Former slave (1818–1895) who lent his eloquent, powerful voice to the abolitionist movement. ALS signed “Fredk. Douglass,” one lightly lined page, 5 x 8, August 27, 1883. Douglass writes to then-Senator Benjamin Harrison. In full: “Absence from home during the last weeks has prevented the due acknowledgment of your letter assuring the proposed National Convention of welcome to Indianapolis. I give you thanks for this assurance, but the call for the convention fixes Louisville as the place for holding the convention and this cannot now, without damage be changed. It may turn out however that the convention itself may find it necessary to seek a more genial climate than Louisville and in that case, I will not forget that there is such a place as Indianapolis.” Accompanied by check signed the same year by future President Benjamin Harrison. In fine condition. The letter is accompanied by an unrelated check, filled out and signed by Harrison, drawn on an Indianapolis bank, November 9, 883, payable to “Self” for $30.
On September 6, just days after this letter was penned, a front-page article in the New York Times reported from Washington that on September 5th, “Fred Douglass, the colored leader, in an interview with a ‘Star’ reporter to-day said that the statement printed in a New-York newspaper that the proposed convention of the colored men at Louisville on Sept. 24 was to be in the interest of the present Administration was wholly untrue. He said also that he proposed to go as a delegate to the convention, if one should be held, and that he had received letters from Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, and other States informing him that the delegates from those States would attend.”
Douglass’ speech at the Louisville convention remains one of his best-known. It included many lines of stirring oratory: “We hold ourselves to be in every sense Americans...[yet] In all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line.” This letter offers uplifting proof that Douglass’ cause had support in the highest places. Pre-certified John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and RRAuction COA.
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