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(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) DOUGLASS, FREDERICK.
Autograph
Letter Signed to one of the sons of Alphonso Janes of Providence, RI.
Two pages,
small 8vo, written on Douglass’ Anacostia letterhead; paper lightly and evenly toned.
Anacostia, D.C., 6 July 1889
[40,000/60,000]
A SPLENDID LETTER FROM DOUGLASS
,
ACKNOWLEDGING A LETTER OF CONGRATULATION
ON HIS APPOINTMENT AS MINISTER TO HAYTI
.
“My dear Dr. Janes; I have received many letters
of congratulation [about] my appointment a Minister to Hayti, but none more welcome than yours.
There are two people in Providence who have lived in my memory eight and forty years. One your
kind mother and the other your big-hearted father. It was under their roofs—when roofs in Providence
were [there] for me—that I did my first writing for the press. I worked hard on that first letter and
showed it to your father and was much encouraged when he told me it was a good letter. We little
thought then that we should live to see the American Union [severed] the slaves liberated—the coun-
try again united on a basis of Liberty and Equality of all the peoples—most of all, did we ever
imagine that I would be sent abroad to represent this country as Minister and Consul General. Accept
my warmest thanks for you kind letter, Very Truly Yours, Frederick Douglass.”
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