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LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

[prejudice] than I had then lately done. I had married a wife. People who had
remained silent over the unlawful relations of the white slave masters with
their colored slave women loudly condemned me for marrying a wife a few
shades lighter than myself. They would have had no objection to my marrying
a person much darker in complexion than myself, but to marry one much
lighter and of the complexion of my father rather than of that of my mother,
was, in the popular eye, a shocking offense, and one for which I was to be
ostracized by white and black alike. Mr. Cleveland found me covered with
these unjust, inconsistent, and foolish reproaches, and instead of joining in
with them or acting in accordance with them, or in anywise giving them
countenance as a cowardly and political trickster might and probably would
have done, he, in the face of all vulgar criticism, paid me all the social consideration
due to the office of Recorder of Deeds of the District of Columbia.
He never failed, while I held office under him, to invite myself and wife to
his grand receptions, and we never failed to attend them. Surrounded by
distinguished men and women from all parts of the country and by diplomatic
representatives from all parts of the world, and under the gaze of the
late slaveholders, there was nothing in the bearing of Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland
toward Mrs. Douglass and myself less cordial and courteous than that
extended to the other ladies and gentlemen present. This manly defiance, by
a Democratic President, of a malignant and time-honored prejudice, won my
respect for the courage of Mr. Cleveland. We were in politics separated from
each other by a space ocean wide. I had done all that I could to defeat his
election and to elect Mr. James G. Blaine, but this made no apparent difference
with Mr. Cleveland. He found me in office when he came into the
Presidency, and he was too noble to refuse me the recognition and hospitalities
that my official position gave me the right to claim. Though this conduct
drew upon him fierce and bitter reproaches from members of his own party
in the South, he never faltered or flinched, and continued to invite Mrs.
Douglass and myself to his receptions during all the time that I was in office
under his administration, and often wrote the invitations with his own hand.
Among my friends in Europe, a fact like this will excite no comment. There,
color does not decide the civil and social position of a man. Here, a white
scoundrel, because he is white, is preferred to an honest and educated black
man. A white man of the baser sort can ride in first-class carriages on railroads,
attend the theaters and enter the hotels and restaurants of our cities,
and be accommodated, while a man with the least drop of African blood in
his veins would be refused and insulted. Nowhere in the world are the worth
and dignity of manhood more exalted in speech and press than they are here,