Mar 30, 2023 - Sale 2631

Sale 2631 - Lot 180

Price Realized: $ 1,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
FREDERICK DOUGLASS. Letter describing his tense meeting with the president of the Dominican Republic. Secretarial manuscript copy of a letter from Douglass to Secretary of State James G. Blaine. 5 pages, 10 x 8 inches, on two folding sheets; attached at one corner with string, short separation at one fold, light offsetting from string. Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 11 February 1890
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Frederick Douglass served as the United States Consul General to Haiti from November 1889 to July 1891, with a joint appointment as chargé d'affaires to the neighboring Dominican Republic. In this letter he describes his first meeting with the long-tenured president of the Dominican Republic, Ulises Heureaux. Douglass describes the president at length and with apparent admiration: "President Heureaux is a tall slender bright-eyed man of dark complexion and well-defined Negro features. He gave me his age as forty-two, but he looks even younger than that. He is of wiry make-up and has apparently a great capacity for work. He has a military bearing, but he carries his honors without ostentation and with manly dignity. Besides his native language, which is Spanish, he speaks French and English, the latter remarkably well. Manifestly he is a man of energy and intelligence." Heureaux expressed a desire for cordial diplomatic relations with the United States but defended his decision to stay out of the "Pan-American Congress" (the First International Conference of American States which was then taking place in Washington). This was attributed to "the neglect with which the United States had treated him and his country in regard to the reciprocity treaty . . . in 1884." In closing, Douglass quotes the Dominican president: "If you take ten years to decide whether you will make a request of me, you must give me a little time in which to decide whether I can grant it." We have not traced the original location of this significant diplomatic letter, and it does not appear to have been published.