MARY E. STEARNS¹Mary Elizabeth Preston Stearns (1821–1901) was the second wife of George Luther Stearns, a prominent Boston manufacturer, social reformer, and abolitionist primarily remembered for being one of the Secret Six that funded John Brown’s raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. Since George was a wealthy industrialist and Mary was descended from eminent Massachusetts families, the couple socialized with New England’s cultural elite. Although both of them held John Brown in high esteem and supported his activities in the late 1850s, Mary’s admiration approached idolatry. Upon the announcement of Brown’s death sentence, Mary commissioned a white marble bust to be made in his likeness. This statue was unveiled at the Stearnses’ home during a celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863 that was attended by William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Julia Ward Howe, and other notables. The Stearnses’ friendship and collaboration with Frederick Douglass largely revolved around George’s wartime exertions to recruit African American soldiers and his postwar efforts to establish black male suffrage. Charles E. Heller, Portrait of an Abolitionist: A Biography of George Luther Stearns, 1809–1867 (Westport, Conn., 1996), 24–27, 107, 142–43, 146–57, 189–209. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Medford[, Mass.] 26 March 1877.

TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

UNITED STATES MARSHALL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

DEAR FRIEND.

No one can offer you profounder congratulations than the wife of George
L. Stearns, and the friend of old John Brown. Indeed to chart my “Nunc
Dimittis,”²Nunc Dimittis, Latin for “now let depart [thy servant],” refers to the Song of Simeon, recorded in Luke 2: 29–32. The passage, which conveys a sense of farewell after the completion of a great task, is used as a hymn, primarily for evening worship services. seems the only thing left for me to do. After all this dreary
watching, and waiting for some result of the Great War, commensurate
with its terrible sacrifice, comes a President so sane, and clean, and well-poised that he seems more like an ideal Hero, than an actual presence; so
far removed from all the political makeshifts, we have been used to call
Presidents, that I rub my eyes, in half fear that it is some enchantment, and
not quite real, and permanent.³Mary Stearns’s enthusiasm for the newly inaugurated president Rutherford B. Hayes, albeit excessive, was based on his well-deserved reputation as a defender of black civil rights. As a Cincinnati-based attorney in the 1850s, Hayes defended fugitive slaves in court. During the Civil War, he amassed an excellent record as an officer in the Union army, and while serving in Congress from 1865 to 1867, he staunchly supported Radical Reconstruction policies. Over the course of three terms as Ohio governor, from 1868 to 1872 and 1876 to 1877, he unsuccessfully advocated amending the state constitution to enfranchise black males; however, he successfully pushed the Fifteenth Amendment through the Ohio legislature. As president, Hayes never wavered in espousing civil rights for blacks, but understood that popular support for federal intervention in southern states had completely vanished by the mid-1870s; therefore, he made civil service reform and sound currency the hallmarks of his administration. Simpson, Reconstruction Presidents, 199–228.

From first, to last, President Hayes, has not even offended, in simple matters of taste, while his moral courage, firmness of purpose, and
heaven-eyed wisdom shine aloft like the stars: keeping in the busy turmoil
of affairs the “ in silence made”. I love and honor him with my whole
heart and soul: and I never could say that, of any President during my life.
He is the Century blossom: and now having redeemed the promises of
the Declaration of Independence, the Republic starts fair, and square on
its second Century;⁴Throughout 1876, Americans celebrated the centennial anniversary of the nation’s birth, marked from the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. According to the historian Dee Brown, during this year, “Americans were inclined to examine their past, to wonder about themselves and their institutions, and to seek an identity upon which to base their future.” Stearns appears to be doing all three in this short letter. Dee Brown, The Year of the Century: 1876 (New York, 1966), 3; Walter Nugent, “The American People and the Centennial of 1876,” Indiana Magazine of History, 75: 53–69 (March 1979). And how narrow the escape from destruction, time
will clearly reveal. President Hayes has a Herculean tasks before him, but
I doubt not his triumph over them all. It is not twenty years, since John
Brown was hung for a practical application of the Golden-Rule⁵Stated by Jesus of Nazareth and recorded in Luke 6: 31, the Golden Rule is essentially a moral principle advising one to treat others in the same manner in which one would like to be treated. The King James Bible, the standard version used in the nineteenth-century English-speaking world, renders it: “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” For a similar but more complex statement of the same idea, see Matthew 7: 12. to your
suffering Race. And today, as its representative you are Marshall of the
District of Columbia! As my friend Mr. M D. Conway⁶Moncure Daniel Conway (1832–1907) was a freethinking clergyman, abolitionist, scholar, and author, perhaps best known as one of a small group of southern-born antislavery luminaries that included Angelina and Sara Grimké, James G. Birney, and Hinton R. Helper. Born into a prominent slaveholding family in Stafford County, Virginia, Conway became progressively alienated from his family, his religion, and his nation as his views on theology, race, and politics grew increasingly liberal throughout his life. Raised as a Methodist Episcopal and ordained in that denomination, he became a Unitarian, a transcendentalist, and an abolitionist while attending Harvard Divinity School in the early 1850s. As a Unitarian minister serving in Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati, Ohio, from 1854 to 1862, Conway acquired a national reputation as a powerful speaker and writer for the abolitionist cause. While in London in 1863 to argue for the abolitionist nature of the Union cause, Conway accepted a call to pastor the nominally Unitarian South Place Chapel, where he remained through the 1880s. Except for a couple of short stints, he lived in Britain and France during the last forty-five years of his life, surviving largely on the income from his prolific writings. John d’Entremont, Southern Emancipator: Moncure Conway; The American Years, 1832–1865 (New York, 1987); Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography (online). would say, “It is
imense”—It is the Lord’s doing, and marvelous in our eyes.

Very near, seems the spirit of my noble Husband in this sublime triumph of reason, and virtue. For this, he gave his life and fortune.

With a renewal of my congratulations, and hearty God speed to you,
and your Race.

I am cordially

Your friend

MARY E. STEARNS

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 82–84L, FD Papers, DLC.