Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1881

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Part 3, Chapters 10-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3: “Third Part”

Part 3, Chapter 10 Summary: “The Campaign of 1888”

At the Republican Convention of 1888, Douglass supports John Sherman of Ohio, but the party instead nominates Benjamin Harrison. Douglass also delivers a speech at the convention urging party faithful to remain true to the oppressed Black people of the South. In light of the recent Supreme Court decision invalidating the 1875 Civil Rights Act, Douglass’s plea comes with urgency:

Leave these men no longer compelled to wade to the ballot-box through blood, but extend over them the protecting arm of this government, and make their pathway to the ballot-box as straight and as smooth and as safe as that of any other class of citizens (503).

On the campaign trail, Douglass finds ordinary Republican voters “more courageous than their party leaders” (503). Those “leaders” prefer to focus on the tariff issue. Douglass has no quarrel with Republican orthodoxy on protective tariffs, but it is not the issue that has animated the Republican party since its inception—the issue to which Douglass has devoted his life.

Part 3, Chapter 11 Summary: “Administration of President Harrison”

In 1889, President Harrison appoints Douglass Minister Resident and Consul General to the Republic of Haiti. New York merchants oppose the appointment on grounds that Douglass likely will hamper their efforts to squeeze degrading concessions out of the Haitians, as majority-white-skinned nations are then doing to majority-dark-skinned nations all over the globe. The other ground of opposition “was that I was not rightly colored for the place, although I matched well with the color of Haiti” (505).

Harassed by the American press, and undermined at every turn by American naval officers, Douglass eventually resigns. The regular appearance of US warships in Haitian harbors tells the Haitians exactly what it would tell anyone in their position: The United States means to bully them into turning the Mole St. Nicolas, an inlet on Haiti’s northwestern coast, where Christopher Columbus landed in 1492, into an American naval station. Douglass will not allow himself to be used for such a purpose.

Part 3, Chapters 12-13 Summary: “Minister to Haiti” and “Continued Negotiations for the Mole St. Nicolas”

Chapters 12 and 13 consist entirely of articles Douglass first published in the September and October 1889 editions of The North American Review. Although divided into two chapters, the subject matter is identical: Douglass’s defense of his conduct as Minister to Haiti.

Part 3, Chapters 10-13 Analysis

Douglass grows weary. Throughout this part, chapters devoted to public affairs appear brief, and with good reason. There are no more Lincolns, Grants, or John Browns. There are no Sumners, Phillipses, or Kelleys. The great moral crusade of the mid-19th century, which achieved its primary goal, has yielded to pecuniary questions such as tariff and monetary policies. Even Douglass, overflowing with literary talent, can find only so many ways to describe the Republican Party’s sad drift from its halcyon days as the party of freedom.

The chapters on Haiti have the same wearied feel to them. For clarity’s sake, the final two chapters might have worked better as part of the Appendix, where Douglass places other full-text speeches or writings. Their placement, however, is not the real problem. Just as Douglass can find only so many ways to lament changes in the Republican Party, so, too, does he exhaust language protesting the shameful treatment of Black people in the United States. Douglass concludes on a hopeful note. With Douglass there is always a hopeful ending, but there is not a happy one.