NOTES
BRILLIANT THOUGHTS
AND IMPORTANT TRUTHS:
A SPEECH OF
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
1. For information about Douglass see
Benjamin Quarles, Frederick Douglass (Wash-
ington, 1948), and the same author's
"Abolition's Different Drummer: Frederick Doug-
lass," in Martin Duberman, ed., The
Antislavery Vanguard (Princeton, N. J., 1965),
123-134. See also the invaluable Philip
S. Foner, The Life and Writings of Frederick
Douglass (New York, 1950-55).
2. The speech was published in the
Wilmington, Ohio Herald of Freedom, May 7, 1852.
3. Apparently Douglass realized that one
of the inevitable results of the industrial and
communication revolutions was to be the
end of slavery. For a discussion of historians'
neglect of this factor, consult James C.
Malin, The Contriving Brain and the Skillful
Hand in the United States (Lawrence, Kan., 1955), 192-196.
4. The nomination of Zachary Taylor for
the presidency in 1848 placed the antislavery
Whigs in a difficult position. Taylor
was a slaveholder and the hero of the Mexican War,
which the abolitionists viewed as a war
for the expansion of slavery.
5. Daniel Sharp (1783-1853), Baptist;
Gardiner Spring (1785-1872), Presbyterian:
Jesse Ames Spencer (1816-1898),
Episcopalian; Nathan Lord (1792-1870) and Orville
Dewey (1794-1882), Unitarians.
6. With his conversion to political
abolitionism, Douglass became convinced that the
Constitution was potentially a strong
weapon against slavery. Just before leaving for
Cincinnati he told Gerrit Smith of the
need to oppose the nonvoting theory at the con-
vention. "Men should not, under the
guidance of a false philosophy, be led to fling from
them such powerful instrumentalities
against Slavery as the Constitution and the ballot,"
he wrote. Douglass to Gerrit Smith,
April 15, 1852, in Foner, Frederick Douglass, II, 177.
7. Many Americans sympathized with those
in both countries who were fighting for
national self-determination.
8. Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), Irish
national leader and reformer who also espoused
the cause of abolition.
9. Lajos Kossuth (1802-1894), Hungarian
patriot and leader of the unsuccessful na-
tional revolt of 1849. He disappointed
American abolitionists because of his avoidance of
the slavery issue in order to get
maximum support for the cause of Hungarian independ-
ence.
CINCINNATI: ATHENS
OF THE WEST, 1830-1861
This paper is based upon a wide variety
of primary and secondary sources housed in
The Cincinnati Historical Society and a
paper read at the OAH 1966 Cincinnati meeting.
1. Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners
of the Americans, ed. by Donald Smalley
(New York, 1949). All references to Domestic
Manners are taken from this edition.
2. Captain Frederick Marryat, A Diary
in America (Paris, 1839), 168.
3. Domestic Manners, 88-89.
4. Ibid., 58.
5. Ibid., 91-92.
6. Cincinnati newspapers abound with
accounts of Mrs. Trollope and her book. They
provide many delicious anecdotes on the
squat, red-faced Englishwoman, who failed
in a department store venture called
"Trollope's Bazaar" at Third and Broadway.
7. Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Cincinnati,
Story of the Queen City (New York,
1939), 145.
8. Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography
(London, 1833), 31-32.
9. William H. Venable, Beginnings of
Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley (Cincinnati,
1891).
10. Ralph L. Rusk, The Literature of
the Middle Western Frontier (New York, 1926);
James M. Miller, The Genesis of Western Culture: The
Upper Ohio Valley, 1800-1825
(Columbus, Ohio, 1938); R. Carlyle
Buley, The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period, 1815-1840
(Indianapolis, 1950); Louis B. Wright, Culture
on the Moving Frontier (Bloomington,
Indiana, 1955); Richard C. Wade, The
Urban Frontier; The Rise of Western Cities,
1790-1830 (Cambridge, Mass., 1959). Practically all of these
studies terminate at the
1830 period.
11. Walter Sutton, The Western Book
Trade: Cincinnati as a Nineteenth-Century
Publishing and Book-Trade Center (Columbus, Ohio, 1961).