FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Rochester, [N.Y.] 16 June 1852.

Professor H. W. Longfellow.

DEAR SIR.

Do not deem me over importunate. My kind friend, Mrs. Porter,Porter, Susan Farley

After her marriage to land agent Samuel D. Porter in 1835, Susan Farley Porter (1812–80) moved from Waldoboro, Maine, to Rochester, New York, where she became one of the city’s most active reformers. Among the founders of the Bethel Free Church and Rochester Orphan Asylum Association, she was also a member of the Rochester Female Charitable Society, an author of the constitution for the Home for Friendless and Virtuous Females, and president of the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. The Porters aided fugitive slaves in crossing the border into Canada, and their barn was reputed to be a common hiding place. FDP, 11 March 1852; 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Monroe County, Rochester, 3rd Ward, 92; Nancy Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822-1872, (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984), 55-56, 59-60, 111, 119-20, 149, 180, 206; Dexter Perkins, "Rochester One Hundred Years Ago," RH, 1:1-24 (July 1939). has just handed to me, your kind note:²The note from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Douglass has not been located. in which you dicline (not peremtorially) to write any thing on slavery for the “Autograph.”³In 1853 and 1854, in an effort to raise money for Frederick Douglass’ Paper, Julia Griffiths edited Autographs for Freedom, a series of gift books of poetry, essays, and letters by various abolitionists and authors. These included not only Douglass, but also Catherine Beecher, Charles Francis Adams, Horace Greeley, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lewis Tappan, Charles Sumner, and Gerrit Smith. To distinguish Autographs for Freedom from other abolitionist gift books, a facsimile of each author’s signature appeared at the end of each selection. Although Longfellow contributed a selection to a similar gift book, the Liberty Bell, edited by Maria Weston Chapman, no work of his appeared in either issue of Autographs for Freedom. Julia Griffiths, ed., Autographs for Freedom, 2 vols. (Rochester, 1853–54); Maria Weston Chapman, ed., Liberty Bell (Boston, 1846); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Andrew Hillen, 6 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1966–82), 3:84–85; Thompson, “Liberty Bell,” 167–68. That excellent Lady, with a perseverance characteristic of zeal in a good cause—says, “Do write at once to Mr. Longfellow—yourself.” My friend seems to think that my ‘fugitive Slave Ship”⁴Douglass is most likely referring to his novella, “The Heroic Slave,” which appeared in the first volume of Autographs for Freedom in 1853. Frederick Douglass, “The Heroic Slave,” in Autographs for Freedom, 1:174–239. will go a great way towards obtaining the desired treasure. I have no such vanity—and yet I am acting as though I had.

If, My dear Sir, you can but favor us with twenty lines—the favor will be highly prized.

For your kind disposition towards me, please, accept my grateful ac
knowledgements.

Very Respectfully Yours &c.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

ALS: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Papers, MH-H.