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CHARLES B. PURVIS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS
[n.p.] 5 July 1880.
MR. DOUGLASS
DEAR FRIEND,
Your very kind letter was received this morning.1Douglass’s letter to Charles Burleigh Purvis has not survived. Purvis implies that Douglass wrote in support of him in an unidentified controversy. At that time, Douglass was a trustee of Howard University, and Purvis was a member of its medical department faculty as well as head surgeon of the Freedmen’s Hospital, which was attached to it. If the criticism Purvis was receiving concerned either of these roles, it did not prevent his elevation to director of that hospital within a few years. More likely the controversy stemmed from the April 1880 publication of the report of a U.S. Senate committee, headed by Blanche K. Bruce, that looked into the financial problems behind the failure of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Bank in 1874. Both Douglass and Purvis were called to testify and answer questions. One of the commissioners initially charged with settling the affairs of the closed bank, Robert H. T. Liepold, criticized a loan that the bank had made to Purvis while he was its vice president. Purvis, in turn, had criticized many of the bank’s past officers and trustees after the bank’s collapse, probably generating hard feelings. U.S. Senate, Report of the Select Committee, 177–191, 254–57; Logan, Howard University, 42, 90; Muller, Lion of Anacostia, 77; Osthaus, Freedmen, Philanthropy, and Fraud, 206. I shall mail it to my father.2 Charles Burleigh Purvis was the son of Robert Purvis. I know he will be pleased to receive it. I want to thank you for the complimentary allusions you made to Dr. Shadd3Born in Washington, D.C., Furmann Jeremiah Shadd (1852–1908) was the son of Absalom W. and Eliza J. Shadd and a close relative of Mary Ann Shadd Carey. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Chatham, Canada West, where they remained through the Civil War. After returning to Washington, D.C., in 1866, Shadd was among the earliest students enrolled at Howard University. After completing his A.B. in 1875, Shadd was hired as a teacher in Howard’s normal school, serving as its principal from 1879 to 1881. While working at the normal school, he was also a student at Howard’s medical school, and he graduated from it in 1881. Later that same year he was appointed assistant surgeon and resident physician at the Freedmen’s Hospital, and also served on the faculty of the medical school. In 1889 he graduated from dental school. In 1891 he was made a full professor at Howard University’s medical school; he applied for membership in the local chapter of the American Medical Association, but was rejected because of his race. In 1895, Shadd resigned his post at the Freedmen’s Hospital and went into private practice. But he maintained his affiliation with Howard University, serving as secretary and treasurer of the medical department from 1896 until his death. Shadd spent most of 1906 studying in Europe, particularly under the German Nobel Prize winner Dr. Robert Koch, who discovered the organisms that cause anthrax, tuberculosis, and Asiatic cholera. Shadd died in Washington, D.C., in 1908. 1900 U.S. Census, District of Columbia, Washington, 203A; Daniel Smith Lamb, ed., Howard University Medical Department: A Historical, Biographical and Statistical Souvenir (Washington, D.C., 1900), 126–27; George Hendrick and Willene Hendrick, Black Refugees in Canada: Accounts of Escape during the Era of Slavery (London, 2010), 67–68; Mary Maillard, ed., Whispers of Cruel Wrongs: The Correspondence of Louise Jacobs and Her Circle, 1879–1911 (Madison, Wisc., 2017), 187n. about me. I am not quite sure I deserved them all. I have tried to do my whole duty; to be a credit to my family & to those with whom I am identified. I donot say I have not made mistakes but they are of the head not of the heart: I am not well to day. I will confess to being sick of heart. I am tired of the abuse that is being heaped upon me day by day & for what I donot know. I cannot see why man who has come to me time & time again for help should now seek to blow a blot upon me. I find consolation in the fact that you, Messrs Lynch,4Probably John R. Lynch.Bruce,5Blanche K. Bruce. Smalls6One of the first black heroes of the Civil War, Robert Smalls (1839–1915) was born a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina. When his master moved to Charleston in 1851, Smalls was brought to that city and permitted to hire himself out as a sail rigger and sailor. At the beginning of the war, Confederate authorities impressed Smalls into service aboard the Planter, a Charleston harbor steamer. On the night of 12 May 1862, Smalls and other black crewmen, together with their families, sailed the vessel past Confederate defenses and delivered themselves to the Union fleet blockading the harbor. The Northerners appointed Smalls pilot and later captain of the Planter and used his knowledge of South Carolina coastal waters to great advantage. In August 1862, General David Hunter sent Smalls to Washington, where he attempted to persuade Lincoln to enlist runaway slaves in the Union army. After the war, Smalls became a leading Republican in South Carolina, serving in the state constitutional convention of 1868, the state legislature (1868–74), and the U.S. House of Representatives (1875–79, 1882–83, 1884–87). Appointed customs collector of the port of Beaufort in 1889, he held that position, except during Grover Cleveland’s second administration, until 1913. Okon Edet Uya, From Slavery to Public Service: Robert Smalls, 1839–1915 (New York, 1971); Benjamin Quarles, “The Abduction of the ‘Planter,’ ” Civil War History, 4:5–10 (March 1958); Christopher, Black Americans in Congress, 38–54; DANB, 560–61; ACAB, 5:553–54; DAB, 17:224–25; BDUSC (online). & others of a representative character see me as I am. Dr. Shadd says you expect to see Mr. Lamar7 Purvis’s handwriting makes the identification of this individual impossible to determine with high confidence. It is possible that it was Blanche K. Bruce’s colleague in the U.S. Senate, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar (1825–93). After graduating from Emory College in 1845, Lamar was admitted to the Georgia bar but moved to Mississippi two years later. Lamar served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1857 until December 1860, when he resigned to take part in his state’s secession. A staunch defender of the Confederacy, which he served in military, diplomatic, and judicial roles, Lamar later espoused sectional reconciliation. In 1873 he returned to a seat in the House of Representatives, where he delivered a memorable eulogy on Charles Sumner. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1876, Lamar also served as President Cleveland’s secretary of the interior (1885–88) and as associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1888–93). James B. Murphy, L. Q. C. Lamar: Pragmatic Patriot (Baton Rouge, La., 1973); ACAB, 3:598–99; NCAB, 1:37; DAB, 10:551–53; BDUSC (online). soon. When you do see him I stand ready to have every act of my official life looked into—I dont know that I should care as long as Presidents & Secretaries <have> the same, & even [illegible] charges made against them, but I do. Sometimes I feel that it doesnot pay to be fighting for the elevation of the colored people, they seem to have no appreciative sense.
I didnot start to write a letter & will not disturb you more.
Yours truly
C. B. PURVIS
ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 410–11, FD Papers, DLC.
