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RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Bridport, [Eng.] 10 June 1876.
DEAR MR. DOUGLASS:
I have just been writing an article for the Inquirer “The Freedmen’s Monument” founded on the interesting pamphlet which you sent my wife1Douglass probably sent Mary Browne Carpenter a copy of the pamphlet containing his speech of 14 April 1876. Oration by Frederick Douglass Delivered on the Occasion of the Unveiling Freedmen’s Memorial Monument to Abraham Lincoln, in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., April 14th, 1876; with an Appendix (Washington, D.C., 1876). It <(the article)> is a very poor affair, and I should have proposed reprinting your oration, to the few extracts I gave for it; but it will do a little to keep you in the remembrances of those whom your affectionate disposition [illegible] shd remember you.
You have had a great deal to spoil you, in your life; but your enemies could not spoil you, neither have your admirers, done so. I only wish that those whose circumstances have turned so much more favourable than yours, could do equal much? t[o] them. But “such are the seas of adversity”:2One of the earliest references to this phrase comes from a 1770 letter from the poet and playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who was quoted in Thomas Moore’s writings as stating: “We are born in a state of warfare with poverty and distress. The sea of adversity is our natural element, and he that will not buffet with the billows deserves to sink.” Thomas Moore, “Memoirs of the Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan,” Complete Poetical Works (Hastings, Eng., 2016), 63. and perhaps your trials have helped to make you what you are.
I have been writing an article “The New Abolitionist” in which the only warm-hearted paper may seem an extract for a speech by Dr. Martineau3James Martineau (1805–1900) was born in Norwich, England, to Thomas and Elizabeth Martineau, and was the brother of the famed abolitionist Harriet Martineau. He was a Unitarian minister and philosopher, attended Lant Carpenter’s school in Bristol, and served congregations in Dublin, Liverpool, and, finally, Bristol, where he preached in the Unitarian Chapel from 1864. He worked as a professor of moral philosophy and served as principal of Manchester College (1869–85). He was also the editor of the Prospective Review (1845–54); published several of his sermons in edited collections, including Hours of Thought on Sacred Things (1876 and 1879); and wrote books, including Rationale of Religious Enquiry (1836), Types of Ethical Theory (1885), A Study of Religion (1888), and The Seat of Authority in Religion (1890). He married Helen Higginson in 1828. Bristol (U.K.) Western Daily Press, 11 November 1864; Bristol (Eng.) Times and Mirror, 12 November 1864; “1851 England and Wales Census,” Ancestry.co.uk; J. Estlin Carpenter, James Martineau: Theologian, and Teacher; A Study of His Life and Thought, (London, 1905), 1–20, 50–80, 120–30, 190–95, 460–70. but my friend Mrs. Butler?4Josephine Butler (1828–1906) was born in Northumberland to John and Hannah Grey. In 1852 she married George Butler, who was ordained two years later and eventually became residentiary canon of Winchester Cathedral in 1882. The couple had four children. Because of her husband’s ministerial work, Butler lived in Liverpool, Oxford, Cheltenham, and Winchester, and in each place dedicated her life to helping working-class women, particularly prostitutes. She established the International Abolitionist Federation in Liverpool in 1875 and successfully campaigned against the Contagious Diseases Acts in the 1880s. A decade later, Butler was an active campaigner during the “white slavery” panic in London; she encouraged Parliament to target traffickers of women and to increase the age of sexual consent to sixteen. She was a passionate supporter of education and published numerous books, including The Constitution Violated (1871), The Salvation Army in Switzerland (1883), Recollections of George Butler (1892), Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade (1896), and Native Races and the War (1900), the last one intended to encourage support for British military intervention in South Africa. She published several pamphlets, including The Education and Employment of Women (1868), An Appeal to the People of England on the Recognition and Superintendence of Prostitution by Governments (1870), and A State Regulation of Vice (1876). She died in Northumberland. Josephine Butler, Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade, (1896; Cambridge, Eng. 2010); Jenny Daggers and Diana Neal, eds., introduction to Sex, Gender and Religion (New York, 2006), 1–20. instantly dislikes to have anything on the subject of “C. D. A”;5The Contagious Diseases Acts were a series of laws passed between 1864 and 1869 to lower the rates of sexually transmitted diseases in the British armed forces. The government believed that high rates of disease compromised military preparedness. The acts focused on specific garrisons, military towns, and ports and gave local authorities the power to arrest and detain women whom they deemed to be prostitutes within these areas. If a local judge approved the arrest, the woman was forced to undergo a medical examination or else face imprisonment for up to three months. A woman found to have a venereal disease was sent to a “lock hospital” to be treated. Although the acts were intended to regulate prostitution and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, their passage in Parliament caused widespread outrage among feminists. In 1869, Josephine Butler established the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and separate branches were established across the country. The organization’s newspaper, the Shield, declared that “the system of these acts is a conspiracy, of the foulest kind, against the womanhood of the realm.” Butler, together with the leading politician James Stansfeld and their supporters, proved the acts were unconstitutional and did nothing to reduce the spread of venereal disease among the armed forces. After the repeal of the acts in 1886, Butler continued her campaign to abolish the Indian Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, which were still in operation. London Shield, 25 July 1870; Margaret Hamilton, “Opposition to the Contagious Diseases Acts 1864–1886,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 10: 14–18 (Spring, 1978); Pamela Cox, “Compulsion, Voluntarism, and Venereal Disease: Governing Sexual Health in England after the Contagious Diseases Acts,” Journal of British Studies, 46: 95–97 (January 2007). and I know that only a very tame creature would be allowed entrance!
It has been deferred a fortnight.
I expect it will be in, next week: and, if no, I shall send my article on your Nation, to which he cannot possibly take exception: and, in a month’s time (when you and your friend will have your thoughts employed on quite other matters!) & hope to send it you—or to write to you why it is not sent.
I am sure I dont remember what I said to you at Halifax—but if I said anything good, I am proud that you remember it.
I should be pleased, in any way, to help one who has very often helped me out of some of my cynical and desponding moods.
I have pleasure in [illegible], and [illegible] my great [illegible] to relations and friends.
I have been glancing at a large illustrated book on the South—by a Mr. White6This is possibly a reference to Carl Schurz’s The Condition of the South: Extracts from the Report of Major-General Carl Schurz, on the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana: Addressed to the President, (Washington, 1866). An 1866 edition credits another author, Andrew Dickson White. It is quite possible, however, that Carpenter misremembered the author, since another likely candidate is Edward King’s The Great South; A Record of Journeys in Louisiana, Texas, the Indian Territory, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland (Hartford, Conn. 1875), which contained illustrations by J. Wells Champney and was first published as a series of magazine articles. I think,—contributed originally to one of your magazines. Of
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course the article seizes on the ludicrous phases, and there is much in the book to make one sad; but, on the whole, the writer sympathized with the efforts made to reach and elevate your race.
I want to come over and see them, some day, though I am not of an age to enjoy the weather of American land, as I did 27 years ago:7Carpenter visited the U.S. in 1850 and traveled (by his count) roughly thirteen thousand miles through New York, Washington, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. He stopped at Rochester, but Douglass was not home; instead, Anna invited him to tea. Carpenter later wrote there was “much to converse about.” Carpenter and Douglass met by chance on a train in New England, and the latter was “afraid lest his English friends should be set against him by his desire to occupy a position independent of the Garrisonians.” Douglass regretted that Carpenter “could not employ that unqualified denunciation of slaveholders . . . but he knew my views on this point” when he stayed with the family in Bridgwater, England. Carpenter published a book about his American travels, Observations on American Slavery, after a Year’s Tour in the United States (1852). Russell Lant Carpenter to Samuel May, February 1850, digitalcommonwealth.org; Russell Lant Carpenter, Observations on American Slavery, after a Year’s Tour in the United States (London, 1852). and both your heat and your cold might be perillous t[o] me.
Before writing my article, I did what only an old man is able t[o] do— viz glanced at many of my old articles in the Inquirer: and in one of them (Oct. 1863) I see a column to the heroic daring of Sargent L. Douglass.8Lewis H. Douglass. I wonder what he is doing now.
I hope that your generosity to your own family has not prevented you from making a suitable provision for old age.
I trust that you were not involved in great pecuniary responsibility by that unhappy Bank.9Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company.
Please excuse a hasty line: and Believe me, ever very faithfully yours,
RUSSELL L. CARPENTER
[P.S.] My sister Mary bore her late Indian journey very well: and has brought home two little Brahmians at 8 and 12. The elder attends the Bristol Grammar School, where the boys are kind to him. It is too soon to say how the experiment will answer?
ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2 frames 842–44L, FD Papers, DLC.
