Correspondence, Volume 1: Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
Publication of the first volume of the Correspondence Series by the Frederick Douglass Papers marks an important step in the history of the project. It is the first volume not directed by the project’s founding editor, John W. Blassingame, who stepped down as the project’s principal investigator in 1994. John R. McKivigan, who became principal investigator at that time, benefited greatly from his predecessor’s vision for this series and for many preliminary labors undertaken by Blassingame and his original staff at Yale University to locate its documents.
With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the Douglass Papers worked at West Virginia University from 1994 to 1998 to complete the location and collection of Douglass’s extensive correspondence. The Eberly College of Arts and Sciences and the library system at that uni-
versity contributed generous support to the Douglass Papers in those years. Special thanks are owed to Barbara Howe, Ronald L. Lewis, and Nancy McGreevy of the West Virginia University Department of History for their encouragement and to numerous graduate students in that department’s Public History program who performed volunteer services for the Douglass
Papers.
At Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, where the project relocated its operations in summer 1998, the School of Liberal Arts and Department of History deserve thanks for their institutional support. A special debt is owed the following individuals at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis for their assistance to the project: David A. Ford, Mary Gelzleichter, Nathan Houser, Joy Kramer, Sharon Peterman, Gail Plater, Herman Saatkamp, Philip Scarpino, William Schneider, Cynthia Stone, and Robert W. White.
Gratitude is also due to a number of specific individuals and organizations. Timothy Connelly from the National Historic Publications and Records Commission and the staff at the National Endowment for the Humanities supplied valuable advice to the Douglass Papers over the years. The National Historic Publications and Records Commission also deserves thanks for its assignment of Sean P. Adams as a Documentary Editing Fellow with this
project in 1997–98. Ann Gordon and Leslie S. Rowland, directors respectively of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton–Susan B. Anthony Papers and the Freedom and Southern Society Project, assisted the Douglass Papers staff in locating documents and refining our editorial procedures. Richard G. Carlson, former member of the Douglass Papers staff, contributed to formulating the editorial procedures for this series. Historian Kathryn Grover generously shared her extensive knowledge of antebellum New Bedford to aid the project’s preparation of annotations. Assistant editor Robin L. Condon, who joined the Douglass Papers staff in 2007, directed prepublication textual editing and proofreading; in addition, the project is grateful to its research assistants James A. Hanna and Jeremiah Nyhuis for their meticulous work on the later phases of the present volume. Professor Jonathan R. Eller, Senior Textual Editor of the Institute for American Thought at Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis, consulted frequently with the Douglass Papers staff regarding textual editing procedures.