Epilogue
Any portion of the story of man’s struggle for freedom is marvelously strange. This is a true story, and therefore some footnotes are necessary. In many instances I have quoted directly from Frederick Douglass’ autobiographies. His own words, with their simple, forthright quality, form a clear picture of the man.
This book attempts to bring together many factors. I am therefore deeply indebted to all who have labored long and faithfully in compiling this story. Special mention must be made of W. E. B. Du Bois’Black ReconstructionandJohn Brown, W. P. and F. J. Garrison’sWilliam Lloyd Garrison, Ida Harper’sSusan B. Anthony, Rayford Logan’sDiplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, A. A. W. Ramsay’sSir Robert Peel, J. T. Wilson’sThe Black PhalanxandThe Journal of Negro History, edited by Carter G. Woodson.
It was on a Sunday afternoon in April that I first climbed Anacostia Heights to Cedar Hill.
“Here are the terrace stairs,” they told me.
But I knew of the winding path that he had used, and I chose that. It is tangled and overgrown in places now, but up I went until I reached the sloping gardens and yes, there it was, just as I had expected, a lilac bush blooming where the path met the graveled walk!
A typical Virginia homestead, with veranda, carriage house and servants’ quarters, the house and grounds are preserved by the Douglass Memorial Association of Negro Women’s Clubs. I stood beside the sundial and tried to read its shadow, looked down into the well, and sat for a while on a stone seat beneath a flowering trellis.
It was so easy to see them on the porch or in the sunny living rooms with wide window-seats and fireplaces. Pictures looked down at me from every side—Susan B. Anthony, William Lloyd Garrison, the young and handsome Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips and Abraham Lincoln.
I sat dreaming at his desk a long time, fingering his notebooks and the yellowing accounting sheets upon which he had tried to balance that pitiful bank record. On three sides of the study books rose from floor to ceiling—worn and penciled books. Books about people were undoubtedly his favorites.
In the rooms upstairs were pictures and intimate small objects of family life, and in his room in a locked case I saw a rusty musket and a flag.
They opened the case for me, and I laid my face against the folds of John Brown’s flag. There it was in this year of 1946, still furled and standing in the corner of Frederick Douglass’ room.
I must have stayed in those rooms for some time, because suddenly I realized it was growing dark and that I was alone. A glass door stood ajar and I stepped through and out upon a little balcony, a tiny balcony where one could sit alone and think. Surely many times on just such spring evenings Douglass had stepped out on his balcony. Looking far over the group of houses clustered at the foot of the hill, he must have caught the gleam of the Potomac as I did, and beyond that all Washington spread out like a bit of magic. Washington Monument was not pointing to the sky in his day, but there was the beautiful rounded dome of the Capitol. He could see that Capitol of which he was so proud—he could contemplate all the intriguing pattern of the city which he loved so much, capital of the nation which he served so faithfully.
Then, all at once, as I stood there on the balcony, I knew why it was that in the evening of his life Frederick Douglass’ eyes were so serene. Not because he was lost in illusions of grandeur, not because he thought the goal attained, not because he thought all the people were marching forward. But as he stood there on his little balcony he could lift his eyes and, looking straight ahead, could see over the dome of the Capitol, steadfastly shedding its rays of hope and guidance, the north star.