Collections : [University of Michigan William L. Clements Library]

The Lydia Maria Child papers consist of ninety mostly personal letters by Lydia Child; the bulk of them were written to her wealthy abolitionist and philanthropic friends in Boston, the Lorings.

The collection consists of ninety mostly personal and often playfully provocative letters dating from approximately 1835 to 1877. Most of them are from Lydia Maria Child to her wealthy Boston abolitionist and philanthropic friends, the Lorings, and date from 1839 to 1859. They thus concentrate on the period of Maria Child's distress with the institutional politics of antislavery, her editorship of the Standard, her growing attachment to New York Bohemia, and the publication of Letters From New York. Many of the letters deal simply with her day to day finances, friends, and family.

These letters chart Maria Child's loss of "pleasure" in "anti Slavery" until the martyrdom of John Brown renewed her "youth and strength." They witness her antagonism to the aggressive tactics of elements of the American Anti-Slavery Society and her defense of the "Old Organization." It is in terms of intra-organizational criticism that she justifies her job at the Standard despite reservations. Later, however, the letters witness her declining commitment to pacifism. They describe a remarkable fearlessness to the danger of the mobs in New York, and they note the challenges that the Standard faced. They speak of Maria Child's withdrawal from cliques of reformers and antislavery organizations, though clearly her hermitage was constantly broken by meetings with the likes of Catherine Beecher and Margaret Fuller. Throughout, she declares a radical social egalitarianism while demonstrating a contemporary racial paternalism and liberalism. Of particular interest concerning antislavery and race are:

• (1) To George Kimball, Jan 1835, on Texas and the freemen plantation in Mexico
• (3) To Louisa L., April 1839, concerning the discord within the movement
• (6) To "Nonny", Dec 1840, of a story about "our colored man... our retainers"
• (8) To Ellis L., May 1841, about guilt for accepting money for editing the Standard
• (9) To Ellis L., June 1841, where she insinuates the A.A.S.S. with proslavery form
• (13) To Ellis L., May 1842, about the Boston and Philadelphia cliques and N.Y. mobs
• (17) To Louisa L., May 1843, about the New York Letters and Angelina Grimké
• (48) To Ellis L., December 1852, with reference to Charles Sumner and Catherine Beecher
• (57) To Louisa L., October 1856, about Kansas and Frémont
• (69) To Oliver Johnson (A.A.S.), Dec. 1859, on John Brown's execution
• (70) To William Cutler, July 1862, on the questions of wage slavery and social equality
• (72) To Anna L., Oct (1871?), on a "mulatto girl" asking for handouts.

More peripherally the letters are witness to the homosocial support networks of Victorian America despite their author's exceptional ability to transcend the limitations imposed on her sex. Of the latter she was painfully aware, complaining here of the impropriety of a "young lady" staying at the Globe Hotel, determining to "always avoid belonging to any association of men" because of her "experience," noting how her critics preferred to attack her as a woman rather than deal with the facts, how some were shocked to meet a woman like her, and complaining about her gendered financial liabilities despite her disfranchisement. Indeed, she detaches gender stereotypes from biological sex as she writes repeatedly of the "small female minds of both sexes." Writing domestic guides for women and attending Emerson's lectures on domestic life never reconciled Maria Child to domestic work, of which she often complains here. On the other hand, she seemed to relish romance and also writes of her caring for a "wild Irish girl," and her poor niece Maria, and her taking in of Dolores, a poor Spanish woman, as her companion. Particularly relevant are her letters: (67) To Louisa L., December 1857, a story of two babies engaged in the struggle of the sexes; (71) To Anna L., July 1871, on suffrage for societal efficiency and female education.

Lydia Maria Child's letters also chart her critical attitude to religious and social injustice in general. This is born out in accounts of specific incidents of charity to orphans abandoned in the Tombs. Calling Angelina Grimké a "flaming Millerite," Maria Child also makes fun of her patron Isaac T. Hopper's Quakerism, claims to prefer the "Lord Pope" to the "Lord Presbyters," and "shocked... Christian piety by saying if Mendelssohn were a Jew, I hoped I should get into the Jew's Quarter in heaven." Her "dislike to respectable Puritanical character" crops up repeatedly in these letters. In one letter she jokingly claims her "right to be damned." She praises Plato as a forefather of "modern socialists" and writes of the world of the spirits and of her "bigotted Swedenborgian[ism]." In terms of her pacifism she recounts an argument she had with Samuel Colt over "his battery." Her letters moreover present a consistent picture of her preference for the soul-inspired music of the underdog against anything machine-like, or tainted by the "diseased ambition of wealth and show... and respectability." She criticizes the "ruffianly Forrest" and the Astor Place Riots for demagoguery and violence while repeatedly noting the blindness of aristocracy and arguing for a world in which "all ranks, and sexes, and sects, and barriers of all sorts," would be ignored. In an elusive search for freedom she claims pleasure in acting "contrary to statutes made and provided."

William P. Fessenden was a founding member of the Republican Party and one of its most energetic antislavery voices. His papers consist almost entirely of incoming correspondence, written while he was serving as a U.S. Senator from Maine, 1855-1868. This correspondence reflects Fessenden's moderately progressive political views, and his interests in the abolition of slavery, economics and finance, the turmoil in Kansas in the late 1850s, and the Civil War.

The William P. Fessenden papers consist almost entirely of incoming correspondence addressed to Fessenden, written while he was serving as a U.S. Senator from Maine, 1855-1868. This correspondence reflects Fessenden's moderately progressive political views, and his interests in the abolition of slavery, economics and finance, the turmoil in Kansas in the late 1850s, and the Civil War. Not surprisingly, the bulk of the correspondence consists of requests for favors from acquaintances and constituents, usually in seeking recommendations for jobs, political appointments, or assistance in pressing legislation.

The major topics of interest covered in the collection include the national debate over slavery. Several letters relate to the political turmoil in Kansas between 1856 and 1860, and there are letters requesting that Fessenden address particular abolition societies, and one interesting item relating to slavery in Missouri that includes a small printed map depicting slave-holding patterns in the state (2:49).

The Civil War forms the context for approximately half of the letters in the collection. There is a small series of letters relating to increases in pay for naval chaplains and army surgeons, and several routine letters requesting commissions or transfers in the army. The most important items present include a letter written from New Orleans, 1864, complaining of Gen. Stephen A. Hurlbut's apparent unwillingness to execute the government's orders to stop trafficking in cotton (Hurlbut's corruption appears to have been no secret); a letter describing the situation in Missouri in the midst of Sterling Price's Wilson's Creek Campaign, complaining about John C. Frémont's ineffectiveness; and a fine letter from a commander of a Maine independent artillery battery in the defenses of Washington, complaining of their inactivity. Finally, there is a brief obituary of Jesse Lee Reno, killed at South Mountain in 1862.

There are very few items that relate in any way to Fessenden's private life, but three letters include some discussion of the problems of his son, Samuel. The only letter written by Fessenden in this collection is addressed to Sam, advising him to behave himself and not to consort with bad company. Apparently, the Senator had good cause to worry for his son, since Sam apparently fell in with gamblers and fled for Canada after running up a sizable debt.