Henry O. Wagoner to Frederick Douglass, August 27, 1866

HENRY O. WAGONER^{1One of Douglass’s most enduring friendships was with Henry O. Wagoner, Sr. (1816–1901). Born in Hagerstown, Maryland, to a formerly enslaved mother and a German father, Wagoner learned to read and write despite a lack of formal education. He spent most of his youth working on western Maryland farms, but fled to Ohio in 1838 for fear that his Underground Railroad activities had roused suspicion. The following year he moved to Galena, Illinois, where he found employment as a newspaper typesetter and bill collector. He next worked for a newspaper and taught at a school in Chatham, Canada West, from 1843 until he relocated to Chicago in 1846, where he ran a profitable milling business. Wagoner met Douglass during one of the latter’s lecture tours in Illinois in the late 1840s and became an occasional correspondent for Douglass’s newspaper. Wagoner participated in abolitionist activities and aided John Brown in March 1858 by offering his mill as a hiding place for escaping Missouri slaves en route to Canada. During the Civil War, Wagoner recruited black troops for regiments in Illinois and Massachusetts. In 1865, he settled in Denver, Colorado, where he established a barbering business and quickly became a leader in the African American community. An active Republican, Wagoner campaigned for male suffrage as Colorado applied for statehood in the 1860s; served as deputy sheriff of Arapaho County, Colorado, between 1865 and 1875; and received an appointment as clerk of the Colorado state legislature in 1876. With years of friendship between them, Wagoner and Douglass aided each other’s adult sons. In 1866, Wagoner hosted Frederick Jr. and Lewis in Denver, teaching them typography. Eight years later, Douglass returned the favor by helping Henry O. Wagoner, Jr., secure a position as consular clerk in Paris, France. The younger Wagoner died while in Lyons, France, and upon the elder Wagoner’s request, Douglass looked for the grave during his 1886 European tour. Henry O. Wagoner to Douglass, 27 August 1866, 10 December 1873, 23 March 1878, 13 July, 13 October 1885, 19 August 1886, 1 September 1890, 17 August 1893, Henry O. Wagoner, Jr., to Douglass, 2 April 1874, 12 May 1877, Douglass to Lewis Douglass, 24 January 1887, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 197–98, 700–703, 733–36, reel 3, frames 122–26, 241–43, reel 4, frames 193, 217–19, 380–81, reel 5, frames 783–84, reel 32, frames 250–51, FD Papers, DLC; NS, 18 February 1848, 24 August 1849; FDP, 11 December 1851; Denver Rocky Mountain News, 28 December 1901; Simmons, Men of Mark, 679–84; Benjamin Quarles, Allies for Freedom: Blacks and John Brown (New York, 1974), 39, 59; Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990 (New York, 1998), 123.} TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Denver, Colo. 27 Aug[us]t 1866.

FREDK DOUGLASS, ESQR.,

ROCHESTER, N. Y.,

MY DEAR FRIEND,—

I am doing most of my manual labor, in my Establishment, and, therefore, I am not in condition to write letters, nevertheless, I cannot resist

the temptation to write you a brief letter, after having had the privilege & pleasure of seeing two letters from you, received by your son Frederick^{2Frederick Douglass, Jr. (1842–92), was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, the second son of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass. Throughout his adult life, Frederick Jr. struggled to achieve success within the same industries as his famous father. For years he tried unsuccessfully to obtain membership in the typographical union; however, he did work with several newspapers, including the New National Era. He was also a frequent contributor to other newspapers, such as the Detroit Plaindealer, the New York Times, and Baltimore’s National Leader, where he worked until his death. He was the only of Douglass’s sons not to enlist in the Union army. Henry O. Wagoner, a close friend of his father’s, took Frederick Jr. and his brother Lewis to Denver in 1866 to help them establish their careers. Ultimately, their attempts failed, and the two returned east. During an outbreak of influenza in 1890, Frederick Jr.’s wife, Virginia, died. Their son Frederick, Frederick Douglass III, as well as several other of the couple’s children, died at a young age. Frederick Jr. succumbed to a prolonged and painful illness in July 1892. New York Times, 24 September 1876; Washington Bee, 30 July 1892; Detroit Plaindealer, 12 August 1892; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 97, 145, 248–49, 258, 272, 342, 365.} and our mutual friend, A. H. Richardson.^{3This is most likely a reference to the A. H. Richardson who is listed as a blacksmith in the 1866 Denver City Directory. It is also probable that this is the same A. H. Richardson who died and was buried there in 1888. “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995,” Ancestry.com; Find a Grave (online).}3—In both of those letters you have been pleased to Express grateful sentiments toward me, for the very little it has been in my power to do for your two sons, Lewis^{4Lewis H. Douglass.} and Frederick, just previous to, and since their arrival in this Territory. What I have done for your boys, is but a feeble Expression of my constitional disposition to help my race in particular, and Mankind in general. As you have well said to Frederick, that he and his brother have “a future,” but you and I have very little more left than “a past,” and, therefore, what I do, in the way of bettering my physical Condition, and that of my beloved family,^{5During the course of their marriage, Henry and Susan Wagoner (1819–70) had eight children. Out of those eight, only the oldest and youngest daughters outlived Wagoner, who died in 1901. In late 1865, his four children, one son and three daughters, were living in Chicago with Susan. During the summer of 1866, Wagoner’s family joined him in Denver. Ulysses S. Grant, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, ed. John Y. Simon, 32 vols. (Carbondale, Ill., 2000), 24:112n; Richard Junger, “ ‘Thinking Men and Women Who Desire to Improve Our Condition’: Henry O. Wagoner, Civil Rights, and Black Economic Opportunity in Frontier Chicago and Denver, 1846–1887,” in Voices from within the Veil: African Americans and the Experience of Democracy, edited by William H. Alexander, Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander, and Charles H. Ford (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Eng., 2008), 157, 160.} must be done quickly. I am very anxious to get through here and get back to my dear wife & children.

Well, the boys have taken hold in good Earnest, the particulars of which, they, doubtless, have written you. Lewis, I take to be a young man of strong, clear good sense. He seems to drive right a head at the object aimed at. Frederick, however, seems to be more Cautious, reflecting, hesitative, And, as you say, “practical.” I Can Easily discover that they are both very desirous of succeeding in their undertaking, whatever they may finally verge into; and, the will to do, is almost success.

Well, whatever of Counsel & tangible assistance it may, from time to time, be in my power to render the boys, I will most cheerfully and gladly do; so, also, will our mutual friend, Richardson. He is a different Man, in that direction, to his brother-in law, J. J.^{6Possibly either J. J. Gangloff, who is listed as a clerk in the 1866 city directory, or J. J. Hayman, who is described in the same directory as having committed suicide “through remorse at his unwarranted treatment of his wife and family.” “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.”}

As the great Pacific R R is progressing so rapidly,^{7In August 1866, the tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad had extended 150 miles west of Omaha, Nebraska. By the end of the month, regular trains began running the full 197 miles from Omaha to Fort Kearney in central Nebraska Territory. Bangor (Me.) Daily Whig & Courier, 27 August 1866; Henry Tanner, Directory & Shippers’ Guide of Kansas & Nebraska: Containing Full and Complete Descriptions of the Cities, Towns and Villages, with the Names and Addresses of the Merchants, Manufacturers, Professional Men, etc., Together with a Record of the Government and Institutions of the States, and a Variety of Useful Information (Leavenworth City, Kans., 1866), 158, 197; David Howard Bain, Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (New York, 1999), 286; Edward J. Renehan, Jr., The Transcontinental Railroad: The Gateway to the West (New York, 2007), 106.} I have several times Expressed, to Richardson and Hardin,^{8Born near Russellville, Kentucky, William Jefferson Hardin (1831–89) was the son of a free biracial mother and a white father, who, he claimed, was a close relative of the Kentucky congressman Benjamin Hardin. In 1839, Hardin was taken in by the South Union Shaker Community near Bowling Green, Kentucky, where he remained for the next eleven years. In 1849, he left the community and accepted a job teaching free African American children in Bowling Green. That same year, he married an enslaved woman named Caroline, with whom he had two children: a son who died in infancy and a daughter. Unable to save enough money from his teaching position to purchase his wife and child’s freedom, Hardin left Kentucky sometime in 1850 to seek his fortune in the California gold rush. After five years of failure, he left California and spent several years traveling across the American West and Canada. In 1862, however, he settled in New Orleans, where he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Third Regiment of Louisiana’s Native Guard. Although Hardin was one of the few African Americans to become a commissioned officer in the Union army during the Civil War, his service lasted only a few months. To protest the increasingly racist policies enacted by the new commander of the Native Guard, and in solidarity with his fellow black troops, Hardin joined their mass resignation in February 1863. Later that same year, he returned to the West, settling in Denver, Colorado. There Hardin established a successful business as a barber and gained fame as a public speaker, becoming known by the locals as the “Colored Orator of Denver.” In 1872 he was named a delegate-at-large from the Colorado Territory to the Republican National Convention. In early 1873, he married a white milliner named Nellie Davidson and accepted a position with the U.S. Mint. Later in the year, however, Hardin’s first wife (and daughter) arrived in Denver and immediately charged him with bigamy. Hardin succeeded in having the charges dismissed, successfully arguing that since he had been a minor and she had been a slave at the time of the marriage, it was not legal in the first place. The scandal, however, damaged his reputation (he was fired from the mint), and by the end of 1873, Hardin and his wife had sold their holdings in Denver and moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he opened another successful barbershop. In 1879, Hardin was elected to the first of two terms in the Wyoming Territorial Legislature, becoming the only African American to serve in that body. However, in August 1882, following the failure of his marriage, and over a year before the end of his second term in the legislature, he sold his property in Cheyenne and moved to Park City, Utah. In failing health, Hardin committed suicide in Park City in 1889. 1870 U.S. Census, Territory of Colorado, Arapahoe County, 46; Gary Kimball, “William Jefferson Hardin: A Grand but Forgotten Park City African American,” Utah Historical Quarterly, 78: 23–38 (Winter 2010); Lori Van Pelt, “William Jefferson Hardin: Wyoming’s First Black Legislator,” WyoHistory.org.} the probability of our hearing you Speak, at no distant day^{9No record exists of Frederick Douglass ever visiting or speaking in Denver, Colorado.}, in the fine Hall of Dr McClellen is just Erecting in this city.^{10Probably Dr. William F. McClelland (c. 1822–1901), one of the first physicians to settle in Denver. He was one of the organizers of both the Denver and Colorado medical societies. McClelland published research on the effect of climatic conditions found in mountainous regions on pulmonary illnesses. Philadelphia Medical Journal, 7: 751 (20 April 1901); Wilbur Fiske Stone, History of Colorado, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1918), 1: 767–70.}

Well, by the last of the Coming Autumn, the time between Denver and Chicago will only be 4 or 5 days, by RR and Coaches—At the present time, business is very dull in Denver, which is always the Case in the month of August. From the first of September, clear up to January, business, in former years, has been good in Denver—

Well, a simple reference to the political aspect of the Country. Notwithstanding the “clouds” which have arisen in high places, and seem to darken the political horizon, yet I am as firm as ever in the belief that bad men, or devils, can do a very little here than Cause a sort of Vibration to the Car of progress, in its onward March; for, “onward is the language of creation,” and no Man or set of men Can long withstand, or throw back

God’s rolling Elements of truth and progress—“As well might they tell the grass not to grow, or the winds not to blow,” as to attempt to stop the Onward March of these elements—From planet to planet, from ocean to ocean, from the Smallest rivulet to the unfathomable Sea”—and from the Smallest hamlet to the most populous city, all is onward.^{11George Linnaeus Banks, “Onward” An Inaugural Address Delivered to the Directors & Members of the Institute, and to the Inhabitants of the Town, in the Victoria Room, Harrogate, on Tuesday Evening, November 14th, 1848, on the Occasion of Re-establishing the Harrogate Mechanics’ and Literary Institute (London, 1848).} But I have forgotten myself, & have written more than I intended.

Regards to your dear family, & best wishes for yourself—

Your friend & brother

H. O. WAGONER

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 197–98, FD Papers, DLC.

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