THEODORE TILTON TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

New York, [N.Y.] 20 Ap[ri]l 1869.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I am right glad to hear of your winter’s prosperity.—

The Haytian case¹During Grant’s first administration, many assumed that the president would appoint a black minister to represent the United States in Haiti. When Grant selected the relatively unknown Ebenezer Bassett, his choice was met with opposition. Some argued that Bassett was not qualified for the position and that Douglass should have the honor of being the nation’s first black foreign minister. An article in the New York Independent claimed that some of Bassett’s friends in Washington, D.C., had deceived the government into believing that Douglass would not accept the Haitian position, or any other ministerial post, if offered. George T. Downing even sent a request to Senator Charles Sumner, who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to urge Grant to withdraw Bassett’s name in favor of Douglass. The Senate confirmed Bassett on 16 April 1869. New York Independent, 22 April 1869; Christopher Teal, Hero of Hispaniola: America’s First Black Diplomat, Ebenezer D. Bassett (Westport, Conn., 2008), 50, 52–54; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 270; Charles E. Wynes, “Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett, America’s First Black Diplomat,” Pennsylvania History 51: 235 (July 1984). I have considered diligently, & have just sent to the
printer such a statement of it for tomorrows’ Independent as will (I think)
properly cover the ground.²In the 22 April 1869 edition of the New York Independent, its editor, Theodore Tilton, published an article that intended to explain why Douglass did not receive the ministerial position. It claimed that “the only excuse which the Government can render for not offering him the post was the public announcement made apparently by authority of Mr. Douglass himself, that he would not accept the offer if made.” The Independent also believed that “some of Mr. Bassett’s friends at Washington” deceived Grant into believing that Douglass “would not entertain an offer of the Haytian or any other mission.” While the article explained that the paper bore no ill feelings toward Bassett, it proclaimed that the Independent was strongly against any use of false pretenses to defraud “the nation of the services of one of its ablest, noblest, and greatest men.” New York Independent, 22 April 1869. After reflection I determined not to print your
letter, but to shoulder the responsibility myself of making an exposé of the
disreputable chicanery which prevented you from receiving the nomination.

You remember what a flurry Mr. Greeley once created by being supposed to want a public office.³The specific incident in Horace Greeley’s career to which Tilton alludes cannot be identified. Greeley served one term in Congress in the 1840s, and he lost campaigns as a Republican for state comptroller in 1869 and for the House of Representatives in 1870. In the latter year, President Grant offered Greeley the post of U.S. minister to Santo Domingo, which he declined. In 1872, Greeley ran against Grant as the candidate of the Liberal Republican–Democratic party fusion. Robert C. Williams, Horace Greeley: Champion of American Freedom (New York, 2006), 293–94. On my second reading of your letter, I was
fearful that its publication would do you the same kind of harm which
his letters did him. If you had been a lesser friend of mine than you are,
I would simply have printed your letter without note or comment. But, if
you will permit me to say so, your public reputation—the growing esteem
in which you are held by all classes of your countrymen—has induced me
to be more watchful for you than you are for yourself. I felt an Editor’s
instinct that the letter would be misconstrued, & that you would be a loser
by its publication.

Now that you are at home, sit down & write some articles for the
Independent’s first page;—for instance, your lecturing reminiscences, or
anything else, grave or gay.

Affectionately yours,

THEODORE TILTON

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 464–66L, FD Papers, DLC.