Rome January 5. 1877.

My dear Friend:

Wherever in the world I may be, how many marvels of art or nature I may have all around me, a letter from you is always the most welcome guest that can come to me either from far of or from the neighborhood, even though the news should not be all of a cheering nature. I can't indeed think it but a real calamity that NathanSprague, Nathan

—disgraced villain that he is—should again be near you and even be admitted as a member of your family. He will never be anything but a scamp, for he is by no means a man who once yielded to passion or strong temptation, but one absolutely destitute of moral feelings and perceptions, who will not shrink from any crime if he expected to derive any advantage from it. A thousand times

rather would I untertake the task to teach a cat or even Border States grammar than to impress him with a sense of truthfulness and honesty. Before long he will get into a new scrape and matters will be worse than before, the family possibly even somewhat larger than now!—RoseSprague, Rosetta Douglass

Rosetta Douglass Sprague (1839–1906), the first child of Anna and Frederick Douglass, was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on 24 June 1839. In her childhood, Rosetta wrote and read letters for her mother, whom she assisted with housework and with piecework for the shoe factories in Lynn, Massachusetts. Her father sent Rosetta to school at age seven in Albany, New York, where she lived with Abigail and Lydia Mott. When the Douglass family moved to Rochester, Rosetta began attending the Seward Seminary, where her presence offended the parents of one of the white students and led to her segregation from the other pupils. Her father, in a fury, removed Rosetta from the school and hired a private tutor for his daughter. Rosetta, along with her three brothers, then led other students in the efforts to desegregate Rochester’s public school system. From 1854 to 1855, Rosetta attended Oberlin College preparatory school, one of the first institutions of higher education to accept African Americans and women. She became a teacher in Philadelphia and Salem, Massachusetts, until her marriage in 1863 to Nathan Sprague, with whom she had seven children. Before her death in 1906, she wrote a memoir of her mother that remains one of the most complete documents of Anna Murray Douglass’s life. Rosetta Douglass Sprague, My Mother as I Recall Her: A Paper Read before the Anna Murray Douglass Union, W.C.T.U., May 10, 1900 (1900; Washington, D.C., 1923); Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1984), 132–45; Ellen N. Lawson and Marlene Merrill, “The Antebellum ‘Talented Thousandth’: Black College Students at Oberlin before the Civil War,” Journal of Negro Education, 52: 145 (Spring 1983); Miriam DeCosta-Willis, “Smoothing the Tucks in Father’s Linen: The Women of Cedar Hill,” Sage, 4: 30–33 (Fall 1987); Sylvia Lyons Render, “Afro-American Women: The Outstanding and the Obscure,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 32: 306–10 (October 1975), 307–10. too unfortunately shows traces of the long demoralizing contact with him; otherwise she could not have consented to live with him again, for even if she could have forgiven his rascality, his treachery towards her must have opened her eyes. I am much afraid you committed a grave mistake in selling the house to him and thus planting him as if it were, right on your nose. To be sure, I don't know how much either the one or the other property is worth, but you know that notwithstanding his mental inferiority he has always had low cunning enough to cheat you in every money transaction, just because you are of a high, noble disposition above all littleness and trickery. I beseech you therefore to practice the greatest caution and prudence you are capable of, and thus let this disagreeable topic be dismissed for the present, especially as that which has been done, can not be undone.

As you see, I am in the "eternal city" feasting and revelling in its marvels. It is indeed the most wonderful thing to see the monuments of so many different civilizations side by side, nay in many instances piled on each other—a church built on the foundations of an antique temple, for instance. There are first the glorious remnants of antiquity, then those of the early times of Christianity, of the Middle Age, of the Renaissance, of the decline, and finally we have our own whole variegated modern

civilization with all its bustle, its joys and heart burnings. None of the works of later times—great as they may be—however equal the remnants of antiquity. By the side of those gigantic, colossal structures, the Coliseum, the palaces of the Emperors and their temples, all the palaces and churches of Papal Rome appear small and almost brittle, and as for the beauty of the ancient statues, it is truly overwhelming. We have seen several beautiful casts together, but excellent as they may be in their way, they convey but a very imperfect idea of the immortal splendor of the originals. Today I was almost overcome with delight when all at once I found myself face to face with the Olympian Jupiter. Of all things those ruins and statues attract me most irresistibly again and again and over them I

almost forget the rest of the world, save a few good friends whom to have here and enjoy this magnificent world with me, I should give more than a little. Another inexhaustible source of delight is this beautiful climate and the luxuriant tropical vegetation. In the gardens and on the promenades you would think yourself in midsummer among all those southern evergreen trees.

As I intend to stay yet a good while here and intended so from the first I have taken chambers—two pleasant rooms for the small sum of fourteen dollars a month at the house of a very kind and good woman, the widow of a Colonel, with whom I am on pleasant social terms. I make myself agreeable by teaching one of her daughters German and they all seem to like me, and consequently don't think me the monster as that my sisterAssing, Rosa Ludmilla

would have

me appear. They even offered to get me an introduction to the Pope, the great object of so many American ladies. Yet, curious as I should have been to see the old gentleman and the whole ceremonial of the Papal court, I declined with many thanks for her good intentions, since with my convictions it would be a piece of untruthfulness towards myself as well as hypocrisy towards him if I should seek him and kneel down to receive his blessing. The more however I have seen of Churches and Catholic worship in all its features. The Italians are very liberal and don't object at all to visitors moving about in their churches and looking at the paintings and monuments even during service. How tired however one grows of all that empty ceremonial, the hypocrisy that is displayed and how one learns to abhor this whole church fabric after looking at the state of ignorance, poverty and general backwardness to which it has reduced the people. I am rather a little isolated here and of course should like to have some good friend with whom to enjoy in common and exchange thoughts about the impressions received, yet I don't complain and feel comparatively happy since I can again move about freely without having constantly to endure those outbreaks of temper, of great rudeness and all the petty malice, of the kind that only a woman is capable of. Sometimes I think myself that there must be some motive behind that I don't know, but whatever it may be, it doesn't change the matter. I don't deny that this experience has left a shadow and that I can't help thinking it over again and again, but fortunately I have friends enough to compensate me and have besides the satisfaction to know not to have slighted any affection, any heart beating warmly

for me, and shall, as I hope, manage to get away in peace.

Mrs. Werpup had already informed me of your visit and of the great pleasure it has been to her. She writes to me faithfully and tells me all that is going on in the Hoboken circle among men and animals. I am glad you showed her so much attention as to go over to see her in my absence. She is really so kindhearted to consider my friends hers also.

I had just moved in my present quarters when I was much surprised by the unexpected visit of a lady whom I had very well known in old times, and who had found my name in the list of arrivals at the hotels. From her I learned one of those stories which seem more novels than reality. I shall tell it to you when we meet again—wherever that may be—and it will interest you since it has a direct bearing on the whole shape my life has assumed, and shows on what slight chances our fate may frequently depend.

Now good night and a thousand good wishes for the new year! May it be kind to both of us! Write me soon and don't forget to send me your autograph and if possible those of some other interesting public men. Hayes'Hayes, Rutherford Birchard

Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822-93), nineteenth president of the United States, had previously served as governor of his home state of Ohio (1867-71) and as a Republican congressman (1865-67). Although Hayes had supported the Radical Reconstruction program while in Congress, events during Grant's administration had convinced him that the remaining southern Republican state governments, led by carpetbaggers and blacks, could no longer sustain themselves even with federal military intervention. As president, Hayes attempted to reinvigorate the southern Republican party through a program of sectional reconciliation aimed at attracting former Whigs and Douglas Democrats into the party. He believed that the goodwill of southern whites was better protection for the political and civil rights of blacks than federal military force. Soon after his inauguration, Hayes ordered U.S. troops in Charleston and New Orleans away from the statehouses and back to their garrisons, causing the Republican governments in South Carolina and Louisiana to collapse in the face of the armed force of their Democratic opponents. Hayes also appointed numerous southern Democrats to federal office, including former Confederate general David M. Key, who became his postmaster general. Despite Hayes's hope, few new southern white voters joined the Republican party, and it shrank into a powerless minority in most of the region for the remainder of the nineteenth century. Kenneth L. Davison, The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (Westport, Conn., 1972); Keith Dan Polakoff, The Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, La., 1973), 246-51, 317-21; Vincent P. DeSantis, Republicans Face the Southern Question: The New Departure Years, 1877-1897 (1959; New York, 1969), 66-132; William Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1879 (Baton Rouge, La., 1979), 335-52. election seems certain, according to the Times, but I doubt that the Democrats will quietly abide by the result.

Yours ever

OttiliaAssing, Ottilie

Ottilie Assing (1819-84) was born to Rosa Maria Antoinette Pauline Assing, a Christian, and Assur David Assing, a Jew, in Hamburg, Germany. Assing received an accelerated education from her mother and was generally described as bright and vivacious. After the death of her mother in 1840 and father in 1842, Ottilie and younger sister Ludmilla spent time with relatives, but she grew depressed and attempted suicide in 1843. After returning to Hamburg, Assing began writing reviews of local culture. In 1851 she became a correspondent for the German periodical Morganblatt fur gehildete Leser. Assing first met Frederick Douglass when she came to America in 1855, supposedly inspired to make his acquaintance after reading My Bondage and My Freedom. She arrived in Rochester and interviewed him for an article that subsequently appeared in Morganblatt. Thereafter Assing published numerous articles about Douglass for her German readership, and also translated My Bondage and My Freedom into German, contributing an introduction. The two began an intimate friendship in 1856 that lasted twenty-eight years. During that time Douglass and Assing corresponded regularly. When in the United States, Assing was a regular visitor at the Douglass home in Rochester. She was friendly with his children, although his wife, Anna Murray, did not approve of her husband's relationship. Douglass and Assing often appeared in public together, but no contemporary public speculation questioned the propriety of their relationship. Following Anna Murray Douglass's death in 1882, Assing hoped that she might become Mrs. Frederick Douglass. However, in January 1884, while Assing was in Europe, Douglass married his secretary, Helen Pitts. Becoming increasingly more ill, possibly with cancer, and despondent from Douglass's rejection, Assing committed suicide in a Paris park on 21 August 1884. She left her entire estate to Douglass. Christoph Lohmann, ed., Radical Passion: Ottilie Assing's Reports from America and Letters to Frederick Douglass (New York, 1999), 69, 329-62; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 7, 23, 38, 56, 184, 368, 371.