Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1881-04-15
The District Of Columbia Marshal


The Washington Star says there IS a
serious deadlock of business at the City
Hall through the want of a Marshal, and
unless the President acts speedily in
making an appointment, the courts will
have to come to q stand-still. There
seems 90 be serious objections to the re-
appointment of Fred Douglass to that
position, and the persistent refusal of
President Garfield to renominate him is
causing great dissatisfaction among the
colored Republicans. A colored cor
respondent, writing from Washington to
Forney's Progress. says:
Garfield has shown his cloven foot
in this matter. He gave us all to IN
derstand that he would appoint Mr..
Douglass, but now it leaks out that he
promised Mr.. Henry last winter. Mr..
Riddle, who had a talk with the Presi-
dent, discovered that the social question
was in the way. Mrs. Garfield wanted
some one as Marshal who could o~fficiate
at the White House, and Mr.. Douglass
was too dark for her taste. 1t the Presi-
dent he can ignore q man of
the ability and prominence of Douglass,
and take up an obscure fellow like
Henry. merely to crafty a prejudice,
and still retain the respect of the better
class of people, he is mistaken. 1t is
evident to me that he has no apprecia-
tive sense and does not feel the great
obligations he is under to the col3red
people,"
The colored wing of the party justly
claim that General Garfield owes his
election to the negro voters, who crowd
ed Indiana and helped to stuff the bal
lot. 1t is not strange, therefore, that
they should insist upon a share of the
offices, or that they should be inclined
to resent the neglect of the President
and party whom they had placed in
power. On this subject the colored cor.
respondent of the Progress says:
"You need not be surprised if the col
ored people come to the conclusion that
it would be better, far better, that the
Democracy should come into power in
1884. Let us look at it. The President
has eighty thousand appointments; there
are not 4 hundred colored men who
will receive appointments of any i'm
portance q can safely say not ten(. There
are 0ger sac and a half millions Of c0lOred
people in the country, and all of these
except a few thousand are in the South,
under the government of the worst part
of the Democratic party, and yet they
llvel Now l would like to know how
much worse off will they be if the ten
who may be appointed to some Office are
brought under the same control? None,
none! If Garfield was a man brave
and true, and a statesman in all
that it means, he would have gladly en-
braced the opportunity he had to have
throttled the mean. cowardly, prejudice
of caste, by reappOinting Dir. Douglass,
and installing him at the White House.
l have been reading the speeches that
have been made during the week in the
Senate, and | am disguised with the Re
publicans who are attempting to make
capital out of the outrages that have been
or are being perpetrated against the poor,
poor colored people of the South. Take
four out of five of the men who have
made speeches, and every one of them
would have been found wanting if they
were placed in positions where they could
give a practical demonstration of this
desire to see the people treated prop
erlY."