FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ISAAC POST

Fulton, [N.Y.] 16 Sept[ember] 1849.

Isaac Post,

MY DEAR FRIEND:

It was my full intention before leaving Rochester on my present mission¹Douglass spent most of September on a lecture tour in New York. Following a speech in West Walworth on 4 September, Douglass visited Marion, Palmyra, Victor, East Bloomfield, Oswego, Fulton, Red Creek, Pultneyville, Mount Morris, Scotsville, and Honeoye Falls before returning to Rochester at the end of month. NS, 14, 21, 28 September, 5 October 1849.—to have made a formal and definite request of you to become a member of a committee, which should take the financial management of the North Star into their own hands.²In a nearly identical letter to William Hallowell dated the same day, Douglass identified the members of the committee as Hallowell, Post, Edmund Willis, and Asa Anthony, an abolitionist friend of Post’s who subscribed to the North Star. A distant cousin of Susan B. Anthony, Asa Anthony was also a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Douglass to William Hallowell, 16 September 1849, Post Family Papers, NRU; 1848 Mail Book of the North Star, 205, FD Papers Project, InIU; New National Era, 23 May 1872; Wilbur H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom (1898; New York, 1968), 414; Stanton and Anthony, Papers, 2:495. Failing to perform this duty then—I now write to urgently solicit you, as a personal favor to me—and as a help to the cause of the slave, to be and to act as a member of a committee which shall superintend the financial and economical concerns of the above named paper.

The said committee to have and exercise the full right—to examine into all the financial concirns of the paper—to see that the accounts of the concern are honestly and accurately kept—and to advise with me on all matters connected with the financial economy of the establishment.

A compliance with the above request will greatly oblige me and perhaps restore confidence where there may now appear to be distrust.³Douglass’s announcement in the North Star at the beginning of October of a donation of $100 from the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society suggests that the society had renewed confidence in the financial affairs of the newspaper. NS, 5 October 1849.

With sincere Love and respect, I am gratefully yours

FREDERICK DOUGLASS