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LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 315

build up an institution which represented their thrift and economy to so strik-
ing advantage; for the more millions accumulated there, I thought, the more
consideration and respect would be shown to the colored people of the whole
country.

About four months before this splendid institution was compelled to
close its doors in the starved and deluded faces of its depositors, and while I
was assured by its President and by its Actuary of its sound condition, I was
solicited by some of its trustees to allow them to use my name in the board
as a candidate for its Presidency. So I waked up one morning to find myself
seated in a comfortable arm chair, with gold spectacles on my nose, and to
hear myself addressed as President of the Freedman's Bank. I could not help
reflecting on the contrast between Frederick the slave boy, running about at
Col. Lloyd's with only a tow linen shirt to cover him, and Frederick—
President of a Bank counting its assets by millions. I had heard of golden
dreams, but such dreams had no comparison with this reality. And yet this
seeming reality was scarcely more substantial than a dream. My term of
service on this golden height covered only the brief space of three months,
and these three months were divided into two parts, during the first part of
which I was quietly employed in an effort to find out the real condition of
the Bank and its numerous branches. This was no easy task. On paper, and
from the representations of its management, its assets amounted to three mil-
lions of dollars, and its liabilities were about equal to its assets. With such a
showing I was encouraged in the belief that by curtailing expenses, doing
away with non-paying branches, which policy the trustees had now adopted,
we could be carried safely through the financial distress then upon the coun-
try. So confident was I of this, that in order to meet what was said to be a
temporary emergency, I was induced to loan the Bank ten thousand dollars
of my own money, to be held by it until it could realize on a part of its abun-
dant securities. This money, though it was repaid, was not done so promptly
as under the supposed circumstances I thought it should be, and these cir-
cumstances increased my fears lest the chasm was not so easily bridged as
the Actuary of the institution had assured me it could be. The more I observed
and learned the more my confidence diminished. I found that those trustees
who wished to issue cards and publish addresses professing the utmost con-
fidence in the Bank, had themselves not one dollar deposited there. Some of
them, while strongly assuring me of its soundness, had withdrawn their
money and opened accounts elsewhere. Gradually I discovered that the Bank
had sustained heavy losses at the South through dishonest agents. that there
was a discrepancy on the books of forty thousand dollars, for which no