FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE

Washington[,] D.C. 2 June 1875.

MY DEAR ROSA:

Nearly six weeks ago, I received a telegram from dear Nathan,¹Nathan Sprague. almost
in the precise words of the one which came yesterday, and since that
time I have been waiting daily expecting to learn that the dear suffering
child had passed beyond the reach of care, trouble, sickness and pain.²Alice Louisa Sprague died on 8 June 1875.
Since it now seems that the dear child cannot live—and that she could
never be strong and healthy if she did live, her passing away will be a
happy release from a life of misery. With her high spirit, a life of weakness and dependence would be intolerable. I hope Dear Rosa, that you
are thoroughly nerved for the event—that you are wholly emancipated
from the superstitious terrors with which priest craft has surrounded the
great and universal fact of deaths—and that you will be able to look with
calmness upon the peaceful features of the dear child whose sufferings
are ended. Death is the common lot of all—and the strongest of us will
soon be called a way. It is well! Death is a friend not an enemy. It comes
at the right time when it comes naturally, and not by violence. It takes
the feeble infant from prospect in misery—and releases the aged from
continued aches and pains—the pain of death is with the living not with
the dead. We shall all miss our dear little Alice. She was the remarkable
child [of] your flock—a real character, [t]he memory of her words and
ways will live with us all.

I do not dogmatize as to the life of the future. I know not, and know
no man can know what is beyond—or what is the condition of existence,
whether conscious or unconscious beyond this life—but whatever else it
may be, it is nothing that our taking thought about it can alter or improve.

The best any of us can do is to trust in the eternal powers which brought
us into existence—and this I do. For myself and for all.

I do not think our house should be left alone or entirely in the hands
of strangers, we have been burnt out once and may be burnt out again—
and if burnt out a second time I have no more strength to start life anew
again—and build up another house.

We are not among friends here any more than in Rochester. It is our
misfortune to create envy wherever we go. The white people dont like us
and the colored people envy us. I do not wish to burden Amelia³Helen Amelia Loguen Douglass. with the
responsibility of taking care of all here—and she told mother⁴Anna Murray Douglass. before she
went away that she did not want to take the responsibility.

Your father—

FREDK DOUGLASS

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 27–28L, FD Papers, DLC.