Please accept these few words as my acknowledgment of your kindness this evening. [Cries, “Go on!”] From long acquaintance you know something of my sympathies. [A voice, “I do!”] Always from the beginning I have sought to serve you, and always to the end shall I seek to serve you. To your cause my life is dedicated, and nothing can turn me from it, nothing can tempt me or drive me from its support. [Loud applause.]
FREDERICK DOUGLASS AND PRESIDENT GRANT.
Letter to Hon. Andrew D. White, President of Cornell University, August 10, 1872.
Washington, August 10, 1872.
MY DEAR SIR,—I am surprised by a statement purporting to proceed from you, which I find under the telegraphic head, to the effect that I have misrepresented facts with regard to Frederick Douglass.
In making this allegation you defend the Commissioners to San Domingo, and allege that Mr. Douglass was well treated by them. I have never said the contrary, nor have I ever alluded to the treatment he received from them. Not a word or hint can be found on the subject in anything written or spoken by me.
My allusion was to the exclusion of Mr. Douglass from the common table of the mail-packet on the Potomac, almost within sight of the Executive Mansion, simply on account of color,—and I added, that the President, on whose invitation he had joined the Commission, never uttered a word in rebuke of this exclusion, and when entertaining the returned Commissioners at dinner carefully omitted Mr. Douglass, who was in Washington at the time, and thus repeated the indignity. On this you are represented as remarking, that General Sigel was also omitted, but that, in fact, Mr. Douglass and General Sigel had already left for their homes (forgetting that Mr. Douglass continued in Washington); and you do not allow yourself to doubt, that, had they been in town, they would have been included in the invitation. Your apology clearly shows your opinion that they ought to have been invited; but please not to forget that there was a reason for inviting Mr. Douglass that did not exist in the case of General Sigel. The General was white, and he had suffered no indignity on board a mail-packet which it was in the power of the President to rebuke by example.