Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/510

502 not easily imposed upon by the dressed-up emptiness of human pride.

With a colored man on a sleeping-car as its conductor, the last to have his bed made up at night, and the last to have his boots blacked in the morning, and the last to be served in any way, is the colored passenger. This conduct is the homage which the black man pays to the white man's prejudice, whose wishes, like a well-trained servant, he is taught to anticipate and obey. Time, education, and circumstances are rapidly destroying these mere color distinctions, and men will be valued in this country, as well as in others, for what they are and for what they can do.

My appointment at the hands of President Grant to a seat in the council—by way of eminence sometimes called the upper house of the territorial legislature of the District of Columbia—must be taken as, at the time it was made, a signal evidence of his high sense of justice, fairness, and impartiality. The colored people of the district constituted then, as now, about one-third of the whole population. They were given by Gen. Grant, three members of this legislative council—a representation more proportionate than any that has existed since the government has passed into the hands of commissioners, for they have all been white men.

It has sometimes been asked why I am called "Honorable." My appointment to this council must explain this, as it explains the impartiality of Gen. Grant, though I fear it will hardly sustain this prodigious handle to my name, as well as it does the former part of this proposition. The members of this district council were required to be appointed by the President, with the advice and consent of the United States Senate. This is the ground, and only ground that I know of, upon which anybody has claimed this title for me. I do not pretend that the