RESIGNING FROM THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED
IN WASHINGTON, D.C., ON 20 JUNE 1871

Washington Daily National Republican, 21 June 1871. Other texts in Washington Daily
Morning Chronicle, 21 June 1871; New National Era, 22 June 1871.

Following Douglass’s defeat in the contest for territorial delegate from the
District of Columbia to the U.S. Congress, the Republican nominating con-
vention had voted to recommend his appointment as district secretary. In-
stead, President Grant chose Douglass to fill one of the eleven seats in the
upper council of the newly created territorial assembly. The council elected
William Stickney as president and Douglass as vice president at its organiza-
tional meeting on 15 May 1871. Douglass also served on the council’s com-
mittees on printing, schools, transportation facilities, and relations with the
federal government. After actively participating on the council during its first
month of operations, Douglass announced to the body on 20 June 1871 that he
had resigned his membership. The council unanimously passed a resolution
expressing its regret at Douglass’s departure and declaring “his associa-
tion . . . most pleasant to each member thereof, as well as profitable to the
people he represents.” The Washington Daily Morning Chronicle reported
Douglass’s resignation with the observation that he had “by his simple,
cordial, manly bearing, and his manifest ability and sound judgment, won the
respect and affection of all.” Washington Daily National Republican, 29
April, 16, 29, 30 May, 1, 2, 14, 15, 17 June 1871; NNE, 4, 18 May, 8 June
1871; Washington Daily Morning Chronicle, 13 June 1871; Washington Eve-
ning Star, 13, 17, 21 June 1871; F. H. Smith to FD, General Correspondence
File, reel 2, frames 596-97, FD Papers, DLC; Douglass, Life and Times,
454-55; Whyte, Uncivil War, 101-13.

I avail myself of this opportunity to state to the Council,¹Concerned that the District of Columbia be governed in a more uniform and representative manner, Congress abolished the separate governments of Washington and Georgetown and on 21 February 1871 formed one municipality to be governed like a territory. A governor, appointed by the president, held executive authority, while legislative power resided in the Legislative Assembly. This bicameral assembly consisted of a Council, composed of eleven residents of the territory appointed by the president, and a House of Delegates to which local voters annually elected twenty-two residents. When the assembly first met on 15 May 1871, it clearly favored an extensive and expensive improvement of the city's streets, buildings, and sanitary conditions. Under the aggressive leadership of the public works director, Alexander Shepherd, the territorial government immediately began this work and continued it for the next three years. Although the government made much progress in this effort, Congress nevertheless abolished the whole territorial arrangement on 20 June 1874 amid widespread accusations of financial corruption, especially against Shepherd, and replaced it with a government of three commissioners. Edwin Melvin Williams, “The Territorial Period-1871-1874," revised by William Tindall, in John Clagett Proctor, ed., Washington Past and Present: A History, 2 vols. (New York, 1930), 1: 130-41; Whyte, Uncivil War, 101. what most of the
members already know, that I have resigned the position I now hold as