seems that the newspapers would present to the eye of public curiosity my
private affairs, and those, too, which every man holds most dear and
sacred, the affairs of the family. What would you have me say? I can give
no explanation. I can make no apology.”

“The opinion has been expressed,” said THE POST, “that the colored
people, who look to you as a leader, will consider your position in the light
of your present action, as equivocal.”

“I do not presume to be a leader,” answered Mr. Douglass, “but if I
have advocated the cause of the colored people it is not because I am a
negro, but because I am a man. The same impulse which would move me to
jump into the water to save a white child from drowning, causes me to
espouse the cause of the downtrodden and oppressed wherever I find them.
Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Sumner²Abraham Lincoln and Charles Sumner. were leaders of the colored people, far
greater than I, an humble citizen, can ever hope to be. They were both
white men. What effect then can the affairs of my private life have upon my
principles of justice. I want for the colored people equal rights and advan-
tages of citizenship and for those objects I am still working just as earnestly
and shall continue to do so until the end.”

“It is said that your action reflects unfavorably upon the woman of the
colored race, and will consequently have a ruinous effect upon your politi-
cal future.”

“I have no political aspirations. I am getting well along in years now,
and I wish only to live quietly and peaceably, doing all the good I can. All
this excitement, then, is caused by my marriage with a woman a few shades
lighter then myself. If I had married a black woman there would have been
nothing said about it. Yet the disparity in our complexions would have been
the same. I am not an African, as may be seen from my features and hair,
and it is equally easy to discern that I am not a Caucasian. There are many
colored ladies of my acquaintance who are as good as I, and who are a great
deal better educated, yet, in affairs of this nature, who is to decide the why
and the wherefore. I have been associated with the lady who has become
my wife³Douglass’s second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass (1838-1903), was the eldest daughter of Gideon and Jane Wills Pitts, a prosperous farm couple of Honeoye, New York. Douglass first met the family while on an antislavery lecture tour in the 1840s. Helen received her early education in Lima, New York, and graduated from Mount Holyoke Seminary in 1859. For over three years in the 1860s she taught freedmen in Norfolk, Virginia, successfully bringing charges against local whites who abused and insulted her pupils. Declining health forced her return to Honeoye, but around 1880 she moved to Washington, D.C., where her uncle, Hiram Pitts, Douglass's neighbor in Anacostia, worked in the pension office. An advocate of both temperance and woman suffrage, she joined the Moral Education Society of Washington and contributed articles to its newspaper, the , edited by Dr. Caroline B. Winslow. In 1882 Douglass, recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia, hired her as a clerk in his office. Few, including the immediate families, suspected the couple's subsequent courtship. Helen’s father and uncle never reconciled themselves to her marriage, but her mother and sisters regularly visited Cedar Hill, the Douglass home. Relations with Douglass's children were polite if not overly familiar. In addition to being Douglass's traveling companion and hostess, she was a member of the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Association of Washington, studied anthropology, joined the District's Anthropological Society, and, in the 1890s, became a manager of the National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children. After her husband's death she lectured on such subjects as Egypt, the Hittites, and the southern convict lease system. Irregularities in Douglass's will resulted in several lawsuits involving his widow and children, the latter opposed to their stepmother's plan to establish Cedar Hill as a memorial to Douglass. Buying out his heirs and living frugally, she maintained the house until her death, willing it to the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association, which through her efforts had been incorporated by Congress in 1900. Helen Pitts Douglass was buried in the Douglass family lot in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York. Helen Pitts Douglass Papers, Williston Memorial Library, Mount Holyoke College: Washington National Republican, 25 January 1884; Washington Post, 26 January 1884, 2, 6 December 1903; Chicago Christian Cynosure, 7 February 1884; "Schoolmate of Mrs. Douglass" to Editor, 12 February 1884, in Cleveland Herald, 14 February 1884; unidentified newspaper clipping [Rochester Morning Herald?], Miscellany File, reel 34, frame 463, FD Papers, DLC; New York Times, 2 December 1903; Francis J. Grimké, “The Second Marriage of Frederick Douglass," JNH, 19: 324-29 (July 1934); Georgianna Rose Simpson, “A Tribute to Helen Pitts Douglass," NHB, 7: 131-32 (March 1934). for sometime past. I came to know her well, and was pleased with
her, and she, I hope, with me.”