FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ZACHARIAH CHANDLER

Washington[,] D.C. 19 August 1876.

HON: Z. CHANDLER:

DEAR SIR:

I am just home from a six weeks absence and and your letter sending me
to Maine has only now come into my hands.¹Details of Douglass’s activity during the summer of 1876 are not well known. Following his speech at the Republican National Convention in Cincinnati on 14 June, he might have continued his campaign efforts with speaking engagements in the North. On 27 July, the Concord, New Hampshire, Independent Statesman claimed that he was “a summer guest” at Newport, New Hampshire. There is also evidence that Douglass addressed an audience in Biddeford, Maine, on 29 July. Assuming he returned to Washington, D.C., sometime in August, as this letter suggests, he then resumed campaigning in September, when he made several stops in Indiana from 25 September to 9 October. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4: xxxv; Concord (N.H.) Independent Statesman, 27 July 1876; Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig & Courier, 31 July 1876. I am now and have been for
Several weeks quite out of health, and am wholly unfit for campaign work:
Nevertheless if I find myself stronger in time for the canvass in Maine I
shall report to you for service: It is the same old conflict: Liberty, union
and civilization on the one hand and slavery disunion and barbarism on
the other. With you, I appreciate the importance of an emphatic and decisive voice from Maine in September and I am obliged to Mr Blaine for
calling me hither.

Truly yours

FREDK DOUGLASS—

ALS: Zachariah Chandler Papers, DLC.