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,¹Susan Farley Porter. 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.