FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO JOSEPHINE S. W. GRIFFING¹Josephine Sophia White Griffing (1814–72), abolitionist and advocate for women’s rights, was born to a farm family in Hebron, Connecticut. She married Charles Stockman Spooner Griffing in 1835. In 1842 the couple moved to Litchfield, Ohio, where they became involved in the antislavery movement. They joined the Western Anti-Slavery Society, and their home served as a stopping point on the Underground Railroad. In 1850, Josephine Griffing began her career as an antislavery lecturer, traveling through Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana for several years. During the Civil War, she joined the Loyal League, an organization of women who continuously petitioned Congress to emancipate the slaves. In 1863 she moved to Washington, D.C., with her three daughters and joined the National Freedmen’s Relief Association. In June 1865, Griffing served as an assistant in the Freedmen’s Bureau in Washington, D.C., but her appointment was terminated in November. She stayed in the city and continued working with freedmen, aiding in the distribution of clothing and food as well as running an industrial school for freedwomen. In recognition of her work, the Freedmen’s Bureau eventually rehired her as an employment agent. Griffing was also active in the women’s rights movement. In 1869 she served as corresponding secretary for the National Woman Suffrage Association, and the following year, she organized the association’s convention in Washington, D.C. Stacey M. Robertson, Hearts Beating for Liberty: Women Abolitionists in the Old Northwest (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2010), 151–54; NAW, 2: 92–94; ANB (online); DAB, 7: 622–23.

Rochester[, N.Y.] 27 Sept[ember] 1868.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

I am impelled by no lack of generosity in refusing to come to Washington
to speak in behalf of woman’s suffrage.²In the fall of 1868, the Universal Franchise Association called for a convention in Washington, D.C. The meeting—which would be the first-ever woman suffrage convention held in the capital—was set for 19 and 20 January 1869. As president of the association’s Washington branch, Josephine Griffing organized the convention and sent invitations to desired speakers, including Douglass. Gordon, Selected Papers of Stanton and Anthony, 2: 345; Kate Masur, An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2010), 181; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 268. The right of woman to vote is as
sacred in my judgment as that of man, and I am quite willing at any time
to hold up both hands in favor of this right. It does not however follow
that I can come to Washington or go elsewhere to deliver lectures upon
this special subject. I am now devoting myself to a cause not more sacred,
certainly more urgent, because it is one of life and death to the long en-

slaved people of this country, and this is: Negro suffrage. While the negro
is mobbed, beaten, shot, stabbed, hanged, burnt and is the target of all
that is malignant in the North and all that is murderous in the South, his
claims may be preferred by me without exposing in any wise myself to the
imputation of narrowness or meanness towards the cause of woman. As
you very well know, woman has a thousand ways to attach herself to the
governing power of the land and already exerts an honorable influence on
the course of legislation. She is the victim of abuses to be sure, but it cannot be pretended I think that her cause is as urgent as that of ours. I never
suspected you of sympathizing with Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton in
their cause. Their principle is: that no negro shall be enfranchised while
woman is not.³During 1867 and 1868, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony grew increasingly hostile to the idea of enfranchisement for black men if women were not simultaneously given the right to vote. Their arguments for woman suffrage became outright racist, and their opposition to the proposed Fifteenth Amendment alienated many former abolitionists, black leaders, and some fellow women’s rights advocates. Josephine Griffing was not only a former abolitionist but also worked closely with the Freedmen’s Bureau after the Civil War. She did not view black men’s enfranchisement as a threat to woman suffrage and took a more universalistic approach to voting rights, believing that any debate about equality would help bring about suffrage for all. But when Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869, Griffing joined. While she worked closely with the NWSA—even when the organization completely rejected the idea of black male suffrage— she did not share its leaders’ racism. Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass on Woman’s Rights, ed. Philip S. Foner (Westport, Conn., 1976), 152n; Carol Faulkner, Women’s Radical Reconstruction: The Freedmen’s Aid Movement (Philadelphia, 2004), 6, 91; Masur, Example for All the Land, 174–75, 180; Nell Irvin Painter, “Voices of Suffrage: Sojourner Truth, Frances Watkins Harper, and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage,” in Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited, ed. Jean H. Baker (New York, 2002), 74–78. Now, considering that white men have been enfranchised
always and colored men have not, the conduct of these white women,
whose husbands, fathers and brothers are voters, does not seem generous.

Very truly yours

FREDK DOUGLASS

ALS: S. W. Griffing Manuscripts, NNC. Another text in PLSr: , 33: 469–70.