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    • Author/Creator:Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895.
    • Title:Frederick Douglass correspondence with William L. Thomas
    • Physical Description:0.21 linear feet (1 box)
    • Yale Holdings

       
    • Notes:In English.
      Gift of the Thomas Stevenson Whitman Family, 2017.
    • Access and use:This material is open for research.
    • Biographical / Historical note:Frederick Douglass was an African-American abolitionist, writer, social reformer, orator, and statesman. He was born in 1818 and died on February 20, 1895.
      William L. Thomas was a lawyer, abolitionist, and politician. He was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on March 15, 1789, to Joshua Thomas and Isabella Stevenson. He attended Harvard University from 1803 to 1807 and after graduating he studied law with his father. Thomas went on to work as a lawyer in Plymouth for his entire career. During the War of 1812, he served as quartermaster of the Massachusetts Militia's 1st Regiment, 5th division, and he held many political positions throughout his life, including justice of the peace, master of chancery, county sheriff, and member of the Massachusetts legislature. Thomas also edited the newspaper Old Colony Memorial and contributed editorials to the North American Review. He died on September 20, 1882.
    • Summary:Contains two autograph letters, signed, from Frederick Douglass to William L. Thomas, dated 1865 October 11 and October 17; one autograph letter, signed, from Thomas to Douglass, dated 1877 April 6; one printed death notice for Anna Murray Douglass, dated 1882 August 4; and one printed page from Harper's Weekly, dated 1877 April 21. In Douglass's first letter to Thomas, he requests that Thomas organize a November 27 meeting in Plymouth, Massachusetts of fellow abolitionists to discuss his concern for freed slaves in the South due to their lack political power. The second letter to Thomas clarifies that Douglass meant to request a meeting for October 27 and Douglass writes that he looks forward to his time in Plymouth. Thomas's letter to Douglass contains words of congratulations for the occasion of Douglass's Presidential appointment of U.S. Marshal of the District of Columbia and mentions that Wendell Phillips gave a lecture in Plymouth a few days earlier. Anna Murray Douglass's death notice states that she died at sixty-nine years old on Friday morning, 1882 August 4, after a four week illness caused by a stroke that left her paralyzed; and it contains words of invitation to attend a funeral at the Douglass residence on August 6. The printed page from Harper's Weekly is an article on Douglass's appointment of U.S. Marshal of the District of Columbia.
    • Format:Archives or Manuscripts
    • Cite as:Frederick Douglass Correspondence with William L. Thomas. James Weldon Johnson Collection in the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
    • Subjects:Douglass, Anna Murray, -1882.
      Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895--Correspondence.
      Phillips, Wendell, 1811-1884.
      Thomas, William L.--Correspondence.
      African Americans--Politics and government.
      Families.
      United States--Race relations.
    • Occupation:Abolitionists.
      Reformers.
      Social reformers.