OTTILIE ASSING TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Hoboken[, N.J.]¹Congress authorized the establishment of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company on 3 March 1865 to meet the growing financial needs of newly emancipated blacks. The bank eventually opened thirty-seven branches in seventeen states and the District of Columbia. In his Life and Times, Douglass reported that after moving to Washington, D.C., he “entrusted . . . about twelve thousand dollars” in the Freedmen’s Bank. The nationwide economic panic of 1873 revealed serious financial weaknesses in the bank, owing to incompetent and corrupt management. A reorganized board of trustees appointed Douglass the bank’s president in hopes of restoring public confidence in its solvency. At that time, Douglass lent the institution $10,000 dollars. When the bank nevertheless failed in July 1874, Douglass shared the fate of his fellow investors. He eventually received sixty-two cents on the dollar for the $2,000 dollars he still had deposited when the bank closed. Douglass described his involvement with the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company at U.S. Senate investigation hearings on 14 and 19 February 1880. Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 183–99, 211–13. May 1874.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

You will believe me when I tell you that all these days I have been reading
all the news about the bank1 with the greatest anxiety.²In March 1874, the U.S. Comptroller Office’s report on the Freedmen’s Bank disclosed deficits of over $200,000, which many viewed at evidence of fraud and mismanagement. Panic among depositors ensued, and runs on the bank induced some branches to require sixty days’ notice before withdrawing funds. Douglass, in the New York Herald of 29 April 1874, attempted to explain the bank’s troubles. Other publications, such as the New York Times and the New York Independent, published reports of ongoing problems with the bank throughout late 1873 and early 1874. New York Herald, 29 April 1874; New York Times, 28, 30 April 1874; New York Independent, 29 January 1874; Walter Lynwood Fleming, “The Freedmen’s Savings Bank,” Yale Review (May 1906), 87. Certainly, there
are many reasons for wishing that the institution would stand the shock
and prove able to brave the storm, yet I acknowledge that above all others
I am influenced by personal motives. I thought it such a pleasant and easy
occupation for you, and the difference between the income derived from
it and that earned by lecturing, more than balanced by the gain in comfort

and health. Your name may yet achieve great things however, I have come
to the conclusion that my new quarters are utterly unfit for me.³Following the retirement of Assing’s previous landlady Eliza Werpup, Assing moved into a room at the Hoboken home of Julius and Eliza Fehr, who some scholars mistakenly believed to be the daughter of Mrs. Werpup. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 340; Lohmann, Radical Passion, 363. The close
proximity with the inevitable piano is becoming more and more odious,
but there is another real evil just as great if not greater. Those good people
keep the most miserable table without exception that it ever was my bad
luck to share. Not only that the food is of the plainest kind, but everything
is utterly spoiled by rascally bad cooking and made more unpalatable by
the slovenly manner in which it is served up. Dirty tableclothes, broken
dishes, German silver spoons the plating of which has come off, are the
ornaments of the table, and it has come so far that instead of looking at
meals as a pleasant part of the day, I dread going down and consider it
an inevitable evil. Of course, if I have to stay in Hoboken next winter,
I shall go back to Mrs. Werpup,⁴Assing had lived nine years with Eliza Werpup in Hoboken. The two developed a congenial relationship, and Douglass visited Werpup while Assing was traveling in Europe. Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 334, 342, 345, 347. who was quite happy when I made the
announcement to her last night, and told me that she felt quite lonely without me. So far all will be right, but I am so disgusted with this slovenly
concern that I would rather go today than tomorrow and Mrs. Werpup
would also like me to come the sooner the better, but the difficulty is to get
away without giving offense, and there does not seem to be the slightest
idea that I should not be perfectly satisfied. Today I made an attempt and
expressed the fear that my close proximity might be rather troublesome
to them, but was assured by Mrs. Fehr⁵Assing refers to Eliza Broguet Fehr (?–1883) and her husband, Julius Fehr (1825–97). Assing and the Fehrs had a tumultuous relationship. In the late 1870s, Assing made a large personal loan to Julius, who wanted to expand his business as a druggist and manufacturer of a patented talcum baby powder. Although Ferh’s business became a long-running enterprise, Assing lost more than $4,000 on the investment. Eliza Fehr also disapproved of Assing’s friendship with Dr. Gustav Frauenstein, a fellow freethinker. Francis Bazley Lee, History of Trenton, New Jersey: The Record of Its Early Settlement and Corporate Progress, 2 vols. (Trenton, N.J., 1895–98), 2:109–10; Diedrich, Love across Color Lines, 341–42; Lohmann, Radical Passion, 363. that such was not the case at all,
and I saw but too distinctly that she wants to keep me by all means. Of
course, I could not mention the bad food, since this is always the most
sensitive point of a housekeeper’s <heart> and thus see no escape before
the end of the month, when I shall escape to Boston and stay there untill
you call me, never to go back save to the fleshpots of Egypt at Mrs. Werpup’s. The best part of <in> this starvation comedy however is that the
people in Mr. Fehr’s employ, the clerk and porter bless me, as if it were,
and heartily wish that I should stay, since, as they say, they now get better
and more food than formerly <ever before>! How then must it have been?
As after all, these inconveniences are but of secondary importance and
the end is certain to come, I can well afford to take a humourous view of
them <situation>, yet I am so impatient that for a moment I formed the
adventurous idea of giving out that I was going to Boston in a week and
to hide away mean while at Mrs. Werpup’s. The evident desire to make
me comfortable is the great difficulty, otherwise I should be off by next
Monday. A kingdom for a good, plausible pretext!

In fact, I ought not to have entertained you so long with these little
miseries, but you know, we share great and small things, and besides I
think you want to know how I am off.

Snow and cold <one day> and wind and cold the next, such is the bill
of fare in the weather department. When shall we have spring?

All good things to you!

Yours ever

OTTILIA

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 740–43L, FD Papers, DLC.