Frederick Douglass to Abigail Kelley, June 19, 1843
FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ABIGAIL KELLEY1Abigail (Abby) Kelley (1810-87) was born to a Quaker family in Pelham, Massachusetts. In 1837 she joined the antislavery movement and became one of its first female traveling lecturers. Garrisonian abolitionists chose her as an officer of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, provoking the exodus of antifeminists from the organization. In 1845 she married a fellow Garrisonian lecturer, Stephen S. Foster. Although quarrels with Garrison over political action led the Fosters to curtail abolitionist participation in the late 1850s, Abby continued to work for women’s rights in the 1860s and 1870s until ill health forced her to limit her activities. Dorothy Sterling, Ahead of Her Time: Abby Kelley and the Politics of Anti-Slavery (New York, 1991); Jane Hanna Pease, “The Freshness of Fanaticism: Abby Kelley Foster: An Essay in Reform” (PhD. diss., University of Rochester, 1969); DAB, 6:542-43.
Fall River, [Mass] 19 June 1843.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
Your kind favor of the 7th instant,2Instant, often abbreviated “inst,” means the present or current month. Kelley’s 7 Jane 1843 letter to Douglass has not been located. reached me on the 16th[.] I should have answered it emmeadiately, but for other pressing engagements—I had decided to go to westeren N. York when I met you at the annual meeting of the American Society,3Douglass and Abby Kelley were among the featured speakers at the tenth annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, held at the Apollo Saloon in New York City on 9 May 1843. NASS, 18 May 1843; Lib., 19 May 1843. with the understanding that I should hear from the EX. committe through our good Friend James C. Hathaway.4Joseph Comstock Hathaway (1810-43), a Quaker farmer from Farmington, New York, was the recording secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1843. Philadelphia Friends Review, 27:328 (10 January 1874). I have not heard any thing from them, or him, since that time. I have therfore decided to spend the summer and a part of the fall, in attending Conventions in Vermont, N. York Ohio—&c. &c.5As part of a Garrisonian lecturing campaign known as the “One Hundred Conventions, Douglass traveled extensively in July, August, and September 1843. He usually spoke in the company of George Bradburn and John A. Collins, but Sydney H. Gay, Charles Lenox Remond, William A. White, Abby Kelley, and other abolitionists sometimes joined him. After speaking in Vermont in mid-July, Douglass and his companions lectured in central and western New York in August, and Ohio and Indiana in September. Lib., 23 June, 21 July, 11 August, 8, 22 September, 13 October 1843; NASS, 22 June, 3, 10, 31 August, 14 September, 19 October 1843. In company with Mr. Collins6John Anderson Collins (1810-c. 1879) of Manchester, Vermont, trained for the Congregational ministry before becoming a general agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1837. While touring England in 1840, he became interested in the utopian economic reform plans of Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, which included the abolition of all private property. From 1840 to 1841, Collins edited the Monthly Garland and compiled a book of antislavery songs, Anti-Slavery Pic-Nic. After leading the One Hundred Conventions tour in 1843, he resigned from the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and founded a short-lived communal farm near Skaneateles, New York. During the 1849 gold rush, Collins migrated to California, where he attempted journalistic and mining enterprises but found little success. Carleton Mabee, Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 through the Civil War (London, 1970), 76, 80-82, 88, 112-25, 212, 264, 394; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 2:453-54n; Sterling, Ahead of Her Time, 103, 136, 158, 177-79; DAB, 4:307-08. and Bradburn.7Son of a woolens manufacturer in Attleboro, Massachusetts, George Bradburn (1806-80) trained for the Unitarian ministry, but subsequently devoted his energies to championing numerous secular reforms. Bradburn also acted as an agent for the American, Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, and he attended the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. He was not a strict Garrisonian, however, opposing all propositions for dissolving the Union and favoring political means to accomplish the abolition of slavery. Bradburn represented Nantucket as a Whig in the state legislature (1839-42), where he led the successful effort to repeal Massachusetts's antimiscegenation law. In the 1840s he lectured for the Garrisonians and traveled with Douglass on many occasions. He later joined the Free Soil party and edited two Free Soil newspapers, the Pioneer and Herald of Freedom and the True Democrat. In addition to abolitionism, Bradburn supported women's rights, temperance, pacifism, and an end it capital punishment. Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Eleventh Annual Report: Presented to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society by Its Board of Directors (Boston, 1843), 44, 90-91; idem, Twelfth Annual Report: Presented to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (Boston, 1844), 34; George Bradburn, A Memorial of George Bradburn, comp. Frances H Bradburn (Boston, 1883). You will see by the liberator of last Friday, a notice of some of those Conventions.
I Attended the annual meeting of the New Hampshire A. S. S.8The New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society held a contentious annual meeting on 7 through 10 June 1843 at the town hall in Concord. Concord (N.H.) Herald of Freedom, 23 June 1843. It was a strange gathering. I never saw any thing like it. It was what Br Rogers9New Hampshire abolitionist Nathaniel Peabody Rogers (1794-1846) left a law practice in Plymouth to edit the Concord abolitionist weekly Herald of Freedom in 1838. He also worked to desegregate transportation facilities, promote temperance, and end capital punishment. In the mid-1840s, Rogers quarreled bitterly with other Garrisonian abolitionists, charging that disunionism carried an implicit threat of war. Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Anti-slavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), 162-63; Mabee, Black Freedom, 116, 123; Robert Adams, “Nathaniel Peabody Rogers: 1794-1846,” NEQ, 20:365-76 (September 1947); NCAB, 2:320. says: disgraceful, mortifying, alarming, divided, united, glorious, and most effective meeting.10Rogers used this phrase to describe the meeting in a newspaper editorial. Concord (N.H.) Herald of Freedom, 16 June 1843. I am to lecture here to night. tomorrow I go to N. Bedford.11The Liberator reported that Douglass addressed an abolitionist meeting on that date in Fall River at which he implicated northern churches in the perpetuation of slavery. The same paper also listed Douglass at a meeting of the Bristol County Anti-Slavery Society in New Bedford on 20 June 1843. Lib., 30 June, 7 July 1843.
In haste Yours in the Glorious Cause
F. DOUGLASS
DOUGLASS TO ABIGAIL KELLEY, 19 JUNE 1843 Page 9
ALS: Foster—Kelley Family Papers, MWA.
l. Abigail (Abby) Kelley (1810-87) was born to a Quaker family in Pelham, Massachusetts. In
1837 she joined the antislavery movement and became one of its first female traveling lecturers. Garrisonian
abolitionists chose her as an officer of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, provoking
the exodus of antifeminists from the organization. In 1845 she married a fellow Garrisonian lecturer,
Stephen S. Foster. Although quarrels with Garrison over political action led the Fosters to curtail abolitionist
participation in the late 1850s, Abby continued to work for women’s rights in the 1860s and 1870s
until ill health forced her to limit her activities. Dorothy Sterling, Ahead of Her Time: Abby Kelley and the Politics of Anti-Slavery (New York, 1991);
Jane Hanna Pease, “The Freshness of Fanaticism: Abby Kelley Foster: An Essay in Reform” (PhD. diss., University of Rochester, 1969); DAB, 6:542-43.
2. Instant, often abbreviated “inst,” means the present or current month. Kelley’s 7 Jane 1843 letter to Douglass has not been located.
3. Douglass and Abby Kelley were among the featured speakers at the tenth annual meeting of
the American Anti-Slavery Society, held at the Apollo Saloon in New York City on 9 May 1843. NASS, 18 May 1843; Lib., 19 May 1843.
4. Joseph Comstock Hathaway (1810-43), a Quaker farmer from Farmington, New York, was
the recording secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1843. Philadelphia Friends Review,
27:328 (10 January 1874).
5. As part of a Garrisonian lecturing campaign known as the “One Hundred Conventions, Douglass
traveled extensively in July, August, and September 1843. He usually spoke in the company of
George Bradburn and John A. Collins, but Sydney H. Gay, Charles Lenox Remond, William A. White,
Abby Kelley, and other abolitionists sometimes joined him. After speaking in Vermont in mid-July,
Douglass and his companions lectured in central and western New York in August, and Ohio and Indiana
in September. Lib., 23 June, 21 July, 11 August, 8, 22 September, 13 October 1843; NASS, 22 June,
3, 10, 31 August, 14 September, 19 October 1843.
6. John Anderson Collins (1810-c. 1879) of Manchester, Vermont, trained for the Congregational ministry
before becoming a general agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1837.
While touring England in 1840, he became interested in the utopian economic reform plans of Charles
Fourier and Robert Owen, which included the abolition of all private property. From 1840 to 1841,
Collins edited the Monthly Garland and compiled a book of antislavery songs, Anti-Slavery Pic-Nic.
After leading the One Hundred Conventions tour in 1843, he resigned from the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
Society and founded a short-lived communal farm near Skaneateles, New York. During the 1849 gold rush,
Collins migrated to California, where he attempted journalistic and mining enterprises
but found little success. Carleton Mabee, Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830
through the Civil War (London, 1970), 76, 80-82, 88, 112-25, 212, 264, 394; Merrill and Ruchames,
Garrison Letters, 2:453-54n; Sterling, Ahead of Her Time, 103, 136, 158, 177-79; DAB, 4:307-08.
7. Son of a woolens manufacturer in Attleboro, Massachusetts, George Bradburn (1806-80)
trained for the Unitarian ministry, but subsequently devoted his energies to championing numerous
secular reforms. Bradburn also acted as an agent for the American, Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, and
he attended the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. He was not a strict Garrisonian, however,
opposing all propositions for dissolving the Union and favoring political means to accomplish the abolition
of slavery. Bradburn represented Nantucket as a Whig in the state legislature (1839-42), where he led
the successful effort to repeal Massachusetts's antimiscegenation law. In the 1840s he lectured
for the Garrisonians and traveled with Douglass on many occasions. He later joined the Free Soil party
and edited two Free Soil newspapers, the Pioneer and Herald of Freedom and the True Democrat. In
addition to abolitionism, Bradburn supported women's rights, temperance, pacifism, and an end it capital
punishment. Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Eleventh Annual Report: Presented to the Massachusetts
Anti-Slavery Society by Its Board of Directors (Boston, 1843), 44, 90-91; idem, Twelfth Annual Report:
Presented to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (Boston, 1844), 34; George Bradburn,
A Memorial of George Bradburn, comp. Frances H Bradburn (Boston, 1883).