Charles W. Chesnutt

“ In 1872 Douglass presided over and addressed a convention of colored men at New Orleans, and urged them to support President Grant for renomination. He was elected a presidential elector for New York, and on the meeting of the electoral college in Albany, after Grant's triumphant re-election, received a further mark of confidence and esteem in the appointment at the hands of his fellow-electors to carry the sealed vote to Washington. ”

“ In the United States Senate a resolution was offered reciting that in the person of the late Frederick Douglass death had borne away a most illustrious citizen, and permitting the body to lie in state in the rotunda of the Capitol on Sunday. ”

“ The movement thus to perpetuate the memory of Douglass had taken rise among a little band of men of his own race, but the whole people of Rochester claimed the right to participate in doing honor to their distinguished fellow-citizen. The city assumed a holiday aspect. A parade of military and civic societies was held, and an appropriate programme rendered at the unveiling of the monument. Governor Roosevelt of New York delivered an address ”

“ There was some criticism of this step by white people who did not approve of the admixture of the races, and by colored persons who thought their leader had slighted his own people when he overlooked the many worthy and accomplished women among them. ”

“ Douglass's funeral took place on February 25, 1895, at the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, and was the occasion of a greater outpouring of colored people than had taken place in Washington since the unveiling of the Lincoln emancipation statue in 1878. ”