He was generous, almost to a fault, with his time, money, and services in behalf of any cause that meant a step forward for his people. His health was uniformly good. Every day he was either riding or walking about the streets of Washington, or in conference with those who needed his advice and assistance in all kinds of helpful enterprises. He had a part in every civic event of any importance in the District of Columbia. No one colored man before or since his death has wielded so much influence in all directions. He had not only won the esteem of the people of Washington, but he knew how to deserve and retain it. In the District government, in the public schools, and at Howard University, his influence was felt and respected.
What he himself was, he had gained by hard work, consecration, temperate habits, and God-fearing conduct toward all his fellows. His life and achievements spoke eloquently to the young men about him and pointed the way to progress. Mr. Douglass had richly earned everything that he had, and those who took him as a model were made to realize that success comes not as a gift, but must be deserved and won as a reward for right thinking and high living. Poor as were his people in all things, Frederick Douglass found enough to be proud of in them and urged continuously upon the younger generation the necessity of cultivating a spirit of race pride,—of setting before themselves and the race of which they were members clear and definite ideals.
In nothing else was the life of Mr. Douglass so important as in the uplifting influence he exerted, directly and indirectly, upon the young men of his time. There were many good leaders worthy of emulation, but none who exercised the authority that he did over the opinions of the other members of his race. His life was an open book. Naturally there were those of his color who envied him; who sought to discredit his worth and work; who felt that so long as he lived and spoke, none other could be known or heard. The young men of force and intelligence, however, who had it in them to do something large and important looked up to and were inspired by the “old man eloquent” of the Negro race.
It is easily possible to extend observations of this kind concerning the personality and influence of this great man during those restful years when he was happily free from care and public responsibilities. How little he thought of death! Sound of body and sane of mind, and always thinking and planning for what should come after, he lived as if there was no claim upon his future existence which he could not adjust. When death did come on the second day of February, 1895, it found him with no preparation, in the ordinary sense, for its message. And yet it had always been his expressed wish that he should go as he did—“to fall as the leaf in the autumn of life.”
On that day he had been attending the Council of Women which was meeting in Metzerott’s Hall in the city of Washington, and was much interested in the proceedings. He was an honorary member of that body. They were in quest of larger liberties for themselves, as he so long had been for himself and his people. When Frederick Douglass appeared at the convention in the morning, he was greeted with applause and escorted to the platform by a committee. He remained there nearly the entire day. When he returned to his home on Cedar Hill for dinner, he was in the best of spirits, and with a great deal of animation and pleasure, discussed with Mrs. Douglass the incidents of the meeting.
After the meal he prepared himself to deliver an address in a colored Baptist church near by. His carriage was at the door. While passing through the hall from the dining-room, he seemed to drop slowly upon his knees, but in such a way that the movement did not excite any alarm in his wife. His face wore a look of surprise as he exclaimed, “Why, what does this mean?” Then, straightening his body upon the floor, he was gone. The men who responded to Mrs. Douglass’s agonized cries for help, came hurriedly with physicians, but it was too late. Douglass was dead—without pain, without warning, without fear, and at a time when life was sweet, full, and complete. His last moment of enthusiasm, like his first hours of aspiration when a slave-child, was for liberty; if not for himself, then for some one else.
The announcement that Frederick Douglass was dead came like a shock to every one, especially to those who had seen him about the city during the day, full of animation and apparent physical vigor. The sad news spread rapidly and produced a profound sense of bereavement among all classes of people.
The scene at the Women’s Council, where he had been during the day an honored guest, was an affecting one. The president, Mrs. May Wright Sewall, in attempting to voice the sentiment of the members, said:
“A report, as unwelcome as sad and solemn, has come to us of the sudden and most unexpected death of Frederick Douglass. The news cannot be received in silence by the Council. That historic figure which individually and intellectually was the symbol of the wonderful transition through which this generation has lived has been with us in our Council during both of our sessions to-day. When he arrived, an escort was directed to conduct him to the platform. We felt that this platform was honored by his presence. I am sure there was no divided sentiment on this subject, although we have here women whose families are related to all political parties of our country, and connected by ancestry with both sides of the great question. It is surely to be regarded as a historic coincidence that this man, who embodied a century of struggle between freedom and oppression, spent his last hours a witness of the united efforts of those who have come from so many different places and along such various avenues to formulate some plan for a new expression of freedom in the relation of woman to the world, society, and the state.”
The mortuary arrangements at Washington were on the scale and of the dignity of a state funeral. Throngs of people lined the streets through which the cortège passed to the Metropolitan Church where the ceremonies were held. Delegations of prominent colored men and women, from almost every part of the Union, came to pay their last respects to the dead statesman.