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Frederick Douglass

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:5,000.00 - 6,000.00 USD
Frederick Douglass

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Auction Date:2017 Sep 13 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Rare ALS, two pages on two adjoining sheets, 5 x 8, October 23, 1890. Letter to the African-American diplomat Ebenezer Bassett, in part: "Thanks for your letter, I am glad that you have decided to leave for Hayti [sic]. If I am detained here, as I think I may be, three weeks longer, you can be maturing the necessary correspondences we shall have to send to the State Department soon after my arrival. I am still in the dark about my detention: but this cannot last long. I am sure that I am to return to my post whether my stay there shall be long or short. I wish you would call on Lucie Villa and tell me how you find things there. Kindly remember to Dr. Terres…Battista and all our circle. I almost wish I could go with you but I must obey orders and besides I think it will be wise for me to be touched by the sharp edge of a few frosty mornings here before enduring again a tropical climate. By the speech I send you will see that I am not quite played out. My friends here congratulate me on my good condition. Of course I do not deceive myself or allow them to deceive me about that. Dear Bassett, I fully confide in you to attend to everything about the Legation just the same as if I were there. A safe and pleasant voyage to you." In fine condition, with areas of light toning. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope, addressed in Douglass's own hand. Bassett first met Douglass in the mid 1850s during the former's tenure as a teacher at the Whiting School in New Haven, Connecticut. As leading abolitionist figures, their paths would inevitably cross throughout their lives, with the pair joining with other black leaders to organize a recruiting drive for black soldiers just days after the Battle of Gettysburg. When U. S. Grant was elected president in 1869, he appointed Bassett as United States Ambassador to civil war-torn Haiti, serving as minister resident for almost nine years of Haitian turmoil and trial where he proved a pioneer in providing political asylum and protecting human rights. In 1889, President Harrison appointed Douglass to be the United States's minister resident and consul-general to the Republic of Haiti.