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THOMAS P. SAUNDERS^{1Thomas P. Saunders (c. 1829–94) was the son of William and Roxanna Saunders. His father was a mixed-race native of the West Indies who was living in Connecticut by 1829 (Thomas, the eldest of four siblings, was born there) and working as a tailor. William was also an agent for William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator. Roxanna, who was also mixed race, was a native of New York. Thomas P. Saunders’s siblings were Prince Henry Boyer Saunders (1832–88), who was his partner in their merchant tailor business; Amos; and Elizabeth. Hartford (Conn.) Trinity Tablet, 18 October 1868; Sacramento (Calif.) Daily Union, 28 May 1870; 1850 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Hartford County, 544; 1860 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Hartford County, 383; 1870 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Hartford County, 10; 1880 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Hartford County, 16D; Frank Andrews Stone, African American Connecticut: The Black Scene in a New England State; Eighteenth to TwentyFirst Century (Deland, Fla., 2008), 127; Theresa Vara-Dannen, The African-American Experience in Nineteenth-Century Connecticut: Benevolence and Bitterness (Lanham, Md., 2014), xxiii, 48, 71–72, 74; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995”; Find a Grave (online).} TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Hartford[, Conn.] 3 Apr[il] 1874.

DEAR FRIEND DOUGLASS

I return you by mail your John Brown lecture^{2Douglass delivered a lecture on John Brown at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., on 18 November 1873. He repeated the lecture on a speaking tour of New England in December 1873, and Saunders perhaps heard it then. NNE, 27 November 1873; Boston Daily Globe, 15 December 1873; Newport (R.I.) Mercury, 20 December 1873.} which my wife^{3The census reveals that Thomas P. Saunders was married to woman named Elveta (or M. Elveta), who was born circa 1842 in Pennsylvania. 1850 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Hartford County, 544; 1860 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Hartford County, 383; 1870 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Hartford County, 10; 1880 U.S. Census, Connecticut, Hartford County, 16D; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.”} and myself have perused with the most unbounded satisfaction. Your task was
doubtless a grateful one in endeavoring to picture him as you knew him
to be, a grand, sincere, and honest old man. So far as words can paint, or
delineate character, you have chosen the best that the Language is capable
of, and you may well feel proud of your success. Taken [illegible] whole
it is splendid while it abounds in passages that are diamonds and pearls
and is a worthy tribute to the greatest honor of the nineteenth century, say
Our friend Bloncourt^{4Sainte Suzanne Melvil-Bloncourt (1825–80), activist and author, was born in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, a French-governed archipelago in the Caribbean. He was the son of wealthy mulattoes and studied law in Paris, graduating in 1846. He devoted himself to the antislavery cause, writing pamphlets and organizing a club devoted to abolition and equal rights. Following the complete abolition of slavery in the French colonies in 1848, Melvil-Bloncourt was elected a deputy in the constituent assembly. Beginning in 1849, and during Napoleon III’s reign, he wrote on the subject of colonial life for French magazines and published biographies of several black citizens of South America. In 1871 he was reelected deputy in Guadeloupe. That same year, Napoleon III was overthrown and his government collapsed. Melvil-Bloncourt was then condemned for his participation in Guadeloupe’s civil government and sentenced to death by a military tribunal. He fled to Switzerland to avoid capture. After receiving amnesty, he returned to Paris in 1880, where he died that November. Little Rock Daily Arkansas Gazette, 24 February 1874; Philadelphia North American, 24 November 1880; Hermann Von Holst, John Brown, ed. by Frank Preston Stearns (Boston, 1888), 192–93; ACAB, 4: 293.} calls him “the Jesus of the nineteenth century.”^{5The abolitionist Robert Purvis deemed John Brown “the Jesus Christ of the nineteenth century” during his speech at National Hall in Philadelphia on Martyr’s Day—the day of Brown’s execution—2 December 1859. Melvil-Bloncourt may have been quoting Purvis in this instance. Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 243; Claudine L. Ferrell, The Abolitionist Movement (Westport, Conn., 2006), 100; Daniel R. Biddle and Murray Dubin, Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America (Philadelphia, 2010), 233.}
You do not know how I lament that the Black people of this country seem
to manifest a forgetfulness of him, which, to me, seems to smack a little
of ingratitude. Had it not have been for his devotion to his sense of justice
and right, the blacks might to-day have been the slaves of the whites

My wife bids me to thank you for the opportunity given her to peruse
the manuscript and joins me in the kindest remembrances to you

Hoping you and yours are all well and that the most unbounded success may attend you I am

Yours Truly

T. P. SAUNDERS

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 737–38L, FD Papers, DLC.