CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Washington[,] D.C. 21 Aug[ust] 1867.

DEAR FATHER

Your letter of the 19th inst.¹Douglass's letter to Charles has not survived. came to hand this morning. Libbie²Mary Elizabeth "Libbie" Murphy Douglass. the baby
and myself are well. It is understood here that General Howard will be
relieved monday next.³Charles is repeating a rumor circulating in Washington that President Andrew Johnson was seeking an African American as a replacement for General Oliver Otis Howard as commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau. By the fall, the story had made it into national publications such as the New York and the New York . Johnson's intention was to remove Howard and replace him with a politically weaker commissioner as part of the president's plan to subvert the bureau. The maneuver ultimately came to naught, since neither Douglass nor Langston would cooperate with Johnson. , 21 September 1867; McFeely, , 241–43, 247, 307. What my fate will be I cant say. Johnson seems
determined to make good use of the rest of his term <and> to play the
mischief in all quarters. My position here will depend on the Policy of the
successor of General Howard. With regard to the chairs and other articles,
I can only say let them go at what they will bring.

You told me some time ago that you would not charge Libbie for
board, and my letter had no reference to that at all. I have learned since
writing this, that you have been tendered the Position that Genl. Howard
now occupies, it came direct from the White House and is now being
talked about in my presence.

John M. Langston4 is also mentioned, rumors are rife in all quarters. I
have heard enough here from reporters of the press coming and going that
if you would accept the position as Comm. of this Bureau, it would be at
once given to you.

It seems very strange to me that such a thing should even be mooted
in the quarter it has emanated from. There is some deep scheming going
on at Head Quarters,⁴John Mercer Langston (1829–97) was born in Louisa County, Virginia, to a planter and his mistress, an emancipated slave of black and American Indian ancestry. Orphaned at an early age but possessed of a substantial inheritance, Langston grew up in Ohio, graduated from Oberlin College (1849), and in 1854 gained admission to the Ohio bar under a precedent allowing certain rights to “a colored man who is nearer white than mulatto or half-breed.” He won elected office in Oberlin and campaigned for black suffrage and education. Langston spoke at temperance and antislavery meetings and helped found the black Ohio State Anti-Slavery Society, of which he was president from 1858 to 1861. During the Civil War, he recruited African American troops, opposed discrimination in the army, headed the National Equal Rights League, and successfully defended Edmonia Lewis—later a noted black sculptor—in an infamous poisoning case at Oberlin College. Langston was inspector general of the Freedmen’s Bureau and was, as Charles reports, approached by the Johnson administration about replacing O. O. Howard as its head. From 1869 until 1876, he was a professor of law and dean at Howard University. President Grant appointed him to the Board of Health of the District of Columbia in 1871, and he served until 1877. Appointed minister to Haiti in 1877, Langston held diplomatic posts until 1885, when he returned to Virginia as president of the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute in Petersburg. In 1888 he won a disputed congressional election in Virginia’s Fourth District, defeating a white Democrat and a white Republican in a race that was ultimately decided by the House of Representatives. Douglass opposed Langston’s candidacy for tending to split the Republican ranks. , 13 May 1852; John Mercer Langston, (Hartford, Conn., 1894); William Cheek and Aimee Lee Cheek, (Urbana, Ill., 1989); Geoffrey Blodgett, “John Mercer Langston and the Case of Edmonia Lewis: Oberlin, 1862,” , 53: 201–18 (July 1968).and I shall await the result in good spirits

Love to Mother
Aff. Yr. Son

CHARLES R. DOUG LASS

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 307–08, FD Papers, DLC.