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  • Epistolary Politics:A Recovered Letter from Frances E. W. Harper to William Still
  • Jana Koehler

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911), one of the most popular black women writers of the nineteenth century, has until recently largely been relegated to the margins of critical examinations of nineteenth-century African American literature. During her lifetime, however, she was an extremely prolific and popular lecturer, poet, writer, and activist. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, of free parents, Harper engaged in political and literary endeavors from an early age. At the age of twenty, she published Forest Leaves (1846), her first book of poetry.1 In 1854, Harper embarked on what would become a lifelong career as a public speaker, which began with her first public anti-slavery speech titled "Education and the Elevation of Colored Race," delivered on behalf of the American Anti-Slavery Society, which she had recently joined. That same year, Harper gained a following with Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, which was deemed a commercial success. She was referred to by William Still, "the stationmaster of the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia"2 and a lifelong friend and ally, as "not merely … the leading colored poet in the United States, but also … one of the most liberal contributors, as well as one of the ablest advocates of the Underground Rail Road and of the slave."3 Harper advocated for both racial and gender legislative equality until her death. A newly-recovered letter from Harper to Still, dated 24 July 1867, powerfully demonstrates the fundamental connection between Harper's literary work and her political advocacy.

Harper's friendship with Still is of particular interest, especially since his book The Underground Railroad (1871) serves as a main source of information about Harper. Throughout her life, Harper maintained a constant communication with Still, often inquiring about the well-being of individuals she had [End Page 283] assisted to freedom.4 As Still recounts, "during seventeen years of public labor she has made thousands of speeches without doing herself or [her] people discredit in a single instance, but has accomplished a great deal in the way of removing prejudice."5 The letters from Harper to Still reveal that Harper lectured to both white and black crowds in private meetings, in public (and well-attended) lectures, even on the train as she crossed the South.6 As Still explains,

For the best part of several years, since the war, she has traveled very extensively through the Southern States, going on the plantations and amongst the lowly, as well as to the cities and towns, addressing schools, Churches, meetings in Court Houses, Legislative Halls, &c., and, sometimes, under the most trying and hazardous circumstances; influenced in her labor of love, wholly by the noble impulses of her own heart, working her way along unsustained by any Society.7

However, not much was known about Harper until the early 1970s, when black feminists began to recover and republish her work,8 including her novel Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted (1892).

Harper's commitment to political activism and artistic production is demonstrated in this newly-recovered letter addressed to Still, in which Harper explains the case of Jeff Gee,9 a black man imprisoned under the imminent threat of execution. Published in the Philadelphia Press for 31 July 1867 under the heading "An Interesting Letter," the paper states that

The following letter, from the well-known Mrs. F. E. W. Harper, to our fellow-townsman, William Still, contains points which will be of decided interest to a great number of our readers. We call special attention to it, since it gives us a broad hint that the era of indirect persecution, even to death, through false accusation, is not at an end in the "reconstructed" South[.]

The letter, sent from Wilmington, North Carolina, and dated 24 July 1867, is addressed to "Friend Still" and reads:

I am now bound for the North, and, if nothing prevents, will be in Baltimore week after next, as I expect to go to Richmond and Washington, and intend stopping in both places. I have been lecturing almost constantly for two weeks past, every night or day except Saturday. The South is a great field...

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