RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Bridport[, Eng.] 4 June 1874.

MY DEAR MR. DOUGLASS,

Your letters are always welcome, but I was particularly glad to hear from
you now,¹Douglass’s earlier letter to Carpenter has not been located. because I was quite uneasy about your new office. An extract
from one of the Rochester papers in the Era, conveyed my own idea—that
it was a great pity for you to risk your property and reputation on a bank.²The New National Era printed a story entitled “Mr. Douglass and the Freedman’s Bank” from the Rochester Express, which contained rumors that Douglass, as president of the Freedmen’s Bank, might have become ensnarled in the corruption that many believed endemic in Washington. The Express feared that “in this era of defalcations, embezzlements, and investigations, he [Douglass] might, through the dishonesty of subordinates and the malice of enemies become involved in scandals that, by association at least, would tarnish his fame. This feeling maybe been caused by the difficulties already encountered by the Freedman’s Bank when Mr. Douglass took charge of it.” There were worries at the time that the bank was on the verge of bankruptcy because of poor investments, but the Express wanted to assure people that this was not Douglass’s fault, as other papers claimed. NNE, 14 May 1874.

I feel all the more sure on the matter, because I lost a good slice of
my [illegible] patrimony, and my brother Phillip³Philip Pearsall Carpenter (1819–77) was born in Bristol to the Reverend Lant Carpenter and Anna Penn. He was the brother of Mary and Russell Lant Carpenter. He attended Bristol College and trained for the ministry at a Presbyterian college in York before attending the University of London in 1841. He preached in Warrington for fifteen years while also devoting his life to causes such as abolition and temperance as well as campaigning for more efficient urban sewage and drainage systems. A conchologist, he identified several new species of shells throughout his life. He married Minnie Meyer in 1860, and the couple adopted a young boy whom Carpenter had met in Baltimore during his visit there in 1858. In 1865, Carpenter and his family moved to Montreal, where he died in 1877. Russell Lant Carpenter, Memoirs of the Life and Works of Philip Pearsall Carpenter (London, 1880); DNB, 3: 1071–72. lost the whole of his, in
the Bank of London,⁴Philip Carpenter lost much of his capital in 1866 just after he moved to Canada. He wrote, “The Bank of London has failed; so I must cast about for the ways and means to earn more money.” According to Russell Lant Carpenter’s memoir of Phillip’s life, Phillip had invested some property in shares with the Bank of London, which earned £200 a year. Concerned that his family might be reduced to poverty after the market crash, he reached out to family members, who immediately lent him money. In a footnote, Russell L. Carpenter explains how, over the following ten years, Philip “received back about a third of what he had paid for the shares at a premium.” Carpenter, Philip Pearsall Carpenter, 286–87. which is supposed a most wise investment and so
it cannot have been, till, in an out day, the Bank advanced half a million
during, or something like it, to the Atlantis & J. W. Ray!⁵In May 1866 the Bank of England experienced what is now referred to as the Panic of 1866, or the Overend Gurney crisis. Overend, Gurney & Co., a bill broker, attempted to increase the credit on several of its loans, but when this backfired and the bank declined to assist the firm, Overend suspended payments, causing a panic that heavily damaged joint-stock companies and industries such as shipping. As a contemporary stated, “It was well known to the members connected with commerce, that Overend, Gurney & Co. held large sums of money on call from country bankers, as well as from the general public, and that these depositors would on the morrow find the resources on which they had hitherto with such confidence relied, no longer available.” The Panic of 1866 represented a temporary financial slump in Britain, and it was followed by a period of economic stability that survived until the First World War. Nicholas Dimsdale and Anthony Hotson, ed., British Financial Crises since 1825 (Oxford, Eng., 2014), 76–78; J. P. Gassiot, Monetary Panic of 1866 (London, 1875), 5. We were afraid
that we should have been bankrupt: as it happened, we have been able,
during the last 8 years, not only to pay all our creditors without any call
on the property, but to get back about a quarter of what we gave for our
shares.

I cannot say that the amount I lost greatly affected my happiness:
and, in my brother Phillip’s case, it [illegible] <only> obliged him to earn
money by a school, instead of working just as hard for nothing on his
philanthropic labours; but he naturally should be very sorry for you to be
straitened, after the hard battle of life you have been fighting.

Then again, in our case, it was merely the loss of perhaps the part of
the paper which are lost [illegible] to me, may be needed to make it attractive to many of [illegible] [illegible].

I am concerned about the bad management in South Carolina.⁶This could refer to the financial problems surrounding the Freedmen’s Bank in South Carolina (and across the United States), or it could be a reference to the upcoming gubernatorial election in South Carolina in November 1874. Governor Franklin J. Moses, Jr., had been accused of corruption throughout his term in office, so the Republicans chose a new candidate, Daniel Henry Chamberlain. Economic concerns added to the political unrest, since Democratic politicians objected to Republicans’ policies of high taxes, which they believed were harming the growth of South Carolina in the wake of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Orangeburg (S.C.) News and Times, 17 April 1875; Atlanta Constitution, 28 March, 1874; Walter Edgar, South Carolina: A History (Columbia, S.C., 1998), 401–02; Barbara P. Josiah, “Providing for the Future: The World of the African American Depositors of Washington, DC’s Freedmen’s Savings Bank, 1865–1874,” Journal of African American History, 89: 1–3 (Winter, 2004).

I sometimes wonder what faith you <have> had [illegible] <among>
your people. Those who have been engaged in the just struggle, or who
have been told its history, must know you well; but has another generation
even of “who know not people”?

What will be your influence among all these new Carolina men, who
have come into power? Do they appreciate what you have done for your
race? I hope they do: and that this Bank, and the Howard University, and
all the good movements, moral as well as political, which you have helped
in, will carry on your influence in the days to come.

You tell me nothing of your family: I hope you might hear from a
good spirit.

I suppose that the bank, at present at least, will confine you a good
deal to Washington.
Thank you for your kind word about my articles & c.⁷Carpenter wrote extensively for the London Inquirer, but the article in question has not been located.

Now and then I fancy that, both by voice and pen, I can do a little that
does not fall behind my old standard: Still I [illegible] only a little.

I have a colleague in the ministry;⁸Carpenter preached at Northgate End Chapel in Halifax from 1856 to 1864. Here he is likely referring to the Reverend James Martineau or one of his successors at Halifax, perhaps Francis English Millson, who was minister of the chapel from 1872. G. E. Evans, Vestiges of Protestant Dissent (Liverpool, Eng., 1897), 32–33, 98–99. and only undertake about a quarter
of what I did at Halifax⁹Carpenter began preaching in Bridport in 1865, twenty-five years after first giving a sermon there. According to the Bridport News, 150 people attended a welcome meeting for him, and “appropriate addresses were delivered by various members of the congregation, breathing kindly and hearty wishes that Mr Carpenter may long continue in their midst, and that his settlement here may be fraught with happiness to himself, and may prove a blessing to the congregation.” He preached at Bridport until 1887. Bridport News, 14 January 1865; Evans, Vestiges of Protestant Dissent, 32–33, 98–99. in various ways. A little tires me.

The gleams of highness are few and soon spent: but I am afraid many
of the cares & trials that multitudes of others found too much for them:
and as my brain would be pretty sure to wander away, if I had not some

definite occupation, I am very glad that my supporters here have been
anxious to keep me still among them.

I have been more than some years here: so of course my position in
the town is not that of a stranger.

I was in London, about a month ago. My aunt,¹⁰This is a reference to Mary Carpenter, sister of Lant Carpenter, who was born in 1787 in Exeter and died at age ninety in 1877. She took over the family’s optician business—Carpenter & Worthing—in 1833. Carpenter, Philip Pearsall Carpenter, 9–11. who is about 86 years
old, still attends to the books of her firm (Carpenter & Worthing):¹¹Russell Lant and Philip Pearsall Carpenter’s uncle Philip Carpenter worked as a manufacturing optician, with offices in London and Birmingham. When he died in 1833, Mary Carpenter took over the family business. During an apprenticeship there, Philip Pearsall Carpenter “stayed behind the counter, properly aproned etc., for six months,” until the ministry soon called him back to Bristol. Carpenter, Philip Pearsall Carpenter, 9–11. and
is generally very bright and cheerful, though infirm in body. I take to see
her every year.

My object was to attend the Formal Conference of the Liberation Society,¹²The Liberation Society, formed by radical Nonconformists, championed disestablishment of the Church of England and the abolition of any connection between church and state. From its inception, in 1844, the society (previously called the Anti-State Church Association) was a powerful political force in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. Supported chiefly by radical reformers such as John Bright and Samuel Morley, as well as by the working classes, the society and its members argued the Church of England was in fact an immoral institution that made no effort to connect with ordinary people. After the abolition of taxes on paper in the early 1860s, the society promoted its message yet further through print culture: in 1865–66, the society collected donations that amounted to £7,556, double the amount from the previous year. The Liberator and the Inquirer were the two main publications through which the society promoted its cause; the latter remains the oldest Nonconformist publication in the world. The monthly Liberator, which began publication in 1855, was designed to act as a unifying publication for the thousands of letters the executive committee wrote or received every year. The newspaper cost twopence and had over eight thousand subscribers by 1874; despite this, only 250 copies were sold, the rest being circulated to members, who paid a minimum of ten shillings per year to the society. J. P. Parry, Democracy and Religion: Gladstone and the Liberal Party (Cambridge, Eng., 1986), 28–29, 235–36, 381; Timothy Larsen, Contested Christianity: The Political and Social Contexts of Victorian Theology (Waco, Tex., 2004), 156–58; J. P. Ellens, Religious Routes to Gladstonian Liberalism: The Church Rate Conflict in England and Wales, 1832–1868 (University Park, Pa., 1994), 128–30, 135–36; J. S. Newton, “The Political Career of Edward Miall, Editor of The Nonconformist and Founder of the Liberation Society” (Ph.D. diss., Durham University, 1975), 464–65. on the executive committee of which I was placed, a few years ago,
as a representative of [my] denomination; but I never attended its Conference or Committee before.

Notwithstanding the defeat of the Liberals at the last election,¹³Carpenter probably refers here to the 1874 general election, in which William Ewart Gladstone’s Liberal party lost to Benjamin Disraeli’s Conservative party. The defeat has been attributed to, in part, a series of reforms ushered in by the Liberals that were deeply unpopular with the Tories. Gladstone’s attitudes toward Ireland and Home Rule, together with the Depression of 1873 and Disraeli’s effective oratory, were also significant factors in the defeat. William Henry Maehl, “Gladstone, the Liberals, and the Election of 1874,” Historical Research, 36: 53–69 (May 1963); Michael Hurst, “Liberal versus Liberal: The General Election of 1874 in Bradford and Sheffield,” Historical Journal, 15: 669–713 (December 1972). or are
in good spirits, for the tories are with us. “The ” is the organ of
the society. It [illegible] not much a [illegible] and to [illegible] as [illegible] paper: for it is only to secure religious equality, by the abolition of
church establishments.

In [illegible] people dont ask what a man does on Sunday: but, in the
country, the division into Churches and Dissenters is very hurtful, and
keeps up the spirit of caste, and a sense of injustice. Our own denomination came more into collision with the Church, than with the orthodox dissenters, who tried to oust us from our chapels: and so we have been rather
shy of helping those Dissenters in these attacks on the Church.

But I feel that bygones should be bygones. The Dissenting churches
no longer persecute us: but the Establishment holds an [illegible] position,
and has, in my estimate, a bad moral influence—so far as it can [illegible]
with the state as concerned.

I had no idea that I should have used two sheets. I meant to have left
more room for a note for my wife.¹⁴Russell L. Carpenter’s wife was Mary Browne Carpenter. It is tantalizing to hear that you might
have come and seen us, had it not been for the bank! Our Country walks,
hills, and sea [illegible] are now in full beauty—hence I hope we may
enjoy them with you, another year.

I dont quite despair of seeing the US. once more; but all the changes
I shall see there will not [illegible] be as gratifying as the change in the
position of your people.

I hope that you will be able to infuse your own spirit into your coadjutators, and to maintain the spirit of their [illegible]. I don’t at all know
what qualification you have for a or for passing an opinion on [illegible]! (the you had most experience of, you !): but I hope that

your high sense of honour and integrity, and your strength of purpose, will
enable you to confer a lasting benefit on your people, without any serious
loss to yourself:— but the man and star of an [illegible] concern must be
very great! I hope, in time, that you will be able to pen us a good report.

As to your son’s paper,¹⁵Douglass had turned the management of the New National Era over to his sons Lewis and Frederick Jr. perhaps I ought not to expect it to be nearly as
good as your own. It is not [illegible] living in such tragic days, as you are;
but still, as their [illegible] shows, there is as much need as ever of true,
[illegible], rumors, self-denying work money: in your case, if you are not
the head of the concern, you will still be greatly at stake.

Altogether, I felt very uneasy. Your letter, on the whole, greatly comforts me. In one respect, I [illegible] not; for I a gather that you [illegible]
the part in consequence of false representation: the real condition of the
Bank was not told you. I [illegible] you [illegible] on your endeavor, I do
not know a more honourable or useful work that you can now perform.
If the Bank had fulfilled its design, it would have greatly encouraged the
[illegible] and [illegible], for which the [illegible] of your people had <not
prepared them> if it is a failure, is not it a great discouragement to those
who our first [illegible] to [illegible]: had the despair which the enemies of
your race are sure to cast upon it. All then that I can say is, that with my
kind [illegible], in which I am sure my [illegible] would you,

Believe me very faithfully yours

R. L. CARPENTER

[illegible] I shall send on your letter to them

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 749–53, FD Papers, LC.