FREDERICK DOUGLASS POST-BELLUM

Frederick Douglass ' proverbial life was rich with meaning and metaphors. It symbolized major portions of the African American past, from slavery to freedom and points in between, high and low. Reading recently in his 1883 autobiography LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, his third such book of his remarkable life, I was blessed to gain additional insights that are as relevant to the present as the past of black life. He writes about his refusal to stand as a candidate for federal elective office, despite entreaties from friends and backers to do so. He writes about his reentry into the field of newspaper publishing with the "New National Era," after the Civil War in Washington, D.C. Most significantly, he sheds inside information on the demise of the Freedmen's Savings Bank and Trust, whose chairmanship he was bamboozled into accepting before its demise, in which he lost his own money, while it was being fleeced! All of these efforts had the intent to draw Douglass from Rochester, NY, where he had lived for 25 years, in comfort, into the sappy maelstrom of Reconstruction era political plunder. That he blinked twice and regretted each capitulation holds valuable lessons for us all in 2019. Anyone can be used, misused, abused, deceived when forces combine to exploit your features, tendencies, vulnerabilities . Frederick Douglass certainly was. Therein lies a lesson for us today. I quote from Chapter XIV "Living and Learning", viz.: "The adoption of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments and their incorporation into the Constitution of the United States opened a very tempting field to my ambition , and one to which I should probably have yielded had I been a younger man. I was earnestly urged by many of my respected fellow citizens both colored and white, and from all sections of the country, to take up my abode in some one of the many districts of the South where there was a large colored vote and get myself elected, as they were sure I could easily do, to a seat in Congress --possibly in the Senate. That I did not yield to this temptation was not entirely due to my age, for the idea did not square well with my better judgment and sense of propriety. The thought of going to live among a people in order to gain their votes and acquire official honors was repugnant to my self -respect, and I had not lived long enough in the political atmosphere of Washington to have this sentiment sufficiently blunted to make me indifferent to its suggestions. I do not deny that the arguments of my friends had some weight in them, and from their standpoint it was all right; but I was better known to myself than to them. I had small faith in my aptitude as a politician , and could not hope to cope with rival aspirants... "I think in this I was right; for thus far our colored members of Congress have not largely made themselves felt in the legislation of the country; and I have little reason to think that I could have done any better than they." P. 835-836 "An effort was being made about this time to establish a large weekly newspaper in the city of Washington, which should be devoted to the defense and enlightenment of the newly emancipated and enfranchised people; and I was urged...to become its editor-in-chief. My sixteen years' experience as editor and publisher of my own paper, and the knowledge of the toil and anxiety which such a relation to a public journal must impose, caused me much reluctance and hesitation; nevertheless, I yielded to the wishes of my friends and counselors, went to Washington, threw myself into the work, hoping to be able to lift up a standard at the national capital for my people which should cheer and strengthen them in the work of their own improvement and elevation. "I was not long connected with this enterprise before I discovered my mistake. The cooperation so liberally promised, and the support which had been assured, were not very largely realized. By a series of circumstances, a little bewildering as I now look back upon them, I found myself alone, under mental and pecuniary burden involved in the prosecution of the enterprise . I had been misled by loud talk of a grand incorporated publishing company, in which I should have shares if I wished, and in any case a fixed salary for my services; and after all these fair-seeming I had not been connected with the paper one year before its affairs had been so managed by the agent by this invisible company or corporate body, as to compel me to bear the burden alone, and to become the sole owner of the printing establishment...This paper was the "New National Era"...A misadventure though it was , which cost me nine to ten thousand dollars, over it I have no tears to shed. The journal was valuable while it lasted, and the experiment was to me full of instruction , which to some extent been heeded, for I have kept well out of newspaper undertakings since. "Someone has said that 'experience is the best teacher.' Unfortunately the wisdom acquired in one experience seems not to serve for another and new one; at any rate, my first lesson at the national capital, bought rather dearly as it was, did not preclude the necessity of a second whetstone to sharpen my wits in this my new home and new surroundings. It is not altogether without a feeling of humiliation that I must narrate my connection with the 'Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company .'" P. 636-637. "'The Freedmen 's Savings and Trust Bank'...was something missionary in its composition, and it dealt largely in exhortations as well as promises. The men connected with its management were generally church members, and reputed eminent for their piety. Some of its agents were preachers of the 'Word.' Their aim was to instill into the minds of the untutored Africans lessons of sobriety, wisdom, and economy, and to show them how to rise in the world. Like snowflakes in winter, circulars, tracts, and other papers were, by this benevolent institution scattered among the sable millions, and they were told to 'look' to the Freedmen's Bank and 'live.' Branches were established in all the Southern States, and as a result, money to the amount of millions flowed into its vaults....The whole thing was beautiful. I had read of this bank when I lived in Rochester, and had indeed been solicited to become one of its trustees, and had reluctantly consented to do so; but when I came to Washington and saw its magnificent brown stone front, its towering height, its perfect appointments and the fine display it made in the transaction of its business, I felt like the Queen of Sheba when she saw the riches of Solomon, that 'the half had not been told me.'... "My confidence in the integrity and wisdom of management was such that at one time I entrusted to its vaults about twelve thousand dollars. It seemed fitting to me to cast in my lot with my brother freedmen and help them build up an institution which represented their thrift and economy to so striking advantage ; for the more millions accumulated there, I thought, the more consideration and respect would be shown to the colored people of the whole country. "About four months before this splendid institution was compelled to close its doors in the starved and deluded faces of its depositors, and while I was assured by its President and by its Actuary of its sound condition, I was solicited by some of the trustees to allow them to use my name as a candidate for its presidency . So I waked up one morning to find myself seated in a comfortable arm chair, with gold spectacles on my nose, and to hear myself addressed as President of the Freedmen's Bank. I could not help reflecting on the contrast between Frederick the slave boy, running about st Colonel Lloyd's with only a tow linen shirt to cover him, and Frederick --President of a bank counting its assets in millions....My term of service on this golden height covered only the brief space of three months, and these three months were divided into two parts , during the first part of which I was quietly employed in an effort to find out the real condition of the bank and its numerous branches... I was induced to loan the bank ten thousand of my own money, to be held by it until it could realize on a part of its abundant securities. This money, though it was repaid, was not done so promptly as, under the supposed circumstances, I thought it should be, and these circumstances increased my fears lest the chasm was not so easily bridged as the actuary of the institution had assured me it could be. The more I observed and learned the more my confidence diminished. I found that those trustees who wished to issue cards and publish addresses professing their utmost confidence in the bank, themselves had not one dollar invested there. Some of them, while strongly assuring me of its soundness , had withdrawn their money and opened accounts elsewhere. Gradually I discovered that the bank had, through dishonest agents, sustained heavy losses at the South; that there was a discrepancy on the books of forty thousand dollars for which no account could be given , and that instead of the assets being equal to the liabilities, we could not in all likelihoods of the case pay seventy-two cents on the dollar... "Standing on the platform of this large and complicated establishment with its thirty-four branches, extending from New Orleans to Philadelphia ...I found the path of inquiry I was pursuing an exceedingly difficult one. I knew there had been lately several runs on the bank, and there had been a heavy draft made upon its reserve fund, but I did not know, what I should have been told before being allowed to enter upon the duties of my office, that this reserve, which the bank by its charter was required to keep, had been entirely exhausted, and that hence there was nothing left to meet any future emergency. Not to make too long a story, I was, in six weeks after my election as president of the bank, convinced that it was no longer a safe custodian of the hard earnings of my confiding people.... "After seven years ...the depositors may deem themselves fortunate if they receive sixty cents on the dollar for what they placed in the care of that fine institution... "I was married to a corpse.... "When I became connected with the bank I had a tolerably fair name for honest dealing...I could today, with the confidence of the converted centurion, offer 'to restore four-fold to any whom I have unjustly taken aught.' I say this not for the benefit of those who know me, but for the thousands of my own race who hear of me mostly through the malicious and envious assaults of unscrupulous aspirants, who vainly fancy that they lift themselves into consideration by wanton attacks upon the characters of men who receive a larger share of respect and esteem than themselves ." P.837- 843