FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO ULYSSES S. GRANT

Washington[, D.C.] 6 June 1871.

U. S. GRANT: PRESIDENT OF THE U. STATES.

SIR:

I have the honor to resign my seat as the member for the first District, in
the Legislative Council of the District of Columbia.¹In an effort to govern the District of Columbia more uniformly and representatively, Congress abolished the separate governments of Washington and Georgetown, and on 21 February 1871 formed one municipality, to be governed in the manner of a territory. A governor, appointed by the president, held executive authority, while legislative power resided in the Legislative Assembly. This bicameral assembly consisted of the Council, composed of eleven residents of the territory appointed by the president, and the House of Delegates, to which local voters annually elected twenty-two residents. As a reward for his loyal support, President Ulysses S. Grant chose Douglass to fill one of the eleven seats in the Council of the newly created Legislative Assembly. The Council elected William Stickney, a white educator, as president and Douglass as vice president at its organizational meeting on 15 May 1871. Douglass also served on the Council’s committees on printing, schools, transportation facilities, and relations with the federal government. After actively participating in the Council during its first month of operations, Douglass announced to the body on 20 June 1871 that he had resigned his membership, in order to attend to “the urgent necessities of private business.” The Council unanimously passed a resolution expressing its regret at Douglass’s departure, declaring, “his association . . . most pleasant to each member thereof, as well as profitable to the people he represents.” The Washington Daily Morning Chronicle reported Douglass’s resignation with the observation that he had “by his simple, cordial, manly bearing, and his manifest ability and sound judgment, won the respect and affection of all.” Douglass publicly thanked Grant for appointing three blacks to the eleven-member Council, citing it as evidence of the president’s “high sense of justice, fairness, and impartiality.” Notably, Grant appointed Douglass’s son Lewis to complete his term. Washington National Republican, 29 April, 16, 29, 30 May, 1, 2, 14, 15, 17 June 1871; NNE, 4, 18 May, 8 June 1871; Washington Evening Star, 13, 17, 21 June 1871; Washington Morning Chronicle, 21 June 1871; F. H. Smith to Douglass, 20 June 1871, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 596–97, FD Papers, DLC; Alan Lessoff, The Nation and Its City: Politics, “Corruption,” and Progress in Washington, D.C., 1861–1902 (Baltimore, 1994), 55; John Muller, Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.: Lion of Anacostia (Charleston, S.C., 2012), 42, 44–46; Whyte, Uncivil War, 101–13; Edwin Melvin Williams, “The Territorial Period—1871–1874,” in Washington Past and Present: A History, ed. John Clagett Proctor, 4 vols. (New York, 1930), 1: 130–41.

I beg also to request that my resignation shall be allowed to take effect
ten days after the date of this Communication.

I am sir, with very great Respect

Your obedient servant

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

ALS: R.G. 59, Box 3, Entry 399, DNA.