Bianca Project - Frederick Douglass and Santo Domingo

            My project will involve looking at Frederick Douglass's role in President Grant's attempt to annex Santo Domingo in 1870-1871.  Douglass, one of the most famous abolitionists of his time, became one of Grant's greatest allies in his Santo Domingo project. Many former abolitionists and other civil rights activists were strongly against Grant's project because they felt it would just become another place where the United States would oppress blacks.  Grant's attempt occurred at the same time that circumstances in the South forced him to pass the Enforcement Act of 1871.  Rampant violence covered the South, and Grant passed the act in order to suppress the Klan.  It was in this moment that Douglass was appointed Secretary to the Santo Domingo Commission, a commission that was intended to bring back information to the American public about whether annexation would be the best thing for Santo Domingo.

            This paper will look at why and how Douglass defended his decision to support Grant.  It will explore Douglass's situation as an educated, successful African American in a time when much of the country was trying to find a scapegoat to explain the fractured internal politics of America.  It will look at how Douglass was attempting to balance his individual life with his broader civil rights goals.  Douglass's role in Grant's project was particularly important because he was the person Grant depended on to sell the idea to African Americans.  The tension that arose from his individual aspirations and the situation for African Americans as a whole will be  one of my major focuses in the paper, because I believe this is one of the major issues Douglass had to come up against in his relationship with racial identity.  I also want to look at Douglass to compare his northern life with the devastation in the South in order to explore how this would have influenced his relationship to the annexation issue.   

3 secondary sources:

Foner, Philip S. The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, Volume IV - Reconstruction and After.  New York: International Publishers, 1955.

McFeely, William S. Frederick Douglass. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991.

Smith, Jean Edward. Grant. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002.

3 Primary sources:

Douglass, Frederick. "The Future of the Colored Race." The North American Review, May 1866.

Frederick Douglass letters to Charles Sumner, 1869-1871

Frederick Douglass's speech about Santo Domingo, found at the Library of Congress