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238

Frederick Douglass

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:6,000.00 - 7,000.00 USD
Frederick Douglass

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Auction Date:2012 Apr 18 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:5 Rt 101A Suite 5, Amherst, New Hampshire, 03031, 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
Fine ALS, one lightly lined (vertically) page, 6 x 8, June 28, 1888. Douglass writes to war journalist, lawyer, and politician Private [J. M.] Dalzell (1838–1924). In full: “I enclose herewith a post office order in your favor six doll[ar]s in payment for eleven copies of your book[.] I am just home from the National Republican Convention at Chicago and have not had time to read your Autobiography. One week in this Chicago business has damaged my health more than six months work would have done at home.” Also included: a first-edition copy of the book to which Douglass refers in the letter, Private Dalzell: his Autobiography, Poems, and Comic War Papers, Sketch of John Gray, Washington’s Last Soldier, Etc. (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1888). On page 197 of the book, Dalzell includes Douglass among a list of those he consulted in writing his biographical sketch of John Gray, then believed to be the last surviving American veteran of the Revolutionary War (though priority to this claim is still a matter of some dispute). Plus: a souvenir manuscript, comprising a fair copy of Dalzell’s 1867 poem “The Blue and Gray” on two lightly lined 8.5 x 14 conjoined sheets, signed on both pages “J. M. Dalzell, Private Dalzell” and dated May 30, 1916. The Douglass letter is encapsulated in Mylar and is bright and fine, with light intersecting folds; the book is clean and fine, with mild soiling and toning, handling wear, and ex-library markings; the souvenir manuscript is clean and fine, with mild handling wear, wrinkling, and small tears.

Less than two weeks earlier, on June 19, Douglass was introduced as one of the featured speakers at the Republican National Convention at Chicago and delivered a stirring address to the delegation: “I believe that the Republican Party will prove itself equally faithful to its friends, and those friends during the war were men with black faces. They were legs to your maimed; they were eyes to your blind; they were shelter to your shelterless sons when they escaped from the lines of the rebels; they are faithful to-day….Lincoln called upon the negro to reach out his iron arm and clutch with his steeled fingers your faltering banner; and they came—they came 200,000 strong. Let us remember these black men now stripped of their constitutional right to vote for the grand standard-bearer whom you will present to the country.”

Convention rules called for a simple majority of votes (415 of 828) for the presidential nomination. Although it took eight ballots for a victor, Benjamin Harrison, to finally be declared on June 25, Douglass was afforded an historic honor on the fourth ballot when one of Kentucky’s 26 delegates cast a vote for him—the first time an African-American had ever received such a vote at a major party convention.

While praising the Republicans, the party’s convention clearly taxed Douglass’ fortitude, based on his comment of how the stress of Chicago politics had damaged him more than six months in Washington, D.C. A most historic association with the great civil rights pioneer.
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