FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ANNA RICHARDSONRichardson, Anna Atkins

Anna Atkins Richardson (1806-92) of Newcastle-upon-Tyne married Ellen Richardson’s brother, Henry Richardson, in 1833. A Quaker, she was active in several reform causes but was particularly dedicated to antislavery activism. A member of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, she alienated British Garrisonians by continuing to support Douglass after he had severed ties with Garrison. With her husband, she helped lead the free produce movement (a boycott of goods derived from slave labor) of the 1850s in England; she was responsible for securing the black lecturers Henry Bibb and Henry Highland Garnet to publicize the cause. From 1851 to 1854, the Richardsons published The Slave, a penny newssheet promoting the free produce movement. [Mary C. Pumphrey], Ellen Richardson: In Memoriam, 1808-1896 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1896); R. J. M. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860 (Baton Rouge, La., 1983), 120, 122, 134; Temperley, British Antislavery, 245.

Lynn, Mass.¹The placeline of this letter also includes “U.S.” 29 April 1847.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

After sixteen days and six hours of fierce conflict with the winds, waves, and the innumerable perils of the deep, I am once more on solid earth. Thanks to the Giver of every good and precious gift[,]²James 1:17. I am once more at home; once more with the wife of my bosomDouglass, Anna Murray

Anna Murray Douglass (c. 1813-82), Douglass’s first wife, was born free in Denton, Maryland. She was the eighth child of Bambarra and Mary Murray, slaves who had been manumitted shortly before her birth. At seventeen she moved to Baltimore, where she worked as a domestic and met Douglass at meetings of the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society. In 1838, Murray helped Douglass finance his escape, and she joined him in New York City, where they were married on 15 September 1838. During Douglass’s first tour of the British Isles (1845-47), she remained in Lynn, Massachusetts, where she supported the family by binding shoes. She gained a reputation for frugality and skillful household management, qualities that would contribute greatly to her family’s financial prosperity over the years. A member of the Lynn Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society and a regular participant in the annual antislavery bazaars in Boston, she continued her antislavery activities after moving to Rochester in 1847. Unlettered, reserved, and, according to her husband, never completely at ease in white company, she seldom appeared at public functions with Douglass. She was nevertheless affectionately remembered by her husband’s associates as a “warm” and “hospitable” hostess at their home. On 9 July 1882, Anna Douglass suffered an attack of paralysis in Washington, D.C., and died there on 4 August. Lib., 18 November, 2 December 1853; Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 20 July 1882; Washington (D.C.) Post, 5 August 1882; Rosetta Douglass Sprague, My Mother as I Recall Her: A Paper Delivered before the Anna Murray Douglass Union, W.C.T.U., May 10, 1900 (1900; Washington, D.C., 1923); Jane Marsh Parker, “Reminiscences of Frederick Douglass,” Outlook, 51:552-53 (6 April 1895); Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1984), 132-37; Julie R. Nelson, “The Best of Intentions: Anna Murray Douglass, Helen Pitts Douglass, and the Challenge of Social Equality,’ Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, 12:39-42 (Spring 1995); Sylvia Lyons Render, “Afro-American Women: The Outstanding and the Obscure,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 32:306-10 (October 1975). ,³Anna Murray Douglass. and in the midst of the dear children of my love.⁴Sons six-year-old Lewis Henry, five-year-old Frederick, Jr., and three-year-old Charles Remond.

You will have learned ere this that I was proscribed and placed beyond the pale of the society of my fellow-passengers during the voyage. This, my dear friend, was an early foretaste of what now awaits me in this boasted land of republican freedom. I care not for it. These things cannot always be. In this instance, aside of the pain of compulsion, I suffered little from the proscription, since it merely placed me beyond the society of a large number with whom I could have no affinity; while, on the other hand, nearly all the Christian portion of the passengers sought out my apartments, and took pleasure in treating me with the kindness due to a man and a brother. . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

My dear Anna is not well, but much better than I expected to find her, as she seldom enjoys good health. She feels exceedingly happy to have me once more at home. She had not allowed herself to expect me much, for fear of being disappointed; but she was none the less glad to see me on that account. My three boys—CharlesDouglass, Charles Remond

Charles Remond Douglass (1844–1920), named after the abolitionist Charles Remond, was the youngest of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass’s sons. He was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, and, like his brothers, was both educated in Rochester and trained by his father in the newspaper office. Like Lewis H. Douglass, Charles enlisted in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War, but mainly served with the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment, where he was promoted to the rank of first sergeant. After the war, Charles settled in Washington, D.C., and found employment first as a clerk in the Freedmen’s Bureau (1867–69) and later in the Treasury Department (1869–75). After his father purchased the in 1870, Charles acted as a correspondent for the newspaper. In 1871 he served as a clerk to the Santo Domingo Commission, and President Ulysses S. Grant later appointed him consul to Puerto Plata, Santo Domingo. From 1875 to 1879 he was a clerk in the U.S. consulate in Santo Domingo. Returning to the United States in 1879, he entered the West Indies import-export business while living in Corona, New York. In 1882, Charles moved back to Washington, D.C., and took a job as an examiner in the Pension Bureau. He remained there until 1892, when he entered the real estate business. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3:860; Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 1:126; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 239, 257–58, 272; EAAH , 1: 407–08. , LewisDouglass, Lewis Henry

Lewis Henry Douglass (1840-1908), the second child and eldest son of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass, was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Educated in the schools of Rochester, New York, he learned the printer's trade as a boy working in the North Star office. In 1863 he enlisted in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry, serving as the regiment's sergeant major and seeing action at the Battle of Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in July I863. Disabled, he was discharged in 1864. He was a member, along with his father, of the black delegation that interviewed President Andrew Johnson on 7 February 1866. Later that year, after failing to obtain employment as a printer in Rochester because of racial discrimination, he moved to Colorado. There he briefly worked for the Denver Daily Gazette until refused membership in the local printers' union because he was “a colored man." In 1869 he took employment as a compositor at the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C. When he attempted to join the Columbia Typographical Union, No. 100, a controlling minority of the membership blocked his election at their May 1869 meeting. For the record, the opposition was based not on his color but on reports that Douglass had “ratted” (worked as a nonunion printer for below-scale wages) in Denver. Dougla,s. who remained at the Printing Office throughout his widely publicized effort to break the union's color barrier, denied the allegation but to no avail. The factionalized union continued to table his application along with those of other black printers (including Frederick Douglass, Jr.) as late as 1871. By then Lewis and Frederick, Jr., had become publishers of the Washington New [National] Era, of which their father was the editor. In 1872-73 Lewis Douglass served on the Legislative Council of the District of Columbia. By the 1890s he was a successful realtor in his adopted city. On 7 October 1869 he married Helen Amelia Loguen, daughter of Reverend Jermain W. Loguen. Lewis H. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, 29 October 1866, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 220-22, FD Papers, DLC; Lewis H. Douglass to D. W. Flynn, 24 May 1869, in San Francisco Elevator, 11 June 1869; NASS, 22 May 1869; Rochester Union and Advertiser, 6 August 1869; William H. Boyd, comp., Boyd’s Directory of the District of Columbia, . . . 1873 (Washington, D.C. 1873), 525; Boyd's Directory, 1893, 371; James M. Gregory, Frederick Douglass, the Orator (1893; New York, 1971), 102-03; Foner and Lewis, Black Worker, 1: 370, 374-83. , and FrederickDouglass, Frederick Jr. (Douglass's son)

Frederick Douglass, Jr. (1842-92), was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, the second son of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass. Throughout his adult life Frederick, Jr., struggled to achieve success within the same industries as his famous father. For years he tried unsuccessfully to obtain membership in the typographical union; he did, however, work with several newspapers, including the New National Era. He was also a frequent contributor to other newspapers, such as the Detroit Plaindealer, the New York Times, and Baltimore's National Leader, where he worked at the time of his death. He was the only of Douglass's sons not to enlist in the Union army. Henry O. Waggoner, a close friend of his father's, took Frederick, Jr., and his brother Lewis to Denver in 1866, to help them establish their careers. Ultimately their attempts failed, and the two returned east. During an outbreak of influenza in 1890, his wife, Virginia, died. His own son, Frederick Douglass III, as well as several other of the couple's children died at an early age. Frederick, Jr., succumbed to a prolonged and painful illness in July 1892. New York Times, 24 September 1876; Washington (D.C.) Bee, 30 July 1892; Detroit Plaindealer, 12 August 1892; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 97, 145, 248-49, 258, 272, 342, 365. , have grown rapidly, though not out of my knowledge. Lewis and Frederick knew me well at first sight, and ran with joy to meet me. And such a meeting! I would that you could have seen it. As soon as it was possible to land at East Boston from the steamer, I leaped on shore, without stopping a moment to look after luggage, and ran through a crowd of friends who had assembled on the wharf to meet me, simply bowing as I passed. Thus making my way to the station, I took the first train for Lynn. In twenty-five minutes, I reached Lynn, the train passing my door, from which I saw all my family five minutes before getting home, as I had to get out at the station. When within about fifty yards of our house, I was met by my two bright-eyed boys, Lewis and Frederick, running and dancing with very joy to meet me. Taking one in my arms and the other by the hand, I hastened into the house. Here imagination must fill up the picture.

‘Kings may be blest, but I was glorious,

O’er all the ills of life victorious.’⁵Robert Burns’s poem “Tam O’Shanter, A Tale” reads, “Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious, / O’er a’ the ills o’ life victorious!” Burns, Poems and Songs, 444.

. . . . . . . . . . . . It is good to be at home; good to be among those whose welfare and happiness depend so much upon myself. ’Tis good to feel the tranquillising influence of home. Already I feel my heart improved.

Dear AnnaDouglass, Anna Murray

Anna Murray Douglass (c. 1813-82), Douglass’s first wife, was born free in Denton, Maryland. She was the eighth child of Bambarra and Mary Murray, slaves who had been manumitted shortly before her birth. At seventeen she moved to Baltimore, where she worked as a domestic and met Douglass at meetings of the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society. In 1838, Murray helped Douglass finance his escape, and she joined him in New York City, where they were married on 15 September 1838. During Douglass’s first tour of the British Isles (1845-47), she remained in Lynn, Massachusetts, where she supported the family by binding shoes. She gained a reputation for frugality and skillful household management, qualities that would contribute greatly to her family’s financial prosperity over the years. A member of the Lynn Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society and a regular participant in the annual antislavery bazaars in Boston, she continued her antislavery activities after moving to Rochester in 1847. Unlettered, reserved, and, according to her husband, never completely at ease in white company, she seldom appeared at public functions with Douglass. She was nevertheless affectionately remembered by her husband’s associates as a “warm” and “hospitable” hostess at their home. On 9 July 1882, Anna Douglass suffered an attack of paralysis in Washington, D.C., and died there on 4 August. Lib., 18 November, 2 December 1853; Philadelphia Christian Recorder, 20 July 1882; Washington (D.C.) Post, 5 August 1882; Rosetta Douglass Sprague, My Mother as I Recall Her: A Paper Delivered before the Anna Murray Douglass Union, W.C.T.U., May 10, 1900 (1900; Washington, D.C., 1923); Jane Marsh Parker, “Reminiscences of Frederick Douglass,” Outlook, 51:552-53 (6 April 1895); Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1984), 132-37; Julie R. Nelson, “The Best of Intentions: Anna Murray Douglass, Helen Pitts Douglass, and the Challenge of Social Equality,’ Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, 12:39-42 (Spring 1995); Sylvia Lyons Render, “Afro-American Women: The Outstanding and the Obscure,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 32:306-10 (October 1975). and myself are intending to visit Albany in a few days; and we shall then see our only girl,
RosettaSprague, Rosetta Douglass

Rosetta Douglass Sprague (1839–1906), the first child of Anna and Frederick Douglass, was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on 24 June 1839. In her childhood, Rosetta wrote and read letters for her mother, whom she assisted with housework and with piecework for the shoe factories in Lynn, Massachusetts. Her father sent Rosetta to school at age seven in Albany, New York, where she lived with Abigail and Lydia Mott. When the Douglass family moved to Rochester, Rosetta began attending the Seward Seminary, where her presence offended the parents of one of the white students and led to her segregation from the other pupils. Her father, in a fury, removed Rosetta from the school and hired a private tutor for his daughter. Rosetta, along with her three brothers, then led other students in the efforts to desegregate Rochester’s public school system. From 1854 to 1855, Rosetta attended Oberlin College preparatory school, one of the first institutions of higher education to accept African Americans and women. She became a teacher in Philadelphia and Salem, Massachusetts, until her marriage in 1863 to Nathan Sprague, with whom she had seven children. Before her death in 1906, she wrote a memoir of her mother that remains one of the most complete documents of Anna Murray Douglass’s life. Rosetta Douglass Sprague, My Mother as I Recall Her: A Paper Read before the Anna Murray Douglass Union, W.C.T.U., May 10, 1900 (1900; Washington, D.C., 1923); Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1984), 132–45; Ellen N. Lawson and Marlene Merrill, “The Antebellum ‘Talented Thousandth’: Black College Students at Oberlin before the Civil War,” Journal of Negro Education, 52: 145 (Spring 1983); Miriam DeCosta-Willis, “Smoothing the Tucks in Father’s Linen: The Women of Cedar Hill,” Sage, 4: 30–33 (Fall 1987); Sylvia Lyons Render, “Afro-American Women: The Outstanding and the Obscure,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 32: 306–10 (October 1975), 307–10. .⁶Rosetta, Douglass’s eight-year-old daughter, was living with Abigail and Lydia Mott while attending school in Albany, New York. I received a sweet letter from her the day after my arrival at home. She is well . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

From all that I have learned thus far, I shall have a fiery furnace⁷A reference to Dan. 3:6. to move through here. The spirit of war rages. The war for the extension of slavery is daily becoming more and more popular; and he is branded as a traitor who utters himself with any decision against it. Smartng under the recollection of my exposure of them abroad, the pro-slavery party here, in Church and State, feel quite malignant toward me; and will, doubtless, manifest their feelings by their conduct. I have no fear. The Lord reigns. Let the earth be glad.⁸A variation of Ps. 97:1. It is my desire daily, to know that my life is hid with God in Christ Jesus.⁹A reference to Eph. 3:9. I will not fear. God is with me; the right is with me; and they must and will prevail. I shall continue to devote my time and strength to our holy cause. Pray for me . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

All England is clear to me; and, though long in her borders, and absent from home, and anxious to be at home, I left her with a heaviness of heart that words cannot express.

I have now my manumission papers in my possession, and will send you a copy by the next steamer. There is nothing that will sting the Americans more than the fact, that I landed on your shores a slave, and came back a freeman. I left republican America a slave; I returned from monarchial England a freeman .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Yours always,

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

[P.S.] I still look forward to some connection with the press as a means of promoting the cause, and securing a living.

PLeSr: Newcastle-upon-Tyne Christian, 3:521–22 (1 June 1847).