Martha Waldo Greene to Frederick Douglass, March 16, 1876

MARTHA WALDO GREENE^{1Martha Waldo Brown Greene (1820–1902) was the daughter of John and Mary Hodges Brown. She married William Arnold Greene (1822–73) on 9 May 1842. Her husband was engaged in the mercantile business in New York City during the time Martha Greene was an officer of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1842–43). The couple then moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, where they had six children. Martha and Douglass remained relatively close friends after the Civil War. She wrote him letters concerning private matters such as his relationship with Ottilie Assing and helped him recover from depression after his first wife died in 1882. Martha died in Melrose, Massachusetts, which was the residence of her daughter, Martha Greene Sherman. Martha W. Greene to Frederick Douglass, 7 July 1864, 2 August 1865, 22 July 1871, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 40–42, 138–39, 604–05, FD Papers, DLC; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 306, 368; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 167; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 313.} TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Prov[idence,] R.I.^{2Greene supplied additional details on her address: “11 Cushing St. Prov. R.I.”} 16 March [1876].

MY DEAR FRIEND

To know that you will be 10 days longer, where a written word will reach you without delay, is to make it impossible for me to stay my pen. It is in vain for me to wish there were no barriers to a more satisfactory inter communication. Could I speak to you face to face, I think you would see that your “call,” was not the one I had promised to heed. You said “come and I will show you the Capitol, and give you an earlier taste of Spring than you can get in New E <ngland]>[”] <afterwards you told me you had wanted me to help you about arranging yr house &c—but not when you

first asked, even that.> not “I am sick and need you. Come”! Am I not right? You say “Woman should be man’s custodian.” do you not mean of his good name as well as of himself?^{3While many of Greene’s letters to Douglass have survived, there are none from Douglass that provide clues to Greene’s description of an invitation to visit him in Washington, D.C., in the spring.}

Under the circumstances, should I have been such had I gone to you? But no more now. I can not help saying this much. But don’t get sick, and don’t need me that way so long as the “fates are against it—”

I deeply sympathize with you in your self forgetting me for poor dear Rosa and hope her loyalty for Nathan will be so wise as to make the years experience of service to him for all the future.^{4Greene probably alludes to the fact that Nathan Sprague spent most of 1876 in jail in Rochester after pleading guilty to mail fraud. Rosetta was hounded by debt collectors in Rochester, and by the end of the year she had moved with her children to Douglass’s Cedar Hill home in Washington, D.C. Rosetta Douglass Sprague to Frederick Douglass, 17 September 1876, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 862–65, FD Papers, DLC; Fought, Women, 220–21.}

Write a word please before you go West.^{5In early March 1876, Douglass had just returned to Washington from a speaking tour of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. He would not travel west again until mid-June, when he attended the Republican National Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4: xxxiv–xxxv.} And will you not come to R.I on yr way back to Washington? You will be no less welcome here now than when my sisters were living.^{6Martha Greene had two older sisters, Mary Hodges Brown Adams (1814–72) and Sarah Josephine Brown (1817–75), who had died in Rhode Island. Find a Grave (online).} and if you would like to give any one of your lectures before the F.R. Ass.^{7Greene appears to allude to the Free Religious Association, a loose collection of progressive Friends, Unitarians, Spiritualists, Jews, and freethinkers that had formed in 1867. Many former abolitionists, such as Lucretia Mott, Wendell Phillips, Oliver Johnson, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, attended and addressed its annual meetings. Douglass was listed among the association’s many vice presidents in 1892–93. William J. Potter, Free Religious Association: Its Twenty-Five Years and Their Meaning (Boston, 1892), 2, 7–17.} I believe they will pay you for it—by knowing in time, <so> not to have engaged any other—

as ever

MARTHA W G

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 32, frames 30R–31, FD Papers, DLC.

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