FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO MARY R. CLARKE¹Mary R. Robinson Clarke (1811–1900). 1870 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 56; Find a Grave (online).

Washington[,] D.C. 14 Nov[ember] 1880.

DEAR FRIEND:

I know that words are tame, that sorrow is its own solace, that mourning
is its own comforter, that the lesson of death is silence and resignation,
and yet ever since I read the sad announcement of of the death of Dear
Doctor Clarke,²John L. Clarke (1812–80), a physician from Massachusetts, was born in Scituate, Rhode Island. In 1854 he graduated from the Homoeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania and that same year moved to Fall River in Bristol County, Massachusetts, where he became a prominent physician in the community. A former member of the Society of Friends, Clarke actively opposed slavery from the earliest days of the abolitionist movement. Lib., 10 October 1845; 1870 U.S. Census, Massachusetts, Bristol County, 56; Herbert C. Clapp, “Obituary, John L. Clarke, M.D.,” New England Medical Gazette, 16: 31–32 (January 1881); I. T. Talbot, “Homoeopathic Directory,” New England Medical Gazette, 5: 155–61 (March 1870). my heart has ached to tell you how deeply touched by that
sad event I was and am. I have felt that one of the truest and best <of my>
friends has departed. It is a consolation that I saw him so recently. I shall
not soon forget the quiet Sunday afternoon spent with you both,³As revealed in his correspondence with Martha W. Greene, Douglass visited Massachusetts sometime in August 1880 and probably visited the ailing Clarke at that time. Martha W. Greene to Douglass, 31 July 1880, General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 415–17, FD Papers, DLC. and his
last words to me “Frederick” when you come again to Fall River come to
our house—and make it your house. No dream at that moment crossed me
that I was seeing the face and hearing the voice of dear Doctor Clarke for
the last time in this life. The great age attained by his father⁴Peleg Clarke (1784–1875), a physician from Coventry, Rhode Island, was active in reform movements, including temperance and abolitionism. The longtime president of the Rhode Island State Anti-Slavery Society, Clarke left the Quaker church to protest the denomination’s lack of support for antislavery activities. His daughter Lydia Clarke was the president of the Coventry Anti-Slavery Society. Clarke was nationally known as a leader of the associationist movement, which located socialist “phalanxes,” or communities, in New York, Pennsylvania, and areas of the Midwest. Most were tied to the philosophies of the French socialist Charles Fourier. Clarke served as a vice president of the New England Fourier Society in the 1840s and represented Rhode Island at the first convention of the American Union of Associationists in 1844. Clarke was also among those responsible for the creation of the Providence Affiliated Union in 1847. The Rhode Island Fourierists had close ties with the abolitionist community, and many members were active in antislavery reform. Although the group managed to open a Fourierist-inspired retail cooperative, no phalanxes were established in Rhode Island. Clarke practiced homeopathic medicine in the state for over sixty years and championed temperance as well as abolitionism. William Harvey King, History of Homeopathy and Its Institutions in America, 4 vols. (New York, 1905), 1:181; Deborah B. Van Broekhoven, Devotion of These Women: Rhode Island in the Antislavery Network (Amherst, Mass, 2002), 65–67, 69, 97, 101–02; Charles R. Crowe, “Utopian Socialism in Rhode Island,” Rhode Island History, 18: 20–26 (January 1959). and his own
regular and quiet life led me to hope that he would yet live many years—
and at first it was not easy to bring my feelings to accept the conclusions
of my reason—

There is sunshine as well as shadow in the valley of death⁵Pss. 23: 4. although
we are compelled to see it through fast flowing tears. The body is gone
but the spirit is near. You are to my vision still together. I see you as in the
days when the cause of the slave had few friends, cheering me on in my
work by the silent influence of your presence and your sympathy—and so
I shall always see you.

The living friends of those days are fast disappearing—the circle is
dissolving—and you and I are in a grand procession marching toward the
sunset. We are not far behind our loved ones—and though no man can
tell what there is beyond there is reason to trust that the Almighty power
that has called us into existence will do all things well in all Eternity. May

you, my friend, have a large share of this all sustaining trust, in your present bereavement.

And yet I sorrow with you.

Respectfully and Truly yours

FREDK DOUGLASS

ALS: Fall River Historical Society, Fall River, Mass.