70

444 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

ness, but of its fears? Are we to wring from it by dread of our power what
we cannot obtain by appeals to its justice and reason? If this is the policy of
this great nation, I own that my assailants were right when they said that I
was not the man to represent the United States in Haïti.

"I am charged with sympathy for Haïti. I am not ashamed of that charge;
but no man can say with trnth that my sympathy with Haïti stood between
me and any honorable duty that I owed to the United States or to any citizen
of the United States.

"The attempt has been made to prove me indifferent to the acquisition of
a naval station in Haïti, and unable to grasp the importance to American
commerce and to American influence of such a station in the Caribbean Sea.
The fact is that when some of these writers were in their petticoats I had
comprehended the value of such an acquisition, both in respect to American
commerce and to American influence. The policy of obtaining such a station
is not new. I supported General Grant's ideas on this subject against the
powerful opposition of my honored and revered friend Charles Sumner.
more than twenty years ago, and proclaimed it on a hundred platlcmns and
to thousands of my fellow-citizens. I said then that it was a shame to
American statesmanship that, while almost every other great nation in the
world had secured a foothold and had power in the Caribbean Sea, where it
could anchor in its own bays and moor in its own harbors, we, who stood at
the very gate of that sea, had there no anchoring ground anywhere. I was for
the acquisition of Samana, and of Santo Domingo herself if she wished to
come to us. While slavery existed I was opposed to all schemes for the exten-
sion of American power and influence. But since its abolition I have gone
with him who goes farthest for such extension.

"But the pivotal and fundamental charge made by my accusers is that I
wasted a whole year in fruitless negotiations for a coaling station at the Môle
St. Nicolas and allowed favorable opportunities for obtaining it to pass
unimproved, so that it was necessary at last for the United States Government
to take the matter out of my hands and send a special commissioner to Haïti,
in the person of Rear-Admiral Gherardi, to negotiate for the Môle. A state-
ment more false than this never dropped from lip or pen. I here and now
declare, without hesitation or qualification or fear of contradiction, that there
is not one word of truth in this charge. If I do not in this state the truth, I may
be easily contradicted and put to open shame. I therefore affirm that at no
time during the first year of my residence in Haïti was I charged with the
duty or invested with any authority by the President of the United States, or
by the Secretary of State, to negotiate with Haïti for a United States naval