FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO RUTH COX

Leamington, [Eng.] 31 Jan[uary] 1847.

MY DEAR HARRIETCox, Ruth (Harriet Bailey)

Ruth Cox (1818–1900), an escaped slave from Congressman John Leeds Kerr’s home in Easton, Talbot County, Maryland, assumed the name Harriet Bailey as a fugitive. In 1842 Cox escaped to West Chester, Pennsylvania, where the Quaker community protected and employed her. While on a speaking tour of Pennsylvania in 1843, Douglass mistakenly identified Cox as his youngest sister, Harriet, and invited her to live with his family in Lynn, Massachusetts. Cox stayed with the Douglass family, using the name Harriet Bailey as protection from slave catchers, and assisted Anna in running the household and taking in piecework. In 1847 Cox married Perry Frank Adams and moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, where they had three children, Matilda Ann, Ebby, and Perry Frank, Jr., and adopted a fourth, Samuel Hall. The Adamses were involved in the antislavery movement in Springfield, with Perry, Sr., a member of the African American Massachusetts State Council in 1854 and connected to John Brown’s secretive League of Gileadites in 1852. In 1861 the family migrated to Haiti under the sponsorship of the Haitian Emigration Bureau, but returned to Springfield sometime around the mid-1860s, as many other emigrants connected with that organization did. After Perry’s death in 1868, Harriet earned her living as a seamstress in Massachusetts and in Rhode Island until migrating to Nebraska with her daughter and son-in-law, minister William Vanderzee. Aaron Anthony Slave Distribution, 22 October 1827, Talbot County Distributions, V.JP#D, 58–59, MdTCH; Norfolk Weekly News, 7 March 1894; Wyuka Cemetery Burial Permit No. 1785, 23 April 1900, Wyuka Cemetery, Lincoln, Neb.; William H. Vanderzee, “John Brown in Springfield, Massachusetts,” 31 October 1918, KHi; Alice V. Coffee, “Lest We Forget” (n.p., n.d.), Alyce McWilliams Hall Collection, NbHi; Ellen Ginzburg Migliorino and Giorgio G. Campanaro, “Frederick Douglass’s More Intimate Nature as Revealed in Some of His Unpublished Letters,” Southern Studies, 18:480–87 (Winter 1979). ¹Ruth Cox used the name of Douglass’s sister, Harriet Bailey, as an alias. —

I am now almost persuaded that I have done you serious injustice[.] If so—I am very sorry for it—and hope to be forgiven for it—and that at once. You know too well and too long to imagine that I could take pleasure in harshly hurting you—in whom I have so long trusted, and have loved as a true friend, and even as a sister. It was with no little pain—that I spoke as I did to you—in the letter asking you to leave my house.²Douglass’s letter to Cox in which he asked her to leave his house has not been located. I suffered as much in sending that letter as you could possibly do in receiving it[.] If you have not absolutely resolved to leave, I now wish you to stay in my family. But do not stay on my account, if you think you can be happier out of my family than in. it. Why consult your own happiness—I would be glad to have you stay—but not my will—persue your own course. You are your own woman—seek your own happiness. I shall always wish you well—and stand ready to render you any assistance I possess the power to do—and this shall be the case no matter what course you take. My regard for you has never been a selfish regard—but always—a regard for your own welfare—and such it shall ever be.

There use many things I should like to write about—but I am not in a state of mind to write. I am miserable—unhappy—and it seems I must so live and Die. I wish to mercy I could see you and talk with. I could soon

relieve my mind—but I am too far a way—and writing seems only to make matters worse. It is absolutely too had that I should be so harrassed in my feelings

Fare well Harriet—and receive my heartfelt good Wishes. Write to me soon

Yours sincerely

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

ALS: Correspondence File, Additions II, FD Papers, DLC.