Amelia was severe.
“After the length of time you’ve stayed away, Fred, I shouldn’t.”
Douglass bowed gravely when at last she complied with his request, his eyes still somewhat puzzled. Then Helen said, “I’m Gideon Pitts’s daughter, from Rochester.”
A few weeks later—to the horror of Washington—President Hayes appointed Frederick Douglass United States Marshal of the District of Columbia. It might almost seem that, having recalled the troops from the South, the President went out of his way to administer a rebuke where it would hurt most.
Fear was expressed that Douglass would pack the courts and jury-boxes with Negroes. Of even more concern was the time-honored custom that the Marshal presented all guests to the President at state functions! Immediately efforts were made by members of the bar to defeat Douglass’ confirmation for office. But a one-time slaveholder, Columbus Alexander, of an old and wealthy Washington family, joined with George Hill, influential Republican, in presenting the necessary bond; and when the confirmation came up before the Senate the gentleman from New York, Senator Roscoe Conkling, won them over with a masterly and eloquent address on “Manhood.”
So Frederick Douglass in “white kid gloves, sparrow-tailed coat, patent-leather boots and alabaster cravat” was at the President’s side at the next White House reception. Nothing could be done now but wait for some overt act on his part to justify his removal. The opposition thought they had him a couple of months after he took office.
The Marshal had been invited to Baltimore to deliver a lecture in Douglass Hall—named in his honor and used for community educational purposes. He spoke on “Our National Capital.” Everybody seemed to enjoy a pleasant evening. But the next morning Douglass awoke to find that he was being quoted and attacked by the press. Within a few days some of the newspapers had worked themselves into a frenzy, and committees were appointed to procure names to a petition demanding his removal from office.
It is said that the President laughed about the matter, and it is certain that after a statement made by Douglass was printed in the Washington Evening Star the hostility kindled against him vanished as quickly as it had come.
Douglass could be very witty, and he had made some humorous reflections on the great city. “But,” he wrote the editor, “it is the easiest thing in the world, as you know, sir, to pervert the meaning and give a one-sided impression of a whole speech.... I am not such a fool as to decry a city in which I have invested my money and made my permanent residence.”