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326 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Since 1872 I have been regularly what my old friend Parker Pillsbury
would call a "field hand" in every important political campaign, and at each
National Convention have sided with what has been called the stalwart ele-
ment of the Republican party. It was in the Grant Presidential campaign that
New York took an advanced step in the renunciation of a timid policy. The
Republicans of that State not having the fear of popular prejudice before their
eyes placed my name as an Elector at large at the head of their Presidential
ticket. Considering the deep-rooted sentiment of the masses against negroes,
the noise and tumult likely to be raised, especially among our adopted citizens
of Irish descent, this was a bold and manly proceeding, and one for which the
Republicans of the State of New York deserve the gratitude of every colored
citizen of the Republic, for it was a blow at popular prejudice in a quarter
where it was capable of making the strongest resistance. The result proved not
only the justice and generosity of the measure, but its wisdom. The Republicans
carried the State by a majority of fifty thousand over the heads of the Liberal
Republican and the Democratic parties combined.

Equally significant of the turn now taken in the political sentiment of the
country, was the action of the Republican Electoral College at its meeting in
Albany, when it committed to my custody the sealed up electoral vote of the
great State of New York, and commissioned me to bring that vote to the
National Capital. Only a few years before, any colored man was forbidden
by law to carry a United States mail bag from one post-office to another. He
was not allowed to touch the sacred leather, though locked in "triple steel,"
but now, not a mail bag, but a document which was to decide the Presidential
question with all its momentous interests, was committed to the hands of one
of this despised class; and around him, in the execution of his high trust, was
thrown all the safeguards provided by the Constitution and the laws of the
land. Though I worked hard and long to secure the nomination and the elec-
tion of Gen. Grant in 1872, I neither received nor sought office under him.
He was my choice upon grounds altogether free from selfish or personal
considerations. I supported him because he had done all, and would do all,
he could to save not only the country from ruin, but the emancipated class
from oppression and ultimate destruction; and because Mr. Greeley, with the
Democratic party behind him, would not have the power, even if he had the
disposition, to afford us the needed protection which our peculiar condition
required. I could easily have secured the appointment as Minister to Haïti,
but preferred to urge the claims of my friend, Ebenezer Bassett, a gentleman
and a scholar, and a man well fitted by his good sense and amiable qualities
to fill the position with credit to himself and his country. It is with a certain