Charles R. Douglass to Frederick Douglass, August 5, 1876

CHARLES R. DOUGLASS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Puerto Plata, [Dominican Republic]. 5 August 1876.^{1Charles Douglas added this additional piece of information regarding his address: “United States Consulate.”}

DEAR FATHER,

Having twice written you since I received your last letter,^{2No copies of these letters have been located.} and under the circumstances of my many failures in life, I have felt that my letters were not desired. I write again however risking the result. It seems that under any circumstances I am to fail in my undertakings, and my life is to be one series of blunders.^{3Given his complaints about his income and living conditions in Santo Domingo, Charles may have been reflecting on his ongoing financial difficulties, which left him in ever-increasing debt to his father. Foremost in his mind, however, was probably his abrupt dismissal from his far better-paying job with the Treasury Department on 30 June 1875, which led directly to his acceptance of the consul position at Puerto Plata two weeks later. Blight, Prophet of Freedom, 505–09, 570–72, 606, 700–01; Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 37.} I have been here nearly a year, and I dont know how I have lived.^{4Charles was appointed U.S. consul to Puerto Plata in Santo Domingo on 10 July 1875. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 37.} I have fallen among friendly people, though when I arrived all hands were against me because of my color, and because I had displaced a white man, but now that man and all his friends stand by me in any of my official acts with the Government. My income does not average over $60 per month, and has not since I have been here as my reports will show. I am holding on because I dare not let go.

These Dominicans are a savage set and are daily growing worse. For sixteen days we have been besieged, and nightly the town is fired upon by the country people. The most formidable revolution that has taken place for years, is now going on.^{5Following a period of political turmoil, a council of secretaries of state took charge of the Dominican Republic in February 1876. In the spring of 1876, the Puerto Plata native General Ulises Heureaux rebelled against the council and secured the election of his own candidate, Ulises Francisco Espaillat Quinones, as the nation’s president. Espaillat’s presidency, however, was met with a number of rebellions, the most successful of which was led by the priest (and future president of the Dominican Republic) Fernando Arturo de Meriño Ramírez. By the end of the year, the civil unrest had grown so widespread and violent that Espaillat was forced to resign on 20 December 1876. Country Study Guide (Washington, D.C., 2002), 55; Michael Newton, ed., Famous Assassinations in World History, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2014), 1: 221.} Last week when the “Tybee”^{6In the 1870s, the commercial steamer Tybee was one of several ships owned and operated by Clyde & Company that made regular thirty-day round trips carrying passengers, mail, and cargo between New York City and ports on the island of Hispaniola, including Puerto Plata. The Executive Documents of the Senate of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1871), 48, 229, 237, 285; Harry Hoetink, The Dominican People, 1850–1900: Notes for a Historical Sociology, trans. Stephen K. Ault (Baltimore, 1982), 62; James W. Trent, Jr., The Manliest Man: Samuel G. Howe and the Contours of Nineteenth-Century American Reform (Boston, 2012), 263.} arrived I had to abandon my house and take Libbie^{7Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Murphy Douglass.} and the children^{8The family of Charles and Libbie Douglass at this time included Charles Frederick Douglass, Joseph Henry Douglass, Annie Elizabeth Douglass, and Julia Ada Douglass.} on board for the night as all our lives were in danger. The Consulate was full of Cubans and bullets were flying thick and fast in the streets, several were killed and wounded. To night as I write—as the Steamer leaves tomorrow, Genl. Luperon^{9Gregorio Luperón (1839–97) was born in humble circumstances in the northern Dominican port city of Puerto Plata. He rose to prominence as a military leader during the War of the Restoration (1863–65), which thwarted Spanish efforts to recolonize the Dominican Republic (1861–65). In response to President Buenaventura Báez’s efforts to secure U.S. annexation of the country between 1868 and 1871, Luperón joined General José María Cabral, the other major leader of the northern Blue party, in a pact to overthrow Báez and maintain Dominican national sovereignty. Famous for his audacity, Luperón purchased a steamship that had served as a blockade runner during the Civil War, and in 1869 he used it to ferry Dominican nationalist revolutionaries from Haiti through a screen of U.S. naval vessels operating in support of Báez. More significant were the defiant letters protesting American annexation that Luperón wrote to President Ulysses S. Grant and Republican senators in 1869 and 1870, which directly contributed to the death of the scheme in 1871. Among modern Dominicans, Luperón is highly esteemed as a nationalist who successfully resisted foreign intrusions in their country. Welles, Naboth’s Vineyard, 1: 361–64; Pons, Dominican Republic, 228–29; Roorda, Derby, and González, Dominican Republic Reader, 141, 171–72.} is shelling the outskirts of the town from the Fort, and a ball has passed through my flag flying over the house. I am here, and here I <am> obliged to stay it out. Times are hard, money scarce, and provisions dear. Merchants are afraid to import, hence my fees are growing less by degrees. Secretary Fish^{10Hamilton Fish.} has addressed me a Circular informing me that Congress has not as yet passed the Consular appropriation bill^{11On 14 August 1876, President Grant signed the bill authorizing the appropriation covering the salaries of the members of the consular and diplomatic corps for the fiscal year ending on 30 June 1877. First Session of the Forty-Fourth Congress: Executive Documents, printed by the order of the House of Representatives, 1875–76, 17 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1876), vol. 14, doc. no. 192, 1–2.} and so my hopes for a fixed salary here are in a precarious condition.

Fred.^{12Frederick Douglass, Jr.} has written to me concerning what I sent you and your failure to receive it—I did send a five gall. demijohn of rum and I now believe it was confiscated by the authorities. I could very well send some fruits as they cost me nothing, but it would be necessary to have some one in New York to whom I could address them. Mr. Eato^{13Charles is likely referring to one of two brothers, either Edward Valentine Clark Eato (1845–1914) or his younger brother Christopher Rush Eato (1848–79). The brothers were the sons of a prominent Harlem-based African Methodist Episcopal Zion minister, the Reverend Timothy Eato (1800–54). At the time Charles’s family sailed from New York City, Edward Eato was working as a clerk in a law firm (later he worked for the Queens Insurance Company), and his brother Christopher was a porter at an envelope factory. Christopher Eato’s career was cut short by his early death, but Edward Eato rose to prominence in New York City’s African American community, serving as president of the African Society (of which his father had been a founding member) for twenty-five years, starting in the mid-1880s, as well as grand master of Prince Hall Masonry in New York beginning in 1890. Edward Eato was also the first African American delegate to an international convention of the Young Men’s Christian Association, as well as a member of the Ugly Club and the Society of the Sons of New York. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, New York County, 4; 1870 U.S. Census, New York, New York County, 31; 1880 U.S. Census, New York, New York County, 595C; 1910 U.S. Census, New York, New York County, 12B; Martin Summers, Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900–1930 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2004), 118, 130; Everett Jenkins, Jr., ed., Pan-African Chronology II: A Comprehensive Reference to the Black Quest for Freedom in Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Asia, 1865–1915, 6 vols. (London, 1998), 2: 35; Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color, 230; “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995.”} was very kind in looking after my family and seeing them safely aboard the Steamer. I sent him by way of gratitude, a doz. pineapples.

Both Matie^{14Mary “Matie” Louise Douglass (1874–90) was born and died in Washington, D.C. She was the fifth child and second surviving daughter of Charles and Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Murphy Douglass. Her death at age fifteen, on 7 March 1890, left her brother Joseph Henry as the only surviving child of Charles Douglass’s first marriage. Bernier and Taylor, If I Survive, 37, 38; Fought, Women, 223, 266, 310.} and Julia Ada^{15Julia Ada Douglass.} are down with the fever and we are up nearly all night with them. The hot weather makes it go pretty hard with

them though I have hopes of their recovery. The rest of us have escaped the fever thus far. I would go to Turks Island^{16This island and the nearby Caicos Islands belong to the same Caribbean archipelago as the Bahamas. It was a longtime British colony whose principal industry was salt. Seltzer, Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer, 1965.} only a few hours journey from here if I could get the appointment. The salary is $2000 per annum and rent paid. The inhabitants are English. It is between here and New York. The present incumbent Mr. Driggs^{17Born in Oneida County, New York, George Washington Driggs (1832–90) grew up in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin. While serving in the Civil War, he also worked as a war correspondent for the Madison (Wisconsin) Patriot. After the war, he moved to Florida, where he served as the assistant secretary of state from 1869 through 1871 while simultaneously acting as the assistant adjutant general of the Florida state militia. In 1871, the Grant administration appointed him U.S. consul to Turks Island, where he remained until 1877. In 1878 he was appointed U.S. consul to the city of Paramaribo, Suriname. By the following year, however, he was acting as a commercial agent for the United States in Hull, England. 1850 U.S. Census, Wisconsin, Fond du Lac County, 516; 1870 U.S. Census, Florida, Leon County, 6; The Acts and Resolutions Adopted by the Legislature of Florida at its Fourth Session, under the Constitution of A.D. 1868 (Tallahassee, Fla., 1871), 46–47; Official Register of the United States, Containing a List of all Officers and Employees in the Civil, Military, and Naval Services on the Thirtieth of June 1879, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1879), 1:21; Howard Roscoe Driggs, Driggs Family History (Salt Lake City, Utah, 1959), 127.} is a very dissipated man without family. If he is to leave I should like the place in preference to this only on account of the salary. In health it is about like this place. The children and all join in love to yourself and mother^{18Anna Murray Douglass.}

Aff. Your son

CHAS. R. DOUGLASS

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 855–56, FD Paper, DLC.

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