FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Washington[,] D.C. 24 Sept[ember] 1874.

MY DEAR GERRIT SMITH:

I am very much obliged by your note and the copy of the pamphlet entitled
“slavery as it is”¹An allusion to Theodore Weld’s American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (New York, 1839).

As to the future of our Republic, I share your fears. Not alone however, are my fears excited by the power and the policy of the Democratic
Party. Rightiousness is the strength of nations as well as of individuals.
In this respect, Washington is the place to see the weakness if not the
strength of this nation. The moral atmosphere is more than tainted, it is
rotten. Averice, duplicity, falsehood, corruption, servility fawning and
trickery of all kinds, confront us at every turn. There is little here but
distrust and suspicion. Every body is supposed to have some ulterior object. I devide the people here into two classes: 1 the class used, 2 the
class that uses them. I belong to the first class. Because I happen to be
well known to President Grant and the heads of departments, I am made
use of by all who want office and want influence to get office. I have been
compelled in order to have any command of my time, at last, to deny
all who apply for my services in that line.²In his final autobiography, Life and Times, Douglass described being besieged by candidates for some kind of federal government appointment: “They have been told by somebody, somewhere, that if they can only get to Washington and find Douglass, they will be quite sure to get an office. . . . Like the mist and spray which rises over the cataract of Niagara, its particles are ever meeting and separating in the air. One goes, another comes, and none stay long. Few are successful in getting what they seek. There are a hundred applicants for every ten vacancies. The demand is incomparably greater than the supply and the cry is, ‘still they come.’” Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 3: 464. Please speak kindly of me to
Mrs Smith³Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith.—

Always truly yours

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.