LETTERS: Three ALS, about US and UK women in the cause; with inscribed early photo and inscribed frontispiece portrait excised from a book.
Letters to British Abolitionists
A collection of letters from Harriet Beecher Stowe to British abolitionists Thomas C. Ryley of Manchester, and his daughter Constance Ryley, including a letter written during the Civil War regarding Thomas’s contribution to an educational fund for freed slaves. A remarkable collection testifying to the international solidarity that existed within the abolitionist movement, at the climax of its efforts. The letters are mounted—along with a photo inscribed by Stowe and another taken from an English edition of one of her works— to the leaves of an album measuring 10 ½ x 15 inches, with a manuscript label affixed to the upper panel reading “Harriet Beecher Stowe. Author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
1. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Autograph letter signed, “H B Stowe,” to Thomas C. Ryley, Esq., May 1, 1863; bifolium, 2 pages; mounted to album leaf; two horizontal folding creases.
A note of gratitude from Stowe to British abolitionist Thomas C. Ryley, who had made a financial contribution to a New England organization charged with the education of slaves freed during the Civil War. The note reads in full:
Dear Sir:
I take pleasure in acknowledging the receipt of your noble minded letter covering an enclosure of $210 for the emancipated slaves. That sum I shall place in the hands of the Boston Educational Commission who have for a year past been diligently & assiduously laboring for the mental & physical well being of the emancipated slaves. Such a substantial token of sympathy from your side of the water outweighs a million of unworthy sayings and doings, and makes us proud to remember that we are of British origin.
I shall request the gentleman to whom I send your money to forward to your address some of the circulars of the society that you may see a little what is doing.
Praying that God may bless our mutual countries,
I am your sincere friend,
H B Stowe
The stated purpose of the Boston Educational Commission was the “industrial, social, intellectual, moral, and religious improvement of persons released from slavery in the course of the war for the Union” (Alvord, J.W. Third Semi-Annual Report on Schools for Freedman. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1867, p. 69). The Commission later changed its name to the New England Freedman’s Union Commission and set up over 200 auxiliary societies throughout the country, all of which united under the umbrella of the American Freedman’s Union Commission in 1866. Stowe composed a portrait of the AFUC’s first president, Gen. Oliver O. Howard, in The Lives and Deeds of Our Self-Made Men (Worthington, Dustin & Co., 1872), and she published an article titled “The Education of the Freedmen” in the June, 1879 issue of the North American Review.
Ryley was a vice-president of the Union and Emancipation Society of Manchester. He would later add to this contribution another of the same amount, as the list of the “Subscriptions to the New-England Freedmen’s Aid Society of 1864-6” records an amount of $420 contributed by Stowe on behalf of Ryley.
(See The Freedman’s Record, http://faculty.assumption.edu/aas/Reports/fr4-65.html)
2. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Autograph letter signed, “H B Stowe,” to [Constance Ryley], December 3, 1871; 1 leaf, recto only; mounted to album leaf.
Addressed to “My Dear Young Friend,” Stowe’s letter to Thomas C. Ryley’s daughter, Constance, reads,
If my photograph can be of the least pleasure to you, I have great pleasure in sending it you. I think I recognize in you a former correspondent during the time of our late war and your father was one of the few who at that crisis understood and felt for us in what we were doing. Present my sincere regards to him and believe me,
Ever truly yours,
H B Stowe
The young friend is Constance Ryley, the daughter of Thomas C. Ryley. Like her father, Constance was active in the abolitionist cause. The “List of Subscriptions to the New En
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