FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO OLIVER OTIS HOWARD

Washington[,] D.C. 18 February 1875.

GEN[ERA]L O. O. HOWARD:

MY DEAR SIR—

I am obliged by your two notes.¹Only one of these letters has been located. Howard wrote to Douglass on 15 January 1875, reporting that an extract from a New York World article in the Chicago Tribune implicated Howard in fraud during his management of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Oliver Otis Howard to Douglass, 15 January 1875, O. O. Howard Manuscripts, MeB. They came here in my absence and hence
the delay in answering—I cannot tell by whom the attacks upon you in
connection with the Freedmen’s Bank are inspired.²Howard had a history of questionable activity in connection with the Freedmen’s Bank. Long before 1875, he had been charged in two bank scandals, leading to a new round of accusations when Douglass was head of the bank. In 1870, Howard was accused of misappropriating governmental funds deposited at the bank, and in 1874 he was accused of the misuse of bounty-fund money. Investigations exonerated Howard of both charges, though evidence collected at the time showed that some of his chief lieutenants were involved in very suspicious investments. These past blots on Howard’s record led to renewed questioning of his integrity regarding the financial instability that caused the collapse of the Freedman’s Bank. Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy and Fraud, 163, 188; McFeely, Yankee Stepfather, 322–37. I do not believe that
any one of the commission is at all unfriendly to you.³Charges of corruption lodged against Howard stemmed mainly from his connections with the brothers Henry D. Cooke, the District of Columbia’s territorial governor, and the financier Jay Cooke, in the latter’s attempt to sell bonds for his Northern Pacific railroad. Howard had solicited wealthy supporters of freedmen’s aid efforts to purchase bonds offered by Jay Cooke, who had promised, in return, to make a significant contribution to Howard’s fund-raising for the YMCA. The Cookes had also gotten the Freedmen’s Bank to make overly generous loans to building projects in the District and to purchase Northern Pacific bonds. When the overextended Jay Cooke & Company was forced into bankruptcy, it precipitated a national financial panic. The Freedmen’s Bank was one of the principal victims of that crash. Walter L. Fleming, The Freedmen’s Savings Bank (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1927), 85, 120–21; McFeely, Yankee Stepfather, 525–27. I have however, no
hesitation in saying to you that the 60 or 70 thousand depositors who were
induced to put their hard earnings in the Freedman’s Bank in the belief
that it was wisely and honestly managed, deeply regret their confidence
and that I am one of their number. I never was more imposed upon by
any concern in my life. It is bad enough to plunder the rich, it is worse to
plunder the poor—and there is [no] disguising the fact that the poor have
been swindled by this Bank and that too under the disguise of Christian
philanthropy. The whole thing is a terrible blow to confidence in men in
whatever position and under whatever name.

Now, my dear General, take nothing of this to yourself—I believe you
have been as much imposed upon as any of us. The men who managed
that Bank and plunged it into its present wretched condition had your
confidence and may have it yet—but I don’t believe in any of them living
or dead—

Yours Very truly

FREDK DOUGLASS

ALS: O. O. Howard Manuscripts, MeB.