Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

In the summer of 1867, Douglass’s older brother Perry appears on his doorstep with a wife and family. The brothers haven’t seen one another in 40 years. Perry explains that, after the war, he left a plantation in Louisiana to seek out his famous sibling. Douglass builds a cottage on the property to house this addition to his extended family. However, his own children find the manners and hygiene of the newcomers appalling. Ottilie expresses a similar revulsion during her visits to Rochester.

Nevertheless, Douglass does his best to provide a home for the new arrivals as well as his quarrelsome and frequently impecunious adult children. The three brothers fight among themselves, and all unite in their aversion to Rosetta’s husband Nathan, whom they accuse of theft and deception. Douglass occasionally funds his children’s business ventures, but these usually fail. The combination of racism and lack of personal initiative leaves them all as dependents on the family patriarch for prolonged periods.

To add to the household stress, Ottilie makes her seasonal visits and offers snide comments about the rest of Douglass’s family. She continues to mock the illiterate Anna. In a letter to Douglass, she writes, “That you should pick up Perry is just like you and natural enough. . . . Among all the leeches that feed on you he is one of the most harmless and least expensive” (511).

Ottilie frequently encourages Douglass to run away with her to Europe, but nothing ever comes of her scheme. In speculating about their long-lasting intimacy, the biographer writes, “He likely cherished her unconditional admiration and devotion, as long as he could control its contours” (513).

Douglass is unable to relinquish either the stolid Anna or the scintillating Ottilie. In the former, he finds the maternal figure who will never leave him. In forming attachments to intellectual women like Julia and Ottilie, he receives flattering adoration as well as the stimulation of his own mental powers. Because she is illiterate, Anna never writes out her thoughts on the odd arrangement. The biographer concludes, “Anna acquiesced in what Douglass needed as long as nothing terrible happened to threaten the family any more than its own internal battles already did” (519).

Between 1872 and 1874, Douglass experiences many setbacks. In June 1872, his property in Rochester catches fire. Arson is suspected but never proven. At this time, the Ku Klux Klan is emerging as a powerful new foe of Reconstruction and equal rights, and some of its ire is directed toward Douglass as the most prominent voice of Black freedom.

Dejected by the loss of his home, Douglass sells the Rochester property and resettles his army of dependents in a townhouse in Washington. He previously maintained a second residence there to be close to the seat of political power. It now becomes his permanent base of operations. As the need for activism related to abolition disappears, Douglass becomes increasingly involved in Washington politics: “His voice would still be that of a radical; but much more work emerged now for the pragmatist, the party man, and the racial symbol” (523-24).

During this time, Douglass launches a new newspaper. His three sons help manage the publishing business, with Ottilie as contributor and editor. According to Blight, “Happily, the editor’s pen beckoned. Douglass got his voice back in the New National Era. He loved the rush and excitement of getting the paper out” (529).

Much of his rhetoric during this period targets the revisionist history of the Civil War being created by Southerners. In depicting themselves as the noble defenders of a lost way of life, pro-slavery forces are trying to control the narrative of how they will be remembered. Douglass does his best in print to contradict this new myth.

Aside from the newspaper, Douglass also works actively for President Ulysses S. Grant’s administration. One of Grant’s favorite initiatives is the annexation of Santo Domingo. Despite Douglass’s previous objections to relocation schemes, he sees this as a bright opportunity for Black Americans who might wish to make a new start in a place that already has a large African population. Blight writes, “It is never easy to be a good imperialist, but the old abolitionist did his best” (542). Congress never agrees to annex the region, so Douglass’s efforts prove in vain. At the same time, he experiences more reversals of fortune as his other ventures fail. The New National Era goes under in 1874, as does the Freedman’s Bank, which Douglass briefly manages during a national depression.