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254 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

responsible for all that had happened. He had many friends, but no instigators. In all
their efforts, this committee signally failed, and soon after my
arrival home, they gave up the search, and asked to be discharged, not having
half fulfilled the duty for which they were appointed.

I have never been able to account satisfactorily for the sudden abandonment
of this investigation on any other ground than that the men engaged in
it expected soon to be in rebellion themselves, and that not a rebellion for
liberty like that of John Brown, but a rebellion for slavery, and that they saw
that by using their senatorial power in search of rebels they might be whetting
a knife for their own throats. At any rate the country was soon relieved
of the congressional drag-net and was now engaged in the heat and turmoil
of a presidential canvass — a canvass which had no parallel, involving as it
did the question of peace or war, the integrity or the dismemberment of the
Republic; and I may add, the maintenance or destruction of slavery. In some
of the southern States the people were already organizing and arming to be
ready for an apprehended contest, and with this work on their hands they had
no time to spare to those they had wished to convict as instigators of the raid,
however desirous they might have been to do so under other circumstances,
for they had parted with none of their hate. As showing their feeling toward
me I may state that a colored man appeared about this time in Knoxville,
Tenn., and was beset by a furious crowd with knives and bludgeons, because
he was supposed to be Fred. Douglass. But, however perilous it would have
been for me to have shown myself in any southern State, there was no especial
danger for me at the North.

Though disappointed in my tour on the Continent, and called home by
one of the saddest events that can afflict the domestic circle, my presence
here was fortunate, since it enabled me to participate in the most important
and memorable presidential canvass ever witnessed in the United States, and
to labor for the election of a man who in the order of events was destined to
do a greater service to his country and to mankind, than any man who had
gone before him in the presidential office. It is something to couple one's
name with great occasions, and it was a great thing to me to be permitted to
bear some humble part in this, the greatest that had thus far come to the
American people. It was a great thing to achieve American independence
when we numbered three millions, but it was a greater thing to save this
country from dismemberment and ruin when it numbered thirty millions. He
alone of all our Presidents was to have the opportunity to destroy slavery,
and to lift into manhood millions of his countrymen hitherto held as chattels
and numbered with the beasts of the field .