Chapter 12

With the full enfranchisement of his people, Douglass entered upon what may be called the third epoch of his career, that of fruition. Not every worthy life receives its reward in this world; but Douglass, having fought the good fight, was now singled out, by virtue of his prominence, for various honors and emoluments at the hands of the public. He was urged by many friends to take up his residence in some Southern district and run for Congress; but from modesty or some doubt of his fitness--which one would think he need not have felt--and the consideration that his people needed an advocate at the North to keep alive there the friendship and zeal for liberty that had accomplished so much for his race, he did not adopt the suggestion.

In 1860 [1870] Douglass moved to Washington, and began [took over] the publication of the _New National Era_, a weekly paper devoted to the interests of the colored race. The venture did not receive the support hoped for; and the paper was turned over to Douglass's two [oldest] sons, Lewis and Frederick, and was finally abandoned [in 1874], Douglass having sunk about ten thousand dollars in the enterprise. Later newspapers for circulation among the colored people have proved more successful; and it ought to be a matter of interest that the race which thirty years ago could not support one publication, edited by its most prominent man, now maintains several hundred newspapers which make their appearance regularly.

In 1871 Douglass was elected president of the Freedmans Bank. This ill-starred venture was then apparently in the full tide of prosperity, and promised to be a great lever in the uplifting of the submerged race. Douglass, soon after his election as president, discovered the insolvency of the institution, and insisted that it be closed up. The negro was in the hands of his friends, and was destined to suffer for their mistakes as well as his own.

Other honors that fell to Douglass were less empty than the presidency of a bankrupt bank. In 1870 he was appointed by President Grant a member of the Santo Domingo Commission, the object of which was to arrange terms for the annexation of the mulatto republic to the Union. Some of the best friends of the colored race, among them Senator Sumner, opposed this step; but Douglass maintained that to receive Santo Domingo as a State would add to its strength and importance. The scheme ultimately fell through, whether for the good or ill of Santo Domingo can best be judged when the results of more recent annexation schemes [1898: Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii, and _de facto_ Cuba] become apparent. Douglass went to Santo Domingo on an American man-of-war, in the company of three other commissioners. In his _Life and Times_ he draws a pleasing contrast between some of his earlier experiences in travelling, and the terms of cordial intimacy upon which, as the representative of a nation which a few years before had denied him a