79

LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 453

Haïtien people may be, they are not cowards, and hence are not easily
scared.

"In the face of all these obvious and effective causes of failure, is it not
strange that our intelligent editors and our nautical newspaper writers could
not have found for the American Government and people a more rational
cause for the failure of the negotiations for the Môle St. Nicolas than that of
my color, indifference and incompetency to deal with a question of such a
magnitude? Were I disposed to exchange the position of accused to that of
accuser, I could find ample material to sustain me in that position. Other
persons did much to create conditions unfavorable to our success, but I leave
to their friends the employment of such personal assaults.

"On the theory that I was the cause of this failure, we must assume that
Haïti was willing to grant the Môle; that the timidity of the Haïtien
Government was all right; that the American prejudice was all right; that the
seven ships of war in the harbor of Port au Prince were all right; that Rear-
Admiral Gherardi was all right, and that I alone was all wrong; and, more-
over, that but for me the Môle St. Nicolas, like an over-ripe apple shaken by
the wind, would have dropped softly into our national basket. I will not
enlarge upon this absurd assumption, but will leave the bare statement of it
to the intellegent reader, that it may perish by its flagrant contradiction of
well-known facts and by its own absurdity.

"I come now to another cause of complaint against me, scarcely less
serious in the minds of those who now assail me than the charge of having
defeated the lease of the Môle St. Nicolas, namely, the failure of what is
publicly known as the Clyde contract. Soon after my arrival in Haïti I was
put in communication with an indi,idual calling himself the agent of the
highly respectable mercantile firm of William P. Clyde & Co., of New York.
He was endeavoring to obtain a subsidy of a half-million dollars from the
government of Haïti to enable this firm to ply a line of steamers between
New York and Haïti. From the first this agent assumed toward me a dictato-
rial attitude. He claimed to he a native of South Carolina, and it was impos-
sible for him to conceal his contempt for the people whose good will it was
his duty to seek. Between this agent and the United States Government I
found myself somewhat in the position of a servant between two masters;
either one of them, separately and apart, might be served acceptably; but to
serve both satisfactorily at the same time and place might be a difficult task,
if not an impossible one. There were times when I was compelled to prefer
the requirements of the one to the ardent wishes of the other, and I thought
as between this agent and the United States. I chose to serve the latter.