FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JOHN W. HUTCHINSON¹In 1840, John Wallace Hutchinson (1821–1908), along with his brothers Asa, Jesse, and Judson, organized the Hutchinson Family Singers, a four-part ensemble modeled after itinerant German and Swiss singing groups then touring the United States. Their sister Abigail soon joined performances; later, so did other family members. All committed abolitionists, the Hutchinsons performed regularly at antislavery conventions throughout the North and toured Great Britain with Douglass in 1845 and 1846. John Wallace Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons (Tribe of Jesse), ed. Charles E. Mann, 2 vols. (Boston, 1896), 1: iii–iv; Dale Cockrell, ed., Excelsior: Journals of the Hutchinson Family Singers, 1842–1846 (Stuyvesant, N.Y., 1989), xi.

Biddeford[, Me.]²Biddeford is a small commercial and manufacturing city in York County, Maine. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 214. 18 Nov[ember] 1874.

MY DEAR JOHN:

I have only time while on the wing as I am, to tell you that you made me
very much obliged to you for the little pamphlet,³John W. Hutchinson probably gave Douglass a copy of the pamphlet Our Paper: Thirty Years Singing! Concert in This Place! Over a Quarter of a Century’s Career of the Hutchinson Family, which he had prepared to promote a series of midwestern concerts in early 1869. Two decades later, Douglass wrote an introduction to the Hutchinson family’s longer history. John W. Hutchinson, Our Paper: Thirty Years Singing! Concert in This Place! Over a Quarter of a Century’s Career of the Hutchinson Family (Chicago, 1869); Hutchinson, Story of the Hutchinsons, 1: xv–xviii. you kindly put into hands
night before last in Lynn,⁴Douglass spoke at Cosmian Hall in Florence, Massachusetts, on 14–15 November 1874. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4: xxxiii. containing biographical sketches of the several
members of your remarkably musical family. No apology was needed for
its publication. All who have listened as I have done, to the “Concord of
Sweet Sounds”⁵Merchant of Venice, sc. 20, line 2366. from members of the “Tribe of Jesse”⁶The “Tribe of Jesse” is a biblical reference to the Twelve Tribes of Israel. These tribes were originally headed by the twelve sons of Jacob, whose name was later changed to Israel. His sons were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. Because Jesse—also the name of the Hutchinson family’s patriarch—is not numbered among the Twelve Tribes, the Hutchinson Family Singers most likely borrowed this allusion as part of their Christian image. Gen. 49: 1–28; Yair Zakovitch, Jacob: Unexpected Patriarch (New Haven, Conn., 2012), 66–75.—want more of
the music and wish to know more of the persons from whom it comes. I
especially have reason to feel a grateful interest in the whole Hutchinson
family—for you have sung the yokes from the necks & and the fetters

from the limbs of my race, and dared to be true to humanity against all
danger to worldly prosperity and reputation. You have dared to sing for a
cause first and for cash afterward. I know of few instrumentalities which
have done more <for> Liberty and temperance than have your voices. But
I only took this moment simply to thank you for the pamphlet and not to
speak in the praise of the dear family.

Yours Very Truly

FREDK DOUGLASS

ALS: Hutchinson Family Letterbook, Lynn Historical Society, Lynn, Mass.