Charles A. Hammond to Frederick Douglass, March 20, 1877

CHARLES A. HAMMOND^{1The Reverend Charles A. Hammond (1825–?) was the minister of Gerrit Smith’s Free Church at Peterboro, New York, and an active member of the Radical Abolitionist party. After the Civil War, he studied for the bar and practiced law in Syracuse. He wrote and lectured on behalf of prohibition. Hammond wrote Gerrit Smith: The Story of a Noble Man, a flattering biography of his early mentor. Lib., 7 September 1860; The Cyclopaedia of Temperance and Prohibition: A Reference Book of Facts (New York, 1891), vi; Charles A. Hammond, Gerrit Smith: The Story of a Noble Man (Geneva, N.Y., 1900).} TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Syracuse, N[.]Y.^{2Hammond added “No 8 Clinton Block” to his address.} 20 March 1877[.]

F. DOUGLASS ESQR

DEAR SIR

Allow me, as a life-long Abolitionist & an old admirer & friend of yours to congratulate you on your confirmation to an office which, though far below your merit, will, I suppose, be of some value, pecuniarily & otherwise.

I think <in> the Senate itself, your proper place, but I am glad Southern Demacrats see that it would be mean & impolitic in them to refuse confirmation of your appointment. I suppose you & I have not voted alike for some years, (I voted for Smith^{3Green Clay Smith (1832–95), politician, soldier, and prohibitionist, was born in Richmond, Kentucky. Before receiving his education, he served as a volunteer during the Mexican War. He then attended Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he graduated in 1849, and also received his law degree from that school in 1852. After practicing law in Richmond and then Covington, Kentucky, he served in the state legislature (1860–61). On the outbreak of the Civil War, Smith was appointed colonel of the Fourth Kentucky Cavalry in the Union army, eventually rising to the rank of brigadier general. In 1863 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, eventually serving two terms. The following year, Smith nearly became Lincoln’s running mate on the Union party ticket after losing to Johnson by one vote. In 1866–68, Smith served as the second territorial governor of Montana. In 1869 he was ordained a Baptist minister and presided over a congregation in Frankfort, Kentucky. A staunch advocate of temperance, he was selected as the Prohibition party’s candidate for vice president of the United States in 1876. From 1890 until his death, Smith served as pastor of the Metropolitan Baptist Church of Washington, D.C. Thomas William Herringshaw, ed., Herringshaw’s Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1898), 860; Thomas Speed, Records and Memorials of the Speed Family (Louisville, Ky., 1892), 91–92; Ezra J. Warner, Jr., Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders (1964; Baton Rouge, 1992), 765; Darcy Richardson, Others: Third Party Politics from the Nation’s Founding to the Rise and Fall of the Greenback-Labor Party (New York, 2004), 466.} & Stewart^{4Gideon Tabor Stewart (1824–1909), temperance advocate, was born in Johnstown, New York, to Thomas Ferguson Stewart and Petreshe (Hill) Stewart. He attended Oberlin College but left before graduating to study law in Norwalk and then Columbus, Ohio. Stewart was admitted to the bar in August 1846 and became a law partner of Jairus Kennan. From 1850 to 1856, he served as auditor of Huron County and then resumed his law practice until the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1861, Stewart moved to Iowa and purchased the Dubuque Times, a pro-Union daily, printing it until the close of the war, when he sold the paper and moved back to Ohio. Stewart then purchased and edited the Toledo Commercial briefly before returning to Norwalk and resuming his law practice in 1866. Initially a member of the Whig party, he later joined the Republicans and then the Prohibition party. Stewart served as chairman of its national committee for four years, was nominated three times as the party’s candidate for governor of Ohio, and ran nine times as its candidate for judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio. In 1876 he served as the Prohibition party’s candidate for vice president. He was a member of the Sons of Temperance and the American Bible Society as well as an advocate of various temperance movements. Gregory Irving Reed, ed., Bench and Bar of Ohio: A Compendium of History and Biography, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1897) 1: 205–07; Richardson, Others, 466; ACAB, 5: 686.} Prohibition), but I rejoice in your welfare & remain, as ever, the sincere friend of you & your race; both the human race & the particular branches of it with which you are connected.

C. A. HAMMOND^{5Hammond added “(Atty &c.)” following his signature.}

[P.S] I should feel honored by a call from you when in town: as I learned you were here, recently; though “Marshall Douglass” is less honorable than simple Frederick Douglass.

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 48R–49, FD Papers, DLC.

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