CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Washington, D.C. 27 March 1868.

DEAR FATHER,

I have just finished reading your letter, dated at Sturgis Michigan.¹Douglass had lectured in Sturgis, Michigan, on 23 March 1868, while on a speaking tour of the Midwest. Indianapolis , 23, 24, 27 March 1868. We are all well here. We have no doubt here, that Johnson will be convicted. The trial will surely go on next monday.²The impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson commenced on Monday, 30 March 1868, as Charles Douglass stated. This was five weeks after Johnson had removed Edwin M. Stanton as secretary of war, thereby violating the Tenure of Office Act and provoking the House of Representatives to pass an impeachment resolution on 24 February. The Senate had originally summoned the president to answer the House’s charges on 13 March, but a coalition of Democratic and moderate Republican senators twice approved appeals for delay presented by Johnson’s defense counsel. Radical Republicans had hoped for a quick trial before public outrage against the president subsided, but moderate Republicans, with the assistance of Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, insisted on a deliberate pace to ensure the appearance of a fair trial. The slow speed of the trial, which lasted until 26 May, allowed a conservative reaction to coalesce within the Republican party, contributing to Johnson’s acquittal. Michael Les Benedict, (New York, 1968), 122–24; Hans L. Trefousse, (Knoxville, 1975; New York, 1999), 151–53, 170–71. Mr. Slade is dead, he died one week ago last monday. The President, his family, and the Mayor of Washington attended the funeral.³William Slade died of heart disease on 16 March 1868. His funeral, two days later, was attended by the elite of Washington society of both races, including President Johnson, Johnson’s two daughters, and Washington’s mayor, Richard Wallach. The service was officiated by the Reverend Byron Sunderland—pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Washington, former chaplain of the U.S. Senate, and sitting president of Howard University—as well as the Reverend Leonard A. Grimes, pastor of the Twelfth Baptist Church of Boston, an African American institution of national prominence. Slade had both black and white pallbearers and was buried in the Columbian Harmony Society Cemetery, the final resting place for several black White House servants of the nineteenth century. Washington , 18 March 1868; Washington, , 114–18; Sweet, “Representative,” 34: 21–41. I did not go, but Libbie did. Lewis is still here, and has some encouragement to remain in view of his chances to get employment.⁴Lewis Douglass, who was also employed by the Red, White, and Blue Mining Company, traveled from Denver, Colorado, to the East in December 1867 to try to promote the company’s interests by lining up new investors. His trip, however, was not a success, since he managed only to convince his father to purchase ten shares, and he seems to have resigned in early 1868. By February he had moved to New York City, where he was living with Sylvester Rosa Koëhler and his family. During that period, he also spent two weeks with his father’s intimate friend Ottilie Assing in Hoboken, New Jersey. In early March, he appears to have moved on to Washington, D.C., but he did not settle there permanently until 1869. Bernier and Taylor, , 19–20.

Republicans in this quarter seem to be a little shy of Chf. Justice
Chase. He has favord the attempt to delay the trial of Johnson, and his
course looks as though he is not well pleased with the turn of affairs in
regard to the nomination for the <next> Presidency.⁵Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase played a significant and controversial role in the impeachment proceedings against President Andrew Johnson in the spring of 1868. Chase insisted that the nature of the Senate when trying an impeachment was fundamentally judicial, bound by the rules of legal evidence and procedure, rather than political, guided only by its own legislative rules of order. Viewing the Senate as a true “high court of impeachment,” Chase asserted his right, as the presiding judge of the proceedings, to rule on points of law and the submission of evidence. Although his views were castigated by the Radical faction leading the effort to remove Johnson from office, Chase’s stance was affirmed by a majority within the Republican-dominated Senate. Inevitably, the impeachment managers blamed Chase for their failure to convince the required two-thirds majority of senators to convict Johnson. Even those who agreed with Chase’s administration of the trial and Johnson’s ultimate acquittal suspected that the chief justice’s behavior was driven by his hatred of Senate president pro tempore Benjamin Wade and by his own persistent presidential ambitions. Most modern historians commend Chase’s actions during the impeachment trial, though they recognize that a wide range of political calculations influenced the Senate. Washington , 19 March 1868; John Niven, (New York, 1995), 419–26; Benedict, , 115–22; Trefousse, , 149, 152, 177.

General Howard is desirous of obtaining your services for a lecture
this Spring. His congregation have about completed a new Church that

will seat two thousand easily.⁶The First Congregational Church of Washington, D.C., was established in 1865 at the corner of Tenth and G streets. Major General Oliver Otis Howard was a prominent member of this church during his tenure as commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Because of his military fame and political clout, Howard was elected to the new church’s corporate board, which by May 1868 had raised enough money to construct one of the most notable church edifices in the city. Unfortunately, Howard’s personal zeal, national prominence, and racial egalitarianism threatened the church’s pastor, the Reverend Charles B. Boynton. After a year of very public acrimony between the men and their followers, Boynton and one-half of the membership resigned in April 1869. Worse still for Howard, the Boynton faction’s public charges of financial irregularities within the Freedmen’s Bureau led to investigations of the general by Congress in 1870 and by the War Department in 1874. It appears that the controversy surrounding Howard and the First Congregational Church kept Frederick Douglass away from the church until late May 1871, when he lectured there on his support for the proposed U.S. annexation of the Dominican Republic. Subsequently, Douglass formed close ties with the church, since it espoused progressive views on race and supported Howard University. Washington , 11 May 1868; Washington , 19 November 1868, 19 January 1869; Washington , 25 May 1871; Everett O. Alldredge, (Washington, D.C., 1965), 8–13, 20–26, 29, 30. The Genl. spoke to me, and desired me to
ascertain at what time you could come.

You have learned, I suppose that the Bill to continue the Bureau another year has passed the House, and we have no doubt that it will pass
the Senate.⁷A congressional bill entitled “An Act to continue the Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees, and for other purposes” was submitted to President Andrew Johnson on 24 July 1868. This legislation, which extended the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau for one year, recognized that the bureau would be discontinued in any southern state fully restored to the Union (with the exception of the Educational Division, which would continue until such states had established education systems). The president did not sign the bill, but since he did not veto it within ten days, it became law. Curiously, Congress soon amended the law with “An Act relating to the Freedmen’s Bureau, and providing for its discontinuance,” submitted to Johnson on 25 July 1868. This legislation directed Commissioner Oliver Otis Howard to discontinue the Freedmen’s Bureau on 1 January 1869, making exceptions for educational activities and assistance to black soldiers in recovering bounties due them for wartime service. This bill was vetoed by President Johnson, but both chambers of Congress quickly passed it over his veto, thus making it law. , 40th Congress, 2d sess., 513, 551; Howard, , 2: 358–60. Our little boy is cutting teeth, he has already two in sight.⁸Charles Frederick Douglass (1867–87) was born on 21 January 1867. He was the third of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass’s twenty-one grandchildren, and their oldest grandson. Bernier and Taylor, , xlix; Fought, , 310. I
hope you will have a warm reception at the home of Gov. Fenton.⁹Reuben E. Fenton was a leading Radical Republican in New York. His tenure as governor, 1865–69, was marked by one of the most significant bursts of activist legislation in the state’s history. Intending to simultaneously address social problems produced by industrialization and urbanization and to undercut New York City institutions controlled by Democrats, Radical Republicans pushed through laws that centralized, in Albany, the power to regulate municipal fire departments, public health services, tenement housing, and public education. Although much of this legislation was popular statewide, the Radicals’ attempt in early 1867 to revise the state constitution to give universal suffrage to black men provoked a vicious racist campaign by Democrats that produced widespread Republican defeats that fall. At the peak of his career, in 1868, Fenton was discussed as a possible running mate for Ulysses S. Grant, and in 1869 he was selected by the New York Assembly to serve in the U.S. Senate. At the end of his term in 1875, he retired to his native Chautauqua County, where he died in 1885. Douglass lectured in Fenton’s hometown of Jamestown, New York, on 31 March and 1 April, and presumably visited him at that time. Jamestown (N.Y.) , 20, 27 March, 3 April 1868; James C. Mohr, “New York: The De-Politicization of Reform,” in , ed. James C. Mohr (Baltimore, 1976), 66–81. In case
the Bureau is continued, I shall endeavor to make a visit home in May or
April. I hope you will speak here for Genl. Howard. All send love.

Aff. Yr. Son,

CHAS R. DOUG LASS

P. S. Fred. has gone to Cheyenne Colorado¹⁰In 1867, Frederick Douglass, Jr., left his job in Denver and moved to Cheyenne, in the Wyoming Territory, to work as a clerk for the Union Pacific Railroad’s superintendent of construction. In 1868, he briefly returned to Rochester, New York, before moving to Washington, D.C., where he opened a grocery store. Bernier and Taylor, , 27, 633.

C. R. D.

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 355–56, FD Papers, DLC.