Boston March 22^nd 1876

Hon Fred Douglass,

Dear Sir:

A suffrage club has just been organized, in Chelsea, and though I do not know how this extension of equal rights to all american citizens irrespective of sex, may be regarded by you, there is a great desire on the part of our numbers, unanimously and warmly expressed to hear you, and I have been instructed to address you with that object in view. Our club is young not very strong and rich only in spirit; but, earnest hard workers in the cause we are engaged We will guarantee all expenses and divide equally the ballance. I think we are safe in promising you an audience both in point of numbers, and enthusiasm worthy your effort. We are satisfied that your appearance here would be beneficial, and we hope and believe not without pleasure and profit to yourself. Mr. PhillipsPhillips, Wendell

Boston-born and Harvard-educated Wendell Phillips (1811-84) ranked second only to Garrison in influence in the American Anti-Slavery Society in the 1840s and 1850s. Bored with the legal profession and influenced by his antislavery fiancee, Ann Terry Greene, Phillips dedicated himself to abolitionism beginning in 1837. A highly gifted orator, Phillips was in demand as a lecturer even in nonabolitionist circles. Besides abolition, Phillips championed woman suffrage, prohibition, penal reform, Indian rights, and legislative protection for workers. When Garrison retired from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1865, Phillips assumed the post and led abolitionists until passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. James Brewer Stewart, Wendell Phillips: Liberty's Hero (Baton Rouge, La., 1986); Irving H. Bartlett, Wendell Phillips: Brahmin Radical (Boston, 1961); DAB, 14:546-47. speaks for us in April, as also Mrs LivermoreLivermore, Mary Ashton Rice

Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820-1905), was an American journalist, abolitionist, and advocate of women's rights. . Mrs. StantonStanton, Elizabeth Cady

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) was the best-known feminist of her day. Born in Johnstown, New York, and educated at Emma Willard's Troy Female Seminary, Stanton developed an interest in abolition and other reforms during visits to the home of her cousin Gerrit Smith. Stanton became determined to work to advance the status of women when she and other female delegates were barred from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. Eight years later Stanton, along with Lucretia Mott, organized the first-ever women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, where Stanton had settled with her husband, Henry B. Stanton, the antislavery politician. During Reconstruction, she opposed the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments because they granted equal rights and suffrage to black males but ignored all females. She held to this position in the Revolution, the woman suffrage weekly she edited with Parker Pillsbury, and in the platform of the National Woman Suffrage Association, which she and Susan B. Anthony founded in 1869. Besides presiding over the last organization for more than two decades, Stanton wrote numerous articles and several books, including the multivolume History of Woman Suffrage in collaboration with Anthony and Matilda Gage. Alma Lutz, Created Equal: A Biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815-1902 (New York, 1940); Lois W. Banner, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Radical for Woman's Rights (Boston, 1980); NAW, 3:342-47 and Susan B. AnthonyAnthony, Susan Brownell

Best known for her partnership with Elizabeth Cady Stanton during the late nineteenth-century woman suffrage campaign, Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906) first became an activist through the temperance and abolitionist movements in Canajoharie and Rochester, New York. Anthony spent her childhood in eastern Massachusetts, where she attended Quaker schools and became a teacher. In 1845 she followed her family to western New York, where they had fled to escape financial difficulties and to join a radical branch of Hicksite Quakers that included the Posts, Hallowells, and Porters. Discussions with Abigail Mott, whom she had met sometime before 1845, led Anthony to join the Unitarian Church shortly after her arrival in Rochester. Anthony continued to teach for another four years, but her involvement in the Daughters of Temperance and the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society soon became her priority. By 1851 she also became interested in the women's rights movement, and a common friend, Amelia Bloomer, introduced Anthony to Stanton. For the next half-century she and Stanton devoted themselves tirelessly to the struggle for women's access to education, professions, and politics. Between 1856 and 1866, however, Anthony continued to work for the end of slavery, serving as an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, organizing antislavery conventions in Rochester and publishing a newspaper that endorsed suffrage for blacks and women. Ida Husted Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, 3 vols. (Indianapolis, 1898-1908); Stanton and Anthony, Papers, 1:xxvi-xxviii; Blake McKelvey, "Susan B. Anthony," RH, 7:1-24 (April 1945); ANB, 1:547-50. follow, I trust the proposition here in contained may meet your approval and that I may receive a favorable reply at your earliest convenience. If not satisfactory

will you please be so kind as to mention your lowest terms. Any time before the close of the season most convenient to yourself, and any subject you may desire as select, will be entirely satisfactory to us. Will you please do us the favor to answer as soon as possible.

I am Sir with great esteem and respect

Very truly yours

E. F. StricklandStrickland, E. F., Jr.

E. F. Strickland, Jr., (ca. 1826-1890), was the namesake of Rev. E. F. Strickland, who was also active in the woman suffrage movement. Strickland, Jr. was chief of the fire department, and superintendent of the Knowles Steam Pump Works in Warren, Massachusetts (Boston Globe, 3 January 1886; Boston Evening Transcript, 21 July 1890) . Jr

Secretary

Chelsea Woman Suffrage ClubChelsea Woman Suffrage Club