178

330 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

fered by my temporary absence, as I had seen to it that those upon whom the
duties of the office devolved were honest, capable, industrious, painstaking,
and faithful. My Deputy Marshal is a man every way qualified for his posi-
tion, and the citizens of Washington may rest assured that no unfaithful man
will be retained in any position under me. Of course I can have nothing to
say as to my own fitness for the position I hold. You have a right to say what
you please on that point; yet I think it would be only fair and generous to
wait for some dereliction of duty on my part before I shall be adjudged as
incompetent to fill the place.

"You will allow me to say also that the attacks upon me on account of
the remarks alleged to have been made by me in Baltimore, strike me as both
malicious and silly. Washington is a great city, not a village nor a hamlet, but
the capital of a great nation, and the manners and habits of its various classes
are proper subjects for presentation and criticism, and I very much mistake
if this great city can be thrown into a tempest of passion by any humorous
reflections I may take the liberty to utter. The city is too great to be small,
and I think it will laugh at the ridiculous attempt to rouse it to a point of furi-
ous hostility to me for anything said in my Baltimore lecture.

"Had the reporters of that lecture been as careful to note what I said in
praise of Washington as what I said, if you please, in disparagement of it, it
would have been impossible to awaken any feeling against me in this com-
munity for what I said. It is the easiest thing in the world, as all editors know,
to pervert the meaning and give a one-sided impression of a whole speech
by simply giving isolated passages from the speech itself, without any quali-
fying connections. It would hardly be imagined from anything that has
appeared here that I had said one word in that lecture in honor of Washington,
and yet the lecture itself, as a whole, was decidedly in the interest of the
national capital. I am not such a fool as to decry a city in which I have
invested my money and made my permanent residence.

"After speaking of the power of the sentiment of patriotism I held forth
in this language: 'In the spirit of this noble sentiment I would have the
American people view the national capital. It is our national center. It
belongs to us; and whether it is mean or majestic, whether arrayed in glory
or covered with shame, we cannot but share its character and its destiny. In
the remotest section of the republic, in the most distant parts of the globe,
amid the splendors of Europe or the wilds of Africa, we are still held and
firmly bound to this common center. Under the shadow of Bunker Hill
monument, in the peerless eloquence of his diction, I once heard the great
Daniel Webster give welcome to all American citizens, assuring them that