380

1008 HISTORICAL ANNOTATION

tury, had been a major port and resort city in Roman times under the name Puteoli. It
also was the site where the Apostle Paul landed in Italy on his journey to Rome for
trial by imperial officials. Murray, Handbook for Travellers in Southern ltaly,
298-99.

426.12 the tomb of Virgil] Located in the western outskirts of late-nineteenth-
century Naples, the small tomb of Virgil had attracted reverential visits by admirers
of the poet since late Roman times. Murray, Handbook for Travellers in Southern
Italy, 173-76.

426.12-13 the spot ... villas of Cicero] Cicero had been born in Isola near Naples
and at various times in his life resided at villas near modem-day Mola, Pozzuoli, and
Monteleone, all in that locale. Murray, Handbook for Travellers in Southern ltaly, 15,
59, 304, 398.

426.13-14 islands of Capri and lschia] The site of many health resorts in
Douglass's day, the Isle of Capri, twenty miles south of Naples, became famous as the
scene of the debaucheries of the Roman emperor Tiberius. Ischia is a volcanic island
of twenty-six square miles located six miles off the Italian coast west of Naples.
Murray, Handbook for Travellers in Southern Italy, 263-69, 328-37.

426.16 Rev. J. C. Fletcher and wife] Probably James Cooley Fletcher (1823-
1901), Presbyterian clergyman and missionary, born in Indianapolis. He graduated
from Brown University in 1846. Following his ordination in 1851, Fletcher spent
most of his career as a missionary in South America and Europe. He acted as an agent
for the American Bible Society in Brazil in 1855 and 1856, after which he returned to
the United States for several years. Returning to Brazil in 1862, he served as an agent
of the American Sunday School Union, traveling some 2,000 miles up the Amazon
River gathering natural specimens. From 1869 until 1873 he resided in Portugal, hold-
ing the positions of U.S. consul at Oporto and of acting charge d'affaires in Lisbon
during 1870. He met and married his second wife, Frederica Jane Smith, at the consul-
ate at Oporto in 1872. The couple moved to Naples, Italy, in 1873, where Fletcher
engaged in voluntary missionary activities until returning to the United States in 1890.
Thereafter Fletcher resided in Los Angeles, where he served as president of the Los
Angeles School of Art until his death in 1901. ACAB, 2:465-66; NCAB, 13:130.

426.39-427.4 an ethnological purpose ... to higher endeavors] Douglass became
intrigued with the ideas surrounding the nineteenth-century debate over the origins of
man. He took exception to the notion of racial polygenesis that formed the core argu-
ment of the American School of Ethnology. Authors in this school, including Josiah
Nott and George Gliddon, claimed that the races had separate origins and therefore
African Americans were a distinct species. Douglass argued in a number of speeches
in favor of the monogenist theory supporting a unified origin of the white and black
races. He delivered the first of many important orations on the subject, "Claims of the
Negro Ethnologically Considered," at Hudson, Ohio, in July 1854. Douglass touched
on the subject often, including a May 1863 address before the Brooklyn Academy of
Music titled "The Present and Future of the Colored Race in America." His fascina-