WILLIAM BRECK¹William Breck (1816–84), lawyer and U.S. diplomat, was born in Newport, New Hampshire. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1838 and moved to Rochester, New York, where he was admitted to the bar. In 1859 he was appointed U.S. consul to Singapore, later serving at Swatow, China, as well as at a commercial point on the Yangtze River. In 1865 he returned to the United States and moved to a plantation near Canton, Mississippi. In June 1872 he served as a delegate at the National Union Republican Convention in Philadelphia, and Governor Adelbert Ames appointed him chancellor of the Thirteenth Chancery District of the State of Mississippi in 1874. Breck left Mississippi in 1877 and moved to Boston. Boston Daily Atlas, 6 November 1843; Lowell (Mass.) Daily Citizen and News, 26 December 1862; San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, 17 February 1863; Francis H. Smith, Presidential Election, 1872: Proceedings of the National Union Republican Convention Held at Philadelphia, June 5 and 6, 1872, Which Nominated for President and Vice-President Ulysses S. Grant and Henry Wilson (Washington, D.C., 1872), 16; Samuel Breck, Genealogy of the Breck Family Descended from Edward of Dorchester and His Brothers in America; With An Appendix of Additional Biographical and Historical Matter, Obituary Notices, Letters, etc., and Armorial Bearings; and a Complete Index (Omaha, Neb., 1889), 80. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Canton, Miss.²Incorporated in 1836, Canton was a trading and lumbering community in Madison County, Mississippi, approximately twenty miles northeast of Jackson, the state capital. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 326. 15 Sept[ember] 1876.

HON. FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

WASHINGTON—

MY DEAR SIR.

How to get out of Mississippi, has been a question, I have of late, many
times asked myself, and, reading in an old Rochester Democrat, notice “of
our fellow citizen Frederick Douglass being in town,” determined me to
call upon our old friend and neighbour for aid to the accomplishment of
our wishes. Your name in a Rochester paper called up so much of the past
from 1840 to 1857—of our old home corner of Troup & High Streets³From 1853 to 1857, Breck resided on the corner of High and Troup streets in Rochester, New York. During this time, Douglass lived on South Avenue, across the Genesee River and southwest of the city’s center. The two men most likely interacted at work—Breck’s law office was located at 17 Buffalo Street, and Douglass edited his newspaper at 25 Buffalo Street. Dewey’s Rochester City Directory [for 1853–54] (Rochester, 1853), 88, 125; Dewey’s Rochester City Directory [for 1855–56] (Rochester, 1855), 108, 145; Dewey’s Rochester City Directory [for 1857–58] (Rochester, 1857), 143, 186; Oliver J. Stuart and S. S. Cornell, Map of the City of Rochester: From Cornell’s Maps to Accompany Boyd’s Rochester and Six County Directory (online).—of
our life in India and China,⁴On 1 January 1859, Breck wrote to Secretary of State Lewis Cass regarding his recent appointment as vice consul in Singapore. He expressed the hope that his “familiarity with the languages and habits of the people” would allow him to perform his duties as vice consul to the satisfaction of the president and the U.S. government. William B. Reed served as minister to China from April 1857 to December 1858 and therefore most likely appointed Breck to his post in Singapore just before leaving office. Charles Lanman, Biographical Annals of the Civil Government of the United States: During its First Century (Washington, D.C., 1876), 592; Walter B. Smith, America’s Diplomats and Consuls of 1776–1865: A Geographic and Biographic Directory of the Foreign Service from the Declaration of Independence to the End of the Civil War (Arlington, Va., 1986), 95, 142, 210; “Feb. 1, 1858–Nov. 16, 1859,” in Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in Singapore, Straits Settlements, 1833–1906, Vol. 5, archives.gov; Congressional Globe, 37th Cong., 2d sess., 487. but more especially of our disappointed and
disappointing life of nine years in Mississippi and this with much thought
of late of our situation here, association perhaps, but, it seems to us you of
any one may see a way for us out of this land of violence, and social ostracism, because we are Northerners and Republicans and blood.

You knew of me until 1857, when I went to India and China, returning
in 1864. During my residence in India I was appointed to act as Consul
at Singapore by Minister Reid,⁵Philadelphia-born William Bradford Reed (1806–76) graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1822 and was admitted to the bar in 1826. That same year, he traveled with his uncle, John Sergeant, to Mexico as his private secretary, and for six months they both stayed with Joel R. Poinsett, American minister to Mexico. Returning to Philadelphia, he started his law practice, joined the anti-Masonic movement, and later became a Whig. Reed served in the Pennsylvania Assembly (1834–35) and then as state attorney general (1838–39). After a term in the state Senate (1841–42), he was elected district attorney for Philadelphia, holding that office from 1850 to 1856. Reed was also appointed a professor of American history at the University of Pennsylvania in 1850. In 1856 he abandoned the Whig party, joined the Democrats, and supported James Buchanan’s presidential candidacy. For his support, Buchanan selected Reed to serve as U.S. minister to China in 1857. In 1859, Reed returned to the United States. During the Civil War, he was openly hostile to the Lincoln administration, which made him unpopular in the North. While Reed desired to continue his political career, his antiwar sentiments virtually killed his future in politics as well as his law practice. In 1870 he moved to Orange, New Jersey, and served as a correspondent for the New York World. Farley Foster, “William B. Reed: President Buchanan’s Minister to China, 1857–58,” Pennsylvania History, 38: 271–73, 280 (July 1970); Arnold Schankman, “William B. Reed and the Civil War,” Pennsylvania History, 39:455–58, 463, 467 (October 1972); ACAB, 5: 209–10; DAB (online). and afterwards at four of the Ports in
China by Presidents Buchanan and Lincoln,⁶In February 1860, President Buchanan nominated Breck to serve as consul at Swatow, China. In December 1862, President Lincoln nominated him to serve in Hankow. The following year, Breck transferred to Ningbo, China, and then, in 1863, to Kiukiang. An Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of the United States, For the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1863 (Washington, D.C., 1864), 94; Annual Report on Foreign Commerce for the Year Ended September 30, 1863 (Washington, D.C., 1865), 583; Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America, from December 6, 1858 to August 6, 1861, Inclusive, Vol. XI (Washington, D.C., 1887), 145; Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America, from December 1, 1862, to July 4, 1864, Inclusive, Vol. XIII (Washington, D.C., 1887), 21. soon after our return from
China, and on account of climate, I came to Mississippi, bought lands,
rented Mills, stores, shops, School House and church for the Freedmen,
expending in improvements and lands about $30,000. During these years
I have been a law abiding citizen [and Republican] but being a Northern
man and a Republican I am a “Carpet Bagger”—By Governor Amos⁷Adelbert Ames (1835–1933), soldier, U.S. senator, and Mississippi governor, was born in Rockland, Maine, to Jesse Ames and Martha B. Tolman. He attended the U.S. Military Academy and graduated in 1861. First commissioned as a second lieutenant, he had risen to brigadier general by the end of the Civil War. During that conflict, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism during the First Battle of Bull Run, and he saw action in several other major battles, including Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg. In 1866, Ames was commissioned a lieutenant colonel of the Twenty-fourth Infantry, and the following year, he was assigned to serve in Mississippi. In June 1868, President Andrew Johnson appointed him provisional governor of Mississippi, and Ames took over the Fourth Military District, which encompassed Arkansas and Mississippi in 1869. When Mississippi passed a state constitution and reentered the Union, the Republican-controlled state legislature elected Ames to the U.S. Senate in 1870. He resigned his seat in January 1874, having been elected governor of Mississippi the previous fall. During his term, pervasive violence, voter intimidation, and fraud allowed the Democrats to take control of the state legislature in 1875. Legislators immediately voted to impeach Ames, who chose to resign in 1876 rather than face a trial. He then moved north with his wife, Blanche Butler, to Minnesota and then to Tewksbury, Massachusetts. There, he invested in textile mills and real estate, where he was very successful financially. He returned to the military as a brigadier general of volunteers during the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Celebrated as the last surviving Civil War general, Ames died in Ormond, Florida, in April 1933. Richard Nelson Current, Those Terrible Carpetbaggers (New York, 1988), 112–17, 172–73, 181–84, 308–09, 324–26, 412–16; ANB (online); BDUSC (online).
I was appointed one of the chancellors of the State,⁸Governor Adelbert Ames appointed William Breck chancellor of the Thirteenth Chancery District of the State of Mississippi on 6 June 1874. This district included Madison County, where Breck resided. Mississippi in 1875: Report of the Select Committee to Inquire into the Mississippi Election of 1875 with the Testimony and Documentary Evidence, 2 vols. (Washington, 1876), 1: 855; Adelbert Ames, The Testimony in the Impeachment of Adelbert Ames, as Governor of Mississippi (Jackson, Miss., 1877), 41–42, 110; James D. Lynch, Kemper County Vindicated, and a Peep at Radical Rule in Mississippi (New York, 1879), 152–53. and in 1872 was a
Member of the Philadelphia Convention⁹William Breck served as a delegate from Madison County, Mississippi, to the 1872 National Union Republican Convention, held in Philadelphia in June. Smith, Presidential Election, 1872, 16.—but, most of my time has been
spent upon my Plantation, and, up to our last fall election, I have thought

to “fight it out in this life.” Since then I have become satisfied we can do
no more good here and to live ostracized with the “cold shoulder”¹⁰Although sometimes misattributed to Nehemiah 9: 12, this expression, describing an act of dismissal or disregard, has its literary origin in Sir Walter Scott’s 1816 novel The Antiquary. Sir Walter Scott, The Antiquary, 2 vols. (1816; Boston, 1893), 1: 211. always
toward you, an outsider and always a Carpet Bagger, at our age, one gets
tired of constant warfare and is willing to sacrifice always every thing for
rest and peace.

This is our situation, and we are very, very anxious to get away. All
we have expended here, will avail us nothing. We would like to settle in
Washington. But, to do this, I should be compelled to obtain, if possible
a position under Government and I hesitate to put myself among office
seekers and a bone to all my friends. Necessity, however, sometimes compels us to do distasteful things, and to know it is distasteful to ask for office—Would it, in your judgment, be possible to obtain position in one of
the [illegible] departments, as Deputy or Chief of Division—or, an office
of that character?—

I trust you will pardon me for thus troubling you. I am sure you must
have but little leisure, and, but for one very dear to me, who has faithfully tried [illegible] these years to educate and [illegible], and, [illegible]
[illegible] the poor and despised about him. I would but come to you,
if endorsements from Mississippi Republicans are necessary, I can furnish them, but I prefer the endorsement of Frederick Douglass. Believe
me Sir—

Very Respectfully Yours—

WILLIAM BRECK

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 860–61, FD Papers, DLC.