Sunday Eve^g Dec 31 76

My dear Friend

"A happy New Year" to you! I shall leave for F. R.Fall River, Massachusetts

(D 2) too early tomorrow [illegible] to get your note even should you have written—and unless I say one word now, shall have no chance to reach you before you leave home—I have not been well since Friday & consequently did not hear Mr GannettGannett, Ezra Stiles

this aft—but I am better tonight and shall like going to Lester Hall to hear Parker PillsburyPillsbury, Parker

The outspoken abolitionist orator, editor, and author Parker Pillsbury (1809-98) was born in Massachusetts but moved to Henniker, New Hampshire, where he farmed and worked as a wagoner until 1835. The local Congregational church there encouraged him to pursue the ministry. Pillsbury graduated from New Hampshire's Gilmanton Theological Seminary in 1838 and studied an additional year at Andover before accepting a church in Loudon, New Hampshire. Converted to abolitionism in Andover, Pillsbury incurred the displeasure of his congregation with sharp attacks on the churches' complicity with slavery. After his license to preach was revoked in 1840, he became lecturing agent for the New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and American antislavery societies, posts he held for over two decades. He edited the Concord (N.H.) Herald of Freedom in 1840 and again in 1845 and 1846 and the National Anti-Slavery Standard in 1866. He lectured widely, often in the company of Stephen S. Foster, and earned a reputation for his successful use of nonresistance in dealing with hostile crowds. Although he served on the executive committee of the New Hampshire Non-Resistance Society, he was among the strongest defenders of John Brown after the Harpers Ferry raid. During the Civil War, Pillsbury criticized Union war aims, especially before the Emancipation Proclamation, and in 1865 broke with Garrison over the necessity for continued activity by the American Anti-Slavery Society. Pillsbury helped to draft the constitution of the feminist American Equal Rights Association in 1865, served as vice president of the New Hampshire Woman Suffrage Association, and in 1868 and 1869 edited a weekly, Revolution, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Pillsbury completed his abolition memoirs, Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles, in 1883. Stacey M. Robertson, Parker Pillsbury: Radical Abolitionist, Male Feminist (Ithaca, N.Y., 2000); James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton, N.J., 1964), 59-60, 100-102, 305-07; Mabee, Black Freedom, 112, 221-23, 329; Filler, "Parker Pillsbury," 315-37; DAB, 14:608-09. discourse on "Thos Paine in the Revolution of 71," this eve. Parker is here, and seems very much as he used to do in the long ago—

Did you not leave more of yourself this time, than ever before? or why do I feel more

than before, that you have only "gone into the next tour"—maybe I yet shall trust without fear—

Oh that dreadful R.R. accident! It makes me tremble—This hasty and is all I can write today—I hope I shall hear very often, while you are on the wing if it is only to know you are safe

MarthaGreene, Martha Waldo Brown

Martha Waldo Brown Greene (1820-1902) was the daughter of John and Mary Hodges Brown. She married William Arnold Greene (1822-73) on 9 May 1842. Her husband was engaged in the mercantile business in New York City in 1842-43, when Martha Greene was an officer of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The couple then moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, where they had six children. Martha and Douglass were close friends and remained so after the Civil War. The contents of the letters often addressed private matters such as his relationship with Ottilie Assing. Greene helped Douglass recover from depression after his first wife died in 1882. Martha died in Melrose, Massachusetts, which was the residence of her daughter Martha Greene Sherman. Martha W. Greene to Frederick Douglass, 7 July 1864, 2 August 1865, 22 July 1871 in General Correspondence File, DLC, reel 2, frames 40-42, 138-39, 604-05, FD Papers, DLC; David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (Baton Rouge, 1989), 167; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 306, 368; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 313.