400

1028 HISTORICAL ANNOTATION

location. After Hyppolite was confirmed as president of Haiti, however, ties between
the Caribbean nation and European powers were mended. By November 1889, Haiti
dispatched ministers plenipotentiary to France, Germany, Great Britain, and Spain.
Brown, Black Diplomat in Haiti, 1:29-32; Himelhoch, "Frederick Douglass and
Haiti's Mole St. Nicolas," 161-62.

457.23 World's Columbian Exposition] The World's Columbian Exposition was
held in 1893 in Chicago, lllinois, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher
Columbus's discovery of America. Many of the leading cities in the United States
competed to host the exposition. Chicago was chosen partly because it was a major
railroad center, but also because it guaranteed to raise $10,000,000. The exposition
continued in the tradition of the Philadelphia Centennial (1876), encompassing a vast,
gardened layout with numerous separate buildings along Chicago's south lake front
area. The chief planners were Chicago architects Daniel H. Burnham and John W.
Root; the designer in chief was Charles B. Atwood, and Frederick Law Olmsted was
in charge of landscaping. The exposition marked the debut of the Ferris wheel,
invented by Pittsburgh engineer G. W. G. Ferris. Those attending the exposition were
also dazzled by another new wonder, electricity, presented for the first time in
America. Douglass attended the fair as a representative of Haiti, but was angry
because African American participation in the festivities was limited. EAAH,
3:370-72.

460.11-12 a city recently transformed] Under the direction of Alexander Robey
("Boss") Shepherd, the District of Columbia's Board of Public Works, an appointed
body of the territorial government established in 1871, initiated a "comprehensive
plan of improvements'' to relieve the city of its rural vestiges. Highly criticized and
the subject of two congressional investigations for its extravagance, shortsightedness,
and corruption, the program nevertheless generated improvements in sewage, road-
way, sidewalk, and building construction. The resultant threat of financial bankruptcy,
however, undermined Congress's faith in territorial governance for the District, and
on 20 June 1874 it was replaced by a presidentially appointed temporary commission,
harbinger of the permanent Board of Commissioners creatcd by Congress in 1878.
The new arrangement stripped the District of self-government and denied its citizens
of the franchise they had exercised since 1867. Green, Washington, 1:313-82; Whyte,
Uncivil War, 114-78, 203-61; Tindall, History of the City of Washington, 247-76;
Bryan, History of the National Capital, 2:586-90.

462.27-29 he delivered us ... rebellion to oppose] An allusion to the lettcr of 26
June 1786 from Thomas Jefferson to Jean Nicholas Demeunier. Thomas Jefferson,
Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian Boyd, 36 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1950), 10:63.

462.36 When he tarried long on the mountain] Douglass conflates words and
themes from the books of Genesis and Exodus, providing a parallel to the pre-Eman-cipation situation in the trying of Jehovah's people through the seeming failures,
desertion, and inscrutability of their leaders. Jacob, for example, could restore his
brother Laban's trust only by withdrawing with him to offer proofs, on which occa-