About four months before this splendid institution was compelled to

close its doors in the starved and deluded faces of its depositors,

and while I was assured by its President and by its Actuary of its

sound condition, I was solicited by some of its trustees to allow

them to use my name in the board as a candidate for its Presidency.

So I waked up one morning to find myself seated in a comfortable arm

chair, with gold spectacles on my nose, and to hear myself addressed

as President of the Freedmen’s Bank. I could not help reflecting on

the contrast between Frederick the slave boy, running about at Col.

Lloyd’s with only a tow linen shirt to cover him, and Frederick--

President of a Bank counting its assets by millions. I had heard of

golden dreams, but such dreams had no comparison with this reality. And

yet this seeming reality was scarcely more substantial than a dream.

My term of service on this golden height covered only the brief space

of three months, and these three months were divided into two parts,

during the first part of which I was quietly employed in an effort to

find out the real condition of the Bank and its numerous branches.

This was no easy task. On paper, and from the representations of its

management, its assets amounted to three millions of dollars, and its

liabilities were about equal to its assets. With such a showing I

was encouraged in the belief that by curtailing expenses, doing away

with non-paying branches, which policy the trustees had now adopted,

we could be carried safely through the financial distress then upon

the country. So confident was I of this, that in order to meet what

was said to be a temporary emergency, I was induced to loan the Bank

ten thousand dollars of my own money, to be held by it until it could

realize on a part of its abundant securities. This money, though it was

repaid, was not done so promptly as under the supposed circumstances I

thought it should be, and these circumstances increased my fears lest

the chasm was not so easily bridged as the Actuary of the institution

had assured me it could be. The more I observed and learned the more

my confidence diminished. I found that those trustees who wished to

issue cards and publish addresses professing the utmost confidence

in the Bank, had themselves not one dollar deposited there. Some of

them, while strongly assuring me of its soundness, had withdrawn their

money and opened accounts elsewhere. Gradually I discovered that the

Bank had sustained heavy losses at the South through dishonest agents,

that there was a discrepancy on the books of forty thousand dollars,

for which no account could be given, that instead of our assets being

equal to our liabilities we could not in all likelihoods of the case

pay seventy-two cents on the dollar. There was an air of mystery, too,

about the spacious and elegant apartments of the Bank building which

greatly troubled me, and which I have only been able to explain to

myself on the supposition that the employees, from the Actuary and the

Inspector down to the messengers, were (perhaps) naturally anxious to

hold their places, and consequently have the business continued. I am

not a violent advocate of the doctrine of the total depravity of human

nature. I am inclined, on the whole, to believe it a tolerably good

nature, yet instances do occur which oblige me to concede that men can

and do act from mere personal and selfish motives. In this case, at any

rate, it seemed not unreasonable to conclude that the finely dressed

young gentlemen, adorned with pens and bouquets, the most fashionable

and genteel of all our colored youth, stationed behind those marble

counters, should desire to retain their places as long as there was

money in the vaults to pay them their salaries.

Standing on the platform of this large and complicated establishment,

with its thirty-four branches, extending from New Orleans to

Philadelphia, its machinery in full operation, its correspondence

carried on in cipher, its actuary dashing in and out of the bank with

an air of pressing business, if not of bewilderment, I found the path

of enquiry I was pursuing an exceedingly difficult one. I knew there

had been very lately several runs on the bank, and that there had been

a heavy draft made upon its reserve fund, but I did not know what I

should have been told before being allowed to enter upon the duties

of my office, that this reserve, which the bank by its charter was

required to keep, had been entirely exhausted, and that hence there

was nothing left to meet any future emergency. Not to make too long

a story, I was, in six weeks after my election as president of this

bank, convinced that it was no longer a safe custodian of the hard

earnings of my confiding people. This conclusion once reached, I could

not hesitate as to my duty in the premises, and this was, to save as

much as possible of the assets held by the bank for the benefit of the

depositors; and to prevent their being further squandered in keeping up

appearances, and in paying the salaries of myself and other officers in

the bank. Fortunately, Congress, from which we held our charter, was

then in session, and its committees on finance were in daily session.

I felt it my duty to make known as speedily as possible to Hon. John

Sherman, chairman of the Senate committee on finance, and to Senator

Scott of Pennsylvania, also of the same committee, that I regarded the

institution as insolvent and irrecoverable, and that I could no longer

ask my people to deposit their money in it. This representation to the

finance committee subjected me to very bitter opposition on the part

of the officers of the bank. Its actuary, Mr. Stickney, immediately

summoned some of the trustees, a dozen or so of them, to go before

the finance committee and make a counter statement to that made by

me; and this they did. Some of them who had assisted me by giving me

facts showing the insolvency of the bank, now made haste to contradict

that conclusion and to assure the committee that it was abundantly

able to weather the financial storm, and pay dollar for dollar to its

depositors if allowed to go on.

I was not exactly thunderstruck, but I was much amazed by this

contradiction. I, however, adhered to my statement that the bank ought

to stop. The finance committee substantially agreed with me, and in a

few weeks so legislated as to bring this imposing banking business to a

close by appointing three commissioners to take charge of its affairs.

This is a fair and unvarnished narration of my connection with the

Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, otherwise known as the Freedmen’s

Savings Bank, a connection which has brought upon my head an amount of

abuse and detraction greater than any encountered in any other part of

my life.

Before leaving the subject I ought in justice to myself to state that

when I found that the affairs of the bank were to be closed up, I

did not, as I might easily have done, and as others did, make myself

a preferred creditor and take my money out of the bank, but on the

contrary, I determined to take my chances with other depositors, and

left my money, to the amount of two thousand dollars, to be divided

with the assets among the creditors of the bank. And now, after seven

years have been allowed for the value of the securities to appreciate

and the loss of interests on the deposits for that length of time, the

depositors may deem themselves fortunate if they receive sixty cents

on the dollar of what they placed in the care of this fine savings

institution.

It is also due to myself to state, especially since I have seen myself

accused of bringing the Freedmen’s Bank into ruin, and squandering

in senseless loans on bad security the hardly-earned moneys of my

race, that all the loans ever made by the bank were made prior to

my connection with it as its president. Not a dollar, not a dime of

its millions were loaned by me, or with my approval. The fact is,

and all investigation shows it, that I was married to a corpse. The

fine building was there with its marble counters and black walnut

finishings, the affable and agile clerks, and the discreet and comely

colored cashier; but the LIFE, which was the money, was gone, and I

found that I had been placed there with the hope that by “some drugs,

some charms, some conjuration, or some mighty magic,” I would bring it

back.

When I became connected with the bank I had a tolerably fair name

for honest dealing; I had expended in the publication of my paper in

Rochester thousands of dollars annually, and had often to depend upon

my credit to bridge over immediate wants, but no man there or elsewhere

can say I ever wronged him out of a cent; and I could, to-day, with

the confidence of the converted centurion, offer “to restore fourfold

to any from whom I have unjustly taken aught.” I say this, not for the

benefit of those who know me, but for the thousands of my own race

who hear of me mostly through the malicious and envious assaults of

unscrupulous aspirants who vainly fancy that they lift themselves into

consideration by wanton attacks upon the characters of men who receive

a larger share of respect and esteem than themselves.

CHAPTER XV.

WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE.

The Santo Domingo controversy--Decoration day at Arlington, 1871--

Speech delivered there--National colored convention at New Orleans,

1872--Elector at large for the State of New York--Death of Hon.

Henry Wilson.

The most of my story is now before the reader. Whatever of good or ill

the future may have in store for me, the past at least is secure. As I

review the last decade up to the present writing, I am impressed with a

sense of completeness; a sort of rounding up of the arch to the point

where the key stone may be inserted, the scaffolding removed, and the

work, with all its perfections or faults, left to speak for itself.

This decade, from 1871 to 1881, has been crowded, if time is capable of

being thus described, with incidents and events which may well enough

be accounted remarkable. To me they certainly appear strange, if not

wonderful. My early life not only gave no visible promise, but no hint

of such experience. On the contrary, that life seemed to render it,

in part at least, impossible. In addition to what is narrated in the

foregoing chapter, I have to speak of my mission to Santo Domingo,

my appointment as a member of the council for the government of the

District of Columbia; my election as elector at large for the State of

New York; my invitation to speak at the monument of the unknown loyal

dead, at Arlington, on Decoration day; my address on the unveiling of

Lincoln monument, at Lincoln Park, Washington; my appointment to bring

the electoral vote from New York to the National Capital; my invitation

to speak near the statue of Abraham Lincoln, Madison Square, New York;

my accompanying the body of Vice-President Wilson from Washington to

Boston; my conversations with Senator Sumner and President Grant; my

welcome to the receptions of Secretary Hamilton Fish; my appointment

by President R. B. Hayes to the office of Marshal of the District of

Columbia; my visit to Thomas Auld, the man who claimed me as his

slave, and from whom I was purchased by my English friends; and my

visit to Lloyd’s plantation, the home of my childhood, after an absence

of fifty-six years; my appointment by President James A. Garfield to

the office of Recorder of Deeds of the District of Columbia, are some

of the matters which belong to this decade, and may come into the

chapter I am now about to write.

Those who knew of my more than friendly relations with Hon. Charles

Sumner, and of his determined opposition to the annexation of Santo

Domingo to the United States, were surprised to find me earnestly

taking sides with Gen. Grant upon that question. Some of my white

friends, and a few of those of my own color--who, unfortunately,

allow themselves to look at public questions more through the medium

of feeling than of reason, and who follow the line of what is

grateful to their friends rather than what is consistent with their

own convictions--thought my course was an ungrateful return for the

eminent services of the Massachusetts senator. I am free to say that,

had I been guided only by the promptings of my heart, I should in this

controversy have followed the lead of Charles Sumner. He was not only

the most clearsighted, brave, and uncompromising friend of my race who

had ever stood upon the floor of the Senate, but was to me a loved,

honored, and precious personal friend; a man possessing the exalted and

matured intellect of a statesman, with the pure and artless heart of a

child. Upon any issue, as between him and others, when the right seemed

in anywise doubtful, I should have followed his counsel and advice. But

the annexation of Santo Domingo, to my understanding, did not seem to

be any such question. The reasons in its favor were many and obvious;

and those against it, as I thought, were easily answered. To Mr.

Sumner, annexation was a measure to extinguish a colored nation, and to

do so by dishonorable means and for selfish motives. To me it meant the

alliance of a weak and defenceless people, having few or none of the

attributes of a nation, torn and rent by internal feuds, unable to

maintain order at home, or command respect abroad, to a government

which would give it peace, stability, prosperity, and civilization,

and make it helpful to both countries. To favor annexation at the time

when Santo Domingo asked for a place in our union, was a very different

thing from what it was when Cuba and Central America were sought by

fillibustering expeditions. When the slave power bore rule, and a

spirit of injustice and oppression animated and controlled every part

of our government, I was for limiting our dominion to the smallest

possible margin; but since liberty and equality have become the law

of our land, I am for extending our dominion whenever and wherever

such extension can peaceably and honorably, and with the approval and

desire of all the parties concerned, be accomplished. Santo Domingo

wanted to come under our government upon the terms thus described; and

for more reasons than I can stop here to give, I then believed, and

do now believe, it would have been wise to have received her into our

sisterhood of States.

[Illustration: Charles Sumner]

The idea that annexation meant degradation to a colored nation, was

altogether fanciful; there was no more dishonor to Santo Domingo in

making her a State of the American union, than in making Kansas,

Nebraska, or any other territory such a State. It was giving to a part

the strength of the whole, and lifting what must be despised for its

isolation into an organization and relationship which would compel

consideration and respect.

Though I differed from Mr. Sumner in respect of this measure, and

although I told him I thought he was unjust to President Grant,

it never disturbed our friendship. After his great speech against

annexation, which occupied six hours in its delivery, and in which he

arraigned the President in a most bitter and fierce manner, being at

the White House one day, I was asked by President Grant what I “now

thought of my friend Mr. Sumner”? I replied that I believed Mr. Sumner

sincerely thought, that in opposing annexation, he was defending the

cause of the colored race as he always had done, but that I thought he

was mistaken. I saw my reply was not very satisfactory, and said: “What

do you, Mr. President, think of Senator Sumner?” He answered, with some

feeling, “I think he is mad.”

The difference in opinion on this question between these two great

men was the cause of bitter personal estrangement, and one which I

intensely regretted. The truth is, that neither one was entirely just

to the other, because neither saw the other in his true character; and

having once fallen asunder, the occasion never came when they could be

brought together.

Variance between great men finds no healing influence in the atmosphere

of Washington. Interested parties are ever ready to fan the flame of

animosity and magnify the grounds of hostility in order to gain the

favor of one or the other. This is perhaps true in some degree in

every community; but it is especially so of the National Capital, and

this for the reason that there is ever a large class of people here

dependent upon the influence and favor of powerful public men for their

daily bread.

My selection to visit Santo Domingo with the commission sent thither,

was another point indicating the difference between the OLD TIME and

the NEW. It placed me on the deck of an American man-of-war, manned

by one hundred marines and five hundred men-of-wars-men, under the

national flag, which I could now call mine, in common with other

American citizens, and gave me a place not in the fore-castle, among

the hands, nor in the caboose with the cooks, but in the captain’s

saloon and in the society of gentlemen, scientists, and statesmen. It

would be a pleasing task to narrate the varied experiences and the

distinguished persons encountered in this Santo Domingo tour, but the

material is too boundless for the limits of these pages. I can only

say, it was highly interesting and instructive. The conversations at

the Captain’s table (at which I had the honor of a seat) were usually

led by Messrs. Wade, Howe, and White--the three commissioners; and

by Mr. Hurlburt of the _New York World_; the last-named gentleman

impressed me as one remarkable for knowledge and refinement, in which

he was no whit behind Messrs. Howe and White. As for Hon. Benj.

F. Wade, he was there, as everywhere, abundant in knowledge and

experience, fully able to take care of himself in the discussion of any

subject in which he chose to take a part. In a circle so brilliant,

it is no affectation of modesty to say I was for the most part a

listener and a learner. The commander of our good ship on this voyage,

Capt. Temple, now promoted to the position of Commodore, was a very

imposing man, and deported himself with much dignity towards us all.

For his treatment to me I am especially grateful. A son of the United

States navy as he was,--a department of our service considerably

distinguished for its aristocratic tendencies, I expected to find

something a little forbidding in his manner; but I am bound to say

that in this I was agreeably disappointed. Both the commander and the

officers under him bore themselves in a friendly manner towards me

during all the voyage, and this is saying a great thing for them, for

the spectacle presented by a colored man seated at the captain’s table

was not only unusual, but had never before occurred in the history of

the United States navy. If during this voyage there was anything to

complain of, it was not in the men in authority, or in the conduct

of the thirty gentlemen who went out as the honored guests of the

expedition, but in the colored waiters. My presence and position seemed

to trouble them for its incomprehensibility; and they did not know

exactly how to deport themselves towards me. Possibly they may have

detected in me something of the same sort in respect of themselves;

at any rate we seemed awkwardly related to each other during several

weeks of the voyage. In their eyes I was Fred. Douglass suddenly, and

possibly undeservedly, lifted above them. The fact that I was colored

and they were colored had so long made us equal, that the contradiction

now presented was too much for them. After all, I have no blame for Sam

and Garrett. They were trained in the school of servility to believe

that white men alone were entitled to be waited upon by colored men;

and the lesson taught by my presence on the “Tennessee” was not to

be learned upon the instant, without thought and experience. I refer

to the matter simply as an incident quite commonly met with in the

lives of colored men who, by their own exertions or otherwise, have

happened to occupy positions of respectability and honor. While the

rank and file of our race quote with much vehemence the doctrine of

human equality, they are often among the first to deny and denounce

it in practice. Of course this is true only of the more ignorant.

Intelligence is a great leveler here as elsewhere. It sees plainly the

real worth of men and things, and is not easily imposed upon by the

dressed up emptiness of human pride.

With a colored man on a sleeping car as its conductor, the last to

have his bed made up at night, and the last to have his boots blacked

in the morning, and the last to be served in any way, is the colored

passenger. This conduct is the homage which the black man pays to the

white man’s prejudice whose wishes, like a well-trained servant, he

is taught to anticipate and obey. Time, education, and circumstances

are rapidly destroying these mere color distinctions, and men will be

valued in this country as well as in others, for what they are, and for

what they can do.

My appointment at the hands of President Grant to a seat in the

council--by way of eminence sometimes called the upper house of the

territorial legislature of the District of Columbia--at the time it

was made, must be taken as a signal evidence of his high sense of

justice, fairness, and impartiality. The colored people of the district

constituted then as now about one-third of the whole population. They

were given by Gen. Grant, three members of this legislative council--a

representation more proportionate than any that has existed since the

government has passed into the hands of commissioners, for they have

all been white men.

[Illustration: COMMISSIONERS TO SANTO DOMINGO.]

It has sometimes been asked why I am called “Honorable.” My appointment

to this council must explain this, as it explains the impartiality of

Gen. Grant, though I fear it will hardly sustain this prodigious handle

to my name, as well as it does the former part of this proposition. The

members of this district council were required to be appointed by the

President, with the advice and consent of the United States Senate.

This is the ground, and only ground that I know of, upon which anybody

has claimed this title for me. I do not pretend that the foundation is

a very good one, but as I have generally allowed people to call me what

they have pleased, and as there is nothing necessarily dishonorable

in this, I have never taken the pains to dispute its application and

propriety; and yet I confess that I am never so spoken of without

feeling a trifle uncomfortable--about as much so as when I am called,

as I sometimes am, the _Rev._ Frederick Douglass. My stay in this

legislative body was of short duration. My vocation abroad left me

little time to study the many matters of local legislation; hence my

resignation, and the appointment of my son Lewis to fill out my term.

I have thus far told my story without copious quotations from my

letters, speeches, or other writings, and shall not depart from this

rule in what remains to be told, except to insert here my speech,

delivered at Arlington, near the monument to the “Unknown Loyal

Dead,” on Decoration Day, 1871. It was delivered under impressive

circumstances, in presence of President Grant, his Cabinet, and a great

multitude of distinguished people, and expresses, as I think, the true

view which should be taken of the great conflict between slavery and

freedom to which it refers.

“Friends and Fellow Citizens: Tarry here for a moment. My words

shall be few and simple. The solemn rites of this hour and place

call for no lengthened speech. There is in the very air of

this resting ground of the unknown dead a silent, subtle, and

an all-pervading eloquence, far more touching, impressive, and

thrilling than living lips have ever uttered. Into the measureless

depths of every loyal soul it is now whispering lessons of all

that is precious, priceless, holiest, and most enduring in human

existence.

“Dark and sad will be the hour to this nation when it forgets to

pay grateful homage to its greatest benefactors. The offering we

bring to-day is due alike to the patriot soldiers dead and their

noble comrades who still live; for whether living or dead, whether

in time or eternity, the loyal soldiers who imperiled all for

country and freedom are one and inseparable.

“Those unknown heroes whose whitened bones have been piously

gathered here, and whose green graves we now strew with sweet and

beautiful flowers, choice emblems alike of pure hearts and brave

spirits, reached in their glorious career that last highest point

of nobleness beyond which human power cannot go. They died for

their country.

“No loftier tribute can be paid to the most illustrious of all the

benefactors of mankind than we pay to these unrecognized soldiers,

when we write above their graves this shining epitaph.

“When the dark and vengeful spirit of slavery, always ambitious,

preferring to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, fired the

Southern heart and stirred all the malign elements of discord;

when our great Republic, the hope of freedom and self-government

throughout the world, had reached the point of supreme peril; when

the Union of these States was torn and rent asunder at the center,

and the armies of a gigantic rebellion came forth with broad

blades and bloody hands to destroy the very foundation of American

society, the unknown braves who flung themselves into the yawning

chasm, where cannon roared and bullets whistled, fought and fell.

They died for their country.

“We are sometimes asked, in the name of patriotism, to forget

the merits of this fearful struggle, and to remember with equal

admiration those who struck at the nation’s life and those who

struck to save it,--those who fought for slavery and those who

fought for liberty and justice.

“I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would

not repel the repentant, but may my “right hand forget her cunning,

and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,” if I forget the

difference between the parties to that terrible, protracted, and

bloody conflict.

“If we ought to forget a war which has filled our land with widows

and orphans, which has made stumps of men of the very flower of our

youth; sent them on the journey of life armless, legless, maimed

and mutilated; which has piled up a debt heavier than a mountain

of gold--swept uncounted thousands of men into bloody graves, and

planted agony at a million hearthstones; I say if this war is to be

forgotten, I ask in the name of all things sacred what shall men

remember?

“The essence and significance of our devotions here to-day are

not to be found in the fact that the men whose remains fill these

graves were brave in battle. If we met simply to show our sense

of bravery, we should find enough to kindle admiration on both

sides. In the raging storm of fire and blood, in the fierce torrent

of shot and shell, of sword and bayonet, whether on foot or on

horse, unflinching courage marked the rebel not less than the loyal

soldier.

“But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been

displayed in a noble cause. We must never forget that victory to

the rebellion meant death to the republic. We must never forget

that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves

between the nation and the nation’s destroyers. If to-day we have

a country not boiling in an agony of blood like France; if now we

have a united country, no longer cursed by the hell-black system

of human bondage; if the American name is no longer a by-word and

a hissing to a mocking earth; if the star spangled banner floats

only over free American citizens in every quarter of the land, and

our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice,

liberty, and civilization, we are indebted to the unselfish

devotion of the noble army who rest in these honored graves all

around us.”

In the month of April, 1872, I had the honor to attend and preside over

a National Convention of colored citizens, held in New Orleans. It was

a critical period in the history of the Republican party, as well as

in that of the country. Eminent men who had hitherto been looked upon

as the pillars of Republicanism had become dissatisfied with President

Grant’s administration, and determined to defeat his nomination for

a second term. The leaders in this unfortunate revolt were Messrs.

Trumbull, Schurz, Greeley, and Sumner. Mr. Schurz had already succeeded

in destroying the Republican party in the State of Missouri, and it

seemed to be his ambition to be the founder of a new party, and to him

more than to any other man belongs the credit of what was once known

as the Liberal Republican party which made Horace Greeley its standard

bearer in the campaign of that year.

At the time of the Convention in New Orleans the elements of this new

combination were just coming together. The division in the Republican

ranks seemed to be growing deeper and broader every day. The colored

people of the country were much affected by the threatened disruption,

and their leaders were much divided as to the side upon which they

should give their voice and their votes. The names of Greeley and

Sumner, on account of their long and earnest advocacy of justice

and liberty to the blacks, had powerful attractions for the newly

enfranchised class; and there was in this Convention at New Orleans

naturally enough a strong disposition to fraternize with the new

party and follow the lead of their old friends. Against this policy

I exerted whatever influence I possessed, and, I think, succeeded in

holding back that Convention from what I felt sure then would have

been a fatal political blunder, and time has proved the correctness

of that position. My speech on taking the chair on that occasion was

telegraphed from New Orleans in full to the New York _Herald_, and the

key-note of it was that there was no path out of the Republican party

that did not lead directly into the Democratic party--away from our

friends and directly to our enemies. Happily this Convention pretty

largely agreed with me, and its members have not since regretted that

agreement.

From this Convention onward, until the nomination and election of

Grant and Wilson, I was actively engaged on the stump, a part of the

time in Virginia with Hon. Henry Wilson, in North Carolina with John

M. Longston and John H. Smyth, and in the State of Maine with Senator

Hamlin, Gen. B. F. Butler, Gen. Woodford, and Hon. James G. Blaine.

Since 1872 I have been regularly what my old friend Parker Pillsbury

would call a “field hand” in every important political campaign, and

at each National Convention have sided with what has been called

the stalwart element of the Republican party. It was in the Grant

Presidential campaign that New York took an advanced step in the

renunciation of a timid policy. The Republicans of that State not

having the fear of popular prejudice before their eyes placed my name

as an Elector at large at the head of their Presidential ticket.

Considering the deep-rooted sentiment of the masses against negroes,

the noise and tumult likely to be raised, especially among our adopted

citizens of Irish descent, this was a bold and manly proceeding, and

one for which the Republicans of the State of New York deserve the

gratitude of every colored citizen of the Republic, for it was a blow

at popular prejudice in a quarter where it was capable of making the

strongest resistance. The result proved not only the justice and

generosity of the measure, but its wisdom. The Republicans carried the

State by a majority of fifty thousand over the heads of the Liberal

Republican and the Democratic parties combined.

Equally significant of the turn now taken in the political sentiment

of the country, was the action of the Republican Electoral College at

its meeting in Albany, when it committed to my custody the sealed up

electoral vote of the great State of New York, and commissioned me to

bring that vote to the National Capital. Only a few years before, any

colored man was forbidden by law to carry a United States mail bag from

one post-office to another. He was not allowed to touch the sacred

leather, though locked in “triple steel,” but now, not a mail bag, but

a document which was to decide the Presidential question with all its

momentous interests, was committed to the hands of one of this despised

class; and around him, in the execution of his high trust, was thrown

all the safeguards provided by the Constitution and the laws of the

land. Though I worked hard and long to secure the nomination and the

election of Gen. Grant in 1872, I neither received nor sought office

under him. He was my choice upon grounds altogether free from selfish

or personal considerations. I supported him because he had done all,

and would do all, he could to save not only the country from ruin, but

the emancipated class from oppression and ultimate destruction; and

because Mr. Greeley, with the Democratic party behind him, would not

have the power, even if he had the disposition, to afford us the needed

protection which our peculiar condition required. I could easily have

secured the appointment as Minister to Hayti, but preferred to urge the

claims of my friend, Ebenezer Bassett, a gentleman and a scholar, and

a man well fitted by his good sense and amiable qualities to fill the

position with credit to himself and his country. It is with a certain

degree of pride that I am able to say that my opinion of the wisdom of

sending Mr. Bassett to Hayti has been fully justified by the creditable

manner in which, for eight years, he discharged the difficult duties

of that position; for I have the assurance of Hon. Hamilton Fish,

Secretary of State of the United States, that Mr. Bassett was a

good Minister. In so many words, the ex-Secretary told me, that he

“wished that one-half of his ministers abroad performed their duties

as well as Mr. Bassett.” To those who knew Hon. Hamilton Fish, this

compliment will not be deemed slight, for few men are less given to

exaggeration and are more scrupulously exact in the observance of law,

and in the use of language, than is that gentleman. While speaking

in this strain of complacency in reference to Mr. Bassett, I take

pleasure also in bearing my testimony based upon knowledge obtained

at the State Department, that Mr. John Mercer Langston, the present

Minister to Hayti, has acquitted himself with equal wisdom and ability

to that of Mr. Bassett in the same position. Having known both these

gentlemen in their youth, when the one was at Yale, and the other at

Oberlin College, and witnessed their efforts to qualify themselves for

positions of usefulness, it has afforded me no limited satisfaction to

see them rise in the world. Such men increase the faith of all in the

possibilities of their race, and make it easier for those who are to

come after them.

The unveiling of Lincoln Monument in Lincoln Park, Washington, April

14th, 1876, and the part taken by me in the ceremonies of that grand

occasion, takes rank among the most interesting incidents of my life,

since it brought me into mental communication with a greater number of

the influential and distinguished men of the country than any I had

before known. There were present the President of the United States

and his Cabinet, Judges of the Supreme Court, the Senate and House

of Representatives, and many thousands of citizens to listen to my

address upon the illustrious man in whose memory the colored people

of the United States had, as a mark of their gratitude, erected that

impressive monument. Occasions like this have done wonders in the

removal of popular prejudice, and in lifting into consideration the

colored race; and I reckon it one of the high privileges of my life,

that I was permitted to have a share in this and several other like

celebrations.

The progress of a nation is sometimes indicated by small things. When

Henry Wilson, an honored Senator and Vice-President of the United

States, died in the capitol of the nation, it was a significant and

telling indication of national advance, when three colored citizens,

Mr. Robert Purvis, Mr. James Wormley, and myself, were selected with

the Senate committee, to accompany his honored remains from Washington

to the grand old commonwealth he loved so well, and whom in turn she

had so greatly loved and honored. It was meet and right that we should

be represented in the long procession that met those remains in every

State between here and Massachusetts, for Henry Wilson was among the

foremost friends of the colored race in this country, and this was the

first time in its history when a colored man was made a pall-bearer

at the funeral, as I was in this instance, of a Vice-President of the

United States.

An appointment to any important and lucrative office under the United

States government, usually brings its recipient a large measure

of praise and congratulation on the one hand, and much abuse and

disparagement on the other; and he may think himself singularly

fortunate if the censure does not exceed the praise. I need not dwell

upon the causes of this extravagance, but I may say there is no office

of any value in the country which is not desired and sought by many

persons equally meritorious and equally deserving. But as only one

person can be appointed to any one office, only one can be pleased,

while many are offended; unhappily, resentment follows disappointment,

and this resentment often finds expression in disparagement and abuse

of the successful man. As in most else I have said, I borrow this

reflection from my own experience.

My appointment as United States Marshal of the District of Columbia,

was in keeping with the rest of my life, as a freeman. It was an

innovation upon long established usage, and opposed to the general

current of sentiment in the community. It came upon the people of the

District as a gross surprise, and almost a punishment; and provoked

something like a scream--I will not say a _yell_--of popular

displeasure. As soon as I was named by President Hayes for the place,

efforts were made by members of the bar to defeat my confirmation

before the Senate. All sorts of reasons against my appointment, but the

true one, were given, and that was withheld more from a sense of shame,

than from a sense of justice. The apprehension doubtless was, that

if appointed marshal, I would surround myself with colored deputies,

colored bailiffs, colored messengers, and pack the jury box with

colored jurors; in a word, Africanize the courts. But the most dreadful

thing threatened, was a colored man at the _Executive Mansion_ in white

kid gloves, sparrow-tailed coat, patent leather boots, and alabaster

cravat, performing the ceremony--a very empty one--of introducing the

aristocratic citizens of the republic to the President of the United

States. This was something entirely too much to be borne; and men asked

themselves in view of it, to what is the world coming? and where will

these things stop? Dreadful! Dreadful!

It is creditable to the manliness of the American Senate, that it was

moved by none of these things, and that it lost no time in the matter

of my confirmation. I learn, and believe my information correct,

that foremost among those who supported my confirmation against the

objections made to it, was Hon. Roscoe Conkling of New York. His speech

in executive session is said by the senators who heard it, to have been

one of the most masterly and eloquent ever delivered on the floor of

the Senate; and this too I readily believe, for Mr. Conkling possesses

the ardor and fire of Henry Clay, the subtlety of Calhoun, and the

massive grandeur of Daniel Webster.

The effort to prevent my confirmation having failed, nothing could

be done but to wait for some overt act to justify my removal; and

for this my _un_friends had not long to wait. In the course of one

or two months I was invited by a number of citizens of Baltimore to

deliver a lecture in that city in Douglass Hall--a building named

in honor of myself, and devoted to educational purposes. With this

invitation I complied, giving the same lecture which I had two years

before delivered in the city of Washington, and which was at the time

published in full in the newspapers, and very highly commended by

them. The subject of the lecture was, “Our National Capital,” and in

it I said many complimentary things of the city, which were as true as

they were complimentary. I spoke of what it had been in the past, what

it was at that time, and what I thought it destined to become in the

future; giving it all credit for its good points, and calling attention

to some of its ridiculous features. For this I got myself pretty

roughly handled. The newspapers worked themselves up to a frenzy of

passion, and committees were appointed to procure names to a petition

to President Hayes demanding my removal. The tide of popular feeling

was so violent, that I deemed it necessary to depart from my usual

custom when assailed, so far as to write the following explanatory

letter, from which the reader will be able to measure the extent and

quality of my offense:

“To the Editor of the Washington Evening _Star_:

“Sir:--You were mistaken in representing me as being off on a

lecturing tour, and, by implication, neglecting my duties as

United States Marshal of the District of Columbia. My absence

from Washington during two days was due to an invitation by the

managers to be present on the occasion of the inauguration of the

International Exhibition in Philadelphia.

“In complying with this invitation, I found myself in company with

other members of the government who went thither in obedience to

the call of patriotism and civilization. No one interest of the

Marshal’s office suffered by my temporary absence, as I had seen

to it that those upon whom the duties of the office devolved were

honest, capable, industrious, painstaking, and faithful. My Deputy

Marshal is a man every way qualified for his position, and the

citizens of Washington may rest assured that no unfaithful man will

be retained in any position under me. Of course I can have nothing

to say as to my own fitness for the position I hold. You have a

right to say what you please on that point; yet I think it would be

only fair and generous to wait for some dereliction of duty on my

part before I shall be adjudged as incompetent to fill the place.

“You will allow me to say also that the attacks upon me on account

of the remarks alleged to have been made by me in Baltimore, strike

me as both malicious and silly. Washington is a great city, not

a village nor a hamlet, but the capital of a great nation, and

the manners and habits of its various classes are proper subjects

for presentation and criticism, and I very much mistake if this

great city can be thrown into a tempest of passion by any humorous

reflections I may take the liberty to utter. The city is too great

to be small, and I think it will laugh at the ridiculous attempt to

rouse it to a point of furious hostility to me for any thing said

in my Baltimore lecture.

“Had the reporters of that lecture been as careful to note what

I said in praise of Washington as what I said, if you please,

in disparagement of it, it would have been impossible to awaken

any feeling against me in this community for what I said. It is

the easiest thing in the world, as all editors know, to pervert

the meaning and give a one-sided impression of a whole speech by

simply giving isolated passages from the speech itself, without any

qualifying connections. It would hardly be imagined from anything

that has appeared here that I had said one word in that lecture in

honor of Washington, and yet the lecture itself, as a whole, was

decidedly in the interest of the national capital. I am not such a

fool as to decry a city in which I have invested my money and made

my permanent residence.

“After speaking of the power of the sentiment of patriotism I held

this language: ‘In the spirit of this noble sentiment I would have

the American people view the national capital. It is our national

center. It belongs to us; and whether it is mean or majestic,

whether arrayed in glory or covered with shame, we cannot but

share its character and its destiny. In the remotest section of

the republic, in the most distant parts of the globe, amid the

splendors of Europe or the wilds of Africa, we are still held and

firmly bound to this common center. Under the shadow of Bunker Hill

monument, in the peerless eloquence of his diction, I once heard

the great Daniel Webster give welcome to all American citizens,

assuring them that wherever else they might be strangers, they

were all at home there. The same boundless welcome is given to

all American citizens by Washington. Elsewhere we may belong to

individual States, but here we belong to the whole United States.

Elsewhere we may belong to a section, but here we belong to a

whole country, and the whole country belongs to us. It is national

territory, and the one place where no American is an intruder or

a carpet-bagger. The new comer is not less at home than the old

resident. Under its lofty domes and stately pillars, as under the

broad blue sky, all races and colors of men stand upon a footing of

common equality.

“‘The wealth and magnificence which elsewhere might oppress the

humble citizen has an opposite effect here. They are felt to be a

part of himself and serve to ennoble him in his own eyes. He is an

owner of the marble grandeur which he beholds about him,--as much

so as any of the forty millions of this great nation. Once in his

life every American who can should visit Washington: not as the

Mahometan to Mecca; not as the Catholic to Rome; not as the Hebrew

to Jerusalem, nor as the Chinaman to the Flowery kingdom, but in

the spirit of enlightened patriotism, knowing the value of free

institutions and how to perpetuate and maintain them.

“‘Washington should be contemplated not merely as an assemblage of

fine buildings; not merely as the chosen resort of the wealth and

fashion of the country; not merely as the honored place where the

statesmen of the nation assemble to shape the policy and frame the

laws; not merely as the point at which we are most visibly touched

by the outside world, and where the diplomatic skill and talent of

the old continent meet and match themselves against those of the

new, but as the national flag itself--a glorious symbol of civil

and religious liberty, leading the world in the race of social

science, civilization, and renown.’

“My lecture in Baltimore required more than an hour and a half

for its delivery, and every intelligent reader will see the

difficulty of doing justice to such a speech when it is abbreviated

and compressed into a half or three-quarters of a column. Such

abbreviation and condensation has been resorted to in this

instance. A few stray sentences, called out from their connections,

would be deprived of much of their harshness if presented in the

form and connection in which they were uttered; but I am taking

up too much space, and will close with the last paragraph of the

lecture, as delivered in Baltimore. ‘No city in the broad world has

a higher or more beneficent mission. Among all the great capitals

of the world it is preëminently the capital of free institutions.

Its fall would be a blow to freedom and progress throughout the

world. Let it stand then where it does now stand--where the father

of his country planted it, and where it has stood for more than

half a century; no longer sandwiched between two slave States; no

longer a contradiction to human progress; no longer the hot-bed of

slavery and the slave trade; no longer the home of the duelist,

the gambler, and the assassin; no longer the frantic partisan of

one section of the country against the other; no longer anchored

to a dark and semi-barbarous past, but a redeemed city, beautiful

to the eye and attractive to the heart, a bond of perpetual union,

an angel of peace on earth and good will to men, a common ground

upon which Americans of all races and colors, all sections, North

and South, may meet and shake hands, not over a chasm of blood, but

over a free, united, and progressive republic.’”

I have already alluded to the fact that much of the opposition to my

appointment to the office of United States Marshal of the District

of Columbia was due to the possibility of my being called to attend

President Hayes at the Executive Mansion upon state occasions, and

having the honor to introduce the guests on such occasions. I now

wish to refer to reproaches liberally showered upon me for holding

the office of Marshal while denied this distinguished honor, and to

show that the complaint against me at this point is not a well founded

complaint.

1st. Because the office of United States Marshal is distinct and

separate and complete in itself, and must be accepted or refused upon

its own merits. If, when offered to any person, its duties are such

as he can properly fulfill, he may very properly accept it; or, if

otherwise, he may as properly refuse it.

2d. Because the duties of the office are clearly and strictly defined

in the law by which it was created; and because nowhere among these

duties is there any mention or intimation that the Marshal may or shall

attend upon the President of the United States at the Executive Mansion

on state occasions.

3d. Because the choice as to who shall have the honor and privilege

of such attendance upon the President belongs exclusively and

reasonably to the President himself, and that therefore no one, however

distinguished, or in whatever office, has any just cause to complain of

the exercise by the President of this right of choice, or because he is

not himself chosen.

In view of these propositions, which I hold to be indisputable, I

should have presented to the country a most foolish and ridiculous

figure had I, as absurdly counseled by some of my colored friends,

resigned the office of Marshal of the District of Columbia, because

President Rutherford B. Hayes, for reasons that must have been

satisfactory to his judgment, preferred some person other than myself

to attend upon him at the Executive Mansion and perform the ceremony of

introduction on state occasions. But it was said, that this statement

did not cover the whole ground; that it was customary for the United

States Marshal of the District of Columbia to perform this social

office; and that the usage had come to have almost the force of law.

I met this at the time, and I meet it now by denying the binding

force of this custom. No former President has any right or power to

make his example the rule for his successor. The custom of inviting

the Marshal to do this duty was made by a President, and could be

as properly unmade by a President. Besides, the usage is altogether

a modern one, and had its origin in peculiar circumstances, and was

justified by those circumstances. It was introduced in time of war

by President Lincoln when he made his old law partner and intimate

acquaintance Marshal of the District, and was continued by Gen. Grant

when he appointed a relative of his, Gen. Sharp, to the same office.

But again it was said that President Hayes only departed from this

custom because the Marshal in my case was a colored man. The answer

I made to this, and now make to it, is, that it is a gratuitous

assumption and entirely begs the question. It may or may not be true

that my complexion was the cause of this departure, but no man has any

right to assume that position in advance of a plain declaration to that

effect by President Hayes himself. Never have I heard from him any such

declaration or intimation. In so far as my intercourse with him is

concerned, I can say that I at no time discovered in him a feeling of

aversion to me on account of my complexion, or on any other account,

and, unless I am greatly deceived, I was ever a welcome visitor at the

Executive Mansion on state occasions and all others, while Rutherford

B. Hayes was President of the United States. I have further to say

that I have many times during his administration had the honor to

introduce distinguished strangers to him, both of native and foreign

birth, and never had reason to feel myself slighted by himself or his

amiable wife; and I think he would be a very unreasonable man who could

desire for himself, or for any other, a larger measure of respect and

consideration than this at the hands of a man and woman occupying the

exalted positions of Mr. and Mrs. Hayes.

I should not do entire justice to the Honorable ex-President if I did

not bear additional testimony to his noble and generous spirit. When

all Washington was in an uproar, and a wild clamor rent the air for my

removal from the office of Marshal on account of the lecture delivered

by me in Baltimore, when petitions were flowing in upon him demanding

my degradation, he nobly rebuked the mad spirit of persecution by

openly declaring his purpose to retain me in my place.

One other word. During the tumult raised against me in consequence of

this lecture on the “National Capital,” Mr. Columbus Alexander, one

of the old and wealthy citizens of Washington, who was on my bond for

twenty thousand dollars, was repeatedly besought to withdraw his name,

and thus leave me disqualified; but like the President, both he and my

other bondsman, Mr. George Hill, Jr., were steadfast and immovable.

I was not surprised that Mr. Hill stood bravely by me, for he was a

Republican; but I was surprised and gratified that Mr. Alexander, a

Democrat, and, I believe, once a slaveholder, had not only the courage,

but the magnanimity to give me fair play in this fight. What I have

said of these gentlemen, can be extended to very few others in this

community, during that period of excitement, among either the white or

colored citizens, for, with the exception of Dr. Charles B. Purvis,

no colored man in the city uttered one public word in defence or

extenuation of me or of my Baltimore speech.

This violent hostility kindled against me was singularly evanescent.

It came like a whirlwind, and like a whirlwind departed. I soon saw

nothing of it, either in the courts among the lawyers, or on the

streets among the people; for it was discovered that there was really

in my speech at Baltimore nothing which made me “worthy of stripes or

of bonds.”

[Illustration: MARSHAL AT THE INAUGURATION OF PRES. GARFIELD.]

I can say from my experience in the office of United States Marshal

of the District of Columbia, it was every way agreeable. When it

was an open question whether I should take the office or not, it

was apprehended and predicted if I should accept it in face of the

opposition of the lawyers and judges of the courts, I should be

subjected to numberless suits for damages, and so vexed and worried

that the office would be rendered valueless to me; that it would not

only eat up my salary, but possibly endanger what little I might have

laid up for a rainy day. I have now to report that this apprehension

was in no sense realized. What might have happened had the members

of the District bar been half as malicious and spiteful as they had

been industriously represented as being, or if I had not secured as my

assistant a man so capable, industrious, vigilant, and careful as Mr.

L. P. Williams, of course I cannot know. But I am bound to praise the

bridge that carries me safely over it. I think it will ever stand as

a witness to my fitness for the position of Marshal, that I had the

wisdom to select for my assistant a gentleman so well instructed and

competent. I also take pleasure in bearing testimony to the generosity

of Mr. Phillips, the assistant Marshal who preceded Mr. Williams in

that office, in giving the new assistant valuable information as to the

various duties he would be called upon to perform. I have further to

say of my experience in the Marshal’s office, that while I have reason

to know that the eminent Chief Justice of the District of Columbia and

some of his associates were not well pleased with my appointment, I was

always treated by them, as well as by the chief clerk of the courts,

Hon. J. R. Meigs, and the subordinates of the latter (with a single

exception), with the respect and consideration due to my office. Among

the eminent lawyers of the District I believe I had many friends, and

there were those of them to whom I could always go with confidence in

an emergency for sound advice and direction, and this fact, after all

the hostility felt in consequence of my appointment, and revived by my

speech at Baltimore, is another proof of the vincibility of all feeling

arising out of popular prejudices.

In all my forty years of thought and labor to promote the freedom and

welfare of my race, I never found myself more widely and painfully at

variance with leading colored men of the country, than when I opposed

the effort to set in motion a wholesale exodus of colored people of the

South to the Northern States; and yet I never took a position in which

I felt myself better fortified by reason and necessity. It was said

of me, that I had deserted to the old master class, and that I was a

traitor to my race; that I had run away from slavery myself, and yet I

was opposing others in doing the same. When my opponents condescended

to argue, they took the ground that the colored people of the South

needed to be brought into contact with the freedom and civilization

of the North; that no emancipated and persecuted people ever had or

ever could rise in the presence of the people by whom they had been

enslaved, and that the true remedy for the ills which the freedmen were

suffering, was to initiate the Israelitish departure from our modern

Egypt to a land abounding, if not in “milk and honey,” certainly in

pork and hominy.

Influenced, no doubt, by the dazzling prospects held out to them by the

advocates of the exodus movement, thousands of poor, hungry, naked,

and destitute colored people were induced to quit the South amid the

frosts and snows of a dreadful winter in search of a better country. I

regret to say there was something sinister in this so-called exodus,

for it transpired that some of the agents most active in promoting

it had an understanding with certain railroad companies, by which

they were to receive one dollar per head upon all such passengers.

Thousands of these poor people, traveling only so far as they had

money to bear their expenses, were dropped on the levees of St. Louis,

in the extremest destitution; and their tales of woe were such as to

move a heart much less sensitive to human suffering than mine. But

while I felt for these poor deluded people, and did what I could to

put a stop to their ill-advised and ill-arranged stampede, I also

did what I could to assist such of them as were within my reach, who

were on their way to this land of promise. Hundreds of these people

came to Washington, and at one time there were from two to three

hundred lodged here, unable to get further for the want of money. I

lost no time in appealing to my friends for the means of assisting

them. Conspicuous among these friends was Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson of

New York city--the lady who, several years ago, made the nation a

present of Carpenter’s great historical picture of the “Signing of

the Emancipation Proclamation,” and who has expended large sums of her

money in investigating the causes of yellow-fever, and in endeavors to

discover means for preventing its ravages in New Orleans and elsewhere.

I found Mrs. Thompson consistently alive to the claims of humanity

in this, as in other instances, for she sent me, without delay, a

draft for two hundred and fifty dollars, and in doing so expressed

the wish that I would promptly inform her of any other opportunity of

doing good. How little justice was done me by those who accused me

of indifference to the welfare of the colored people of the South on

account of my opposition to the so-called exodus will be seen by the

following extracts from a paper on that subject laid before the Social

Science Congress at Saratoga, when that question was before the country:

* * * * *

“Important as manual labor is everywhere, it is nowhere more

important and absolutely indispensable to the existence of society

than in the more southern of the United States. Machinery may

continue to do, as it has done, much of the work of the North,

but the work of the South requires bone, sinew, and muscle of the

strongest and most enduring kind for its performance. Labor in that

section must know no pause. Her soil is pregnant and prolific with

life and energy. All the forces of nature within her borders are

wonderfully vigorous, persistent, and active. Aided by an almost

perpetual summer abundantly supplied with heat and moisture, her

soil readily and rapidly covers itself with noxious weeds, dense

forests, and impenetrable jungles. Only a few years of non-tillage

would be needed to give the sunny and fruitful South to the bats

and owls of a desolate wilderness. From this condition, shocking

for a southern man to contemplate, it is now seen that nothing less

powerful than the naked iron arm of the negro, can save her. For

him as a Southern laborer, there is no competitor or substitute.

The thought of filling his place by any other variety of the human

family, will be found delusive and utterly impracticable. Neither

Chinaman, German, Norwegian, nor Swede can drive him from the

sugar and cotton fields of Louisiana and Mississippi. They would

certainly perish in the black bottoms of these states if they could

be induced, which they cannot, to try the experiment.

“Nature itself, in those States, comes to the rescue of the negro,

fights his battles, and enables him to exact conditions from those

who would unfairly treat and oppress him. Besides being dependent

upon the roughest and flintiest kind of labor, the climate of

the South makes such labor uninviting and harshly repulsive to

the white man. He dreads it, shrinks from it, and refuses it. He

shuns the burning sun of the fields and seeks the shade of the

verandas. On the contrary, the negro walks, labors, and sleeps in

the sunlight unharmed. The standing apology for slavery was based

upon a knowledge of this fact. It was said that the world must have

cotton and sugar, and that only the negro could supply this want;

and that he could be induced to do it only under the “beneficent

whip” of some bloodthirsty _Legree_. The last part of this argument

has been happily disproved by the large crops of these productions

since Emancipation; but the first part of it stands firm,

unassailed and unassailable.

“Even if climate and other natural causes did not protect the negro

from all competition in the labor-market of the South, inevitable

social causes would probably effect the same result. The slave

system of that section has left behind it, as in the nature of the

case it must, manners, customs, and conditions to which free white

laboring men will be in no haste to submit themselves and their

families. They do not emigrate from the free North, where labor

is respected, to a lately enslaved South, where labor has been

whipped, chained, and degraded for centuries. Naturally enough such

emigration follows the lines of latitude in which they who compose

it were born. Not from South to North, but from East to West ‘the

Star of Empire takes its way.’

“Hence it is seen that the dependence of the planters, land-owners,

and old master-class of the South upon the negro, however galling

and humiliating to Southern pride and power, is nearly complete

and perfect. There is only one mode of escape for them, and that

mode they will certainly not adopt. It is to take off their own

coats, cease to whittle sticks and talk politics at cross-roads,

and go themselves to work in their broad and sunny fields of

cotton and sugar. An invitation to do this is about as harsh and

distasteful to all their inclinations as would be an invitation to

step down into their graves. With the negro, all this is different.

Neither natural, artificial, or traditional causes stand in the

way of the freedman to labor in the South. Neither the heat

nor the fever-demon which lurks in her tangled and oozy swamps

affright him, and he stands to-day the admitted author of whatever

prosperity, beauty, and civilization are now possessed by the

South, and the admitted arbiter of her destiny.

“This then, is the high vantage ground of the negro; he has labor;

the South wants it, and must have it or perish. Since he is free

he can now give it or withhold it, use it where he is, or take it

elsewhere as he pleases. His labor made him a slave, and his labor

can, if he will, make him free, comfortable, and independent. It

is more to him than fire, swords, ballot-boxes, or bayonets. It

touches the heart of the South through its pocket. This power

served him well years ago, when in the bitterest extremity of

destitution. But for it, he would have perished when he dropped

out of slavery. It saved him then, and it will save him again.

Emancipation came to him, surrounded by extremely unfriendly

circumstances. It was not the choice or consent of the people

among whom he lived, but against their will, and a death struggle

on their part to prevent it. His chains were broken in the tempest

and whirlwind of civil war. Without food, without shelter, without

land, without money, and without friends, he with his children,

his sick, his aged and helpless ones, were turned loose and naked

to the open sky. The announcement of his freedom was instantly

followed by an order from his master to quit his old quarters, and

to seek bread thereafter from the hands of those who had given him

his freedom. A desperate extremity was thus forced upon him at the

outset of his freedom, and the world watched with humane anxiety,

to see what would become of him. His peril was imminent. Starvation

and death stared him in the face and marked him for their victim.

“It will not soon be forgotten that at the close of a five hours’

speech by the late Senator Sumner, in which he advocated with

unequaled learning and eloquence the enfranchisement of the

freedmen, the best argument with which he was met in the Senate,

was that legislation at that point would be utterly superfluous;

that the negro was rapidly dying out, and must inevitably and

speedily disappear and become extinct.

“Inhuman and shocking as was this consignment of millions of human

beings to extinction, the extremity of the negro, at that date,

did not contradict, but favored, the prophecy. The policy of the

old master-class dictated by passion, pride, and revenge, was then

to make the freedom of the negro, a greater calamity to him, if

possible, than had been his slavery. But happily, both for the old

master-class, and for the recently emancipated, there came then, as

there will come now, the sober second thought. The old master-class

then found it had made a great mistake. It had driven away the

means of its own support. It had destroyed the hands, and left the

mouths. It had starved the negro, and starved itself. Not even to

gratify its own anger and resentment could it afford to allow its

fields to go uncultivated, and its tables unsupplied with food.

Hence the freedman, less from humanity than cupidity, less from

choice than necessity, was speedily called back to labor and life.

“But now, after fourteen years of service, and fourteen years of

separation from the visible presence of slavery, during which he

has shown both disposition and ability to supply the labor market

of the South, and that he could do so far better as a freedman than

he ever did as a slave; that more cotton and sugar can be raised by

the same hands, under the inspiration of liberty and hope, than can

be raised under the influence of bondage and the whip, he is again,

alas! in the deepest trouble; again without a home, out under

the open sky, with his wife and little ones. He lines the Sunny

banks of the Mississippi, fluttering in rags and wretchedness,

mournfully imploring hard-hearted Steamboat Captains to take him on

board; while the friends of the emigration movement are diligently

soliciting funds all over the North to help him away from his old

home to the new Canaan of Kansas.”

I am sorry to be obliged to omit the statement which here follows, of

the reasons given for the Exodus movement, and my explanation of them,

but from want of space I can present only such portions of the paper as

express most vividly and in fewest words, my position in regard to the

question. I go on to say:

“Bad as is the condition of the negro to-day at the South, there

was a time when it was flagrantly and incomparably worse. A few

years ago he had nothing--he had not even himself. He belonged

to somebody else, who could dispose of his person and his labor

as he pleased. Now he has himself, his labor, and his right to

dispose of one and the other as shall best suit his own happiness.

He has more. He has a standing in the supreme law of the land--

in the Constitution of the United States--not to be changed or

affected by any conjunction of circumstances likely to occur in the

immediate or remote future. The Fourteenth Amendment makes him a

citizen and the Fifteenth makes him a voter. With power behind him,

at work for him, and which cannot be taken from him, the negro of

the South may wisely bide his time. The situation at the moment is

exceptional and transient. The permanent powers of the government

are all on his side. What though for the moment the hand of

violence strikes down the negro’s rights in the South, those rights

will revive, survive, and flourish again. They are not the only

people who have been, in a moment of popular passion, maltreated

and driven from the polls. The Irish and Dutch have frequently been

so treated. Boston, Baltimore, and New York have been the scenes

of lawless violence; but those scenes have now disappeared....

Without abating one jot of our horror and indignation at the

outrages committed in some parts of the Southern States against the

negro, we cannot but regard the present agitation of an African

exodus from the South as ill-timed and in some respects hurtful. We

stand to-day at the beginning of a grand and beneficent reaction.

There is a growing recognition of the duty and obligation of the

American people to guard, protect, and defend the personal and

political rights of all the people of all the States; to uphold the

principles upon which rebellion was suppressed, slavery abolished,

and the country saved from dismemberment and ruin.

“We see and feel to-day, as we have not seen and felt before, that

the time for conciliation and trusting to the honor of the late

rebels and slaveholders has passed. The President of the United

States himself, while still liberal, just, and generous toward the

South, has yet sounded a halt in that direction, and has bravely,

firmly, and ably asserted the constitutional authority to maintain

the public peace in every State in the Union, and upon every day in

the year, and has maintained this ground against all the powers of

House and Senate.

“We stand at the gateway of a marked and decided change in the

statesmanship of our rulers. Every day brings fresh and increasing

evidence that we are, and of right ought to be, a nation; that

Confederate notions of the nature and powers of our government

ought to have perished in the rebellion which they supported; that

they are anachronisms and superstitions and no longer fit to be

above ground....

“At a time like this, so full of hope and courage, it is

unfortunate that a cry of despair should be raised in behalf of

the colored people of the South; unfortunate that men are going

over the country begging in the name of the poor colored man of the

South, and telling the people that the government has no power to

enforce the Constitution and laws in that section, and that there

is no hope for the poor negro but to plant him in the new soil of

Kansas or Nebraska.

“These men do the colored people of the South a real damage.

They give their enemies an advantage in the argument for their

manhood and freedom. They assume their inability to take care

of themselves. The country will be told of the hundreds who go

to Kansas, but not of the thousands who stay in Mississippi and

Louisiana.

“It will be told of the destitute who require material aid, but not

of the multitude who are bravely sustaining themselves where they

are.

“In Georgia the negroes are paying taxes upon six millions of

dollars; in Louisiana upon forty or fifty millions; and upon

unascertained sums elsewhere in the Southern States.

“Why should a people who have made such progress in the course of a

few years be humiliated and scandalized by exodus agents, begging

money to remove them from their homes? especially at a time when

every indication favors the position that the wrongs and hardships

which they suffer are soon to be redressed?

“Besides the objection thus stated, it is manifest that the

public and noisy advocacy of a general stampede of the colored

people from the South to the North is necessarily an abandonment

of the great and paramount principle of protection to person and

property in every State in the Union. It is an evasion of a solemn

obligation and duty. The business of this nation is to protect

its citizens _where they are_, not to transport them where they

will not need protection. The best that can be said of this exodus

in this respect is, that it is an attempt to climb up some other

way; it is an expedient, a half-way measure, and tends to weaken

in the public mind a sense of absolute right, power, and duty of

the government, inasmuch as it concedes by implication at least,

that on the soil of the South the law of the land cannot command

obedience, the ballot-box cannot be kept pure, peaceable elections

cannot be held, the Constitution cannot be enforced, and the lives

and liberties of loyal and peaceable citizens cannot be protected.

It is a surrender, a premature disheartening surrender, since it

would secure freedom and free institutions by migration rather

than by protection; by flight rather than by right; by going into

a strange land rather than by staying in one’s own. It leaves the

whole question of equal rights on the soil of the South open and

still to be settled, with the moral influence of exodus against us;

since it is a confession of the utter impracticability of equal

rights and equal protection in any State where those rights may be

struck down by violence.

“It does not appear that the friends of freedom should spend either

time or talent in furtherance of this exodus, as a desirable

measure, either for the North or the South. If the people of this

country cannot be protected in every State of the Union, the

government of the United States is shorn of its rightful dignity

and power, the late rebellion has triumphed, the sovereignty of the

nation is an empty name, and the power and authority in individual

States is greater than the power and authority of the United

States....

“The colored people of the South, just beginning to accumulate a

little property, and to lay the foundation of family, should not

be in haste to sell that little and be off to the banks of the

Mississippi. The habit of roaming from place to place in pursuit of

better conditions of existence is never a good one. A man should

never leave his home for a new one till he has earnestly endeavored

to make his immediate surroundings accord with his wishes. The time

and energy expended in wandering from place to place, if employed

in making him a comfortable home where he is, will, in nine cases

out of ten, prove the best investment. No people ever did much for

themselves or for the world without the sense and inspiration of

native land, of a fixed home, of familiar neighborhood and common

associations. The fact of being to the manner born has an elevating

power upon the mind and heart of a man. It is a more cheerful thing

to be able to say I was born here and know all the people, than to

say I am a stranger here and know none of the people.

“It cannot be doubted that in so far as this exodus tends to

promote restlessness in the colored people of the South, to

unsettle their feeling of home, and to sacrifice positive

advantages where they are, for fancied ones in Kansas or elsewhere,

it is an evil. Some have sold their little homes, their chickens,

mules, and pigs, at a sacrifice, to follow the exodus. Let it be

understood that you are going, and you advertise the fact that

your mule has lost half its value; for your staying with him makes

half his value. Let the colored people of Georgia offer their six

millions’ worth of property for sale, with the purpose to leave

Georgia, and they will not realize half its value. Land is not

worth much where there are no people to occupy it, and a mule is

not worth much where there is no one to drive him.

“It may be safely asserted that whether advocated and commended to

favor on the ground that it will increase the political power of

the Republican party, and thus help to make a solid North against

a solid South, or upon the ground that it will increase the power

and influence of the colored people as a political element, and

enable them the better to protect their rights, and insure their

moral and social elevation, the exodus will prove a disappointment,

a mistake, and a failure; because, as to strengthening the

Republican party, the emigrants will go only to those States where

the Republican party is strong and solid enough already with their

votes; and in respect to the other part of the argument, it will

fail because it takes colored voters from a section of the country

where they are sufficiently numerous to elect some of their number

to places of honor and profit, and places them in a country where

their proportion to other classes will be so small as not to be

recognized as a political element or entitled to be represented by

one of themselves. And further, because go where they will, they

must for a time inevitably carry with them poverty, ignorance, and

other repulsive incidents, inherited from their former condition

as slaves--a circumstance which is about as likely to make votes

for Democrats as for Republicans, and to raise up bitter prejudice

against them as to raise up friends for them....

“Plainly enough, the exodus is less harmful as a measure than are

the arguments by which it is supported. The one is the result of

a feeling of outrage and despair; but the other comes of cool,

selfish calculation. One is the result of honest despair, and

appeals powerfully to the sympathies of men; the other is an appeal

to our selfishness, which shrinks from doing right because the way

is difficult.

“Not only is the South the best locality for the negro, on the

ground of his political powers and possibilities, but it is best

for him as a field of labor. He is there, as he is nowhere else,

an absolute necessity. He has a monopoly of the labor market. His

labor is the only labor which can successfully offer itself for

sale in that market. This fact, with a little wisdom and firmness,

will enable him to sell his labor there on terms more favorable

to himself than he can elsewhere. As there are no competitors or

substitutes he can demand living prices with the certainty that

the demand will be complied with. Exodus would deprive him of this

advantage....

“The negro, as already intimated, is preëminently a Southern man.

He is so both in constitution and habits, in body as well as mind.

He will not only take with him to the North, southern modes of

labor, but southern modes of life. The careless and improvident

habits of the South cannot be set aside in a generation. If they

are adhered to in the North, in the fierce winds and snows of

Kansas and Nebraska, the emigration must be large to keep up their

numbers....

“As an assertion of power by a people hitherto held in bitter

contempt, as an emphatic and stinging protest against high-handed,

greedy, and shameless injustice to the weak and defenceless, as

a means of opening the blind eyes of oppressors to their folly

and peril, the exodus has done valuable service. Whether it has

accomplished all of which it is capable in this direction, for the

present is a question which may well be considered. With a moderate

degree of intelligent leadership among the laboring class of the

South, properly handling the justice of their cause, and wisely

using the exodus example, they can easily exact better terms for

their labor than ever before. Exodus is medicine, not food; it is

for disease, not health; it is not to be taken from choice, but

necessity. In anything like a normal condition of things, the South

is the best place for the negro. Nowhere else is there for him a

promise of a happier future. Let him stay there if he can, and save

both the South and himself to civilization. While, however, it may

be the highest wisdom in the circumstances for the freedmen to stay

where they are, no encouragement should be given to any measures

of coercion to keep them there. The American people are bound, if

they are or can be bound to anything, to keep the north gate of the

South open to black and white and to all the people. The time to

assert a right, Webster says, is when it is called in question. If

it is attempted, by force or fraud to compel the colored people to

stay there, they should by all means go--go quickly, and die if

need be in the attempt.”...

CHAPTER XVI.

“TIME MAKES ALL THINGS EVEN.”

Return to the “old master”--A last interview--Capt. Auld’s admission

“had I been in your place, I should have done as you did”--Speech at

Easton--The old jail there--Invited to a sail on the revenue cutter

Guthrie--Hon. John L. Thomas--Visit to the old plantation--Home of

Col. Lloyd--Kind reception and attentions--Familiar scenes--Old

memories--Burial-ground--Hospitality--Gracious reception from Mrs.

Buchanan--A little girl’s floral gift--A promise of a “good time

coming”--Speech at Harper’s Ferry, Decoration day, 1881--Storer

College--Hon. A. J. Hunter.

The leading incidents to which it is my purpose to call attention and

make prominent in the present chapter, will, I think, address the

imagination of the reader with peculiar and poetic force, and might

well enough be dramatized for the stage. They certainly afford another

striking illustration of the trite saying, that “truth is stranger than

fiction.”

The first of these events occurred four years ago, when, after a period

of more than forty years, I visited and had an interview with Captain

Thomas Auld, at St. Michaels, Talbot County, Maryland. It will be

remembered by those who have followed the thread of my story, that St.

Michaels was at one time the place of my home, and the scene of some

of my saddest experiences of slave life; and that I left there, or,

rather, was compelled to leave there, because it was believed that I

had written passes for several slaves to enable them to escape from

slavery, and that prominent slaveholders in that neighborhood had, for

this alleged offense, threatened to shoot me on sight, and to prevent

the execution of this threat, my master had sent me to Baltimore.

My return, therefore, to this place, in peace, among the same people,

was strange enough of itself, but that I should, when there, be

formally invited by Capt. Thomas Auld, then over eighty years old, to

come to the side of his dying bed, evidently with a view to a friendly

talk over our past relations, was a fact still more strange, and one

which, until its occurrence, I could never have thought possible. To

me, Capt. Auld had sustained the relation of master--a relation which

I had held in extremest abhorrence, and which, for forty years, I had

denounced in all bitterness of spirit and fierceness of speech. He had

struck down my personality, had subjected me to his will, made property

of my body and soul, reduced me to a chattel, hired me out to a noted

slave breaker to be worked like a beast and flogged into submission;

he had taken my hard earnings, sent me to prison, offered me for sale,

broken up my Sunday-school, forbidden me to teach my fellow slaves

to read on pain of nine and thirty lashes on my bare back; he had

sold my body to his brother Hugh, and pocketed the price of my flesh

and blood without any apparent disturbance of his conscience. I, on

my part, had traveled through the length and breadth of this country

and of England, holding up this conduct of his in common with that of

other slaveholders to the reprobation of all men who would listen to

my words. I had made his name and his deeds familiar to the world by

my writings in four different languages, yet here we were after four

decades once more face to face--he on his bed, aged and tremulous,

drawing near the sunset of life, and I, his former slave, United

States Marshal of the District of Columbia, holding his hand and in

friendly conversation with him, in a sort of final settlement of past

differences, preparatory to his stepping into his grave, where all

distinctions are at an end, and where the great and the small, the

slave and his master, are reduced to the same level. Had I been asked

in the days of slavery to visit this man, I should have regarded the

invitation as one to put fetters on my ankles and handcuffs on my

wrists. It would have been an invitation to the auction-block and the

slave whip. I had no business with this man under the old regime but

to keep out of his way. But now that slavery was destroyed, and the

slave and the master stood upon equal ground, I was not only willing

to meet him, but was very glad to do so. The conditions were favorable

for remembrance of all his good deeds, and generous extenuation of all

his evil ones. He was to me no longer a slaveholder either in fact

or in spirit, and I regarded him as I did myself, a victim of the

circumstances of birth, education, law, and custom.

Our courses had been determined for us, not by us. We had both been

flung, by powers that did not ask our consent, upon a mighty current

of life, which we could neither resist nor control. By this current he

was a master, and I a slave; but now our lives were verging towards a

point where differences disappear, where even the constancy of hate

breaks down, where the clouds of pride, passion, and selfishness vanish

before the brightness of infinite light. At such a time, and in such a

place, when a man is about closing his eyes on this world and ready to

step into the eternal unknown, no word of reproach or bitterness should

reach him or fall from his lips; and on this occasion there was to this

rule no transgression on either side.

As this visit to Capt. Auld has been made the subject of mirth by

heartless triflers, and regretted as a weakening of my life-long

testimony against slavery, by serious-minded men, and as the report of

it, published in the papers immediately after it occurred, was in some

respects defective and colored, it may be proper to state exactly what

was said and done at this interview.

It should in the first place be understood that I did not go to St.

Michaels upon Capt. Auld’s invitation, but upon that of my colored

friend, Charles Caldwell; but when once there, Capt. Auld sent Mr.

Green, a man in constant attendance upon him during his sickness, to

tell me he would be very glad to see me, and wished me to accompany

Green to his house, with which request I complied. On reaching the

house I was met by Mr. Wm. H. Bruff, a son-in-law of Capt. Auld, and

Mrs. Louisa Bruff, his daughter, and was conducted by them immediately

to the bed-room of Capt. Auld. We addressed each other simultaneously,

he calling me “Marshal Douglass,” and I, as I had always called him,

“Captain Auld.” Hearing myself called by him “Marshal Douglass,” I

instantly broke up the formal nature of the meeting by saying, “not

_Marshal_, but Frederick to you as formerly.” We shook hands cordially,

and in the act of doing so, he, having been long stricken with palsy,

shed tears as men thus afflicted will do when excited by any deep

emotion. The sight of him, the changes which time had wrought in him,

his tremulous hands constantly in motion, and all the circumstances of

his condition affected me deeply, and for a time choked my voice and

made me speechless. We both, however, got the better of our feelings,

and conversed freely about the past.

Though broken by age and palsy, the mind of Capt. Auld was remarkably

clear and strong. After he had become composed I asked him what he

thought of my conduct in running away and going to the north. He

hesitated a moment as if to properly formulate his reply, and said:

“Frederick, I always knew you were too smart to be a slave, and had I

been in your place I should have done as you did.” I said, “Capt. Auld,

I am glad to hear you say this. I did not run away from _you_, but from

_slavery_; it was not that I loved Cæsar less, but Rome more.” I told

him that I had made a mistake in my narrative, a copy of which I had

sent him, in attributing to him ungrateful and cruel treatment of my

grandmother; that I had done so on the supposition that in the division

of the property of my old master, Mr. Aaron Anthony, my grandmother

had fallen to him, and that he had left her in her old age, when she

could be no longer of service to him, to pick up her living in solitude

with none to help her, or in other words had turned her out to die

like an old horse. “Ah!” he said, “that was a mistake, I never owned

your grandmother; she in the division of the slaves was awarded to my

brother-in-law, Andrew Anthony; but,” he added quickly, “I brought her

down here and took care of her as long as she lived.” The fact is, that

after writing my narrative describing the condition of my grandmother,

Capt. Auld’s attention being thus called to it, he rescued her from

her destitution. I told him that this mistake of mine was corrected as

soon as I discovered it, and that I had at no time any wish to do him

injustice; that I regarded both of us as victims of a system. “Oh, I

never liked slavery,” he said, “and I meant to emancipate all of my

slaves when they reached the age of twenty-five years.” I told him

I had always been curious to know how old I was, that it had been a

serious trouble to me, not to know when was my birthday. He said he

could not tell me that, but he thought I was born in February, 1818.

This date made me one year younger than I had supposed myself from what

was told me by Mistress Lucretia, Captain Auld’s former wife, when I

left Lloyd’s for Baltimore in the Spring of 1825; she having then said

that I was eight, going on nine. I know that it was in the year 1825

that I went to Baltimore, because it was in that year that Mr. James

Beacham built a large frigate at the foot of Alliceana street, for one

of the South American Governments. Judging from this, and from certain

events which transpired at Col. Lloyd’s, such as a boy without any

knowledge of books, under eight years old, would hardly take cognizance

of, I am led to believe that Mrs. Lucretia was nearer right as to my

age than her husband.

Before I left his bedside Captain Auld spoke with a cheerful confidence

of the great change that awaited him, and felt himself about to depart

in peace. Seeing his extreme weakness I did not protract my visit. The

whole interview did not last more than twenty minutes, and we parted to

meet no more. His death was soon after announced in the papers, and the

fact that he had once owned me as a slave was cited as rendering that

event noteworthy.

It may not, perhaps, be quite artistic to speak in this connection of

another incident of something of the same nature as that which I have

just narrated, and yet it quite naturally finds place here; and that

is, my visit to the town of Easton, county seat of Talbot County, two

years later, to deliver an address in the Court House, for the benefit

of some association in that place. This visit was made interesting to

me, by the fact that forty-five years before I had, in company with

Henry and John Harris, been dragged to Easton behind horses, with my

hands tied, put in jail, and offered for sale, for the offense of

intending to run away from slavery.

It may easily be seen that this visit, after this lapse of time,

brought with it feelings and reflections such as only unusual

circumstances can awaken. There stood the old jail, with its

white-washed walls and iron gratings, as when in my youth I heard its

heavy locks and bolts clank behind me.

Strange too, Mr. Joseph Graham, who was then Sheriff of the County, and

who locked me in this gloomy place, was still living, though verging

towards eighty, and was one of the gentlemen who now gave me a warm

and friendly welcome, and was among my hearers when I delivered my

address at the Court House. There too in the same old place stood Sol.

Law’s Tavern, where once the slave traders were wont to congregate, and

where I now took up my abode and was treated with a hospitality and

consideration undreamed of as possible by me in the olden time.

When one has advanced far in the journey of life, when he has seen and

traveled over much of this great world, and has had many and strange

experiences of shadow and sunshine, when long distances of time and

space have come between him and his point of departure, it is natural

that his thoughts should return to the place of his beginning, and

that he should be seized with a strong desire to revisit the scenes

of his early recollection, and live over in memory the incidents of

his childhood. At least such for several years had been my thoughts

and feeling in respect of Col. Lloyd’s plantation on Wye River, Talbot

County, Maryland; for I had never been there since I left it, when

eight years old, in 1825.

While slavery continued, of course this very natural desire could not

be safely gratified; for my presence among slaves was dangerous to

the public peace, and could no more be tolerated than could a wolf

among sheep, or fire in a magazine. But now that the results of the

war had changed all this, I had for several years determined to return

to my old home upon the first opportunity. Speaking of this desire

of mine last winter, to Hon. John L. Thomas, the efficient collector

at the port of Baltimore, and a leading Republican of the State of

Maryland, he urged me very much to go, and added that he often took a

trip to the eastern shore in his Revenue Cutter, Guthrie, (otherwise

known in time of war as the Ewing,) and would be much pleased to have

me accompany him on one of these trips. I expressed some doubt as to

how such a visit would be received by the present Col. Edward Lloyd,

now proprietor of the old place, and grandson of Governor Ed. Lloyd

whom I remembered. Mr. Thomas promptly assured me that from his own

knowledge I need have no trouble on that score. Mr. Lloyd was a liberal

minded gentleman, and he had no doubt would take a visit from me very

kindly. I was very glad to accept the offer. The opportunity for the

trip however did not occur till the 12th of June, and on that day, in

company with Messrs. Thomas, Thompson, and Chamberlain, on board the

Cutter, we started for the contemplated visit. In four hours after

leaving Baltimore, we were anchored in the River off the Lloyd estate,

and from the deck of our vessel I saw once more the stately chimneys

of the grand old mansion which I had last seen from the deck of the

Sallie Lloyd when a boy. I left there as a slave, and returned as a

freeman: I left there unknown to the outside world, and returned well

known: I left there on a freight boat and returned on a Revenue Cutter:

I left on a vessel belonging to Col. Edward Lloyd, and returned on one

belonging to the United States.

As soon as we had come to anchor, Mr. Thomas despatched a note to Col.

Edward Lloyd, announcing my presence on board his Cutter, and inviting

him to meet me, informing him it was my desire, if agreeable to him,

to revisit my old home. In response to this note, Mr. Howard Lloyd, a

son of Col. Lloyd, a young gentleman of very pleasant address, came

on board the Cutter, and was introduced to the several gentlemen and

myself.

He told us that his father was gone to Easton on business, expressed

his regret at his absence, hoped he would return before we should

leave, and in the meantime received us cordially and invited us ashore,

escorted us over the grounds, and gave us as hearty a welcome as we

could have wished. I hope I shall be pardoned for speaking of this

incident with much complacency. It was one which could happen to but

few men, and only once in the life time of any. The span of human life

is too short for the repetition of events which occur at the distance

of fifty years. That I was deeply moved, and greatly affected by it,

can be easily imagined. Here I was, being welcomed and escorted by the

great grandson of Colonel Edward Lloyd--a gentleman I had known well

56 years before, and whose form and features were as vividly depicted

on my memory as if I had seen him but yesterday. He was a gentleman of

the olden time, elegant in his apparel, dignified in his deportment,

a man of few words and of weighty presence; and I can easily conceive

that no Governor of the State of Maryland ever commanded a larger

measure of respect than did this great grandfather of the young

gentleman now before me. In company with Mr. Howard was his little

brother Decosa, a bright boy of eight or nine years, disclosing his

aristocratic descent in the lineaments of his face, and in all his

modest and graceful movements. As I looked at him I could not help the

reflections naturally arising from having seen so many generations of

the same family on the same estate. I had seen the elder Lloyd, and was

now walking around with the youngest member of that name. In respect

to the place itself, I was most agreeably surprised to find that time

had dealt so gently with it, and that in all its appointments it was so

little changed from what it was when I left it, and from what I have

elsewhere described it. Very little was missing except the squads of

little black children which were once seen in all directions, and the

great number of slaves on its fields. Col. Lloyd’s estate comprised

twenty-seven thousand acres, and the home-farm seven thousand. In my

boyhood sixty men were employed in cultivating the home farm alone.

Now, by the aid of machinery, the work is accomplished by ten men. I

found the buildings, which gave it the appearance of a village, nearly

all standing, and I was astonished to find that I had carried their

appearance and location so accurately in my mind during so many years.

There was the long quarter, the quarter on the hill, the dwelling-house

of my old master, Aaron Anthony; the overseer’s house, once occupied

by William Sevier, Austin Gore, James Hopkins, and other overseers.

In connection with my old master’s house was the kitchen where Aunt

Katy presided, and where my head had received many a thump from her

unfriendly hand. I looked into this kitchen with peculiar interest,

and remembered that it was there I last saw my mother. I went round to

the window at which Miss Lucretia used to sit with her sewing, and at

which I used to sing when hungry, a signal which she well understood,

and to which she readily responded with bread. The little closet in

which I slept in a bag had been taken into the room; the dirt floor,

too, had disappeared under plank. But upon the whole, the house is

very much as it was in the olden time. Not far from it was the stable

formerly in charge of old Barney. The store-house at the end of it, of

which my master carried the keys, had been removed. The large carriage

house, too, which in my boy days contained two or three fine coaches,

several phaetons, gigs, and a large sleigh (for the latter there was

seldom any use) was gone. This carriage house was of much interest to

me because Col. Lloyd sometimes allowed his servants the use of it for

festal occasions, and in it there was at such times music and dancing.

With these two exceptions, the houses of the estate remained. There

was the shoemaker’s shop, where Uncle Abe made and mended shoes; and

there the blacksmith’s shop, where Uncle Tony hammered iron, and the

weekly closing of which first taught me to distinguish Sundays from

other days. The old barn, too, was there--time-worn, to be sure, but

still in good condition--a place of wonderful interest to me in my

childhood, for there I often repaired to listen to the chatter and

watch the flight of swallows among its lofty beams, and under its

ample roof. Time had wrought some changes in the trees and foliage.

The Lombardy poplars, in the branches of which the red-winged black

birds used to congregate and sing, and whose music awakened in my young

heart sensations and aspirations deep and undefinable, were gone; but

the oaks and elms where young Daniel (the uncle of the present Edward

Lloyd) used to divide with me his cakes and biscuits, were there as

umbrageous and beautiful as ever. I expressed a wish to Mr. Howard to

be shown into the family burial ground, and thither we made our way. It

is a remarkable spot--the resting place for all the deceased Lloyds

for two hundred years, for the family have been in possession of the

estate since the settlement of the Maryland colony.

The tombs there remind one of what may be seen in the grounds of

moss-covered churches in England. The very names of those who sleep

within the oldest of them are crumbled away and become undecipherable.

Everything about it is impressive, and suggestive of the transient

character of human life and glory. No one could stand under its

weeping willows, amidst its creeping ivy and myrtle, and look

through its somber shadows, without a feeling of unusual solemnity.

The first interment I ever witnessed was in this place. It was the

great-great-grandmother, brought from Annapolis in a mahogany coffin,

and quietly, without ceremony, deposited in this ground.

While here, Mr. Howard gathered for me a bouquet of flowers and

evergreens from the different graves around us, and which I carefully

brought to my home for preservation.

[Illustration: REVISITS HIS OLD HOME.]

Notable among the tombs were those of Admiral Buchanan, who commanded

the Merrimac in the action at Hampton Roads with the Monitor, March

8, 1862, and that of General Winder of the Confederate army, both

sons-in-law of the elder Lloyd. There was also pointed out to me the

grave of a Massachusetts man, a Mr. Page, a teacher in the family,

whom I had often seen and wondered what he could be thinking about

as he silently paced up and down the garden walks, always alone, for

he associated neither with Captain Anthony, Mr. McDermot, nor the

overseers. He seemed to be one by himself. I believe he originated

somewhere near Greenfield, Massachusetts, and members of his family

will perhaps learn for the first time, from these lines, the place of

his burial; for I have had intimation that they knew little about him

after he once left home.

We then visited the garden, still kept in fine condition, but not as

in the days of the elder Lloyd, for then it was tended constantly by

Mr. McDermot, a scientific gardener, and four experienced hands, and

formed, perhaps, the most beautiful feature of the place. From this

we were invited to what was called by the slaves the Great House--

the mansion of the Lloyds, and were helped to chairs upon its stately

veranda, where we could have a full view of its garden, with its broad

walks, hedged with box and adorned with fruit trees and flowers of

almost every variety. A more tranquil and tranquilizing scene I have

seldom met in this or any other country.

We were soon invited from this delightful outlook into the large dining

room, with its old-fashioned furniture, its mahogany side-board, its

cut-glass chandeliers, decanters, tumblers, and wine glasses, and

cordially invited to refresh ourselves with wine of most excellent

quality.

To say that our reception was every way gratifying is but a feeble

expression of the feeling of each and all of us.

Leaving the Great House, my presence became known to the colored

people, some of whom were children of those I had known when a boy.

They all seemed delighted to see me, and were pleased when I called

over the names of many of the old servants, and pointed out the cabin

where Dr. Copper, an old slave, used to teach us with a hickory stick

in hand, to say the “Lord’s Prayer.” After spending a little time with

these, we bade good-bye to Mr. Howard Lloyd, with many thanks for his

kind attentions, and steamed away to St. Michael’s, a place of which I

have already spoken.

The next part of this memorable trip took us to the home of Mrs.

Buchanan, the widow of Admiral Buchanan, one of the two only living

daughters of old Governor Lloyd, and here my reception was as kindly

as that received at the Great House, where I had often seen her when a

slender young lady of eighteen. She is now about seventy-four years,

but marvelously well preserved. She invited me to a seat by her side,

introduced me to her grandchildren, conversed with me as freely and

with as little embarrassment as if I had been an old acquaintance and

occupied an equal station with the most aristocratic of the Caucasian

race. I saw in her much of the quiet dignity as well as the features

of her father. I spent an hour or so in conversation with Mrs.

Buchanan, and when I left a beautiful little granddaughter of hers,

with a pleasant smile on her face, handed me a bouquet of many-colored

flowers. I never accepted such a gift with a sweeter sentiment of

gratitude than from the hand of this lovely child. It told me many

things, and among them that a new dispensation of justice, kindness,

and human brotherhood was dawning not only in the North, but in the

South; that the war and the slavery that caused the war were things of

the past, and that the rising generation are turning their eyes from

the sunset of decayed institutions to the grand possibilities of a

glorious future.

The next, and last noteworthy incident in my experience, and one which

further and strikingly illustrates the idea with which this chapter

sets out, is my visit to Harper’s Ferry on 30th of May, of this year,

and my address on John Brown, delivered in that place before Storer

College, an Institution established for the education of the children

of those whom John Brown endeavored to liberate. It is only a little

more than twenty years ago when the subject of my discourse (as will

be seen elsewhere in this volume) made a raid upon Harper’s Ferry;

when its people, and we may say the whole nation, were filled with

astonishment, horror, and indignation at the mention of his name;

when the Government of the United States co-operated with the State

of Virginia in efforts to arrest and bring to capital punishment all

persons in any way connected with John Brown and his enterprise; when

United States Marshals visited Rochester and elsewhere in search of

me, with a view to my apprehension and execution, for my supposed

complicity with Brown; when many prominent citizens of the North

were compelled to leave the country to avoid arrest, and men were

mobbed, even in Boston, for daring to speak a word in vindication or

extenuation of what was considered Brown’s stupendous crime; and yet

here I was, after two decades upon the very soil he had stained with

blood, among the very people he had startled and outraged, and who a

few years ago would have hanged me to the first tree, in open daylight,

allowed to deliver an address, not merely defending John Brown, but

extolling him as a hero and martyr to the cause of liberty, and doing

it with scarcely a murmur of disapprobation. I confess that as I

looked out upon the scene before me and the towering heights around

me, and remembered the bloody drama there enacted; saw the log house

in the distance where John Brown collected his men, saw the little

engine house where the brave old Puritan fortified himself against

a dozen companies of Virginia Militia, and the place where he was

finally captured by United States troops under Col. Robert E. Lee, I

was a little shocked at my own boldness in attempting to deliver an

address in such presence, and of the character advertised in advance

of my coming. But there was no cause of apprehension. The people of

Harper’s Ferry have made wondrous progress in their ideas of freedom,

of thought, and speech. The abolition of slavery has not merely

emancipated the negro, but liberated the whites; taken the lock from

their tongues, and the fetters from their press. On the platform from

which I spoke, sat Hon. Andrew J. Hunter, the prosecuting attorney for

the State of Virginia, who conducted the cause of the State against

John Brown, that consigned him to the gallows. This man, now well

stricken in years, greeted me cordially, and in conversation with me

after the address, bore testimony to the manliness and courage of John

Brown, and though he still disapproved of the raid made by him upon

Harper’s Ferry, he commended me for my address, and gave me a pressing

invitation to visit Charlestown, where he lives, and offered to give me

some facts which might prove interesting to me, as to the sayings and

conduct of Captain Brown while in prison and on trial, up to the time

of his execution. I regret that my engagements and duties were such

that I could not then and there accept his invitation, for I could not

doubt the sincerity with which it was given, or fail to see the value

of compliance. Mr. Hunter not only congratulated me upon my speech, but

at parting, gave me a friendly grip, and added that if Robert E. Lee

were alive and present, he knew he would give me his hand also.

This man’s presence added much to the interest of the occasion by his

frequent interruptions, approving, and condemning my sentiments as they

were uttered. I only regret that he did not undertake a formal reply to

my speech, but this, though invited, he declined to do. It would have

given me an opportunity of fortifying certain positions in my address

which were perhaps insufficiently defended. Upon the whole, taking

the visit to Capt. Auld, to Easton with its old jail, to the home of

my old master at Col. Lloyd’s, and this visit to Harper’s Ferry, with

all their associations, they fulfill the expectation created at the

beginning of this chapter.

CHAPTER XVII.

INCIDENTS AND EVENTS.

Hon. Gerrit Smith and Mr. E. C. Delevan--Experiences at Hotels and on

Steamboats and other modes of travel--Hon. Edward Marshall--Grace

Greenwood--Hon. Moses Norris--Rob’t J. Ingersoll--Reflections and

conclusions--Compensations.

In escaping from the South, the reader will have observed that I did

not escape from its wide-spread influence in the North. That influence

met me almost everywhere outside of pronounced anti-slavery circles,

and sometimes even within them. It was in the air, and men breathed it

and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its

presence.

I might recount many occasions when I have encountered this feeling,

some painful and melancholy, some ridiculous and amusing. It has been a

part of my mission to expose the absurdity of this spirit of caste and

in some measure help to emancipate men from its control.

Invited to accompany Hon. Gerrit Smith to dine with Mr. E. C. Delevan,

at Albany many years ago, I expressed to Mr. Smith, my awkwardness and

embarrassment in the society I was likely to meet there. “Ah!” said

that good man, “you must go, Douglass, it is your mission to break down

the walls of separation between the two races.” I went with Mr. Smith,

and was soon made at ease by Mr. Delevan and the ladies and gentlemen

there. They were among the most refined and brilliant people I had ever

met. I felt somewhat surprised that I could be so much at ease in such

company, but I found it then, as I have since, that the higher the

gradation in intelligence and refinement, the farther removed are all

artificial distinctions, and restraints of mere caste or color.

In one of my anti-slavery campaigns in New York, five and thirty years

ago, I had an appointment at Victor, a town in Ontario County. I was

compelled to stop at the hotel. It was the custom at that time, to seat

the guests at a long table running the length of the dining room. When

I entered I was shown a little table off in a corner. I knew what it

meant, but took my dinner all the same. When I went to the desk to pay

my bill, I said, “Now, Landlord, be good enough to tell me just why you

gave me my dinner at the little table in the corner by myself?” He was

equal to the occasion, and quickly replied: “Because you see, I wished

to give you something better than the others.” The cool reply staggered

me, and I gathered up my change, muttering only that I did not want to

be treated better than other people, and bade him good morning.

On an anti-slavery tour through the West, in company with H. Ford

Douglas, a young colored man of fine intellect and much promise, and

my old friend John Jones, (both now deceased,) we stopped at a Hotel

in Janesville, and were seated by ourselves to take our meals, where

all the bar-room loafers of the town could stare us. Thus seated I took

occasion to say, loud enough for the crowd to hear me, that I had just

been out to the stable and had made a great discovery. Asked by Mr.

Jones what my discovery was, I said that I saw there, black horses and

white horses eating together from the same trough in peace, from which

I inferred that the horses of Janesville were more civilized than its

people. The crowd saw the hit, and broke out into a good-natured laugh.

We were afterwards entertained at the same table with other guests.

Many years ago, on my way from Cleveland to Buffalo, on one of the

Lake Steamers, the gong sounded for supper. There was a rough element

on board, such as at that time might be found anywhere between Buffalo

and Chicago. It was not to be trifled with especially when hungry. At

the first sound of the gong there was a furious rush for the table.

From prudence, more than from lack of appetite, I waited for the

second table, as did several others. At this second table I took a

seat far apart from the few gentlemen scattered along its side, but

directly opposite a well dressed, finely-featured man, of the fairest

complexion, high forehead, golden hair and light beard. His whole

appearance told me he was _somebody_. I had been seated but a minute or

two, when the steward came to me, and roughly ordered me away. I paid

no attention to him, but proceeded to take my supper, determined not

to leave, unless compelled to do so by superior force, and being young

and strong I was not entirely unwilling to risk the consequences of

such a contest. A few moments passed, when on each side of my chair,

there appeared a stalwart of my own race. I glanced at the gentleman

opposite. His brow was knit, his color changed from white to scarlet,

and his eyes were full of fire. I saw the lightning flash, but I could

not tell where it would strike. Before my sable brethren could execute

their captain’s order, and just as they were about to lay violent

hands upon me, a voice from that man of golden hair and fiery eyes

resounded like a clap of summer thunder. “Let the gentleman alone! I am

not ashamed to take my tea with Mr. Douglass.” His was a voice to be

obeyed, and my right to my seat and my supper was no more disputed.

I bowed my acknowledgments to the gentleman, and thanked him for

his chivalrous interference; and as modestly as I could, asked him

his name. “I am Edward Marshall of Kentucky, now of California,” he

said. “Sir, I am very glad to know you, I have just been reading your

speech in Congress,” I said. Supper over, we passed several hours in

conversation with each other, during which he told me of his political

career in California, of his election to Congress, and that he was a

Democrat, but had no prejudice against color. He was then just coming

from Kentucky where he had been in part to see his black mammy, for,

said he, “I nursed at the breasts of a colored mother.”

I asked him if he knew my old friend John A. Collins in California.

“Oh, yes,” he replied, “he is a smart fellow; he ran against me for

Congress. I charged him with being an abolitionist, but he denied it,

so I sent off and got the evidence of his having been general agent of

the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and that settled him.”

During the passage, Mr. Marshall invited me into the bar-room to take

a drink. I excused myself from drinking, but went down with him. There

were a number of thirsty looking individuals standing around, to whom

Mr. Marshall said, “Come, boys, take a drink.” When the drinking was

over, he threw down upon the counter a twenty dollar gold piece, at

which the bar-keeper made large eyes, and said he could not change it.

“Well, keep it,” said the gallant Marshall, “it will all be gone before

morning.” After this, we naturally fell apart, and he was monopolized

by other company; but I shall never fail to bear willing testimony to

the generous and manly qualities of this brother of the gifted and

eloquent Thomas Marshall of Kentucky.