The Life of Frederick Douglass

by Anne Schraff

  “Frederick,” Auld said, “I always knew you were too smart to be a slave.” Then, commenting on Douglass’s escape, he said, “Had I been in your place, I would have done as you did.”15 Douglass told Auld that he did not escape from Auld, “but from slavery.”16

  During the meeting, Douglass learned a consoling fact about the fate of his beloved grandmother, Betsy Bailey. Douglass had always believed that Auld abandoned her to die alone. Douglass wrote in his first book that she had been “turned out to die like an old horse.”17 But Auld now assured him that he had taken care of Betsy Bailey until her death. Douglass noted this in later editions of his book.

  In 1878, the Douglass family moved into a beautiful home high on a hill in Uniontown, east of the Anacostia River. The house sat on nine acres with a barn and a large vegetable and flower garden just like the one the family had in Rochester. Anna Douglass once more had a garden to delight in. The following year, Douglass bought an adjacent fifteen acres and the Douglass family settled in at Cedar Hill.

  Chapter 9

  SORROW AND SUNSHINE

  The white frame house on Cedar Hill provided Frederick Douglass with his own spacious library and a music room where his violin rested on the piano. There was a sitting room, guest rooms, and a grand master bedroom. From the large porch, Douglass could look down and see the entire city of Washington. Cedar Hill was a place of pride for Douglass. Walking home in the afternoon, over the bridge and up the hill, the sixty-year-old former slave, who used to beg for crumbs and crawl into cotton sacks to keep warm, knew he had come a great distance in his life.

  But his financial woes continued. Douglass was now supporting his own family, his daughter’s family, and his son Charles’s family. When Douglass’s brother Perry and his large family needed help, Frederick Douglass took on their care as well. Now, in 1879, Perry was dying. “He is a dear old fellow,” Douglass said, “and I am glad to have a shelter for him.”1

  Anna Douglass’s health began to fail as she reached the age of sixty-five. She suffered from a neurological problem that made her unsteady on her feet. She sometimes fell and had to be helped to a couch. She suffered as well from her husband’s long absences. Even now, Douglass’s attention was distracted from his ailing wife by the controversy over the Exodusters, poor blacks who were leaving the South in great numbers to try their luck in Kansas. At least one hundred thousand blacks made the journey in less than two years. Douglass understood their frustration, calling the citizenship granted in the Fourteenth Amendment to blacks “a mockery.”2 But Douglass opposed the exodus, believing blacks should remain in the South and fight for their rights.3

  Frederick Douglass served as marshal at the 1881 inauguration of President James Garfield. In the same year he published his third book, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Additional material in this book included the Civil War and Douglass’s impression of recent political developments. After Garfield took office, Douglass lost his marshal’s job, but was named recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia.

  In July 1882, Anna Douglass suffered a paralytic stroke and became critically ill. Douglass described her as “very feeble,” and said, “all that Medical skill and good Nursing can do will be done.”4 The Douglass children gathered around their dying mother for the next twelve days. Her left side was paralyzed and Douglass called her continued grasp of life “a marvel.”5 She died on August 4, 1882, at four in the morning, at the age of sixty-nine.

  Grief-stricken at the loss of his wife of forty-four years, Douglass and his children took Anna to Rochester for burial. Douglass lamented that in the midst of such sorrow a person had no time for “pride of self importance.”6 Although Douglass had frequently been separated from his wife as he lectured around the country and the world, he was so depressed following her death that his friends feared he was heading for a breakdown. He was placed in the care of a physician, and his friends took him to Poland Springs in Maine to try to cheer him up. Slowly, Douglass was regaining his interest in life.

  His mood darkened again after a Supreme Court decision that, according to Douglass, came upon the country like a clap of thunder from a clear sky and “[placed the United States government] on the side of prejudice, proscription and persecution.”7 In the cases, called the civil rights cases, the Court ruled that the owner of a public accommodation could not be forced to serve black patrons. Douglass said, “The heart of humanity sickens in sorrow and writhes in pain” after such a decision.8 All the justices were Republicans, so the decision was all the sadder for Douglass, who had loyally served the Republican Party for many years.

  In his job as recorder of deeds, early in 1882, Douglass hired a new clerk, Helen Pitts. The forty-three-year-old white woman was from New York, the daughter of abolitionist parents. Pitts was a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and had taught at Hampton Institute. Now she lived with an uncle in Uniontown, right next to Cedar Hill. The Pittses and the Douglasses, already neighbors, became friends. Cedar Hill had become a gathering place for intellectual discussions on the issues of the day, and Douglass enjoyed stimulating conversations with Pitts. Invaluable as an assistant, Pitts kept the business of the recorder’s office going smoothly when Douglass was off lecturing.

  On January 24, 1884, Frederick Douglass appeared at the city hall and paid the $1 fee to obtain a marriage license. He then called for a carriage to take him to Helen Pitts’s residence. Pitts, a petite woman with dark eyes and hair, accompanied Douglass to a parsonage attached to the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. The Reverend Francis J. Grimké, minister of the African-American church, performed the marriage ceremony, which was witnessed by the minister’s wife and two household members. Pitts later said of the marriage, “Love came to me and I was not afraid to marry the man I loved because of his color.”9

  When forty-five-year-old Pitts and her sixty-six-year-old husband emerged from the parsonage, reporters thronged around them. The couple escaped quickly to the seclusion of Cedar Hill.

  The interracial marriage was a shock to many of Douglass’s friends and provoked resentment in his children. Rosetta Sprague later recalled that “it was an unhappy time.”10

  After an elegant wedding supper, the newlyweds went to visit Helen Pitts’s parents. Her father refused to welcome his black son-in-law into his home.

  Douglass’s children and many of his black friends saw the marriage to Helen Pitts as a denial of his black heritage. The black newspaper Weekly News bluntly said what many were thinking: “Fred Douglass has married a red-head white girl. Goodbye black blood in that family.”11 Douglass realized the marriage would bring such criticism, but he insisted that “there is peace and happiness within.”12 Later Douglass quipped that it proved he was impartial: “In my first marriage I paid a compliment to my mother’s race. In the second, to my father’s.”13

  In September 1886, the Douglasses set sail for Europe. On September 24, they visited Douglass’s old friend Julia Griffiths Crofts, now widowed. Though they had kept in touch by letters over the years, Douglass had not seen Crofts face-to-face for twenty-six years.

  The Douglasses visited London, Paris, and the ruins of Pompeii. They were having such a good time that they extended their trip to Egypt and Greece. Douglass could not help but relate much of what he saw to the experience of black slavery in the United States. In Egypt, he identified with the story of Moses leading his people from slavery and when he saw black workers in Egypt, he was proud of their skill and diligence.14

  In March 1887, Helen Douglass’s mother became very ill. Helen traveled back home to care for her mother at Cedar Hill. Frederick remained in Europe to fulfill his lecture commitments. He then returned home, and in 1888 toured the South to check on the condition of black people. When he saw the broken-down shacks of tenant farmers, they were hauntingly familiar to him. They reminded him of how he had lived as a slave in the South. He found a dispirited population without hope. In Washington, D.C., for the twenty-sixth anniversary of President Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation, Douglass lashed out against the cruel conditions he had found in the South. He said that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were being ignored. Speeches like this helped restore Douglass’s reputation with the black people who had begun to doubt his commitment to their causes.

  In 1889, Benjamin Harrison, a Republican, became president. Douglass, now seventy-one, hoped that a job in the Harrison administration would come his way. During the first administration of Democratic president Grover Cleveland (1885–1889), he had no such opportunity. Douglass would have gladly taken back his old job as recorder of deeds, but instead he was offered the job of consul general to Haiti. Secretary of State James Blaine went personally to Cedar Hill to offer him the position.

  Douglass’s friends urged him to reject the job because Harrison was not a true friend to blacks. Also, Douglass’s friends feared that the hot, humid climate of Haiti might be hard on Douglass, especially at his age. Even worse, there was political unrest and a potential for violence in Haiti. Frequently politicians were driven from office or killed. His friends did not believe this would be a good place for Frederick Douglass to be.

  Haiti was part of the island of Hispaniola discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492. By the mid-1500s, thousands of black slaves were being brought to Haiti to labor on Spanish plantations. France gained control of Haiti in 1697, and it became France’s richest colony in the New World. In 1793, Toussaint L’Ouverture, a freed slave, led other slaves in a revolution that lasted for several years. L’Ouverture was successful and he freed the slaves by overthrowing French rule. Haiti was declared independent in 1804. During the next decades there were many rebellions and periods of unrest, but it remained a black-led nation, the only one in the New World. In 1889, Frederick Douglass and many other black Americans took pride in the fact that former slaves like themselves were the rulers of a country. So, in spite of the misgivings of his friends, Douglass told Secretary Blaine that he would accept the job as consul general to Haiti.

  Chapter 10

  HAITI AND THE FINAL DAYS

  Helen Douglass was very good-natured about the assignment to Haiti. When she and her husband reached Port-au-Prince in the old Civil War ship Kearsarge, she enjoyed the sights and sounds of the country. For his part, Douglass was proud to be minister to this independent black republic.

  When the Douglasses arrived in Haiti, a revolution was under way. Two generals—François De Legitime and Florvil Hyppolite—claimed the presidency. Legitime had the support of France, which hoped to reestablish its influence in Haiti. Hyppolite was driven to a northern section of the country, and to prevent his receiving military supplies, the French were blockading Haiti.

  President Benjamin Harrison recognized Legitime as the legitimate ruler of Haiti. Hyppolite, however, gained the support of the United States Navy and some gun dealers in New York anxious to sell him arms. When an American gun merchant loaded ten ships with weapons, the U.S. Navy helped him run the French blockade. President Harrison appeared to be supporting both sides. He publicly recognized Legitime, while permitting the arming of Hyppolite. At the time, the United States hoped to establish a naval base at Mole St. Nicholas in the northeastern tip of Haiti and was possibly trying to make friends with whoever would win the revolution.

  On October 7, 1889, Hyppolite became president of Haiti after his well-armed soldiers prevailed. A joint fleet of ships from Britain, France, and Germany was allegedly heading for Haiti to demand payment of debts contracted by the Legitime government. Douglass negotiated an agreement to repay the debt, sparing Haiti possible occupation by foreign governments. Then Douglass was caught up in the efforts to establish a U.S. naval base in Haiti. Douglass was assigned to sell the idea to President Hyppolite, but Hyppolite refused to approve it. Douglass respected his decision because he believed in the right of sovereign nations to make such decisions. But newspaper critics of Douglass in the United States blamed Douglass for the failure to secure the naval base, saying he showed too much deference to the black Haitian president.

  As Douglass struggled with Haitian politics, he learned that his son Frederick Jr.’s wife, Virginia, was near death and she would leave two small children. Douglass knew his family responsibilities would increase. Helen Douglass grew ill in Haiti, adding to Douglass’s stress. And then, Douglass became increasingly offended by the tyrannical policies of President Hyppolite. Douglass witnessed massacres in the streets as Hyppolite struck out against dissent. On July 30, 1891, Frederick Douglass resigned as consul general to Haiti.

  In 1892, Douglass was honored when he was chosen commissioner of the Republic of Haiti’s pavilion at the world’s fair celebration, but he was feeling the burden of age. “I am now seventy-five years,” he wrote. “My eyes are failing and my hand is not as nimble as it once was.”1

  Douglass continued his passionate interest in civil rights for his black brothers and sisters. He was especially shocked by the rising numbers of lynchings—murder by lawless mobs—of blacks in the South. There were 235 lynchings in 1892 alone, and 3,000 blacks were lynched between 1882 and 1900.2 Douglass denounced the lynching of three black men in Memphis, Tennessee, saying they had been killed because they had businesses that white men wanted.3

  At the Republican convention of 1892, Douglass demanded a greater role for the federal government in protecting the lives and rights of black citizens. Though President Harrison made no promises, Douglass supported him. Harrison lost to Democrat Grover Cleveland, and Douglass blamed his lack of support for civil rights for the defeat.

  Helen Douglass’s family now accepted Douglass and called him “Uncle Fred,” but there was never more than stiff politeness between Helen Douglass and Douglass’s children. In July 1892, Frederick Douglass Jr., always frail, died. The fifty-year old namesake of his father had been a journalist. Frederick Douglass and his son Lewis helped care for the eleven-year old son, Charley Paul, left behind when Frederick Jr. died.

  Frederick Douglass found joy in Haley George, the son of Charles Douglass. The boy sent his grandfather wonderful letters describing his fishing and crabbing adventures. Douglass had always loved nature, and now he rose at five in the morning to walk around the grounds of Cedar Hill admiring the trees and flowers. He drew great pleasure from reading, and his library was filled with the plays of William Shakespeare and the poems of Lord Byron and John Greenleaf Whittier. Douglass still played the violin and he enjoyed string music. He said, “No man can be an enemy of mine who loves the violin.”4 He was delighted when another of son Charles’s boys, Joseph, showed promise in the violin.

  Frederick Douglass never relented in his continuing crusade to improve the lot of black Americans. He was still active on the lecture circuit and he never rejected an opportunity to strike a blow for equality.

  Douglass invited Ida B. Wells, a fellow black crusader for civil rights, to lunch in Boston one day, and when she told him there was a nice restaurant down the street that did not serve black people, the old warrior came to life in the heart of Frederick Douglass. He grasped Wells’s arm and told her that they would dine at that place this day. The pair walked to the Boston Oyster House, found a table, and sat down as waiters stared at them. When no waiters came to bring menus, the owner of the restaurant recognized Douglass and came over. Soon the two men were chatting and waiters were summoned to take orders. Douglass and Wells had integrated the Boston Oyster House.

  On January 9, 1894, Frederick Douglass delivered his last great speech, at the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. In this speech, “The Lessons of the Hour,” he attacked all the means that were being employed to deprive black people of their rights, from lynching men who had been denied fair trials, to literacy tests designed to prevent black men from voting. He denounced persecution of blacks in the South. The speech was eloquent and classic Frederick Douglass—it was the great orator at his best.

  On February 20, 1895, Frederick Douglass attended a women’s rights meeting wit
h Susan B. Anthony, where giving women the vote was the topic. Douglass was a commanding figure with his strong features and flowing white hair. He was pleased with progress made at the meeting to develop a strategy for gaining the vote for women. When he returned home to Cedar Hill, he was regaling Helen Douglass with details of the day’s events when he suddenly crumpled to the floor and died of a massive heart attack.

  Douglass’s body remained at Cedar Hill for three days. The immediate family congregated in the parlor, where the Reverend Hugh Stevenson conducted Bible readings and prayer. The body was then taken to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church to lie in state for four hours. Thousands of black school- children viewed Douglass in the open casket. The services were attended by many ordinary people, white and black, as well as dignitaries such as Supreme Court Justice John Harlan and the entire faculty of Howard University.

  After the funeral, Helen Douglass and the three surviving children took Frederick Douglass to Central Church in Rochester, and finally to Mount Hope Cemetery, where he was laid to rest with Anna Douglass, his first wife, and his daughter Annie. There would be a simple gravestone stating only his name and dates of birth and death.

  Praise for Douglass came from all over the world upon his death. The North Carolina legislature closed down for the day to honor him. In Massachusetts, Indiana, Illinois, and New York, the legislatures issued formal statements of regret.5 The New York State Assembly called Douglass “one of the foremost citizens and most striking figures of the Republic.”6 The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery expressed “appreciation of a life that has made grander the history, not only of our country and our lives, but of the world.”7 From the London Daily News came this tribute to Douglass: “First to last his was [a] noble life. His own people have lost a father and friend, and all good men have lost a comrade in the fight for the legal emancipation of one race and the spiritual emancipation of all.”8