HENRY O. WAGONER, JR., TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Lyons, France[.] 12 May [18]77.

HON. FREDK. DOUGLASS,

U.S. MARSHAL,

WASHINGTON, D.C.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

It is true I am about to ask you a favor, as you will see from the sequel of
this letter, but I hope that that will not cause you to doubt or depreciate
my sincerity in tendering you my congratulations upon your appointment

to so important and desirable a position as that of U.S. Marshal for the
District of Columbia. Knowing, as you cannot help but do, the high estimation which I have always entertained for your surpassing talents and
exalted character, you will easily understand with what I
learned that they had been so substantially and practically recognized by
the Chief Magistrate of the Nation.

I have learned of your goodness in going to see the Secretary of State¹William Maxwell Evarts (1818–1901), lawyer, politician, and U.S. secretary of state, was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale in 1837, studied law at Harvard, and was admitted to the bar in New York City in 1841. President Zachary Taylor appointed him assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1849. Evarts’s strong opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 led him to aid in the organization of the Republican party in New York. He was chair of the New York delegation to the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago. During the Civil War, Evarts was a member of New York’s Union Defense Committee, and it was during this time that he gained a strong reputation in international law. Although sympathetic to Radical Republicans during Reconstruction, Evarts defended President Johnson during his impeachment trial in 1868. As a result, Evarts served as attorney general until March 1869. In 1877, he represented Rutherford B. Hayes as chief counsel on the electoral commission to settle the disputed presidential election. Hayes appointed Evarts secretary of state in 1877. He served until 1881 and then briefly returned to New York City before being elected to the Senate. He held his seat from 1885 to 1891. New York Times, 1 March 1901; Brainerd Dyer, The Public Career of William M. Evarts (Berkeley, Calif., 1933); DAB, 6: 215–18; ANB (online).
in company with Prof. Langston²John Mercer Langston. and saying a good word for me. I am
profoundly touched at this additional mark of your consideration for me.
Whether your kind offices in my behalf shall be successful or not, my
gratitude to you remains the same. And if they should prove successful
I shall endeavor to discharge my duties in a manner to justify the good
opinion which you would seem to have of me.

When I wrote you some months ago I supposed that Gen Osterhaus,³Peter Joseph Osterhaus (1823–1917), army officer and U.S. diplomat, was born in Koblenz, Germany. After receiving a military education in Berlin, he served as a volunteer in the Prussian Twenty-ninth Infantry Regiment. In 1848 he joined the revolution that tried to unify Germany under a liberal government. After its failure a year later, Osterhaus fled with his wife and their children to the United States. At first moving to Belleville, Illinois, and later to Lebanon, Illinois, the family eventually settled in St. Louis, Missouri, among the city’s large German population. Osterhaus enlisted at the beginning of the Civil War, rising through the Union army ranks after demonstrating leadership capabilities. As a brigadier general, he served under General Ulysses Grant during the siege of Vicksburg in spring 1863. Following exceptional performances during key battles in Grant’s offensive in the western theater and General William Tecumseh Sherman’s siege of Atlanta, Osterhaus was promoted to major general. Following the war, Osterhaus served in Mississippi until January 1866, when he was mustered out of service. In June he was appointed U.S. consul in Lyon, France, and served until August 1877. After returning to St. Louis and resuming his work in the hardware business for several years, he was appointed deputy U.S. consul in Mannheim, Germany. He served until his retirement in 1900. Warner, Generals in Blue, 582–83; DAB, 14: 88–89; ANB (online).
the Consul here was then in the U.S. seeking a transfer. This was his intention when he left here, but he went first to Germany and while there
was offered, and accepted, the very remunerative position of General Superintendent of a large manufacturing company. After returning a few
days to Lyons he left again for Germany to assume his new duties and is
now there with his family. I have, therefore, been Consul here
for over three months. He delayed sending his resignation, long since determined upon, for reasons which I will not now detail. Of course, I could
expect nothing, and your efforts add those of other friends were likely to
remain fruitless until this was done.

I have, however, to-day authoritatively learned that his resignation of
the Consulship of Lyons was mailed on the 10th instant. It will, therefore,
reach Washington about the same time as this letter. No you know well the
importance striking a blow at the propitious moment. Mr. Evarts ought to be
seen immediately after the reception of the Consul’s resignation and before
he has time to make any engagements on the subject with other parties. May
I count on you to do this? I know it is a bold thing in me to put your goodness to such repeated tests. But I am emboldened to do so by the remembrance of the old addage of the Greeks that “the gods attend on the brave”.⁴Wagoner perhaps adapts the saying “Heaven helps not the men who will not act” from Sophocles’s play Philoctetes. Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, 59.

As you see, I am making an almost death-struggle for this place and I
shall await with great anxiety the result.

My regards to your family and best wishes for your continued health
happiness and prosperity.

Your obedient Servant,

H. O. WAGONER, JR.

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 122–26, FD Papers, DLC.