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316 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

account could be given, that instead of our assets being equal to our liabili-
ties we could not in all likelihoods of the case pay seventy-two cents on the
dollar. There was an air of mystery, too, about the spacious and elegant apart-
ments of the Bank building which greatly troubled me, and which I have
only been able to explain to myself on the supposition that the employees,
from the Actuary and the Inspector down to the messengers, were (perhaps)
naturally anxious to hold their places, and consequently have the business
continued. I am not a violent advocate of the doctrine of the total depravity
of human nature. I am inclined, on the whole, to believe it a tolerably good
nature, yet instances do occur which oblige me to concede that men can and
do act from mere personal and selfish motives. In this case, at any rate, it
seemed not unreasonable to conclude that the finely dressed young gentle-
men, adorned with pens and bouquets, the most fashionable and genteel of
all our colored youth, stationed behind those marble counters, should desire
to retain their places as long as there was money in the vaults to pay them
their salaries.

Standing on the platform of this large and complicated establishment,
with its thirty-four branches, extending from New Orleans to Philadelphia,
its machinery in full operation, its correspondence carried on in cipher, its
actuary dashing in and out of the bank with an air of pressing business, if not
of bewilderment, I found the path of enquiry I was pursuing an exceedingly
difficult one. I knew there had been very lately several runs on the bank, and
that there had been a heavy draft made upon its reserve fund, but I did not
know what I should have been told before being allowed to enter upon the
duties of my office, that this reserve, which the bank by its charter was
required to keep, had been entirely exhausted, and that hence there was noth-
ing left to meet any future emergency. Not to make too long a story, I was,
in six weeks after my election as president of this bank, convinced that it was
no longer a safe custodian of the hard earnings of my confiding people. This
conclusion once reached. I could not hesitate as to my duty in the premises,
and this was, to save as much as possible of the assets held by the bank for
the benefit of the depositors; and to prevent their being further squandered
in keeping up appearances, and in paying the salaries of myself and other
officers in the bank. Fortunately, Congress, from which we held our charter,
was then in session, and its committees on finance were in daily session. I
felt it my duty to make known as speedily as possible to Hon. John Sherman,
chairman of the Senate committee on finance, and to Senator Scott of
Pennsylvania, also of the same committee, that I regarded the institution as
insolvent and irrecoverable, and that I could no longer ask my people to

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