Oxford Democrat. [volume] (Paris, Me.) 1833-1933, 1877-03-27
From the New York Times.
1.-The Whirtigig of Time"

may be commented upon as significant,
now that he has received an honorable
and lucrative Office at the hands OF the
President of the United States. But
when we consider what that office has
been, in what a jurisdiction 1t is exer-
cised, and what is the history OF the man
who now fills it, we have some occasion
to say that the appointment has certain
dramatic interest. He would have been
derided as dreamer who, twenty years
ago. should have said that slave-born
man, then living, should be chief execu-
tive officer of the slave-holding, slave-dea-
ling District of Columbia.
Frederick Douglass was reared as
slave on plantation in Talbot County,
MARYLAND. When ten years old he was
lent to a relative of his owner, and was
sent to Baltimore, just as any ohattel
might have been sent. He worked In
shipyard, and his contact with men and
things from the vast, mysterious and un-
known world outside of his dark bondage
stirred the trembling soul within him.
Vague rumors of lands where slavery was
unknown came to him. Glimpses OF
strange knowledge, communicable by
means of written and printed characters,
cleaned before him. He resolved to learn
to read and write. He vowed that he
would fee to that far-off land OF freedom.
Secretly, for it was forbidden, he taught
himself reading and writing. There Is
nowhere a more pathetic chapter OF per-
sonal biography than that in which the
painful and furtive studies Of the poor
Slave bow are described. In 1888, when
tweuty.one years old, Douglass carried
out his lOng-cherished plan OF escape,
He fled to New York, and after divers
vicissitndes, made his way to MaSsachu-
sets. There he married, and when, in
1910. the long-stihed anti-slavery feeling
of New England burst out, he astonlshed
everybody with his sudden appearance as
living example of the wrongs Of human
slavery. His addresses gave him motor
ietv. and he was Immediately wanted
in MARYLAND. He was safe nowhere in
the American Republic so long as his
chattelhood was recognised by majority
of the people of the United States. His
owner demanded his body to be returned
to slavery. But his romantic career, his
commanding talents, and his recognized
services in the cause Of emancipation had
given him some fame A subscription
was opened in England, and in 1916 Fred
erick Douglass was bought, paid for, and
delivered to himself by sundry British
''sentimentalists, as they were esteemed.
How he was hated aud feared by the
slave-hOlding politicians, and how he
found it necessary to fee to England at
ter John Browns failure at Harper's Fer
~, most Of our readers know.
The anti-slavery people early agitated
the proposition that slavery should be
abolished in the District of Columbia.
1t was held to be monstrous thing that,
in the capital of Republic nominally
free, there should be an auction block
from which human beings should be bought
and sold. SIave.pens aud barracoons
stood in sight of the portics of the Capt.
toll of the United States. Signing cap
tives, linked in couples, crept through the
streets Of Washington, giving the lie dai.
" to the proud boast that this was the
land OF the free. The anti-Slavery soci-
etics. founded in 1882, while they affr-
med that Congress had no right to inter-
fere with slavery in the States, did de-
clare that that body should abolish human
bondage in the District of Columbia and
wherever the National Government had
exclusive jurisdiction. 1t was in vain.
The slave power was supreme in the Ma
tional Capital. When Dr.. Bailey, in
lS4T, proclaimed in the National Era,
bold attempt at newspaper publishing in
the district Of Columbia, that slave-hold-
ing and slave-trading should therein cease,
his office was besieged by mob, and his
own life put in jeopardy. In 1850, among
the concessions which were made in the
famous compromise bill of that year, alb
clifton of the slave trade in the District
of Columbia offset the infamous Fugitive
Slave law. The National Republican
Convention of 1860 embodied in its plat
form the proposition that Congress had
no right to give legal existence to slavery
many territory of the United States
Slavery was abolished in the District Of
Columbia by act of Congress April IL,
1862.
For a long series Of years the slave
holding oligarchy of Virginia and Mary
land gave laws and manners TO that part
of the national domain which contains
the capital of the United States. No
part of the South was so furiously seces-
sionist as the old population of Wash
ington, Georgetown, and Alexandria. No
antiquated society in the extreme South
50 long and 50 resentfully refused to ac-
cept the results of the civil war as these
people. No old togies anywhere so Bit
terly despised street-cars, cooking-stcves,
and the common appliances of newer
civilization as these. And the fact that
their streets were darkened with crowds
of ragged, miserable, and ignorant "con-
trabands" while the war ragged nauseated
them utterly against emancipation. They
closed the shutters Of their houses, and
in sullenness cursed the day. When the
slave power was at its height, the mar
shall Of the district of Columbia was a
terrible man. He punished the uneasy