FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SYLVESTER R. KOËHLER

Rochester[, N.Y.] 14 June 1870.

MY DEAR MR KOEHLER.

I shall find it no hardship to say a good word for the Portrait of Senator Revels¹Hiram R. Revels. which has just been published by the Prang and company in
Boston²The Boston-based firm of Louis Prang & Co. promoted a chromolithograph print of Hiram Revels as “an exact imitation of an Oil Painting, and hardly to be distinguished from it.” The model for this print was an original oil painting produced by the artist Theodore Kaufmann. Louis Prang, Prang’s Civil War Pictures: The Complete Battle Chromos of Louis Prang, ed. Harold Holzer (New York, 2001), 26. for it is a remarkably good one. Since my letter to you in April,³A letter by Douglass to Koëhler written in April 1870 has not been located. I
have several times seen Mr Revels and can therefore speak of his picture
from personal knowledge. (It strikes me as a faithful representation of the
man.) It is neither flattered by partiality nor distorted by malice or prejudice. Upon public ground I think the Publishing House of Prang and Co.
for giving the country this admirable picture of our first colored American
Senator. Whatever may be the prejudices of those who may look upon it,
they will be compelled to admit that the Mississippi Senator is a man,
and one who will easily pass for a man among men. We colored men <so
often> see ourselves described and painted as monkeys, that we think it a
great piece of good fortune to find an exception to this general rule. The
picture now before me not only speaks well for our representative man in
the Senate, but speaks well for the Art which produced it. This chrome
lithograph of Senator Revels, as a work of Art, is admirable. It has all the
softness and perfection of shading of a fine oil painting. Heretofore colored Americans have thought little of adorning their parlors with pictures.
They have had to do with the stern and I may say, the ugly realities of
life. Pictures come not with slavery and oppression and destitution—but
with liberty, fairplay, leisure and refinements. These conditions are now
possible to the Colored American Citizens—and I think the walls of their
houses will soon begin to bear evidences of their altered relations to the
people about them.

For once This portrait of Senator Revels

This portrait, representing truly, as it does, the face and form of our
first colored Senator to the U. States Senate—is a historical picture. It
marks, with almost startling emphases the point dividing our new from
our old condition. Every colored householder in the land should have one
of these portraits in his parlor—and should explain it to his children—as

the dividing line between the darkness and despair that overhung our past,
and the light and hope that now beam upon our future as a people. I shall
be glad to have you make use of this note in commending the portrait of
Hon: Hiram R. Revels to the colored people, and all other people of the
United States.

Yours Respectfully.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

ALS: FD Miscellaneous, CtY.