FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Washington, D.C. 15 Aug[ust] 1872.

MY DEAR GERRIT SMITH:

Your defense of your consistency is before me. I think you were
wrong when you consented to follow even so good a man as S. P. Chase
into the Democratic party—but you are clearly right in refusing to follow
Mr Greeley there.¹In the 1868 campaign, Gerrit Smith had hoped that the Democratic party would support the former abolitionist and Supreme Court chief justice Salmon P. Chase as its candidate for president, although Smith did not publicly promise the party his support. Four years later, Smith was an at-large delegate to the Republican National Convention, where he supported Grant’s nomination for a second term and opposed the Liberal Republican bolt led by Horace Greeley into an alliance with the Democrats. Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 446, 474–78.

You see that I am becoming quite important of late because not invited to dine in company with the Santo Domingo Commissioners at the
White house.²Douglass had been appointed assistant secretary to the commissioners who were sent to the Dominican Republic in 1871 to investigate possible U.S. annexation of the small nation. Douglass had given his support to the idea after the fall of slavery. On their return, the commissioners were invited by President Grant to a dinner at the White House, but he omitted Douglass. Many black leaders and Liberal Republican critics of Grant voiced outrage at this perceived snub. Douglass remained largely silent on the subject, but during the campaign season of 1872, Charles Sumner and Horace Greeley tried to use this insult as proof that Grant was no friend to African Americans. Douglass, who remained unswervingly loyal to Grant, later said that as he was “so used to being snubbed, and receiving insults because of my color,” that he could ignore this incident. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3: 318–21; Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 542; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 277. I cannot make the President a great sinner for that omission, though I would have rejoiced in such a reproof of the insult offered
me on my return to Washington as an invitation to dine with the President
would have been.

Always yours.

FREDK DOUG LASS

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.