FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL GRIDLEY HOWE¹Born into one of Boston’s leading families, Samuel Gridley Howe (1801–76) graduated from Brown University in 1821 and Harvard Medical School in 1824. For the next six years, Howe participated as a soldier, surgeon, and relief worker in the Greek rebellion against Turkish rule. After returning to the United States, he was a pioneer in the education of the blind, deaf, and insane. Howe married Julia Ward in 1843, and the two coedited the Free Soil newspaper the Boston Commonwealth in the early 1850s. His active support for the free-state movement in Kansas brought Howe into close contact with John Brown, who recruited Howe as one of the Secret Six who financed the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. After that incident, Howe wrote a public letter disclaiming any advance knowledge of Brown’s plans. Howe then briefly fled to Canada, returning later to testify before the congressional panel investigating the raid. During the Civil War, he assisted the U.S. Sanitary Commission and, at the conflict’s conclusion, served on the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission. In 1871, Howe traveled to Santo Domingo as one of the three members of the commission (which Douglass accompanied as secretary) charged to study the advisability of U.S. annexation of that nation. Rossbach, Ambivalent Conspirators, 26; ACAB, 3: 283–84; NCAB, 8: 372–73; DAB, 9: 296–97.

Washington, D.C.²Douglass wrote this letter on printed stationery from the New National Era. 21 June 1871.

DR J. G. HOWE.

DEAR SIR:

You have rightly stated my opinion of the Baez Government of Santo
Domingo.³Buenaventura Báez (1812–84) was born in Azua, Dominican Republic, to a wealthy landowning father and a mulatto slave mother, and he was educated in France. After the War for Independence from Haiti (1844–49), leadership of the new Dominican Republic alternated for the next thirty years between the northern Blue party, led by Pedro Santana (1801–64), and the southern Red party, led by Báez. To protect their persons and property from domestic rivals, spiraling national debt, and Haitian invasion, these caudillos (strong men) repeatedly sought to secure their nation’s protection or annexation by a foreign power. Spain recolonized the Dominican Republic at Santana’s invitation in 1861 but retreated after the bloody popular resistance that the Dominicans named the War of the Restoration (1863–65). During the Spanish annexation, Báez moved to Europe, where he lived off subsidies and titles bestowed by Spain’s queen. When Spanish defeat appeared imminent, Báez renounced his allegiance to the Crown and relocated to Curaçao to orchestrate his return to power. Restoration of Dominican sovereignty inaugurated twenty years of political chaos; conflict between conservative Reds and liberal Blues resulted in more than fifty revolts and at least twenty-one changes in government. Báez held the presidency three times during the era, the longest period being from May 1868 to January 1874, during which he encouraged U.S. annexation. After ruling from December 1876 to February 1878, Báez died in exile in 1882. Modern historians of the Dominican Republic universally denounce Santana and Báez for creating a national culture in which political and economic chaos was the norm. Sumner Welles, Naboth’s Vineyard: The Dominican Republic, 1844–1924, 2 vols. (1928; Mamaroneck, N.Y., 1966), 1: 66–67, 76, 91–92, 96, 100, 136–37, 301–02; Richard A. Haggerty, ed., Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies (Washington, D.C., 1991), 12–18; Frank Moya Pons, The Dominican Republic: A National History (New Rochelle, N.Y., 1995), 219–32; Eric Paul Roorda, Lauren Derby, and Raymundo González, eds., The Dominican Republic Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Durham, N.C., 2014), 141, 146. I would willingly unite with any measure of temporary relief
which you with other gentlemen may be able to devise whether in the way
of a loan or by . The well disposed and order loving, loving
people of that country are with Baez and have claimed upon the friends
of good order every where. The thing to be done is for our Government
to annex Santo Domingo at the earliest possible moment. It is a crying
shame to raise the hopes of that people as we have done and then leave
them to perish. I will see General Babcock⁴Orville Elias Babcock (1835–84) was born in Franklin, Vermont, and graduated from West Point in 1861. Babcock was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers and appointed to the staff of General William B. Franklin in the Army of the Potomac. He then served as acting chief engineer of the Department of the Ohio, being promoted to captain of the Corps of Engineers in June 1863. His success in overseeing construction tasks during the Knoxville campaign gained him favor with General Ulysses S. Grant, who promoted him to lieutenant colonel of staff in 1864. Following Grant’s successful election to the presidency in 1869, Babcock was assigned to serve as Grant’s assistant private secretary and major of engineers. That same year, he was sent to the Dominican Republic to explore terms for that country’s proposed annexation by the United States, one of the most controversial diplomatic initiatives of the Grant administration. Babcock negotiated a treaty of annexation with the Dominican president, Buenaventura Báez, which Grant proposed to the Senate. The treaty was twice defeated, largely because of the vociferous opposition of a Senate faction led by Charles Sumner. Following the controversy surrounding the Dominican Republic, Babcock was appointed superintendent of public buildings and grounds for Washington, D.C., in 1871. But this assignment became marred by controversy when a congressional investigation revealed irregularities in the oversight of finances. In December 1875, a grand jury indicted Babcock for conspiring to defraud the government, in what was known as the Whiskey Ring scandal. For over a decade, distillers and others in the liquor industry had evaded paying taxes by bribing federal officials. It was estimated that 12–15 million gallons of whiskey had gone untaxed annually. Grant nonetheless maintained his support of Babcock, giving a deposition from the White House that was delivered to a St. Louis grand jury investigating corruption. Babcock was acquitted in February 1876, but Grant replaced him as his private secretary with his sons, Ulysses Jr. and Fred. Babcock instead was appointed inspector of lighthouses and was the engineer in charge of the Fifth and Sixth Light-house Districts. He drowned at Mosquito Inlet in Florida while fulfilling his duties. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4: 281–82; New York Times, 4 June 1884; Jean Edward Smith, Grant (New York, 2001), 501–02, 581–82, 590–93; ANB (online). as you request.

Respectfully

FREDK DOUGLASS

ALS: Samuel Gridley Howe Collection, MB.