FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO THEODORE TILTON

Rochester, [N.Y.] 2 Sept[ember] 1867.

MY DEAR TILTON:

Thanks for your kind note: I am glad to be thought of by such a friend.
You have heard little of me this summer—yet I have not been passing life
in the elegant leisure you picture me. Besides making many Speeches
in the Rural districts and paying a flying visit to old Virginia in July¹Douglass delivered a Fourth of July address in Portsmouth, Virginia. There are scattered reports of him lecturing in Penn Yan and Addison, New York, in August 1867. No record of other speeches given that summer have survived. Norfolk (Va.) Journal, 5, 8 July 1867; New York Times, 17 July 1867; Penn Yan (N.Y.) Yates County Chronicle, 22 August 1867.—I
have been keeping a kind of Hotel all summer—and have just now been
released from this latter vocation. My Poor Brother Perry²Perry Downs.—after a bondage of fifty six years deeply marked by the hardships and sorrows of that
hateful condition—and after a Separation from me during forty years, as
complete, as if he had lived on another planet—Came to me two months
ago with his family of six and took up his abode with me³Douglass’s brother Perry Downs and his family arrived in Rochester in the summer of 1867. They lived with the Douglass family for several months before moving into a cottage that Douglass had built for them on the grounds of his property. David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (New York, 2018), 495–96.—To him, Dear
old fellow! one who has carried me on his shoulders a many time for he is
older than I—Though my head seems to contradict it, one who defended
<me> from the assaults of bigger boys—When I needed defense, I have
been mainly devoting myself—and gladly so. I have now completed for
him and his family a snug little cottage, on my own groud—where where
My dear old slavery scarred—and long lost Brother may spend in peace—
with his family <the> remainder of his days—Though no longer young,
he is no sluggard. Slavery got the best of his life—but he is still strong and
hopeful—I wish his old master⁴Douglass likely refers to his brother’s final owner in Maryland, John Planner Anthony. Perry Downs to Douglass, 21 February 1867, FD Collection, DHU-MS; Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58–59, MdTCH; 1850 U.S. Census, Slave Schedule, Maryland, Talbot County, 1, 4; 1860 U.S. Census, Slave Schedule, Maryland, Talbot County, 557; Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 175–77, 206, 225. could see him now—Cheerful—helpful and taking “”—If slavery were not dead—and I did
not in some sort wish to forget its terrible hardships—blighting curses,
and shocking horrors—I would try to write some a narrative of Brother
Perry’s bondage—but let the old system go. I would not call its guilty
Ghost from the depths into which its crimes have hurled it—I turn gladly
from it to the new a better despensation now dawning.

Yes! I do—in this eventful and perilous times want to speak and yet
why should I want to speak? My thought is spoken more skillfully, wisely,
forcibly—and more effectively by others—“The Independent,”⁵The Independent (1848–1928) was a weekly newspaper published in New York City. Originally a religious newspaper, the Independent was dedicated to the survival of the Congregationalist Church after several Presbyterian and Congregationalist leaders adopted a “Plan of Union” for missionary efforts in the western territories. In 1854, the Independent’s format was changed in an attempt to broaden the newspaper’s appeal to non-Congregationalist readers. Theodore Tilton, who joined the newspaper that year, placed a stronger emphasis on antislavery, temperance, and woman suffrage. An early contributor, the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, served as editor from 1861 through 1863, when Tilton became the official editor in chief. In 1867, Tilton changed the Independent’s format to a weekly political magazine, and its religious emphasis was slowly abandoned. Tilton recruited Douglass to write articles for the Independent during and after the Civil War. Lib., 8 December 1848; New York Independent, 27 August 1868; Louis Filler, “Liberalism, Anti-Slavery, and the Founders of the Independent,” New England Quarterly, 27: 291–306 (September 1954); ACAB, 6: 120. among
the number than I could speak it.

I have something to tell you. Among the strange things which have
come to me this summer—has been a proposition from the “White House”,
for me to take charge of the Bureau!—This came in July. Of course I refused at once to facilitate the “Removal”—of a man so just and good as
General Howard —and especially to place myself under any oblegations

to keep the peace with it. Have we [illegible] <reached> the end of Johnson’s wrath or may we look for more?

Remember me to your Dear wife and to those bright eyed and blessed
little Tiltons—⁶Elizabeth Richards Tilton (c. 1834–97) attended the Packer Institute before marrying Theodore Tilton in the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Church in Brooklyn in 1855. The Tiltons had five living children: Florence (1857–?), Alice (1859–?), Carroll (1863–1904), Paul (1867–68), and Ralph (1870–1907). An additional child, Mattie, died in infancy, during the Civil War. Elizabeth confessed to her husband that she had sought spiritual consolation from Beecher in fall 1868, shortly after the death of her young son Paul, but she later recanted this statement in court. According to Theodore, Elizabeth confessed that an affair between herself and Beecher, lasting a year and a half, ensued shortly thereafter. The Tiltons attempted to reconcile, but rumors of the affair eventually circulated in their tight-knit Brooklyn community. The press got wind of these charges and publicized them widely. The resulting 1875 civil trial, brought by Tilton against Beecher for adultery, became one of the great sensations of the Gilded Age. The trial resulted in a hung jury, and the Tiltons then divorced. Beecher weathered the scandal, but Tilton’s reputation was damaged, and he eventually moved to Paris. Elizabeth Tilton remained a member of Beecher’s congregation but avoided the public limelight for the remainder of her life. Richard Wightman Fox, Trials of Intimacy: Love and Loss in the Beecher-Tilton Scandal (Chicago, 1999), 11, 15–17, 80–82, 89–131, 202–04, 222, 247–49, 316–17; Shaplen, Free Love and Heavenly Sinners, 3–6, 34–35, 46, 215–55.

Your sincere friend

FREDERICK DOUG LASS

[P.S.] I am glad to see your name in the east—

ALS: Frederick Douglass Manuscripts, NHi. Another text in PLSr: New York ,
12 September 1867.