe, Republicans and Reconstruction in Virginia, 1856–70 (Charlottesville, Va., 1991), 34–35, 40, 48, 62–63, 129–41, 144–46, 185; Patricia Hicklin, “John C. Underwood and the Antislavery Movement in Virginia, 1847–60,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 73: 156–68 (April 1965).

Rochester, N.Y. 14 November 1866.

HON: JOHN C. UNDERWOOD:

MY DEAR SIR:

My good opinion of my abilities is strengthened by the fact that both yourself and Chief Justice Chase²Salmon Portland Chase (1808–73) served as a U.S. senator, cabinet officer, and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He taught school briefly in Washington, D.C., before settling in Cincinnati and beginning a legal career. There he defended a number of fugitive slaves and acted as legal counsel for the abolitionist James G. Birney. Initially a Whig, Chase joined the Liberty party in 1840 and presided at the Buffalo Convention of the Free Soil party in 1848. A coalition of Free Soilers and Democrats in the Ohio legislature sent Chase to the U.S. Senate in 1849, where he remained until 1854. He strongly opposed the Compromise of 1850 and favored the restriction of slavery by federal law. In the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Chase joined the Republican party and won the governorship of Ohio in 1855. After returning to the U.S. Senate in 1861, he resigned to become Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of the treasury. Closely aligned with Radical Republicans in Congress, Chase became the focus of opposition to Lincoln within the Republican party. Although he resigned his cabinet post and challenged Lincoln for the 1864 presidential nomination, Lincoln appointed him chief justice of the Supreme Court. Throughout his political career, Chase was a strong proponent of black suffrage and the Radical program of Reconstruction. Chase sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1868, but attracted little support. Frederick J. Blue, Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics (Kent, Ohio, 1987); James Brewer Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings and the Tactics of Radical Politics (Cleveland, 1970), 116–18, 153–54; Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837–1860 (New York, 1976), 90; Reinhard H. Luthin, “Salmon P. Chase’s Political Career before the Civil War,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 29: 517–40 (March 1943); DAB, 4: 27–34. should think me a proper person to establish
a press on the soil of Virginia in the interest of Equal Rights.³It appears that this letter, located in the John C. Underwood Papers in the Library of Congress, is the only documentary evidence that Underwood asked Douglass to establish a newspaper in Alexandria, Virginia. Although Underwood and Douglass were prominent participants in the Southern Loyalist Convention held in early September 1866, many events and private conversations that occurred there were not reported in the press. Underwood, a key figure in founding the Republican party in antebellum Virginia, was particularly notable for establishing party newspapers in the western part of the state. In fact, Underwood attempted to launch such a party paper in Richmond, in eastern Virginia, during late 1865, but failed to attract enough subscribers or advertising revenue. Knowing the difficulties of starting and maintaining a Republican newspaper in the South, Underwood apparently hoped that a luminary like Douglass would attract enough funding from northern sources to make the venture successful. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase did not attend the Southern Loyalist Convention, so his suggestion to Douglass obviously occurred elsewhere. No diary entries or correspondence concerning this topic can be found in the published papers of Chase. It should be noted that Underwood and Chase were friends and political allies, so it is likely they conceived the idea together but broached it to Douglass separately. John Niven, ed., The Salmon P. Chase Papers, 5 vols. (Kent, Ohio, 1993–98); Lowe, Republicans and Reconstruction, 34, 41, 57, 66, 141, 209.

I have thought much of the idea since you suggested it in Philadelphia;
but I am not yet persuaded to attempt the enterprize. There are but twelve
hours in a day for any of us and the most we can do is to work, and work
with all our might while the day lasts and this I am doing already.

For some time yet to come, the future of the colored race, will depend
more upon the sentiments and opinions of the people of the North and
West than then upon those of the South. The sceptre has passed from

Virginia and the law from between her feet. The loyal North and West
must now and for some time to <come> control not only the destiny of the
negro but that of the nation. I now act upon the mind of the country from
Maine to the Mississippi—and am probably doing as much to disseminate
sound views of human rights in this way as I could were I to place Baltimore between me and the North and West.

I should be more enclined to come to Alexandria but that I fear my
doing so would be taken as a defiance by the old residents of the city.
My long and well known radical abolitionism will render me an object
of unusual hostility and will render me less likely to gain their attention
than almost any other colored man. It is not my duty to court violence or
martyrdom or to act in any manner which can be construed into a spirit
of bravado. I have now an ample field in which I can work and work effectively, and with my present light I think it wise to remain where I am,
at least until the public mind of the South shall attain a more healthy tone
than at present. When the Liberty to utter my opinions in Virginia shall
depend upon a more reliable man than our present Commander in Chief
of the Army and Navy,⁴Andrew Johnson. it may be safe for me to attempt to establish a
press in Virginia.

Now, my dear sir, I leave this matter with you. I should on very many
accounts be happy to be near you, and disposing of my time and talents
in a manner to command your approval, and though I have stated my self
some what strongly I do not by any means wish to close the door against
any further facts and suggestions from you. I intend visiting Washington
in the month of January⁵Nothing in Douglass’s correspondence or in reports by major New York or District of Columbia newspapers suggests that he visited Washington, D.C., in January 1867. and will then, if you please, have a further interview with you on this subject.

With great and sincere Respect

I am, Dear Sir, your most Obent. Servant

FREDERICK DOUGLASS—

ALS: John C. Underwood Papers, DLC.