The Frederick Douglass Papers
Jul 2026 · Yale University Press
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About this ebook
Douglass’s letters from the 1880s reveal both his unrelenting efforts to protect African American rights and little-known details about his personal life
The fourth volume of the Correspondence Series presents Frederick Douglass as a still-influential public figure but also as a man aware that the gains African Americans made during the Civil War and Reconstruction were not as well secured as he had hoped.
For this volume, the editors selected 247 of the 914 known letters sent to or from Douglass between 1881 and 1888. An active partisan, Douglass corresponded regularly with Republican party leaders from the local to national level about campaign tactics and strategies. Douglass also often received letters from African Americans who detailed the deteriorating state of race relations across the South in the 1880s. Douglass used his correspondence to advance the political stature of Republicans he regarded as most sympathetic to protecting African American rights.
Douglass wrote about his taste in reading; his fondness for carriage riding; his feuds with family members and neighbors; his first wife, Anna Murray; and his remarriage, to Helen Pitts, and the controversy that the interracial marriage generated. Douglass’s correspondence details the seven-month honeymoon the couple took in Europe and Egypt, the reunion with old abolitionist friends in Great Britain, and candid appraisals of places he visited and people he met overseas.
The fourth volume of the Correspondence Series presents Frederick Douglass as a still-influential public figure but also as a man aware that the gains African Americans made during the Civil War and Reconstruction were not as well secured as he had hoped.
For this volume, the editors selected 247 of the 914 known letters sent to or from Douglass between 1881 and 1888. An active partisan, Douglass corresponded regularly with Republican party leaders from the local to national level about campaign tactics and strategies. Douglass also often received letters from African Americans who detailed the deteriorating state of race relations across the South in the 1880s. Douglass used his correspondence to advance the political stature of Republicans he regarded as most sympathetic to protecting African American rights.
Douglass wrote about his taste in reading; his fondness for carriage riding; his feuds with family members and neighbors; his first wife, Anna Murray; and his remarriage, to Helen Pitts, and the controversy that the interracial marriage generated. Douglass’s correspondence details the seven-month honeymoon the couple took in Europe and Egypt, the reunion with old abolitionist friends in Great Britain, and candid appraisals of places he visited and people he met overseas.
Douglass’s letters from the 1880s reveal both his unrelenting efforts to protect African American rights and little-known details about his personal life
The fourth volume of the Correspondence Series presents Frederick Douglass as a still-influential public figure but also as a man aware that ...
About the author
John R. McKivigan has been the Mary O’Brien Gibson Professor of History at Indiana University Indianapolis (formerly IUPUI) since 1998 and the editor of the Frederick Douglass Papers since 1992. Previously he was a professor of history at West Virginia University and the associate editor of the Douglass Papers.
John R. McKivigan has been the Mary O’Brien Gibson Professor of History at Indiana University Indianapolis (formerly IUPUI) since 1998 and the editor of the Frederick Douglass Papers since 1992. Previously he was a professor of history at West Virginia University and the associate editor of the D...
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