#julia griffiths

Having learned nothing from Webb’s disingenuously “sharing” her confidential critical letters just two years before, this time she wrote to the British poet and litterateur Mary Howitt about how “selfish” Frederick Douglass was and that he should not have received presents from the English, as they were “taken from the cause.” Weston Chapman’s ire was probably aroused by a gift of ten British pounds that she had recently received from the British philanthropist Anne Milbanke (briefly Lady Byron) with instructions to forward it to Douglass. …. As luck would have it, when Weston Chapman’s letter to Mary Howitt criticizing Douglass arrived, Howitt was entertaining Douglass’s passionate British supporter Julia Griffiths. Griffiths immediately wrote to Douglass to tell him what his Boston colleague was saying about him behind his back, and “wondering” that “this woman would dare to write about you in such a manner.” Maria’s sister Anne was in the Boston office when Douglass, who was still circulating in the Boston movement, picked up Griffiths’s letter, and she witnessed how sad and offended he was.

Interview with Leigh Fought on Anna and Frederick Douglass