?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
ON THE EVE OF HIS MARRIAGE TO HELEN PITTS (SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) DOUGLASS, FREDERICK. Sulfur Bitters, the Great Blood Purifier. Chromolithographic print 7-1/8 x 9-3/8 inches; some wear and discoloration, a pencil scribble on the reverse. [Boston, circa 1888]
a rare "trade card," with a not-so-subtle joke on the product name, "sulfur bitters, the great blood purifier." A racist image depicting Frederick Douglass, in fancy dress, with top-hat and walking stick, and his new white bride, emerging from a pharmacy. To his left are a number of boxes and a sign for "Sulfur Bitters, the Great Blood Purifier." His bride looks up fondly to her husband who holds a box of bitters. In the background, a "Cheshire Cat" grins broadly, while two newsboys remark about the couple. In 1888, after a long period of mourning, following the death of his wife, Frederick Douglass married Helen Pitts. Pitts, a white woman, was the daughter of Gideon Pitts, an upstate New York abolitionist. Contrary to Douglass's naïve belief that theirs would be a symbolic and welcome union of the two races, the public, including Pitts' father, was incensed. Not only did he reject his new son-in-law, he refused his home to him, and would only visit his daughter in Washington when Douglass was away. Douglass's children reacted similarly. What is surprising is Douglass' apparent naïveté regarding the state of race relations in America in 1888.
