Frederick Douglass and the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society
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Corinthian Hall, the site of Frederick Douglass’s 4th of July Speech. Read about the history of the hall on Rochester’s “Freethought trail.”
Frederick Douglass, around the time of his 1852 speech. Accessible Archives.
This past July 4th brought new attention and urgency to a speech that Frederick Douglass gave on July 5, 1852. He quite pointedly chose the day after the 4th for his lecture, sponsored by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society (or RLASS) at Corinthian Hall, a grand public space in the center of the city. An illustration from the time shows the room set up for a banquet, but I am picturing a tightly packed, hot room of people who came to hear Douglass in the middle of summer.
In his speech, Douglass said:
Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic…they loved their country more than their own private interests.
But despite the national rejoicing for Independence Day,
I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them.
Toward the end of the address:
Fellow citizens, I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existed of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity a lie.
(You can read the full speech here, as well as listen to an excerpt voiced by five young descendants here.)
I learned about the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society when I researched the life of Julia Wilbur, a member and sort of a grantee/contractor of the group. RLASS paid for her to work as a relief agent during the Civil War, helping people who had escaped slavery and made their way to Alexandria, Virginia.
The Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society
Who were these women? A blend of conventional and brave, operating within the “sphere” of 19th century expectations and also breaking beyond it.
To wit, their Constitution included a Preamble:
Whereas Slavery is an evil that ought not to exist and is a violation of the inalienable rights of man, as set forth in the Declaration of Independence….
And Article 7:
The funds of this Society shall be devoted to the diffusion of Anti-Slavery Sentiments by means of the Press and the Lecturer; to the relief of the suffering Fugitive, and for such other Anti-Slavery objects that may present themselves.
As well as Article 15
It shall be rule of the Society that the supper consist of tea, bread and butter, one kind of plain cake, and one simple relish.
Leading up to the RLASS
Curtailed from full political participation, 19th-century women found their own ways to organize around social issues. The first known female anti-slavery groups were formed by Black women in 1832 in Salem, Massachusetts, and the next year in Philadelphia.
In Rochester, two anti-slavery groups formed in the 1830s, one of Black women and another of white women. Both groups seem to have dissolved as formal organizations by 1840. A main activity was petitioning Congress to oppose slavery measures (such as in the District of Columbia) until pro-slavery interests in the House banned acceptance of the petitions, a so-called gag rule.
Other anti-slavery groups emerged that gave women a greater or lesser voice. In fact, one of the reasons for a split between two major factions was over the role of women in leadership and speaking positions. Another point of contention was whether to work within the political realities to seek change or to remain as activists on the outside. (Sound familiar?) Lewis and Arthur Tappan from New York City were most identified with the work-within-the-system group; William Lloyd Garrison from Boston, with the group that favored “moral suasion” (their term) over politics. The lines were fluid and many other people were involved, although the number of northerners who actively opposed slavery remained small in any event.
Frederick Douglass Moves to Rochester
After escaping slavery in 1838, Frederick Douglass lived in Massachusetts and traveled, often extensively, to give lectures. He published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845, and went to England. When he returned, he decided to publish a newspaper to further spread his ideas. Practically, this meant leaving Massachusetts where William Lloyd Garrison published the Liberator. Attracted by the reformers he had met in Rochester, which he had visited on his lecture tours, he moved his family to the city in upstate New York.
Undated photo—although maybe a printing expert could date it more closely through the technology. Source: Rochester Public Library, Local History Division.
In 1849, two women whom Douglass had met in England, Julia and Eliza Griffiths, came to Rochester for a somewhat controversial stay. Eliza married and moved to Canada, but Julia settled in for several years. She had a praiseworthy goal—survival of the North Star. But she did things her way. She moved in with the Douglass family. She had her own desk at the North Star office and dedicated herself to keeping it financially afloat through organizing, cajoling, marketing, and various other creative, yet often perceived as annoying, strategies.
Griffiths encouraged creation of a new group, the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. She turned to Susan Porter and her sister-in-law Maria. Susan had been active in the first group in the 1830s, and she and her husband sheltered people escaping to Canada.
The Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Sewing Society met for the first time on August 20, 1851. They didn’t do much sewing, so dropped it from their name soon after.
Raising Money for the Cause
The group never numbered more than a few dozen members, and they were all white women of comfortable means. Some individually supported women’s rights, but it had abolition of slavery as its main focus. (Remember that many participants of the Seneca Falls convention, held in 1848, came from Rochester.)
This is not to take away from the fact that any organized group to fight slavery was an outlier, even in relatively progressive Rochester. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 meant action to aid an escapee was illegal.
Most of the money went to Douglass’s publications (by then called Frederick Douglass’’ Paper). They gave money to other anti-slavery leaders, as well as individuals escaping to Canada.
The women raised money by holding gift fairs around Christmas time, selling items donated by their own membership but also from like-minded women elsewhere, including from England, Ireland, and, at least once, Mexico—toys, crafts, books, and the like. According to the group’s annual reports, they raised a total of $408.57 their first year, about half of which went to “Donation to Mr. Douglass.” By their fourth year, they reported a healthy $1,524.23 in revenues.
RLASS had another successful project, creation and sale of a gift book called Autographs for Freedom. They capitalized on a fad to collect autographs from friends and famous people. Members wrote to famous anti-slavery figures—among them Harriet Beecher Stowe, poet James Greenleaf Whittier, Senator Charles Sumner, and, of course, Frederick Douglass—to request a brief written submission and, most importantly, a reproducible written signature. Julia Griffiths seems to have been largely responsible for putting two editions together, in 1853 and 1854. (You can see digital copies online and print versions are often for sale through book dealers.)
Giving Voice to the Cause
As they did with Frederick Douglass for his July 4th speech, the RLASS rented halls to hold lectures, a huge way to educate and entertain in the 1800s. In just one year, the Society “caused to be delivered” lectures by Henry Ward Beecher (famous minister and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe), James McCune Smith (Black doctor and abolitionist), and Horace Greeley (editor of the influential New York Tribune), in addition to Douglass. That sounds like a pretty impressive line-up.
Taking Action for the Cause
Julia Griffiths returned to England in the mid-1850s but the group sustained itself without her—although she often wrote with “helpful” suggestions. In the first year of the Civil War, RLASS considered what it would do next. In 1863:
A new field of labor has opened to us, a field that three years ago we hardly dared to hope to live long enough to labor in: comforting, cheering, advising, educating the freed men, women and children of the race upon whom then the chains seems so securely fastened…
They focused their money and time to assist freedpeople in Alexandria, Virginia, the Union-occupied town across the Potomac from Washington, DC. In addition to supporting Julia Wilbur as their “agent,” they sent clothing and bedding to her to distribute. Wilbur sent in reports about her activities for publication in the RLASS annual reports.
As they wrote in early 1865:
The work of the Society, which till the breaking out of the war, was divided between advocating Anti-Slavery principles by the press and the lecturer, and aiding and comforting fugitives from slavery has since that time, been all directed in the one channel of aid to the Freedmen…
Julia Wilbur worked in Alexandria until February 1865 and then took up similar work in Washington, DC. In addition to her submissions to the group’s official reports, her letters to treasurer Anna Barnes give a less diplomatic (and far more interesting) account of her activities.
The RLASS was able to support her for a few more years, but then….
The End of RLASS
The end of the war brought the legal end to slavery but not the end to inequality and poverty. The RLASS recognized the continued needs but their treasury, alas, was greatly diminished—down to $284 in 1867. Julia Wilbur looked for other ways to supplement her work. She worked for the Freedmen’s Bureau and taught sewing for a Philadelphia Association in exchange for lodging and traveling expenses. But those sources dried up, too. Ccompassion fatigue had set in. The group disbanded.
A group that averaged 12 members at its monthly meetings had a list of solid accomplishments in its 15-year span. And that includes providing the lectern to Frederick Douglass on that July day at Corinthian Hall.
RLASS Online
When I researched and wrote my biography of Julia Wilbur, I had to rely on microfilm and photocopy of many of the RLASS resources. The bulk of the papers are at the University of Michigan, although there are also many interesting documents at the University of Rochester. In addition, Julia Wilbur’s extensive diaries are at Haverford College.
Since then, many of these papers have been digitized and are available online. You can now read the RLASS papers and Julia Wilbur’s diaries from your home computer.