Jack gave a short laugh. “I realize, Mr. Douglass, that we’re uncivilized down here. But stranger things than this are seen on Pennsylvania Avenue. Relax, we’ll get home all right.”
So they drove down the avenue past soldiers and visitors and legislators, all intent upon their own affairs. Louisiana Avenue with its wide greensward and early violets was loveliest of all.
For two days in the short period before the guns opened fire at Fort Sumter, Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison rested from their labors on a shaded side-street off Louisiana Avenue.
Up North the countryside was still locked in the hard rigors of winter, but here spring was in the air. He walked out in the yard, and told Miss Amelia about his big sons who kept the paper going during his many absences.
Succulent odors rose like incense from Amelia’s kitchen—Maryland fried chicken, served with snowy mounds of rice, popovers and cherry pie—their fragrance hung in the air and brought her lodgers tumbling down from their rooms to inquire, “What’s going on here?”
Amelia told them about her guests, swearing them to secrecy. They tiptoed out into the hall and peeped into the living room. On the second evening Miss Amelia gave in to their urgent requests.
“A few of my young friends to meet you, Frederick. You won’t mind?” After supper they gathered round. Far into the night they asked questions and talked together, the ex-slave and young Americans who sorted mail, ran errands and wrote the letters of the legislators on Capitol Hill.
They were the boys who would have to drag their broken bodies across stubble fields, who would lie like filthy, grotesque rag dolls in the mud. They were the girls who would be childless or widowed or old before their lives had bloomed.
“It’s been wonderful here, Miss Amelia.” Douglas held her hand in parting.
“I’ve been proud to have you, Frederick.” Her blue eyes looked up into his, and Douglass saw her tears.