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Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
FREDERICK DOUGLASS. Letter confirming his upcoming lecture on John Brown. Autograph Letter Signed as "Fred'k Douglass" to unknown recipient. 2 pages, 8 x 5 inches, plus integral blank; light toning. Washington, 28 November [1882?]
Douglass makes arrangements for a lecture on his old friend John Brown, whose raid on Harper's Ferry he had supported but refused to join back in 1859. Here he writes: "You may depend upon me for a lecture on 'John Brown' in Vineland Tuesday evening December 12th on the conditions already agreed to. I hope you will give me a good audience on the occasion. My health is quite equal to the work before me. Please tell me at what time it will be necessary to leave Philadelphia in order to reach you in time? I can be in Philadelphia about half past one on the afternoon of Tuesday. Will this be early enough to connect for Vineland?"
Vineland, NJ was founded as a progressive utopian community in 1862; Douglass was recruited as an early member but never moved there. Douglass revealed many of the details of his relationship with John Brown for the first time in an 1881 lecture at Storer College, and elaborated on them in his 1881 autobiography, "Life and Times." He lectured frequently on Brown over the next few years. His first wife Anna died in August 1882, and Douglass was widely reported to be in ill health in late November and December 1882. December 12th fell on a Tuesday in 1876, 1882, and 1893, but the 1882 date seems most likely, although he was still on the lecture circuit in 1893.
WITH--a period photograph of an engraved portrait of Douglass, 5 x 3 1/2 inches oval, on embossed mount of publisher Foust Studios of Wilson, NC. Provenance: Carol Yvonne Perdue Black Memorabilia Collection.
