DOUGLASS

A LIFE IN DOCUMENTS

Historians Present Documents from

the Gilder Lehrman Collection

General Editor
JAMES G. BASKER

Editors
JUSTINE AHLSTROM
NICOLE SEARY

Contributors

STEVEN MINTZ
LUCAS MOREL
JAMES OAKES
QUANDRA PRETTYMAN
DAVID S. REYNOLDS
MANISHA SINHA
NOELLE N. TRENT

EDWARD L. AYERS
DAVID W. BLIGHT
LEIGH K. FOUGHT
JAMES O. HORTON
LOIS E. HORTON
RANDALL KENNEDY

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This volume is dedicated to the memory of James Oliver Horton (1943–2017)
• scholar, teacher, friend, and supporter of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Jim Horton, the Benjamin Banneker Professor Emeritus of American Studies and History at The George Washington University, was a member of the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s Scholarly Advisory Board from the Institute’s founding in 1994; led Teacher Seminars from 1997 to 2003; wrote essays for History Now, the Institute’s online journal; made other significant contributions to the Institute (including the essay reprinted in this volume); and supported all our work with teachers, students, and the general public. He was an indefatigable leader in keeping African American history at the center of the larger American story, deftly bridging academic and public spheres. He is deeply missed.

Screen Shot 2021-02-05 at 7.52.56 AM.png — **James O. Horton**

James O. Horton at the opening of Free at Last: A History of the Abolition of Slavery in America at Federal Hall in New York City in November 1997. Horton co-curated this Gilder Lehrman traveling exhibition, which was hosted by more than 130 schools, libraries, and museums in thirty-four states.

Horton’s—were written as “keepsakes” for the Frederick Douglass Book Prize ceremonies, which have been held annually since 1999. Indeed, the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, which awards $25,000 to the author of the best book on any aspect of slavery and abolition, was one of the first projects launched by the Gilder Lehrman Institute in its early years, in partnership with our sister institution, the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. The first and still the largest book prize to focus exclusively on the field of slavery studies, over the past nineteen years the Frederick Douglass Prize has recognized an honor roll of great historians.

Frederick Douglass and the history he represents are a major part of the program-ming and resources that the Gilder Lehrman Institute offers to the tens of thousands of teachers and millions of students in its educational network. The Institute has curated exhibitions on Douglass at the New-York Historical Society and the Morgan Library, as well as digitally on its website, which is visited by millions of users each year. In 2004 the Institute created a traveling exhibition on the life and achievement of Frederick Douglass that has been circulating across the United States ever since, having visited more than 145 sites—most of them schools—in thirty-nine states (as of January 2018). Meanwhile the Institute has printed four different classroom posters about Frederick Douglass; a total of 16,000 copies have been distributed through our network, free, to thousands of schools in all fifty states. In short, Frederick Douglass is never far from the center of the American story as presented by the Gilder Lehrman Institute.

For anyone who takes an interest in American history, in Douglass’s life, or simply in great stories, the documents reproduced in this book are bound to touch a responsive chord. Who could fail to be moved by the emotions emanating from Douglass’s 1859 letter explaining that he fled the United States to England lest he “be implicated with John Brown” and perhaps put to death; or in the wake of America’s bloodiest war ever, his speech at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in 1871; or his reminiscences about Lincoln in 1880, honoring him as “one of the noblest wisest and best men I ever knew.” One feels the sorrow of two grieving souls in communion with each other, as he writes Mary Todd Lincoln in August 1865 to console her and thank her for the gift of her late husband’s walking cane. And the rising dismay and anger he felt, perhaps even a premonition of the century to come, when in 1888 he noted “the clamour raised for the disfranchisement of the colored voters of the South.” Perhaps the most moving and evocative of them all is Douglass’s letter to his former owner Hugh Auld, twenty-one years after he had fled to freedom in the North, in which he delicately explores their shared history and assures Auld that he is not bitter—“I love you, but hate Slavery.” When in the history of human-ity has an escaped slave ever written to his former master in such terms?

As Frederick Douglass begins his third century in American memory, we hope this book will help future generations understand and value his unique contributions to our country’s history, and the possibilities his spirit represents for our future.

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