THIRD PART.

CHAPTER I.

LATER LIFE.

THIRD PART.

CHAPTER I.

LATER LIFE.

Again summoned to the defence of his people—The difficulties of the task—The race problem—His life work.

Ten years ago when the preceding^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: preceeding. chapters of this book were written,^†The first American edition of was published by Park Publishing Company of Hartford, Connecticut, in November 1881. Douglass's introductory remarks in the additional third part of the expanded and revised second edition, published in 1892—written roughly ten years later than the first published edition—by DeWolfe, Fiske and Company of Boston, Massachusetts, refer to the first American edition, which consisted of the first two sections of the DeWolfe, Fiske editions. having then reached in the journey of life the middle of the decade beginning at sixty and ending at seventy, and naturally reminded that I was no longer young, I laid aside my pen with some such sense of relief as might be felt by a weary and overburdened traveller when arrived at the desired end of a long journey, or as an honest debtor wishing to be square with all the world might feel when the last dollar of an old debt was paid off. Not that I wished to be discharged from labor and service, in the cause to which I have devoted my life, but from this peculiar kind of labor and service. I hardly need say to those who know me, that writing for the public eye never came quite as easily to me as speaking to the public ear. It is a marvel to me that, under the circumstances, I learned to write at all. It has been a still greater marvel that in the brief working period in which they lived and wrought, such men as DickensDickens, Charles

Charles Dickens (1812-70), British novelist and writer, authored many of the most enduring pieces of modern literature. The quintessential Victorian writer, Dickens penned dozens of stories and novels beginning with the Monthly Magazine publication of a short story titled "A Dinner at Poplar Walk" (1833). Many of his works consider the bleak side of human nature and reflect the darker side of life in Victorian England. Among his best-known works are Pickwick Papers (1837), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1850), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great Expectations (1861). Grahame Smith, Charles Dickens: A Literary Life (New York, 1996); DNB, 5:925-37. , DumasDumas, Alexandre

Alexandre Dumas (1802-70), a French novelist and playwright, was one of the pioneers of the Romantic theater in France. During his career, he published more than 200 works of fiction. His best-known novels include The Three Musketeers (1844) and The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-45). Rullin lists him because Dumas's grandmother had been a black slave on the West Indian island of Santo Domingo. Jacques Barzun, ed., European Writers: The Romantic Century, 7 vols. (New York, 1985), 6:723-24; Frank N. Magill, ed., Great Lives from History: Renaissance to 1900 Series, 5 vols. (Pasadena, Calif., 1989), 2:665-69); Drabble, Oxford Companion to English Literature, 294. , CarlyleCarlyle, Thomas (1795-1881)

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Scottish historian and social philosopher, was one of the most prolific writers of the Victorian era. He is best remembered for his critically acclaimed multivolume examinations of important historical events and figures, including The French Revolution (1837), Chartism (1840), and a six-volume History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great (1858-65). Carlyle lectured widely and wrote on such subjects as Chartism, Darwinism, and economics. On social and scientific issues Carlyle was often acerbic and argumentative, but his works of history marked a groundbreaking advance in the scholarship of the nineteenth century. Fred Kaplan, Thomas Carlyle: A Biography (Ithaca, N.Y. 1983), 239-40; Stanley J. Kunitz, ed., British Authors of the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1936), 115-18. and Sir Walter ScottScott, Sir Walter

could have produced the works ascribed to them. But many have been the impediments with which I have had to struggle. I have too, been embarrassed^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: embarassed. by the thought of writing so much about myself when there was so much else of which to write. It is far easier to write about others than about one's self. I write freely of myself, not from choice, but because I have, by my cause, been morally forced into thus writing. Time and events have summoned me to stand forth both as a witness and an advocate for a people long dumb, not allowed to speak for themselves, yet much misunderstood, and deeply wronged. In the earlier days of my freedom, I was called upon to expose the direful nature of the slave system, by telling my own experience while a slave, and to do what I could thereby to make slavery odious and thus to hasten the day of emancipation. It was no time to mince matters or to stand upon a delicate sense of propriety, in the presence of a crime so gigantic as our slavery was, and the duty to oppose it, so imperative. I was called upon to expose even my stripes,^†Douglass began his career as an antislavery orator, giving his first public address at Nantucket, Massachusetts, in August 1841. As a fugitive from slavery, his early speeches detailed the horrors of slavery from a firsthand perspective. Mayer, , 305-06; Quarles, , 13-14. and with many misgivings obeyed the summons and tried thus to do my whole duty in this my first public work and what, I may say, proved to be the best work of my life.

Fifty years have passed since I entered upon that work, and now that it is ended, I find myself summoned again by the popular voice and by what is called the negro problem,^†Toward the end of the nineteenth century. African American intellectuals and civil rights activists planned a series of meetings to discuss the place of black citizens in society. Organized by such prominent race leaders as Booker T. Washington, T. Thomas Fortune, and W. E. B. Du Bois, the movement was just beginning in the last few years of Douglass's life in reaction to the slow erosion of civil rights advances instituted during the Reconstruction era, the rapid advance of disfranchisement, Jim Crow laws, and the horrors of lynching in the South. The meetings and discussions eventually led to the formation of organizations such as the Afro-American League, which focused on black self-help and in due course the Niagara Movement, targeting civil rights issues. As the elder spokesman among a group of younger black activists, Douglass's words and thoughts on the state of blackwhite relations and the place of African Americans in the nation were valued. His most famous oration concerning the issue was a frequently delivered speech titled "Lessons of the Hour," which he sometimes alternatively titled "The Negro Problem." In the speech Douglass condemned racial prejudice and the oppression of African Americans. He argued that Americans needed to put away their prejudices and embrace the principles of liberty and equality on which the nation was founded. , ser. 1, 5:575-607; John Hope Franklin, , 7th ed. (New York, 1994), 288-89. to come a second time upon the witness stand and give evidence upon disputed points concerning myself and my emancipated brothers and sisters who, though free, are yet oppressed and are in as much need of an advocate as before they were set free. Though this is not altogether as agreeable to me as was my first mission, it is one that comes with such commanding authority as to compel me to accept it as a present duty. In it I am pelted with all sorts of knotty questions, some of which might be difficult even for HumboldtHumboldt, Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von, Baron

Alexander Von Humboldt (1769-1859), Prussian (German) geographer, studied mineralogy at the University of Frankfurt and at the University of Gottingen, then worked for the Prussian government as the superintendent of mines. From 1799 through 1803 Humboldt traveled extensively in the Americas, where he studied the natural world and developed his holistic theory of nature, integrating the study of biology, geology, geophysics, archaeology, and meteorology. The work resulting from his travels and extensive study was published in thirty-three volumes titled Voyage aux regions equinoctales du Nouveau Continent (1805-34). Humboldt continued to travel to areas in Mexico, Peru, and Cuba, enhancing human knowledge of the natural world. He is accredited as one of the harbingers of modern empirical scientific methods and is considered the founder of the modern science of geography. Gerard Helfrich, Humboldt's Cosmos: Alexander Von Humboldt and the Latin American Journey That Changed the Way We See the World (New York, 2004); The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography, 12 vols. (New York, 1973), 3:1100-03 , CuvierCuvier, Georges

Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), French biologist and anatomist, is credited with expanding the system of classifying organisms by dividing the fossil record into phyla. A professor of zoology and animal anatomy, Cuvier taught at the College de France, then spent many years at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. There he continued his work on animal anatomy, finally developing the classification system that sorted animals into the four phyla of vertebrates, mollusks, articulates, and radiates. Despite his extensive work in paleontology and anatomy, Cuvier rejected evolutionary theory, believing that beings in the natural world were already perfect. Toby A. Appel, The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate: French Biology in the Decades before Darwin (New York, 1987), 136-42, 145-50, 170-74; Magill, Great Lives from History, 2:570-73. , or DarwinDarwin, Charles Robert

Charles Robert Darwin (1809-82), British naturalist, is most commonly associated with the theory of natural evolution. Educated at the University of Edinburgh] and Christ's College, Cambridge. Darwin began his naturalist career in 1831 on a round-the-world voyage aboard the HMS Beagle. During this five-year excursion, Darwin studied animal and bird species and by 1838 developed his theory of natural selection, which held that the fittest of a species were most likely to survive. Darwin's theories were revealed to the world with the 1859 publication of On the Origin of the Species, outlining his belief in scientific evolution. Although other nineteenth-century naturalists made similar proposals, Darwin's evolutionary theory was the first to receive widespread support from the scientific community. Darwin's ideas were considered controversial in the nineteenth century and beyond. Peter J. Bowler, Charles Darwin: The Man and His Influence (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 17-19; DNB, 5:522-37. , were they alive, to answer. They are questions which range over the whole field of science, learning and philosophy, and some descend to the depths of impertinent, unmannerly and vulgar curiosity. To be able to answer the higher range of these questions I should be profoundly versed in psychology, anthropology, ethnology,^†Proponents of ethnology, a pseudoscience popular in the midnineteenth century, claimed that races of people were in fact separate human species. Southern proslavery advocates used the notion of ethnology to support the belief that as a separate species, individuals of African descent were an inferior race and perfectly suited for slavery. Thomas E. Will, "The American School of Ethnology: Science and Scripture in the Proslavery Argument," , 19:14-34 (1998); , 1:484-85. sociology, theology, biology and all the other ologies, philosophies and sciences. There is no disguising the fact that the American people are much interested and mystified about the mere matter of color as connected with manhood. It seems to them that color has some moral or immoral qualities and especially the latter. They do not feel quite reconciled to the idea that a man of different color from themselves should have all the human rights claimed by themselves. When an unknown man is spoken of in their presence, the first question that arises in the average American mind concerning him and which must be answered is, Of what^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: What. color is he? and he rises or falls in estimation by the answer given. It is not whether he is a good man or a bad man. That does not seem of primary importance. Hence I have often been bluntly and sometimes very rudely asked, of what color my mother was, and of what color was my father? In what proportion does the blood of the various races mingle in my veins, especially, how much white blood and how much black blood entered into my composition? Whether I was not part Indian as well as African and Caucasian? Whether I considered myself more African than Caucasian or the reverse? Whether I derived my intelligence from my father or from my mother, from my white or from my black blood? Whether persons of mixed blood are as strong and healthy as persons of either of the races whose blood they inherit? Whether persons of mixed blood do permanently remain of the mixed complexion or finally take on the complexion of one or the other of the two or more races of which they may be composed? Whether they live as long and raise as large families as other people? Whether they inherit only evil from both parents and good from neither? Whether evil dispositions are more transmissible than good? Why did I

marry a person of my father's complexion instead of marrying one of my mother's complexion?^†Douglass's marriage to Helen Pitts, a white clerk in the Recorder of Deeds office, stirred considerable controversy. The ceremony was performed by Presbyterian minister Francis J. Grimke on 24 January 1884 at his home in Washington. D.C. The interracial marriage received much coverage in the press. The Washington reported that in a recent lecture Douglass had advocated "the merging of the races, but the suggestion was construed as nothing more than a glittering generality in favor of cooperation of the races by the amalgamation or miscegenation process. His bride, although young and pretty, appears to be an 'advanced thinker' on this question." The New York noted the age difference between Douglass and his new bride, commenting that he had "daughters as old as his present wife." New York , 25 January 1884; Washington (D.C.) , quoted in M. Annella, "Some Aspects of Interracial Marriage in Washington, D.C.," , 25:384-85 (Autumn 1956); Francis J. Grimke, "The Second Marriage of Frederick Douglass," , 19:324-29 (October 1934). How is the race problem to be solved in this country? Will the negro go back to Africa or remain here? Under this shower of purely American questions, more or less personal, I have endeavored to possess my soul in patience and get as much good out of life as was possible with so much to occupy my time; and, though often perplexed, seldom losing my temper, or abating heart or hope for the future of my people. Though I cannot say I have satisfied the curiosity of my countrymen on all the questions raised by them, I have, like all honest men on the witness stand, answered to the best of my knowledge and belief, and I hope that I have never answered in such wise as to increase the hardships of any human being of whatever race or color.

When the first part of this book was written, I was, as before intimated, already looking towards the sunset of human life and thinking that my children would probably finish the recital of my life, or that possibly some other persons outside of family ties to whom I am known might think it worth while to tell what he or she might know of the remainder of my story. I considered, as I have said, that my work was done. But friends and publishers concur in the opinion that the unity and completeness of the work require^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: requires. that it shall be finished by the hand by which it was begun.

Many things touched me and employed my thoughts and activities between the years 1881 and 1891. I am willing to speak of them, Like most men who give the world their autobiographies I wish my story to be told as favorably towards myself as it can be with a due regard to truth. I do not wish it to be imagined by any that I am insensible to the singularity of my career, or to the peculiar relation I sustain to the history of my time and country. I know and feel that it is something to have lived at all in this Republic, during the latter part of this eventful century, but I know it is more to have had some small share in the great events which have distinguished it from the experience of all other centuries. No man liveth unto himself,^†Douglass paraphrases Rom. 14:7. or ought to live unto himself. My life has conformed to this Bible saying, for, more than most men, I have been the thin edge of the wedge to open, for my people a way in many directions and places never before occupied by them. It has been mine, in some degree, to stand as their defence in moral battle against the shafts of detraction, calumny and persecution, and to labor in removing and overcoming those obstacles which, in the shape of erroneous ideas and customs, have blocked the way to their progress. I have found this to be no hardship, but the natural and congenial vocation of my life. I had hardly become a thinking being when I first learned to hate slavery, and

hence I was no sooner free, than I joined the noble band of Abolitionists in Massachusetts, headed by William Lloyd GarrisonGarrison, William Lloyd

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was the foremost white abolitionist of the nineteenth century and was credited with the discovery of Douglass as a speaker at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket in 1841. He began his career as an apprentice printer on the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald at the age of thirteen. Garrison became editor of the Newburyport Free Press in 1826, but the paper closed within a year. He was then associated with a series of periodicals in Boston that advocated reform before Benjamin Lundy offered the young journalist the opportunity to write for his antislavery newspaper. Garrison joined Lundy in editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1829, during the last year of the paper's 1821-1830 run. In 1830 a libel suit against the editors forced the paper to close and landed Garrison in jail. After his release, he courted the wealthy merchants of New York and Boston in order to start the Liberator (1831-65), a weekly journal based in Boston in which he advocated an immediate end to slavery. Garrison's brand of abolition condemned any institution that would tolerate the existence of slavery, including churches, political parties. and even the United States itself and any scheme aimed at removing black people from the country. Instead, Garrison hoped to raise the public's awareness that slavery was morally wrong and thereby force its end in an almost millennial moment of emancipation. His approach appealed to both white and black antislavery advocates but earned him many enemies among those only moderately opposed to slavery and slaveholders alike. Seeing the need for greater action and organization beyond the pages of the Liberator; Garrison joined with other abolitionists to form the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1831. Two years later he helped found the larger American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 he established ties with English abolitionists after a trip to Great Britain, and he later brought the noted and notorious speaker George Thompson to the United States for a tour. Garrison also dedicated himself to women's rights, encouraging women to enter the public sphere by inviting them, via the Liberator, to form female antislavery societies. In addition to the thirty-three women's antislavery societies that flourished by 1838, Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society welcomed women as well as blacks into its ranks. However, female delegates were excluded from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London. The issue of women's participation in the antislavery movement and Garrison's absolute refusal to turn to politics to end slavery caused a division in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, who opposed women's acting as speakers and who hoped to use politics toward abolition, broke with Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society, forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, or the "New Organization" in 1841. Garrison's ideas were so closely associated with the "Old Organization" that the American Anti-Slavery Society became known simply as the "Garrisonians." With the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Garrison believed that he had accomplished his life's work and that of the antislavery movement. He then resigned from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and closed the Liberator. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (New York, 188589); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998); James Brewer Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1992); John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1963); Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928-36), 7:168-72. and Wendell^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Wendall. Phillips. Afterward, by voice and pen, in season and out of season, it was mine to stand for the freedom of people of all colors, until in our land the last yoke was broken and the last bondsman was set free. In the war for the Union I persuaded the colored man to become^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: be come. a soldier. In the peace that followed, I asked the Government to make him a citizen. In the reconstruction^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: construction. of the rebellious States I urged his enfranchisement.

CHAPTER II.

ANTI-SLAVERY.

CHAPTER II.

ANTI-SLAVERY.

The anti-slavery movement.

Much has been written and published during the last ten years purporting to be a history of the anti-slavery movement^†In the years between 1880 and the turn of the twentieth century, a number of publications reflected on the antebellum antislavery struggle and detailed the lives of famous abolitionists. Some were memoirs or autobiographies, such as Douglass's own , while others were written by family members or scholars interested in glorifying the cause. Among the popular titles were biographies of William Jay, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Charles Osborn, James G. Birney, Joshua R. Giddings, and Frederick Douglass. Personal reflections on the antislavery movement appeared in works by Parker Pillsbury, Oliver Johnson, Sarah H. Southwick, and Elizabeth Buffum Chace, among others. Topical treatments of the antislavery movement appeared in volumes concerning slavery in Washington, D.C., Abraham Lincoln's role in the abolition of slavery, and specific events such as the emigrant movement in pursuit of a free Kansas. Bayard Tuckerman and John Jay, (1893; New York, 1969); Sarah H. Southwick, (Cambridge, Mass., 1893); Mary Tremain, (New York, 1892); James Freeman Clarke, (New York, 1883); Charles Godfrey Leland, (New York, 1879); Oliver Johnson, (Worcester, Mass., 1887); idem, (Boston, 1881); George W[ashington] Julian, (Chicago, 1892); idem, (Indianapolis, 1891); Elizabeth Buffum Chace, (Central Falls, R.I., 1891); William Birney, (New York, 1890); George Lowell Austin, (Boston, 1884); Holland, ; Pillsbury, . and of the part taken by the men and women engaged in it, myself among the number. In some of these narrations I have received^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: recived. more consideration and higher estimation than I perhaps, deserved. In others I have not escaped undeserved disparagement, which I may leave to the reader and to the judgment of those who shall come after me to reply to and to set right.

The anti-slavery movement, that truly great moral conflict which rocked the land during thirty years, and the part taken by the men and women engaged in it, are not quite far enough removed from us in point of time, to admit at present, of an impartial history. Some of the sects and parties that took part in it still linger with us and are zealous for distinction, for priority and superiority. There is also the disposition to unduly magnify the importance of some men and to diminish the importance of others. While over all this I spread the mantle of charity, it may in a measure explain whatever may seem like prejudice, bigotry and partiality in some attempts already made at the history of the Anti-slavery movement. As in a great war, amid the roar of cannon, the smoke of powder, the rising dust and the blinding blaze of fire and counter-fire of battle, no one participant may be blamed for not being able to see and to correctly measure and report the efficiency of the different forces engaged, and to render honor where honor is due;^†Rom. 13:7. so we may say of the late historians who have essayed^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: assayed. to write the history of the anti-slavery movement. It is not strange that those who write in New England from the stand occupied by William Lloyd Garrison and his friends, should fail to appreciate the services of the political abolitionists and of the Free Soil and

Republican parties. Perhaps a political abolitionist^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: abolitionists. would equally misjudge and underrate the value of the nonvoting and moral suasion party, of which Mr. Garrison was the admitted leader; while in fact the two were the halves necessary to make the whole. Without AdamsAdams, John Quincy

The eldest son of John Adams, John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) served as the American ambassador to the Netherlands, Berlin, Russia, and England during the early years of the Republic. He also held office as U.S. senator from Massachusetts (1803-08), secretary of state in James Monroe's cabinet (1817-25), and president of the United States (1825-29). From 1831 until his death, Adams sat in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he opposed slavery and its extension and fought the gag rule on abolitionist petitions. In late 1831 he made his first anti-slavery speech on the floor of Congress when he introduced fifteen petitions from Pennsylvania Quakers praying for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. Adams also defended a band of captured Africans before the Supreme Court in the Amistad case in 1841. Despite his association with the aboli-tionist cause, Adams said that he personally favored ending only the slave trade. Samuel F. Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union (New York, 1956); Leonard L. Richards, The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams (New York, 1986); Paul C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life (New York, 1997). , GiddingsGiddings, Joshua Reed

Joshua Reed Giddings (1795-1864), antislavery congressman from Ohio, was first elected to the House of Representatives as a Whig in 1838. He vigorously opposed the "gag rule," the annexation of Texas, and the Mexican-American War. In 1842, while negotiations were underway with Great Britain over the Creole affair, Giddings introduced unpopular resolutions supporting the right of mutiny for slaves aboard the British ship. Widely opposed, Giddings immediately resigned his seat, appealed to his constituents, and won reelection by an overwhelming margin. In 1848 Giddings left the Whig party to join the Free Soilers and then allied himself with the Republicans after the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Passed over for renomination in 1858 on account of his antislavery radicalism and declining health, Giddings was a delegate to the 1860 Republican convention, at which he and his allies forced the adoption of a plank endorsing the principles of the Declaration of Independence. In the last three years of his life, Giddings served as the consul general to Canada. James Brewer Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings and the Tactics of Radical Politics (Cleveland, 1970); Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 6 vols. (New York, 1888-89), 4:478; DAB, 7:260-61; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-Present (online). , HaleHale, John Parker

John Parker Hale (1806-73), U.S. congressman (1843-45) and senator (1843-53, 1855-65) from New Hampshire, and minister to Spain (1865-69), was the presidential nominee of the moribund Liberty party in 1847-48 and of the Free Soil party in 1852. Read out of the regular Democratic party in 1845 because of his opposition to Texas annexation, Hale helped forge an antislavery coalition of Whigs and Independent Democrats that gained control of the New Hampshire legislature in 1846 and elected him to the U.S. Senate. Unhampered by partisan ties, Hale emerged during the first two years of his term as virtually the sole antislavery spokesman in the upper chamber. His approach to abolitionism was often indirect and legalistic, however, as exemplified by his response to the 1848 Pearl incident. Though deeply moved by the plight of the recaptured fugitives, Hale did not openly attack slavery or the slave trade but instead raised the issue of proslavery mobs. On 20 April 1848, two days after the mob attack on the National Era office, he introduced a bill to make local communities in the District of Columbia liable for damage to private property by any "riotous or tumultuous assemblage of people." The bill contained no specific mention of slavery, yet it produced heated responses from several southern senators, including Henry S. Foote, who threatened to lynch Hale if the New Hampshireman ever ventured inside the state of Mississippi. The Pearl incident and its aftermath enhanced Hale's stature among most abolitionists and helped to solidify his antislavery convictions. Within two months, Hale introduced an unsuccessful resolution for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Lib., 5 May 1848; Congressional Globe, 30th Cong., 1st sess., 1848, appendix, 500-10; Richard H. Sewell, John P. Hale and the Politics of Abolition (Cambridge, Mass., 1965). , ChaseChase, Salmon Portland

Salmon Portland Chase (1808-73) served as a U.S. senator, cabinet officer, and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He taught school briefly in Washington, D.C., before settling in Cincinnati and beginning a legal career. There he defended a number of fugitive slaves and acted as legal counsel for the abolitionist James G. Birney. Initially a Whig, Chase joined the Liberty party in 1840, and presided at the Buffalo Convention of the Free Soil party in 1848. A coalition of Free Soilers and Democrats in the Ohio legislature sent Chase to the U.S. Senate in 1849, where he remained until 1854. He strongly opposed the Compromise of 1850 and favored the restriction of slavery by federal law. In the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Chase joined the Republican party and won the governorship of Ohio in 1855. After resuming his U.S. Senate seat in 1861, he resigned to become Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of the treasury. Closely aligned with radical Republicans in Congress, Chase became the focus of opposition to Lincoln within the Republican party. Although he resigned from his cabinet post and challenged Lincoln for the 1864 presidential nomination, the latter appointed him chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Throughout his political career, Chase was a strong proponent of black suffrage and the radical program of Reconstruction. In 1868, Chase again sought the Democratic presidential nomination as a Democrat, but attracted little support. Frederick J. Blue, Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics (Kent, Ohio, 1987); James Brewer Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings and the Tactics of Radical Politics (Cleveland, 1970), 116-18, 153-54; Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837-1860 (New York, 1976), 90; Reinhard H. Luthin, “Salmon P. Chase’s Political Career before the Civil War,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 29:517-40 (March 1943); DAB,4:27-34. , WadeWade, Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin Wade (1800-78), antislavery lawyer, judge, and legislator, was born in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, moved to Ohio as a young man, and eventually entered into a law partnership with Joshua Giddings. In 1837 Wade was elected as a Whig to the Ohio senate, where his opposition to stricter fugitive slave laws possibly cost him reelection. He served again in the state legislature rom 1841 to 1843, and in 1847 was appointed presiding judge of the Third Ohio Judicial Circuit. Four years later, Whigs and Free Soilers united to elect him to the U.S. Senate. In the 1850s he converted to Republicanism and was an outspoken opponent of any move to expand the limits of slavery. An advocate of aggressive military measures during the Civil War, Wade served as chairman of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War and, with Congressman Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, sponsored an alternative to Lincoln's Reconstruction policy, the Wade-Davis Bill of 1864, which the president vetoed. After the war he continued to advocate congressional Reconstruction and was one of the leading critics of Andrew Johnson's conciliatory policies toward the South. As president pro tempore of the Senate at the time of Johnson's impeachment trial in 1868, Wade stood to gain the presidency upon Johnson's conviction. Johnson survived impeachment, but Wade, whose radicalism applied to woman suffrage and labor legislation as well as to Reconstruction issues, had alienated many politicians and voters. He never again held public office. In 1866 Wade had been one of only four Republican senators to join Charles Sumner in successfully blocking the apportionment amendment. Albert G. Riddle, The Life of Benjamin F. Wade (Cleveland, 1886); Hans L. Trefousse, Benjamin Franklin Wade: Radical Republican from Ohio (New York, 1963); DAB, 19:303-05. , SewardSeward, William Henry

William Henry Seward (1801-72) was a New York state senator (1830-32) and governor (1839-43) before serving as a U.S. senator (1849-61). He originally belonged to the Anti-Mason party, but became a leader of the Whig party during the 1830s and 1840s. By 1855 Seward had moved his allegiance to the Republican party. During the Compromise of 1850, he first invoked the concept of "a higher law than the Constitution" to support abolition. As the decade progressed, Seward became more outspoken against slavery. characterizing the struggle as an "irrepressible conflict" between opposing forces. In 1856 and 1860 he unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination. Instead, he became Abraham Lincoln's secretary of state in 1861. Seward's influence prevented European recognition of the Confederacy during the Civil War. In 1867 he negotiated the U.S. purchase of the Alaska territory, known as "Seward's Folly." Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward, 2 vols. (1899-1900; Gloucester, Mass., 1967); ACAB, 5:470-73; DAB, 16:615-21. , WilsonWilson, Henry

Elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts by a coalition of Free Soilers, Know-Nothings, and Democrats in 1855, Henry Wilson (1812-75) strongly advocated the abolition of slavery as a political goal. In 1862 Wilson introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and, as a Radical Republican, he was one of the strongest voices denouncing the Black Codes enacted under Presidential Reconstruction. In 1865 he introduced a bill aimed at nullifying all laws and ordinances discriminating against freemen and former slaves. Wilson replaced Schuyler Colfax as vice president for Ulysses S. Grant's second term, but died in office. Ernest McKay, Henry Wilson: Practical Radical (London, 1971), 94-95, 197-98. and SumnerSumner, Charles

Best remembered as the victim of a vicious attack by a congressional colleague, Charles Sumner (1811-74), U.S. senator from Massachusetts (1851-74), was dedicated to the cause of emancipation. Born in Boston, Sumner attended and then taught at Harvard College. He engaged in a semi-successful law practice until his outspoken opposition to the United States war against Mexico thrust him into politics. He was a founder of the Free Soil Party in Massachusetts, and a coalition of Free Soilers and Democrats elected him to the U.S. Senate in 1850. Immediately embroiling himself in the heated topic of slavery, Sumner became an outspoken advocate of emancipation and repeatedly refuted compromises proposed by Henry Clay and others. After one particularly scathing speech in the Senate against slavery, Sumner was brutally beaten with a cane by a Southern representative, which necessitated years of recovery before Sumner was able to reenter the Senate. Sumner’s lasting legacy was to turn popular sentiment in the North toward emancipation, and after the Civil War, he continued to fight for the individual freedoms of blacks until his sudden death in 1874. Frederick J. Blue, Charles Sumner and the Conscience of the North (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1994); David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (New York, 1960); DAB, 18:208-14. to plead our cause in the councils of the nation, the taskmasters would have remained the contented and undisturbed rulers of the Union, and no condition of things would have been brought about authorizing the Federal Government to abolish slavery in the country's defence. As one of those whose bonds have been broken, I cannot see without pain any attempt to disparage and undervalue^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: under value. any man's work in this cause.

Hereafter, when we get a little farther away from the conflict, some brave and truth-loving man, with all the facts before him, uninfluenced by filial love and veneration for men, or party associations, or pride of name, will gather from here and there the scattered fragments, my small contribution perhaps among the number, and give to those who shall come after us an impartial history of this the grandest moral conflict of the century. Truth is patient and time is just. With these and like reflections which have often brought consolation to better men than myself, when upon them has fallen the keen edge of censure, and with the scrupulous justice done me in the biography of myself, lately written by Mr. Frederick May HollandHolland, Frederic May

Frederic May Holland (1836-1908), prominent Unitarian minister from Concord, Massachusetts, authored a number of books on history and literature. Among his publications are The Reign of Stoics (1879), Stories from Robert Browning (1882), The Rise of Intellectual Liberty from Thales to Copernicus (1885), Our Clergywomen (1892), and Liberty in the Nineteenth Century (1899). In 1888 he began writing a biography of Douglass, which appeared in 1891 as Frederick Douglass: The Colored Orator. Funk and Wagnalls published the volume as a part of its American Reformers series edited by Carlos Martyn. To prepare this detailed examination of Douglass's life and career, Holland did considerable research and corresponded frequently with Douglass, who provided copies of his correspondence and speeches. Holland gave Douglass the opportunity to review the final manuscript before publication, and according to Holland's correspondence, Douglass looked on the book with approval. Following Douglass's death in 1895, Holland issued a revised second edition of the biography including a new conclusion on the final five years of Douglass's life. The volume provides a sympathetic look at Douglass and includes substantial quotes from original orations and personal correspondence. Frederic May Holland to Douglass, 6 August 1888, 28 July, 1 August 1889, 30 July, 8 August 1890, 20 April 1891, Douglass to Holland, 8 August 1889, General Correspondence File, reel 5, frames 496-98, 505-07, 514-16, 723-24, 745-46, reel 6, frames 78-80, FD Papers, DLC; Holland, Frederick Douglass; Oscar Fay Adams, A Dictionary of American Authors (1884; Boston, 1970), 190. of Concord, Massachusetts, I can easily rest contented.

CHAPTER III
A GRAND OCCASION: DOUBTS AS TO GARFIELD'S COURSE.

CHAPTER III
A GRAND OCCASION: DOUBTS AS TO GARFIELD'S COURSE.

Inauguration of President Garfield—A valuable precedent—An affecting scene—The greed of the office-seekers—Conference with President Garfield—Distrust of the Vice-President—Garfield not a stalwart—Encounter of Garfield with Tucker—Hope in promises of a new—The sorrow stricken Nation.

In the first part of this remarkable^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: reamrkable. decade of American life and history, we had the election and grand inauguration of James A. Garfield, as President of the United States, and in a few months thereafter we had his tragic death hy the hand of a desperate assassin. On the Fourth of March in that year,^†As marshal for the District of Columbia, Douglass not only attended Garfield's inauguration on 4 March 1881, but led the procession of the presidential party and officials into the Senate chamber where the oath of office was administered. New York , 5 March 1881. I happened to be United States Marshal of the District of Columbia,^†President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Douglass U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia on 17 March 1877, and he served until 1881. Established by the Judiciary Act of 1789, the office of U.S. marshal was created to support the federal courts and to carry out the orders issued by federal judges, Congress, or the president. Federal marshals formed the first civilian police force under the jurisdiction of the three branches of government. Because marshals held broad authority, Congress limited their tenure to four-year terms, and although their tenure was renewable, marshals served at the pleasure of the president. Acting primarily in support of federal courts, marshals' duties ranged from serving subpoenas and warrants to making arrests and handling prisoners. Law enforcement responsibilities were balanced with administrative tasks. Marshals acted as the federal court bursar, paying the fees and expenses of clerks, jurors, and witnesses. More mundane responsibilities included ensuring that prisoners and witnesses appeared on time, and that the water pitchers were filled. For most of its history the post of U.S. marshal was a patronage job. No central administrative structure governed the marshals until the 1950s, and from 1789 until 1896 each marshal could hire as many deputies as he pleased. Deputy marshals were paid from fees collected for serving writs, warrants, and subpoenas. Because federal law was not yet complicated, nineteenth-century marshals such as Douglass were able to learn the requirements of the position quickly and carry out their duties efficiently. Appointment, 1877, Miscellany, reel 31, frames 315-17, FD Papers, DLC; Frederick S. Calhoun, (Washington, D.C., 1989), 2-8. having been appointed to that office, four years previous to that date, by President Rutherford B. Hayes. This official position placed me in touch with both the outgoing president and the president elect. By the unwritten law of long

established usage, the United States Marshal of the District of Columbia is accorded a conspicuous position on the occasion of the inauguration of a new president of the United States. He has the honor of escorting both the outgoing and the incoming president, from the imposing ceremonies in the U.S. Senate Chamber to the east front of the Capitol, where, on a capacious platform erected for the purpose, before uncounted thousands and in the presence of grave Senators, Members of Congress and representatives of all the civilized nations of the world, the presidential oath is solemnly administered to the president elect, who proceeds to deliver his inaugural address, a copy of which has already been given to the press. In the procession from the Senate I had the honor, in the presence of all the many thousands of the dignitaries^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: dignataries. there assembled, of holding the right and marching close by the side of both Presidents. The grandeur and solemnity of the occasion appeared to me no less great and uncommon because of the honorable and responsible position I that day held. I was a part of a great national event and one which would pass into American history, but at the moment I had no intimation or foreshadowing of how dark, dreadful and bloody would be the contents of the chapter. I have sometimes had what seemed to me startling presentiments of coming evil, but there was^†Editorial Emendation: were. none on this grand inaugural day. The moral and political sky was calmly blue, bright and beautiful, and full of hope for the new President and for the nation. I felt myself standing on new ground, on a height never before trodden by any of my people; one heretofore occupied only by members of the Caucasian race. I do not doubt that this sudden elevation and distinction made upon me a decided impression. But I knew enough to know that my elevation was temporary; that it was brilliant but not lasting; and that like many others tossed by the late war to the surface, I should soon be reduced to the^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: tha. ranks of my common people. However, I deemed the event highly important as a new circumstance in my career, as a new recognition of my class, and as a new step in the progress of the nation. Personally it was a striking contrast to my early condition. Yonder I was an unlettered slave toiling under the lash of Covey. the negro breaker; here, I was the United States Marshal of the Capital of the Nation. having under my care and guidance the sacred persons of an ex-President^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: expresident. and of the President elect of a nation of sixty millions,^†At the time of Garfield's inauguration the population of the United States was closer to fifty million, as the census counted 50,155,783 in 1880. The nation's population in 1890 was 62,622,250. U.S. Bureau of the Census, (Washington, D.C., 1895), 2; idem, Tenth Census, 2-3. and was armed with a nation's power to arrest any arm raised against them. While I was not insensible or indifferent to the fact that I was treading the high places of the land, I was not conscious of any unsteadiness of head or heart. I was United States Marshal by accident. I was no less Frederick Douglass, identified with a proscribed class whose perfect and practical equality with other

American citizens was yet far down the steps of time. Yet I was not sorry to have this brief authority, for I rejoiced in the fact that a colored man could occupy this height. The precedent was valuable. Though the tide that carried me there might not soon again rise so high, it was something that it had once so risen and had remained up long enough to leave its mark on the point it touched and that not even the hoary locks of Time could remove it or conceal it from the eyes of mankind. The incident was valuable as showing that the sentiment of the nation was more liberal towards the colored man in proportion to its proximity, in point of time, to the war and to the period when his services were fresh in its memory, for his condition is affected by his nearness to, or remoteness from the time when his services were rendered. The imperfections of memory, the multitudinous throngs of events, the fading effects of time upon the national mind, and the growing affection of the loyal nation for the late rebels, will, on the page of our national history, obscure the negro's part, though they can never blot it out entirely, nor can it be entirely forgotten.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: forgotton.

The inauguration of President Garfield was exceptional in its surroundings. The coronation of a king could hardly have been characterized by more display of joy and satisfaction. The delight and enthusiasm of the President's friends knew no bounds. The pageant was to the last degree brilliant and memorable, and the scene became sublime when, after his grand inaugural address, the soldier, the orator, the statesman, the President elect of this great nation, stepped aside, bowed his splendid form and, in sight of all the people, kissed his mother. It was a reminder to the dear mother that though her son was President of the United States, he was still her son, and that none of the honors he that day received could make him forget, for a moment, the debt or love due to that mother whose hand had guided his infancy. Some thought that this act was somewhat theatrical and wanting in dignity,^†The New York Times confirms that Garfield did indeed stoop to kiss both his mother and his wife before receiving congratulations after taking the oath of office as president. "New Chief Magistrate," New York , 5 March 1881. but as a near spectator of the scene. I thought it touching and beautiful. Nothing so unaffected, and spontaneous and sacred could awaken in the heart of a true man other than sentiments of respect and admiration. On that day of glory and amid demonstrations so sublime, no thought of the tragic death that awaited the illustrious object of this grand ovation could have intruded itself. It is not to be supposed that, even in the mind of the mad assassin GuiteauGuiteau, Charles Julius

The assassin of President James A. Garfield, Charles Julius Guiteau (1841-82), grew up in a home that embraced the perfectionist tradition of John Humphrey Noyes. As a young adult, Guiteau lived for a time at the perfectionist community at Oneida, New York, and then studied law in Chicago. After losing his only court case, he specialized in collecting bad debts and in creating his own. Guiteau returned to New York City in 1871, where he was briefly married to librarian Annie Bunn. In 1872 he campaigned for presidential candidate Horace Greeley, hoping for appointment as minister to Chile. Following Greeley's defeat, Guiteau turned to religion, working as an itinerant evangelist. In 1880 he published a speech for Republican candidate Garfield and reportedly spent time at Republican headquarters. He hoped to be appointed consul general at Paris but was unsuccessful. In May 1881, after being ejected from Blaine's office, Guiteau became convinced that removing Garfield from office was the only way to save the Republican party and the nation from another civil war. He purchased a revolver and began stalking the president, catching up with him at the Baltimore & Potomac railway station in Baltimore on 2 July 1881. He shot and mortally wounded Garfield, who died on 19 September in Elberon, New Jersey. Guiteau was arrested, tried, and convicted, despite an attempted insanity defense. He was hanged in Washington, D.C., on 30 June 1882. Charles E. Rosenberg, The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau: Psychiatry and Law in the Gilded Age (Chicago, 1968), 1-12; Franklin L. Ford, Political Murder: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 353-56; James W. Clarke, American Assassins: The Darker Side of Politics (Princeton, N.J., 1982), 198-214; Peskin, Garfield, 582-96; ANB, 9:715-16. ,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Giteau. the thought of murdering the President had yet dawned. I heard at his trial, this demon possessed man talk, and came to the conclusion that this deed was the result of madness for office, and that this madness carried the assassin beyond the limit to which the same madness sometimes carries other men. Others conspire, intrigue, lie and slander in order to get office, but this crazy

creature thought that he could get office by killing a President. He thought that if he gave the Presidency to Mr. ArthurArthur, Chester Alan

Chester Alan Arthur (1830-86) was born in East Fairfield, Vermont. In 1848 he graduated from Union College, Schenectady, New York, whereupon he became the principal of an academy in Vermont. Arthur then studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1854. During the Civil War Arthur served as the quartermaster general with the rank of brigadier general for the state of New York. After the war President Grant appointed him collector of the port of New York from 1871 to 1878. He was chosen as the running mate of Republican James A. Garfield in 1880 and became vice president on 4 March 1881. Arthur was sworn in as the twenty-first president of the United States on 20 September 1881, following the death of President Garfield. ACAB, 1:99-106; DAB, 1:373-76; ANB, 1:646--48; BDUSC (online). , the latter would serve him a similar good turn and not only protect him from punishment, but give him an office. No better evidence of insanity could be wanted than this mode of reasoning. Guiteau may have been in some measure responsible, but I have always thought him hopelessly insane.

No doubt there were many present at this inauguration who, like the assassin, thought that in the bestowment of patronage, the new President would not forget them. It is painful to think that to this selfish feeling we may rightfully ascribe much of the display and seeming enthusiasm on such occasions; that because of it, banners wave, men march, rockets cleave the air and cannons pour out their thunders. Only the common people animated by patriotism, and without hope of reward, know on such occasions, the thrill of a pure enthusiasm. To the office seeker the whole is gone through with as a mere hollow dumb show. It is not uncommon to hear men boast of how much they did for the victorious party; how much marching and counter-marching they did and how much influence they brought to the successful candidates, and on the strength of it threaten^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: threatem. that they will never do the like again if their services shall fail to get them office. The madness of Guiteau^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Giteau. was but the exaggerated madness of other men. It is impossible to measure the evil which this craving madness may yet bring upon the country. Any civil service reform which will diminish it, even if it does not entirely banish it from the minds of Americans, should be supported by every patriotic citizen.^†Douglass describes the "spoils system" associated with the practice of awarding public appointments and jobs to supporters of the winning candidate. Although the practice stretches across the history of politics in the United States, Senator William Marcy of New York first applied the term "spoils" in 1832, when President Andrew Jackson openly rewarded loyal followers with important political posts. A call for reform in federal appointment procedures was sounded during the scandal-ridden administration of Ulysses S. Grant, but it was the assassination of James Garfield that finally brought civil service reform. Knowledge that Garfield's assassin, Charles Julius Guiteau, was partly motivated by his quest for a public appointment in Garfield's administration led to widespread support for change. Under the administration of Chester A. Arthur, Congress passed the Pendleton Act of 1883 to regulate and improve the civil service system of the United States. Although some patronage appointments continued to be made, the act established a merit system for many government posts. The Pendleton Act created the U.S. Civil Service Commission, an executive agency charged with classifying and appointing personnel to non-cabinet-level federal positions. Seymour Martin Lipset, ed., , 4 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1995), 4:1177-79; Jay M. Shafritz, (Chicago, 1988), 400.

Few men in the country felt more than I, the shock caused by the assassination of President Garfield, and few men had better reason for thus feeling. I not only shared with the nation its great common sorrow because a good man had been cruelly and madly slain in the midst of his years and in the morning of his highest honors and usefulness, but because of the loss which I thought his death had entailed upon the colored people of the country. For though I at one time, had my fears as to the course Mr. Garfield would pursue towards us, my hopes were stronger than my fears. and my faith stronger than my doubts. Only a few weeks before his tragic death, he invited me to the Executive Mansion to talk over matters pertaining to the cause of my people, and here came up the subject of his foreign appointments. In this conversation he referred to the fact that his Republican predecessors in office had never sent colored men to any of the white nations. He said that he meant to depart from this usage; that he had made up his mind to send some colored men abroad to some of the white nationalities, and he

wanted to know of me if such persons would be acceptable to some such nations. I of course, thought the way clear to this new departure and encouraged the President in his proposed advanced step. At the time this promise was made and this hope was held out I had little doubt of its perfect fulfillment. There was in the President's manner the appearance of a well matured, fixed and resolute purpose to try the experiment. Hence his sudden and violent death came to me, not only with the crushing significance of a great crime against the nation and against mankind, but as a killing blow to my newly awakened hopes for my struggling people. I thought that could this new departure in the policy of our Government be carried out a death wound would be given to American prejudice and a new and much needed assurance would be given to the colored citizen. Thereafter he would be more respected at home and abroad, than he had ever before been. It would be conclusive evidence that the American people and Government were in earnest, and that they were not trifling and deceiving him when they clothed him with American citizenship. It would say to the country and to the civilized world that the great Republican party of the American Union, which carried the nation through the war, saved the country from dismemberment, reconstructed the Government on the basis of liberty, emancipated the slave and made him a citizen, was an honest party and meant all it had said and was determined hereafter to take no step backward. Cherishing as I did, this view, of what was promised and should be expected from the continued life of Mr. Garfield, his death appeared to me as among the gloomiest calamities that could have come to my people. The hopes awakened by the kind-hearted President had no support in my knowledge of the character of the self-indulgent man who was elected, in the contingency of death, to succeed him. The announcement, at the Chicago Convention,^†The factionally divided Republican party held its 1880 convention in Chicago beginning 2 June. One bloc, the "stalwarts" headed by New York's Roscoe Conkling, sought to nominate former president Ulysses S. Grant for a third term. Those in opposition favored a number of candidates, including the eventual nominee, Congressman James A. Garfield of Ohio. After settling disputes over delegate credentials, the convention began a long series of ballots in search of a nominee. Garfield's name was put forth late in the process and received the party's nomination on the thirty-sixth ballot. After their struggle to nominate a candidate ended, the delegates easily approved a platform by voice vote without debate. Major issues in the platform included a call for increased federal power, continued support for a protective tariff, civil service reform, and the limiting of Chinese immigration. (Minneapolis, Minn., 1903), 454-669; (Washington, D.C., 1997), 50-51. of this man's name as that of the candidate for the Vice Presidency, strangely enough brought over me a shudder such as one might feel in coming upon an armed murderer or a poisonous reptile.^†A largely inconsequential president, Chester A. Arthur did have a particular characteristic that ended his political career at its peak. A true bon vivant, Arthur was appalled by the White House's "modern abominations," including Victorian bureaus, dark paneling, and dreary window hangings. He made plans for a new executive mansion to be built across Lafayette Park. When these plans fell through, Arthur demanded that Congress make an appropriation for redecoration, stating that if Congress did not act he would pay for the project himself. Congress did act, albeit reluctantly, and the president began redecorating. He removed cartloads of "junk," repainted the walls, and brought in draperies and new furniture. An exemplar of Arthur's opulence was a Louis Comfort Tiffany-designed colored-glass screen across the rear of the main entrance hall. So involved was Arthur in the project that contemporaries claimed he devoted more time to interior design than to presidential duties. After the redecoration was complete on 7 December 1881, Arthur brought in a respected French chef from New York City to prepare meals. The president's wardrobe consisted of twenty-five new Prince Albert-type frock coats and several hundred pairs of pants. Arthur's kingly ways, however, tarnished his image in the American democratic public eye, and possibly ruined his chances of becoming president in his own right in 1884, when he lost the Republican nomination to James G. Blaine. Representative Joe Cannon of Illinois remarked after the Blaine nomination that "Arthur was defeated by his trousers." Thomas C. Reeves, (New York, 1975); David M. Pletcher, (Columbia, Mo., 1962), 259-60; Doenecke, ; Howard Bailey, "Le Grand Chester," , 3:50-55 (March 1970). For some occult and mysterious cause I know not what, I felt the hand of death upon me. I do not say or intimate that Mr. Arthur had anything to do with the taking off of the President. I might have had the same shudder had any other man been named, but I state the simple fact precisely as it was.

Whether President Garfield would have confirmed or disappointed^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: dissapointed. my hopes, had his life been spared by the assassin's bullet, can, of course never be known. His promise to break the record of former Presidents was plain, emphatic and hearty. Considering the strength of popular prejudice against the negro, the proposition to send a colored man to an admitted post of

honor in a white nation was a bold one. While there was much in the history and generous nature of Mr. Garfield to justify hope, I must say, that there was also something in his temperament and character to cause doubt and fear that his resolution in the end might be sicklied over with the pale cast of thought. Mr. Garfield, though a good man, was not my man for the Presidency. For that place I wanted a man of sterner stuff. I was for General Grant and for him with all the embarrassment^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: embarassment. and burden of a ''Third term" attaching to his candidacy.^†Ulysses S. Grant considered running for a third term as president in 1880. Beginning in May 1877, Grant and his wife Julia embarked on a two-year tour around the world, which received extended press coverage abroad and in the United States. He hoped that his popularity with world leaders would erase the memory of his two scandal-ridden terms in the White House. Grant's name appeared on the ballot at the Republican convention held at Chicago in 1880, and in the first ballot he received 304 of the 370 votes necessary to secure the nomination. Although his wife urged him to appear before the convention to demonstrate his desire to return to the presidency, Grant refused. On a subsequent ballot, the nomination went to James A. Garfield of Ohio. Following Grant's failure to secure a nomination, Douglass spoke of his support for the former president at a celebration in Elmira, New York, proclaiming, "no grander man now walks this continent than the trained soldier and tried statesman, U.S. Grant." , ser. 1, 4:571; McFeely, , 478-83; idem, , 277. I held that even defeat with Grant was better than success^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: succes. with a temporizer. I knew both men personally and valued the qualities of both. In the Senate Mr. Garfield was in his place. He was able in debate, amiable^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: aimable. in disposition and loveable in character, and when surrounded by the right influences would be sure to go right, but he did not to my mind, have in his moral make up, sufficient "backbone" to fit him for the chief magistracy of the nation at such a time as was then upon the country. In this place, a clear head, quick decision and firm purpose are required. The conditions demanded stalwart qualities and he was not a stalwart.^†In mentioning "stalwart qualities," Douglass alludes to those "stalwart" Republicans who opposed James G. Blaine as the Republican nominee in the 1884 presidential election. Blaine coined the term as an accolade. In 1877 he wrote to the Boston : "the Boston Press no more represents the stalwart Republican feeling of New England on the pending issues than the same press did when it demanded the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1851." Four years later The Nation commented on Blaine's letter, stating: "The epithet 'Stalwart' as applied to a class of politicians was first used by Mr. Blaine in 1877 to designate those Republicans who were unwilling to give up hostility and distrust of the South as a political motive." During the 1884 election, Republicans divided into two factions; the "stalwarts" were party regulars who opposed Blaine, and the "half-breeds" were independents who supported Blaine. Ironically, it was Blaine's opposition that appropriated his term "stalwart." Blaine was an avid reader of Sir Walter Scott, who frequently used "stalwart" in his writings. The word itself is of Anglo-Saxon origin, meaning "foundation worthy." The Old English meaning is "serviceable," a fitting description of what a loyal party politician should be. The term remains in usage today as a means of identifying a staunch supportive, unwavering party regular. Safire, , 750-51. The country had not quite survived the effects and influence of its great war for existence. The serpent had been wounded but not killed. Under the disguise of meekly accepting the results and decisions of the war, the rebels had come back to Congress more with the pride of conquerors than with the repentant^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: repentent. humility of defeated traitors. Their heads were high in the air. It was not they but the loyal men who were at fault. Under the fair-seeming name of local self-government, they were shooting to death just as many of the newly made citizens of the South as was necessary to put the individual states of the Union entirely into their power.^†As Reconstruction came to a close in the 1870s and conservatives gained control of southern state governments, violence against African Americans escalated. The perpetrators of political and physical violence worked to repeal federal guarantees of civil and political rights, and fashioned themselves "Redeemers," implying divine sanction for restoring the authority white southerners had lost during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Many southern states and localities followed the tactics of the so-called "Mississippi Plan," which began as an all-out assault on African Americans in that state in 1875. Aiming to regain control peacefully if possible, but sanctioning any necessary violence, Redeemers terrorized blacks and appealed to the population to support white supremacy. Although some southern whites initially objected to the violence of "redemption," once the movement's goals became sanctioned in law, the methods of restoring white supremacy became enshrined in the mythos of the postbellum era and was later openly celebrated on monuments and in commemorations. Nicholas Lemann, (New York, 2006), 185-87; Gillette, , 153-54. The object, which, through violence and bloodshed, they had accomplished in the several states, they were already aiming to accomplish in the United States, by address and political strategy. They had captured the individual states and meant now to capture the United States. The moral difference between those who fought^†Editorial Emendation: and who had fought. for the Union and liberty, and those who fought for slavery and the dismemberment of the Union, was fast fading away. The language of a sickly conciliation,^†The election of 1876 resulted in a dispute centering on twenty electoral votes from four states: Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina. A compromise was effected to determine how the disputed electors would be counted. Democratic nominee Samuel J. Tilden needed only one to win, but Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican, needed all twenty. To retain the presidency, the Republicans agreed to several provisions. As president, Hayes would see that Congress appropriated funds for southern infrastructure and transportation, would appoint a southerner to the presidential cabinet, and the Republicans would follow a policy of noninterference in southern affairs. This last provision paved the way for southern Democrats to roll back many of the Reconstruction-era gains by Republicans in relation to civil and political rights for blacks; hence it was a "sickly conciliation" in Douglass's view. Foner, , 566-80; , 3:13-16. inherited from the administration of President Hayes, was abroad. lnsolency born of slave mastery had begun to exhibit itself in the House and Senate of the Nation. The recent amendments of the Constitution, adopted to secure the results of the war for the Union, were beginning to be despised and scouted, and the Ship of State seemed fast returning to her ancient moorings. It was therefore no blind partiality that led me to prefer General Grant to General Garfield. The one might arrest the reaction and stay the hand of violence and bloodshed at the South; the other held out little promise

of such a result. I had once seen the mettle of Mr. Garfield tried when it seemed to me he did not exhibit the pure gold of moral courage; when in fact he quailed under the fierce glance of Randolph TuckerTucker, John Randolph

John Randolph Tucker (1823-97) was born in Winchester, Virginia. After studying at the University of Virginia, he opened a legal practice in his hometown. In 1857 Tucker was elected attorney general of Virginia, a position to which he was reelected twice and held until 1865. Following the end of the Civil War, Tucker practiced law in Baltimore and served as general counsel of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Tucker's skill as a legal advocate involved him in several prominent cases, including the defense of Jefferson Davis after the Civil War. He also represented Florida before the Electoral Commission during the disputed 1876 election and made an unsuccessful appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court for the Chicago anarchists accused in the Haymarket bombing on 4 May 1886. In 1874 Tucker was elected to Congress, where he gained a reputation as a staunch representative for the South. He was a strict constructionist on the issue of state's rights, and he used his oratorical skills to speak out against Reconstruction and the Electoral Commission Bill. Despite strong political ditlerences, Tucker became close friends with Congressman James A. Garfield of Ohio. After Garfield's assassination, Tucker became guardian of his two sons. After retiring from Congress in 1887, Tucker taught at Washington and Lee University. From 1892 to 1893 he served as president of the American Bar Association. Tucker spent his last years working on his own analysis of the Constitution. Following his death, his son, Henry St. George Tucker, also a professor at Washington and Lee, finished the book, John W. Davis, "John Randolph Tucker: The Man and His Work," in The John Randolph Tucker Lectures, 4 vols. (Lexington, Va., 1952-1967), 1:11-36; ANB, 21:898; BDUSC (online). , a returned slaveholding rebel. I can never forget the scene. Mr. Garfield had used the phrase "perjured traitors" as descriptive^†The exchange Douglass describes took place during a speech Garfield delivered before the House of Representatives on 12 January 1876, concerning extending amnesty to former Confederates. The general tone of the speech was conciliatory, but Representative Randolph Tucker of Virginia took offense when Garfield noted that the original amnesty did not extend to those holding federal commissions in the government or military who changed sides to support the Confederacy. He argued that those individuals were guilty of "the crime of perjury in the eyes of the law." When challenged by Tucker, Garfield attempted to explain, "In view of the fact of flaming war, I do not say those men should be regarded as ordinary perjurers; I never said that. But what will the gentleman call it? By what other name does the law know it? I did not make the dictionary, nor did I make the law." After several southerners joined in Tucker's protest, claiming Garfield's words injured the honor of numerous men, he made a second attempt to smooth ruffied feathers, proclaiming, "I have not used the word in any offensive sense, but in its plain and ordinary acceptation, as used in the law." James A. Garfield, , Speech, Article, and Book File, reel 23, frame 167, FD Papers, DLC. of those who had been educated by the Government and sworn to support and defend the Constitution and yet had betaken themselves to the battle field and fought to destroy it. Mr. Tucker had resented these terms as thus applied,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: aplied. and the only defence Mr. Garfield made to this brazen insolence of Mr.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: MR. Tucker, was, that he did not make the dictionary. This was perhaps, the soft answer that turneth away wrath, but it is not the answer with which to rebuke effrontery, haughtiness and presumption. It is not the answer that Charles SumnerSumner, Charles

Best remembered as the victim of a vicious attack by a congressional colleague, Charles Sumner (1811-74), U.S. senator from Massachusetts (1851-74), was dedicated to the cause of emancipation. Born in Boston, Sumner attended and then taught at Harvard College. He engaged in a semi-successful law practice until his outspoken opposition to the United States war against Mexico thrust him into politics. He was a founder of the Free Soil Party in Massachusetts, and a coalition of Free Soilers and Democrats elected him to the U.S. Senate in 1850. Immediately embroiling himself in the heated topic of slavery, Sumner became an outspoken advocate of emancipation and repeatedly refuted compromises proposed by Henry Clay and others. After one particularly scathing speech in the Senate against slavery, Sumner was brutally beaten with a cane by a Southern representative, which necessitated years of recovery before Sumner was able to reenter the Senate. Sumner’s lasting legacy was to turn popular sentiment in the North toward emancipation, and after the Civil War, he continued to fight for the individual freedoms of blacks until his sudden death in 1874. Frederick J. Blue, Charles Sumner and the Conscience of the North (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1994); David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (New York, 1960); DAB, 18:208-14. or Benjamin F. WadeWade, Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin Wade (1800-78), antislavery lawyer, judge, and legislator, was born in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, moved to Ohio as a young man, and eventually entered into a law partnership with Joshua Giddings. In 1837 Wade was elected as a Whig to the Ohio senate, where his opposition to stricter fugitive slave laws possibly cost him reelection. He served again in the state legislature rom 1841 to 1843, and in 1847 was appointed presiding judge of the Third Ohio Judicial Circuit. Four years later, Whigs and Free Soilers united to elect him to the U.S. Senate. In the 1850s he converted to Republicanism and was an outspoken opponent of any move to expand the limits of slavery. An advocate of aggressive military measures during the Civil War, Wade served as chairman of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War and, with Congressman Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, sponsored an alternative to Lincoln's Reconstruction policy, the Wade-Davis Bill of 1864, which the president vetoed. After the war he continued to advocate congressional Reconstruction and was one of the leading critics of Andrew Johnson's conciliatory policies toward the South. As president pro tempore of the Senate at the time of Johnson's impeachment trial in 1868, Wade stood to gain the presidency upon Johnson's conviction. Johnson survived impeachment, but Wade, whose radicalism applied to woman suffrage and labor legislation as well as to Reconstruction issues, had alienated many politicians and voters. He never again held public office. In 1866 Wade had been one of only four Republican senators to join Charles Sumner in successfully blocking the apportionment amendment. Albert G. Riddle, The Life of Benjamin F. Wade (Cleveland, 1886); Hans L. Trefousse, Benjamin Franklin Wade: Radical Republican from Ohio (New York, 1963); DAB, 19:303-05. or Owen LovejoyLovejoy, Owen

Owen Lovejoy (1811-64), a congressman and Congregational minister, studied briefly at Bowdoin College in the early 1830s. Influenced by Theodore Dwight Weld, Lovejoy became a staunch abolitionist in 1836. He moved to Alton, Illinois, to study for the ministry under his brother Elijah P. Lovejoy, who published an antislavery newspaper, the Alton Observer. When Elijah was killed at the hands of an antiabolition mob in 1837, Owen vowed to devote himself to "the cause that has been sprinkled with my brother's blood.'' Beginning in the 1840s Lovejoy was an active political abolitionist, supporting first the Liberty party, then the Free Soilers, and eventually the Republican party. In 1856 he won a seat in Congress. In 1860 Lovejoy campaigned for Lincoln's election to the presidency and advocated a heavy-handed prosecution of the war against the Confederacy. In December 1861 Lovejoy proposed a bill to free all slaves in the United States and called for the use of black troops. In 1862 he played a major role in the passage of the Homestead Act and the Pacific Railroad Bill, which authorized the building of the first transcontinental railroad. When Lovejoy died in 1864, Lincoln eulogized him as "the best friend I had in Congress." Edward Magdol, Owen Lovejoy: Abolitionist in Congress (New Brunswick, N.J., 1967); idem, "Owen Lovejoy's Role in the Campaign of 1858," JISHS 51:403-16 (1958); Ruth Ewers Haberkorn, '"Owen Lovejoy in Princeton, Illinois," JISHS, 36:284-315 (1943); ANB, 14:6-7. ^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Owin. would have given. None^†Editorial Emendation: Neither. of these brave men would, in such a case, have sheltered himself behind the dictionary. In nature exuberant, readily responsive in sympathy, shrinking from conflict with his immediate surroundings, abounding in love of approbation. Mr. Garfield himself admitted that he had made promises that he could not fulfill. His amiable^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: aimable. disposition to make himself agreeable to those with whom he came in contact made him weak and led him to create false hopes in those who approached him for favors. This was shown in a case to which I was a party. Prior to his inauguration he solemnly promised Senator Roscoe ConklingConkling, Roscoe

Roscoe Conkling (1829-88), Republican politician, was born in Albany, New York. He trained for the law in Utica, was admitted to the bar in 1850, and served as district attorney for Oneida County from 1850 until he was elected mayor of Utica in 1858. The following year he entered the U.S. House of Representatives, serving until an 1862 defeat, but returning in 1865 for one term. Serving in the Senate from 1867 until 1881, Conkling ardently advocated Ulysses Grant's Reconstruction policies. A champion of the political spoils system, Conkling opposed the civil service reforms advocated by Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and James A. Garfield. During Garfield's administration Conkling and a colleague, Thomas C. Platt, resigned from the Senate to protest Garfield's appointment of a former Liberal Republican to a key patronage job in the New York City customs house. Platt and Conkling were chagrined when they lost their anticipated reelections. Conkling resumed law practice in New York City. Jordan, Roscoe Conkling of New York; Chidsey, Gentleman from New York; ACAB, 1:706-07. that he would appoint me United States Marshal for the District of Columbia. He not only promised, but did so with emphasis. He slapped the table with his hand when he^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: the. made the promise. When I apologized to Mr. Conkling for the failure of Mr. Garfield to fulfill his promise, that gentleman silenced me by repeating with increasing emphasis." But he told me he would appoint you United States Marshal of the District of Columbia." To all I could say in defence of Mr. Garfield. Mr. Conkling repeated this promise with increasing solemnity till it seemed to reproach me not less than Mr. Garfield; he for failing to keep his word and I for defending him. It need not be said to those who knew the character and composition of Senator Conkling, that it was impossible for him to tolerate or excuse a broken promise. No man more than he, considered a man's word his bond.^†Miguel Cervantes, "An honest man's word is as good as his bond," Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, , 2 vols. (1604-15; Ware, Eng., 1993), 2:550. The difference between the two men is the difference between one guided by principle and one controlled by sentiment.

Although Mr. Garfield had given me this cause to doubt his word, I still had faith in his promised new departure. I believed in it all the more because Mr. Blaine, then Secretary of State and known to have great influence with the President, was with him in this new measure. Mr. Blaine went so far as

to ask me to give him the names of several colored men who could fill such places with credit to the Government and to themselves. All this was ended by the accursed bullet of the assassin. I therefore not only shared the general sorrow of the woe smitten Nation, but lamented the loss of a great benefactor. Nothing could be more sad and pathetic than the death of this loveable man. It was his lot, while in full health, standing at the gateway of a great office armed with power and supplied with opportunity: with high and pure purposes in life and with heart and mind cheerfully surveying the broad field of duty outstretched before him, to be suddenly and without^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: with out. warning cut down in an instant, in the midst of his years and in the fullness of his honors. There was no true man in the land who did not share the pain of the illustrious sufferer while he lingered in life, or who could refuse a tear when the final hour came when his life and suffering ended.

CHAPTER IV.
RECORDER OF DEEDS.

CHAPTER IV.
RECORDER OF DEEDS.

Activity in behalf of his people—Income of the Recorder of Deeds—False impressions as to his wealth—Appeals for assistance—Persistent beggars.

Although I was not reappointed to the office of Marshal of the District of Columbia as I had reason to expect and to believe that I should be, not only because under me the office had been conducted blamelessly, but because President Garfield had solemnly promised Senator Conkling that I should be so appointed, I was given the office of Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia.^†The recorder of deeds acts as the tax collection agent for the District of Columbia, administering the Office of Tax and Revenue. The recorder's office also functions as the official repository for all land records and general public instruments for the District. The recorder of deeds maintains records of real estate transactions, deeds, transfer tax, and fees on instruments being recorded. The office also maintains the records for public inspection. Herbert Sydney Duncombe, (Washington, D.C., 1977), 59; Paul W. Wager, ed., (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1950), 17. This office was, in many respects, more congenial to my feelings than was that of United States Marshal of the District which made me the daily witness in the criminal court of a side of the District life to me most painful and repulsive. Happily, I was never required to personally superintend or witness an execution or to take any part in one. That sad and solemn business had, prior to my appointment, been committed to the warden of the jail, but the contact with the criminal class and the responsibility of watching and taking care of criminals were^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: was. in every way distasteful to me, and hence I would, under any circumstances, have preferred the office of Recorder of Deeds to that of Marshal. The duties of Recorder, though specific, exacting and imperative, are easily performed. The office is one that imposes no social duties whatever and therefore neither fettered my pen nor silenced my voice in the cause of my people. I wrote much and spoke often, and perhaps, because of this activity, gave to envious tongues a pretext

against me. I think that I was not, while in this office or in that of Marshal, less outspoken against what I considered the errors of rulers, than while outside of the office. My cause first, midst, last and always, whether in office or out of office, was and is that of the black man; not^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: blackman;not because he is black, but because he is a man, and a man subjected in this country to peculiar wrongs and hardships.

As in the case of United States Marshal, so in that of Recorder of Deeds, I was the first colored man who held the office, and like all innovations on established usage, my appointment did not meet with the approval of the conservatives and old time rulers of the country, but on the contrary, met with resistance from both these and the press as well as from the street corners. Happily for me the American people possess in large measure a proneness to acquiescence. They readily submit to the "Powers that be"^†A paraphrase of Rom. 13:1. and to the rule or the majority. This sheet anchor^†Literally, a large ship's anchor, used only in an emergency. Figuratively, it refers to that on which one places one's reliance when everything else has failed. of our national stability, prosperity and peace, served me in good stead in this crisis in my career, as indeed it had done in many others.

I held the office of Recorder of Deeds of the District of Columbia for nearly five years. Having, so to speak, broken the ice by giving to the country the example of a colored man at the head of that office, it has become the one special office to which, since that time, colored men have aspired. Much that is sheep-like is illustrated in the colored race and perhaps the same is true in all races. Where one goes the others are apt to follow. The office has, ever since I left it, been sought for and occupied by colored men.^†According to a study of African Americans in late-nineteenth-century Washington, D.C., blacks had long benefited from appointments to a number of local government posts in the District. Beginning with Douglass's appointment, the post of recorder of deeds was held continuously by blacks at least through the 1890s. Edward Ingle, "The Negro in the District of Columbia," , 11:140-41 (March-April 1893). In this, if not in anything else. I have opened the gate and led the way upward for the people with whom I am identified. The office of Recorder was far less remunerative: when I held it than it has since become. With the almost wonderful increase of population, after long years of stationary^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: stationery. condition due to the existence of slavery, and with the vast improvements in its sanitary conditions, there has come to Washington a surprising activity in the real estate business.^†Following the end of Reconstruction in 1877, Washington, D.C. experienced a boom in real estate sales and new building construction that lasted until the onset of the depression of 1893. Speculation in city properties was spurred by a building spree that saw new businesses and neighborhoods constructed around Washington. Congressional promises to maintain federal sharing of the city's expenses kept property taxes low, and residents and speculators began to build houses to sell or rent. In the 1880s a well-furnished house in the District rented for an average of $200 a month, although less affluent residents could lease a home for as little as $75 monthly. New construction of office buildings also encouraged investment in real estate. In 1887 there were some 2,450 buildings erected on land that increased in value from 8 cents a square foot in 1882 to 48 cents a square foot in 1887. Many of the new offices were occupied by real estate agencies. As recorder of deeds during this boom, Douglass stood to make a handsome living from the fees for recording and transferring property. Constance McLaughlin Green, , 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1962-63), 2:9-34; Alan Lessoff, , (Baltimore, 1994), 65-66, 73. As the office of Recorder is supported by fees, and every transfer of property and every Deed of Trust and every Mortgage executed must be recorded, the income of this office has risen to a larger sum than that of any office of the National Government except that of the President of the United States.^†Because the income of the recorder of deeds was directly tied to the number of transactions and recordings performed, the recorder's salary did increase significantly as the District of Columbia grew and prospered. Although figures are not available for subsequent recorders, the boost in Douglass's salary supports the trend. At the end of his first full year in the office, the personal account of the recorder amounted to $4,447. By August 1886 the earnings effectively doubled to $8,735. Even if one assumes a steady growth, it is unlikely that the recorder's salary approached the $50,000 earned by the president of the United States. Subject File, Recorder of Deeds, 1881-86, FD Papers, DLC; Leonard W. Levy and Louis Fisher, eds., , 4 vols. (New York, 1994), 4:1346.

In my experience in public life I have learned that there are many ways by which confidence in public men may be undermined and destroyed, and against which they arc comparatively helpless. One of the most successful methods is to start the rumor that a man has made a large fortune out of the Government and is rich. This method of political warfare, I will hardly say

assassination, has not escaped the vigilant eye of the Afro-American press or of the aspirant and office seeker, who, when he has found a public man supposed to be in the way of his ambition, has resorted to this device. In my casethis method has not been only well studied but diligently and vigorously employed. The surprising feature is that at this point no amount of testimony and denial has any effect. It is only necessary to get the rumor well started to have it roll on and increase like a ball in adhesive snow. I have for instance seen myself described, in some of our Afro-American newspapers, as a man of large fortune, worth half a million of dollars, and the impression was given by the writer that I had made this large fortune out of the Government. The absurdity of all this would readily assert itself to the thoughtful readers of these papers, if they would only stop to think, but unfortunately, all the readers of Afro-American or other newspapers are not very thoughtful or painstaking in such investigations, but usually accept a "rumor" or an "It is said," as law and gospel. The rumors of my wealth are not only not true, but in the nature of my work and history, could not be true. A half a million indeed! The fact is, I never was worth one fifth of that sum and never expect to be. The offices held by me during the eleven years of my political life never brought me over three thousand dollars a year above the current expenses of living, and during some of the years my income was much less than this sum.

While^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Whiile. I hold it to be no sin to be rich. but on the contrary, wish there were many rich men among American citizens of color, the notoriety foolishly or maliciously given me, has, in some measure, placed me unfavorably before the people I have most endeavored to serve and has naturally enough subjected me to some annoyances which I might have otherwise escaped. Aside from envy and prejudice, excited by seeing one man in better circumstances^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: circumstsnce. than another it has overwhelmed me with applications to travel and lecture at my own expense for this and that good object. It has also brought me much correspondence to occupy and consume the time and attention which perhaps might have been more usefully employed in other directions. Numerous pressing and pathetic appeals for assistance, written under the delusion of my great wealth, have come to me from colored people from all parts of the country, with heart rending tales of destitution and misery, such as I would gladly relieve did my circumstances admit of it. This confidence in my benevolent disposition has been flattering enough and gratefully appreciated by me but I have found it difficult to make the applicants believe that I have no power to justify it. While some of these applications for aid have been distressing, others have been simply amusing in their absurdity.

One person wholly unknown to me besought me for the modest sum of four thousand dollars. She had seen a house that would exactly suit herself and daughter for a home. It could be purchased for that amount and she implored me to send her the money. Another wrote me setting forth the goodness of Divine Providence in blessing me with great riches and beseeching me to forward to her the price of a piano, assuring me that she had never before troubled me for money. She knew that her daughter was remarkably gifted in music and could make her way in the world if to start with she could only have a piano. These were no doubt honest people and applied to me confidently expecting to get the money for which they asked. They were not of that class or professional beggars who hide away in garrets, cellars and other out of the way places and load the mails with ingeniously framed begging letters to persons known to have means and supposed to be benevolent, and upon whom they think they can impose. They are however of that large class or persons who are perfectly willing to subsist at other people's expense. Happily, the speculators in human credulity generally reveal the presence of fraud by their elaborate and overdrawn tales of woe and suffering and thus defeat themselves. The witness who gives evidence merely from memory and not from the knowledge of the case then present to his mind, may tell a straight story, but one not so straight will often better secure belief. The skillful lawyer can generally detect in the perfection of the story the vice of the evidence.

Among the most numerous and persistent beggars whom I have to encounter in this class are those who come in the character of creditors to demand from me the payment of a debt which I especially owe them for the great services which they or their fathers or grandfathers have rendered to the cause of emancipation. "They have assisted slaves in their flight from bondage." "They have travelled miles to hear me lecture." "They remember some things which they heard me say." "They read everything that I ever wrote." "Their fathers kept stations on the underground railroad." "They voted the Liberty Party ticket many years ago, when no one else did,'' and much else of the same sort, but always concluding with a solid demand for money or for my influence to get positions under the Government for themselves or for their friends. Though I could not exactly see how or why I should he called upon to pay the debt of emancipation for the whole four millions of liberated people, I have always tried to do my part as opportunity has offered. At the same time it has seemed to me incomprehensible that they did not see that the real debtors in this woeful account are themselves and that the absurdity of their posing as creditors did not occur to them.

CHAPTER V.
PRESIDENT CLEVELAND' S ADMINISTRATION.

CHAPTER V.
PRESIDENT CLEVELAND' S ADMINISTRATION.

Circumstances of Cleveland's election—Political standing of the District of Columbia—Estimate of Cleveland's character—Respect for Mr. Cleveland—Decline of strength in the Republican Party—Time of gloom for the colored people—Reason for the defeat of Blaine.

The last year of my service in the comfortable^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: confortable. office of Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, to which aspirants have never been few in number or wanting in zeal, was under the early part of the remarkable administration of President Grover ClevelandCleveland, Grover

Twenty-second and twenty-fourth president of the United States, Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) was born in Caldwell, New Jersey. As a young adult he settled in Buffalo, New York, where he practiced law. His political career began when he was elected mayor of Buffalo in 1881. In 1884 Cleveland sought the Democratic nomination for the presidency. His disdain for partisan politics won him the support of Democratic reformers as well as that of Republican Mugwumps, who favored civil service reform . Cleveland narrowly defeated Republican James G. Blaine of Maine, receiving only 48.5 percent of the vote but carrying key states. Cleveland's first term focused on attacking the tariff and on civil service reform. Just before his inauguration, he wrote to Douglass suggesting that he consider resigning his position as recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia. However, Douglass remained in the post for most of 1885. Although he did not agree with Cleveland's politics, Douglass respected the president's willingness to treat African Americans as social equals. once remarking on him that "whatever else he may be, he is not a snob: and he is not a coward." Cleveland lost his 1888 bid for reelection to Republican Benjamin Harrison. He returned to win the Democratic nomination in 1892 and solidly defeated Harrison. Retiring from the presidency in 1897, Cleveland spent his final years as a trustee of Princeton University, where he died in 1908. Douglass to F. W. Bird. 6 April 1886, Francis William Bird Papers, Harvard University, Houghton Library, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 112, FD Papers, DLC, reprinted in New York Times, 2 May 1886, also quoted in Holland, Frederick Douglass, 356-57; H. Paul Jeffers, An Honest President: The Life and Presidencies of Grover Cleveland (New York, 2002); Richard E. Welch, Jr., The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland (Lawrence, Kans., 1988); ANB, 14:60-64. . It was thought by some of my friends and especially by my Afro-American critics, that I ought to have instantly resigned this office upon the incoming of the new administration. I do not know how much the desirableness of the office influenced my opinion in an opposite direction, for the human heart is very deceitful, but I took a different view in this respect from my colored critics. The office of Recorder, like that of the Register of Wills,^†In most jurisdictions. the register of wills presides over the court of probate. The officeholder is responsible for collecting inheritance taxes and the tax on the commissions of estate administrators and executors. They are paid a percentage of fees collected. Emmett G. Asseff, "Delaware,'' in , ed. Wager, 214; Elwyn A. Mauck, "Maryland," in ibid., 223. is a purely local office, though held at the pleasure of the President, and it is in no sense a federal or political office. The Federal Government provides no salary for it. It is supported solely by fees paid for work actually done by its employees, for the citizens of the District of Columbia. While these citizens, outside the eager applicants for the place, made no complaint of my continuance in the office, I saw no reason to retire from it. Then too, President Cleveland did not appear to be in haste or to desire my resignation half as much as some of my Afro-American brethren desired me to make room for them. Besides, he owed his election to a peculiar combination of circumstances favorable to my remaining where I was. He had been supported by Republican votes as well as by Democratic votes. He had been the candidate of civil service reformers,^†The 1884 Democratic platform proclaimed allegiance to civil service reform. Grover Cleveland characterized the Republican party as "vast army of office-holders" hopelessly corrupted by power, money, and influence. This Republican army, he warned, stood as a barrier between the people and their government. Desiring more than lofty stump statements, the Civil Service Reform League urged Cleveland to make specific promises that he would retain meritorious officeholders regardless of their party affiliations. Cleveland's response was a letter in which he promised to retain such Officeholders as long as they were not in positions central to the execution of administration policy and had not previously engaged in "obnoxious" partisan politics. Officeholders who attended strictly to their public duties, he assured, would not be dismissed "for party or political reasons." In contrast to Cleveland, Republican nominee James G. Blaine was an unabashed spoilsman, who alienated reform-minded Republicans. Blaine's famously scandal-ridden past made Grover Cleveland's tepid commitment to reform seem revolutionary. Mark Wahlgren Summers, (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000), 75-6, 204-05; Welch, , 35-36. the fundamental idea of whom is that there should be no removal from office the duties of which have been fully and faithfully performed by the incumbent. Being elected by the votes of civil service reformers there was an implied political obligation imposed upon Mr. Cleveland to respect the idea represented^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: represnted. by the votes of these reformers. During the first part of his administration, the time in which I held office under him, the disposition on the part of the President to fulfill that obligation was quite manifest and the feeling at the time was that we were entering upon a new era of American politics, in which there would be no removals from office on the ground of party politics. It seemed that for better or for worse we had reversed the practice of both parties in our political^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: pilitical. history and that the old formula "To the victor belong the spoils"^†During the Senate debate on 21 January 1832 over confirmation of President Van Buren's nomination for ambassador to Great Britain, New York Senator William L. Marcy declared that the politicians of the United States "see nothing wrong in the rule, that to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy." , 14 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1833), 8:1325.

was no longer to be the approved rule in politics. Then again I saw that there was less reason for resigning because of the election of a President of a different party from my own, when the political status of the people of the District of Columbia was considered. These people are outside of the United States. They occupy neutral ground and have no political existence.^†The U.S. Constitution granted Congress jurisdiction over the U.S. capital city, which in turn approved limited political rights for residents of the District of Columbia. The District of Columbia was treated as a U.S. territory from the end of the Civil War until 1878, when Congress passed the Organic Act, which halted movement toward local self-government. At the same time the city's solvency was guaranteed, as the Congress pledged to underwrite the District's public debt. Under this arrangement municipal administration was overseen by presidentially appointed commissioners, while city residents had neither voting rights nor representation in Congress. Although periodic movements in the late nineteenth century called for suffrage and home rule, proponents of D.C. suffrage were defeated at least partly because of a fear of enfranchising the large numbers of African Americans who inhabited the capital city. With ratification of the Twenty-third Amendment in 1961, D.C. residents were allowed to vote for president and vice president, but continued to be represented in Congress only by a nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives. Green, , 2:vii, 4-5, 24, 185; Lessoff, : 10-11, 101-29; Martha Derthick, "Politics in Voteless Washington," , 25:93-106 (February 1963). They have neither voice nor vote in all the practical politics of the United States. They are hardly to be called citizens of the United States. Practically they are aliens; not citizens, but subjects. The District of Columbia is the one spot where there is no government for the people, of the people and by the people. Its citizens submit to rulers whom they have had no choice in selecting. They obey laws which they had no voice in making. They have a plenty of taxation but no representation.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: representat tion. In the great questions of politics in the country they can march with neither army but are relegated to the position of neuters.

I have nothing to say in favor of this anomalous condition of the People of the District of Columbia and hardly think that it ought to be or will be much longer endured, but while it exists it does not appear that the election of a President of the United States^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: S States. should make it the duty of a purely local officer, holding an office supported, not by the United States, but by the disfranchised people of the District of Columbia, to resign such office. For these reasons I rested securely in the Recorder's office until the President, whether intentionally or not, had excited the admiration of the Civil Service Reformers by whom he was elected, after which he vigorously endeavored to conform his policy to the opposing ideas of the Democratic Party. Having received all possible applause from the reformers and thus made it difficult for them to contradict their approval and return to the Republican Party, he went to work in earnest at the removal from office of all^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: office all. those whom he regarded as offensive partisans, myself among the number.^†As president, Cleveland responded to clamors for a reduction in political appointments and for civil service reform promised by the Democratic party. Cleveland aimed to end the practice of political spoils with the 1883 Pendleton Act, the purpose of which was to reform and to ensure uniformity in federal appointments. Although Cleveland did remove some political appointees, including Douglass, he was also accused of using the civil service system to place his own political appointments under the classitication system, thereby guaranteeing their retention once he was out of office. Welch, , 59-62; Ari Hoogenboom, "The Pendleton Act and the Civil Service," , 64:301-18 (January 1959). Seldom has a political device worked better. In face of all the facts, the Civil Service Reformers adhered to their President. He had not done all they had hoped for but he had done what they insisted was the best that he could do under the circumstances.

In parting with President Grover Cleveland it is due to state that, personally, I have no cause of complaint against him. On the contrary there is much for which I have reason to commend him. I found him a robust, manly man, one having the courage to act upon his convictions and to bear with equanimity the reproaches of those who differed from him. When President Cleveland came to Washington I was under a considerable cloud not altogether free from angry lightning. False friends of both colors were loading me with reproaches. No man perhaps had ever more offended popular prejudice

than I had then lately done. I had married a wife. People who had remained silent over the unlawful relations of the white slave masters with their colored slave women loudly condemned me for marrying a wife a few shades lighter than myself. They would have had no objection to my marrying a person much darker in complexion than myself, but to marry one much lighter and of the complexion of my father rather than of that of my mother, was, in the popular eye, a shocking offense, and one for which I was to be ostracized by white and black alike. Mr. Cleveland found me covered with these unjust, inconsistent, and foolish reproaches, and instead of joining in with them or acting in accordance with them, or in anywise giving them countenance as a cowardly and political trickster might and probably would have done, he, in the face of all vulgar criticism, paid me all the social consideration due to the office of Recorder of Deeds of the District of Columbia. He never failed, while I held office under him, to invite myself and wife to his grand receptions, and we never failed to attend them. Surrounded by distinguished men and women from all parts of the country and by diplomatic representatives from all parts of the world, and under the gaze of the late slaveholders, there was nothing in the bearing of Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland toward Mrs. Douglass and myself less cordial and courteous than that extended to the other ladies and gentlemen present. This manly defiance, by a Democratic President, of a malignant and time-honored prejudice, won my respect for the courage of Mr. Cleveland. We were in politics separated from each other by a space ocean wide. I had done all that I could to defeat his election and to elect Mr. James G. Blaine,^†During the 1884 presidential election campaign James G. Blaine and the Republican platform maintained the party's traditional advocacy of the protective tariff. Anticipating a possible large defection of "Mugwump" Republicans offended by Blaine's taint of public corruption, the Democrats wrote a platform that attempted to blur historic points of difference between the parties, especially regarding the tariff issue. Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland defeated Blaine by 1,143 votes in New York, carrying the state and the 1884 election. W. Dean Burnham, (Baltimore, 1955), 137; Schlesinger, , 2:1570-71, 1573; Johnson, , 1:65-68, 72-74. but this made no apparent difference with Mr. Cleveland. He found me in office when he came into the Presidency, and he was too noble to refuse me the recognition and hospitalities that my official position gave me the right to claim. Though this conduct drew upon him fierce and bitter reproaches from members of his own party in the South, he never faltered or flinched, and continued to invite Mrs. Douglass and myself to his receptions during all the time that I was in office under his administration, and often wrote the invitations with his own hand. Among my friends in Europe, a fact like this will excite no comment. There, color does not decide the civil and social position of a man. Here, a white scoundrel, because he is white, is preferred to an honest and educated black man. A white man of the baser sort can ride in first-class carriages on railroads, attend the theaters and enter the hotels and restaurants of our cities, and be accommodated, while a man with the least drop of African blood in his veins would be refused and insulted. Nowhere in the world are the worth and dignity of manhood more exalted in speech and press than they are here,

and nowhere is manhood pure and simple more despised than here. We affect contempt for the castes and aristocracies of the old world and laugh at their assumptions, but at home foster pretensions far less rational and much more ridiculous.

I have spoken freely of the sensible and manly course of Mr. Cleveland, and shall perhaps, for this reason, be thought and described as having a leaning towards the Democratic party. No greater mistake could be made. No such inference should be drawn from anything that I have said. I am a Republican and am likely to remain a Republican, but I was never such a partisan that I could not commend a noble action performed by any man of whatever party or sect.

During the administration of Chester A. ArthurArthur, Chester Alan

Chester Alan Arthur (1830-86) was born in East Fairfield, Vermont. In 1848 he graduated from Union College, Schenectady, New York, whereupon he became the principal of an academy in Vermont. Arthur then studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1854. During the Civil War Arthur served as the quartermaster general with the rank of brigadier general for the state of New York. After the war President Grant appointed him collector of the port of New York from 1871 to 1878. He was chosen as the running mate of Republican James A. Garfield in 1880 and became vice president on 4 March 1881. Arthur was sworn in as the twenty-first president of the United States on 20 September 1881, following the death of President Garfield. ACAB, 1:99-106; DAB, 1:373-76; ANB, 1:646--48; BDUSC (online). , as also during that of Rutherford B. HayesHayes, Rutherford Birchard

Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822-93), nineteenth president of the United States, had previously served as governor of his home state of Ohio (1867-71) and as a Republican congressman (1865-67). Although Hayes had supported the Radical Reconstruction program while in Congress, events during Grant's administration had convinced him that the remaining southern Republican state governments, led by carpetbaggers and blacks, could no longer sustain themselves even with federal military intervention. As president, Hayes attempted to reinvigorate the southern Republican party through a program of sectional reconciliation aimed at attracting former Whigs and Douglas Democrats into the party. He believed that the goodwill of southern whites was better protection for the political and civil rights of blacks than federal military force. Soon after his inauguration, Hayes ordered U.S. troops in Charleston and New Orleans away from the statehouses and back to their garrisons, causing the Republican governments in South Carolina and Louisiana to collapse in the face of the armed force of their Democratic opponents. Hayes also appointed numerous southern Democrats to federal office, including former Confederate general David M. Key, who became his postmaster general. Despite Hayes's hope, few new southern white voters joined the Republican party, and it shrank into a powerless minority in most of the region for the remainder of the nineteenth century. Kenneth L. Davison, The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (Westport, Conn., 1972); Keith Dan Polakoff, The Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, La., 1973), 246-51, 317-21; Vincent P. DeSantis, Republicans Face the Southern Question: The New Departure Years, 1877-1897 (1959; New York, 1969), 66-132; William Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1879 (Baton Rouge, La., 1979), 335-52. , the spirit of slavery and rebellion increased in power and advanced towards ascendency. At the same time, the spirit which had abolished slavery and saved the Union steadily and proportionately declined, and with it the strength and unity of the Republican party also declined. The dawn of this deplorable action became visible when the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives defeated the bill to protect colored citizens of the South from rapine and murder.^†Douglass refers to the election enforcement measure pursued by the House of Representatives in 1875. Known by proponents and detractors as "the force bill of 1875" or "Grant's bayonet bill," the legislation was designed to protect black voters from intimidation and fraud. For political reasons, southern Republicans were the measure's strongest supporters; one of the bill's effects would be to ensure Republican national victories in the presidency, House, and Senate by virtue of southern electoral votes. Drafted by the House Republican caucus, the bill proposed strict federal intervention in the South to protect voters at the polls and prevent the overthrow of state authority. It also empowered the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, and specified new and harsh penalties for voter fraud and election irregularities. The bill went before the House on 25 February 1875. Radical Republicans supported the bill, but the measure passed largely on the support of Republican moderates who foresaw the bill's death in the Senate. In the Senate, Democrats lined up in opposition, while moderate Republicans either railed against the excessive power the bill would give the president, or agreed with Speaker of the House James G. Blaine, that the bill would not rescue a South already controlled by Democrats. The defeat of the Force Bill forecasted the imminent failure of Reconstruction. Richard H. Abbott, (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986), 231; Charles W. Calhoun, (Lawrence, Kans., 2006), 69, 75-78; Gillette, , 280-299. Under President Hayes it took organic, chronic form, and rapidly grew in bulk and force. This well-meaning President turned his back upon the loyal state governments of the South, gave the powerful Post-Office Department into the hands of a Southern Democrat, filled the Southern States with rebel postmasters, went South, praised the honesty and bravery of the rebels, preached pacification, and persuaded himself and others to believe that this conciliation policy would arrest the hand of violence, put a stop to outrage and murder, and restore peace and prosperity to the rebel States.^†Douglass, along with many staunch Republicans, expressed disdain for President Rutherford B. Hayes's soft handed policies toward the southern states. Assuming the office of the presidency after a disputed election in 1876, Hayes was determined to end the sectional turmoil that had marked the presidency of his predecessor, Ulysses S. Grant. Envisioning a post-Reconstruction South in which Republicans could hold their own, Hayes planned to build a Republican party in the southern states that would not depend on black votes as the sole source of its strength, but would also garner the respect of conservative southern whites. He appointed David M. Key, a Tennessee Democrat and former Confederate general, to be postmaster general. Hayes then curtailed African American and carpetbagger leadership in the Republican party, recalled all federal troops from their remaining garrisons in the South, and restored "home rule" to southern whites. Hayes embarked on two successful tours through the South in 1877, but his proposed program of national aid for southern internal improvements failed to attract a southern Democratic exodus to the Republican party. Even Hayes's new appointment policy, which filled southern political posts with Democrats, failed to amass Republican strength in the South. Hayes's conciliatory southern policies, though well intentioned, only seemed to anger staunch Republicans like Frederick Douglass. Vincent P. DeSantis, "President Hayes's Southern Policy," , 21:476-94 (November 1955); Frank P. Vazzano, "Rutherford B. Hayes and the Politics of Discord," , 68:519-40 (Fall 2006). The results of this policy were no less ruinous and damning because of the good intention of President Hayes. Its effect upon the Republican spirit of the country was like the withering blast of the sirocco upon all vegetation within its reach.^†Douglass employs a meteorological analogy to emphasize the detrimental effects President Rutherford B. Hayes's southern policies had on the spirit of the Republican party. He compares Hayes's policies to the sirocco, a warm wind of the Mediterranean area that usually sweeps northward from the hot and dry Sahara or Arabian deserts. The sirocco generally hits Mediterranean shores in the spring when atmospheric low-pressure areas move over the Mediterranean. Douglass believed that Hayes's policy of appeasement toward the southern states forcefully withered away the Republican spirit that abolished slavery and restored the Union, much in the same way that the sirocco withers away vegetation. Oliver, , 467, 473. The sentiment that gave us a reconstructed Union on a basis of liberty for all people was blasted as a flower is blasted by a killing frost. The whole four years of this administration were, to the loyal colored citizen, full of darkness and dismal terror. The only gleam of hope afforded him was that the empty form, at least, of the Republican party was still in power, and that it would yet regain something of the strength and vitality that characterized it in the days of GrantGrant, Ulysses Simpson

Ulysses Simpson Grant (1822-85), eighteenth president of the United States (1869-77) and general-in-chief of all Union armies in the final year of the Civil War, personally directed the Union forces in Virginia from 1864 to 1865. William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography (New York, 1981); ACAB, 2:709-25; DAB, 7:492-501. , SumnerSumner, Charles

Best remembered as the victim of a vicious attack by a congressional colleague, Charles Sumner (1811-74), U.S. senator from Massachusetts (1851-74), was dedicated to the cause of emancipation. Born in Boston, Sumner attended and then taught at Harvard College. He engaged in a semi-successful law practice until his outspoken opposition to the United States war against Mexico thrust him into politics. He was a founder of the Free Soil Party in Massachusetts, and a coalition of Free Soilers and Democrats elected him to the U.S. Senate in 1850. Immediately embroiling himself in the heated topic of slavery, Sumner became an outspoken advocate of emancipation and repeatedly refuted compromises proposed by Henry Clay and others. After one particularly scathing speech in the Senate against slavery, Sumner was brutally beaten with a cane by a Southern representative, which necessitated years of recovery before Sumner was able to reenter the Senate. Sumner’s lasting legacy was to turn popular sentiment in the North toward emancipation, and after the Civil War, he continued to fight for the individual freedoms of blacks until his sudden death in 1874. Frederick J. Blue, Charles Sumner and the Conscience of the North (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1994); David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (New York, 1960); DAB, 18:208-14. , and ConklingConkling, Roscoe

Roscoe Conkling (1829-88), Republican politician, was born in Albany, New York. He trained for the law in Utica, was admitted to the bar in 1850, and served as district attorney for Oneida County from 1850 until he was elected mayor of Utica in 1858. The following year he entered the U.S. House of Representatives, serving until an 1862 defeat, but returning in 1865 for one term. Serving in the Senate from 1867 until 1881, Conkling ardently advocated Ulysses Grant's Reconstruction policies. A champion of the political spoils system, Conkling opposed the civil service reforms advocated by Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and James A. Garfield. During Garfield's administration Conkling and a colleague, Thomas C. Platt, resigned from the Senate to protest Garfield's appointment of a former Liberal Republican to a key patronage job in the New York City customs house. Platt and Conkling were chagrined when they lost their anticipated reelections. Conkling resumed law practice in New York City. Jordan, Roscoe Conkling of New York; Chidsey, Gentleman from New York; ACAB, 1:706-07. and the period of reconstruction. How vain was this hope I need not here stop to describe. Fate was against us. The death of Mr. Garfield placed in the Presidential chair Chester A. Arthur, who did nothing

to correct the errors of President Hayes, or to arrest the decline and fall of the Republican party, but, on the contrary, by his self-indulgence, indifference and neglect of opportunity, allowed the country to drift (like an oarless boat in the rapids) towards the howling chasm of the slaveholding Democracy.

It was not "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion"^†During the 1880 presidential campaign, a Republican circular issued in Maine attacked the urban and Irish immigrant base of the Democratic party by publicizing the notion that the party was controlled by the spirit of "rule or ruin," which meant it was controlled by "Rum and Romanism, Rebellion and Despotism!" While many Republicans favored temperance or prohibition, the urban constituency of the Democratic party did include rum sellers and Irish immigrants known to patronize saloons. The slogan was resurrected and became a centerpiece of the 1884 Republican presidential campaign. A week before the election, the Reverend Samuel D. Burchard addressed a gathering of the Religious Bureau of the Republican National Committee, associating the Democratic party with rum, Romanism, and rebellion. Burchard proclaimed the Democrats to be on the wrong side of the most important issues of the day: temperance reform, anti-Catholicism, and the Civil War. Unfortunately for Republican presidential nominee James G. Blaine, public backlash against Burchard's statement may have tipped the election's narrow margin in favor of Democrat Grover Cleveland. Summers, , 80, 279-85. that defeated Mr. James G. Blaine, but it was Mr. Blaine who defeated himself. The foundation of his defeat was laid by his own hand in the defeat of the Bill to protect the lives and political rights of Southern Republicans. Up to that hour the Republican Party was courageous, confident and strong, and able to elect any candidate it might deem it wise to put in nomination for the Presidency; but from that hour it was smitten with moral decay; its courage quailed, its confidence vanished, and it has since hardly lived at all, but has been suspended and has, comparatively, only lingered between life and death. The lesson taught by its example, and its warning is, that political parties, like individual men, are only strong while they are consistent and honest and that treachery and deception are only the sand on which political fools vainly endeavor to build. When the Republican party^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: paryy. ceased to care for and protect its southern allies, and sought the smiles of the southern negro murderers, it shocked, disgusted and drove away its best friends. The scepter of power could no longer be held by it and it opened the way for the defeat of Mr. Blaine and the election of Mr.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: MR. Cleveland.

Clinging in hope to the Republican party as I did, thinking it would cease its backsliding and resume its old character as the party of progress, justice and freedom, I regretted its defeat and shared in some measure the painful apprehension and distress felt by my people at the South from the return to power of the old Democratic and slavery party. To many of them it seemed that they were left naked to their enemies; in fact, lost; that Mr. Cleveland's^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: CLeveland's. election meant the revival of the slave power, and that they would now, be again reduced to slavery and the lash. The misery brought to the South by this widespread^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: wide spread. alarm can hardly be described or measured. The wail of despair from the late bondsmen, was, for a time, deep, bitter and heart rending. Illiterate and unable to learn to read or to learn of any limit to the power of the party now in the ascendant, their fears were unmitigated and intolerable, and their outcry of alarm was like the cry of dismay uttered by an army when its champion has fallen and no one appears to take his place. It was well for the poor people in this condition, that Mr. Cleveland himself kindly sent word South to allay their fears and to remove their agony. In this trepidation of the unlettered negro, something is apparent, aside from his

ignorance. If he knew nothing of letters, he knew something of events and of the history of parties to them. He knew that the Republican party was the party hated by the old master class, and that the Democratic party was the party beloved of the old master class.

CHAPTER VI.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: 6.
THE SUPREME COURT DECISION.

CHAPTER VI.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: 6.
THE SUPREME COURT DECISION.

Action of the Supreme Court—Its effect on the colored people—Address at Lincoln Hall.

In further illustration of the reactionary tendencies of public opinion against the black man and of the increasing^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: incresing. decline, since the war for the Union, in the power of resistance to the onward march of the rebel states to their former control and ascendency in the councils of the nation, the decision of the United States Supreme Court, declaring the Civil Rights law of 1875, unconstitutional,^†On 15 October 1883 the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. This law, generally regarded as one of the most radical to emerge from the Reconstruction era, stated that all persons, regardless of race or color, were entitled to full and equal access to public accommodations and facilities, particularly places of lodging, amusement, and transportation. By an eight-to-one vote, the Supreme Court struck down the law, which had been intended to ensure the enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment. The majority opinion, written by Justice Joseph P. Bradley, declared the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional because it compromised the power of state governments in a manner the Constitution did not authorize. Bradley maintained that the Fourteenth Amendment had not given Congress the right to compel states to regulate against private acts of racial discrimination but only to pass legislation correcting state actions that denied civil rights. Moreover, Bradley maintained, the Thirteenth Amendment granted Congress the power to enact laws necessary to destroy slavery and its "badge." Unequal access to public facilities, he concluded, neither perpetuated the institution of slavery nor symbolized it and therefore was a matter for state not federal jurisdiction. 109 U.S. 3 (1883), 8-26; Lois B. Moreland, (Columbus, Ohio, 1970), 64-78; Loren P. Beth, (New York, 1971), 192-96; Herman Belz, (New York, 1978), 134-36. is striking and convincing. The strength and activities of the malign clements of the country against equal rights and equality before the law, seemed to increase in proportion to the increasing distance between that time and the time of the war. When the black man's arm was needed to defend the country; when the North and the South were in arms against each other, and the country was in danger of dismemberment, his rights were well considered. That the reverse is now true is a proof of the fading and defacing effect of time and the transient character of Republican gratitude. From the hour that the loyal North began to fraternize with the disloyal and slave holding South; from the hour that they began to "'shake hands over the bloody chasm:"^†The quotation originates with Horace Greeley's public letter accepting the Liberal Republican party's nomination for president in May 1872. The concluding sentence of this letter noted: "People, I accept your nomination, in the confident trust that the masses of our countrymen, North and South, are eager to clasp hands across the bloody chasm which has too long divided them, forgetting that they have been enemies in the joyful consciousness that they are and must henceforth remain brethren," (New York, 1872), 40. from that hour the cause of justice to the black man began to decline and lose its hold upon the public mind, and it has lost ground ever since.

The future historian will turn to the year 1883 to find the most flagrant example of this national deterioration. Here he will find the Supreme Court of the nation reversing the action of the Government, defeating the manifest purpose of the Constitution, nullifying the Fourteenth Amendment, and placing itself on the side of prejudice, proscription and persecution.

Whatever this Supreme Court may have been in the past, or may, by the Constitution, have been intended to be, it has, since the days of the Dred Scott decision, been wholly under the influence of the Slave power, and its decisions have been dictated by that power rather than by what seemed to be sound and established rules of legal interpretation.

Although we had, in other days, seen this court bend and twist the law to the will and interest of the Slave power, it was supposed that by the late

war and the great fact that slavery was abolished, and the further fact that the members of the bench were now appointed^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: appoint ed. by a Republican administration the spirit as well as the^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: well the. body of slavery had been exorcised. Hence the decision in question came to the black man as a painful and bewildering surprise. It was a blow from an unsuspected quarter. The surrender, to Jefferson Davis, of the National Capital, in the time^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: in time. of the war, could hardly have caused a greater shock. For the moment the colored citizen felt as if the earth was opened beneath him. He was wounded in the house of his friends. He felt that this decision drove him from the doors of the great temple of American justice. The Nation that he had served against its enemies had thus turned him over naked to those enemies. His trouble was without any immediate remedy. The decision must stand until the gates of death could prevail against it.

The colored men in the Capital of the Nation where the deed was done, were quick to perceive its disastrous significance, and in the helpless horror of the moment, they called upon myself and others to express their grief and indignation. In obedience to that call a meeting was assembled in Lincoln Hall, the largest hall in the city,^†The 15 October 1883 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court declaring the Civil Rights Act of 1875 null and void sparked loud protest from African Americans. One of the largest of the meetings to denounce the decision took place on 22 October in Washington, D.C., at Lincoln Hall. More than 2,000 people, white as well as black, crowded into the hall while an equal number was turned away. James M. Gregory of Howard University presided, and the Reverend Francis J. Grimke opened the meeting with a prayer. After Gregory stated the object of the meeting, Douglass's son Lewis read eight resolutions, unanimously adopted by the meeting, calling for state civil rights laws, equal treatment of black citizens, and enforcement of civil rights laws by the Republican and Democratic parties. Gregory then introduced Douglass, whom the crowd "lustily applauded," according to the Washington Evening Star. The popular lecturer Robert Green Ingersoll followed Douglass with the longest address of the evening. When Ingersoll finished, Douglass led three cheers for his speech, which had been frequently interrupted by applause. Brief remarks by former congressman Samuel Shellabarger and the Reverend Jeremiah E. Rankin concluded the meeting. Henry Johnson to Douglass, 23 October 1883, General Correspondence File, reel 3, frame 793, FD Papers, DLC; Cleveland , 20, 27 October, 10 November 1883; Washington (D.C.) , 21, 24 October 1883; Washington (D.C.) , 23 October 1883; Washington (D.C.) , 27 October 1883. which was packed by an audience of all colors, to hear what might be said about^†Editorial Emendation: to. this new and startling event. Though we were powerless to arrest the wrong or modify the consequences of this extraordinary decision, we could, at least cry out against its absurdity and injustice.

On that occasion our cause was ably and eloquently presented by that distinguished lawyer, and eminent philanthropist, Robert G. Ingersoll.^†Robert G. Ingersoll shared the platform with Douglass and addressed the crowd concerning the voiding of the Civil Rights Act of 1875. His speech began with an overview of the Supreme Court decision and the specific provisions of the 1875 act found unconstitutional. Ingersoll reminded the audience that the justices of the court were merely men and that the citizens of the United States had the right to question their rulings. He expanded on the lack of racial equality and gave numerous examples to support the need for civil rights legislation. In the conclusion of the address, Ingersoll noted that "he saw no reason why the white man should hate the black man, but if the tables were turned, we would have cause to do so." Henry McNeal Turner, (Atlanta, 1893), 48-53. For my own part I felt it to be a serious thing to contradict the judgment of the highest court in the land, especially in view of the danger of being betrayed into unwise and extravagant language by the wild excitement of the moment. As the first speaker on that memorable occasion, I present here, as a part of my "Life and Times" what I there said.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: "My Life.

"I have only a few words to say to you this evening ....^†Douglass gave this address on 12 October 1883 at Lincoln Hall in Washington, D.C. The speech was reprinted in several contemporary sources. (Washington, D.C., 1883), 4-14; Washington (D.C.) , 22 October 1883; , ser. 1, 5:110-23. It may be, after all, that the hour calls more loudly for silence than for speech. Later on in this discussion, when we shall have before us the full text of the Supreme Court and the dissenting opinion of Judge HarlanHarlan, John Marshall

John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911) was born in Boyle County, Kentucky, and educated at Centre College at Danville and the Transylvania University at Lexington. Though a slaveholder, Harlan joined the Union army at the start of the Civil War. A lawyer since 1853, he served as Kentucky's attorney general from 1863 to 1867. Harlan unsuccessfully sought the Kentucky governorship on the Republican ticket in 1871 and 1875 but regained political influence by campaigning strenuously for Rutherford B. Hayes's election as president. Hayes rewarded that support by appointing Harlan an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1877. Known as "the great dissenter," Harlan wrote 316 dissenting opinions out of a total of 703 opinions during his thirty-three-year career on the highest court. In opposing the majority decision on the Civil Rights Act of 1875, Harlan claimed that the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments intended to protect the civil rights of former slaves from racial discrimination. Congress therefore had a right, Harlan concluded, to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, "by appropriate legislation, which may be of direct and primary character," as was the Civil Rights Act of 1875. According to Harlan, this civil rights legislation was within constitutional bounds when it allowed Congress to regulate the actions of states as well as individuals and corporations that exercised public functions in order to ensure equal access of members of various races to public accommodations and facilities. 109 U.S. 3 (1883), 26-62; Floyd Barzilia Clark, The Constitutional Doctrines of Justice Harlan (Baltimore, 1915); Beth, American Constitution, 195-96; Moreland, White Racism, 64-78; Louis Filler, "John M. Harlan," in The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789-1969: Their Lives and Major Opinions, ed. Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, 5 vols. (New York, 196978), 2:1281-95; DAB, 34:296-72. , who must have weighty reasons for separating from his associates and incurring thereby, as he must, an amount of criticism from which even the bravest man might shrink, we may be in a better frame of mind, better supplied with facts, and better prepared to speak calmly, correctly and wisely, than now. The temptation at this time is, to speak more from feeling^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: feel ing. than reason, more from impulse than reflection.

"We have been, as a class, grievously wounded; wounded in the house of our friends, and this wound is too deep and too painful for ordinary and measured speech.

'When a deed is done for freedom,
Through the broad earth's aching breast
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic,
Trembling on from east to west.'^†Douglass quotes the first lines of "The Present Crisis" (1844), by James Russell Lowell. James Russell Lowell, , 5 vols. (1876; Boston, 1904), 1:185.

"But when a deed is done for slavery, caste and oppression, and a blow is struck at human progress, whether so intended or not, the heart of humanity sickens in sorrow and writhes in pain. It makes us feel as if some one were stamping upon the graves of our mothers, or desecrating our sacred temples. Only base men and oppressors can rejoice in a triumph of injustice over the weak and defenceless, for weakness ought itself to protect^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: to,protect. from assaults of pride, prejudice and power.

"The cause which has brought us here to-night is neither common nor trivial. Few events in our national history have surpassed it in magnitude, importance and significance. It has swept over the land like a cyclone, leaving moral desolation in its track. This decision belongs with a class of judicial and legislative wrongs by which we have been oppressed.

"We feel it, as we felt years ago, the furious attempt to force the accursed system of slavery upon the soil of Kansas: as we felt the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Hill: the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the Dred Scott decision. I look upon it as one more shocking development^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: developement. of that moral weakness in high places which has attended the conflict between the spirit of liberty and the spirit of slavery, and I venture to predict that it will be so regarded by aftercoming^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: after coming. generations. Far down the ages, when men^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: when the men. shall wish to inform themselves as to the real state of liberty, law, religion and civilization in the United States at this juncture of our history, they will overhaul^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: over haul. the proceedings^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: pro ceedings. of the Supreme Court, and read this strange decision declaring the Civil Rights Bill unconstitutional and void.

"From this, more than from many volumes, they will learn how far we had advanced, in this year of grace, from the barbarism of slavery toward civilization and the rights of man.

"Fellow-citizens: Among the great evils which now stalk abroad in our land, the one, I think, which most threatens to undermine and destroy the foundations of our free institutions in this country, is the great and apparently increasing want of respect entertained for those to whom are committed the responsibility and the duty of administering our government. On this point,

I think all good men must agree, and against the evil I trust you feel the deepest repugnance, and that we will, neither here nor elsewhere, give it the least breath of sympathy or encouragement. We should never forget, whatever may be the incidental^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: incendental. mistakes or misconduct of rulers, that government is better than anarchy, and patient reform is better than violent revolution.

"But while I would increase this feeling, and give it the emphasis of a voice from heaven, it must not be allowed to interfere with free speech, honest expression of opinion and fair criticism. To give up this would be to give up progress, and to consign the nation to moral stagnation, putrefaction and death.

"In the matter of respect for dignitaries, it should, however never be forgotten that duties are reciprocal, and that while the people should frown down every manifestation of levity and contempt for those in power, it is the duty of the possessors of power so to use it as to deserve and insure respect and reverence.

"To come a little nearer to the case now before us. The Supreme Court of the United States, in the exercise of its high and vast constitutional power, suddenly and unexpectedly decided that the law intended to secure to colored people the civil rights guaranteed to them by the following provision of the Constitution of the United States, is unconstitutional and void. Here it is:

'"No state,' says the Fourteenth Amendment, 'shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of the law; or deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.'^†Douglass makes only a few minor errors in quoting the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

"Now, when a bill has been discussed for weeks and months and even years, in the press and on the platform, in Congress and out of Congress; when it has been calmly debated by the clearest heads and the most skillful and learned lawyers in the land; when every argument against it has been over and over again carefully considered and fairly answered; when, constitutionally, it has been especially discussed, pro and con; when it has passed the United States House of Representatives and has been solemnly enacted by the United States Senate, perhaps the most imposing legislative body in the world; when such a bill has been submitted to the Cabinet of the Nation, composed of the ablest men in the land; when it has passed under the scrutinizing eye of the Attorney General of the United States;^†When the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was passed on 1 March, George Henry Williams was the United States attorney general. The duties of attorney general, according to the Judiciary Act of 1789, which created the cabinet-level post, include giving advice and opinions "upon questions of law when required by the President of the United States, or when requested by the heads of any of the departments." Although the attorney general would have had no specific role in crafting or revising the legislation, the controversial nature of the Civil Rights Act would almost certainly have been of interest to President Grant and probably would have been reviewed by the nation's chief lawyer. Judiciary Act of 1789, U.S. Statutes at Large 1 (1789): 73-93. when the Executive of the Nation has given to it his name and formal approval; when it has taken its place upon the statute book and has remained there for nearly a decade, and the country has largely assented to it, you will agree with me that the

reasons for declaring such a law unconstitutional and void, should be strong, irresistible^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: irresistable. and absolutely conclusive.

"Inasmuch as the law in question is a law in favor of liberty and justice, it ought to have had the benefit of any doubt which could arise as to its strict constitutionality. This, I believe, will be the view taken of it, not only by laymen like myself, but by eminent lawyers as well.

"All men who have given any thought to the machinery, structure and practical operation of our Government, must have recognized the importance of absolute harmony between its various departments and their respective powers and duties. They must have seen clearly the mischievous tendency and danger to the body politic of any antagonisms between any of its various branches. To feel the force of this thought, we have only to remember the history of the administration of President JohnsonJohnson, Andrew

Andrew Johnson (1808-75) assumed the presidency on 15 April 1865, following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, the self-educated Johnson served in the Tennessee legislature (1834-37, 1839-43) prior to being elected a Democratic congressman (1843-53), governor (1853-57), and U.S. senator (1857-62). In 1862 Lincoln appointed Johnson, a Unionist, military governor of Tennessee, and two years later Johnson was elected as Lincoln's vice president. Radical Republicans opposed Johnson's Reconstruction policies and in 1867, after the president had attempted to oust Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in defiance of the Tenure of Office Act, succeeded in impeaching him. At the Senate trial in 1868 conviction failed by one vote. After his presidential term Johnson returned to Tennessee, which elected him to the U.S. Senate in 1874. Robert W. Winston, Andrew Johnson: Plebeian and Patriot (New York, 1928); James E. Sefton, Andrew Johnson and the Uses of Constitutional Power (Boston, 1980). and the conflict which then took place between the national Executive and the national Congress, when the will of the people was again and again met by the Executive veto and when the country seemed upon the verge of another revolution. No patriot, however bold, can wish for his country a repetition of those gloomy days.

"Now let me say here, before I go on a step or two further in this discussion, that, if any man has come here to-night with his breast heaving with passion, his heart flooding with acrimony, and wishing and expecting to hear violent denunciation of the Supreme^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Su(preme Court, on account of this decision, he has mistaken the object of this meeting and the character of the men by whom it is called.

"We neither come to bury Caesar, nor to praise him.^†Douglass twists the lines from Marc Antony's speech in William Shakespeare's play , in which Antony declares, "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." , sc. 9, line 1461. The Supreme Court is the autocratic point in our Government. No monarch in Europe has a power more absolute over the laws, lives and liberties of his people, than that Court has over our laws, lives and liberties. Its judges live, and ought to live, an eagle's flight beyond the reach of fear or favor, praise or blame, profit or loss. No vulgar prejudice should touch the members of that Court, anywhere. Their decisions should come down to us like the calm, clear light of Infinite justice. We should be able to think of them and to speak of them with profoundest respect for their wisdom and deepest reverence for their virtue; for what His Holiness the Pope is to the Roman Catholic Church,^†The dogmatic constitution of the Roman Catholic Church, Pastor Aeternus, ratified on 18 July 1870 by the first Vatican Council, affirmed that the pope was infallible, that is, immune from error through divine assistance. More specifically, this constitution maintained that when the bishop of Rome, as spiritual head of the Universal Church, came to a decision regarding questions of faith and morals with intent to define a doctrine applicable to all Christians, such decrees were divinely guaranteed as inerrant. Samuel Macauley Jackson, ed., , 12 vols. (New York, 1908-12), 5:489-90; Vergilius Ferm, ed., (1945; New York, 1981), 369, 598. the Supreme Court is to the American State. Its members are men, to be sure, and may not, like the Pope, claim infallibility, and they are not infallible, but they are the Supreme lawgiving power of the Nation, and their decisions are law until changed by that Court.

"What will be said here to-night, will be spoken I trust, more in sorrow

than in anger; more in a tone of regret than in bitterness and reproach, and more to promote sound views than to find bad motives for unsound views.

"We cannot, however, overlook the fact that though not so intended, this decision has inflicted a heavy calamity upon seven millions of the people of this country and left them naked and defenceless against the action of a malignant, vulgar and pitiless prejudice from which the Constitution plainly intended to shield them.

"It presents the United States before the world as a Nation utterly destitute of power to protect the constitutional rights of its own citizens upon its own soil.

"It can claim service and allegiance, loyalty and life, from them, but it cannot protect them against the most palpable violation of the rights of human nature; rights to secure which, governments are established. It can tax their bread and tax their blood, but it has no protecting power for their persons. Its National Power extends only to the District of Columbia and the Territories—to where the people have no votes—and to where the land has no people.^†Douglass alludes to Justice Joseph Bradley's interpretation of the U.S. Constitution regarding the right of state governments to provide their own legislative protection for their citizens' civil rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional, Bradley concluded, because it compromised this right in favor of federal intervention. The Constitution, Bradley asserted, "does not authorize Congress to create a code of municipal law for the regulation of private rights." Douglass, therefore, broadly interprets Bradley's statement to suggest that federal intervention for civil rights is allowable only in those areas of the country not yet designated as states. 109 U.S. 3 (1883), 8-26; Michael J. Klarman, (New York, 2004), 10-11; John R. Schmidhauser, (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1958), 98-100; Moreland, , 64-68; Donna A. Barnes and Catharine Connolly, "Repression, the Judicial System, and Political Opportunities for Civil Rights Advocacy during Reconstruction," , 40:327-45 (Spring 1999). All else is subject to the States. In the name of common sense. I ask what right have we to call ourselves a Nation, in view of this decision and of this utter destitution of power?

"In humiliating the colored people of this country, this decision has humbled the Nation. It gives, to the Rail-Road Conductor in South Carolina or Mississippi, more power than it gives to the National Government. He may order the wifeWaite, Amelia Champlin Warner

Amelia (1820-1896) was the daughter of Samuel Selden Warner & Abigail Champlin. She married her second cousin Morrison Remick Waite (Find a Grave, online resource). of the Chief JusticeWaite, Morrison Remick

Morrison Remick Waite (1816-88) served as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1874 to his death. Born in Lyme, Connecticut, Waite graduated from Yale College in 1837, studied law at the office of Samuel M. Young in Maumee City, Ohio, and passed the bar in 1839. The following year, Waite married his second cousin, Amelia Champlin Warner, of Lyme, and became Young's law partner. He played an active role in first the Whig and then the Republican parties in Ohio, but his only successes in reaching public office were one-year terms in the state legislature (1849) and on the Toledo town council (1851). His display of legal skills as an American counsel in the Alabama claims arbitration between the United States and Great Britain (1871) and as president of the Ohio constitutional convention (1873) prompted Grant to select Waite as chief justice. During the fourteen years Waite held his position, he delivered the court's decision on more than 1,000 cases. In cases dealing with Reconstruction-era legislation, Waite took an active, and consistently conservative, role in formulating decisions that curtailed the authority of the federal government to protect the civil rights of the freedmen. C. Peter Magrath, Morrison R. Waite: The Triumph of Character (New York, 1963); Schmidhauser, Supreme Court as Final Arbiter, 97-114; Moreland, White Racism, 44-49; Louis Filler, "Morrison R. Waite," in Justices of the United States Supreme Court, ed. Friedman and Israel, 2:1243-57; DAB, 10:322-25. of the United States into a smoking car, full of hirsute men, and compel her to go and to listen to the coarse jests and inhale the foul smoke of a vulgar crowd. It gives to hotel-keepers who may, from a prejudice born of the rebellion, wish to turn her out at midnight into the storm and darkness, power to compel her to go. In such a case according to this decision of the Supreme Court, the National Government has no right to interfere. She must take her claim for protection and redress, not to the Nation, but to the State; and when the State, as I understand it, declares that there is upon its Statute Book, no law for her protection, and that the State has made no law against her, the function and power of the National Government are^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: is. exhausted and she is utterly without any redress.

"Bad, therefore, as our case is, under this decision, the evil principle affirmed by the Court is not wholly confined to, or spent upon persons of color. The wife of Chief-Justice Waite—I speak it respectfully—is protected to-day, not by the law, but solely by the accident of her color. So far as the law of the land is concerned, she is in the same condition as that of the humblest colored woman in the Republic. The difference between colored and

white, here, is, that the one, by reason of color, does not need protection. It is nevertheless true that manhood is insulted in both cases. 'No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man, without at last finding the other end of it about his own neck.'^†The words were a portion of the address that Douglass delivered on 22 October 1883, condemning the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court declaring the Civil Rights Act of 1875 null and void. , ser. 1., 5:117.

''The lesson of all the ages upon this point is, that a wrong done to one man is a wrong done to all men.^†Douglass uttered these words during an address delivered in Washington, D.C. on 22 October 1883. His speech condemned the actions of the U.S. Supreme Court in declaring the Civil Rights Act of 1875 null and void. , ser. 1, 5:117. It may not be felt at the moment, and the evil may be long delayed, but so sure as there is a moral Government of the universe, so sure as there is a God of the Universe, so sure will the harvest of evil come.

"Color prejudice is not the only prejudice against which a Republic like^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Republic of. ours should guard. The spirit of caste is malignant and dangerous everywhere. There is the prejudice of the rich against the poor, the pride and prejudice of the idle dandy against the hard handed working man. There is, worst of all, religious prejudice, a prejudice which has stained whole continents with blood. It is, in fact, a spirit infernal, against which every enlightened man should wage perpetual war. Perhaps no class of our fellow-citizens has carried this prejudice against color to a point more extreme and dangerous than have our Catholic Irish fellow citizens, and yet no people on the face of the earth have been more relentlessly persecuted and oppressed on account of race and religion. than have this same Irish people.

"But in Ireland, persecution has at last reached a point where it reacts terribly upon her persecutors. England is to-day reaping the bitter consequences of her own injustice and oppression. Ask any man of intelligence, 'What is the chief source of England's weakness?^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: weakness?" What has reduced her to the rank of a second class power?'^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: power?" and if truly answered, the answer will be 'Ireland!'^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: "Ireland!" But poor, ragged, hungry, starving and oppressed as Ireland is, she is strong enough to be a standing menace to the power and glory of England.

"Fellow-citizens! We want no black Ireland in America. We want no aggrieved class in America. Strong as we are without the negro, we are stronger with him than without him. The power and friendship of seven millions of people,^†In 1880 the African American population of the United States stood at 6,580,793; by 1890 it had risen to 7,470,040. U.S. Bureau of the Census, , 3:ibid., , 397. however humble and scattered all over the country, are not to be despised.

"To-day our Republic sits as a queen among the nations of the earth. Peace is within her walls and plenteousness within her palaces, but he is a bolder and a far more hopeful man than I am, who will affirn that this peace and prosperity will always last. History repeats itself. What has happened once may happen again.

"The negro, in the Revolution, fought for us and with us. In the war of

1812 Gen. Jackson, at New Orleans, found it necessary to call upon the colored people to assist in its defence against England. Abraham Lincoln found it necessary to call upon the negro to defend the Union against rebellion. In all cases the negro responded gallantly.^†During the American Revolution, black Americans fought for both sides. The British made dubious promises of deliverance from slavery in exchange for the services of blacks, promises that were quickly abandoned when the British began to sell their black recruits into slavery to raise wartime funds. Even though fighting for the Americans was little better, since it rarely guaranteed manumission, some 5,000 black Americans fought with Patriot forces. The Revolutionary War created a climate of social insubordination and chaos that blacks used to their advantage in attempts to gain freedom. African Americans also fought on both sides in the War of 1812. Many served with honor as sailors, as the Navy was one of the few institutions that offered rough equality with whites. Service in land forces was generally restricted to white men, but in Louisiana, a state with a large free black population. African American soldiers participated in the victory over the British at the Battle of New Orleans. Benjamin Quarles, (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), 68-93; Cassandra Pybus, (Boston, 2006), 21-37; Gail Buckley, (New York, 2001), xiii-xiv, xvi, 416, 450; , 1:60-66, 287-92, 3:315-17.

"Our legislators, our Presidents and our judges should have a care, lest, by forcing these people outside of law, they destroy that love of country which in the day of trouble is needful to the Nation's defence.

"I am not here in this presence, to discuss the constitutionality or the unconstitutionality of this decision of the Supreme Court. The decision may or may not be constitutional. That is a question for lawyers and not for laymen, and there are lawyers on this platform as learned, able and eloquent as any who have appeared in this case before the Supreme Court, or as any in the land. To these I leave the exposition of the Constitution; but I claim the right to remark upon a strange and glaring inconsistency of this decision, with former decisions, where the rules of law apply. It is a new departure, entirely out of the line of precedents and decisions of the Supreme Court at other times and in other directions where the rights of colored men were concerned. It has utterly ignored and rejected the force and application of the object and intention of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. It has made no account whatever of the intention and purpose of Congress and the President in putting the Civil Rights Bill upon the Statute Book of the Nation. It has seen^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: sen. fit in this case, affecting a weak and much persecuted people, to be guided by the narrowest and most restricted rules of legal interpretation. It has viewed both the Constitution and the law with a strict regard to their letter. but without any generous recognition and application of their broad and liberal spirit. Upon those narrow principles the decision is logical and legal, of course. But what I complain of, and what every lover of liberty in the United States has a right to complain of, is this sudden and causeless reversal of all the great rules of legal interpretation by which this Court was governed in the construction of the Constitution and of laws respecting colored people.

"In the dark days of slavery, this Court on all occasions gave the greatest importance to intention as a guide to interpretation. The object^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: objection. and intention of the law, it was said, must prevail. Everything in favor of slavery and against the negro was settled by this object and intention rule.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: intention. We were over and over again referred to what the framers meant, and plain language itself was sacrificed and perverted from its natural and obvious meaning that the so affirmed intention of these framers might be positively asserted and given the force of law. When we said in behalf of the negro that the Constitution of the United States was intended to establish justice and to secure the

blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, we were told that the words said so, but that that was obviously not its intention; that it was intended to apply only to white people, and that the intention must govern.^†Douglass alludes to the preamble of the U.S. Constitution and the decision of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in the Dred Scott case. , 19 Howard 393 (1857), 407-10.

"When we came to the clause of the Constitution which declares that the immigration or importation of such persons as any of the States may see fit to admit shall not be prohibited, and the friends of liberty declared that this provision of the Constitution did not describe the slave-trade, they were^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: was. told that while its language applied not to the slaves, but to persons, still the object and intention of that clause of the Constitution were plainly to protect the slave-trade and that that intention was the law and must prevail. When we came to that clause of the Constitution which declares that 'No^†Editorial Emendation: "No person held to labor or service in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such labor or service, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such labor or service may be due,'^†Douglass describes Article 1, Section 9, of the U.S. Constitution. This article prohibited the banning of the slave trade by Congress prior to 1808. Editorial Emendation: due," we insisted that it neither described nor applied to slaves; that it applied only to persons owing service and labor; that slaves did not and could not owe service and labor; that this clause of the Constitution said nothing of slaves or of the masters of slaves: that it was silent as to Slave States or Free States: that it was simply a provision to enforce a contract and not to force any man into slavery, for the slave could not owe service or make a contract.

"We^†Editorial Emendation: affirmed that it gave no warrant for what was called 'The^†Editorial Emendation: "The Fugitive Slave Bill,'^†Editorial Emendation: Bill," and we contended that the bill was therefore unconstitutional; but our arguments were laughed to scorn by that Court and by all the Courts of the country. We were told that the intention of the Constitution was to enable masters to recapture slaves, and that the law of Ninety-three^†The Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 were constitutional. binding not only on the State but upon each citizen of a State.

"Fellow-citizens!^†Editorial Emendation: While slavery was the base line of American society; while it ruled the church and state: while it was the interpreter of our law and the exponent of our religion, it admitted no quibbling, no narrow rules of legal or scriptural interpretations of the Bible or of the Constitution. It sternly demanded its pound of flesh,^†A paraphrase of the , sc. 18, line 1907. no matter how the scale turned or how much blood was shed in the taking of it. It was enough for it to be able^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: to able. to show the intention to get all it asked in the courts or out of the courts. But now slavery is abolished. Its reign was long, dark and bloody. Liberty is now the base line of the Republic. Liberty has supplanted slavery but I fear it has not supplanted the spirit or power of slavery. Where slavery was strong, liberty is now weak.

"Oh,^†Editorial Emendation: for a Supreme^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Suprme. Court of the United States which shall be as true to

the claims of humanity as the Supreme Court formerly was to the demands of slavery. When that day comes, as come it will, a Civil Rights Bill will not be declared unconstitutional and void, in utter and flagrant disregard of the objects and intentions of the National legislature by which it was enacted and of the rights plainly secured by the Constitution.

"This decision of the Supreme Court admits that the Fourteenth Amendment is a prohibition on the States. It admits that a State shall not abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, but commits the seeming absurdity of allowing the people of a State to do what it prohibits the State itself from doing.

"It used to be thought that the whole was more than a part; that the greater included the less, and that what was unconstitutional for a State to do was equally unconstitutional for an individual member of a State to do. What is a State, in the absence of the people who compose it? Land, air and water. That is all. Land and water do not discriminate. All are equal before them. This law was made for people. As individuals, the people of the State of South Carolina may stamp out the rights of the negro where ever they please so long as they do not do so as a State, and this absurd conclusion is to be called a law. All the parts can violate the Constitution, but the whole cannot. It is not the act itself, according to this decision, that is unconstitutional. The unconstitutionality of the case depends wholly upon the party committing the act. If the State commits it, the act is wrong, if the citizen of the State commits it, the act is right.

"O, consistency, thou art indeed a jewel! What does it matter to a colored citizen that a State may not insult and outrage him, if the citizen of the State may? The effect upon him is the same, and it was just this effect that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment plainly intended by that article^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: arcticle. to prevent.

"It was the act, not the instrument; it was the murder, not the pistol or dagger, which was prohibited. It meant to protect the newly enfranchised citizen from injustice and wrong, not merely from a State, but from the individual members of a State. It meant to give the protection to which his citizenship, his loyalty, his allegiance and his services entitled him: and this meaning, and this purpose, and this intention are now declared by the Supreme Court of the United States to be unconstitutional and void.

"I say again, fellow-citizens, Oh,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: for a Supreme Court which shall be as true, as vigilant, as active and exacting in maintaining laws enacted for the protection of human rights, as in other days was that Court for the destruction of human rights!

"It is said that this decision will make no difference in the treatment of colored people; that the Civil Rights Bill was a dead letter and could not be enforced. There may be some truth in all this, but it is not the whole truth. That bill, like all advance legislation, was a banner on the outer wall of American liberty;^†Adapts , sc. 25, line 1982. a noble moral standard uplifted for the education of American people. There are tongues in trees, sermons in stones and books in the running brooks.^†Misquotes , sc. 4, lines 597-98. This law, though dead, did speak.^†A paraphrase of Heb. 11:4. It expressed the sentiment of^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: sentiment and justice and fair play^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: fairplay common to every honest heart. Its voice was against popular prejudice and meanness. It appealed to all the noble and patriotic instincts of the American people. It told the American people that they were all equal before the law; that they belonged to a common country and were equal citizens. The Supreme Court has hauled down this broad and glorious flag of liberty in open day and before all the people, and has thereby given joy to the heart of every man in the land who wishes to deny to others the rights he claims for himself. It is a concession to race pride. selfishness and meanness, and will be received with joy by every upholder of caste in the land, and for this I deplore and denounce this decision.

"It is a frequent and favorite device of an indefensible cause to misstate and pervert the views of those who advocate a good cause, and I have never seen this device more generally resorted to than in the case of the late decision on the Civil Rights Bill. When we dissent from the opinion of the Supreme Court and give the reasons why we think the opinion unsound, we are straightway charged in the papers with denouncing the Court itself, and thus put in the attitude of bad citizens. Now, I utterly deny that there has ever been any denunciation of the Supreme Court by the speakers on this platform, and I defy^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: dfy. any man to point out one sentence or one syllable of any speech of mine in denunciation of that Court.

"Another illustration of this tendency to put opponents in a false position is seen in the persistent effort to stigmatize the 'Civil Rights Bill' as a 'Social Rights Bill.'^†Douglass expressed dismay over the opposition argument that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was a social rights bill that would somehow require blacks "to enter into social relations with whites." Harper's Weekly reported that in opposition to the bill, southern Democrats revived the old question, "Do you want your daughter to marry a Negro?" When the Civil Rights Act became law in 1875, Harper's even ran an editorial in which a southern planter lamented, "Now my daughter will have to marry a Negro.'' Douglass fiercely countered this racist attitude by explaining that social equality and civic equality were two different things and that just because an African American would have the right to sit in a restaurant with a white man, the Civil Rights Act did not give said black the right to enter into social relations with anybody. Despite Douglass's protests, the "Social Rights argument" fanned the flames of popular prejudice and playcd a decisive role in the eventual failure of the bill. Kirt H. Wilson, (East Lansing, Mich., 2002); L. E. Murphy, "The Civil Rights Law of 1875," , 12:110-27 (April 1927). Now, where under the whole heavens, outside of the United States, could any such perversion of truth have any chance of success?^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: success. No man in Europe would ever dream that, because he has a right to ride on a railway or stop at a hotel, he therefore has the right to enter into social relations with anybody. No one has a right to speak to another without that other's permission. Social Equality and civil equality rest upon entirely^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: upon an entirely different bases,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: basis and well enough the American people know it; yet in order to inflame a popular prejudice, respectable papers like the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune persist in describing the Civil^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: civil. Rights Bill as a Social Rights Bill.^†The Chicago , the New York , and other newspapers editorialized favorably upon the Supreme Court's decision declaring the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. Douglass's prompt criticism of the decision drew censure from the editors of these newspapers. Washington (D.C.) , 16 October 1883; New York , 16, 18 October 1883; Chicago , 19, 20 October 1883.

"When a colored man is in the same room or in the same carriage with white people, as a servant, there is no talk of social equality, but if he is there as a man and a gentleman, he is an offence. What makes the difference? It is not color, for his color is unchanged. The whole essence of the thing is in its purpose to degrade and stamp out the liberties of the race. It is the old spirit of slavery and nothing else. To say that because a man rides in the same car with another he is therefore socially equal is one of the wildest absurdities.

"When I was in England, some years ago, I rode upon highways, byways, steamboats, stage-coaches and omnibusses. I was in the House of Commons, in the House of Lords,^†The House of Lords, the upper chamber of the British Parliament, was originally part of the king's council of the Norman and Plantagenet monarchs. During the reign of Edward III the Lords became separated from the Commons. Since that separation the House of Lords has been in continuous existence except for a gap between the end of the English Civil War in 1649, when it was abolished by a unanimous vote of the Commons, and 1660, when it resumed at the Restoration of Charles II. Juliet Gardiner and Neil Wenbom, eds., (New York, 1997), 482-83. in the British Museum,^†The British Museum and Library was founded in 1753 to house the Cotton, Harley, and Sloane collections of historic books, manuscripts, and curiosities acquired by the British Commonwealth. The museum was funded by public lottery and established in Montagu House, Bloomsbury. It was intended to cover all world cultures and became a highly regarded center for both scholarship and tourism. Some of the impressive artifacts housed at the museum include the Rosetta Stone, George III's library, and the Elgin marbles. Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert, eds., (Bethesda, Md., 1983), 89-91. in the Coliseum,^†Known as the Coliseum, or Flavian Amphitheater, Douglass refers to the ancient Roman imperial amphitheater used for gladiatorial and hunting games. The Coliseum represented the finest elements in Roman architecture and engineering. Construction began under the Flavian emperor Vespasian and was dedicated in 80 CE. While the Coliseum displayed the brilliance of Roman building, it also symbolized the worst, most depraved elements of Roman taste and character. Prisoners and enemies of the state engaged in brutal gladiatorial battles in the arena, much to the delight of thousands of onlookers from all levels of Roman society. The structure fell into disrepair in the late medieval and early modem era, but was consecrated as a holy site by Pope Benedict XIV (1740-58) to honor the numerous Christian martyrs slain there. Douglass visited the Coliseum in Rome in January 1887 during his European honeymoon with Helen Pitts Douglass. Karl Baedeker, (Leipzig, 1909), 303-07; Foner, , 345; Mark G. Emerson, "Scholarly Edition of the Grand Tour Diaries of Frederick Douglass and Helen Pitts Douglass" (M.A. thesis, Indiana University, 2003), 610n; Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed., , 2 vols. (Westport, Conn., 1996), 1:308-14. in the National Gallery;^†By the end of the eighteenth century most of the principal national galleries in Europe had opened. During this period British planners proposed building a National Gallery in London to rival the best Europe had to offer. In the early 1820s Sir George Beaumont and the Reverend W. Holwell Carr donated their collections to the gallery. The Treasury purchased an additional thirty-eight paintings from the estate of city broker John Julius Angerstein. This national collection was first housed in the Angerstein house in Pall Mall. When the collection outgrew its first home it was moved to a new building in Trafalgar Square in 1838, which also housed the Royal Academy. Thanks to Treasury grants, personal gifts, loans, and bequests, the British National Gallery grew into one of the most impressive and respected galleries in the world. Gardiner and Wenbom, , 536. everywhere; sleeping in rooms where lords and dukes had slept; sitting at tables where lords and dukes were sitting, but I never thought that those circumstances made me socially the equal of these lords and dukes. I hardly think that some of our Democratic friends would be regarded among those lords as their equals. If riding in the same car makes one equal, I think that the little poodle dog I saw one day sitting in the lap of a lady was made equal by riding in the same car with her. Equality, social equality, is a matter between individuals. It is a reciprocal understanding. I do not think that when I ride with an educated polished rascal he is thereby made my equal, or that when I ride with a numbskull^†Editorial Emendation: mumbscull. it makes him my equal. Social equality does not necessarily follow from civil equality, and yet for the purpose of a hell-black and damning prejudice, our papers still insist that the Civil Rights Bill is a Bill to establish social equality.

"If it is a Bill for social equality,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Social-equality. so is the Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men have equal rights; so is the Sermon on the Mount;^†Matt. 5-7. so is the Golden Rule that commands us to do to others as we would that others should do to us; so is the teaching of the Apostle that of one blood God has made all nations to dwell on the face of the earth;^†A paraphrase of Acts 17:26. so is the Constitution of the United States, and so are the laws and customs of every civilized country in the world; for nowhere,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: no where. outside of the United States, is any man denied civil rights on account of his color."

CHAPTER VII.
DEFEAT OF JAMES G. BLAINE.

CHAPTER VII.
DEFEAT OF JAMES G. BLAINE.

Causes of the Republican defeat—Tariff and free trade—No confidence in the Democratic party.

The next event worthy of remark after the decision of the Supreme Court against the validity of the Civil Rights Law, and one which strikingly illustrated

the reaction of public sentiment and the steady march of the slave power toward national supremacy since the agonies of the war, was the defeat in 1884, of Mr. James G. Blaine, the Republican candidate for the Presidency, and the election of Mr. Grover Cleveland, the Democratic candidate for that office. This result, in view of the men and the parties represented, was a marked surprise. Mr. Blaine was supposed to be the most popular statesman in the country, while his opponent was little known outside of his own State. Besides, the attitude and behavior of the Democratic party during the war had been such as to induce belief that many years must elapse before it could again be trusted with the reins of the National Government. Events show that little dependence can be wisely placed upon the political stability of the masses. Popularity to-day is, with them, no guarantee of popularity to-morrow. Offences and services are alike easily and speedily forgotten by them. They change front at the command of the moment. Yet it is never difficult to account for a change, after that change has taken place, and certainly not, in the present instance.

The defeat of the Republican party in 1884, was due rather to its own folly than to the wisdom of the Democratic party. It despised and rejected the hand that had raised it to power and it paid the penalty of its own folly. The life of the Republican party lay in its devotion to justice, liberty and humanity. When it abandoned or slighted these great moral ideas and devoted itself to materialistic measures, it no longer appealed to the heart of the nation, but to its pocket. It became a Samson^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Sampson shorn of its locks.^†Douglass refers to the biblical hero Samson, who lost his strength when his wife, Delilah, shaved the seven locks from his head, leaving him vulnerahle to attack by his enemies, the Philistines. Judg. 16:17-20; Freedman, , 5:950-54. The leader in this new and downward departure of the party was the first to feel its fatal consequences. It was he, more than any other man, who defeated the policy of GrantGrant, Ulysses Simpson

Ulysses Simpson Grant (1822-85), eighteenth president of the United States (1869-77) and general-in-chief of all Union armies in the final year of the Civil War, personally directed the Union forces in Virginia from 1864 to 1865. William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography (New York, 1981); ACAB, 2:709-25; DAB, 7:492-501. , ConklingConkling, Roscoe

Roscoe Conkling (1829-88), Republican politician, was born in Albany, New York. He trained for the law in Utica, was admitted to the bar in 1850, and served as district attorney for Oneida County from 1850 until he was elected mayor of Utica in 1858. The following year he entered the U.S. House of Representatives, serving until an 1862 defeat, but returning in 1865 for one term. Serving in the Senate from 1867 until 1881, Conkling ardently advocated Ulysses Grant's Reconstruction policies. A champion of the political spoils system, Conkling opposed the civil service reforms advocated by Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and James A. Garfield. During Garfield's administration Conkling and a colleague, Thomas C. Platt, resigned from the Senate to protest Garfield's appointment of a former Liberal Republican to a key patronage job in the New York City customs house. Platt and Conkling were chagrined when they lost their anticipated reelections. Conkling resumed law practice in New York City. Jordan, Roscoe Conkling of New York; Chidsey, Gentleman from New York; ACAB, 1:706-07. , General ButlerButler, Benjamin Franklin (1795-1858)

and other true men, in favor of extending national protection to colored citizens in their right to vote. His mistake became sensible even to him in the hour of his defeat. It was all plain then. He made, at Augusta, at the close of the campaign, the speech which he should have made at its beginning.^†On the evening of 18 November 1884, local friends and supporters of James G. Blaine came to his home in Augusta, Maine, to offer consolation for his defeat in the presidential election. Blaine thanked his visitors and delivered a short address that attracted national publicity. Blaine congratulated Grover Cleveland on his victory but warned that the transfer of the White House to the Democrats was "a great national misfortune" because of southerners' control over that party. Blaine claimed that the southern Democrats had unjustly intimidated over a million black voters away from the polls and thereby carried enough states to steal the close election. These practices amounted to "the rule of a minority," in Blaine's estimation, which gave the southern white voter disproportionate political power. New York , 19 November 1884; Edward P. Crapol, (Wilmington, Del., 2000); Muzzey, , 325. In that speech he showed plainly that the hand which struck down the negro voter was the same hand by which he himself was politically slain.

This degeneracy in the Republican party began to manifest itself when the voices of SumnerSumner, Charles

Best remembered as the victim of a vicious attack by a congressional colleague, Charles Sumner (1811-74), U.S. senator from Massachusetts (1851-74), was dedicated to the cause of emancipation. Born in Boston, Sumner attended and then taught at Harvard College. He engaged in a semi-successful law practice until his outspoken opposition to the United States war against Mexico thrust him into politics. He was a founder of the Free Soil Party in Massachusetts, and a coalition of Free Soilers and Democrats elected him to the U.S. Senate in 1850. Immediately embroiling himself in the heated topic of slavery, Sumner became an outspoken advocate of emancipation and repeatedly refuted compromises proposed by Henry Clay and others. After one particularly scathing speech in the Senate against slavery, Sumner was brutally beaten with a cane by a Southern representative, which necessitated years of recovery before Sumner was able to reenter the Senate. Sumner’s lasting legacy was to turn popular sentiment in the North toward emancipation, and after the Civil War, he continued to fight for the individual freedoms of blacks until his sudden death in 1874. Frederick J. Blue, Charles Sumner and the Conscience of the North (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1994); David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (New York, 1960); DAB, 18:208-14. , WadeWade, Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin Wade (1800-78), antislavery lawyer, judge, and legislator, was born in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, moved to Ohio as a young man, and eventually entered into a law partnership with Joshua Giddings. In 1837 Wade was elected as a Whig to the Ohio senate, where his opposition to stricter fugitive slave laws possibly cost him reelection. He served again in the state legislature rom 1841 to 1843, and in 1847 was appointed presiding judge of the Third Ohio Judicial Circuit. Four years later, Whigs and Free Soilers united to elect him to the U.S. Senate. In the 1850s he converted to Republicanism and was an outspoken opponent of any move to expand the limits of slavery. An advocate of aggressive military measures during the Civil War, Wade served as chairman of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War and, with Congressman Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, sponsored an alternative to Lincoln's Reconstruction policy, the Wade-Davis Bill of 1864, which the president vetoed. After the war he continued to advocate congressional Reconstruction and was one of the leading critics of Andrew Johnson's conciliatory policies toward the South. As president pro tempore of the Senate at the time of Johnson's impeachment trial in 1868, Wade stood to gain the presidency upon Johnson's conviction. Johnson survived impeachment, but Wade, whose radicalism applied to woman suffrage and labor legislation as well as to Reconstruction issues, had alienated many politicians and voters. He never again held public office. In 1866 Wade had been one of only four Republican senators to join Charles Sumner in successfully blocking the apportionment amendment. Albert G. Riddle, The Life of Benjamin F. Wade (Cleveland, 1886); Hans L. Trefousse, Benjamin Franklin Wade: Radical Republican from Ohio (New York, 1963); DAB, 19:303-05. , MortonMorton, Oliver Hazard Perry Throck

Oliver Hazard Perry Throck Morton (1823-77) was born in Wayne County, Indiana. Removed from school at the age of fifteen and apprenticed to his brother, a hatter, Morton practiced that trade for four years. He then studied at Miami University in Ohio and began the practice of Law in Centreville, Indiana, in 1847. Morton rose quickly in prominence in his new profession, largely owing to his successful representation of railroad special interests. Though initially a Democrat, Morton left that party in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor of Indiana in 1854. Elected lieutenant governor in 1860, he succeeded to the governorship when Henry S. Lane was chosen U.S. senator by the Indiana legislature. He served in that office from 1861 to 1867 and during the Civil War engaged in bitter political conflicts with Democrats in the state legislature. From 1867 until his death, Moon was a U.S. senator. He soon broke with Andrew Johnson and became a leader of Republican radicals and later an advocatc of inflationary "soft money" policies. William Dudley Foulke, Life of Oliver P. Morton, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, 1899); E. Orville Johnson, "Oliver P. Morton: A Study of His Career as a Public Speaker and of His Speaking on Slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction Issues" (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1957); ACAB, 4:431-32; DAB, 13:262-64; BDUSC (online). , Conkling, StevensStevens, Thaddeus

and LoganLogan, John Alexander

John Alexander Logan (1826-86) began a legal and political career soon alter returning to Illinois from service in the Mexican-American War. He served as a state representative (1852-53, 1856-57) and as prosecuting attorney for the state's third Judiciary district (1853-57). An enthusiastic supporter of Stephen A. Douglas's faction of the Democratic party, Logan won election to a congressional seat in 1858. Though reelected in 1860, he resigned from Congress the following August to join the Union army. After the war, Illinois Republicans elected him to Congress in 1866, 1868, and 1870. In 1871 the state legislature appointed him to the U.S. Senate, a post he lost in 1877 but regained in 1879 and held until his death. During his years in Congress, Logan especially concerned himself with veteran affairs and had come to support civil service reform by 1885. He was James G. Blaine's vice-presidential candidate in the Republican party's unsuccessful 1884 campaign. James Pickett Jones, John A. Logan: Stalwart Republican from Illinois (Tallahassee, 1982); ACAB, 4:4-5; NCAB, 27:280-81; DAB, 11:363-65. were no longer controlling its councils; when Morton was laughed at for "waving the bloody shirt"^†The tactic of "waving the bloody shirt" was used by some Republicans and other opponents to imply that members of the Democratic party were responsible for the bloodshed of the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Republican politicians often cast Democrats and southerners as synonymous, exploiting the graphic image of the "bloody shirt" to garner support for their own candidates. Foner, , 487, 487-88n, 509, 569; Reinhard H. Luthin, "Waving the Bloody Shirt: Northern Political Tactics in Post-Civil War Times," , 14:64-71 (Spring 1960). and for exposing the bloody crimes and outrages against the Republican voters of the South; when the talk of unloading the negro waxed louder and louder; when Southern men pretended to be aching for a favorable moment for deserting the Democratic Party and joining the Republican party, and when it was thought that the white vote of the South could be secured if the black vote

was abandoned. Then came along the old issues of tariff and free-trade^†Tariffs, the duties collected on imported goods, were one of the most politically divisive issues in the United States during the nineteenth century. Burgeoning industry, particularly in the North, generated interest in protective tariffs, as they essentially offset the investment required to start up new manufacturing. However, the goods affected and the rates levied were inconsistent, and southern states, such as South Carolina, saw consumer prices on foreign goods increase and foreign demand for their agricultural exports decrease. Tariffs therefore became one of the primary conflicts of political interest between the North and the South. This difference naturally manifested in antebellum political parties, beginning most clearly with the Nullification Crisis of 1832. During the Civil War, tariffs reached an all-time high, and the nation became dependent upon them as a primary source of revenue. The "war tariff," in fact, remained largely untouched by legislation until 1887. In 1884, Republicans, the party then in favor of tariffs, placed the tariff question at the head of their national platform. This issue, however, did little to redeem the scandal-tarnished public image of presidential candidate James G. Blaine. F. W. Taussig, , 8th rev. ed. (New York, 1964), 68, 84-92, 155-56, 253. and kindred questions of material interests, to the exclusion of the more vital principles for which the Republican party stood in the days of its purity and power. But the expected accessions to its ranks from the white voters of the South did not take place. If anything, the South became, with every concession made by the Republicans to win its white vote, more solidly Democratic. There never was yet, and there never will be, an instance of permanent success where a party abandons its righteous principles to win favor of the opposing party. Mankind abhors the idea of abandoning friends in order to win the support of enemies. Considering that the Republican party had fallen away from the grand ideas of liberty, progress and national unity in which it had originated, and no longer felt that it should protect the rights it had recognized in the Constitution, some of its foremost men lost their interest in its success, and others deserted outright, claiming that as there was now, on the Southern question, no difference between the two parties, there was, therefore, no choice. Even colored voters in the North, where in doubtful Republican States their votes are most important and can turn the scale for or against one or the other of the parties, began to advocate the withdrawal of their support from the old party by which they were made citizens and to join the Democratic party.^†Beginning with the New Departure movement following the election of 1868, some Democrats moved to court the support of northern African Americans. By signaling acceptance of the Reconstruction constitutional amendments and support for moderate racial policies, they hoped to break the strong commitment of northern blacks to the Republican party. The strategy was employed at both state and local levels--for example, in 1870, Democrats in the New York legislature tried to claim credit for black suffrage by passing a bill that ended the state's property restriction on black renters. While many African Americans, including Douglass, realized that the Democrats' support for racial issues was meant to mask the encroachment of violence and loss of civil rights among southern blacks, others switched parties. Democratic recruitment among northern black leaders increased in the 1880s, and in 1888 prominent blacks T. Thomas Fortune, T. McCants Stewart, and George T. Downing actively campaigned for the reelection of Grover Cleveland. Lawrence Grossman, (Urbana, Ill., 1976), 21-22, 37-40; Emma Lou Thornbrough, (Chicago, 1972), 93-94. Of this class I was not one. I knew that however bad the Republican party was, the Democratic party was much worse. The elements of which the Republican party was composed gave better ground for the ultimate hope of the success of the colored man's cause than those of the Democratic party. The Democratic party was the party of reaction and the chosen party of the old master class. It was true to that class in the darkest hours of the rebellion, and was true to the same in its resistance of all the measures intended to secure to the Nation the blood bought results of the war. I was convinced that it was not wise to cast in my lot with that party. Considerations of gratitude as well as wisdom bound me to the Republican party. If men in either party could be induced to extend the arm of the nation for the protection of the negro voter I believed that the Republican party would be that party.

CHAPTER VIII.
EUROPEAN TOUR.

CHAPTER VIII.
EUROPEAN TOUR.

Revisits Parliament—Changes in Parliament—Recollections of Lord Brougham^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Broughan. Listens to Gladstone—Meeting with old friends.

September 1886 was quite a mile stone in my experience and journey of life. I had long desired to make a brief tour through several countries in Europe

and especially to revisit England, Ireland and Scotland^†In August 1845 Fredrick Douglass boarded the Cunard liner Cambria to embark on his first trip to the British Isles. He was at that time the most celebrated black American to cross the Atlantic. Douglass's first visit to the British Isles served a dual purpose: to remove him from his own country at a time when revelations made in his autobiography had threatened him with re-enslavement and to demonstrate his commanding presence and powerful rhetoric to the British people. Douglass used the liberal atmosphere of the British Isles to his great advantage. After arriving in Liverpool he traveled to Ireland, where he spent three months delivering lectures to mesmerized audiences in Cork, Dublin, and Belfast. After touring Ireland, Douglass spent 1846 and early 1847 sweeping through Scotland and England, speaking to large crowds and establishing himself as the most sought-after American reformer. Douglass's first trip to the British Isles was a resounding success. His long-awaited third trip to Britain forty years later in 1886 was at times bittersweet. Many of the friends he had made during his first visit and the group of "England's great men," whom Douglass had observed in the House of Commons, had died. Rice and Crawford, , 1-5; , 1:411. and to meet once more the friends I met with in those countries more than forty years before. I had twice visited England, but I had never been on the Continent of Europe, and this time I was accompanied by my wife.

I shall attempt here no ample description of our travels abroad. For this more space would be required than the limits of this volume will permit. Besides, with such details the book shelves are already crowded. To revisit places, scenes and friends after forty years is not a very common occurrence in the lives of men, and while the desire to do so may be intense, the gratification has to it a sad side as well as a cheerful one. The old people first met there have passed away, the middle aged have grown old, and the young have only heard their fathers and mothers speak of you. The places are there but the people are gone. I felt this when looking upon the members of the House of Commons. When I was there forty-five years before, I saw many of England's great men; men whom I had much desired to see and hear and was then much gratified by being able to see and hear. There were^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: was. Sir Robert PeelPeel, Sir Robert

Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), second baronet and Conservative (Tory) statesman, began his political career in the House of Commons at the age of twenty-one. During his career he held office as chief secretary for Ireland, home secretary, first secretary of the Treasury, chancellor of the Exchequer, and was twice prime minister (1834-35, 1841-46), Sally Mitchell, ed., Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia (New York, 1988), 585-86; Connolly, Oxford Companion to Irish History, 461; Cannon, Oxford Companion to British History, 737-38; DNB, 15:655-68. , Daniel O'ConnellO'Connell, Daniel

Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), Irish lawyer and member of Parliament, played a major role in both the British and American antislavery movements. Converted to abolitionism in 1824 after hearing English abolitionist James Cropper, O'Connell balanced conflicting commitments to black freedom and Irish independence throughout his career. A leader of the movement to repeal the Act of Union between England and Ireland, as well as a participant in the related campaign to remove the civil restrictions imposed upon Catholics, O'Connell saw the bill for Catholic Emancipation pass Parliament in 1829 with strong support from antislavery politicians. Four years later he marshaled crucial Irish votes needed for passage of the Emancipation Act of 1833, inaugurating gradual abolition in the British West Indies. On 1838 he narrowly averted a duel with U.S. Ambassador Andrew Stevenson, whom he accused of being a slave breeder. Identified with William Lloyd Garrison throughout the 1830s, O'Connell supported the seating of women delegates at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 and made numerous attempts to rally abolitionist sentiment among Irish Americans in the years immediately following. O'Connell often suffered high political costs as a result of such activities, particularly in light of diminished U.S. support for the Irish repeal movement. Although some Garrisonians criticized O'Connell for vacillation and political expediency, American reformers of all persuasions lavished praise on the "Irish Liberator" during the post- Civil War era. Oliver MacDonagh, The Emancipationist: Daniel O'Connell, 1830-47 (New York, 1989); Gilbert Osofsky, "Abolitionists, Irish Immigrants, and the Dilemmas of Romantic Nationalism," AHR, 80:889-912 (October 1975); Douglas C. Riach, "Daniel O'Connell and American Anti-Slavery," Irish Historical Studies, 20:3-25 (March 1976); Howard Temperley, "The O'Connell-Stevenson Contretemps: A Reflection of the Anglo-American Slavery Issue," JNH, 47:217-33 (October 1962); Henry Boylan, A Dictionary of Irish Biography, 3d ed. (Niwot, Colo., 1998), 306-08; DNB, 14:816-34. ,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: O'CONnell Richard CobdenCobden, Richard

In 1849 M.P. Richard Cobden (1804-65) introduced an unsuccessful motion in the House of Commons in support of arbitration treaties. Known primarily as a free-trade advocate and founder of the Anti-Corn Law League, Cobden joined the peace movement in 1842 after concluding that war was a natural consequence of economic competition. Christina Phelps, The Anglo-American Peace Movement in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York, 1930), 36-37, 61, 150-64; DNB, 4:604-10. , John BrightBright, John

John Bright (1811- 89), a member of the House of Commons and known for great oratory, supported free trade and repeal of the Corn Laws. Although his radical stands on church disestablishment, parliamentary reform, and foreign nonintervention prevented him from rising to leadership of the Liberal party, he held his seat for many years. During the American Civil War, Bright favored the North and brought the opinion of the British middle and working classes to his side. Late in Bright's career, his opposition to Irish home rule and to most factory legislation led to a growing political isolation from younger Liberal reformers. George Macaulay Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (Boston, 1913); Ephraim D. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, 2 vols. (New York, 1925), 1:58, 108-10, 221-22, 2:132-34; Keith Robbins, John Bright (London, 1979); Herman Ausubel, John Bright: Victorian Reformer (New York, 1966); DNB, 22:273-91. , Lord John RussellRussell, John Russell, Earl

Lord John Russell (1792-1878), first Earl Russell, was a Whig-Liberal statesman. A champion of political and social reforms during his lengthy career, he served as British prime minister from 1846 to 1852 and from 1865 to 1866. He also held office as home secretary (1835-39), colonial secretary (1839-41, 1855), and foreign secretary (1852-53, 1859-65). Cannon, Oxford Companion to British History, 828-29; DNB, 17:454-65. , Sir James GrahamGraham, James, Sir

The second baronet Sir James Graham (1792-1861) was educated at Oxford University and inherited a large estate in Cumberland. He was first elected to Parliament in 1820 and soon became a leading Whig. While a defender of individual property rights, Graham also supported Catholic Emancipation and parliamentary reform. In 1830 Graham was appointed first lord of the Admiralty in Earl Grey's cabinet. In that position he championed naval administrative reform. Graham resigned from the Admiralty in 1834 over proposals for reforming the established Church of Ireland. He later served as home secretary in Sir Robert Peel's 1841-46 ministry. During this latter tenure he supported Corn Law repeal and was responsible for public order during the Chartist riots. Graham returned to the Admiralty in Lord Aberdeen's coalition ministry of 1853-55. Cannon, Oxford Companion to British History, 428; Gardiner and Wenborn, Columbia Companion to British History, 349. , Benjamin DisraeliDisraeli, Benjamin

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), first earl of Beaconsfield, was born the son of a Jewish literary antiquarian. Baptized in 1817, Disraeli entered Lincoln's Inn in 1825. Between 1826 and 1833 he published a number of novels that illustrated his political principles; in 1835 he stated his conservative stance explicitly in A Vindication of the English Constitution. He began his parliamentary career in 1837 as a Tory representing Maidstone. Disraeli maintained that the novel form was the best way to mold public sentiment, and published his best known novels--Coningsby (1844), Sybil (1845), and Tancred (1847)--while he opposed his party leader Robert Peel on the issue of Corn Law repeal. Disraeli served three times as chancellor of the Exchequer (1852, 1858-59, and 1866-67) and was responsible for the 1867 Reform Act, which enfranchised the urban working classes in England and Wales; a policy change that ultimately benefited the conservatives. Disraeli served twice as Conservative prime minister of Great Britain (1868, 1874-80), supporting moderate social reform and an activist foreign policy. Jonathan Bate, ed., The Oxford English Literary History, 1830-1880: The Victorians, 13 vols. (Oxford, Eng., 2002-06), 8:574-75; Christopher High, ed., The Cambridge Historical Encyclopedia of Great Britain and Ireland (Cambridge, Eng., 1985), 349; DNB, 5:1006-22. , Lord MorpethMorpeth, Earl of

and others, but except Mr. GladstoneGladstone, William Ewart

William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), British prime minister (1868-74, 1880-85, 1886, 1892-94), was the personification of Victorian liberalism. The fourth son of a Liverpool merchant, he was educated at Oxford University. Intensely religious in his early years, Gladstone was elected to Parliament as a Conservative in 1832. In 1859 Gladstone quit the Conservative party and joined Lord Palmerston's Liberal ministry. As chancellor of the Exchequer, a position he held in four different terms, Gladstone set out to complete the Free Trade program and to reduce taxes and public expenditures. Gladstone placed as much emphasis on the moral basis of politics as he did on the material basis. His drive for the abolition of church rates endeared him to the Nonconformists and helped transform the Liberal party into a powerful political force. Gladstone's first term as prime minister (1868-74) featured significant reforms of the army, civil service, local government, and law courts. In foreign affairs, Gladstone was committed to the notion of the "Law of Nations," an overriding imperative for world peace and mutual understanding. In an age of resurgent British imperialism, however, Gladstone's pacifist outlook toward foreign affairs rendered him a target for critics who demanded a more aggressive foreign stance. Gladstone retired from politics after Benjamin Disraeli's Conservative government came to power in 1874, but in 1879 he returned to the political stump to protest Disraeli's foreign policy. Gladstone's later ministries of 1880-85, 1886, and 1892-94 were less productive than his first one. The Liberal party, distracted by the Irish problem, became less responsive to the changing interests of the working classes, more interested in economic and social improvements than on constitutional and religious questions. Gladstone's great oratorical skill, organizational flair, and capacity to meet new challenges with fresh ideas made him one of the most enduring political figures in British history. Cannon, Oxford Companion to British History, 415-417; Gardiner and Wenborn, Columbia Companion to British History, 340-341; DNB, Supplement, 22:705-54. , not one who was there then,^†Editorial Emendation: now. is there now. Mr. Bright was alive, but ill health kept him out of Parliament. Five and forty years before, I saw him there, young, robust and strong; a rising British Statesman, representing a new element of power in his country, and battling, as the co-worker of Richard Cobden, against the corn laws which kept bread from the mouths of the hungry. His voice and eloquence were then^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: than a power in Parliament. At that time the question which most deeply interested and agitated England was the repeal of the corn laws. Of this agitation Mr. Richard Cobden and Mr. Bright, backed by the anti-corn-law league, were the leaders. The landed aristocracy of England, represented by the Tory party,^†The Tories were one of the two main British political parties between the later seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. The name "Tory" comes from the Irish word Toraidhe, meaning bandit, cattle thief, bog-trotter, or outlaw. The Tories originally supported the notion of God-ordained kingly authority, or "divine right." They held a deep attachment to the Anglican Church, and believed the crown and church to be the chief guarantors of the British political, religious, and social order. Though the Tories' existence as a parliamentary party evolved over time in response to issues and personalities, the party's values, emphasizing the church and the sanctity of governmental authority, remained a constant in British politics. These values played a prominent role in the debates on America and in the "conservative reaction" toward the end of the eighteenth century. During the French Revolution the Whig opposition derided the ministry of William Pitt the younger as "Tory." The term "Tory" is still used in modern British politics to refer, often pejoratively, to the Conservative party. Cannon, , 923; Gardiner and Wenborn, , 747-48. opposed the repeal with intense zeal and bitterness. But the circumstances were against that interest and against that party. The famine of 1845 was doing its ghastly work and the people not only of Ireland, but of England and Scotland, were asking for bread, more bread, and cheaper bread; and this was a petition to which resistance was vain. The facts and figures of Cobden and the eloquence of Mr. Bright, supported by the needs of the people, bore down the powerful opposition of the aristocracy and finally won over to repeal the great Tory leader, in the person of Sir Robert Peel, one of the most graceful debaters and ablest parliamentarians that England ever had. A more fascinating man than he I never saw or heard in any legislative body. But able and skillful leader as he was, he could not carry his party with him. The landed

proprietors opposed him to the last. Their cause was espoused by Lord George BentinckBentinck, William George Frederic Cavendish-Scott

Lord (William) George Frederic Cavendish Scott Bentinck (1802-48) was a prominent British politician and sportsman. Bentinck did not attend school or university, but instead acquired a patched-together education while roaming about Nottinghamshire. Bentinck began his career in politics as personal secretary to his uncle George Canning. In 1828 he succeeded his uncle Lord William Bentinck as member of Parliament for King's Lynn, a borough in which his family exacted much influence. A moderate Tory follower of George Canning, Bentinck refused to support Lord Wellington's ministry, voted in favor of Catholic Emancipation, and supported the Reform Bill of 1832. A close friendship with Edward Stanley led Bentinck into the Derby Dilly, a group of moderate Whigs who seceded from the reformers in 1834, and were later absorbed into the Conservative opposition. He supported Robert Peel and the Conservatives but refused to take office, showing more interest in hunting than in politics. He carried on extensive horse breeding, training, and racing operations, and he displayed a weakness for gambling on races. Bentinck made substantial contributions to the sport, including devising a new code of racing rules in 1844. Bentinck dipped back into politics in 1845-46 as an opponent of Peel's policy of Corn Law repeal, Bentinck's personal connections and social standing assured him the leadership of the protectionist revolt in the Commons. He failed to prevent the repeal, but he did succeed in bringing down Peel's government. Bentinck spent the remainder of his days in politics as a champion of protectionism. Though conservative in most areas, he was liberal on religious matters, and he alienated his party by voting for the admission of Jews to Parliament in 1847. This stance resulted in his resignation from party leadership. Cannon, Oxford Companion to British History, 96; DNB, 2:297-302. ^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Bentick. and Mr. Benjamin Disraeli. The philippics^†Douglass adopts the term "philippics" to refer to speeches given in 1845 by Lord George Bentinck and Benjamin Disraeli in opposition to the Corn Law policies of Sir Robert Peel and the Tories. The term itself derives from Demosthenes, deemed the greatest of the Athenian orators. As a politician Demosthenes became prominent by consistently urging resistance to the encroachment of Philip II, king of Macedon and father of Alexander the Great. Demosthenes attacked Philip in a series of four political orations, known as his Philippics. They consisted of long, periodic sentences that were often followed by short, pithy statements. In more modern political terminology, as shown by Douglass's usage, "philippics" can serve as a general term delineating any type of oppositional speech given by one person or political body against a rival individual or group. M. C. Howatson, ed., , 2d ed. (New York, 1989), 179-83, 432. Editorial Emendation: ^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: : phillippics. of the latter against Sir Robert were among the most scathing and torturing of anything in their line to which I ever listened. His invectives were all the more burning and blistering because delivered with the utmost coolness and studied deliberation. But he too, was gone when I looked into the House of Commons this time. The grand form and powerful presence of Daniel O'Connell was no longer there. The diminutive but dignified figure of Lord John Russell, that great whig^†The Whigs were one of the two main political parties in Britain between the later seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. The term "Whig" derived from the extended form "Whiggamore," a derogatory name for the Scottish Presbyterian Covenanters. The political label "Whig" originally came into use in the late 1670s, when the Tories used it to identify those opposed to the succession of James II. The Whigs saw Parliament as the crucial constraint on royal prerogative. The party's primary goal was to gain power in Parliament, which they believed would safeguard the national interest and place a check on royal power. A party of aristocratic lineage, the Whigs championed reform in part so that the lower classes would maintain their deference. By the 1820s the Whigs focused on taxation, Catholic Emancipation, and parliamentary reform. In 1829 they succeeded in removing the political restrictions on Catholics. In March 1831 the prominent Whig Lord John Russell introduced a wide-ranging parliamentary reform bill. The bill became law in July 1832 and heralded a new series of Whig reforms, including the abolition of slavery, and a Factory Act that alleviated harsh working conditions and child labor. Despite a series of successful reforms, the late 1830s saw the Whig party steadily unravel through factionalism. This process culminated in the 1859 alliance between Whigs, radicals, and former Peelites under the leadership of former foreign secretary Lord Henry John Temple Palmerston, a union that marked the foundation of the modern Liberal party. Gardiner and Wenborn, , 804-05; Mitchell, , 856-58. leader, was absent. In the House of Lords, where, five and forty years before, I saw and heard Lord Brougham, all were gone, and he with the rest. He was the most remarkable speaker I ever heard. Such a flow of language; such a wealth of knowledge; such an aptitude of repartee; such quickness in reply to difficult questions suddenly sprung upon him. I think I never saw equaled in any other speaker. In his attitudes and gestures he was in all respects original and just the opposite of Daniel Webster. As he spoke, his tall frame reeled to and fro like a reed in a gale, and his arms were everywhere, down by his sides, extended in front and over his head; always in action and never at rest. He was discussing the postal relations in England and he seemed to know the postal arrangements of every civilized people in the world. He was often interrupted by "the noble Lords" but he very simply disposed of them^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: "The...disposed of tham. with a word or two that made them objects of pity and sometimes of ridicule. I wondered how they dared to expose their lordly heads to the heels of such a perfect race horse in debate as he seemed to be. He simply played with them. When they came too near he gave them a kick and scampered away over the field of his subject without looking back to see if his victims were living, wounded or dead. But this marvelous man though he lived long, was gone and I saw in England no man like him filling his place or likely to fill his place.

While in England during this last visit I had the good fortune to see and hear Mr. William E. Gladstone, the great Liberal^†Before 1868 the Liberal party in Britain existed as an uneasy coalition between Whigs, the moderate liberals who dominated, and middle-class reformers. The Whigs were led by some of Britain's richest aristocratic magnates, who blocked much reform legislation. The balance of power shifted after the Reform Act of 1867 broadened suffrage. The Gladstone government of 1868-74 was one of the great reforming administrations in British history. With the passing of Gladstone's Irish Home Rule Bill of 1886, however, the Liberal party divided, and Whigs defected en masse to the Conservatives. The division of the party was characterized less by the Whig defection than it was by a change in the character of liberalism itself. Most Liberals in this period opposed armaments, belligerence in foreign affairs, and imperial expansion, and the reforms they enacted were political, not social. They sought to curtail the powers of the House of Lords, called for the disestablishment of the Church of England, and demanded that government not intervene in economic and social affairs. After 1868, in an attempt to cater to the demands of the new partly enfranchised working class, the Liberal agenda shifted to social issues such as industrial reform. The 1890s brought further division when the party split heavily over British foreign affairs. The more radical "Little Englanders" were hostile toward the growth of a foreign empire. The conservative "Unionists," in contrast, supported imperialism and a strong national defense. Jonathan Parry, (New Haven, Conn., 1993), 227-92; Cannon, , 573-75. leader, and, since Sir Robert Peel, the acknowledged prince of parliamentary debaters. He was said by those who had often heard him, to be on this occasion in one of his happiest speaking moods and made one of his best speeches. I went early. The House was already crowded with members and spectators when Mr. Gladstone came in and took his seat opposite Mr. BalfourBalfour, Arthur James

Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), first earl of Balfour, prime minister, and philosopher, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. From 1874 to 1885 he represented Hertford in Parliament, then East Manchester until 1906. Balfour made his reputation as chief secretary for Ireland (1887-91). There he ruthlessly suppressed rural violence, earning himself the epithet "Bloody Balfour." Beginning in 1891, following his post in connection with Ireland, Balfour was groomed for the office of prime minister by his uncle, the exiting Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil Salisbury. He succeeded his uncle as prime minister but also inherited Salisbury's accumulated problems, including the inflated cost of the South African War. Balfour's government passed key legislation, including the 1902 Education Act, and the Anglo-French Entente of 1904. These successes notwithstanding, after 1906 the Conservative party became predominantly protectionist, and Balfour exercised little effective leadership. By 1911 a "Balfour Must Go" campaign had been mounted, and Balfour resigned. Balfour was thirty-eight years old when Douglass witnessed him debate William Gladstone in 1886. Max Egremont, Balfour: A Life of James Arthur Balfour (London, 1980); Sydney Henry Zebel, Balfour: A Political Biography (Cambridge, Eng., 1973); Catherine B. Shannon, Arthur J. Balfour and Ireland, 1874-1922 (Washington, D.C., 1988); DNB, 41-57. , the Tory leader. Though seventy-seven years had passed over him his step was firm and his bearing confident and vigorous. Expectation had been raised by the announcement in advance that Mr. Gladstone would that day move for the indefinite postponement of the Irish Force Bill,^†Douglass refers to the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act passed in July 1887. Also known as the Crimes Act or the Criminal Law Amendment Act, it was rooted in the Irish Plan of Campaign, which began in October 1886. This plan gave Irish tenants clear directions and legal advice as to how they could force rent reductions from their landlords. To fight the Irish unrest, Arthur James Balfour was made the new chief secretary for Ireland. The Criminal Law and Procedure Act strengthened his power, by permitting the private questioning under oath by a resident magistrate of any individual suspected of holding information relevant to crimes. It also made offenses associated with agrarian agitation punishable by swift imprisonment, and gave the attorney general the authority to move cases from one county to another. The act gave rise to numerous violent confrontations, notably the "Mitchelstown massacre," in which constables opened fire on a crowd of protestors. killing two and injuring dozens. This incident demonstrated Balfour's ruthless enforcement of the Crimes Act and earned him the title "Bloody Balfour." R. V. Comerford, "The Parnell Era, 1883-91," in , ed. W. E. Vaughan (Oxford, Eng., 1996), 70-73. the measure of all others to which the

Government was committed as a remedy for the ills of Ireland. As he sat in front of the Government leader, an able debater awaiting the moment to begin his speech I saw in the face of Mr. Gladstone a blending of opposite qualities. There were^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: was the peace and gentleness^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: gentleness and of of the lamb, with the strength and determination of the lion. Deep earnestness was expressed in all his features. He began his speech in a tone conciliatory and persuasive. His argument against the Bill was based upon statistics which he handled with marvellous facility. He showed that the amount of crimes in Ireland for which the Force Bill was claimed as a remedy by the Government, was not greater than the same class of crimes in England; and that therefore there was no reason for a Force Bill in one country more than in the other. After marshaling his facts and figures to this point, in a masterly and convincing manner, raising his voice and pointing his finger directly at Mr. Balfour,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: BAlfour he exclaimed,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: exclaimed,, in a tone almost menacing and tragic, "What are you fighting for?" The effect was thrilling. His peroration was a splendid appeal to English love of liberty. When he sat down the House was instantly thinned out. There seemed neither in members nor spectators any desire to hear another voice after hearing Mr. Gladstone's, and I shared this feeling with the rest. A few words were said in reply by Mr. Balfour who, though an able debater, was no match for the aged Liberal Leader.

Leaving public persons of whom many more could be mentioned, I turn to the precious friends from whom I parted at the end of my first visit to Great Britain and Ireland. In Dublin, the first city I then visited, I was kindly received by Mr. Richard WebbWebb, Richard Davis

Richard D. Webb was a Garrisonian abolitionist from Dublin, Ireland, whom Douglass met on his first trip to the British Isles in 1845. Originally a Quaker, he turned toward Unitarianism as his antislavery passions became more radical. A successful printer, Webb guided the small, but intensely active, Hibernian Anti-Slavery Society in Dublin, of which James Haughton and his family were also members. Webb printed the organ of the British Garrisonian abolitionist movement, the Anti-Slavery Advocate, out of his Dublin-based office. The British Garrisonians were active pamphleteers, and Webb's own The National AntiSlavery Societies of England and the United States (1852) was one of the most confident and able statements of the Garrisonian cause to appear on either side of the Atlantic. Temperley, British Antislavery, 210, 212-13, 227, 237, 239, 244, 252-54, 256, 259; Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 241-44, 248, 258-59, 293-94. , Richard AllenAllen, Richard (Ireland)

Richard Allen (1803-86), Irish abolitionist and Quaker reformer, was a prominent member of the Hibernian Anti-Slavery Society. In 1828 he married Anne Webb and became a close companion to his new brother-in-law, Irish reformer Richard Davis Webb. Along with Webb and James Haughton, Allen became one of the most recognized Irish reformers. Dubbed the "Antieverythingarians" by the conservative Dublin Evening Mail, Allen and his associates supported Middle Eastern missionary work, peace, temperance, and British Indian reform, but would become best known as abolitionists. In 1840 Allen met William Lloyd Garrison when both were delegates to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention. Allen became a strong proponent of Garrisonian abolitionism soon afterward. Douglass met and interacted with Allen and his fellow Irish activists in 1845 during his first trip to Ireland and Great Britain. Allen visited the United States in 1883, and was reportedly appalled by the unfair treatment of African Americans following the end of slavery and Reconstruction. Nini Rodgers, Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, 1612-1865 (New York, 2007), 270, 273, 278-80, 286-89; Douglas C. Riach, "Richard Davis Webb and Antislavery in Ireland,'' in Antislavery Reconsidered, ed. Perry and Fellman, 149-59. , James HaughtonHaughton, James

James Haughton (1795-1873) was one of Ireland's leading social reformers and temperance activists. After several business ventures elsewhere, Haughton settled in Dublin in 1817, where he became a corn and flour factor in partnership with his brother William. Despite a Quaker education, Haughton joined the Unitarians in 1834 and supported the antislavery movement from an early period. He attended the World's Anti-Slavery Conventions in London in 1840 and 1843 as a delegate of the Hibernian Anti-Slavery Society. A lifelong proponent of reform, Haughton was one of the earliest disciples of the Irish temperance reformer Father Theobald Mathew. Following in Father Mathew's footsteps, Haughton devoted much energy to promoting total abstinence and advocating legislative restrictions on alcohol. He served as vice president of the United Kingdom Alliance, and penned a series of public letters on temperance, slavery, peace, capital punishment, British India, sanitary reform, and education. Initially he signed his letters "The Son of a Water Drinker," but eventually used his own name and continued to write until 1872. Haughton was also a friend and admirer of the Irish nationalist leader Daniel O'Connell. Together they advocated various plans for improving the condition of Ireland and repealing union with Britain. John F. Quinn, Father Mathew's Crusade: Temperance in Nineteenth-Century Ireland and Irish America (Amherst, Mass., 2002), 52, 118-19; Osofsky, "Abolitionists, Irish Immigrants," 889-912; DNB, 9:168. ^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Horton and others. They were now all gone,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: gone,, and except some of their children, I was among strangers. These received me in the same cordial spirit that distinguished their fathers and mothers. I did not visit dear old Cork, where in 1845 I was made welcome by the Jenningses,^†During his 1845-47 tour of England and Ireland, Douglass stayed in the home of Thomas and Ann Jennings and their eight children for at least a month. Four of the Jenningses' daughters, Charlotte, Helen, Isabel, and Jane, were active in the Cork Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. Isabel Jennings acted as cosecretary of the society, and later supported Douglass's newspaper with donations. Following his return to the United States, Douglass maintained correspondence with Isabel Jennings. Taylor, , 158, 243-44; Patricia J. Ferreira, "Frederick Douglass in Ireland: The Dublin Edition of His Narrative," , 5:57 (Spring 2001). Editorial Emendation: Jennings. the Warings,^†Douglass probably refers to the family of Dublin abolitionist Maria Waring (1818-74), the sister-in-law of Anti-Slavery Advocate editor Richard D. Webb. Along with the Webbs, Waring was at the center of the antislavery movement in Ireland and a loyal supporter of Garrison, who once said of Waring, "There are few, very few, on my list of friends, for whom I cherish a more sincere regard." , ser. 3, 1:65n; Merrill and Ruchames, , 3:289n, 384. the Wrights^†Douglass may be referring to one or both of two families with the surname Wright who lived in County Cork, Ireland] One, headed hy William and Jane Wright, lived in Kilworth; the other, headed by George and Eliza Wright, lived in nearby Maryville. Both patriarchs were millers. Josephine Masterson, (Baltimore, 1994), 62, 78. and their circle of friends, most of whom l learned had passed away. The same was true of the Neills,^†Douglass may be referring to the family of John R. Neill, a friend of Richard D. Webb and William Lloyd Garrison. One John R. Neill is listed as a watchmaker and jeweler in a contemporary Belfast directory. Merrill and Ruchames, , 3:428-29n. Editorial Emendation: Neals. the Workmans,^†Douglass may be referring to a family of Workmans in Belfast, Ireland. Some members of the family emigrated to America in the late eighteenth century, but others remained in Ireland, engaged in the family business of manufacture of fine linens. Thelma C. Anderson, (Salt Lake City, 1962), 719. the McIntyres,^†Douglass probably refers to the family of Eliza McIntyre (?-1851), an active abolitionist from Belfast, Ireland, who up until her death served as secretary for the city's Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. An obituary in describes McIntyre as possessing "amiable disposition, gentle spirit, rare gifts, and disinterested benevolence." , 20 November 1851. Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Mc.Intyres and the NelsonsNelson, Isaac

Isaac Nelson (1812-88), a Belfast Presbyterian minister, was an active member of the anti-Garrisonian British and Belfast Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass befriended Nelson during his tour of Ireland in the mid-1840s. Nelson penned a letter of support for Douglass that appeared in the Irish edition of Douglass's Narrative. At the 29 August session of the Evangelical Alliance, he submitted the resolution, "That, whereas it is impossible for the Conference to legislate for particular cases or exceptions, no Slaveholder be admitted to any Branch of the Alliance." Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3:389-90; Ferreira, "Frederick Douglass in Ireland," 59; Riach, "Campaign Against American Slavery," 247, 390, 531, 539; Rice, "Scottish Factor," 353; Evangelical Alliance, Proceedings, 1846, 376. of Belfast.^†The second-largest city in Ireland, Belfast is also the economic and political capital of Northern Ireland. It is located on Ireland's eastern coast and at the mouth of the River Lagan. Normans established a fort at Belfast as early as the twelfth century, but it did not develop into a substantial town until the early seventeenth century, when the success of the local textile industry induced a period of rapid growth. The period from 1860 to World War I was marked by the development of shipbuilding and engineering industries; the city's population expanded from 87,000 in 1851 to 349,000 by 1901. Cannon, , 92; Cohen, , 1:304. I had friends in Limerick,^†Limerick is the center of County Limerick, Ireland, near the beginning of the River Shannon in the midwest of the Irish Republic. It was occupied by the Norse in the ninth century, became the capital of the province of Munster around 1000, and was controlled by the English in the twelfth century. Primary exports are fish and produce. Cohen, ; 2:1740. in Waterford,^†The political and economic center of County Waterford, Ireland, the city is famous for producing Waterford crystal, which has been manufactured there since 1783. Located in the southeast of Ireland, near the River Suir, Waterford was a center for shipbuilding in the nineteenth century. Cohen, , 3:3421. in Enniscorthy^†Enniscorthy is located in County Wexford, Ireland, approximately thirteen miles from the city of Wexford in the southwest of the country. Located on the River Slaney, its industries include iron founding, tobacco production, iron milling, and bacon and ham curing. Cohen, , 1:942. Editorial Emendation: Eniscorthy and other towns of Ireland, but l saw none of them during this visit. What was true of the mortality of my friends in Ireland, was equally true of those in England. Few who^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Who first received me in that country, are now among the living. It was however my good fortune to meet once more Mrs. Anna RichardsonRichardson, Anna Atkins

Anna Atkins Richardson (1806-92) of Newcastle-upon-Tyne married Ellen Richardson’s brother, Henry Richardson, in 1833. A Quaker, she was active in several reform causes but was particularly dedicated to antislavery activism. A member of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, she alienated British Garrisonians by continuing to support Douglass after he had severed ties with Garrison. With her husband, she helped lead the free produce movement (a boycott of goods derived from slave labor) of the 1850s in England; she was responsible for securing the black lecturers Henry Bibb and Henry Highland Garnet to publicize the cause. From 1851 to 1854, the Richardsons published The Slave, a penny newssheet promoting the free produce movement. [Mary C. Pumphrey], Ellen Richardson: In Memoriam, 1808-1896 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1896); R. J. M. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860 (Baton Rouge, La., 1983), 120, 122, 134; Temperley, British Antislavery, 245. and Miss Ellen RichardsonRichardson, Ellen

Ellen Richardson (1808—96) was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She dedicated herself to the education of working-class girls, holding supervisory posts at both the Royal Jubilee School for Girls and St. Mary’s School. In 1846, she joined her sister-in-law Anna Atkins Richardson in providing the money to purchase Douglass’s freedom from Thomas Auld. Anna Atkins Richardson (1806-92) of Newcastle-upon-Tyne married Ellen Richardson’s brother, Henry Richardson, in 1833. A Quaker, she was active in several reform causes but was particularly dedicated to antislavery activism. A member of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, she alienated British Garrisonians by continuing to support Douglass after he had severed ties with Garrison. With her husband, she helped lead the free produce movement (a boycott of goods derived from slave labor) of the 1850s in England; she was responsible for securing the black lecturers Henry Bibb and Henry Highland Garnet to publicize the cause. From 1851 to 1854, the Richardsons published The Slave, a penny newssheet promoting the free produce movement. [Mary C. Pumphrey], Ellen Richardson: In Memoriam, 1808-1896 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1896); R. J. M. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860 (Baton Rouge, La., 1983), 120, 122, 134; Temperley, British Antislavery, 245. , the two members of the Society of Friends, both beyond three score and ten, and who, forty-five years before, opened a correspondence with my old master and raised seven hundred and fifty dollars with which to purchase my freedom. Mrs. Anna Richardson, having reached the good old

age of eighty-six years, her life marvellously filled up with good works, for her hand was never idle and her heart and brain were always active in the cause of peace and benevolence, a few days before this writing passed away. Miss Ellen Richardson, now over eighty, still lives and continues to take a lively interest in the career of the man whose freedom she was instrumental in procuring. It was a great privilege to once more look into the faces and hear the voices of these two noble and benevolent women. I saw in England, too, Mr.Carpenter, Russell Lant

The Reverend Russell Lant Carpenter (1816-92), a Unitarian minister, spent his childhood in Bristol, England. He attended Bristol College in preparation for a life of ministry, continued his studies at Manchester and York Colleges and was one of the first to graduate from London University in 1840. Carpenter became intensely involved in the temperance movement and subsequently quit his pastorate at Bridgwater, England, since part of the church's endowment came from taverns selling liquors. In August 18-19 he journeyed to the United States, where he spent a full year preaching from Montreal to St. Louis to Boston. His father, Dr. Lant Carpenter, was a well-known teacher whose Unitarian writings were already known to the antislavery men of the day. Thus, Carpenter became acquainted with Garrison, Douglass, and others. Having returned to England, he married in 1853 and continued his ministerial work there until his death. His works include Memoirs of Lant Carpenter (1842), Discourses and Devotional Services (1849), A Monotessaron (1851), and a biography about his brother, Philip, Memoirs of the Life and Work of Philip Pearsall Carpenter (1880). Carpenter also contributed frequently to the Inquirer and to other periodicals. London Inquirer, 30 January 1892. and Mrs. Russell Lant CarpenterCarpenter, Mary Browne

Mary Browne Carpenter (c. 1824–98) was the wife of the prominent Unitarian minister Russell Lant Carpenter (1819–92). They were married in Bridgwater, Somersetshire, in 1853. She was one of four daughters born to William Browne, a wealthy Unitarian merchant, and his wife, Mary. William Browne served as mayor of Bridgwater in 1854. In addition to her support of the antislavery effort, Mary Browne Carpenter was also deeply involved in the woman suffrage movement, belonging to one of the more radical suffrage societies in Bridport. She also supported the animal rights and temperance movements. 1841 England Census, Gloucestershire, Bristol, 22; “England and Wales, Christening Records, 1530–1906,” FamilySearch.org; “England and Wales, Death Index, 1837–1915,” FamilySearch.org; “England and Wales, Marriage Index, 1837–1915,” FamilySearch. org; “England and Wales, Non-Conformist Records Indexes, 1588–1977,” FamilySearch.org; Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: A Regional Survey (New York, 2006), 161, 169.She has not been identified by name. ,^†Editorial Emendation: Mr. & Mrs. two friends who were helpful to me when in England and, until within a few days, helpful to me still. During all the time that I edited and published my paper, in Rochester, New York, I had the material and moral support of Rev. Russell Lant Carpenter and that of his excellent wife. But now he too, has passed away, covered with honors. He was one of the purest spirits and most impartial minds I ever met. Though a man of slender fame, his life was one of earnest work and he reached the age of seventy-five. He was the son of Rev. Lant CarpenterCarpenter, Lant

Lant Carpenter (1780-1840) was a British reformer and Unitarian minister , the long honored^†Editorial Emendation: long and honored. pastor in Bristol, and the brother of PhilipCarpenter, Philip Pearsall

Philip Carpenter (1819-77) and Mary Carpenter (1807-77), the children of British reformer and Unitarian minister Lant Carpenter, were both social justice activists. The youngest in the family, Philip trained at the University of Edinburgh and the University of London. Ordained as a Unitarian minister, he served congregations near Manchester and later Warrington. Also an avid naturalist, Philip Carpenter collected specimens and made a catalog of marine shells for the British Museum. In 1865 he moved to Montreal, Canada, where he pursued his scientific study of conchology, gaining respect for his knowledge and publications in the field. His eldest sister, Mary Carpenter, began operating a girls' school in Bristol in 1829 with the help of her mother, Anna Penn Carpenter. Finding the care of poor children her life's calling, in 1835 Mary formed the Working and Visiting Society and in 1852 opened her own reformatory for boys. In the 1850s and 1860s she lobbied for industrial schooling in Britain and opened two schools of her own. In her later years she traveled widely and lectured in Britain and India on education and penal reform. Jo Manton, Mary Carpenter and the Children of the Streets (London, 1976), 18-30; Jennifer S. Uglow, ed., The International Dictionary of Womens Biography (New York, 1982), 94; ACAB, 1:531-32; DNB, 3:1068-70, 1071-72; DAB, 1:561. and Mary CarpenterCarpenter, Mary

Mary Carpenter (1807-77) was the daughter of British reformer and Unitarian minister Lant Carpenter, and with her brother Philip Lant Carpenter, was a social justice activist. She began operating a girls' school in Bristol in 1829 with the help of her mother, Anna Penn Carpenter. Finding the care of poor children her life's calling, in 1835 Mary formed the Working and Visiting Society and in 1852 opened her own reformatory for boys. In the 1850s and 1860s she lobbied for industrial schooling in Britain and opened two schools of her own. In her later years she traveled widely and lectured in Britain and India on education and penal reform. She was inspired to visit India as a result of her father’s friendship with Rammohun Roy, a Bengalese teacher and religious educator who established the Brahmo Samaj, a brotherhood made up of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus. Roy visited Mary’s father, Lant Carpenter, at the Lewis Mead Unitarian Church in Bristol, but died shortly afterward from meningitis in 1833. Mary visited India four times, where she established a school for Hindu girls and became active in social reform. Jo Manton, Mary Carpenter and the Children of the Streets (London, 1976), 18-30; Jennifer S. Uglow, ed., The International Dictionary of Womens Biography (New York, 1982), 94; Mary Carpenter, Six Months in India (London, 1868).ACAB, 1:531-32; DNB, 3:1068-70, 1071-72; DAB, 1:561. , and one of a family distinguished for every excellence.

I missed the presence of George ThompsonThompson, George

George Thompson (1804-78), originally from Liverpool, was an early advocate of slave emancipation in the British colonies and was an influential British ally of William Lloyd Garrison. Thompson lectured for the Agency Committee, a group that helped force passage of the West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833. That same year, he was among the founders of the Edinburgh Society for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the World. As a member of Parliament from 1847 to 1852, Thompson was a member of the Parliamentary Reform Association and the Anti-Corn Law League, and promoted the production of East Indian cotton in order to undermine American slavery. Thompson also promoted the antislavery cause during trips to the United States during the 1830s, 1850s, and 1860s. Lib., 29 May 1846; Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1:434-522, 2:1-72; Howard Temperley, British Antislavery, 1833-1870 (Columbia, S.C., 1972), 23-29; C. Duncan Rice, "The Anti-Slavery Mission of George Thompson to the United States, 1834-1835," Journal of American Studies, 2:13-41 (April 1968); DNB, 19:691. , one of the most eloquent men who ever advocated the cause of the colored man, either in England or America. Joseph SturgeSturge, Joseph

Joseph Sturge (1793–1859), English philanthropist and social reformer, perhaps best known as the founder of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. The son of a prosperous Quaker farmer, Sturge achieved quick financial success as a corn merchant. He abandoned commercial life before age forty to devote full time to various benevolent causes, including adult education, temperance, and social work among Birmingham‘s poor. He was an original member of the Anti-Corn Law League, and in 1831 he joined Thomas Attwood's Birmingham Political Union, where he advocated tax reform, free trade, disestablishment of the Anglican Church, ballot voting, and abolition of capital punishment. During the 1840s he campaigned for an extended franchise, first as a Chartist and later through the newly constituted Complete Suffrage Movement, which he helped launch. He also financed a pacifist newspaper, the Morning Star. Sturge’s antislavery career began in the 1820 when, as a protege of abolitionist James Cropper, he supported the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery. As secretary of the Birmingham Anti-Slavery Society, he organized public demonstrations against the West Indian apprenticeship system in the fall of 1835. Two years later, after a journey to the British West Indies, Sturge testified against the apprenticeship system before Parliamentary committees and co-authored The West Indies in 1837. In 1839 Sturge organized the abortive West Indian Land Investment Company to promote landownership among the freedmen. When Frederick Douglass visited Birmingham in December 1845 to address a local temperance society, he was a dinner guest at Sturge’s home. The two men met again some five months later in London at a meeting of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Temperley, British Anti-Slavery, 12–13, 24–25, 36, 69, 72, 123, 140; Harrison, Drink and the Victorians, 133; Douglass to Garrison, 23 May 1846, in Lib., 26 June 1846; Quarles, FD, 42; DNB, 19: 130–31. and most of his family had also passed away. But I will pursue this melancholy enumeration no further, except to say that, in meeting with the descendants of Anti-Slavery friends in England, Ireland and Scotland, it was good to have confirmed the scriptural saying "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it."^†Prov. 22:6.

CHAPTER IX.

CONTINUATION OF EUROPEAN TOUR.

CHAPTER IX.

CONTINUATION OF EUROPEAN TOUR.

Through France—Dijon and Lyons—The palace of the Popes—The Ampitheater at Arles—Visits Nice—Pisa and its leaning tower—The Pantheon—Modern Rome—Religion at Rome—Rome of the past—Vesuvius and Naples—Through the Suez Canal—Life in the East—The Nile—The religion of Mahomet—At the graves of Theodore Parker and Mrs. Browning—The mountains of the Tyrol.

Aside from the great cities of London and Paris, with their varied and brilliant attractions, the American tourist will find no part of a European tour more interesting than the country lying between Paris and Rome. Here was the cradle in which the civilization^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: cvilization of Western Europe and our own country

was rocked and developed. The whole journey between these two great cities is deeply interesting and thought suggesting. It was the battle ground and the scene of heroic endeavor, where every inch of the field was sternly disputed; where the helmet, shield and spear of Eastern civilization met the sling and arrow and desperate courage of determined barbarism. Nor the tide of battle always in one direction. Indications of the sternness and duration of the conflict are still visible all along the line. These are seen in walled and fortified towns, in grim and solemn convents, in old monasteries and castles, in massive walls and gates, in huge iron bolts and heavily barred windows, and fortifications built after the wisdom of the wary eagle on lofty crags and clefts of rocks and mountain fastnesses, hard to assault and easy to detend. These all tell of the troublous times in which they were erected, when homes were castles, palaces were prisons, and men held their lives and property by the might of the strongest. Here met the old and the new, and here was fought out the irrepressible conflict between European civilization^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: cvilization. and barbarism.

As we move eastward and southward between these two great cities the traveller will observe an increase of black hair, black eyes, full lips and dark complexions. He will observe a Southern and Eastern style of dress; gay colors, startling jewelry, and an outdoor free and easy movement of the people.

I have seen it alleged that the habit of carrying the burdens on the head is a mark of inferiority peculiar to the negro. It was not necessary that I should go to Europe to be able to refute this allegation, yet I was glad to see, both in Italy and the South of France, that this custom is about as common there as it is among the dusky daughters of the Nile. Even if originated by the negro, it has been well copied by some of the best types of the Caucasian. In any case it may be welcomed as a proof of a common brotherhood.

In other respects I saw in France and Italy evidences of a common identity with the African. In Africa the people congregate at night in their towns and villages, while their living is made by tilling the soil outside. We saw few farm houses in the South of France. Beautiful fields and vineyards are there, but few farm houses. The village has taken the place of the farm house, and the peasants sometimes go several miles from their villages to work their vineyards. They may be seen in gangs in the morning, going to their work, and returning in gangs in the evening from their work. Men and women share this toil alike and one of the pleasantest sights to be seen, in passing along, are the groups of these people, seated along the roadside and taking their frugal meal of brown bread and sour wine, as cheerful and happy as if

their fare was sumptuous and their raiment purple and fine linen. This sight, like many others, is a gratifying evidence that^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: gratifying that the poor often get as much happiness out of life as do the rich and great, and perhaps more. American ideas however, would be unreconciled and shocked by the part borne by the women in the labors of the field. If an equal share in the hardships of life is desired by women, the battle for it has been already fought and won by the women of the Old World. Like men they go to the field, bright and early in the morning, and like the men they return to their villages late in the somber shades of evening, with faces browned by the sun and hands hardened by the hoe.

Leaving Paris and passing the famous grounds of Fontainebleau,^†Located about forty miles southwest of Paris, the palace of Fontainebleau was constructed in the mid-sixteenth century by the French king Francis I. The palace was highly regarded by subsequent French monarchs and the Emperors Napoleon I and III on account of its extensive grounds and richly decorated interiors. John Murray (Firm), , 15th ed. (London, 1881), 13-17. Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Fontainbleau. one is reminded that they are no longer as of yore, the proud abode of royalty. Like all else of imperial and monarchical possessions, the palace here, has, under the Republic,^†Douglass refers to France's Third Republic, founded in 1870. Gordon Wright, , 5th ed. (New York, 1995), 205-22. passed from the hands of princes to the possession of the people. It is still kept in excellent condition. Its grounds conform in the strictest sense to French taste and skill, the main feature of which is perfect uniformity. Its trees and its walks conform to straight lines. The plumbit^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: plummit. and pruning hook are employed with remorseless severity. No branch of a tree is permitted to be found longer than another, and the hedge seems to be trimmed by rule, compass and square. But little liberty is allowed to nature in direction. Her crooked ways must be made straight, her bent forms made vertical; high must be made low, and all be cut down to a dead level. Her houses, gardens, roads and bridges are all more or less subject to this rule. As you see them in one part of the country, so you see them in another.

Dijon,^†Douglass refers to the vineyards of the Côte d'Or surrounding Dijon in eastern France. That city was the capital of the independent duchy of Burgundy, which France annexed in the fourteenth century. Murray, , 21-26; Alex Lichine, (New York, 1951), 96-100. so closely associated with the names of BossuetBossuet, Jacques-Bénigne

Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1627-1704), Roman Catholic bishop and orator, was born in Dijon, France. Considered one of the most gifted preachers of his time, Bossuet delivered hundreds of sermons, many of which were published and read widely across Europe. He acted as court preacher at the court of Louis XIV and came to advocate for the divine right of the monarch. During the final decades of his life Bossuet worked tirelessly to reconcile Protestantism and Catholicism within France. Andrew Lossky, Louis XIV and the French Monarchy (New Brunswick, N.J., 1994), 194, 198, 284-85; New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2:548-51. and St. BernardBernard, of Clairvaux, Saint

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) established a monastery at Clairvaux near Dijon, France, in 1115. He was the primary founder of the reformist Cistercian Order. He was chosen by Pope Eugenius III to preach the call for the Second Crusade, and he received considerable blame for its failure. A famed theologian and staunch defender of the Catholic Church against the encroachment of secular rulers, Bernard's treatises and books gained a wide readership across Europe. He was canonized in 1174. G. R. Evans, Bernard of Clairvaux (New York, 2000), 3-21; M. Basil Pennington, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux: Studies Commemorating the Eighth Centenary of His Canonization (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1977), vii-xiii. ;^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Benard. the center, also, of the finest vineyards and the finest wines in France, and the ancient seat of the great dukes of Burgundy, traces of whose wealth and power are still visible in what remains of the ducal palace and the ancient castle whose walls when a prison, enclosed the restless MirabeauMirabeau, Gabriel-Honoré, comte de

Gabriel-Honore Mirabeau (1749-91), French author and statesman, was imprisoned for the attempted murder of his wife's lover in the Chateaux d'If in 1774. He was later transferred and held at the castle Douglass mentions, the Chateaux de Joux at Dijon, but gained release in the spring of 1776. Mirabeau's literary and political career was not harmed by this incarceration. During the French Revolution he secretly negotiated for the restoration of the monarchy, but failed to produce an agreement, and his reputation was damaged once his association with Louis XVI became public knowledge. Evarts S. Scudder, Mirabeau (London, 1935), 26-32; Barbara Luttrell, Mirabeau (Carbondale, Ill., 1990), 38-44. , takes a deep hold upon the interest of the traveller. Its venerable and picturesque churches, in a chapel of one of which is a black image of the Virgin Mary,^†One of the most famous of the black Madonnas is located in the Notre-Dame chapel in Dijon, France. Constructed in the third quarter of the twelfth century, this depiction of Mary is without the Christ child. It is believed that the face of the Madonna was blackened in the sixteenth century, as an earlier depiction shows a light complexion. Ilene H. Forsyth, (Princeton, N.J., 1972), 189-90. about which one might philosophize, leave upon the mind an impression very different from the one felt on reaching Lyons,^†France's second-largest city in the late nineteenth century, Lyons was a major manufacturing center, especially for silk products. Cohen, , 2: 1814-15. that center of the greatest silk industry in France. The main feature of our interest in the latter town, aside from its historical associations, was the Heights of Fourvieres,^† Crowned by churches and military fortifications, the Heights of Fourviere along the west bank of the Saone River possesses a commanding view of the city of Lyons and its neighboring countryside. Murray, , 53, 60. Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Fourvieres.from which one of the grandest views of the surrounding country can in clear weather be had. We were conducted to this immense height by a kind-hearted woman who seemed to know at once that we were strangers and in need of a guide. She volunteered to serve without promise of reward. She would not

touch a penny for her service. She was evidently a good Catholic and her kindness made even more impression upon us than the sonorous bells of her city. We saw in Lyons too, a grand French military display, twenty thousand men in procession, rank upon rank with their glittering steel, and splendid uniform, with all the pomp and circumstance of glorious war, a spectacle at once brilliant and sad to behold. Soldiers and slaughter go together.

Avignon,^†In the period 1305-78, seven popes resided in the French city of Avignon in the Rhone River valley. After Pope Urban VI restored Rome as the seat of the papacy, two more Avignon-based prelates contested the spiritual authority of their Roman rivals until 1423. Murray, , 129-35; Ferm, , 49. more than seventy years the home of the Popes and the scene of pontifical magnificence,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: pontifical and magnificence. powerfully impresses the mind. Five ecclesiastical dignitaries at the least, according to history, were here consecrated to the service of the church. Avignon especially illustrates what I have said of the general character of the country through which we passed on our way to the Eternal City.^†The sobriquet "Eternal City" has been attached to Rome since the first century BCE. Morris and Morris, , 206. It is surrounded by a wall flanked by thirty-nine towers and is entered through four great gates. Though this wall is twelve feet high and is thus flanked by towers, and though it was doubtless at one time a means of defence, it would be nothing against the projectiles of modem warfare. Like many other things it has survived the use for which it was erected. The object of chief interest in Avignon, its palace of the Popes, is certainly a very striking feature. In its appointments, it justifies the German proverb "That they who have the cross will bless themselves." Situated on an eminence proudly overlooking^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: over looking. the city and its surroundings, the grounds large and beautiful, the Popes who resided there no doubt found it a very pleasant abode. In looking at the situation of the palace, it was evident to me, that Catholics have long known how to select locations for their churches and other buildings. They are masters of geographical and topographical conditions as well as of things ecclesiastical. This famous old building was not only a palace, or a strictly religious institution but it was at once a palace and a prison. Many a poor soul is said to have endured within its walls the agony of a trial and the still greater one of torture for opinion's^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: opinions. sake. If it was a place of prayer it was also a place of punishment. The holy men who ruled at that day could be lions as well as lambs. In this building were many halls: halls of judgment; halls of inquisition;^†Aimed at combating heresy, the Inquisition was a special permanent tribunal established by Pope Gregory IX in the thirteenth century. He charged the Dominican Order with the duty of carrying out the Inquisition using legal practices common to the time. Judging only heresy, the Dominicans used local authorities to establish a tribunal to prosecute heretics. Pope Paul III established a system of tribunals that would later become known as the Roman Inquisition because it revived penalties based on Roman law, including many horrendous forms of torture. Under Paul III's papacy the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition was established, and a handbook appeared in 1578, spelling out that the penalties resulting from inquisition convictions were meant to promote the public good. As a result of the Vatican's domination of the central Italian states, the Roman Inquisition persisted there until the mid-1800s although it declined earlier elsewhere. , 7:485-92. halls of torture and halls of banqueting. In the day of its palatial glory, religion stood no such nonsense as freedom of thought. Believe with the church or else be accursed; accept our faith or be hurled among the damned, was the stern voice of religion at that time. Men like Robert G. IngersollIngersoll, Robert Green

Best remembered for giving James G. Blaine his nickname, the "plumed knight," in a nominating speech at the 1876 Republican convention, Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-99) was also a well-known advocate of atheism. Born in Dresden, New York, he accompanied his family to Illinois in 1843. After briefly teaching school, he practiced law together with his brother Ebon Ingersoll in Peoria. In 1860 Ingersoll was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Congress. He served as a colonel in the Union army during the Civil War and at the time converted to the Republican party. From 1867 to 1869 Ingersoll held the appointed office of Illinois attorney general. Douglass first met Ingersoll in the late 1860s when he took Douglass into his home as a guest after all Peoria hotels had refused him a room. Ingersoll had a lucrative legal career in addition to receiving record fees for lectures on "free thought" and other topics. A powerful and witty stump speaker, he was a major weapon in the Republican oratorical arsenal in elections during the 1880s and 1890s. His condemnation of the Supreme Court ruling overturning the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was consistent with his long history of opposition to racial and religious discrimination. C[larence] H. Cramer, Royal Bob: The Life of Robert G. Ingersoll (Indianapolis, 1952); ACAB, 3:348. ^†Douglass alludes to Ingersoll's well-publicized atheist beliefs. John R. McKivigan, (Ithaca, N.Y., 2008), 148-50, 179. would then have had short lives. Until the days of Louis NapoleonNapoleon III, Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte

Born Louis-Napoleon, Napoleon III (1808-73) was the nephew of Napoleon I and son of Napoleon I's brother, Louis, King of Holland, and Hortense de Beauharnais, the daughter of Napoleon I's first wife, Josephine. After the death of his older brother and of the only son of Napoleon I, he came to think of himself as the heir to the Napoleonic regime. He was elected president of the Second Republic of France in December 1848 and declared himself emperor in December 1852. His reign was marked by a volatile relationship with Britain, which was tied to an assassination attempt in Paris on 14 January 1858. Orchestrated by Dr. Simon Bernard, a French exile in London, and attempted by the Italian Felice Orsini, two unnamed Italians, and one Spaniard, the assassins threw explosive bombs at the imperial ranch on the rue Lepelletier. Napoleon III was deposed in 1870 after leading his country to defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and died in exile in England. Roman Golicz, "Napoleon III, Lord Palmerston and the Entente Cordiale," History Today, 50:10-17 (December 2000); Roger Price, "Napoleon III," History Review, 45:14-18 (March 2003). , the implements of torture in this old building were exhibited to travellers, but not so now. Cold and cruel as was this Napoleon, he was ashamed to have these terrible instruments exhibited to the eye of modem civilization. Guilty as he was of stamping out the liberties of the Republic

which he betrayed, he had too much consideration for the humanity of the nineteenth century to give it the shock of a sight of these fiendish instruments. There are however, to be seen within these walls, dark rooms, narrow passages, huge locks, heavy bars and bolts; enough of the ghosts of dead and buried fanaticism, superstition and bigotry to cause a man of modem times to shudder. Looking into the open and stony mouth of the dungeon into which heretics were hurled and out of which none was^†Editorial Emendation: were. allowed to come alive, it required no effort of the imagination to create visions of the inquisition, to see the terror stricken faces, the tottering forms and pleading tears of the accused, and the saintly satisfaction of the inquisitors while ridding the world of the representatives of unbelief and misbelief.

It is hard to think that men could from innocent motives thus punish their fellows, but such is, no doubt, the fact. They were conscientious and felt that they were doing righteous service unto the Lord. They believed literally in cutting off right hands and plucking out right eyes.^†Douglass alludes to Matt. 5:29-30. Heaven and hell were alike under their control. They believed that they had the keys and they lived up to their convictions.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: convictinns. They could smile when they heard bones crack in the stocks and saw the maiden's flesh torn from her bones. It is only the best things that serve the worst perversions. Many pious souls to-day hate the negro while they think they love the Lord. A difference of religion, in the days of this old palace, did for a man what a difference of color does for him in some quarters, at this day, and though light has not dawned upon the color question as upon the freedom of thought, it is to be hoped that it soon will. This old palace is no longer the home of saints, but the home of soldiers. It is no longer the stronghold of the church, but the stronghold of the state. The roll of the drum has taken the place of the bell for prayer. Martial^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Marshal. law has taken the place of ecclesiastical law and there is no doubt which is the more^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: most. merciful.

Though Avignon awakened in us a train of gloomy thoughts. we still think of it as a charming old city. We went there with much curiosity and left it with much reluctance. It would be a pleasure to visit the old city again. No American tourist should go through the South of France without tarrying awhile^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: aw hile. within the walls of Avignon and no one should visit that city without going through the old papal palace.

One of the oldest and most fascinating old towns met with, in a trip from Paris to Marseilles, is that of Aries. Its streets are the narrowest, queerest and crookedest of any yet seen in our journey. It speaks of Greek as well as of Roman civilization. The bits of marble picked up in the streets show that they have been under the skillful hands either of the Greek or Roman workmen.

The old amphitheater,^†The most famous artifact of the history of Arles as the principal city of southern France in the time of the Roman Empire is an imposing oval shaped amphitheater, two stories high and measuring 459 feet by 341 feet, built during the reign of Emperor Titus in the first century. Murray, , 155-59. a miniature Coliseum,^†The Coliseum, or Flavian Amphitheater, in Rome. where men fought with wild beasts amid the applauding shouts of ladies and gentlemen of the period, though used no longer for its old time purposes, is in good condition and may yet stand for a thousand years. We were shown through its various apartments where the lions were kept and the dens out of which they came to the arena, where, lashed to fury, they waged their bloody contests with men. A sight of this old theater of horrors, once strangely enough the place of amusement to thousands, makes one thankful that his lot is cast in our humane and enlightened age. There is however, enough of the wild beast left in our modern human life to modify the pride of our enlightenment and humanity and to remind us ofour kinship with the people who once delighted in the brutality and cruelty practiced in this amphitheater. In this respect our newspapers tell us a sad story. They would not be filled with the details of prize fights and discussions of the brutal perfections of prize fighters if such things did not please the brutal proclivities of a large class of readers.

Another interesting object in Aries, is a long line of granite coffins, buried here for ages and discovered at last by excavations for a Railroad just outside of the town. These houses of the dead are well preserved but the dust and ashes, once their tenants, are lost and scattered to the winds.

An hour or two after leaving this quaint and sinuous old town, we were confronted at Marseilles,^†France's major Mediterranean port, Marseilles is a seventy-five-mile train ride from Avignon. Cohen, , 2:1899. by the blue and tideless waters of the Mediterranean, a sea charming in itself and made more charming by the poetry and eloquence it has inspired Its deep blue waters sparkling under a summer sun and a half tropical sky, fanned by balmy breezes from Africa golden sand, was in fine contrast with the snow covered mountains and plains we had just left hehind us. Only a few hours before reaching Marseilles we were in mid-winter, but now all at once we were greeted with the lemon and the orange, the olive and the oleander, all flourishing under the open sky. The transition was so sudden, and so agreeable and so completely in contrast, that it seemed more like magic than like reality. Not only was the climate different, but the people and everything else seemed different. There was a visible blending of the orient with the occident. The sails of the ships, the rigging of the smaller vessels, the jib-like main sails,^†A triangular-shaped staysail stretching from the outer edge of the jibboom to the foretop of the masthead in a large ship, forming the ship's principal sail. and the general appearance of all, resembled the marine pictures of the East and made the whole scene novel, picturesque and attractive. A general view of that far-famed city made plainly visible in Marseilles the results of large wealth and active commerce, as expressed in the far-reaching streets, large warehouses,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: ware-ho houses. and fine residences. We however cared less for all this than for Château^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Chateau. d'If,^†Editorial Emendation: D'If. the old prison anchored in the sea and around which the genius of Alexander Dumas has woven such a network^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: net-work.

of enchantment that a desire to visit it is irresistible;^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: irresistable. hence, the first morning after our arrival Mrs. Douglass and myself, hired one of the numerous boats in the harbor and employed an old man to row us out to the enchanted scene. The morning^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: mornin. was clear, bright and balmy. The distance was so great and the air so warm that the old man of the sea was quite ready to have me take a hand at the oars. After a long pull and a strong pull as the sailors say, we reached the weird old rock from which Edmond Dantes^†Douglass refers to the mulatto French novelist and dramatist Alexandre Dumas (1802-70). Edmond Dantes, the hero of Dumas's novel , is portrayed as imprisoned in the real-life Chateau d'lf prison off the coast of Marseilles. Murray, , 165. was hurled. The reality of the scene was not of course up to the point as painted by DumasDumas, Alexandre

Alexandre Dumas (1802-70), a French novelist and playwright, was one of the pioneers of the Romantic theater in France. During his career, he published more than 200 works of fiction. His best-known novels include The Three Musketeers (1844) and The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-45). Rullin lists him because Dumas's grandmother had been a black slave on the West Indian island of Santo Domingo. Jacques Barzun, ed., European Writers: The Romantic Century, 7 vols. (New York, 1985), 6:723-24; Frank N. Magill, ed., Great Lives from History: Renaissance to 1900 Series, 5 vols. (Pasadena, Calif., 1989), 2:665-69); Drabble, Oxford Companion to English Literature, 294. . But we were glad to have seen it disrobed of the enchantment that distance and genius have^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: has. thrown around it. It is a queer old place, surrounded by the sea, lone and desolate, standing boldly and high against the horizon, and the blue waves coming from afar dashing themselves against its sharp and flinty sides, made for us a picture most striking and not soon to be forgotten.

On our way along the far-famed^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: farfamed. Riviera^†The Riviera stretches along the coast between the southern ranges of the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea. Extending from La Spezia, Italy, to Hyeres, France, the Riviera is famous for a mild climate, scenic beaches, and many resorts and hotels. It has been an important tourist destination since the midnineteenth century. Cohen, , 3:2623. to Genoa,^†Genoa, the principal commercial town and port in Italy at the time of Douglass's visit. Karl Baedeker, , 7th ed. (Leipzig, 1886), 78, 90-102; Cohen, , 1:1094, 2:1952. once the city of sea kings and merchant princes, we. like most travellers, tarried awhile at Nice,^†Nice is a tourist destination and resort on the French Riviera, an attractive destination due to its mild climate. Baedeker, , 105; Cohen, , 2:2180. that favorite resort of health and pleasure and one beautiful for situation. The outlook from it on the sea is enchanting, but no one should visit Nice with a lean purse, and a man with a full one will be wise not to tarry long. It was the most expensive place we found abroad.

Genoa, the birth-place of Christopher ColumbusColombo, Cristoforo

The navigator and explorer Cristoforo Colombo (1451-1506) was the son of a weaver from a village near Genoa. John Murray (Firm), Handbook for Travellers in Northern Italy, 15th ed. (London, 1883), 88. , the man who saw by an eye of faith the things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, is a grand old city, with its multitude of churches, numerous narrow streets, many colored buildings and splendid palaces. Looking out upon the sea I recalled to mind one of the finest pieces of word painting I ever heard from the lips of the late Wendell PhillipsPhillips, Wendell

Boston-born and Harvard-educated Wendell Phillips (1811-84) ranked second only to Garrison in influence in the American Anti-Slavery Society in the 1840s and 1850s. Bored with the legal profession and influenced by his antislavery fiancee, Ann Terry Greene, Phillips dedicated himself to abolitionism beginning in 1837. A highly gifted orator, Phillips was in demand as a lecturer even in nonabolitionist circles. Besides abolition, Phillips championed woman suffrage, prohibition, penal reform, Indian rights, and legislative protection for workers. When Garrison retired from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1865, Phillips assumed the post and led abolitionists until passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. James Brewer Stewart, Wendell Phillips: Liberty's Hero (Baton Rouge, La., 1986); Irving H. Bartlett, Wendell Phillips: Brahmin Radical (Boston, 1961); DAB, 14:546-47. .^†Douglass makes minor errors in quoting the speech of Wendell Phillips on 10 May 1842 at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass probably quotes the passage by Wendell Phillips from a recent biography of that abolitionist by George Lowell Austin. , 20 May 1842; Austin, , 422-23; Charles L. Hincke, "Wendell Phillips," , 48:489 (December 1912). Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Philips. He visited^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: bisited. this city fifty years ago. He was then a young man fresh from his marriage tour of the continent of^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: continentof. Europe. He was speaking on the platform of the old Tabernacle^†Editorial Emendation: tabernacle in. on Broadway, New York, and criticising the conduct of our Government in refusing to unite with England and France to suppress the African slave-trade. While in Genoa, the correspondence between our Government and that of France and England was going on. General CassCass, Lewis

Lewis Cass (1782-1866), Democratic politician and onetime presidential candidate, served in the Ohio legislature, held a series of federal administrative appointments, and attained the rank of major general of volunteers for Ohio during the War of 1812. For his distinguished service during the war, he was appointed governor of Michigan territory in 1813. Additional federal appointments by Andrew Jackson included secretary of war in 1831 and minister to France in 1836. Cass served six years as minister beginning 4 October 1836. During his tenure in France, Cass penned a series of articles published collectively as France, Its King, Court, and Government; and Three Hours at St. Cloud (1841). In one of the articles he criticized the British government for stopping American ships suspected of illegally transporting African slaves. Cass argued that the British practice of impressment was a greater evil than the slave trade. He warned that the United States would be prepared to defend its maritime rights by military means if necessary. Upon his return to the United States, Cass was elected to the Senate by the Michigan legislature in 1845. Considered a party regular, he advocated a strong nationalism, supported Jacksonian policies in the West, and believed in limiting the use of federal power in domestic matters. Following the conservative line, Cass opposed limiting the spread of slavery through the Wilmot Proviso, and instead supported popular sovereignty as a solution to sectional tensions. At the Democratic national convention held in Baltimore in 1848, Cass received his party's presidential nomination on the fourth ballot. Campaigning on a conservative platform of limited government, acceptance of slavery and its possible expansion, and resistance to centralization, he lost to Whig challenger Zachary Taylor. Andrew C. McLaughlin, Lewis Cass (Boston, 1892); Frank B. Woodford, Lewis Cass: The Last Jeffersonian (New Brunswick, N.J., 1950); Willard Carl Klunder, Lewis Cass and the Politics of Moderation (Kent, Ohio, 1996), 94-95, 100-101; ACAB 1:551-53; NCAB, 5:3-5; DAB, 3:562-64; ANB, 4:546-547. who represented us at the court of Louis PhilippeLouis Philippe (King of the French)

The last king of France, Louis Philippe (1773-1850), ruled from 1830 to 1848. He was exiled during the reign of Napoleon I and spent those years traveling, including in the United States during 1796-97. A member of the cadet branch of the house of Bourbon, he succeeded to the throne in 1830 following the ousting of Charles X in the so-called July Revolution. He was known for avoiding outward appearances of wealth and lavishness. He abdicated to his grandson Philippe during the February 1848 revolution and fled to Great Britain. The National Assembly refused to accept Philippe as monarch and instead elected Louis Napoleon Bonaparte president. Louis Philippe died in Claremont, Surrey, England, on 26 August 1850. Louis Philippe, Diary of My Travels in America, trans. Stephen Becker (New York, 1977), 1-8; T. E. B. Howarth, Citizen-King: The Life of Louis Philippe, King of the French (London, 1961). ,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Philip. had placed our Government on the wrong side of this question. In this very city standing perhaps on these very heights^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: height. upon which l stood looking off to sea, Mr. Phillips saw our well known ship of war the "Ohio,"^†This seventy-four-gun U.S. Navy frigate was built in New York City and launched in 1820. Commodore Isaac Hull used the as his flagship while commanding the Mediterranean Squadron in the late 1830s. The saw considerable action in the Gulf of Mexico during the U.S. conflict with Mexico and then was sent to become the flagship of the Pacific Squadron in the war's later phases. The Navy retired the aging vessel in 1883. Howard I. Chapelle, (New York, 1949), 308, 313-14. lying in the harbor, and thus described^†Editorial Emendation: describes. the feeling with which he contemplated that ship in view^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: invview. of our attitude towards other nations in regard to the slave-trade. With a face expressive of indignation, shame and scorn, Phillips said, "As I stood upon^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: uponn. the shores of Genoa and saw floating upon the placid waters of the Mediterranean our beautiful American ship,

the 'Ohio,' with masts tapering proportionately aloft and an eastern sun reflecting her graceful form upon the waters, attracting the view of the multitude upon the shore, it was enough to pride any American heart to think himself an American;^†From June 1839 until July 1841 Phillips toured Europe with his ailing wife, but no published accounts of his 1842 speeches contain the quotation in question. Oscar Sherwin, (New York, 1958), 107-21. but when I thought that in all probability the first time that gallant ship would gird on her gorgeous apparel and wake from her sides her dormant thunders it would be in defence of the African slave-trade, I could but blush and hang my head to think myself an American."

This fine passage in the speech of Wendell Phillips uttered when I was new from slavery, was one element in my desire to^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: desireto. see Genoa and to look out upon the sea from the same height upon which he stood. At the time of hearing it I had no idea that I should ever realize this desire.

Like most Italian cities, Genoa upholds the reputation of its country in respect of art. The old masters in painting and sculpture, and their name is legion, are still largely represented in the palaces of the merchant princes of this city. One of its singular features is the abundance of fresco work^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: frescoe work. seen on both the inside and the outside of buildings. One feels emphatically the presence and power of the Roman Catholic Church in the multitude of shrines seen everywhere and containing pictures of apostles or saints, or the Virgin Mother and the infant Jesus. But of all the interesting objects collected in the Museum of Genoa,^†Genoa was a city with a wealth of art collections from old masters. Douglass probably refers to the three museums which collectively make up Genoa's Musei di Strada Nuova, which are all located on one street, Via Garibaldi. Baedeker, Northern Italy, 78, 90-102: Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:094, 2: 1952. the one that touched me closest was the violin that had belonged to, and been played upon by PaganiniPaganini, Niccolò

Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) was an Italian violinist , the greatest musical genius of his time. This violin is treasured in a glass case and beyond the reach of careless fingers. a thing to be seen and not handled.^†The internationally renowned violinist and composer Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840) bequeathed his favorite instrument, a Guarneri del Gesu 1742, to his native Genoa, where it was exhibited at the Palazzo del Municipio. Stanley Sadie, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 20 vols. (London, 1980), 14:86-91. There are some things and places made sacred by their uses and by the events with which they are associated, especially those which have in any measure changed the current of human taste, thought and life, or which have revealed new powers and triumphs of the human soul. The pen with which Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, the Sword worn by Washington through the war of the Revolution, though of the same material and form of other pens and swords have an individual character, and stir in the minds of men peculiar sensations. So this old violin, made after the pattern of others and perhaps not more perfect in its construction than hundreds seen elsewhere, detained me longer and interested me more than anything else in the Museum of Genoa. Emerson says, "It is not the thing said, but the man behind it, that is important."^†Douglass paraphrases Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote: "It makes a great difference to the force of any sentence, whether there be a man behind it, or no," in his essay "Goethe, or the Writer" (1850). Emerson, Collected Works, 4:162. So it was not this old violin, but the marvellous man behind it, the man who played on it and played as never man played before, and thrilled the hearts of thousands by his playing, that made it a precious object in my eyes. Owing perhaps to my love of music and of the violin in particular, I would have given more for that old violin of wood, horse hair and

catgut than for any one of the long line of pictures I saw before me. I desired it on account of the man who had played upon it—the man who revealed powers and possibilities as they were never known before. This was his old violin, his favorite instrument, the companion of his toils and triumphs, the solace of his private hours, the minister to his soul in his battles with sin and sorrow. It had delighted thousands. Men had listened to it with admiration and wonder. It had filled the largest halls of Europe with a concord of sweet sounds. It had even stirred the dull hearts of Counts,^†Editorial Emendation: Courts. Kings and Princes and revealed to them their kinship to common mortals as perhaps no other instrument ever had. It was with some difficulty that I moved away from this old violin of Paganini.

Never to be forgotten by one who has enjoyed it is a morning at Pisa,^†Located in the central Italian region of Tuscany. Pisa is an important commercial and industrial city. Pisa was a powerful independent maritime republic from the ninth through eleventh centuries but was overtaken by Genoa in 1284. Janet Ross and Nelly Erichsen, The Story of Pisa (London, 1909), 189-96; Baedeker, Northern Italy 353; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2446. the city of the leaning tower; a city renowned in Italian history. Though still possessing many imposing buildings, like many other once famous places its glory has departed. Its week days resemble our Sundays, so silent and dead are its streets. Its grand old cathedral, Baptistry, and Leaning Tower are the features that most attract the^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: attractthe.. attention of the tourist.^†Pisans largely rebuilt their cathedral, or Duomo, after a fire in 1595 but retained the building's original eleventh-century Romanesque design. The most famous landmark of Pisa is the Leaning Tower, a 179-foot-high bell tower constructed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which started to tilt during its construction due to ground settling. Construction of the bellshaped Baptistery of Pisa began in 1153 and continued intermittently for more than two centuries. It is located on the same square as the city's cathedral and leaning tower. Ross and Erichsen, Story of Pisa, 25, 107-08, 155-96. The Baptistry is especially interesting for its acoustic properties. The human voice heard here has imparted to it the richest notes of the organ and goes on repeating and prolonging itself, increasing in volume and ranging higher and higher in ascent, till lost in whispers almost divine at the very top of the dome. But no American sensitive and responsive to what is old, grand and historic, with his face towards the east and the city of Rome^†Rome was formed from several unified villages about 500 BCE. Citizens built the city into a republic that survived for four centuries. Governed by a senate during the republic and later by emperors. Rome was the center of the vast Roman Empire until its division into East and West in the fourth century. As toleration for Christianity evolved within the empire, Rome became the center of religion and the prime location of the papacy. When the Italian kingdom formed in 1862, Rome was not included, but remained under the control of Napoleon III. Italian forces captured the city in 1871, following the fall of Napoleon and made it the national capital. Karl Baedeker, Italy: Handbook for Travellers: Second Part, Central Italy and Rome, 9th ed. (Leipzig,1886 ), 122-32: Emerson, "Scholarly Edition of the Grand Tour Diaries," 56-57n: Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 3:2639-40. only a few hours away will tarry long even in this fine old city of Pisa. Like the mysterious lodestone^†Editorial Emendation: load-stone. to steel, he is attracted by an invisible power and the attraction increases with every step of his approach. All that one has ever read, heard, felt, thought or imagined concerning Rome, comes thronging upon mind and heart, and makes one eager and impatient to be there. The privilege of daylight was denied us on our arrival, and our first glimpse of Rome was by the light of moon and stars. More unfortunate still,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: stil. we were landed in the new part of the city which contradicted all our dreams of the Eternal City. To all appearances we might have been dropped down at any railway station in Paris, London or New York, or at some of the grand hotels at Saratoga or Coney Island.^†The site of health spas since the early nineteenth century, Saratoga Springs, New^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: new. York, attracted thousands of visitors each summer even before railroads connected the rural community to the major eastern cities in the 1830s. Saratoga Springs was famed for the lavish accommodations found at such establishments as the United States Hotel, the Grand Union, and Congress Hall. The first hotel at Coney Island, at the southernmost end of Brooklyn, New York, opened in 1829. The construction of a railroad from Manhattan in the 1870s allowed Coney Island to draw a wealthy clientele to expensive resort hotels at Manhattan Beach and Brighton Beach as well as a multitude of middle and working-class visitors to its many other amusements. Hugh Bradley, (New York, 1940), 54-66, 89-91, 115-62; John F. Kasson, (New York, 1978), 29-33. At this station were long rows of carriages, coaches, omnibuses^†A four-wheeled public vehicle for carrying passengers.and other vehicles, with their usual accompaniment of drivers, porters and runners, clamorous for passengers for their several hotels. All was more like an American town of the latest pattern than a city whose foundations were laid nearly a thousand years before the flight of Joseph and Mary into Egypt.^†The Etruscan invasion of the area where Rome stands led to the unification of local villages into a city-state. Romans overthrew the invading Etruscans around 500 BCE, establishing a republic that lasted for four centuries. Baedeker, , 122-32; Cohen, , 3:2639-40. We were disappointed^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: dissappointed. by this intensely modern aspect. It was not the Rome we

came to see. But the disappointment^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: dissappointment. was temporary, and happily enough, the first impression heightened the effect of the subsequent happy realization of what we had expected. With the light of day, the Eternal City, seated on its throne of seven hills, fully gave us all it had promised, banished every feeling of disappointment^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: dissappointment. and filled our minds with ever-increasing wonder and amazement. In all directions were disclosed those indications of her ancient greatness for which we were looking, and of her fitness to be the seat of the most powerful empire that man had ever seen;—truly the Mistress of the known world and, for a thousand years, the recognized metropolis of the Christian faith and the head, still, of the largest organized church in the world. Here can be seen together the symbols of both Christian and pagan Rome: the temples of discarded gods and those of the accepted Savior of the world—the Son of the Virgin Mary. Empires, principalities, powers and dominions have perished: altars and their gods have mingled with the dust; a religion which made men virtuous in peace and invincible in war, has perished or been supplanted, yet the Eternal City itself remains. It speaks from the spacious Forum^†The principal site for administrative, judicial, and religious activities in ancient Rome, the Forum was lined with temples, courts, statues, and commemorative arches. The Italian government began systematic efforts for excavation and preservation of the ruins of the Roman Forum in the 1870s. John Murray (Firm), , 13th ed. (London, 1881), 80-89. yet studded with graceful but time worn columns, where CiceroCicero, Marcus Tullius

Statesman, orator, and philosopher, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE) delivered a series of speeches in the Roman Senate in 63 BCE against the insurrectionary conspiracy of the disgruntled patrician Lucius Sergius Cataline (108-62 BCE), who died in battle the following year. Cicero's orations against the Roman soldier and statesman Marcus Antonius (82-30 BCE) led to his murder by the latter. Torsten Petersson, Cicero: A Biography (New York, 1963), 196-200; Michael Avi Yonah and Israel Shatzman, Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Classical World (1975; New York, 1996), 47, 114, 120-22. poured out his burning eloquence against Catiline^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Cataline. and against Antony, for which latter speech he lost his head; from the Palatine,^†The Palatine Hill is located on the south side of the Roman Forum. Originally believed to have consisted of two summits of almost equal height, the Palatine was probably altered through the construction of buildings and fortifications along the hilltop. Baedeker, , 314-15; Christian Huelsen, (New York, 1928), 59-65. from whose summit the palaces of the Caesars^†The first Roman emperor, Augustus, constructed a palace on the Palatine Hill near the Forum. His successors also built residences on that hill until it eventually became a crowded complex of imperial homes, gardens, and temples. Murray, , 104-05. overlooked a large part of the ancient city, and from the Pantheon,^†A particularly well-preserved temple dedicated to the worship of all the gods, the Roman Pantheon dates back to the third consulate of Marcus Agrippa in 27 BCE. Murray, , 151-55. built twenty-seven years before the songs of the angels were heard on the plains of Bethlehem,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Bethleham. and of which ByronByron, George Gordon Byron, Lord

George Gordon Noel Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824), British Romantic poet, authored many influential works, including Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-18) and Don Juan (1819-24). Born in Scotland. he inherited the English estate and title of his great-uncle Lord Byron in 1798, when he was ten years old. While at Trinity College in 1806, he published his first collection of poems. In 1809 he assumed his seat in the House of Lords and anonymously published the satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. Byron gained wide popularity with the publication of his narrative poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Often quoted by Douglass, the generally autobiographic poem tells of the adventures of a disillusioned young man who seeks distraction in foreign lands. The narrative struck a chord with many disheartened by the lengthy series of revolutions and Napoleonic wars of the early nineteenth century. The title "childe" is derived from the medieval term for a young man eligible for knighthood. Following estrangement from his wife in 1816, Byron left Britain never to return. For the remainder of his life he traveled, settling in Italy and eventually Greece, where he died in April 1824. Fiona MacCarthy, Byron: Life and Legend (New York, 2002); DNB, 584-607. says,

"Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime,
Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods.
... spared^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: ##### spared. and blessed by time.
Looking tranquility. while falls or nods
Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods
His way through thorns to ashes—glorious dome!
Shalt thou not last'? Time's scythe and tyrants' rods
Shiver upon thee—sanctuary and home
Of art and piety—Pantheon! Pride of Rome!"^†Douglass quotes Canto IV, stanza 146, of (1818). Byron, , 2:173.

Though two thousand years have rolled over it, and though the beautiful marble which once adorned and protected its exterior has been torn off and made to serve other and inferior purposes, there, speaking to us of ages past, it stands, erect and strong, and may stand yet a thousand years longer. Its walls, twenty feet thick, give few signs of decay. More than any building I saw in Rome, it tells of the thoroughness of the Romans in everything thought it worth their while to undertake or to be or to do.

Hardly less indicative of their character did we find the ruins of those stupendous Baths of Titus, Diocletian and Caracalla,^†Among the largest and best-preserved buildings of ancient Rome are its baths or thermae. In particular, the Baths of Diocletian, Caracalla, and Titus impressed nineteenth-century tourists because of the ruins' massive columns, statues of athletes, and accommodations for thousands of bathers at one time. Murray, , 128-35. in whose spacious apartments, designed to fulfill every conceivable condition of ease and luxury, one needs not to consult Gibbon^†Edward Gibbon, , 6 vols. (London, 1776-88). for the causes of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. The lap of luxury and the pursuit of ease and pleasure are death to manly courage, energy, will and enterprise.

None of the splendid arches, recalling as they do the glories of Rome's triumphs, can, by the reflective mind, be contemplated with a deeper, sadder interest than is indelibly associated with that of Titus,^†Built to commemorate the conquest of Judea by the Emperor Titus, the Arch of Titus has a bas-relief depiction of the triumphal procession of the emperor, and his army bearing spoils from the Temple of Jerusalem. William Knight, (London, 1867), 57; Murray, , 99. commemorating the destruction of the unhappy Jews and making public to a pagan city the desecration of all that was most sacred to the religion of that despised people. This arch is an object which must forever be a painful one to every Jew, since it reminds him of the loss of his beloved Jerusalem.^†The city of Jerusalem is located on a ridge to the west of the Dead Sea and the Jordan River in modern-day Israel. The city is a historically important city for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Following the rule of Herod the Great (73-4 BCE) Jerusalem was incorporated as a province of the Roman Empire. Under Roman rule, the city was administered by a series of prefects, but fell into decline. The Old City in the eastern area of Jerusalem was walled into four quadrants by order of the Ottoman sultan Sulayman I in the sixteenth century. Karl Baedeker, (Leipzig, 1906), 19-22; Cohen, , 2:1442-43; Freedman, , 3:760-61. Surely one who has^†Editorial Emendation: none who have. never suffered a like scorn can adequately feel for their humiliation, as they, for their abasement, were forced to pass beneath that arch whose sculptured sides portrayed the^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: tthe. sacred vessels torn, in the profanation of their Temple, from its Holy of Holies.^†Soldiers acting under authority of the Roman emperor Titus destroyed the Second Temple at Jerusalem in 70 CE during the First Jewish Revolt. The Temple's destruction marked the end of organized Jewish resistance and was followed by the capture and destruction of Jerusalem and its walls. Michael Grant, (New York, 1978), 347-48; Fred Skolnik, ed., , 2d ed., 22 vols. (Detroit, 2007), 19:743-44.

Among other objects calling up ancient events in the history of Rome, stands the Column of Trajan, after which Napoleon's monument in Paris was modelled.^†Erected in 114 to honor the military triumphs of the Emperor Trajan in the Balkans, the Column of Trajan measured over 94 feet and served in classical times as a base for a massive statue of the emperor. Napoleon I erected a 143-foot column at Vendôme Place in Paris in imitation of the Column of Trajan. John Murray (Firm),, rev. ed. (London, 1882), 313-14; idem, , 92-95. It tells of the many battles fought and won by Trajan, and is a beautiful column. Though now slowly yielding to the wasting touch of Time, we may still say of it as was once said by the great Daniel Webster of Bunker Hill Monument, "It looks, it speaks, it acts."^†Douglass quotes Daniel Webster's address delivered on 17 June 1843 at the dedication of the monument on Bunker Hill in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Webster said: "But at the rising of the sun, and at the setting of the sun; in the blaze of noonday. and beneath the milder effulgence of lunar light; it looks, it speaks, it acts, to the full comprehension of every American mind, and the awakening of glowing enthusiasm in every American heart." Webster, , 1:262. It certainly is a memorial of the past, a monitor of the present, though it may not be a hope of the future. In sight of the palaces of the Caesars and the Temple of the Vestal Virgins^†In a circular temple on the Roman Forum, an order of priestesses, popularly known as the Vestal Virgins, maintained an eternal fire to honor Vesta, the goddess of the hearth. Murray, , 81-82, 155-56; Yonah and Shatzman, , 477. and the Capitoline Hill,^†The original fortified citadel of Rome, the Capitoline Hill is the site of ruins dating mainly to the city's early history as a republic. Murray, , 100-104. darkening the horizon with its somber and time defying walls, rises the immense and towering form of the Coliseum—an ancient hell of human horrors, where the élite^†Editorial Emendation: elite. of Rome enjoyed the sport of seeing men tom to pieces by hungry and infuriated lions and tigers and by each other. No building more elaborate, vast and wonderful than this has risen since the Tower of Babel.^†The Tower of Babel story appears in Genesis and features a city with a tower that may have been a fortress or temple. At the time of its construction, according to biblical sources, humans possessed a single common language and all migrated to the Shinar region. When residents came together to make bricks to build a city in the belief that the city would prevent their dispersal, God intervened for fear that such concentration would allow humans to do anything they desired. He made them each speak a different language and scattered them over the face of the Earth. Gen. 11:1-9; Freedman, , 1:561-62.

While the old part of Rome has antiquities of its own, the new part has antiquities from abroad. There are here fourteen obelisks from Egypt,^†A reference to the red granite obelisk originally brought from Egypt to Rome during the reign of the Emperor Caligula in the first century. This obelisk stood in the circus of Nero, but by order of Pope Sixtus V was removed to the Piazza of St. Peter in 1586. Murray, , 137, 139-40. one of the finest of which adorns the square in front of St. Peter's.^†The original basilica of St. Peter's was constructed at the order of the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century. The building received major renovation during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including the construction of its massive dome designed by Michelangelo Buonarroti. Murray, , 194-210.

The streets of Rome except in the newest part, are generally very narrow, and the houses on either side of them being very high, there is much more shade than sunshine in them, and hence the remarkably chilly atmosphere which strangers complain. Yet the city is not without redeeming and compensating features. It has many fine open spaces and public squares, supplied

with large flowing fountains and adorned with various attractive devices, where the people have abundant pure water, fresh air, and bright, health-giving sunlight.

Of street life in Rome I must not speak except to mention one feature of it which overtops all others, and that is the part taken both consciously and unconsciously by members of various bodies of the Church. All that we see and hear impresses us with the gigantic, all-pervading, complicated, accumulated and mysterious power of this great religious and political organization. Wherever else the Roman Church may question its own strength and practice a modest reserve, here she is open, free, self-asserting and bold in her largest assumptions. She writes indulgences^†Beginning in the ninth century, the Roman Catholic Church granted indulgences to those paying a debt of temporal punishment after the guilt of a sin was forgiven. In the eleventh century the church began to tie grants of indulgence to monetary contributions in support of monasteries and later for schools, churches, or hospitals. During the Middle Ages the church granted the most celebrated indulgences to crusaders and those who contributed heavily to the Crusades. The practice of granting indulgences led to criticism of the church for using them in order to raise funds. Following the findings of the Council of Trent in 1562-63, Pope Pius IV canceled indulgences requiring monetary payments in 1567. , 7:436-41. over her gateways^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: gate-ways. as boldly to-day as if LutherLuther, Martin

Martin Luther (1483-1546). German monk and theologian, instigated the Protestant Reformation in reaction to practices and the authority of the Roman Catholic Church that he found objectionable, such as the granting or sale of indulgences. Luther translated the Bible into vernacular German and authored many theological works, the most famous of which is the Ninety-five Theses (1517), attacking the practice of indulgences. Richard Marius, Martin Luther: The Christian between God and Death (Cambridge, Mass., 1999). had never lived and she jingles the keys of heaven and hell as confidently as if her right to do so had never been called into question. About every fifth man met with holds some official relation to this stupendous and far-reaching body and is at work in some way to maintain its power, ascendency and glory. Religion seems to be in Rome the chief busness by which men live. Throngs of young students of all lands and languages march through the streets at all hours of the day, but never unattended. Experienced, well-dressed, discreet and dignified ecclesiastics^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: eccliastics. attend them everywhere. On the surface these dear young people, so pure and in the full fresh bloom of youth, are beautiful to look upon; but when you reflect that they are being trained to defend dogmas and superstitions contrary to the progress and enlightenment of the age the spectacle becomes sad indeed.

In contrast to them are other specimens of religious zeal neither pleasant to the eye, to the touch nor even to the thought. They are the vacant-faced, barelegged, rimy monks, who have taken a vow neither to marry, nor to work, nor to wash, and to live by prayer;—who beg and pay for what they get by praying for the donors. It is strange that such fanaticism is encouraged hy a church so worldly-wise as that of Rome, and yet in this I may be less wise than the Church. She may have a use for them too occult for my dim vision.

The two best points from which to view the exterior of Rome are the Pincian Hill and the Janiculum.^†The Pincian or Pincio, north of the Quirinal, rises to a height of 164 feet. The Janiculum, west of the Tiber, is the secondtallest hill in Rome but is outside the boundaries of the ancient city. Neither is considered among the Seven Hills of Rome. Baedeker, , 181-82, 419; Cohen, , 3:2639. Of the seven hills these are not the least interesting, and from their summits can be taken in its full magnificence, a general view of the Eternal City. Once seen from these points, it will never he forgotten but will dwell in the mind forever. A glance reveals all the great features of the city, with its grand and impressive surroundings. Here begins the far-reaching and much dreaded Campagna,^†Campagna di Roma is the low-lying region that surrounds Rome. Popular during the Roman era, the region was largely abandoned because of the brackish water that bred malaria and other diseases. In the late nineteenth century it was reclaimed for farming. Baedeker, , 427-28; Cohen, , 1:514. and at one's feet lies a whole forest of grand historical churches, which with their domes, towers and

turrets rising skyward, and their deep, sonorous bells, form a combination of sight and sound to be seen and heard nowhere^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: no where. in the world outside of Rome. From one of these points, the Pincian, can be enjoyed the finest view perhaps, to be had of the far-famed dome of St. Peter's. It is hard to imagine any structure built by human hands more grand and imposing than this dome as seen from the Pincian Hill, especially near the sunset hour. Towering high above the ample body of the great Cathedral and the world famed Vatican,^†Located within the boundaries of Rome, the Vatican is the seat of the Roman Catholic Church and home of the papacy. Although it lies within Italy, the Vatican is a sovereign state under political control of the pope. Baedeker, , 373-74; Emerson, "Scholarly Edition of the Grand Tour Diaries," 57n. it is bathed in a sea of ethereal glory. Its magnificence^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: magnificance. and impressiveness gain^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: gains. by distance. When you move away from it, it seems to follow you, and though you travel fast and far, when you look back it will be there and more impressive than ever.

The outsides^†Editorial Emendation: outside. of St. Peter's and her three hundred sister churches and the many storied Vatican give no hint of the wealth^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: welath. and grandeur within them. As in its day, pagan Rome drew tribute from all the known world, so the Church of Rome to-day receives gifts from all the Christian world—our own Republican country included—and the end is not yet—even a President of the United States sends his presents to his Holiness, the Pope.^†In 1887 President Grover Cleveland sent Pope Leo XIII a bound copy of the U.S. Constitution as a present to recognize the latter's fiftieth anniversary as a priest. , 42 vols. (New York, 1862-1903), 27:716. A look into some of these Romish churches will show that even Solomon in all his glory^†Douglass refers to Matt. 6:28-29. was not arrayed like one of these. All that architecture, sculpture, and fine colors can do, all that art and skill can do to render them beautiful and imposing has been done in these magnificent Roman churches. St. Peter's by its vastness, wealth, splendor and architectural perfections. acts upon us like some great and overpowering natural wonder. It awes us into silent, speechless admiration. One is at a loss to know how the amplitudinous and multitudinous whole that is there displayed to view has been brought together. The more one sees of it the more impressive and wonderful it becomes. Several other churches are very little inferior to St. Peter's, in this wealth and splendor. For one, however, I was much more interested in the Rome of the past, than in the Rome of the present; in the banks of the Tiber^†Stretching across the central region of Italy, the Tiber River flows 251 miles south across Tuscany, Umbria, and North Latium, then through Rome to empty into the Tyrrhenian Sea. Baedeker, , 62, 78, 96, 106, 109, 175; Cohen, , 3:3159. with their history, than in the images, angels and pictures on the walls of its splendid churches; in the preaching of PaulPaul (Saul of Tarsus)

Paul was an early Christian apostle whose teachings formed the foundation of orthodox Christian theology. His life is chronicled in the biblical book of Acts, where he is described as being a Roman citizen at birth. Beginning life as a Jew, Paul was commissioned to spread the gospel among the gentiles. His travels took him to such places in the ancient world as Galatia, Macedonia, Greece, and Jerusalem. He was eventually arrested and imprisoned for allegedly urging Jews to abandon traditional practices, including circumcision. Freedman, Anchor Bible Dictionary, 5:186-201. eighteen hundred years ago, than in the preaching of the priests and popes of to-day. The fine silks and costly jewels and vestments of the priests of the present could hardly have been dreamed of by the first great preacher of Christianity at Rome, who lived in his own hired house, and whose hands ministered to his own necessities . It was something to feel ourselves standing where this brave man stood, looking on the place where he lived and walking on the same Appian Way^†Originally constructed in 312 BCE, the Via Appia extended from Rome to Capua. The Romans later extended this road through to the Adriatic coast. Yonah and Shatzman, , 477. where he walked, when, having appealed to Caesar, he was bravely on the way to this same Rome to meet his fate, whether that should be life or death. This was more

to me than being shown, as we were, under the dome of St. Peter's, the head of St. Luke in a casket, a piece of the true cross, a lock of Virgin Mary's hair, and the legbone of Lazarus;^†Numerous Christian relics are located within St. Peter's Basilica and in more than 100 tombs in the Vatican Grotto below the basilica. Travel guides indicate Douglass might have encountered the head of St. Andrew, the bones of Popes Leo II and Leo III, and a relic of the true Cross. J. W. Cruickshank and A. M. Cruickshank, , rev. ed. (1906; London, 1911), 182-85. or any of the wonderful things in that line palmed off on a credulous and superstitious people. In one of these churches we were shown a great doll, covered with silks and jewels and all manner of strange devices, and this wooden baby was solemnly credited with miraculous power in healing the sick and averting many of the evils to which flesh is heir. In the same church we were, with equal solemnity shown a print of the devil's cloven foot, in the hard stone. I could but ask myself what the devil could a devil be doing in such a holy place. I had some curiosity in seeing devout people going up to the black statue of St. Peter^†Douglass probably refers to the bronze statue of St. Peter, which stands to the right of the nave of St. Peter's Basilica. Devotees would first kiss the toe of the statue and then press their heads against the digit. Murray, , 201.—I was glad to find him black,—I have no prejudice against his color—and kissing the old fellow's big toe, one side of which has been nearly worn away by these devout and tender salutes to which it has been the cold subject. In seeing these one may well ask himself, What will not men believe? Crowds of men and women going up a stairway on their knees;—monks making ornaments of dead men's bones; others refusing to wash themselves; and all in order to secure the favor of God, give a degrading idea of man's relation to the Infinite author of the Universe. But there is no reasoning with faith. It is doubtless a great comfort to these people after all to have kissed the great toe of the black image of the Apostle Peter and in having bruised their knees in substituting their knees for feet in ascending a stairway, called the Scala Santa.^†According to this tradition, the Scala Santa in the Basilica of the Lateran in Rome consists of twenty-eight marble stairs from the house of Pontius Pilate, upon which Jesus walked after his judgment. Penitents ascended the marble stairs on their knees. Murray, , 219-20. I felt in looking upon these religious shows in Rome, as the late Benjamin Wade said he felt at a negro camp meeting where there were^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: was. much howling, shouting and jumping; "This is nothing to me, but it surely must be something to them."

The Railway south from Rome, through the Campagna, gives a splendid view of miles of Roman arches over which water was formerly brought to the city. Few works better illustrate the spirit and power of the Roman people than do these miles of masonry. Humanly speaking, there was nothing requiring thought, skill, energy, and determination which these people could not and did not do. The ride from Rome to Naples in winter is delightful—a beautiful valley diversified by mountain peaks on either side, capped with snow, is a perpetual entertainment to the eye of the traveller. Only a few hours' ride and behold a scene of startling sublimity. It is a broad column of white vapor from the summit of Vesuvius,^†The only active volcano in mainland Europe, Vesuvius stands on the eastern shore of the Bay of Naples in the south of Italy. Rising to around 4,000 feet, it alters in height with subsequent eruptions. The first recorded eruption took place in 79 CE. Eight more eruptions in the eighteenth century were followed by nine in the nineteenth century and three in the twentieth. Karl Baedeker, , 9th ed. (Leipzig, 1887), 120-24; Cohen, , 3:3342. slowly and majestically rising against the blue Italian sky and before gentle northern and land breezes, grandly moving off to sea, a thing of wonder. For more than seventeen hundred years this vapor, sometimes mingled with the lurid light of red hot lava,

has been rising thus from the open mouth of this mountain, and its fires are still burning and its vapor still ascending, and no man can tell when they will cease, or when in floods of burning lava it will again burst forth and overwhelm unsuspecting thousands in the fate of Pompeii and Herculaneum,^†Pompeii was a prosperous Roman port city about five miles from Mount Vesuvius. An eruption of Vesuvius destroyed the nearby resort town of Herculaneum in 63 CE. Pompeii suffered the same fate from an eruption sixteen years later. The rediscovery and excavation of these two communities beginning in the seventeenth century spurred serious historical study of classical art and architecture. John Murray (Firm), , 4th ed. (London, 1862), 207-50; Yonah and Shatzman,, 231, 367-68. cities so long buried from the world by its ashes. It is a grand spectacle to see this vapor silently and peacefully rolling up the sky and moving off to sea, but^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: bu t. we shudder at the thought of what may yet befall the populous towns and villages that still hover so daringly about its dangerous base.

Naples^†Located in south-central Italy, Naples is a major seaport on the Mediterrancean Sea. The picturesque city sits at the base of a number of hills that surround the Bay of Naples. Cohen, , 2:2119. is a great city and its bay is all that its fame has taught us to expect. Its beautiful surroundings rich with historical associations would easily keep one lingering for months. Pompeii, Herculaneum, Puteoli where St. Paul landed from his perilous voyage to Rome;^†Located seven miles southwest of Naples, the town of Pozzuoli, with only 12,000 inhabitants in the late nineteenth century, had been a major port and resort city in Roman times under the name Puteoli. It also was the site where the Apostle Paul landed in Italy on his journey to Rome for trial by imperial officials. Murray, , 298-99. the tomb of Virgil;^†Located in the western outskirts of late-nineteenth-century Naples, the small tomb of Virgil had attracted reverential visits by admirers of the poet since late Roman times. Murray, , 173-76. the spot, still traceable, where stood one of the villas of Cicero;^†Cicero had been born in Isola near Naples and at various times in his life resided at villas near modem-day Mola, Pozzuoli, and Monteleone, all in that locale. Murray, , 15, 59, 304, 398. the islands of Capri and lschia,^†The site of many health resorts in Douglass's day, the Isle of Capri, twenty miles south of Naples, became famous as the scene of the debaucheries of the Roman emperor Tiberius. Ischia is a volcanic island of twenty-six square miles located six miles off the Italian coast west of Naples. Murray, , 263-69, 328-37. and a thousand other objects full of worthy interest, afford constant activity to both reflection and imagination. Mrs. Douglass and myself were much indebted to the kindness of Rev. J. C. FletcherFletcher, James Cooley

Probably James Cooley Fletcher (1823-1901), Presbyterian clergyman and missionary, born in Indianapolis. He graduated from Brown University in 1846. Following his ordination in 1851, Fletcher spent most of his career as a missionary in South America and Europe. He acted as an agent for the American Bible Society in Brazil in 1855 and 1856, after which he returned to the United States for several years. Returning to Brazil in 1862, he served as an agent of the American Sunday School Union, traveling some 2,000 miles up the Amazon River gathering natural specimens. From 1869 until 1873 he resided in Portugal, holding the positions of U.S. consul at Oporto and of acting chargé d'affaires in Lisbon during 1870. He met and married his second wife, Frederica Jane Smith, at the consulate at Oporto in 1872. The couple moved to Naples, Italy, in 1873, where Fletcher engaged in voluntary missionary activities until returning to the United States in 1890. Thereafter Fletcher resided in Los Angeles, where he served as president of the Los Angeles School of Art until his death in 1901. ACAB, 2:465-66; NCAB, 13:130. and wifeFletcher, Frederica Jane Smith

Frederica Jane Smith Fletcher was second wife of James Cooley Fletcher, whom she met at the consulate at Oporto in 1872. The couple moved to Naples, Italy, in 1873, where he engaged in voluntary missionary activities until returning to the United States in 1890. Thereafter Fletcher resided in Los Angeles, where he served as president of the Los Angeles School of Art until his death in 1901. ACAB, 2:465-66; NCAB, 13:130. during our stay in this celebrated city.

When once an American tourist has quitted Rome and has felt the balmy breezes of the Mediterranean; has seen the beautiful Bay of Naples; reveled in the wonders of its neighborhood; stood at the base of Vesuvius; surveyed the narrow streets, the majestic halls, and the luxurious houses of long buried Pompeii; stood upon the spot where the great apostle Paul first landed at Puteoli, after his eventful and perilous voyage on his way to Rome; he is generally seized with an ardent desire to wander still further eastward and southward. Sicily will tempt him, and once there, and his face turned towards the rising sun, he will want to see Egypt, the Suez Canal, the Libyan desert, the wondrous Nile—land of obelisks and hieroglyphs, which men are so well learning to read; land of sphinxes and mummies many thousand years old, of great pyramids and colossal ruins that speak to us of a civilization which extends back into the misty shadows of the past, far beyond the reach and grasp of authentic history. The more he has seen of modern civilization in England, France and Italy, the more he will want to see the traces of that civilization which existed when these countries of Europe were inhabited by barbarians. When once so near to this more renowned and ancient abode of civilization, the scene of so many Bible events and wonders, the desire to see it becomes almost irresistible.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: irresistable.

I confess, however, that my desire to visit Egypt did not rest entirely upon the basis thus foreshadowed. I had a motive far less enthusiastic and sentimental; an ethnological purpose in the pursuit of which, I hoped to turn

my visit to some account in combatting American prejudice against the darker colored races of mankind, and at the same time to raise colored people somewhat in their own estimation and thus stimulate them to higher endeavors.^†Douglass became intrigued with the ideas surrounding the nineteenth-century debate over the origins of man. He took exception to the notion of racial polygenesis that formed the core argument of the American School of Ethnology. Authors in this school, including Josiah Nott and George Gliddon, claimed that the races had separate origins and therefore African Americans were a distinct species. Douglass argued in a number of speeches in favor of the monogenist theory supporting a unified origin of the white and black races. He delivered the first of many important orations on the subject, "Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered," at Hudson, Ohio, in July 1854. Douglass touched on the subject often, including a May 1863 address before the Brooklyn Academy of Music titled "The Present and Future of the Colored Race in America." His fascination with ethnology continued in the postwar years, as evinced in an 1869 oration titled "Our Composite Nationality," delivered in Boston, and in an 1884 article in which he used the common origin of all races to predict the eventual elevation of blacks in the United States. Charles A. Gardiner et al., "The Future of the Negro," , 139:84-86 (July 1884); , ser. 1, 2:497-525, 3:570-84, 4:240-59. I had a theory, for which I wanted the support of facts in the range of my own knowledge,—but more of this in another place.

The voyage from Naples to Port Said,^†The Douglasses departed Naples on 12 February 1887 on board the steamer Ormuz and arrived at Port Said on 16 February. The Egyptian seaport of Port Said lies at the Mediterranean Sea entrance to the Suez Canal and had a population of approximately 10,000 at the time of the Douglasses' visit. French architect Ferdinand de Lesseps selected the site for Port Said in 1859 and had breakwaters constructed to make it a safe harbor for oceangoing ships. FD Diary, reel 1, frames 26-27, FD Papers, DLC; John Murray (Firm), , 4th ed. (London, 1873), 244-46. on a good steamer, is accomplished in four days, and in fine weather it is a very delightful one. In our case, air, sea and sky assumed their most amiable^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: aimable. behavior, and early dawn found us face to face with old Stromboli^†Part of the Lipari island group, Stromboli lies about forty-five miles north of Sicily in the Tuscan Sea and contains an active volcano on its western coast. Augustus J. C. Hare and St. Clair Baddeley, (New York, 1905), 62, 91. —whose cone shaped summit seems to rise almost perpendicularly from the sea. We passed^†Editorial Emendation: pass. through the straits of Messina,^†Separating Sicily from the Italian mainland, the Strait of Messina is about twenty miles in length and varies in width from two to eleven miles. Hare and Baddeley, , 63-70. left^†Editorial Emendation: leave. behind us the smoke and vapor of Mt. Etna,^†An active volcano near the northeastern coast of the island of Sicily, the snow-covered summit of Mount Etna at a height of over 10,800 feet is visible from the Italian mainland. Hare and Baddeley, , 1, 86-92. and in three days, were^†Editorial Emendation: are. safely anchored in front of Port Said—the west end of the Suez Canal^†Opened in 1869 after a decade of construction by a Franco-Egyptian company headed by Ferdinand de Lesseps, the 100-mile-long Suez Canal allowed oceangoing ships direct passage from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. The British government purchased the controlling interest in the canal company from the Egyptian khedive in 1875 and by the time of Douglass's tour had established a protectorate over the entire Egyptian nation. Murray, , 231-47; D. A. Farnie, (New York, 1969), 55-80, 229-46, 282-324. —that stupendous work which has brought the occident face to face with the orient and changed the route taken by the commerce of the world; which has brought Australia within forty days of England,^†In 1877 the steamer of the British Orient Line used the Suez Canal route to sail from London to Adelaide in forty days for each direction, cutting the previous average sailing time around the Cape of Good Hope in half. Farnie, , 345. and saved the men who go down to the sea in ships much of the time and danger once their lot in finding their way to the east around the Cape of Good Hope.^†The Cape of Good Hope is the southernmost point on the African continent. Prior to the opening of the Suez Canal, ships sailing east had to pass all the way around Africa and the Cape of Good Hope to reach such destinations as Australia or the East African coast. Cohen, , 1:1132.

At Port Said, where we entered^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: enter. the Suez Canal, the vessels of all nations halt. The few houses that make up the town look white, new and temporary, reminding one of some of the hastily built wooden towns of the American frontier, where there is much space outside and little within. Here our good ship, the "Ormuz,"^†Built in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1866, for the Orient Steam Navigation Company, the screw-driven steamer was 465.5 feet long and 52.1 feet wide. (New York, 1888), 673; Farnie, , 346-59. the largest vessel that had then ever floated through the Suez Canal, stopped to take in a large supply of coal, prior to proceeding on her long voyage to Australia. Great barges loaded with this fuel stored there from England for the purpose of coaling her eastern bound vessels, were brought alongside^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: along side. of our steamer and their contents soon put on board by a small army of Arabs. It was something to see these men of the desert at work. As I looked at them and listened to their fun and frolic while bearing their heavy burdens, I said to myself, "You fellows are, at least in your disposition, half brothers to the negro." The negro works best and hardest when it is no longer work, but becomes play with joyous singing. These children of the desert performed their task in like manner, amid shouts of laughter and tncks of fun, as if their hard work were the veriest sport. In color these Arabs are something between two riding saddles, the one old and the other new. They are a little lighter than the one and a little darker than the other. I did not see a single fat man among them. They were erect and strong, lean and sinewy. Their strength and fleetness were truly remarkable. They tossed the heavy bags of coal on their shoulders, and trotted on board our ship with them for hours without halt or weariness. Lank in body, slender in limb, full

of spirit, they reminded one of blooded horses.^†Thoroughbred or pedigreed horses. It was the month of February^†In his diary of his tour of Europe and the Near East, Douglass describes this event as occurring on 16 February 1887, FD Diary, reel I, frames 28-29, FD Papers, DLC.and the water by no means warm, but these people seemed about as much at home in the water as on the land and gave us some fine specimens of their swimming and diving ability. Passengers would throw small coins into the water for the interest of seeing them dive for them, and this they did with almost fish-like swiftness and never failed to bring from the bottom the coveted sixpence or franc, as the case might be, and to show it between their white teeth as they came to the surface.

Slowly and carefully moving through the Canal an impressive scene was presented to the eye. Nothing in my American experience ever gave me such a deep sense of unearthly silence—such a sense of vast, profound, unbroken sameness and solitude, as did this passage through the Suez Canal, moving smoothly and noiselessly between two spade built banks of yellow sand, watched over by the jealous care of England and France, two rival powers, each jealous of the other. We find here, too, the motive and mainspring of English Egyptian occupation and of English policy.^†The British occupation of Egypt began in the summer of 1882, and Great Britain maintained varying degrees of control over the region for the next seventy-four years. Britain officially claimed that its interest in Egypt was to stabilize the region following the Egyptian Revolution of 1881, which challenged the authority of the traditional ruler, Khedive Ismail. The khedive initially requested British support following the financial collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the 1870s, and Britain joined with France in 1881 in asserting the necessity of retaining the khedive in order to maintain regional stability. With the increasing importance of the Suez Canal to world commerce, Britain found intervention necessary when the 1881 uprising threatened that stability. The British found that the economic and political weakness of Egypt required continued occupation. The move also provided a convenient stepping-stone for the British colonization of the Sudan and eventually India. H. L. Wesseling, (Westport, Conn., 1996), 35-53; Peter Mansfield, (New York, 1971), 1-16. On either side stretches a sandy desert, to which the eye, even with the aid of the strongest field glass, can find no limit but the horizon; land where neither^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: neither, tree, shrub, nor vegetation of any kind, nor human habitation breaks the view. All is flat, broad, silent, dreamy and unending solitude. There appears occasionally away in the distance a white line of life which only makes the silence and solitude more pronounced. It is a line of flamingoes—the only bird to be seen in the desert—making us wonder what they find upon which to subsist. But here, too, is another sign of life, wholly unlooked for and for which it is hard to account. It is the half naked, hungry form of a human being, a young Arab, who seems to have started up out of the yellow sand under his feet, for no town, village, house or shelter is seen from which he could have emerged; but here he is and he is as lively as a cricket, running by the ship's^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: ships. side up and down the sandy banks for miles and for hours with the speed of a horse and the endurance of a hound, plaintively shouting as he runs, "Backshish! Backshish! Backshish!"^†A Persian term, popularly used throughout the Near East, to describe a tip, or small amount of money given for a service rendered, such as to a waiter, or a charitable donation given to a beggar. Editorial Emendation: "Backshish! Backshisk. and only stopping in the race to pick up the pieces of bread and meat thrown to him from the ship. Far away in the distance, through the quivering air and sunlight, a mirage^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: miarge. appears. Now it is a splendid forest and now a refreshing lake. The illusion is perfect. It is a forest without trees and a lake without water. As one travels on, the mirage travels also, but its distance from the observer remains ever the same.

After more than a day and a night on this weird. silent and dreamy Canal, under a cloudless sky, almost unconscious of motion, yet moving on and on without pause and without haste, through a noiseless, treeless, houseless

and seemingly endless wilderness of sand, where not even the crowing of a cock or the barking of a dog is heard, we were transferred^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: transfered. to a smart little French steamer and landed at lsmalia,^†The site of administrative headquarters for the Suez Canal. Ismailia was an Egyptian town of around 3,000 inhabitants in the 1880s, situated on Lake Timsah where the Sweet Water Canal and a railroad line from Cairo intersectcd the Suez Canal. Murray, , 222, 240-41; Farnie, , 125-27. where, since leaving the new and shambling town of Port Said, we saw^†Editorial Emendation: see. the first sign of civilization and began^†Editorial Emendation: begin. to realize that we were^†Editorial Emendation: are. entering the land of the Pharaohs.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Pharoahs.

Here the Khedive has one of his many palaces and here and there are a few moderately comfortable dwellings with two or three hotels and a railroad station. How and by what means the people in this place live, is a mystery. For miles around there is no sign of grain or grass or vegetation of any kind. Here we first caught sight of the living locomotive of the East, that marvellous embodiment of strength, docility and obedience, of patient endurance of hunger and thirst—the camel. I have large sympathy with all burden bearers, whether they be men or beasts, and having read of the gentle submission of the camel to hardships and abuse, of how he will kneel to receive his heavy burden and groan to have it made lighter, I was glad right here in the edge of Egypt to have a visible illustration of these qualities of the animal. I saw him kneel and saw the heavy load of sand put on his back.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: back, I saw him try to rise under its weight and heard his sad moan. I had at the moment much the same feeling as when I first saw a gang of slaves chained together and shipped to a foreign market. A long line of camels attended by three or four Arabs came slowly moving over the desert. This spectacle, more than the language or customs of the people, gave me a vivid impression of eastern life; a picture of it as it was in the days of Abraham and Moses. In this wide waste, under this cloudless sky star-lighted by night and by a fierce blazing sun by day—where even the wind seems voiceless—it was natural for men to look up to the sky and stars and contemplate the Universe and infinity above and around them; the signs and wonders in the heavens above and in the earth beneath. In such loneliness, silence, and expansiveness, imagination is unchained and man has naturally a deeper sense of the infinite presence than is to be felt in the noise and hustle of the towns and men crowded cities. Religious ideas have come to us from the wilderness, from mountain tops, from dens and caves, and from the last silent spaces from which come^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: comes. the mirage and other shadowy illusions; which create rivers, lakes and forests where there is^†Editorial Emendation: are. none. The songs of the angels could be better heard by the shepherds on the plains of Bethlehem^†Considered the historical birthplace of Jesus, this district of Israel's West Bank is one of the Christian world's most important shrines. Located on a hill on the western fringes of the Judean Wilderness, , 101-02; Cohen, , 1:337. than by the jostling crowds in the busy streets of Jerusalem. John the Baptist^†An allusion to the ministry of John the Baptist, described in Matt. 3:1-12, Mark 1:2-8, Luke 3:2-20, John 1:19-36. could preach better in the wilderness than in the busy marts of men. Jesus said his best word to the world when on the Mount of Olives.^†The Mount of Olives consists of three ridges located in the Central Mountain Range of Israel, which runs north to south from the Kidron Valley to the east of Jerusalem. Associated with both Christian and Jewish traditions, the site is mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments. Douglass references Matt. 21:1 or perhaps Matt. 24:1-25:36, which describes Jesus standing on the Mount of Olives, prophesying to his disciples. His extended teaching on the Mount of Olives is referred to as the Olivet Discourse. Freedman, , 5:13-15. Moses learned more of the laws of God when in the mountains than when down among the people. The Hebrew prophets frequented dens and caves

and desert places,^†Douglass refers to Heb. 11:38. Freedman, , 3:100. John saw his wonderful vision on^†Editorial Emendation: in. the Isle of^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Of. Patmos^†Douglass refers to the beginning of the book of Revelations, when the apostle John received a prophecy of the end of the world. Rev. 1:9; Freedman, , 5:694. with naught in sight but the sea and sky. It was in a lonely place that Jacob wrestled with the angel.^†Douglass refers to an incident in Genesis 32:24-32, in which Jacob wrestles with an angel throughout a night. Although the angel injures Jacob in the leg, Jacob emerges victorious. The angel blesses Jacob and renames him Israel, "for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed." Freedman, , 3:604-05. The transfiguration^†Matt. 17:1-2; Freedman, , 6:640-41. was on a mountain. No wonder that Moses wandering in the vast and silent desert, after killing an Egyptian and brooding over the oppressed condition of his people, should hear the voice of Jehovah saying, "'I have^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Ihave. seen the affliction of my people."^†An allusion to the events of Exod. 2:12-15, 2:24-25, and particularly 3:7: "And the Lord said I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters: for I know their sorrows." Freedman, , 2:700-08. Paul was not in Damascus but on his lonely way thither when he heard a voice from heaven.^†Douglass refers to Acts 9:3-4, when Saul, on his bloody path to persecute followers of Jesus in the city of Damascus, has a revelation that his actions are wrong. He converted to Christianity, changed his name to Paul, and became the foremost missionary of the teachings of Christ. Freedman, , 5:186-201. The heart beats louder and the soul hears quicker in silence and solitude. It was from the vastness and silence of the desert that MahometMuhammad

Muhammad (c. 570-632), the Muslim Prophet, received his divine mission in his early forties, around the year 610. The Muslim scripture, the Koran, was revealed to him at that time, and he became the main conduit for the religion's modern rituals and practices, including Islam's monotheistic emphasis. Michael Cook, Muhammad (New York, 1983). learned his religion, and once he thought he had discovered man's true relation to the Infinite he proclaimed himself a prophet and began to preach with that sort of authority and power which never fails^†Editorial Emendation: failed. to make converts.

Such speculations were for me ended by the startling whistle of the locomotive and the sound of the rushing train—things which put an end to religious reveries and fix attention upon the things of this busy world. In passing through the land of Goshen^†Goshen is a region in the eastern Egyptian delta where many Hebrews lived during their time in Egypt. Jacob's family relocated to the "land of Goshen" when a famine struck Canaan. Gen. 46:26-34; Freedman, , 2:1076-77. I experienced a thrill of satisfaction in viewing the scene of one of the most affecting stories ever written—the story^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: stroy. of Jacob^†Following the family's move to Goshen, famine led Jacob to send several of his sons to seek grain from the Pharaoh. Jacob's sons sold their younger brother Joseph into slavery. Gen. 46:1-34, 47:1-5; Freedman, , 3:599-609.—how his sons were compelled by famine to go into Egypt to buy corn; how they sold their young brother Joseph into slavery; how they came home with a lie upon their lips to hide their treachery and cruelty; how the slave boy Joseph gained favor in the eyes of Pharaoh;^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Pharoah. how these brothers who had sold him were again by famine brought face to face with Joseph who stipulated that the only condition upon which he would again see them was that they should bring their young brother Benjamin with them; how Jacob plaintively appealed against this arrangement by which his gray hair might be brought down in sorrow to the grave, and finally, through the good offices of Joseph, the happy settlement of the whole family in this fertile land of Goshen. Than this simple tale nothing has been written, nothing can be found in literature, more pathetic and touching. Here was the land of Goshen, with fields yet green, its camels still grazing and its corn still growing as when Jacob and his sons with their flocks and herds were settled in it three thousand years ago.

The fertilizing power of the Nile,^†Stretching some 4. 160 miles. the Nile is the world's longest river. It flows northward from its headwaters in remote Burundi in central Africa to the delta on the Mediterranean Sea in northeast Egypt. The river's waters support 98 percent of Egypt's agriculture. Cohen, , 2:2187-88. wherever the land is overflowed by it, is very marked, especially in contrast with the sandy desert. It is seen in the deep, black and glossy soil, and in the thick and full growth and deep green color of its vegetation. No fences divide field from field and define the possessions of different proprietors. To all appearance the land might belong to one man alone. The overflow of the Nile explains this feature of the country, as its mighty floods would sweep away such barriers. The mode here of grazing

cattle is to us peculiar. The donkeys, horses, cows and camels are not allowed to roam over the field as with us, but are tethered to stakes driven down in the ground. They eat all before them leaving the land behind them as though it had been mowed with a scythe or a sickle. They present a pleasant picture, standing in rows like soldiers, with their heads towards the tall vegetation and seemingly as orderly as civilized people at their dining^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: dinning. tables.

Every effort is made to get as much of the Nile water as possible. Ditches are cut, ponds are made and men are engaged day and night in dipping it up and having it placed where it is most needed. The two processes adopted by which to raise this water are the Shaduf and the Sakiyeh.^†A , is a device consisting of a pole on a pivot with a bucket at one end to raise water; a is a water wheel with a number of buckets that raise water as the wheel turns. Both were often used in Egypt to gather river water for irrigation purposes. Long lines of women are sometimes seen with heavy earthen jars on their heads distributing this precious fertilizing water over the thirsty land. Seeing the value of this water and how completely the life of man and beast is dependent upon it, one cannot wonder at the deep solicitude with which its rise is looked for, watched and measured.

Egypt may haw invented the plow, but it has not improved upon the invention. The kind used there is perhaps as old as the time of Moses and consists or two or three pieces of wood so arranged that the end of one piece turns no furrow, but simply scratches the soil. Still, in the distance, the man how holds this contrivance, and the beast that draws it, look^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: looks. very much as if they were plowing. I am told however, that this kind of plow does better service for the peculiar soil of Egypt than ours would do; that the experiment of tilling the ground with our plow has been tried in Egypt and has failed, so that the cultivation of the soil, like many other things, is best where it answers its purposes best and produces the best results.

Cairo^†The capital of Egypt, Cairo was founded in 969 across the Nile River from the ancient capital, Memphis. The first railroad in Africa, built in 1855, linked Cairo and Alexandria, respectively the administrative and economic centers of Egypt. Karl Baedeker, , 2d ed. (Leipzig, 1885), 241-44; idem, (Leipzig, 1908), 64; Cohen, , 1:495. with its towers, minarets, and mosques presents a strangely fascinating scene, especially from the Citadel,^†Construction of Cairo's citadel was begun in 1176, reputedly using stones taken from the small pyramids at Giza. At the time of Douglass's visit. only the outer east wall and several towers remained. Among the structures within the Citadel is the Alabaster Mosque, completed in 1857. From a parapet on the southwest side of the mosque is a view of the Pyramids of Giza. Baedeker, , 62. 264, 344, 355; Cohen, , 1:495. where away off in the distance, rising between the yellow desert and the soft, blue cloudless sky, we discern the unmistakable forms or those mysterious piles of masonry, the Pyramids.^†The pyramids of Egypt were constructed as burial tombs for Egyptian rulers from the third to the sixth dynasties, between 2686 BCE and 2133 BCE. Most were built on the desert's fringe west of the Nile River near Memphis. Nineteenth-century conventions concerning the purpose of the pyramids varied. One suggested that the pyramid shape was merely a representation of a primitive mound. Another theory held that the shape of the burial pyramid aimed to represent in stone the symbol of the Egyptian sun god. Baedeker, , 121-35; I. E. S. Edwards, , rev. ed. (New York, 1985), 278-83. Who built them and for what purpose they were built are questions which no man has been able to satisfactorily answer. According to one theory they were huilt for sepulchral^†Pertaining to a burial place or a burial; or something appropriate to a tomb. purposes, and, according to another they were built for a standard of measurement, but neither theory has set aside the other, and both may be wrong. There they stand, however, grandly, in sight of Cairo, just in the edge of the Libyan desert^†Douglass perhaps refers to the eastern portion of the Sahara Desert, which extends into Egypt. La Verle Berry, "The Society and Its Environment," in , ed. Helen Chapin Metz, 4th ed. (Washington, D.C., 1989), 64-09. and overlooking the valley of the Nile, as they have stood during more than three thousand years and are likely to stand as many thousand years longer, for nothing grows old here but time and that lives on forever.

One of the first exploits a tourist is tempted to perform here is to ascend to the top of the highest Pyramid. The task is by no means an easy one, nor is it entirely free from danger. It is clearly dangerous if undertaken without the experience of two or more guides. You need them not only to show you where to put your feet, but to lift you over the huge blocks of stone of which the Pyramids are built, for some of these stones are from three to four feet in thickness and height. Neither in ascending nor^†Editorial Emendation: or. descending is it safe to look down. One misstep and all is over. I went, with seventy years on my head, to the top of the highest Pyramid, but nothing in the world would tempt me to try the experiment again. I had two Arabs before me, pulling, and two at my back, pushing, but the main work I had to do myself. I did not recover from the terrible strain in less than two weeks. I paid dearly for the venture. Still, it was worth something to stand for once on such a height and above the work and the world below. Taking the view altogether—the character of the surroundings, the great unexplained and inexplicable Sphinx, the Pyramids and other wonders of Sakkara,^†Located fifteen miles south of Cairo, the plateau of Sakkarah with a village of the same name was one of the principal sites of the pyramids and other burial memorials of the ancient Egyptian rulers of Memphis. The famous Egyptian Sphinx, however, is located on the plateau of Giza about three miles southwest of Cairo. Murray, , 173, 177-79, 193-96, 201-02. the winding river of the valley of the Nile, the silent, solemn and measureless desert, the seats of ancient Memphis^†The ancient capital city of Lower Egypt, Memphis lies about ten miles south of modern Cairo beside the Nile River. Murray, , 202-05. and Heliopolis,^†Near the site of the nineteenth-century village of Matareeah, about ten miles northeast of Cairo, the ancient Egyptian town of Ei-Re, or "Abode of the Sun," was called Heliopolis by the Greeks. In Douglass's time, tourists visited the site of Heliopolis to view its obelisks, a sphinx, and a temple of the sun. Murray, , 157-61. the distant mosques, minarets and stately palaces, the ages and events that have swept over the scene and the millions on millions that lived, wrought and died there, there are stirred in the one who beholds it for the first time, thoughts and feelings never thought and felt before. While nothing could tempt me to climb the rugged, jagged, steep and perilous sides of the great Pyramid again, yet I am very glad to have had the experience once, and once is enough for a lifetime.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: life time.

I have spoken of the prevalence and power at Rome, of the Catholic^†Editorial Emendation: Christian. Church and religion and of the strange things believed and practised there in the way of religious rites and ceremonies. The religion and Church of Egypt, though denounced as a fraud and their author branded throughout Christendom as an impostor, are not less believed in and followed in Egypt, than the church and Christianity are believed in and followed at Rome. Two hundred millions of people follow Mahomet to-day^†The accuracy of Douglass's demographic estimation cannot be verified, as scholarly sources supply considerably different statistics. The four most populated Muslim countries of the era, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, together did not reach half the number Douglass cited. Albert Hourani, (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 291-95; Alan Richards and John Waterbury, (Boulder, Colo., 1990), 58; (London, 1986), 31, 109, 131, 333; James Hastings, , 13 vols. (New York, 1917-27), 8:875-91; Lindsay Jones, ed., , 2d ed., 14 vols. (Detroit, 2005), 7:4628. and the number is increasing. Annually in Cairo, twelve thousand students study the Koran with a view to preaching its doctrines in Africa and elsewhere. So sacred do these people hold their mosques that a Christian is not allowed to enter them without putting off his shoes and putting on Mahometan slippers. If Rome has its unwashed monks, Cairo has its howling and dancing dervishes,^†Dervishes are Muslim mystics or Sufis who formed orders or brotherhoods beginning in the twelfth century. Many took vows of poverty. Some dervish orders were known for fantastic practices such as dancing, whirling, and howling. Yaacov Shimoni, (New York, 1987), 149-50. and both seem equally deaf to the dictates of reason. The dancing and howling dervishes often spin around in their religious transports till their heads lose control and they fall to the floor sighing, groaning and foaming at the mouth

like madmen, reminding one of scenes that sometimes occur at our own old fashioned camp meetings.^†Editorial Emendation: campmeetings.

It is not within the scope and purpose of this supplement of my story to give an extended account of my travels or to tell of all I have seen and heard and felt. I had strange dreams of travel even in my boyhood days. I thought I^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: thoughtI. should some day see many of the famous places of which I heard men speak, and or which I read even while a slave. During my visit to England, as I have before said, I had a strong desire to go to France and should have done so but for a Mr. George M. DallasDallas, George Mifflin

George Mifflin Dallas (1792-1864), Philadelphia-born lawyer and Democratic politician, served as vice president (1845-49) under James Polk. Other political offices Dallas held during his public career included U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (1829-31). U.S. senator (1831-33), Pennsylvania attorney general (1833-35), and U.S. minister to Russia (1837-39). Although retired to private law practice in 1849, he expressed his support for the Compromise of 1850 and its provisions for the return of fugitive slaves in a letter to Guy M. Bryan published in the New York Times, 13 October 1851. Denouncing "the self-slaughter of intermeddling with the institutions and rights exclusively of state creation, state responsibility, and state control," Dallas observed that "the act for the extradition of fugitives is the pretext for protracted and persevering war upon the guarantees of the Constitution." As a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomi-nation in 1852, Dallas was asked whether he would enforce the Fugitive Slave Law, and he answered unequivocally, "Yes, I would!" Dallas held the post of envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the British Court of St. James during James Buchanan's presidency. No record survives of Douglass's approach to him for a passport during his second visit to the British Isles in the winter and spring of 1860. George Mifflin Dallas to Guy M. Bryan, 25 July 1851, in New York Daily Times, 13 October 1851; New York Daily Times, 31 May 1852; John M. Belohlavek, George Mifflin Dallas: Jacksonian Patrician (University Park, Pa., 1977), 138-43; NCAB, 6:268; DAB, 5:38-39; BDUSC (online). , who was then minister to England, He refused to give me a passport on the ground that I was not and could not be an American citizen. This man is now dead and generally forgotten as I shall be; but I have lived to see myself recognized everywhere as an American citizen. In view of my disappointment^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: dissappointment. and the repulse I met with at the hands of this American Minister, my gratification was all the more intense that I was not only permitted to visit France and see something of life in Paris; to walk the streets of that splendid city and spend days and weeks in her charming art Galleries, but to extend my tour to other lands and visit other cities; to look upon Egypt; to stand on the summit of its highest Pyramid; to walk among the ruins of old Memphis; to gaze into the dead eyes of Pharaoh;^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Pharoh. to feel the smoothness or granite^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: granits. tombs polished by Egyptian workmen three thousand years ago; to see the last remaining obelisk of Heliopolis; to view the land of Goshen; to sail on the bosom of the Nile; to pass in sight of Crete,^†Located approximately 60 miles from the Greek mainland, the island of Crete is situated in the Mediterranean Sea. The largest of the Greek islands, it extends nearly 160 miles and marks the southern limit of the Aegean Sea. Cohen, , 1:750. looking from the deck or our steamer perhaps as it did when Paul saw it on the voyage to Rome eighteen hundred years ago; to walk among the marble ruins of the Acropolis;^†This historic rock outcrop rises 260 feet above the city of Athens, Greece. The Acropolis features a relatively flat top, and originally functioned as a fortified citadel. Major structures on the Acropolis include the Parthenon, the Propylea, the temple of Athena Nike, and the Erechtheion. Cohen, , 1:14. to stand upon Mars Hill,^†Commonly known as the Areopagus, the structure Douglass mentions is a rocky hill northwest of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. In classical times it functioned as the site of the Court of Appeals for civil and criminal trials. During the Roman period, it was known as Mars Hill, after the Roman god of war. Philip Sanford Marden, (Boston, 1907), 107; Baedeker, , 4th ed. (New York, 1995), 157-58; Cohen, , 1:150. where Paul preached; to ascend Lycabettus and over look the plains of Marathon, the garden of Plato, and the rock where Demosthenes declaimed against the breezes of the sea; to gaze upon the Parthenon, the Temple of Theseus, the Temple of Wingless Victory, and the Theater of Dionysius.^†Mount Lycabettus, the highest hill within the city, is often climbed by tourists seeking to enjoy a view of all of Athens, including the ancient sites Douglass mentions. From this hill, one of two routes to Marathon is visible across a low-lying plain, which in ancient times was a commercial route for those landing on the region's east coast. Another landmark visible is the Academy, or garden, where the famous philosopher Plato regularly addressed his students. Douglass might have been imagining he could see the spot where the Greek statesman and orator Demosthenes stood, but he could certainly see the majestic temple known as the Parthenon, which is the most visible monument on the marble outcropping known as the Acropolis. On the other side of the Acropolis stands the temple of Athena Nike, sometimes known as the Temple of Wingless Victory. This temple once housed a statue of the winged Nike, who represents victory, but her wings were removed at some point to prevent "victory" from flying away. Below the Acropolis, Douglass could also see the free-standing temple of Theseus, who according to Greek legend unified the region of Attica under Athens. The Theater of Dionysus, a large open-air theater at the base of the Acropolis, is also visible from Lycabettus. Ernest Arthur Gardner, (London, 1902), 9-12, 24-25, 80-81, 12325, 217-18; Stamati M. Polemis, (Athens, 1927), 23. To think that I, once a slave on the eastern shore of Maryland, was experiencing all this was well calculated to intensify my feeling of good fortune by reason of contrast, if nothing more. A few years back my Sundays were spent on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay, bemoaning my condition and looking out from the farm of Edward CoveyCovey, Edward

Edward Covey (1806?-75), who started out as a poor farm-renter from Talbot County, Maryland, managed to accumulate $23,000 in real estate by 1850. Covey's reputation as a slave breaker enabled him to rent or even to receive the free use of field hands from local slaveowners anxious to have their slaves taught proper discipline. Douglass was hired out to him from 1 January to 25 December 1834. Douglass said his first six months with Covey were the worst times he had experienced in slavery. Covey whipped him weekly until Douglass midway through the year fought him to a standstill. Covey's reputation as a slave breaker was apparently “an immense advantage to him.” Harriet Lucretia Anthony, the great granddaughter of Aaron Anthony, remembered that "Mr. Covey was really noted for his cruelty and meanness." His farm never wanted for prime field hands, whom Covey either rented cheaply or got the free use of from slave owners anxious to have their property taught proper discipline. Covey’s favored position in the local labor market may explain why this poor but admittedly hard-working man had managed to accumulate $23,000 in real estate by 1850. Inventory of the Estate of Edward Covey, 15 May 1875, Talbot County Inventories, TNC#3, 578, MdTCH; Douglass, Narrative. 81–109; idem, Bondage and Freedom, 203–50; Harriet Anthony's annotated copy of My Bondage and My Freedom, folder 93, 203, Dodge Collection, MdAA; 1850 U.S. Census, Maryland, Talbot County, 240 (schedule of free inhabitants); Preston, Young Frederick Douglass, 117-31. , and, with a heart aching to be on their decks, watching the white sails of the ships passing off to sea. Now I was enjoying what the wisest and best of the world have bestowed for the wisest and best to enjoy.

Touching at Naples, we returned to Rome, where the longer one stays the longer one wants to stay. No place is better fitted^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: is fitted. to withdraw one from the noise and bustle of modern life and fill one's soul with solemn reflections

and thrilling sensations. Under one's feet and all around are the ashes of human greatness. Here, according to the age and body of its time, human ambition reached its topmost height and human power its utmost limit. The lesson of the vanity of all things is taught in deeply buried palaces, in fallen columns, in defaced monuments, in decaying arches, and in crumbling walls;—all perishing under the silent and destructive force of time and the steady action of the elements, in utter mockery of the pride and power of the great people by whom they were called into existence.

Next to Rome, in point of interest to me, is the classic city of Florence,^†Located on the Amo River, the city of Florence is in the Italian province of Tuscany. Initially the site of Etruscan settlement, it later became an important Roman town. The city became known for the production of fine silks, tapestries, and jewelry. Baedeker, , 380-85; Cohen, , 1:1010-11. and thither we went from the Eternal City. One might never tire of what is here to be seen. The first thing Mrs. Douglass and I did, on our arrival in Florence, was to visit the grave of Theodore ParkerParker, Theodore

Theodore Parker (1810-60), Harvard-educated Unitarian clergyman and reformer, was among the most erudite of all New England transcendentalists. Born in Lexington, Massachusetts, he taught at Boston-area private schools from 1831 until 1842 and graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 1836. After his ordination in 1837, Parker preached mainly at his West Roxbury church until 1845, when he resigned and accepted the pastorate of the new Twenty- Eighth Congregational Society of Boston. There he attracted a large, socially diverse and racially integrated following. The author of numerous tracts, sermons, and published addresses, he also edited the Massachusetts Quarterly Review throughout its three-year existence. Although he criticized some Garrisonian positions, Parker joined in the antislavery cause after 1845, attacking slavery on moral and economic grounds but basing his most militant abolitionism on the belief that black emancipation would prepare the way for further Anglo-Saxon dominance. As a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee he gave frequent aid to escaped bondsmen, actively resisted the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, and was indicted for his role in the Anthony Burns case. An outspoken proponent of the admission of Kansas as a free state, Parker hosted a meeting in 1858 at which John Brown disclosed his plans for a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Parker was among the "Secret Six" who supported John Brown's raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. Suffering from declining health, Parker traveled to the Caribbean and then Europe, where he hoped to improve his condition. Instead he died of tuberculosis in Florence, Italy, on 10 May 1860, where he was buried. Renehan, Secret Six, 37-46; Henry Steele Commager, Theodore Parker (Boston, 1960); C. Peter Ripley, ed., The Black Abolitionist Papers, 5 vols. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1985- 92), 4:52; Fredrickson, Black Image in the White Mind, 119-21, 157-58; ACAB, 4:654-56; DAB, 14:38-41; ANB, 17:43-44. and at the same time that of Elizabeth Barrett BrowningBrowning, Elizabeth Barrett

English author Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61) published her first poetry collection in 1826. Additional works included a translation of the Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound. Among her admirers was the poet Robert Browning, with whom she began corresponding in 1845. They married the following year, despite the objections of Barrett's family, and moved to Florence, Italy. Suffering from frequent bouts of ill health, Browning nevertheless gave birth to a son in 1849 and then published her most famous work, Sonnets from the Portuguese, in 1850. She died in Florence in 1861 and is buried there in a tomb shaped as a sarcophagus resting on six pedestals. Scott Wilson, Resting Places, The Burial Sites of Over 7,000 Famous Persons (Jefferson, N.C., 2001), 44: Beverly Taylor, "Elizabeth Barrett Browning," in Victorian Women Poets, ed. William B. Thesing (Detroit, 1999), 80-98; Magill, Critical Survey of Poetry, 1:393-404; Emerson, "Scholarly Edition of the Grand Tour Diaries," 119n. . The preacher and the poet lie near each other. The soul of each was devoted to liberty. The brave stand taken by Theodore Parker during the Anti-Slavery conflict endeared him to my heart and naturally enough the spot made sacred by his ashes was the first to draw me to its side. He had a voice for the slave when nearly all the pulpits or the land were dumb. Looking upon the little mound of earth that covered his dust, I felt the pathos of his simple grave. It did not seem well that the remains of the great American preacher should rest thus in a foreign soil far away from the hearts and hands which would gladly linger about it and keep it well adorned with flowers. Than Theodore Parker, no man was more intensely American. Broad as the land in his sympathy with mankind, he was yet a loving son of New England and thoroughly Bostonian in his thoughts, feelings and activities. The liberal thought which he taught had in his native land its natural home and largest welcome, and I therefore felt that his dust should have been brought here. It was in his pulpit that I made my first anti-slavery^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: anti-salvery. speech in Roxbury.^†Once home to Brook Farm utopian community, Roxbury in the 1840s was a suburban community south of the city of Boston, Massachusetts. Theodore Parker preached mainly in his West Roxbury Unitarian Church from his April 1837 ordination until December 1845, when he accepted the pulpit of the newly organized Twenty-eighth Congregational Society of Boston. Although Douglass spoke throughout Massachusetts as an itinerant abolitionist agent in the 1840s, no notices have survived of his addressing an audience in Parker's Roxbury congregation., 17:43-44. That its doors opened to me, in that dark period was due to him. I remember too, his loving kindness when I was persecuted for my change of opinion as to political action. Theodore Parker never joined that warfare upon me. He loved Mr. Garrison,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Garrissonian. but was not a Garrisonian. He worked with the sects, but was not a sectarian. His character was cast in a mould too large to be pressed into a form or reform less broad than humanity. He would shed his blood as quickly for a black fugitive slave pursued by human hounds as for a white President of the United States. He was the friend of the non-voting and non-resistant class of Abolitionists, but not less the friend of Henry Wilson, Charles Sumner, Gerrit^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Gerritt. Smith and John Brown. He was the large and generous brother of all men honestly endeavoring to bring about the abolition of negro slavery. It has lately been attempted to

class him with the contemners of the negro. Could that be established, it would convict him of duplicity and hypocrisy of the most revolting kind. But his whole life and character are in direct contradiction to that assumption.

Its Ducal Palaces, its grand Duomo,^†Famous for its 300-foot-high dome. Florence's cathedral, known as Il Duomo, was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi and built from 1294 to 1462. In 1588 the unfinished façade created by Giotto di Bondone was removed and replaced with marble. Baedeker, , 406, 436, 474; Emerson, "Scholarly Edition of the Grand Tour Diaries," 123n. its fine galleries of art, its beautiful Arno,^†The Arno River bisects the city of Florence in much the same way as the Seine separates Paris. It flows from Florence to Pisa and empties into the Ligurian Sea. Cohen, , 1:163, 1010, 3:2857. its charming environs and its many associations of great historical personages, especially of Michael AngeloMichelangelo (di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni)

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564), renowned Italian Renaissance sculptor, architect, and painter, is best known for such important works as the paintings on the ceiling of St. Peter's Sistine Chapel. His most famous work, the marble statue of David, was completed in Florence in 1504. Linda Murray, Michelangelo (New York, 1980). , DanteAlighieri, Dante

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Florentine poet, was author of the epic Divine Comedy. In addition to his poetic works, Dante trained and worked as a pharmacist and was involved in Florentine politics. Rachel Jacoff, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Dante (New York, 1993), 1-13. and SavonarolaSavonarola, Girolamo

Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98), Italian priest of the Dominican order, led Florence in the late fifteenth century. His famed opposition to the openness of the Renaissance led to book burnings and the destruction of art he deemed immoral. He emerged as political head of Florence in 1494 and led followers in the Bonfire of the Vanities, the aim of which was to destroy such items as mirrors, lewd or pagan books, cosmetics, and immoral works of art. Among works of art destroyed in Savonarola's bonfires were works by Michelangelo and Botticelli. He was excommunicated by Pope Alexander VI in 1497 and executed the following year. Donald Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance (Princeton, N.J., 1970), 74-77, 287-88. , give it a controlling power over mind and heart. I have travelled over no equal space between any two cities in Italy where the scenery was more delightful than that between Florence and Venice.^†Located in northeastern Italy, Venice is known for its series of 150 or more canals, including the Grand Canal, which forms the city's main traffic artery. A center for tourism and shipbuilding, Venice was once the most important maritime city, with a population of some 200,000 in the fifteenth century. Baedeker, , 239-40, 260; Cohen, , 3:3331. I enjoyed it with the ardor of a boy to whom all the world is new. Born and raised in^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: on. a flat country without the diversity of hill and valley, mountains have always attracted me. Those in sight on this journey were far away but lost nothing by the soft haze that blended their dark summits with the clouds and sky. These were too, the mountains of the Tyrol,^†The Tyrolean Alps, famed for their beauty, are located along the German border with Austria. Cohen, , 3:3252. the scene of the patriotic exploits of HoferHofer, Andreas

Andreas Hofer (1767-1810), Austrian patriot and guerrilla leader, led the Tyroleans against Napoleon in 1809. An innkeeper who traded in wine, horses, and grain. Hofer was elected to represent his home region in the Tyrolean assembly at the age of twenty-two. He led the military resistance against the French in the wars of 1796 and 1805, protecting Tyrol and the house of Habsburg from French domination. Hofer was less fortunate in 1809 when Austria again took up arms against France, and was executed at Napoleon I's order in 1810. Owen Connelly, ed., Historical Dictionary of Napoleonic France, 1799-1815 (Westport, Conn., 1985), 241-42. and his countrymen. The railway between Florence and Venice is over some of the oldest and best cultivated parts of Italy. The land is rich and fruitful. Every outlook has the appearance of thrift. There is not a single point upon which to hang the reproach of laziness so commonly charged against the Italians. I saw in Italy nothing to justify this unenviable reputation. In city and country alike the people seemed to me remarkably industrious and well provided with food and raiment.

I could tell much of the once famous city of Venice, of Milan,^†At the heart of Lombardy and its capital, Milan is one of the richest manufacturing centers of Italy, with silk and woolen goods comprising its primary products. Several navigable water routes connect to Milan. Baedeker, , 121; Cohen, , 2:1979. Lucerne^†Located on Lake Lucerne in Central Switzerland, Lucerne was mainly a summer resort town at the time Douglass visited. Baedeker, , 28; Cohen, , 2:1798. and other points subsequently visited, but it is enough that I have given my readers an idea of the use I made of my time during this absence from the scenes and activities that occupied me at home. I assume that they will rejoice that, after my life of hardships in slavery and of conflict with race and color prejudice and proscription at home, there was left to me a space in life when I could and did walk the world unquestioned; a man among men.

CHAPTER X.
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1888.

CHAPTER X.
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1888.

Preference for John Sherman—Speech at the convention—On the stump—The tariff question.

Returning from Europe in 1887 after a year of sojourn abroad, I found, as is usual when our country is nearing the close of a Presidential term, the public mind largely occupied with the question in respect of a successor to the outgoing President. The Democratic Party had the advantage of the Republican Party in two points. It was already in power and had its mind fixed upon one

candidate, in the person of Grover Cleveland, whose term was then expiring. Although he had not entirely satisfied the Southern section of his party or the Civil Service Reformers of the North, to whom he owed his election, he had so managed his administration that neither of^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: neitherof. these factions could afford to oppose his nomination for a second term of the Presidency. With the Republican party the case was different. It was not only out of power and deprived of the office holding influence and machinery to give it unity and force, but its candidates for Presidential honors were legion, and there was much doubt as to who would be chosen standard bearer in the impending contest. Among the doubters I was happily not one. From the first my candidate was Senator John Sherman of Ohio.^†While traveling through Pittsburgh on his way to Ohio and Illinois in June 1888, Douglass told a newspaper reporter that blacks strongly supported the nomination of Senator John Sherman of Ohio as the Republican candidate for president. The New York quoted Douglass as saying, "Sherman unquestionably is their favorite, and is the man I want to see get the nomination." At the Republican national convention in Chicago that month, Sherman led the balloting on the first several roll calls. Douglass was among the Sherman supporters on the convention floor, and at one point he took the stage on Sherman's behalf. However, Benjamin Harrison won the nomination on the eighth ballot. New York , 14 June 1888; New York , 22 June 1888. Not only was he the man fitted for the place by his eminent abilities and tried statesmanship in regard to general matters, but more important still, he was the man whose attitude towards the newly enfranchised colored citizens of the South, best fitted him for the place. In the Convention at Chicago I did what I could to secure his nomination, as long as there was any ground of hope for success. In every convention of the kind there comes a time when the judgment of factions must yield to the judgment of the majority. Either Russell A. AlgerAlger, Russell Alexander

Ohio-born Russell Alexander Alger (1836-1907) was orphaned at eleven years of age. He worked as a laborer and taught school before studying law in Akron, Ohio, where he was admitted to the bar in 1859. During the Civil War Alger served in the Union army, rising to the rank of colonel. Alger participated in battles at Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and in the Shenandoah Valley but resigned his commission in September 1864 after contracting typhoid fever. Following the war Alger settled in Detroit, Michigan, where he amassed a fortune in the lumber business. He was a founder of the Michigan branch of the Grand Army of the Republic and became its national commander in 1889. Alger was elected Republican governor of Michigan for one term (1885-87), and from 1897 to 1899 served as secretary of war in President McKinley's cabinet. The stigma inefficiency in managing that office during the war with Spain caused Alger to resign on 18 July 1899. He represented Michigan in the U.S. Senate from 1902 until his death. ANB, 1: 288-89; BDUSC (online). of Michigan, Allison of IowaAllison, William Boyd

William Boyd Allison (1829-1908) briefly attended Western Reserve College before opening a law office in Ashland, Ohio, in 1852. He was one of the founders of Ohio's Republican party in 1854. After losing a county political race, Allison headed west in 1857, settling in Dubuque, Iowa, where he again practiced law. Allison's political future was assured with the case of Gelpke v. the City of Dubuque (1862). Herman Gelpke brought suit against Dubuque for its failure to pay interest on the railroad bonds issued to promote the building of the Dubuque Pacific Railroad. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled in favor of the city, but the U.S. Supreme Court accepted Allison's arguments that a state supreme court's interpretation of its own constitution was subject to higher authority and ruled against the city. In 1860 Allison was elected to the House of Representatives as a Republican, where he introduced a bill providing federal land grants for his old friends, the railroads. In 1870, with the support of railroad magnates, Allison was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served as Iowa's political boss for thirty-five years. A master of political compromise, Allison served on the Senate's Committee on Appropriations and its Committee on Finance. influencing the major domestic legislation of the day. Allison made two bids for the Republican presidential nomination but lost to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and William McKinley in 1896. Leland L. Sage, William Boyd Allison: A Study in Practical Politics (Iowa City, 1956); ANB, 1:365-67; BDUSC (online). , Gresham of IndianaGresham, Walter Quintin

After studying law with a prominent Indiana Whig, Walter Quintin Gresham (1832-95) was admitted to the bar in April 1854. Following the collapse of the Whigs, Gresham flirted with the Know-Nothings before settling on the Republican party, where his prominence grew. Initially moderate on the slavery issue, he pushed for sectional compromise as a member of the Indiana General Assembly during debates held during the secession winter of 1861 . Following distinguished Civil War service. Gresham received an appointment in 1869 as federal district judge for Indiana by President Ulysses S. Grant. In 1880 President Chester A. Arthur appointed Gresham postmaster general, charged with implementing the Pendleton Civil Service Act. Gresham later served Arthur as secretary of the Treasury. After becoming disenchanted with the Republican party's protectionist tariff stance. Gresham threw his support to Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland in 1884, and was rewarded with appointment as secretary of state in Cleveland's first administration. In that post, he was a strict opponent of reckless expansionism, a position epitomized in his opposition to the annexation of Hawaii. Charles W. Calhoun, Gilded Age Cato: The Life of Walter Q. Gresham (Lexington, Ky., 1988); ANB, 9:572-74. ,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Indiania. or Depew of New YorkDepew, Chauncey Mitchell

Chauncey Mitchell Depew (1834-1928), railroad president and U.S. senator, was born in Peekskill, New York, and attended Yale University. In 1858 Depew was admitted to the bar. In 1862 and 1863 he served in the New York state legislature and became a leader of the Republican party caucus in his second session. In 1866 Depew signed on as an attorney for Cornelius Vanderbilt's railroads, beginning an association that would last for the rest of his life. By 1874 he was a director of the Vanderbilt system and in 1875 became its general counsel. In 1885 Depew advanced to the presidency of the New York Central Railroad. Though primarily a businessman, Depew was drawn to politics. In 1899 Depew stepped down from the presidency of the New York Central Railroad (but remained chairman of the board) to serve in the U.S. Senate. Although Depew was criticized as a hired lobbyist for the railroad and insurance industries, he completed his two Senate terms. Chauncey Depew, My Memories of Eighty Years (New York, 1924); ANB, 6:459-60; BDUSC (online). , would in my opinion have made an excellent President. But my judgment as to whom^†Editorial Emendation: either. was not the judgment of the Convention, so I went, as in duty bound, with the choice of the Majority of my party and have never regretted my course.

Although I was not a delegate to this National Republican Convention, but was, as in previous ones, a spectator, I was early honored by a spontaneous call to the platform and to address the convention. It was a call not to be disregarded. It came from^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: came came from. ten thousand leading Republicans of the land. It offered me an opportunity to give what I thought ought to be the accepted key note to the opening campaign How faithfully I responded will be seen by the brief speech I made in response to this call. It was not a speech to tickle men's ears or to flatter party pride, but to stir men up to the discharge of an imperative duty. It would have been easy on such an occasion to make a speech composed of glittering generalities, but the cause of my outraged people was on my heart and I spoke out of its fullness, and the response that came back to me showed that the great audience to which I spoke was in sympathy with my sentiments. After thanking the Convention for the honor of its hearty call upon me for a speech I said:—

"I have only one word to say to this Convention and it is this: I hope this Convention will make such a record in its proceedings as will entirely put it

out of the power of the leaders of the Democratic party and the leaders of the Mugwump party^†The term "mugwump" describes a political bolter or maverick. It was the name given to Republicans who refused to support the presidential candidacy of James G. Blaine, a man they viewed as hopelessly corrupt, in the 1884 campaign. Indeed, these true Mugwumps went a step further and supported Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland. The first known use of the term "mugwump" was in John Eliot's Indian Bible, published in 1663 . It is derived from the Algonquian word , which referred to a chief or another high-ranking individual. The term was popularized politically in 1884 by the New York and became the common name for anti-Blaine Republicans. The term persisted in the United States and Great Britain as a label for political bolters but has most often been ascribed to independent Republicans. Safire, , 471-72; Mathews, , 2:1098. to say that they see no difference between the position of the Republican party, in respect to the class I represent, and that of the Democratic Party. I have a great respect for a certain quality for which the Democratic party is distinguished. That quality is fidelity to its friends, its faithfulness to those whom it has acknowledged as its masters during the last forty years. It was faithful to the slave holding class during the existence of slavery. It was faithful to them before the war. It gave them all the encouragement that it possibly could without drawing its own neck into the halter. It was also faithful during the period of reconstruction and it has been faithful ever since. It is to-day, faithful to the solid South.^†In the late nineteenth century, "Solid South" referred to the supposedly monolithic vote of the southern states for the Democratic party. During Reconstruction, southern whites detested the so-called northern "Carpetbaggers" and "Scalawags" who through the Republican party controlled most state governments. The Democratic party appealed to white southerners who harbored resentment after the Confederacy's defeat, and Democratic politicians came to rely on the former Confederate states for strong support. Ironically, the phrase "Solid South" was popularized by Confederate cavalry leader John Singleton Mosby, who startled many southerners when he supported Republican (and Union army veteran) Rutherford B. Hayes over Democrat Samuel Tilden in the 1876 election. In a widely publicized letter, Mosby wrote: "Suppose Hayes is elected with a solid South against him--what are you going to do then?" Mosby's usage, in the context of a southerner fighting the solidity of the South, gave the phrase an air of political excitement. After Mosby's letter was published, Harper's Weekly reported that ''The Solid South is the Southern Democracy seeking domination of the United States through the machinery of the Democratic party." Republicans at the time were delighted that a red-blooded southerner like Mosby had used the term in a negative light toward his native region, and the New York Tribune, recognizing the danger of political conglomeration, stated that "The claim of a 'solid South ' is likely to do the Democrats fully as much harm as good." Nevertheless, the South voted solidly Democratic well into the mid-twentieth century. Satire, , 730-31. I hope and believe that the great Republican party will prove itself equally faithful to its friends, those friends with black faces who during the war were eyes to your blind, shelter to your shelterless when flying from the lines of the enemy. They are as faithful^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: are faithful. to-day as when the great Republic was in the extremest need; when its fate seemed to tremble in the balance; when the crowned heads of the Old World were gloating owr our ruin, saying, 'Aha, aha! the great Republican bubble is about to burst.' When your army was melting away before the tire and pestilence of rebellion; when your star spangled banner trailed in the dust or, heavy with blood, drooped at the mast head, you called upon the negro. Yes, Abraham Lincoln called upon the negro to reach forth with his iron arm and catch with his steel fingers your faltering flag, and he came, he came full two hundred thousand strong. Let us in the platform we are now about to promulgate remember the brave black men, and let us remember that these brave black men are now stripped of their constitutional right to vote. Let this remembrance be embodied in^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: vote. In. the standard bearer whom you will present to the country. Leave^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: country, leave. these men no longer compelled to wade to the ballot box through blood, but extend over them the protecting arm of this Government and make their pathway to the ballot box as straight and as smooth and as safe as that of any other class of citizens. Be not deterred from this duty by the cry of the bloody shirt. Let that shirt be waved as long as there shall be a drop of innocent blood upon it. A government that can give liberty in its constitution ought to have the power in its administration to protect and defend that liberty. I will not further take up your time. I have spoken for millions and my thought is now before you."^†The text of this impromptu speech before the Republican national convention on 19 June 1888 in Chicago's Armory Hall was reported with minor variants in newspapers all across the nation. , ser. 1, 5:388-90.

As soon as the Presidential campaign was fairly opened and a request was made for speakers to go before the people and support by the living voice the nominations and principles of the Republican Party, though somewhat

old for such service and never much of a stump speaker, I obeyed the summons. In company with my young friend Charles S. MorrisMorris, Charles Satchell

Charles Satchell Morris (1865-c.1952), Baptist minister and missionary, served as minister of the Myrtle Baptist Church in West Newton, Massachusetts (1896-99), and acted as a missionary in Liberia and South Africa before accepting the pastorate of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City (1902-08). More missionary work followed his New York pastorate, and in 1911 he began a lengthy tenure at a Baptist church in Norfolk, Virginia. Morris joined Douglass on a speaking tour on behalf of Benjamin Harrison's presidential campaign in 1888. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 5:xxiv, 390; William H. Ferris, The African Abroad or His Evolution in Western Civilization, 2 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 1913), 2:80104; Adam Clayton Powell, Adam by Adam: The Autobiography of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (New York, 1971), 46-47; Lewis R. Harlan et al., eds., Booker T. Washington Papers, 14 vols. (Urbana, Ill., 1972-89), 5:102; Joseph B. Earnest, "The Religious Development of the Negro in Virginia" (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1914), 221. , a man rarely gifted with eloquence, I made^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Made. speeches in five different states,^†Douglass spoke in numerous localities, including engagements in at least four states, in the months leading up to the 1888 presidential election, endorsing the platform of the Republican National Committee. His September travels took him to Indiana, where he and Charles Morris spoke on 22 September. On 25 September he addressed a large crowd at Grand Rapids, Michigan, moving on to speak at Pontiac the next day. On the following Saturday, 29 September, he spoke at Detroit. Returning to New England, Douglass and others addressed Republican rallies at Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut, both on 25 October. At the end of the month, he addressed a crowd at the Park Rink in Orange, New Jersey, on 29 October. Detroit , 26, 27 September 1888; Washington (D.C.) , 29 September 1888; Hartford (Conn.) , 24 October 1888; New Haven (Conn.) , 25 October 1888; New Haven (Conn.) , 26 October 1888; New York , 30 October 1888. indoors^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: in doors. and out of doors, in skating rinks and public halls, day and night, at points where it was thought by the National Republican Committee that my presence and speech would do most to promote success.

While the Committee was anxious to have the question of tariff made the prominent topic in the campaign, it did not in words restrict me to that one topic. I could not have gone into the field with any such restriction, had any such been imposed. Hence I left the discussion of the tariff to my young friend Morris, while I spoke for justice and humanity, as did that noble woman and peerless orator, Miss Anna E. DickensonDickinson, Anna Elizabeth

Philadelphia-born and Quaker-educated Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842-1932) began her career as a working woman, employed first as a copyist, then as a schoolteacher, and finally in the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. At the age of eighteen she first appeared on lecture platforms as a feminist and anti-slavery crusader. After she lost her job at the mint in December 1861 for accusing General George B. McClellan of treason, she became a full-time lecturer. Throughout the Civil War, Dickinson delivered Republican campaign speeches in New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, and on 16 January 1864 she spoke before a distinguished audience of statesmen and military officials, including President Lincoln, in the hall of the House of Representatives. At the end of the war she joined the lyceum lecture circuit, speaking on behalf of Radical Republican Reconstruction measures and women's rights, and against Mormonism, large corporations, and craft unions. In the early 1870s Dickinson's popularity as an orator waned, and her attempts at comebacks, first as a playwright and actress in the late 1870s and early 1880s and then as a political orator during the 1888 election, proved unsuccessful. She spent the last forty years of her life in obscurity. Giraud Chester, Embattled Maiden: The Life of Anna Dickinson (New York, 1951); NCAB, 3:109; DAB, 21:244-45; NAW, 1:475-76. ,^†Editorial Emendation: Dickinson. whose heart has ever been true to the oppressed, and who was a speaker in the same campaign. I took it to be the vital and animating principle of the Republican party. I found the people more courageous than their party leaders. What the leaders were afraid to teach, the people were brave enough and glad enough to learn. I held that the soul of the nation was in this question and that the gain of all the gold in the world would not compensate for the loss of the Nation's soul. National honor is the soul of the Nation, and when this is lost all is lost. The Republican party and the Nation were pledged to the protection of the constitutional rights of the colored citizens. If they refused^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: it they refused. to perform their promise,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: its their promise. they would be false to their highest^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: its their highest. trust. As with an individual, so too, with a nation, there is a time when it may properly be asked "What doth it profit to gain the whole world and thereby lose one's soul?"^†A paraphrase of Mark 8:36.

With such views as these I supported the Republican party in this somewhat remarkable campaign. I based myself upon that part of the Republican platform which I supported in my speech before the Republican Convention at Chicago. No man who knew me could have expected me to pursue any other course. The little I said on the tariff was simply based upon the principle of self protection taught in every department of nature whether in men, beasts or plants. It comes with the inherent right to exist. It is in every blade of grass as well as in every man and nation. If foreign manufactures oppress and cripple ours and serve to retard our natural progress, we have the right to protect ourselves against such efforts. Of course this right of self-protection has its limits, and the thing most important is to discover those limits and to observe them. There is no doubt as to the principle, but like all other principles, it may not justify all the inferences which may be deduced from it. There seems to be no difference between the Republican and Democratic parties as to the principle of protection.^†The tariff issue was in many respects the defining issue of the 1888 campaign. Placing a duty on imported goods, a tariff raises revenues while shielding domestic products from foreign competition. Cheaper goods held off the American market forced users of these goods to pay higher prices. This strategy in turn artificially supported the prices of American goods. Those who supported the tariff claimed it to be synonymous with the American way of life. It shielded "infant industries" against the international capitalists and "pauper labor"of Europe. To many American workers it promised food on the table and expansion of jobs, particularly for the large immigrant population. Others, however, viewed the tariff as a monopolist creator of extravagant wealth that fueled corruption in Washington. Democratic nominee and presidential incumbent Grover Cleveland was among the strongest opponents of the tariff. In April 1888 his bill to revise the tariffs, the Mills Bill, went to the House. This bill proposed modest reductions that many businessmen viewed as nonthreatening. The Republican nominee, Benjamin Harrison, steadfastly supported a high protective tariff throughout his political career. During the campaign, nearly all of Harrison's speeches stressed the importance of retaining the protective tariff He was supported by such groups as the American Iron and Steel Association and the American Protective Tariff League. When Democrats countered that Harrison's status-quo support for the tariff was akin to supporting excessive profits for businessmen while ignoring the small wage earners, the Republicans retaliated, claiming that Cleveland's tariff reforms would squelch the labor movement by unleashing a flood of cheap foreign goods. In truth, both parties' positions on the tariff hardly differed at all. Cleveland, far from wanting to abolish protectionism, merely suggested more study and minor reforms. Harrison simply stood behind the established system. Neither candidate's stance would have significantly altered the tariff, but the Republicans campaigned more successfully than the Democrats, and Harrison won the presidency. Schlesinger, , 387-96. They only differ in the inferences

drawn from the principle. One is for a tariff for revenue only and the other is for a tariff not only for revenue, but for protection to such industries as are believed to stand in need of protection. While on this question I have always taken sides with the Republican party. I have always felt that in the presence of the oppression and persecution to which the colored race is subjected in the Southern States, no colored man can consistently base his support of any party upon any other principle than that which looks to the protection of men and women from lynch law^†The term "lynching" refers to punishment or physical violence by self-appointed groups without regard to established legal procedures, often resulting in death. In American vocabulary the term can be traced to the Revolutionary era, when Charles Lynch (1736-96), a Bedford County, Virginia, justice of the peace, conducted a vigilante campaign against suspected Loyalists. In the following decades "lynch laws" were inflicted throughout the nation by popular tribunals bent on punishing "transgressors of community standards." In the post-Reconstruction South, whites lynched blacks who refused to show proper deference or disputed working conditions. Southern lynch mobs were often sadistic in the brutal methods they employed to execute victims. The brutality of the lynch mob became one of the defining images of bigotry and racial oppression in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Paul Finkelman, ed., , 3 vols. (New York, 2001), 2:238-39; , 2:307-14. and murder.

CHAPTER XI.
ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT HARRISON.

CHAPTER XI.
ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT HARRISON.

Appointed Minister to Haïti— Unfriendly criticism—Admiral Gherardi.

My appointment by President HarrisonHarrison, Benjamin

Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901), twenty-third president of the United States, was the grandson of President William Henry Harrison. Beginning his law career in Indiana in 1854. Harrison was a strong supporter of the Republican party from its inception. He served with distinction during the Civil War. earning promotion to brigadier general by war's end. Although he ran unsuccessfully for the Indiana governorship in the 1870s, by 1877 he had acquired enough political clout to be named leader of the state Republican party. He was instrumental in helping James Garfield gain the Republican nomination in 1880 and was elected to the U.S. Senate the following year. Losing his Senate seat when the Democrats swept Indiana in 1887, Harrison decided to try for the presidency. Despite divisions within the party, Harrison won the nomination on the eighth ballot. Douglass and other prominent African Americans campaigned widely for Harrison, who received 233 electoral votes to the incumbent Grover Cleveland's 168. Harrison was nominated again in 1892, but lost to Cleveland. He returned to practice law in Indianapolis, where he died in 1901. Homer E. Socolofsky and Allan B. Spetter, The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison (Lawrence, Kans., 1987), 7-16, 127, 185-86; ANB, 10:198-201. in 1889, to the office of Minister Resident and Consul General to the Republic of Haïti,^†Douglass campaigned heavily for Benjamin Harrison in 1888. Seeking a reward, Douglass applied twice in 1889 for his old position as recorder of deeds in the District of Columbia. Instead President Harrison gave Douglass the post of minister resident and consul general to Haiti. In this capacity Douglass was given the diplomatic task of acquiring the Mole, a task that proved to be difficult on account of the political and diplomatic corruption he encountered. Myra Himelhoch, "Frederick Douglass and Haiti's Mole St. Nicolas." , 56:161-80 (July 1971); Merline Pitre, "Frederick Douglass and American Diplomacy in the Caribbean," , 13:457-75 (June 1983); Louis Manin Sears, "Frederick Douglass and the Mission to Haiti, 1889-1891," , 21:222-38 (May 1941). did not pass without adverse comment at the time it was made; nor did I escape criticism at any time during the two years I had the honor to hold that office. In respect to the unfavorable comments upon my appointment, it may be truly said that they had their origin and inspiration from two very natural sources: First, American race and color prejudice, and second, a desire on the part of certain influential merchants in New York, to obtain concessions from Haïti^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Haiti. upon grounds that I was not likely to favor. When there is made upon a public man an attack by newspapers differing at all other points and united only in this attack, there is some reason to believe that they are inspired by a common influence. Neither my character nor my color was acceptable to the New York Press.^†Douglass's appointment as minister to Haiti was not well received in the American press. Supporting editors in the black press protested that the position was beneath a man of Douglass's stature. Black editors who disapproved of Douglass's personal life or political choices argued that a younger man should have been selected for the post. The mainstream northern press also criticized his mission to Haiti, claiming that the Haitian people would prefer to deal with a white man. Especially unkind to Douglass and his mission in Haiti was the African American newspaperman T. Thomas Fortune editor of the New York , who criticized the minister for supporting an interventionist agenda in Haiti. The mainstream press, such as the New York , blamed Douglass for the failure to acquire a naval station at Môle St. Nicholas. During his tenure as minister, the press often criticized Douglass for appearing too sympathetic to the people of Haiti. His assertion that the U.S. Navy supplied negative information about him to American newspapers may not have been unfounded. In an especially scathing attack on his ministry the noted: "It is the general belief about the Navy Department that the diplomatic career of Frederick Douglass at Port au Prince is rapidly drawing to a close." New York , 25 March, 4 June 1891; Himelhoch, "Frederick Douglass and Haiti's Mole St. Nicolas," 164-65, 169-70. The fault of my character was that upon it there could be predicated no well grounded hope that l would allow myself to be used or allow my office to he used to further selfish schemes of any sort for the benefit of individuals either at the expense of Haïti or at the expense of the character of the United States. and the fault of my color was that it was a shade too dark for American taste. It was not charged, as perhaps, it well might have been, that I was unfitfor the place by reason of inexperience and want of aptitude to perform the duties of the office; but the color argument was relied upon. It was that I was not colored right for the place although I matched well with the color of Haïti.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Haiti. It was held that the office should be given to a white man both on the ground or fitness and on the ground of efficiency. On the ground of fitness because it was alleged that Haïti would rather have in her Capital a white Minister Resident and Consul General than a colored one; and on the ground of

efficiency, because a white Minister by reason of being white, and therefore superior, could obtain from Haïti concessions which a colored Minister could not. It was also said, that I would not be well received by Haïti, because I had at one time advocated the annexation of Santo Domingo to the United States, a measure to which Haïti was strongly opposed. Every occasion was embraced by the New York Press to show that my experience in Haïti confirmed their views and predictions. Before I went there they endeavored to show that the Captain of the ship designated by the Government to take me to my post at Port au Prince, had refused to take me on board and as an excuse for his refusal, had made a false statement concerning the unseaworthiness of his vessel, when the real ground of objection was the color of my skin. When it was known that I had not been fully accredited in due form to the Government of President HyppoliteHyppolite, Louis Mondestin Florvil

Louis Mondestin Florvil Hyppolite (1827-96), son of a former Haitian minister, served in the Haitian military under two administrations before participating in a successful insurrection against President Etienne Félicité (Lysius) Salomon in 1888. After the assassination of the leading rebel, Séïdé Télémaque, a bloody civil war erupted in which Hyppolite commanded the forces of the nation's north against François-Denis Légitime, who held the loyalty of the south and the capital of Port-au-Prince. Hyppolite eventually won this contest and was sworn in as president of Haiti on 17 October 1889. An able leader and diplomat, Hyppolite ruled Haiti for seven years by sharing de facto power with several regional warlords. He is remembered for his improvements of the nation's public works. Hyppolite died while preparing to suppress a rebellion in the nation's south. Robert I. Rotberg, Haiti: The Politics of Squalor (Boston, 1971), 96, 98-99; Heinl and Heinl, Written in Blood, 244, 301-20; Roland I. Perusse, Historical Dictionary of Haiti (Metuchen, N.J., 1977), 54; EAAH, 2:135-38. and that there was a delay of many weeks^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: weks. in my formal recognition by the Haïtien^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Haitien. Government, the story was trumpeted abroad that I was "snubbed" by Haïti and in truth was having a hard time down there. After I was formally^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: formerly. recognized and had entered upon the duties of my office I was followed by the same unfriendly spirit and every effort was made to disparage me in the eyes of both the people or the United States, and those of Haïti.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Haiti. Strangely enough much or this unfriendly influence came from officers of the American Navy, men in the pay of the Government. The appearance in the Harbor of Port au Prince of United States ships of war instead of being a support to the American Minister was always followed by a heavy broadside^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: broad side. against him in the American papers. Our ships seemed to be well supplied with salt water correspondents, men who had studied the science of polite detraction at the public expense and had reached in it a high degree of perfection. The arrival of an American war vessel became a source of apprehension, and an Admiral's pennon in the Harbor of Port au Prince, was a signal of attack upon the United States Minister.

Speaking of the acquisition of the Môle St. Nicolas as a United States Naval station,^†In 1888 Haiti emerged from a revolution during which its latest dictator was overthrown. Two generals, the French pawn Légitime and the American protégé Hyppolite, vied for presidential succession. Légitime overtook the presidency. The United States, under the imperialist foreign policy of President Benjamin Harrison and Secretary of State James G. Blaine, saw a chance to compete with France for naval bases in the West Indies. The United States provided material aid to Hyppolite, and the general soon overthrew Légitime's forces. As recompense, the United States expected Hyppolite to lease to it the Mole St. Nicholas, a strategic key in West Indian waters. In 1889 Douglass, the new minister resident and consul general to Haiti, and co-negotiator Rear Admiral Bancroft Gherardi, were sent to Haiti to acquire a lease on the Môle. In Haiti, Douglass was greeted affably by Hyppolite, who promised full cooperation, but circumstances soon played against Douglass. The presence of U.S. officers reconnoitering the Môle, along with imperial barbs from the American press, aroused fresh Haitian nationalism that threatened Hyppolite's rule. In the midst of this political upheaval, Hyppolite's government refused to yield to U.S. diplomatic pressure, even as Douglass continued to be treated cordially. In addition, tensions between Douglass and Gherardi complicated the negotiation process. Any last chances for acquiring the Môle evaporated when a huge fleet of U.S. ships assembled at Port-au-Prince. Amidst this concentration, Haiti declined lease of the Môle. Douglass resigned his mission on 30 July 1891 and through numerous newspaper interviews exculpated himself of any blame for the mission's failure. Sears, "Frederick Douglass and the Mission to Haiti," 222-38; Himelhoch, "Frederick Douglass and Haiti's Môle St. Nicolas," 161-80. one of these fruitful correspondents thus exposed the real cause of complaint against me. "When by the active intervention and material aid of the States, General Hyppolite was placed in power in October 1889^†Editorial Emendation: #### ... American influence was paramount and had a shrewd and capable American then been sent by the United States to conduct the negotiations so ably initiated by Rear Admiral Gherardi, there would be a different condition of affairs to report to-day. At Admiral Gherardi 's suggestion, a new Minister was sent to Port au Prince....^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: ####. The lack of wisdom, however, displayed in the choice...^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: ####. has by the result attained become only too apparent." "Of the Clyde concession it is perhaps, needless to say, anything....^†Editorial Emendation: anything, #### has It has failed

completely....^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: completely #####. But with the negotiations in the hands of Rear Admiral Gherardi a decision must be reached shortly. Admiral Gherardi is sent to resuscitate the negotiations. Admiral Gherardi will succeed eventually." "It is recognized that were the United States to possess^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: posses. a coaling station in Haïti... it would^†Editorial Emendation: Haiti #### would intervene to end the petty revolutions that distract the country."

Thus we had Admiral Gherardi at every turn of Haïtien affairs. It was at his suggestion that a new Minister was appointed. It was he who made American influence paramount in Haïti. It was he who was to conduct the negotiations for the naval station. It was he who counseled the State Department at Washington. It was he who decided the question of the fitness of the American Minister at Haïti. In all this I am not disclosing Cabinet or State secrets. This and much more was published in the New York papers. The comment that I have to make upon it is, that no better way could have heen devised to arouse the suspicion of Haïtien statesmen and lead them to reject our application for a naval station, than to make such representations as these coming from the decks of the flag-ship of Rear Admiral Gherardi.

CHAPTER XII.
MINISTER TO HAÏTI.

CHAPTER XII.
MINISTER TO HAÏTI.

The Môle St. Nicolas—Social Relations—Sympathy for Haïti—The facts about the Môle St. Nicolas—Conference with the Haïtian Government—Negotiations for the Môle St. Nicolas—Close of the interview.

The part I bore in the matter of obtaining at the Môle St. Nicolas, a naval station for the United States, and the real cause for the failure of the enterprise, are made evident in the following articles from me, published in the North American Review for September and October, 1891.^†Douglass reproduces his two articles appearing in the September and October 1891 issues of the : Douglass, "Haïti and the United States, I," 337-45; idem, "Haïti and the United States, II," 450-59.

"I propose to make a plain statement regarding my connection with the late negotiations with the government of Haïti for a United States naval station at the Môle St. Nicolas. Such a statement seems required. not only as a personal vindication from underserved censure, but as due to the truth of history. Recognizing my duty to be silent while the question of the Môle was pending. I refrained from making any formal reply to the many misstatements and misrepresentations which have burdened the public press unchallenged during the last six months. I have, however, long intended to correct some of the grosser errors contained in these misrepresentations, should the time ever come when I could do so without exposing myself to the charge of

undue sensitiveness and without detriment to the public interest. That time has now come, and there is no ground of sentiment, reason, or propriety for a longer silence, especially since, through no fault of mine, the secrets of the negotiations in question have already been paraded before the public, apparently with no other purpose than to make me responsible for their failure.

"There are many reasons why I would be gladly excused from appearing before the public in the attitude of self-defence. But while there are times when such defence is a privilege to be exercised or omitted at the pleasure of the party assailed, there are other times and circumstances when it becomes a duty which cannot be omitted without the imputation of cowardice or of conscious guilt. This is especially true in a case where the charges vitally affect one's standing with the people and government of one's country. In such a case a man must defend himself, if only to demonstrate his fitness to defend anything else. In discharging this duty I shall acknowledge no favoritism to men in high places, no restraint but candor, and no limitation but truth. It is easy to whip a man when his hands are tied. It required little courage for these men of war to assail me while I was in office and known to be forbidden by its rules to write or to speak in my own defence. They^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: they. had everything their own way.

"Perhaps it was thought that I lacked the spirit or the ability to reply. On no other ground of assurance could there have been such loose and reckless disregard of easily ascertained facts to contradict them. It is also obvious that the respectability of the public journals, rather than the credibility of the writers themselves, was relied upon to give effect to their statements. Had they disclosed their names and their true addresses, the public could have easily divined a motive which would have rendered unnecessary any word^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: owrd. of mine in self-defence. It would have become evident, in that case, that there was a premeditated attempt to make me a scape-goat to bear off the sins of others. It may be noted, too, that prompt advantage has been taken of the fact that falsehood is not easily exposed when it has had an early start in advance of truth. As mindful of some things as they were, however, they forgot that innocence needs no defence until it is accused.

"The charge is that I have been the means of^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: od. defeating the acquisition of an important United States naval station at the Môle St. Nicolas. It is said, in general terms, that I wasted the whole of my first year in Haïti in needless parley and delay, and finally reduced the chances of getting the Môle to such a narrow margin as to make it necessary for our government to appoint Rear-Admiral GherardiGherardi, Bancroft

Bancroft Gherardi (1832-1903) was born in Jackson, Louisiana, to an Italian immigrant father and the sister of historian and politician George Bancroft. He received a commission in the U.S. Navy in 1846 when his uncle was secretary of the Navy. After five years of service, he briefly attended the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating in 1852. Following several Civil War and postwar assignments, he rose to the rank of rear admiral and commanded the North Atlantic Squadron (1889-92). During the Haitian civil war of 1888-89, Gherardi advised the United States not to recognize the legitimacy of the blockade against ports controlled by Louis M. F. Hyppolite. At this time, Gherardi held many discussions with Hyppolite and his principal advisers and came to believe that, out of gratitude for the U.S. policy toward the blockade, important concessions would be granted. In January 1891 the Harrison administration appointed Gherardi special commissioner to cooperate with Douglass in negotiating a treaty for the lease of the Môle St. Nicholas as a naval coaling station. The State Department's failure to provide Gherardi with the proper credentials, however, allowed the Haitians to drag out the negotiations. Heinl and Heinl, Written in Blood, 309-10, 312-20; Logan, Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 413-14, 423-23, 439-52; EAAH, 2:106-07; ACAB, 2: 633-34; DAB, 7:232. as a special commissioner to Haiti to take the whole matter of negotiation for the Môle out of my hands. One of the charitable

apologies they^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: thay. are pleased to make for my failure is my color; and the implication is that a white man would have succeeded where I failed. This color argument is not new. It besieged the White House before I was appointed Minister-Resident and Consul-General to Haïti. At once and all along, the line of contention was then raised that no man with African blood in his veins should be sent as Minister to the Black Republic. White men professed to speak in the interest of black Haïti; and I could have applauded their alacrity in upholding her dignity if I could have respected their sincerity. They thought it monstrous to compel black Haïti to receive a Minister as black as herself. They did not see that it would be shockingly inconsistent for Haïti to object to a black Minister while she herself is black.

"Prejudice sets all logic at defiance.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: definace. It takes no account of reason or consistency. One of the duties of Minister in a foreign land is to cultivate good social as well as civil relations with the people and government to which he is sent. Would an American white man, imbued with our national sentiments, be more likely than an American colored man to cultivate such relations? Would his American contempt for the colored race at home fit him to win the respect and good-will of colored people abroad? Or would he play the hypocrite and pretend to love negroes in Haïti when he is known to hate negroes in the United States,—aye,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: States?—Aye. so bitterly that he hates to see them occupy even the comparatively humble position of Consul-General to Haïti? Would not the contempt and disgust of Haïti repel such a sham?

"Haïti^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Haiti. is no stranger to Americans or to American prejudice. Our white^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: wite. fellow-countrymen have taken little pains to conceal their sentiments. This objection to my color and this demand for a white man to succeed me spring from the very feeling which Haïti herself contradicts and detests. I defy any man to prove, by any word or act of the Haïtien Government, that I was less respected at the capital of Haïti than was any white Minister or consul. This clamor for a white Minister for Haïti is based upon the idea that a white man is held in higher esteem by her than is a black man, and that he can get more out of her than can^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: cand. one of her own color. It is not so, and the whole free history of Haïti proves it not to be so. Even if it were true that a white man could, by reason of his alleged superiority, gain something extra from the servility of Haïti, it would be the height of meanness for a great nation like the United States to take advantage of such servility on the part of a weak nation. The American people are too great to be small, and they should ask nothing of Haïti on grounds less just and reasonable than those upon which they would ask anything of France or England. Is the weakness of a nation a reason for our robbing it? Are we to take advantage, not only of its weakness,

but of its fears? Are we to wring from it by dread of our power what we cannot obtain by appeals to its justice and reason? If this is the policy of this great nation, I own that my assailants were right when they said that I was not the man to represent the United States in Haïti.

"I am charged with sympathy for Haïti. I am not ashamed of that charge; but no man can say with trnth that my sympathy with Haïti stood between me and any honorable duty that I owed to the United States or to any citizen of the United States.

"The attempt has been made to prove me indifferent to the acquisition of a naval station in Haïti, and unable to grasp the importance to American commerce and to American influence of such a station in the Caribbean Sea. The fact is that when some of these writers were in their petticoats I had comprehended the value of such an acquisition, both in respect to American commerce and to American influence. The policy of obtaining such a station is not new.^†Long before Douglass's diplomatic involvement with Haiti, the United States attempted to annex the small Caribbean island. Its rich supply of resources and its geographic location had long made it desirable to the United States and to European powers. The first attempt began in 1854. The chief forces behind these efforts were southern leaders who wanted more slave territory and the desire for a U.S. naval station at Samana Bay. However, five presidential administrations had declined to annex Samana Bay over fear of arousing French and British opposition, and prominent antislavery leaders opposed annexation. The second attempt began in January 1866, when Secretary of State William H. Seward set his sights on obtaining St. Thomas and Samana Bay as U.S. naval bases. Along with Seward, Massachusetts land speculators William L. Cazneau and Warren Fabens attempted to persuade President Grant to annex the island. Grant believed that territorial expansion would increase U.S. prestige and provide a place of refuge for American blacks. Grant's chief opposition was Senator Charles Sumner. Sumner accused the executive branch of governmental overreach and believed that annexation would obliterate Haitian independence. As debate on the annexation treaty began on 29 June 1870, pro-administration Republicans removed Sumner from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This action made the breach between Grant and Sumner irreconcilable, and Grant yielded to his opposition in the spring of 1871. Sumner was further vindicated when the president of Haiti honored him with a medal in appreciation of his bold defense of Haitian independence. Harold T. Pinkett, "Efforts to Annex Santo Domingo to the United States, 1866-1871,", 26:12-45 (January 1941); Jeannette P. Nichols, "The United States Congress and Imperialism, 1861-1897," , 21:526-38 (December 1961); James A. Padgett, "Diplomats to Haiti and Their Diplomacy," , 25:265-330 (July 1940). I supported General Grant's ideas on this subject against the powerful opposition of my honored and revered friend Charles Sumner, more than twenty years ago, and proclaimed it on a hundred platforms and to thousands of my fellow-citizens. I said then that it was a shame to American statesmanship that, while almost every other great nation in the world had secured a foothold and had power in the Caribbean Sea, where it could anchor in its own bays and moor in its own harbors, we, who stood at the very gate of that sea, had there no anchoring ground anywhere. I was for the acquisition of Samana,^†Samana Bay is located on the northeastern edge of the Dominican Republic near the Mona Passage, which joins the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. Its deep harbor made it attractive as a potential naval base. Cohen, , 3:2731. and of Santo Domingo herself if she wished to come to us. While slavery existed I was opposed to all schemes for the extension of American power and influence. But since its abolition I have gone with him who goes farthest for such extension.

"But the pivotal and fundamental charge made by my accusers is that I wasted a whole year in fruitless negotiations for a coaling station at the Môle St. Nicolas and allowed favorable opportunities for obtaining it to pass unimproved, so that it was necessary at last for the United States Government to take the matter out of my hands and send a special commissioner to Haïti, in the person of Rear-Admiral^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Rear)Admiral. Gherardi, to negotiate for the Môle. A statement more false than this never dropped from lip or pen. I here and now declare, without hesitation or qualification or fear of contradiction, that there is not one word of truth^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: trith. in this charge. If I do not in this state the truth, I may be easily contradicted and put to open shame. I therefore affirm that at no time during the first year of my residence in Haïti was I charged with the duty or invested with any authority by the President of the United States, or by the Secretary of State, to negotiate with Haïti for a United States naval

station at the Môle St. Nicolas or anywhere else in that country. Where no duty was imposed no duty was neglected. It is not for a diplomat to run before he is sent, especially in matters involving large consequences like those implied in extending our power into a neighboring country.

"Here, then, let me present the plain facts in the case. They, better than anything else I can say, vindicate my conduct in connection with this question.

"On the 26th of January, 1891,^†Admiral Gherardi arrived in Port-au-Prince on 25 January 1891 and met with Douglass almost immediately. Although it cannot be confirmed that the meeting took place, as Douglass recalls, on 26 January, this is most likely the correct date given the time of Gherardi's arrival and the haste he made in arranging the meeting with Douglass. Himelhoch, "Frederick Douglass and Haiti's Môle St. Nicolas," 174. Rear-Admiral Gherardi, having arrived at Port au Prince, sent one of his under-officers on shore to the United States Legation^†The U.S. legation in Haiti was established in 1862 with the appointment of Benjamin F. Whidden as the first U.S. commissioner and consul general. Smaller than a modern embassy, a legation was often designated to facilitate international relations and to house U.S. diplomatic officers in small countries. When diplomatic relations were firmly established between the United States and Haiti following the Civil War, the legation at Haiti generally accommodated the minister and several consular agents. During Douglass's tenure in Haiti, the legation consisted of a small office facility with a public room to greet visitors and a private room that served as his official office. Nonna Brown, ed., , 2 vols. (Salisbury, N.C., 1977), 1:10-18; Padgett, "Diplomats to Haiti and Their Diplomacy," 270-77. to invite me on board of his flagship, the 'Philadelphia.'^†A cruiser, the was built by William Cramp and Sons at Philadelphia in 1888 and launched 7 September 1889. The Philadelphia was the flagship of Rear Admiral Bancroft Gherardi during his command of the North Atlantic Squadron and the negotiations for annexing Môle St. Nicholas. The cruiser was removed from service and sold at public auction in 1927. Mooney, , 5:282-83. I complied with the invitation, although I knew that, in strict politeness, it would have been more appropriate for Admiral Gherardi himself to come to me. I felt disinclined, however, to stand upon ceremony or to endeavor to correct the manners of an American Admiral. Having long since decided to my own satisfaction that no expression of American prejudice or slight on account of my color could diminish my self-respect or disturb my equanimity, I went on board as requested, and there for the first time learned that I was to have some connection with negotiations for a United States coaling station at the Môle St. Nicolas, and this information was imparted to me by Rear-Admiral Gherardi. He told me in his peculiar, emphatic manner that he had been duly appointed a United States special commissioner; that his mission was to obtain a naval station at the Môle St. Nicolas; and that it was the wish of Mr. BlaineBlaine, James Gillespie

Born in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania, James Gillespie Blaine (1830-93), graduated from Washington College near his hometown in 1847. After studying law and teaching, Blaine moved to Maine where he worked for newspapers in Kennebec and Portland in the mid-1860s. An early adherent of the Republican party, he held office in the state legislature (1858-62), the U.S. House of Representatives (1863-75), and the U.S. Senate (1875-81). Relatively conservative on the issues of military Reconstruction, Blaine was a leader of the anti-Grant ''HalfBreed" faction of the Republican party and lost bitterly contested battles for the presidential nomination in 1876 and 1880. He served Garfield as secretary of state but departed the cabinet when Chester Arthur became president. In 1884 Blaine finally captured the nomination for president but lost a close election to Grover Cleveland in which Democrats charged him with accepting financial favors while a congressman. Blaine concluded his long public career by serving as Benjamin Harrison's secretary of state (1889-93). David Saville Muzzey, James G. Blaine: A Political Idol of Other Days (New York, 1934); Charles Edward Russell, Blaine of Maine: His Life and Times (New York, 1931); ACAB, 1:275-80; NCAB, 1:137-39; DAB, 2:322-29. and Mr. TracyTracy, Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin Tracy (1830-1915) was Benjamin Harrison's secretary of the Navy. During the Reconstruction years Tracy served as a federal attorney for the Eastern District of New York and earned a seat on the New York Court of Appeals in 1881. Building on Alfred Thayer Mahan's theory from The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890), Tracy convinced Harrison and Congress that a strong, technically advanced navy was necessary for the United States to defend itself against the great European and Asian imperial nations. During Tracy's four years as naval secretary, nineteen new state-of-the-art steel warships were commissioned. Of utmost importance to Tracy's expansionist policy was the acquisition of naval bases around the world. One of Tracy's prime targets for acquisition was Haiti's deepwater harbor at Môle St. Nicholas, which was to be used as a refueling location for steamships. B. Franklin Cooling, Benjamin Franklin Tracy: Father of the Modern American Fighting Navy (Hamden, Conn., 1973); EAAH, 3:243-44; ANB, 21:791-94. , and also of the President of the United States, that I should earnestly coöperate with him in accomplishing this object. He further made me acquainted with the dignity of his position, and I was not slow in recognizing it.

"In reality, some time before the arrival of Admiral Gherardi on this diplomatic scene, I was made acquainted with the fact of his appointment. There was at Port au Prince an individual, of whom we shall hear more elsewhere, acting as agent of a distinguished firm in New York, who appeared to be more fully initiated into the secrets of the State Department at Washington than I was, and who knew, or said he knew, all about the appointment of Admiral Gherardi, whose arrival he diligently heralded in advance and carefully made public in all the political and business circles to which he had access. He stated that I was discredited at Washington, had, in fact, been suspended and recalled, and that Admiral Gherardi had been duly commissioned to take my place. This news was sudden and far from flattering. It is unnecessary to say that it placed me in an unenviable position both before the community of Port au Prince and before the Government of Haïti. It had,

however, the advantage, so far as I was able to believe anything so anomalous, of preparing me for the advent of my successor, and of softening the shock of my fall from my high estate. My connection with this negotiation, as all may see, was very humble, secondary, and subordinate. The glory of success or the shame of defeat was to belong to the new Minister. I was made subject to the Commissioner. This was not quite so bad as the New York agent had prepared me to expect, but it was not what I thought I deserved and what my position as Minister called for at the hands of my Government. Strangely enough, all of my instructions concerning the Môle came to me through my newly constituted superior. He was fresh from the face of our Secretary of State, knew his most secret intentions and the wants and wishes of the Government, and I naturally enough, received the law from his lips.

"The situation suggested the resignation of my office as due to my honor; but reflection soon convinced me that such a course would subject me to a misconstruction more hurtful than any^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: nay. which, in the circumstances, could justly^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: juctly. arise from remaining at my post. The Government had decided that a special Commissioner was needed in Haïti. No charges were brought against me, and it was not for me to set up my wisdom or my resentment as a safer ruler of action than that prescribed by the wisdom of my Government. Besides, I did^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: di. not propose to be pushed out of office in this way. I therefore resolved to cooperate with the special Commissioner in good faith and in all earnestness, and did so to the best of my ability.

"It was first necessary, in furtherance of the mission of Admiral Gherardi, to obtain for him as early as possible an interview with Mr. FirminFirmin, Joseph-Anténor

Joseph-Anténor Firmin (1850-1911), Haitian statesman and author, was born in Cap Haitien in northern Haiti. Firmin studied law and became the inspector of schools in Cap Haitien. In 1881 Firmin married Rosa Salnave, daughter of the former Haitian president Sylvain Salnave, and two years later the Haitian government sent Firmin to France on diplomatic assignment. In Paris he was admitted to the Anthropological Society, where he became perhaps the first black scholar to write a systematic work of anthropology. His research led to the publishing of The Equality of the Human Races in 1885, a direct response to racist anthropological works of the nineteenth century such as Count Arthur de Gobineau's four-volume Inequality of Human Races. Firmin rejected de Gobineau's racial classifications as nonscientific and absurd; he also questioned the biological premise of race. Firmin's work denied the notion of "pure races" and celebrated the inherent values of race mixtures. He returned to Haiti in the midst of the civil war of 1888. Firmin served under Hyppolite as minister of finance, commerce, and foreign relations. In 1891 he played a key role in negotiations with U.S. Minister to Haiti Frederick Douglass and Admiral Bancroft Gherardi to establish a U.S. naval base in Haiti's deepwater harbor at Môle St. Nicholas. Firmin stood against leasing the Môle to the United States, arguing that if the Haitian government unconditionally surrendered sovereign territory to any foreign power, nationalist sentiment would grip the population and incite rebellions. He was later recognized as having played a critical role in keeping the Môle St. Nicholas under Haitian control. Firmin was appointed minister to France in 1900, and two years later he returned to Haiti as the leader of an insurrection that was defeated by government forces at Port-au-Prince. After leading a second failed insurrection in 1910, Firmin died in nearby St. Thomas, EAAH, 2:19. , the Haïti Minister of Foreign Affairs, and with His Excellency Florvil Hyppolite, the President of Haïti. This, by reason of my position as Minister and my good relations with the Government of Haïti, I accomplished only two days after the arrival of the Admiral. Not even my accusers can charge me with tardiness in obeying in this, or in anything else, the orders of my superior. In acting under him I had put aside the fact of the awkward position in which the officious agent had placed me, and the still more galling fact that the instructions I received had not reached me from the State Department in the usual and appropriate way, as also the fact that I had been in some degree subjected to the authority of an officer who had not, like myself, been duly appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate of the United States, and yet one whose name and bearing proclaimed him practically the man having full command. Neither did I allow anything like a feeling of offended dignity to diminish my zeal and alacrity in carrying out his instructions. I consoled myself with the thought that I was acting like a good soldier,

promptly and faithfully executing the orders of my superior, and obeying the will of my government. Our first conference with President Hyppolite and his Foreign Secretary was held at the palace at Port au Prince on the 28th of January, 1891.^†Douglass's recollection is correct. The formal opening of the negotiations for the Môle St. Nicholas began on the afternoon of 28 January 1891 at Hyppolite's presidential palace. Present at the three-hour conference were Douglass, Rear Admiral Bancroft Gherardi, Lieutenant Huse (Gherardi's interpreter). Haitian Prime Minister Antenor Joseph Firmin, and President Hyppolite. Himelhoch, "Frederick Douglass and Haiti's Môle St. Nicolas," 174. At this conference, which was, in fact, the real beginning of the negotiations for the Môle St. Nicolas, the wishes of our Government were made known to the Government of Haïti by Rear-Admiral Gherardi; and I must do him the justice to say that he stated the case with force and ability. If anything was omitted or insisted upon calculated to defeat the object in view, this defect must be looked for in the Admiral's address, for he was the principal speaker,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: principle speaker. as he was also the principal negotiator.^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: principle negotiator.

"Admiral Gherardi based our claim for this concession upon the ground of services rendered by the United States to the Hyppolite revolution. He claimed it also on the ground of promises made to our Government by Hyppolite and Firmin through their agents while the revolution was in progress, and affirmed but for the support of our Government the revolution would have failed. I supplemented his remarks, not in opposition to his views, but with the intention of impressing the Go,ernment of Haïti with the idea that the concession asked for was in the line of good neighborhood and advanced civilization, and in every way consistent with the autonomy of Haïti, urging that the concession would be a source of strength rather than of weakness to the Haïti government; that national isolation was a policy of the past; that the necessity for it in Haïti, for which there was an apology at the commencement of her existence, no longer exists; that her relation to the world and that of the world to her are not what they were when her independence was achieved that her true policy now is to touch the world at all points that make for civilization and commerce; and that, instead of asking in alarm what will happen if a naval station be conceded to the United States, it should ask, what will happen if such a naval station be not conceded? I insisted that there was far more danger to be apprehended to the stability of the existing Government from allowing the rumor to float in the air that it was about to sell out the country than by granting the lease of the Môle and letting the country know precisely what had been done and the reasons in the premises or the same; that a fact accomplished carries with it a power to promote acquiescence; and I besought them to meet the question with courage.

"In replying to us Mr. Firmin demanded to know on which of the two grounds we based our claim for the possession of this naval station. If it were demanded, he said, upon any pledge made by President Hyppolite and himself, he denied the existence of any such promise or pledge, and insisted that

while the offer of certain advantages had been made to our Government, the Government at Washington had not at the time accepted them. The letter in proof of the different view was, he said, only a copy of the original letter, and the original letter was never accepted by the American Government.

"This position of Mr. Firmin's was resisted by Admiral Gherardi, who contended with much force that, while there was no formal agreement consummated between the two Governments, Haïti was nevertheless bound, since the assistance for which she asked had made Hyppolite President of Haïti. Without^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: without. intending to break the force of the Admiral's contention at this point, I plainly saw the indefensible attitude in which he was placing the Government of the United States in representing our Government as interfering by its navy with the affairs of a neighboring country, covertly assisting in putting down one government and setting up another; and I therefore adhered to the grounds upon which I based our demand for a coaling-station at the Môle. I spoke in the interest and honor of the United States. It did not strike me that what was claimed by Admiral Gherardi to haw been done—though I did not say as much— is the work for which the United States is armed, equipped, manned and supported by the American people. It was alleged that, though our Government did not authorize Rear-Admiral Gherardi to overthrow^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: over-throw. LégitimeLégitime, François-Denis

François-Denis Légitime (1842-1935) was agricultural minister in the cabinet of Haitian President Louis Félicité (Lysius) Salomon. When the latter was overthrown in August 1888, Legitime attempted to succeed him. The supporters of Louis M. F. Hyppolite disputed the legitimacy of Légitime's election on 16 December 1888 as the fourteenth president of Haiti. At the start of the eight-month civil war that followed, Légitime held control of only the capital of Port-au-Prince and a portion of Haiti's south. The loyalty of the nation's navy to Légitime, however, allowed him to declare a blockade of ports commanded by Hyppolite. His regime even won recognition from the major European powers as the legitimate government of the whole country. Thanks in part to the United States' refusal to recognize Légitime's government or its blockade. Hyppolite's strength grew. By the time President Benjamin Harrison finally recognized the authority of Légitime's rule in June 1889, he controlled only the immediate area around Port-au-Prince. On 22 August 1889 Legitime conceded defeat and sailed into exile. Légitime lived in Paris for a time but returned to Haiti in 1896, remaining there until his death. Jacques Nicholas Léger, Haiti, Her History and Her Detractors (1907; Westport, Conn., 1970), 241-44; Heinl and Heinl, Written in Blood, 239-40, 229-301, 303-09; Logan, Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 397-99, 426-47. and to set up Hyppolite as President of Haïti, it gave him the wink, and left him to assume the responsibility. I did not accept this as a foundation upon which I could base my diplomacy. If this was a blunder on my part, it was a blunder of which I am not ashamed, and it was committed in the interest of my country.

"At the close of this conference we were asked by Mr. Firmin to put into writing our request for the Mole, and the terms upon which we asked its concession."

CHAPTER XIII.
CONTINUED NEGOTIATIONS FOR THE MÔLE ST. NICOLAS

CHAPTER XIII.
CONTINUED NEGOTIATIONS FOR THE MÔLE ST. NICOLAS

Unfortunate delay—Renewed authority from the United States—Haïti's refusal—Reasons for the refusal—The Clyde contract—A dishonest proposition—A strange demand—Haïti's mistake—Bad effect of the Clyde proposition—Final words.

"At a meeting subsequent to the one already described. application for a United States naval station at the Môle St. Nicolas was made in due form to Mr. Firmin, the Haïtien Minister of Foreign Affairs. At his request, as already stated, this application was presented to him in writing. It was prepared

on board the 'Philadelphia,' the flagship of Rear-Admiral Bancroft Gherardi, and bore his signature alone. I neither signed it nor was asked to sign it, although it met my entire approval. I make this statement not in the way of complaint or grievance, but simply to show what, at the time, was my part, and what was not my part, in this important negotiation, the failure of which has unjustly been laid to my charge. Had the Môle been acquired, in response to this paper, the credit of success, according to the record, would have properly belonged to the gallant admiral in whose name it was demanded; for in it I had neither part nor lot.

"At this point, curiously enough, and unfortunately for the negotiations, the Haïtian Minister, who is an able man and well skilled in the technicalities of diplomacy, asked to see the commission of Admiral Gherardi and to read his letter of instructions. When these were presented to Mr. Firmin, he, after carefully reading them, pronounced them insufficient, and held that by them the Government of the United States would not be bound by any convention which Haïti might make with the admiral. This position of Mr. Firmin's was earnestly and stoutly opposed by Admiral Gherardi, who insisted that his instructions were full, complete, and amply sufficient. Unfortunately, however, he did not leave the matter in controversy without intimating that he thought that Mr. Firmin might be insincere in raising such an objection, and that he was urging it simply with a view to cause unnecessary delay. This as more like the blunt admiral than the discreet diplomat. Such an imputation was obviously out of place, and not likely to smooth the way to a successful proceeding; quite the reverse. Mr. Firmin insisted that his ground was well and honestly taken.

"Here, therefore, the negotiation was brought to a sudden halt, and the question for us then was, What shall he done next? Three ways were open to us: first, to continue to insist upon the completeness of the authority of Admiral Gherardi; second, to abandon the scheme of a naval station altogether; third, to apply to the government at Washington for the required letter of credence. It was my opinion that it was hardly worth while to continue to insist upon the sufficiency of the admiral's papers, since it seemed useless to contend about mere technicalities; more especially as we were now in telegraphic connection with the United States, and could in the course of a few days easily obtain the proper and required papers.

"'Besides, I held that a prompt compliance with the demand of the Haïtian Government for a perfect letter of credence would be not only the easiest way out of the difficulty, but the wisest policy by which to accomplish the end we sought, since such compliance on our part with even what

might be fairly considered an unreasonable demand would make refusal by Haiti to grant the Môle all the more difficult.

"I did not understand Admiral Gherardi to combat this opinion of mine, for he at once acted upon it, and caused an officer from his flagship to go with me to my house and prepare a telegram to be sent to Washington for the required letter of credence. To this telegram he, two days thereafter, received answer that such a letter would be immediately sent by a Clyde steamer^†One of the ships owned by the Clyde Steamship Line, based out of New York and operated by William P. Clyde. Pitre, "Frederick Douglass and American Diplomacy," 457-75. to Gonaïves,^†The port town of Gonaives is on the west coast of Haiti. Cohen, , 1:1131. and thither the admiral went to receive his expected letter. But, from some unexplained cause, no such letter came by the Clyde steamer at the time appointed, and two months intervened before the desired credentials arrived. This unexpected delay proved to be very mischievous and unfavorable to our getting the Môle, since it gave rise among the Haïtian people to much speculation and many disquieting rumors prejudicial to the project. It was said that Admiral Gherardi had left Port au Prince in anger, and had gone to take possession of the Môle without further parley; that the American flag was already floating over our new naval station; that the United States wanted the Môle as an entering wedge to obtaining possession of the whole island; with much else of like inflammatory^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: inflamatory. nature. Although there was no truth in all this, it had the unhappy effect among the masses of stirring up suspicion and angry feelings towards the United States, and of making it more difficult than it might otherwise have been for the government of Haïti^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Haiti. to grant the required concession.

"Finally after this long interval of waiting, during which the flagship of Admiral Gherardi was reported at different points, sometimes at Gonaïves, sometimes at the Môle, and sometimes at Kingston, Jamaica,^†The capital city of Jamaica, Kingston was settled following the destruction of Port Royal, a former haven for buccaneers and thieves, by an earthquake in 1692. Growth was rapid, and by 1703 Kingston was the chief seat of trade on the island. In 1872 it became the nation's capital. Brian Rajewski, ed., , 4 vols. (London, 1999), 2:309; Cohen, , 2:156-7. the desired letter of credence arrived.^†In his dispatch to Secretary of State James G. Blaine on 18 February 1891, Douglass reported the incident in which the Haitian foreign minister demanded additional credentials before initiating negotia-tions with Admiral Bancroft Gherardi for the desired naval base lease at Môle St. Nicholas. After nearly two months' delay, a letter from President Benjamin Harrison dated 9 April arrived in Haiti about 18 April 1891. The letter of credence authorized Gherardi to negotiate for the naval station. Brown, , 2:71-75, 100-104. The next day I was again summoned on board the 'Philadelphia,' and there was shown me a paper, signed by the President of the United States and by the Secretary of State, authorizing myself, as Minister Resident to Haïti, and Rear-Admiral Gherardi, as special Commissioner, to negotiate with such persons as Haïti might appoint, for the purpose of concluding a convention by which we should obtain a lease of the Môle St. Nicolas as a United States naval station.

"It may be here remarked that the letter of credence signed by President Harrison and by the Secretary of State differed in two respects from the former and rejected letter under which we had previously acted. First, it charged me, equally with Admiral Gherardi, with the duty of negotiation; and secondly, it was an application for a naval station pure and simple, without limitation and without conditions.

"Before presenting to Haïti this new letter, which had the advantage of

being free from the conditions specified in the old one, the question arose between the Admiral and myself as to whether or not we should begin our new negotiations, under our new commission, separate and entirely apart from all that had been attempted under the instructions contained in the old letter. On this point I differed from the Admiral. I took the position that we should ignore the past altogether,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: altogehter. and proceed according to the instructions of the new letter alone, unincumbered by any terms or limitations contained in the old letter. I felt sure that there were features in the conditions of the old letter which would be met by the representatives of Haïti with strong objections. But the Admiral and his able lieutenant insisted that the present letter did not exclude the conditions of the old one, but was, in its nature, only supplementary to them, and hence that this was simply a continuation of what had gone before. It was therefore decided to proceed with the negotiations on the basis of both the old and the new letter. Under the former letter of instructions our terms were precise and explicit; under the latter we were left largely to our own discretion; we were simply to secure from the government of Haïti a lease of the Môle St. Nicolas for a naval station.

"The result is known. Haïti refused to grant the lease, and alleged that to do so was impossible under the hard terms imposed in the previous letter of instructions. I do not know that our Government would have accepted a naval station from Haïti upon any other or less stringent terms or conditions than those exacted in our first letter of instructions; but I do know that the main grounds alleged by Haïti for its refusal were the conditions set forth in this first letter of instructions, one of which is expressed as follows: 'That so long as the United States may be the lessee of the Môle St. Nicolas, the Government of Haïti will not lease or otherwise dispose of any port or harbor or other territory in its dominions, or grant any special privileges or rights of use therein, to any other power, state, or government." This was not only a comprehensive limitation of the power of Haïti over her own territory, but a denial to all others of that which we claimed for ourselves.

"But no one cause fully explains our failure to get a naval station at the Môle. One fundamental element in our non-success was found, not in any aversion to the United States or in any indifference on my part, as has often been charged, but in the Government of Haïti itself. It was evidently timid. With every disposition to oblige us, it had not the courage to defy the well-known, deeply-rooted and easily-excited prejudices and traditions of the Haïtien people. Nothing is more repugnant to the thoughts and feelings of the masses of that country than the alienation of a single rood^†A medieval term measuring a plot of land, or a roodland. of their territory to a foreign power.

"This sentiment originated, very naturally, in the circumstances in which Haïti began her national existence.^†Coming under French rule in 1697, Haiti prospered thanks to forestry and sugar-related industries. The abolition of slavery in France following the French Revolution in 1789 inspired Haiti's half-million black slaves to revolt. In a series of violent uprisings led by the ex-slave-turned-general in the French army, Toussaint L'Ouverture, slaves killed white planters and razed estates. By 1801 he controlled the entire island, and abolished slavery through a new constitution. In retaliation the French emperor, Napoleon, sent seventy warships and 25,000 men to Haiti to surpress the uprising. Although Toussaint L'Ouverture was captured and eventually died in a French prison, his successor, Jean Jacques Dessalines, continued the struggle. In 1803 the French army, decimated by disease, surrendered. Haiti declared its independence on 1 January 1804. Laurent Dubois, (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), 1-6; Timothy L. Gall, ed., , 5 vols. (Detroit, 2004), 3:250-51. The whole Christian world was at that time against her. The Caribbean Sea was studded with communities hostile to her. They were slaveholding. She, by her bravery, and her blood, was free. Her existence was, therefore, a menace to them, and theirs was a menace to her. France, England, Spain, Portugal, and Holland, as well as the United States, were wedded to the slave system which Haïti had, by arms, thrown off; and hence she was regarded as an outcast, and was outlawed by the Christian world. Though time and events have gone far to change this relation of hers to the outside world, the sentiment that originated in the beginning of her existence continues, on both sides, until this day. It was this that stood like a wall of granite against our success. Other causes cooperated, but this was the principal^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: principle. cause. Of course our peculiar and intense prejudice against the colored race was not forgotten. Our contrast to other nations, in this respect, is often dwelt upon in Haïti to our disadvantage. In no part of Europe will a Haïtien be insulted because of his color, and Haïtiens well know that this is not the case in the United States.

"Another influence unfavorable to our obtaining the covted naval station at the Môle was the tone of the New York press on the subject. It more than hinted that, once in possession of the Môle, the United States would control the destiny of Haïti.^†Douglass was well aware of the hawkish stance taken by the major New York City newsparers regarding U.S. acquisition of the Môle St. Nicholas. The New York was the most explicit in its assertion that U.S. control of the Môle was akin to dominance of the Haitian nation. The 25 February 1891 issue of the stated that Haitian president Florvil Hyppolite's refusal to cede the Môle was rooted in fear of losing power. Other New York papers only occasionally dedicated column space to the negotiations. In a 14 August article, the New York , like the , painted President Hyppolite as a scoundrel determined to preserve his powerful position. The inferred that the ceding of the Mole to the United States would essentially render Hyppolite's government powerless and put Haiti under U.S. control. New York , 25 February, 25 March, 9 April 1891; New York Daily , 14 April, 26 August 1891. Torn and rent by revolution as she has been and still is, Haïti yet has a large share of national pride, and scorns the idea that she needs or will submit to, the rule of a foreign power. Some of her citizens would doubtless be glad of American rule, but the overwhelming majority would burn their towns and freely shed their blood over their ashes to prevent such a consummation.

"Not the least, perhaps. among the collateral causes of our non-success was the minatory attitude assumed by us while conducting the negotiation. What wisdom was there in confronting Haïti^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Haiti. at such a moment with a squadron of large ships of war with a hundred cannon and two thousand men? This was done, and it was naturally construed into a hint to Haïti that if we could not, by appeals to reason and friendly feeling, obtain what we wanted, we could obtain it by a show of force. We appeared before the Haïtiens, and before the world, with the pen in one hand and the sword in the other. This was not a friendly and considerate attitude for a great government like ours to assume when asking a concession from a small and weak nation like Haïti. It was ill-timed, and out of all proportion to the demands of the occasion. It was also done under a total misapprehension of the character of the people with whom we had to deal. We should have known that, whatever else the

Haïtien people may be, they are not cowards, and hence are not easily scared.

"In the face of all these obvious and effective causes of failure, is it not strange that our intelligent editors and our nautical newspaper writers could not have found for the American Government and people a more rational cause for the failure of the negotiations for the Môle St. Nicolas than that of my color, indifference and incompetency to deal with a question of such a magnitude? Were I disposed to exchange the position of accused to that of accuser, I could find ample material to sustain me in that position. Other persons did much to create conditions unfavorable to our success, but I leave to their friends the employment of such personal assaults.

"On the theory that I was the cause of this failure, we must assume that Haïti was willing to grant the Môle; that the timidity of the Haïtien Government was all right; that the American prejudice was all right; that the seven ships of war in the harbor of Port au Prince were all right; that Rear-Admiral Gherardi was all right, and that I alone was all wrong; and, moreover, that but for me the Môle St. Nicolas, like an over-ripe apple shaken by the wind, would have dropped softly into our national basket. I will not enlarge upon this absurd assumption, but will leave the bare statement of it to the intellegent reader, that it may perish by its flagrant contradiction of well-known facts and by its own absurdity.

"I come now to another cause of complaint against me, scarcely less serious in the minds of those who now assail me than the charge of having defeated the lease of the Môle St. Nicolas, namely, the failure of what is publicly known as the Clyde contract. Soon after my arrival in Haïti I was put in communication with an individual calling himself the agent of the highly respectable mercantile firm of William P. Clyde & Co., of New York.^†Douglass alludes to the New York-based shipping company headed by magnate William P. Clyde. Founded in 1844 by Clyde's father, Thomas Clyde, the enterprise became the largest coastal steamship company in the United States. Expansion into rail lines in the United States and Panama increased the company's hold on transportation, and in the late 1880s Clyde viewed Haiti as the next logical extension of operations. Clyde sought the support of Douglass to promote the company's business interests in Haiti, most specifically through the Clyde Concession. The Clyde agent who contacted Douglass to help the company procure a concession from Haitian president Hyppolite was Captain E. C. Reed of South Carolina. Pitre, "Frederick Douglass and American Diplomacy," 469; , 1:307-08. He was endeavoring to obtain a subsidy of a half-million dollars from the government of Haïti to enable this firm to ply a line of steamers between New York and Haïti. From the first this agent assumed toward me a dictatorial attitude. He claimed to he a native of South Carolina, and it was impossible for him to conceal his contempt for the people whose good will it was his duty to seek. Between this agent and the United States Government I found myself somewhat^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: somewaht. in the position of a servant between two masters; either one of them, separately and apart, might be served acceptably; but to serve both satisfactorily at the same time and place might be a difficult task, if not an impossible one. There were times when I was compelled to prefer the requirements of the one to the ardent wishes of the other, and I thought as between this agent and the United States. I chose to serve the latter.

"The trouble between us came about in this way: Mr. Firmin, the Haïtien Minister of Foreign Affairs, had objected to granting the Clyde concession^†The Clyde Contract, or Clyde Concession, was a shipping concession proposed by the Clyde Steamship Line to Haitian president Louis Mondestin Florvil Hyppolite. Douglass supported this grant, which was to be a reward for the Clyde Line's services to Hyppolite's forces during his struggle to maintain power over rival François D. Legitime in 1888-89. The Clyde Line, with the backing of the U.S. Navy, ran in ten shiploads of supplies to Hyppolite's forces at the risk of shelling from Legitime's gunboats. Clyde claimed that because the supplies had heen delivered under fire, and shipped at prewar freight rates that were significantly lower than they should have been. Hyppolite's government owed the Clyde Line a subsidy. The concession called for a subsidy of half a million dollars to establish a steamship line between New York and seven Haitian ports. It would also include a lease on Haiti's deepwater harbor at Mole St. Nicholas for ninety-nine years, allowing a U.S. naval base to he established there. Joan Dayan, "A Few Stories about Haiti, or, Stigma Revisited," , 35:169-72 (Summer 2004); Pitre, "Frederick Douglass and American Diplomacy," 469; , 1:307-08. on the ground that, if it were granted and this heavy drain were made upon the treasury of his country, Mr. Douglass stood ready to present and to press upon Haïti the payment of the claims of many other American citizens, and that this would greatly embarrass^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: embarass. the newly-organized government of President Hyppolite. In view of this objection, the zealous agent in question came to me and proposed that I should go to Mr. Firmin, in my quality of Minister-Resident and Consul-General of the United States, and assure him that, if he would only grant the Clyde concession, I, on my part, would withhold and refrain from pressing the claims of other American citizens.

"The proposition shocked me. It sounded like the words of Satan on the mountain, and I thought it time to call a halt. I was in favor of the Clyde contract, but I could not see what I had said or done to make it possible for any man to make to me a proposal so plainly dishonest and scandalous. I refused to do any such thing. Here was my first offence, and it at once stamped me as an unprofitable servant. It did not seem to occur to this agent that he had made to me a shameful, dishonest, and shocking proposition. Blinded by zeal or by an influence still more misleading, he seemed to see in it only an innocent proposal. He thereafter looked upon me as an unworthy ally, and duly reported me as such to his master and to other influential persons. He could not understand my conduct as proceeding from other or better motives than that of over-affection for the Haïtiens. In his eyes I was, from that time, more a Haïtien than an American, and I soon saw myself so characterized in American journals.

"The refusal to compromise and postpone the just claims of other American citizens for that of his master's contract was not, however, my only offence. On obtaining a leave of absence from my post, in July, 1890, I, of course, as was my duty, called upon President Hyppolite before my departure, for the purpose of paying to him my respects. This agent at once sought me and desired me to make use of this visit of mere ceremony as an occasion to press anew the Clyde contract upon the attention of the President. This I could not properly do, especially as I had on previous occasions repeatedly urged its consideration upon him. The President already knew well enough my sense of the importance to Haïti of this measure, not only as a means of enlarging her commerce and of promoting her civilization, but also as a guarantee of the stability of her government. Nevertheless, my refusal to urge in so unbecoming a manner a demand already repeatedly urged upon the attention of the Haïtien^†Editorial Emendation: Haitien Government was made use of by this

agent, to my injury, both at the State Department and with Mr. Clyde's firm. I was reported at Washington and to various persons in high places as unfriendly to this concession.

"When at last it appeared to the agent that the Government of Haïti was, as he thought, stubbornly blind to its own interests, and that it would not grant the contract in question, he called at the United States Legation and expressed to me his disappointment and disgust at the delay of Haïti in accepting his scheme. He said he did not believe that the Government really intended to do anything for his firm; that he himself had spent much time and money in promoting the concession; and as he did not think that Mr. Clyde ought to be made to pay for the time thus lost and the expense incurred by the delay and dallying of the Haïtien Government, he should therefore demand his pay of Haïti. This determination struck me as very odd, and I jocosely^†Jokingly. replied:

"'Then, sir, as they will not allow you to put a hot poker down their backs, you mean to make them pay for heating it!'

"This rejoinder was my final destruction in the esteem of this zealous advocate. He saw at once that he could not count upon my assistance in making this new demand. I was both surprised at his proposal and amused by it, and wondered that he could think it possible that he could get this pay. It seemed to me that Haïti would scout the idea at once. She had not sent for him. She had not asked him to stay. He was there for purposes of his own and not for any purpose of hers. I could not see why Haïti should pay him for coming, going, or staying. But this gentleman knew better than I the generous character of the people with whom he had to deal, and he followed them up till they actually paid him $5,000 in gold.

"But compliance with his demand proved a woeful mistake on the part of Haïti, and, in fact, nonsense. This man, after getting his money, went away, but he did not stay away. He was soon back again to press his scheme with renewed vigor. His demands were now to be complied with or he would make, not Rome, but Haïti, howl. To him it was nothing that Haïti was already wasted by repeated revolutions; nothing that she was already staggering under the weight of a heavy national debt; nothing that she herself ought to be the best judge of her ability to pour out a half-million of dollars in this new and, to her, doubtful enterprise; nothing that she had heard his arguments in its favor a hundred times over; nothing that in her judgment, she had far more pressing needs for her money than the proposed investment in this steamship subsidy, as recommended by him; nothing that she had told him plainly that she was afraid to add to her pecuniary burdens this new and

onerous one, and nothing that she had just paid him $5,000^†Editorial Emendation: #5,000. in gold to get rid of his importunities.

"Now, while I was in favor of Haïti's granting the subsidy asked for in the name of Clyde & Co., and thought that it would be in many ways a good thing for Haïti to have the proposed line of steamers for which a subsidy was asked, I had, and I now have, nothing but disgust for the method by which this scheme was pressed upon Haïti.

"I must say in conclusion that, while, as already intimated, it does not appear certain that Haïti would have leased us the Môle on any conditions whatever, it is certain that the application for it was ill timed in more respects than one. It was especially unfortunate for us that the Clyde concession was applied for in advance of our application for a lease of the Môle. Whatever else may be said of the Haïtiens, this is true of them; they are quick to detect a fault and to distinguish a trick from an honest proceeding. To them the preference given to the interests of an individual firm over those of the United States seemed to wear a sinister aspect. In the opinion of many intelligent persons in Haïti, had a lease of the Môle been asked for in advance of the concession to Mr. Clyde, the application for it might have been successful. This, however, is not my opinion. I do not now think that any earthly power outside of absolute force could have gotten for us a naval station at the Môle St. Nicolas. Still, to all appearances, the conditions of success were more favorable before than after the Clyde contract was^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: contract ws was. urged upon Haïti. Prior to this, the country, weary of war, was at peace. Ambitious leaders had not begun openly to conspire. The government under Hyppolite was newly organized. Confidence in its stability was unimpaired. It was, naturally enough, reaching out its hand to us for friendly recognition. Our good offices during the war were fresh in its memory. France, England and Germany, were not ready to give it recognition.^†European countries were not eager to officially recognize the post revolutionary government of Haiti. As the historically dominant foreign power in Haitian affairs, France was not easily convinced to accept the presidency of Florvil Hyppolite. When a struggle for power in 1888 ended in the ousting of existing president Lysius Salomon, France gave aid to Hyppolite's challenger, the military leader François Legitime. Great Britain also provided silent support for Legitime. Fearing the port at Mole St. Nicholas would fall into French hands under a Legitime presidency, the United States cooperated with Hyppolite, in hopes that a U.S. naval station could he established in this strategic location. After Hyppolite was confirmed as president of Haiti, however, ties between the Caribbean nation and European powers were mended. By November 1889, Haiti dispatched ministers plenipotentiary to France, Germany, Great Britain, and Spain. Brown, , 1:29-32; Himelhoch, "Frederick Douglass and Haiti's Mole St. Nicolas," 161-62. In fact, all the conditions conspired to influence Haïti to listen to our request for a coaling station at the Môle St. Nicolas. But instead of a proposition for a coaling station at the Môle St. Nicolas, there was presented one for a subsidy to an individual steamship company. All must see that the effect of this was calculated to weaken our higher claim and to place us at a disadvantage before Haïti and before all the world.

"And now, since the American people have been made thoroughly acquainted with one view of this question, I know of no interest which will suffer and no just obligation which will be impaired by the presentation of such facts as I have here submitted to the public judgment. If, in this, my course is thought to be unusual, it should be remembered that the course

pursued towards me by the press has been unusual, and that they who had no censure for the latter should^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: shoul. have none for the former."

I have nearly reached the end of the period of which, in the beginning, I purposed to write, and should I live to see the end of another decade, it is not at all likely that I shall feel disposed to add another word to this volume. I may therefore make this the concluding chapter of this part of my autobiography. Contemplating my life as a whole, I have to say that, although it has at times been dark and stormy, and I have met with hardships from which other men have been exempted, yet my life has in many respects been remarkably full of sunshine and joy. Servitude, persecution, and false friends, desertion and depreciation, have not robbed my life of happiness or made it a burden. I have been, and still am, especially fortunate and may well indulget sentiments of warmest gratitude for the lines in which my life has fallen. While I cannot boast of having accomplished great things in the world, I cannot on the other hand feel that I have lived in vain. From first to last I have, in large measure, shared the respect and confidence of my fellow men. I have the happiness of possessing many precious and long-enduring friendships with good men and women. I have been the recipient of many honors, among which my unsought appointment by President Benjamin Harrison, to the office of Minister Resident and Consul General to represent the United States at the capital of Haïti,^†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Haiti (here and next). and my equally unsought appointment by President Florvil Hyppolite, to represent Haïti among all the civilized nations of the globe at the World's Columbian Exposition,^†The World's Columbian Exposition was held in 1893 in Chicago, Illinois, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's discovery of America. Many of the leading cities in the United States competed to host the exposition. Chicago was chosen partly because it was a major railroad center, but also because it guaranteed to raise $10,000,000. The exposition continued in the tradition of the Philadelphia Centennial (1876), encompassing a vast, gardened layout with numerous separate buildings along Chicago's south lake front area. The chief planners were Chicago architects Daniel H. Burnham and John W. Root; the designer in chief was Charles B. Atwood, and Frederick Law Olmsted was in charge of landscaping. The exposition marked the debut of the Ferris wheel, invented by Pittsburgh engineer G. W. G. Ferris. Those attending the exposition were also dazzled by another new wonder, electricity, presented for the first time in America. Douglass attended the fair as a representative of Haiti, but was angry because African American participation in the festivities was limited. , 3:370-72. are crowning honors to my long career and a fitting and happy close to my whole public life.