On January 26, 1891, Rear Admiral Gherardi, having arrived at Port-au-Prince, sent one of his under-officers on shore to the United States Legation, to invite me on board his flagship, the Philadelphia.... I went on board as requested, and there for the first time I learned that I was to have some connection with negotiations for a United States coaling-station at the Môle St. Nicolas; and this information was imparted to me by Rear Admiral Gherardi. He told me in his peculiarly emphatic manner that he had been duly appointed a United Sates special commissioner; that his mission was to obtain a naval station at the Môle St. Nicolas; and that it was the wish of Mr. Blaine and Mr. Tracy, and also of the President of the United States, that I should earnestly co-operate with him in accomplishing this object. He further made me acquainted with the dignity of his position, and I was not slow in recognizing it.
In reality, some time before the arrival of Admiral Gherardi on this diplomatic scene, I was made acquainted with the fact of his appointment. There was at Port-au-Prince an individual, acting as agent of a distinguished firm in New York, who appeared to be more fully initiated into the secrets of the State Department at Washington than I was, and who knew, or said he knew, all about the appointment of Admiral Gherardi, whose arrival he diligently heralded in advance, and carefully made public in all the political and business circles to which he had access. He stated that I was discredited at Washington, had, in fact, been suspended and recalled, and that Admiral Gherardi had been duly commissioned to take my place. It is unnecessary to say that it placed me in an unenviable position, both before the community of Port-au-Prince and before the government of Haiti.
Anyone may read a carefully documented account of the negotiations which followed in Rayford Logan’s Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti. There can be no question that Douglass strove to carry out the wishes of his government while at the same time “maintaining the good character of the United States.” He clearly regretted certain features of the negotiations.
Not the least, perhaps, among the collateral causes of our non-success was the minatory attitude assumed by us while conducting the negotiation. What wisdom was there in confronting Haiti at such a moment with a squadron of large ships of war with a hundred cannon and two thousand men? This was done, and it was naturally construed into a hint to Haiti that if we could not, by appeals to reason and friendly feeling, obtain what we wanted, we could obtain it by a show of force. We appeared before the Haitians, and before the world, with the pen in one hand and the sword in the other. This was not a friendly and considerate attitude for a great government like ours to assume when asking a concession from a small and weak nation like Haiti. It was ill-timed and out of all proportion to the demands of the occasion. It was also done under a total misapprehension of the character of the people with whom we had to deal. We should have known that, whatever else the Haitian people may be, they are not cowards, and hence are not easily scared.
Frederick Douglass was blamed for the failure of the negotiations. He did resign the summer of 1891.
Logan says, “My own belief is that Douglass was sincerely desirous of protecting the interests of a country of the same race as his, while at the same time carrying out the wishes of his government and upholding the integrity of that government. His failure was due rather to the fact that there was no real public demand for the Môle, that Harrison was not prepared to use force.... After all, the Panama Canal had not been built; the United States had not even obtained her release from the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty so that she could construct a canal under her own control. The use of force against Haiti had to wait until the canal had been constructed, until the United States had become a world power, until a new period of recurrent revolutions had increased the impatience in the State Department, and until the attention fixed upon the World War permitted the military occupation of Haiti without arousing too much protest in the United Sates.”[34]
In 1893 the Haitian government appointed Douglass Haiti’s Commissioner to the World Columbian Exposition at Chicago; and in 1899 Haiti contributed the first thousand dollars toward the bronze statue of Frederick Douglass now standing in one of the public parks of Rochester. Speaking in 1932, Dantes Bellegarde, Haitian Minister to the United States, expressed the belief that were Frederick Douglass still living he “would be among those who most ardently approved the doctrine of international morality.... A policy respectful of the rights of small nations such as had been exemplified in the activities of Douglass while United States Minister in Haiti, is the only policy capable of assuring to a powerful nation like the United States the real and profound sympathy of the states of Latin America.”
Frederick Douglass was now nearly eighty years old. He had not retired from public life. His snow-white bushy hair, topping the straight, well-set figure was a familiar sight wherever people gathered to plan a stronger, nobler nation, to build a more understanding world. His faith in his country and in its ultimate destiny rendered him tolerant; his ready wit was gentle. Little knots of people gathered round him wherever he went and found themselves repeating his stories and remembering best of all his rare good humor. The villagers in Anacostia were proud of him. They told of the visitors who came from far and near seeking his home.
On the morning of February 15, 1895, Susan B. Anthony arrived in Washington to open the second triennial meeting of the National Woman’s Council. This was her seventy-fifth birthday, and that afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Douglass called to express their good wishes and congratulations.
The big open meeting of the session was to be February 20. During the morning Frederick Douglass appeared and, amid resounding applause, was invited to the platform by the president, Mrs. Sewall. He accepted, but declined to speak, acknowledging the applause only by a bow.