FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM JAY MURTAGH

[n.p.] 12 May 1877.

EDITOR REPUBLICAN:¹William Jay Murtagh.

In your assault upon me, on account of my lecture delivered in Baltimore,²A reference to the lecture “Our National Capital,” which Douglass delivered in Baltimore on 8 May 1877, described in the annotation to the previous letter.
you denounce me as “traveling through the North, spitting out spite and
slander.”³These and other quoted passages appeared in the 11 May 1877 issue of the Washington Evening Star in a story entitled “A Gratuitous and Studied Insult to Washington.” You say I have “thrown on the cloak of hypocrisy,” and describe
me as “standing forth in the naked, hideous depravity of a slanderer, lost
to all ideas of decency and propriety,” and much else of the same sort. You
treat my lecture in Baltimore as something new, and as a studied insult to
Washington, when you ought to know that the same lecture was delivered
in the District of Columbia, and published in full, nearly two years ago,
and was highly commended, if I mistake not, by the ,
as well as by the , at that time.⁴While reports in neither the Washington National Republican nor the Washington Daily Morning Chronicle have been located, other sources disclose that Douglass delivered a well-prepared lecture entitled “The Popularity of the Capital” in late November 1875 at a fund-raising benefit for the Bethel Baptist Church. Washington Evening Star, 26 November 1875; Muller, Lion of Anacostia, 72. You ought to be glad to know,
also, that you are mistaken in representing me as “traveling through the
North,” for in fact I was only as far North as the International Exhibition,⁵On 10 May 1877, public ceremonies dedicated the Main Building of the former centennial fairgrounds at Fairmount Park in Philadelphia as the site for a new international exhibition, more popularly known as the Permanent International Exhibition. Presidents Grant and Hayes as well as Douglass were among a long list of dignitaries in attendance. The exhibition, which failed to live up to its name, closed on 14 February 1881 because of financial difficulties. New York Times, 8 May 1877; New York Tribune, 11 May 1877; Scharf and Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 3: 1863.
to the inauguration of which I had the honor to be invited, in company
with many other distinguished persons, for after your assault I must be
permitted to consider myself somewhat distinguished. Your first quotation
from the condensed and necessarily imperfect report of my lecture is that

in which I am made to say that “Washington had a good many churches,
but it was some distance from the spot to which their spires pointed.” I
did make use of some suc[h] remark as that, and I hardly see now, upon
reflection, how such a remark as that could properly give offense to any
citizen of average intelligence. There is everywhere in the world, and
there certainly is in Washington, some space between heaven and earth,
some space between profession and practice, and I do not see how any
statement of that fact can prove me “a slanderer” or “lost to all sense of
decency and propriety.” My next offense is the den[i]al that Washington
has pr[o]duced a great philanthropist, and in proof of my falsehood at this
point you mention the late [A]mos Kendall⁶Amos Kendall (1789–1869), journalist and postmaster general, was born in Dunstable, Massachusetts, and graduated from Dartmouth College. After studying law under the Republican congressman William M. Richardson, he moved to Frankfort, Kentucky, and worked as editor and part owner of the Argus of Western America newspaper for the next twelve years. Although he supported Henry Clay for president in 1824, he eventually joined the Democrats and enthusiastically backed Andrew Jackson during the presidential campaign of 1828. Jackson then appointed Kendall as an auditor of the treasury, and he became one of the president’s closest advisers. Using his excellent writing skills, Kendall helped compose several speeches for Jackson, including his second inaugural address. He served as postmaster general (1835–40) and helped eradicate corruption within the department. Kendall helped run Martin Van Buren’s unsuccessful bid for reelection in 1840. In 1845, Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, requested that Kendall serve as his agent to help handle his finances and defend his patent in court. Kendall’s work for Morse made him a millionaire. In 1857 he founded the Columbia Institution for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind (now Gallaudet College) and served as its first president. During the Civil War, Kendall supported the Unionist wing of the Democratic party, often criticizing the Republicans and President Lincoln for political overreach. His last years were spent arguing against Republican Reconstruction policies. New York Times, 13 November 1869; William Stickney, Autobiography of Amos Kendall (Boston, 1872); DAB, 10: 325–27; ANB, 12: 555–57. and Mr. Wm. W. Corcoran,⁷William Wilson Corcoran (1798–1888), banker and philanthropist, was born in Georgetown, District of Columbia. He studied one year at Georgetown College (now Georgetown University) before leaving in 1815 to start a dry-goods store with his two older brothers. After some initial success, the business went bankrupt during the financial panic of 1823. Corcoran then became a real estate investor and a manager of real estate accounts for the Washington branch of the Bank of the United States. In 1840 he formed the banking firm Corcoran & Riggs with his partner, George Washington Riggs. Instead of issuing banknotes, the firm concentrated on investing in U.S. Treasury notes, which it would then resell to investors. Because Corcoran & Riggs developed into a main depository of government funds, it significantly aided in the financing of the Mexican War in 1846, thus earning the two partners a fortune. The firm continued to flourish until President Franklin Pierce’s treasury secretary, James Guthrie, eradicated government deposits from private firms in 1853. Corcoran retired the following year but continued to invest in government bonds, land grants, real estate, and railroads. A man with southern sentiments, Corcoran further distanced himself from the Union in November 1861 when his daughter and son-in-law were captured on board the British mail ship Trent, along with Confederate commissioners, and subsequently imprisoned. After their release, he traveled to France with them and eventually expatriated $1 million in cash to Europe. While some of his properties and rents were confiscated during the Civil War, after he took the loyalty oath to the Union upon his return to the United States in 1868, they were restored. Cochran spent the remainder of his years in Washington, D.C., contributing to philanthropic organizations and attempting to reestablish Democratic party power in the capital. He opened the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1872 and donated the funds to complete construction of the Washington Monument. Corcoran established the Democratic newspaper the Washington Union before his death in 1888. Henry Cohen, Business and Politics from the Age of Jackson to the Civil War: The Career Biography of W. W. Corcoran (Westport, Conn., 1971); DAB, 4: 440–41; ANB (online).
still living. I would belittle the benevolence of neither of these gentlemen,
though I beg to remind you that there was a time when it was fashionable
for to revile one of them with a bitterness only second to
that with which it now reviles me. Yet I think philanthropy means love
for the whole human family, and if the negro is a member of that family,
I may be excused if I find anything in the character and history of either
of those gentlemen to justify me in styling them great philanthropists.
Mr. Corcoran is a gentleman of great wealth, and has done much for the
city of Washington, for which, as a citizen of Washington, I will award
him all honor, but I cannot describe him, nor do I think he wishes to
be described, as a great philanthropist. In my manuscript I use the word
great, which was omitted in your quotation; with that qualification I stand
by every word of the quotation; but of course in this I am speaking only
within the limits of my own knowledge and belief, and will gladly own
myself mistaken when an exception is presented by you or anybody else.
You complain of my assertion that “it is again getting dark for the colored
race.” This isolated remark does great injustice to my lecture so far as
respects the District of Columbia. I took pains in that lecture to show the
vast and wonderful improvement in the condition of the colored people in
this city, and especially to praise the educational institutions with which
they are now present. I spoke especially of the Sumner School,⁸The Charles Sumner School is located at the intersection of 17th and M streets, N.W., in Washington, D.C. It was constructed on the site of an earlier Freedmen’s Bureau school built in 1866. The new building was designed by the Washington architect Adolph Cluss and dedicated in 1872. Named for the abolitionist and black civil rights activist Senator Charles Sumner, the school served as one of the first public schools built exclusively for the education of blacks in Washington, D.C. The first story held four schoolrooms, the second housed more schoolrooms and offices, and a 3,000-square-foot hall completed the third floor. The first class graduated in 1877. Beth L. Savage, ed., African American Historic Places (Washington, D.C., 1994), 148–49; Curtis, Black Heritage Sites, 54–55. and the
hope of a future of my race which it inspires. The next statement, [damaged] [damaged] from the connections, to which you object, is that “the
Washingtonian is intole[ra]nt.” I did not say this, but I did say the genuine
Washingtonian to the manner born and a [damaged] [damaged] expression in all his movements. If you stop into a store to purchase an article
you may expect to wait five minutes at least before any clerk will condescend to notice your presence. That is what I said, and, in judging that,

you must remember that I am a colored man, and that I was speaking to
colored men[.] No doubt the editor and proprietor of a powerful public
journal would be waited upon with more [damaged] than myself. Not only
is it true that clerks are slow to wait upon colored persons in many of our
stores, but instances may be [damaged] where they have failed to have
been waited upon at all. any rate, Mr. Editor, I think you will agree with
me that there is no slander in this a[l]legation. In speaking of the absence
of enterprise and industry in the city of Washington, I have committed an
offense, if it be an offense, of which the columns of have
been equally guilty with myself. I am not sure but at this point I have stolen your thunder, for no man in this community has held up the destitution
of Washington at this point more conspicuously than yourself. Your main
quotation is as follows:

“You can generally tell the character of a man by the way he wears
his hat. On first sight you would think you were among a lot of thieves
by the manner in which they wear their hats in Washington. They wear
them down over their eyes, which gives them a sombre, sinister appearance. Members of Congress set this fashion, being in the habit of wearing
their hats in this style, with their eyes cast down, thinking on the legislation of the hour, and sometimes desiring to avoid recognition. Another
distinction of the Washingtonian is his negro pronunciation. There is a
class there called the poor white trash[.] During slavery they would follow
an escaped slave as a dog would a bone. Now they manage to eke out an
existence by hunting and fishing. Then [damaged] are the spoilsmen, pension buyers, lobbyists, &c, with all sorts of schemes to make money. To be
honest in Washington is to be considered a fool. Nobody ever says ‘No;’
all say ‘Yes.’ There is more insincere politeness and obsequious hat-lifting
there than anywhere else.”

This is a condensed statement, and is consequently imperfect. What
I said was, “There is no article of gentleman’s dress which can be worn
more expressively than a hat.” You can almost tell a honest man from a
rogue, a man of sense from a fool, a man of good breeding from a fop, by
his manner of wearing his hat. . I did not say, as the quotation has
it, you would think you were among a lot of thie[v]es. I did not say that
“the people of Washington were a lot of thieves, or that the manner of
wearing their hats” proved anything as to their character, I merely spoke
of the appearance it gave them, and this, too,

. But I need not go further with my explanations. Had the reporters
been as careful to report what I said in praise of Washington as they have
been to report what they may have considered disparagement of Washington I think you would hardly have ventured to assault me in so wrathful and furious a manner as you have done. You will pardon me if I just
remind you that Washington is not a hamlet nor a village, but a great city,
the capital of a great country, and that it is too large to be small, and that
the public habits, customs and manners of its various classes are the subjects of public remark, and that no man is to be denounced as a criminal
for speaking of such peculiarities as may offend his taste or make what he
conceives to be an unpleasant impression. I spoke of the negro pronunciation, peculiar to the genuine old school Washingtonian. What I said was
this: born and reared among negroes, learning their first songs and stories
from the lips of the negroes, they had naturally enough acquired something of the negro manner of using their vocal organs. My consolation is
that if the blacks are too low to learn from the whites, the whites are not
too high to learn from the blacks, and I added that in any case the example
is one which shows that the common good requires the education of all;
it shows that we cannot touch [damaged] without being [damaged]; that
ignorance is as contagious as knowledge, and that no people can afford
to be in contact with an ignorant class. So far from slandering the whole
people of Washington in that lecture, I spoke largely in their praise, and
I very much mistake their ideas of liberality, their magnanimity of spirit,
their conscious worth and complacency if my comments, even though
they be not strictly just, shall [damaged] them into the tempest of rage
which must have agitated the breast of the man who penned the editorial
in your columns, upon which I have felt it due to myself and to my fellowcitizens to send you this letter. Let me say in conclusion that I live in the
District of Columbia, my interests are in the District of Columbia; that I
am interested in its character fame and fortune, and that I should as little
think of aiming a blow at either as I should at the breast of my own family.

FRED. DOUGLASS

PLSr: Washington, D.C., , 13 May 1877.