Graham Crackers

Speaking of Douglass family foods, Frederick himself liked Graham crackers.

In 1874, he wrote to his disreputable son-in-law, Nathan Sprague, who was working hard to stay in the Douglass family's good graces:

My dear Nathan:I know your heart is full of trouble and care and I feel for you. But you are a brave man and while you will do all that a true man can, you will bear up under whatever other trouble which may be added to your present trials and griefs. My own health is not good – but I hope soon to grow better. I shall be very glad when the Graham Crackers come. They usually serve me a very good purpose. I have written to Louisa more about our house affairs and she will tell you. While Rosa is down, I will write all the more to Louisa –Your father in Law

Fredk Douglass[i]

And:

My dear Nathan:

                I am obliged by your letter and also by a box of my favorite crackers. Matters are proceeding here about as usual. The boys are struggling manfully to keep their paper afloat. They had no notion of letting the paper fail, but I fear they will have to. If they do not, and make a success they will be entitled to a large measure of praise. I have got myself in a hard place in this Freedman’s Bank and shall consider myself fortunate if I get out of it as easily as I got into it. I was wanted to bolster up the credit of the concern and to get through some legislation in its favor. When this is done as I hope it will be soon, I may separate myself from it, and go on with my literary work which I should have never abandoned.

                Love to Dear Rosetta, and the children.
                Truly yours,
                Fredk. Douglass[ii]

These Graham crackers were not at all like the sort made by Nabisco that you can buy today. They were a heftier, grittier cracker made with coarse graham flour and less sugar. Sylvester Graham invented them as part of his special diet. His followers ate them to control certain, carnal urges that might lead to self-abuse, but they probably found that the crackers increased the urge to clean out their colons. Which was not necessarily a bad thing in an age of overly boiled vegetables and high fat meat.

Incidentally, "the boys" were Douglass's sons, whose newspaper, The New National Era, closed operation that October. Douglass had been editor of the paper for a while, but had too much else to do and was losing money at too fast a rate to stay part of the business. The newspaper competition was stiff, and more so for black papers, so this was not some failure of character or laziness on the part of the sons, as many of their father's biographers would have it. The same for Douglass's involvement in the Freedman's Bank, especially in the economically risky years of the 1870s. 

---

[i] Frederick Douglass to Nathan Sprague, [n.d.], [n.p.], Addition I, FDP, DCL

[ii] FD to Nathan Sprague, Washington, D.C., 30 May 1874 [typescript]

Maryland Biscuits

Maryland Biscuits

Julia Griffiths, now an English dowager of sorts, step-mother to three girls, sent her greetings to Anna Douglass and fondly recalled the American woman's "Maryland biscuits."

That seemed a strange designation until I realized that Julia, being English, would likely not have encountered the American version of a "biscuit," ours being closer to an English scone and we referring to English version of biscuits as "cookies." (Mmmmmm.....cookie!) So, I imagined a scene in which Anna served biscuits to Julia, who asked what they were. Anna said, "biscuits," to which Julia said something like "these aren't like biscuits in England," and Anna replied, "well, these are Maryland biscuits."

Then, I came across a letter from Louisa Sprague, who lived with the Douglasses from 1871 until Anna died and Frederick remarried. She, too, was from Maryland, although not the same part as Anna. Anna came from the Eastern Shore and Louisa was probably from Prince Georges County. Louisa wrote to Frederick: "this is Sunday morning and I thought instead of making marlland Biskits I would try send you a line." [i]

"Marland Biskits": Maryland biscuits.  Louisa would have no need to designate these as particular, unless there were, in fact a particular kind of biscuit. So, using Prof. Google (shhh...don't tell!) I found that they were, in fact a type of biscuit made by beating the dough to make it rise. (Why would beating make it rise? Science.) The recipe is specific to the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Anna probably learned how to make them from her mother.

I also like to think that beating the dough was her form of therapy, not just when Frederick and the kids bothered her, but when she had to think of the things they went through. I also like to think that, if Julia remembered them, they must have been tasty.

---

[i] Louisa Sprague to FD, Washington, D.C., 15 July 1883, Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress.

The Musical Douglasses: Rosetta

Frederick Douglass's piano

 In 1861, Daniel Alexander Payne visited the Douglass home on South Street:

My Eastern labors took me in the month of August to the city of Rochester, N. Y., which was then the home of Frederick Douglass. His taste in the elegant and beautiful of nature had kept pace with his advancement in science. The balsam fir, the Norway spruce, the Canadian pine, and the cedar encircled his residence, while the sweet notes of the piano resounded within under the skillful touch of his daughter. It was on one of these musical occasions that I saw the father exhibited in him as I before had seen the orator and the man. She had performed several pieces on the instrument, and closed with the variations upon "Annie Laurie," when he sprung from his chair and seizing her hand in one of his, threw his arms around her and, pressing her to his bosom, exclaimed: "Rosa, my dear daughter, you have moved your father's heart!" [i]

Rosetta was the only daughter left at home. Her little sister Annie had died the year before.  Her brother Charles had lived with family friends, the Piersons, outside of Lockport since John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry nearly two years earlier. Her other two brothers had less work, now that their father had scaled back production on his papers, ending publication of his weekly paper to focus on his monthly paper and to campaign for emancipation and black military service. She and he had planned to visit Haiti in April, but had cancelled the trip when the war began only days before their departure.The next year saw her in Phildadelphia in search of a teaching position, which she found in Salem, New Jersey. She returned to Rochester when Charles and Lewis joined the Massachusetts 54^th regiment. Nathan Sprague entered her life, and they married at the end of 1864. While she was pregnant with their first child, Annie, he also joined the army. They eventually had seven children, six girls.

Nathan, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was his own self (seriously, the man could not get out of his own way) had difficulty providing for his growing family, and they relied heavily on the support of the Douglasses for two decades. In the estimation of Frederick and the Douglass sons, Nathan had failed as a man, and the sons complained about him bitterly. Frederick vacillated between cursing Nathan for his shortcomings and praising him when he tried to do well. Rosetta, however, had to bear the brunt of their problems at home.

In 1876, after Frederick and Anna had moved to Capitol Hill -- just before they moved to Cedar Hill -- Nathan was arrested for stealing letters from the post office, where he had secured a position through Frederick’s patronage. He spent a year in jail. While he was there, Rosetta decided to move in with her parents. Hearing that she was leaving town, the creditors came calling. In despair, she wrote to her father:

The past two weeks have been full of events and I am having a singular time and I wonder can it be me. My breaking up has caused such a flutter among Nathan’s creditors and I am being sued on every side.

She listed all of the things that the creditors demanded and took, but one item she would not let go:

Rosetta Douglass Sprague

....The piano she [Mrs. Rodenbeck, who came to collect her due] cannot hold at any rate. It is a poor rule that does not work both ways. I cannot dispose of the furniture to pay N’s debts as it is considered his personal property, it is mine as much his for housekeeping purposes and I can remove it but cannot dispose of it but my piano is my personal property and it can be seized to settle debts contracted by Nathan. Dist. Attorney Raines assures me it cannot be kept and tomorrow morning is the time set for deciding if I can be made responsible for N’s debts if I cannot be so responsible the other parties that have sued me will have to withdraw their suits.[ii]

For these reasons, woman’s rights activists had agitated for married women’s property protections. They
had success in New York in 1848 and 1860, but the latter had been rolled back in 1862. Rosetta, more than Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Abby Kelley, or any of the famed activists, taught Douglass about the necessity for protecting women’s property within matrimony.

The piano was more than property, too. The ability to play a piano marked a young woman as accomplished and a lady. This was especially important for young African American women of the middle class, like Rosetta. She was a daddy’s girl, for sure, and this piano connected her to her father, the violinist.

This was a low moment in her life. Her huband was in jail, and his debts called in. Her parents lived in a faraway city. She had buried her third child, Alice, a year earlier. Her fourth child, Estelle, was staying with Frederick and Anna. Her youngest -- the sixth -- was only a year old and her oldest was six. She should at least have the comfort of her piano!

---

[i] From Daniel Alexander Payne, Recollectionsof Seventy Years (Nashville, 1888), 143.

[ii] RDS to FD, Rochester, 17 Sept 1876, Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress.

Images: Virtual Museum Exhibit, Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, Anacostia, D.C..

Illustrated Maps of Douglass's "Narrative"

Mental Floss reports on a new book, Plotted: A Literary Atlas, by Andrew DeGraff, due out later this year.  Look who is included:

Black and Abroad under the Dred Scott Decision, 1860

[This was axed from a chapter. I liked the incident, and if this were a more traditional biography, it would have stayed. In a book about Douglass and women, and in a chapter about Rosetta Douglass, it was more of a tangent, although it does involve a woman.]

Sarah Parker Remond

At a January 1860 meeting in Wakefield, Douglass crossed paths with Sarah Remond and Caroline Putnam, sisters of his former travelling companion, Charles Lenox Remond. They appeared on the same program, one of the few times that Douglass was able to share the stage with a black woman. Douglass suspected that “it must have been embarrassing to Miss Sarah,” he and her brother having been at odds for some time, but “she did not rebel.” Instead, Remond spoke “with her accustomed calmness,” and he noted that “the audience was much pleased with the two blacks from America.”[i]

Douglass and Remond both discovered that, for all the welcome in England, their disfranchised status in America followed them.  Both planned to visit France, “a long-cherished desire,” Douglass confessed. He applied for a passport and she for a visa. “True to the decision of the United States Supreme court, and true, perhaps, the petty meanness of his own nature,” Douglass reported, the American Minister George Dallas rejected their applications on the grounds that he did not have the authority to grant them permission to travel because, thanks to the 1857 Dred Scot decision, neither had American citizenship. Remond and her sister Putnam took their passports to Dallas’s office. “I informed him I was a citizen of Salem, Massachusetts,” Remond wrote, “and Massachusetts acknowledged my citizenship.” Dallas continued to refuse her a visa, and threatened to throw her out of his office if she persisted in demanding one. She did, pointing out that free blacks like herself “have been subjected all their lives to the taxation and other burdens imposed upon American citizens” simply because of their skin color, only to have their rights ignored by “the Ministers of their country, whose salaries they contribute to pay.”  Douglass did not press the issue with Dallas, refusing to “beg or remonstrate.”  Instead, he turned to the French minister who granted permission while she turned to the British government. Remond remained abroad for the rest of her life, but tragedy drew Douglass home.[ii]

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[i] Amy Post to FD, Rochester, 13 Feb 1860, IAPFP, NRU; FDP, 17 Feb 1830.

[ii] FD, L&T, 252-53; “Sara Parker Remond and the Passport Issue,” Black Abolitionist Papers, ed. C. Peter Ripley (Chapel Hill, 1985), I: 469-73; Dorothy B. Porter, “Sara Parker Remond, Abolitionist and Physician,” Journal of Negro History, 20, 3 (July 1935): 287-93. Ottilie Assing allegedly planned to join Douglass in Paris. Douglass himself never referred to such an eventuality, and the evidence is inferred from letters that Rahel de Castro, Assing’s friend, wrote to Ludmilla Assing reporting on her correspondence with Ottilie. If, however, Remond and her sister also traveled in Paris at the same time, Douglass would not be so unwise as to engage in the sort of clandestine, interracial rendezvous as described by Maria Diedrich. He may have planned to visit with Remond or, much more likely, Crofts, who had rejected a visit to France in 1855 to promote Douglass in England. Assing, however, probably did intend to coordinate a trip to Europe with Douglass’s plans, and her reaction to his cancellation of his trip focuses on her own disappointment rather than its tragic reasons.

Not that Frederick Douglass on the Fourth of July

Most people do know -- or should know -- about Douglass's "What to the American Slave is the Fourth of July" speech, given at the invitation of the Rochester Ladies' Antislavery Society to their 5 July 1852 meeting.  If 1852 was bad, two years into life with the Fugitive Slave Act, March 1857 brought the Dred Scot decision, which said that African Americans were "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." 

This editorial appeared in Frederick Douglass' Paper that year, on 10 July 1857:

THE FOURTH OF JULY.

Judging from the little interest which the return of our national Anniversary excites now-a-days and contrasting it with the magnificent eclat with which it was wont to be celebrated in days gone by, we are somewhat inclined to the opinion that "Freedom's natal day," has well night worn out its welcome. so far as this section of the country is concerned the day fell upon people like a wet, musty, tattered blanket. There was not even the usual number of drunken fights in this locality. this, however may be reasonably attributed to the liquorary action of our last Legislature, rather than to any serious decline in the article of Patriotism. The cities of New York and Detroit have amply compensated for any defection of this kind.

Our New York correspondent [James McCune Smith] thinks that we, the colored people, ought to celebrate this day. Many things can be said in favor, and many things against this opinion. We don't know but that as our white fellow citizens are losing their respect and veneration for the sublime lesson which the day inculcates; as the country appears to be rushing to destruction, with greedy haste, forgetting the illustrious example of our fathers; it were well something could be done to preserve the memory of the eventful day. We would, however so far as we are concerned, feel rather awkward in marching in a procession celebrating the Jubilee, the Anniversary of our country's freedom, when four millions of our brethren still wear the heavy yoke, and the Supreme Court of the Nation solemnly declares they (and we) "have no rights which white men are bound to respect." If our active participation in Fourth of July festivities will tend to a practical exemplification of the theory so eloquently enunciated by our Fathers,  let us celebrate the day with music, and with [illegible]; but if not [illegible] thin our mournful silence will be an expressive rebuke of the inconsistencies of this God-defying nation.

This appeared in Frederick Douglass' Paper, 1 July 1858:

FOURTH OF JULY.

The eighty-third anniversary of American Independence is near at hand, and will no doubt be celebrated with the usual amount of speeches, songs, ringing of bells, fire crackers, whisky, and religious mockery. On that day we shall hear the United States lauded to the skies, as the freest nation on the earth, "the land of the free and the home of the brave;" we shall hear that "all men are created free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;" we shall be told all this, and be made to believe that these principles are practised in this great country. The people may or may not forget that this free and brave country upholds a system of oppression much worse than the tyranny that cause the Revolutionary war, and which has never had an equal in wickedness at any time.

What do all their songs and speeches amount to, when their very actions give the lie to everything they say? To a stranger in this country, it would seem that the Americans were crazy, or half witted. In praising their institutions as the freest, when such advertisements as the following are paraded in their newspapers, without causing the slightest blush:

Sale of Negroes, &c.: -- By consent of parties, I will on the 4th day of July next, at the Court House door, in the town of Winchester, sell for cash the following negroes: Elle, about fifteen years old; Fed, about -- years old; Bonaparte, about 14; Richard, about 11; Joan, a girl, about 8; David, about 6; Ben, about 4; Charles, about 2; Eda, about 33, and her infant child; Juda, about 24; also, one top buggy; on bay mare; and James A. England's interest in lots No. 29, 30, 32, and 37 at Cowan, which interest will be explained on day of sale; also the tavern University House and fixtures at Cowan. it being property conveyed to me by deed of trust from J.A. England about the 1st of March, 1859.

June 9.     J.B. HAWKINS.

---Winchester (Tenn.) Journal.

No doubt they will have a good time at that sale, as we see no other plan advertised for celebrating the "4th" at that place; and any person who doubts that the United States is "the land of the free and the home of the brave," let him attend on that occasion.

In Sight

So it requires a revision, an introduction, some supporting apparatus like a finished bibliography, and more images, and it won't really be a manuscript until it's in a box on the way to the publisher, and it won't really be a book until it's between two covers and in my hands. Still, I sort of have something here. Over 360 pages of something that tells a story from beginning to end.

Frederick Douglass in the News,

"From Ireland to Haiti, Frederick Douglass Preached Freedom," Boston Haitian Reporter, 22 June 2015. Dig the statue:


"Attorney General Loretta Lynch Uses Frederick Douglass's Bible for Swearing-In Ceremony," Washington Post, 17 June 2015.

"Channeling Frederick Douglass: Fallsburg Student Revives Abolitionist and Statesman for Stump Speech at the Grist Mill," Pike County Courier, 17 June 2015.

"Enjoy a Powerful Performance by 11-Year-Old Spoken Word Performer Elijah Coles-Brown," WTVR, Richmond, Va., 18 June 2015.

"Douglass Reading Marks Holiday," Times-Argus, Montpelier, Vt, 19 June 2015.

Lewis Douglass "thrown into the shade" by Frederick, Jr.

Lewis Douglass to Amelia Loguen, Rochester, 6 June 1861, Walter O. Evans Collection (private)

My Dear Amelia,
Your letter bearing date May 29, but unfortunately for me, not mailed until the 31^st reached me last evening, finding me well. Ever since you apprised me that it was not your intention to poke fun at me by that Kiss I have ceased to fancy that you so intended. If by that Kiss you intended to ameliorate my feelings towards you, let me apprise you that you have triumphantly succeeded in your Amelia – rating. Just at the present moment I would be glad to receive another Amelia ration, as I shall hereafter call your love inspiring kiss, they now are rations which I will always be glad to receive.  That cold “good evening” when we met at our house the time of your visit on returning from the falls, I am excusable for though I had seen you on four occasions before I never had an introduction to you. The time you were at our home in 1857 I did not even speak to you, in fact I was completely thrown into the shade by a younger brother who I remember staid away from the office for the purpose of entertaining you, you will no doubt remember the circumstance. The next time I saw you was the 2^nd of Oct. 1857 at 6 ½ o’clock p.m. at your home, then I  did not speak to you, and the next time I saw you was in June 1858, father and myself were on our way to McGrawville, then I had no introduction to you and nothing but a “cold good afternoon” escaped either of us, it was on that occasion, that you were dressed in that near approach to masculine unmentionables, bloomers, and sang ‘I’ll never see my darling any [nivey?],’ you will also remember this occasion, again, the next time we met was in Geneva, August 1, 1859, then I had no introduction to you but I believe we exchanged nods as we were walking down to the park, this time you will remember as you were waited upon by a highly interesting (to say the least) ‘dark’ from Syracuse I believe, on the discovery of which I ‘sloped,’ leaving you and Miss Douglass in the enjoy

[letter incomplete]

Lewis, Frederick Douglass's oldest son, was not yet twenty-one when he wrote this, working for his father as. Amelia Loguen was one of the daughters of Jermain Loguen and Caroline Storum Loguen of Syracuse. A Rite-Aid now sits on the site of their home at the corner of Genesee and Pine.

Clearly, Amelia had entranced Lewis's younger brother, Frederick, Jr., who was a mere fifteen in 1857. Poor Lewis was an elderly seventeen at the time, with many more responsibilities in his father's office.

When Lewis saw her the second time he and his father were in Syracuse for a celebration of the Jerry Rescue, which had taken place when he was eleven.

In June 1858, the elder Douglass spoke at New York Central College. Frederick Douglass' Paper had been advertising the school, which billed itself as teaching "Radical Anti-Slavery and the Equality of the Sexes." She may have been visiting Rochester because father Douglass had no speaking engagements in Syracuse that month, and Syracuse was not in their path from Rochester to McGrawville. Clearly, Lewis was not a fan of the Bloomer dress, which was on its way out of fashion at the time. That Amelia, a black woman, wore a dress so reviled in polite society suggests her commitment to that area of reform.

Their Geneva meeting took place at a West Indian Emancipation Day celebration. The "dark," which was probably an insult, seems to have been a young man interested in Amelia, who appeared to have been accompanied by Rosetta, Lewis's sister. 

Unfortunately, the rest of this letter was missing. I would like to know how these early, distant exchanges became the flirtation in which she "poked fun" of him with kisses. 

"Articles" for the Bazaar

From Frederick Douglass' Paper, 10 July 1857:

Some of the articles mentioned in the Bazaar Report as commanding a ready sale, are as follows: -- materials for children's dresses unmade; aprons and pinafores of all kinds made up; baby linen, with the exception of caps; hosiery, worked collars, and cuffs; crochet work of all kinds, tatting, and knitted edgings; cambric handkerchiefs; fine Irish linens; boxes of tapes; white crochet mats and doyleys; purses and balls; needle-books and pin-cushions of superior quality; knitted and embroidered slippers; sofa cushions, and carriage bags; Honiton lace; papier machie ornaments; Irish bog oak ornaments; fancy stationary, and water colored drawings.

Antislavery women, "were forced to defer to the men and to sit home expending their energy on handicraft monstrosities to send to Maria Chapman for her antislavery bazaars in Boston," wrote William McFeely in his biography of Frederick Douglass (p. 142). Granted, the volume came out in 1991, when historians were only beginning to scratch the surface of women's roles and work in the antislavery movement. Still, this passage makes me cringe. 

The excerpt from Frederick Douglass' Paper above, shows the types of items that these women made and which ones sold well. "Children's dresses," "aprons and pinafores," "baby linen," "slippers," "carriage bags," "hosiery" and so forth were all useful items that could take time to make and not available ready-made. Nicer items, such as the lace, drawing, and stationary all made nice gifts. As the two types of "ornaments" indicate, even then people purchased items for Christmas, a holiday gaining popularity in a form that we would recognize, with Christmas trees and presents, even if the whole celebration would shock today's celebrants with its modesty. 

As for the bazaar, mentioned in such passing as to suggest its irrelevance, Chapman could bring in a thousand dollars or more each year. That kept antislavery lecturers on the road and the Liberator and National Anti-Slavery Standard in print. 

Don't underestimate the knitters!