Other honors that fell to Douglass were less empty than the presidency of a bankrupt bank.  In 1870 he was appointed by President Grant a member of the Santo Domingo Commission, the object of which was to arrange terms for the annexation of the mulatto republic to the Union.  Some of the best friends of the colored race, among them Senator Sumner, opposed this step; but Douglass maintained that to receive Santo Domingo as a State would add to its strength and importance.  The scheme ultimately fell through, whether for the good or ill of Santo Domingo can best be judged when the results of more recent annexation schemes [1898:  Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii, and de facto Cuba] become apparent.  Douglass went to Santo Domingo on an American man-of-war, in the company of three other commissioners.  In his Life and Times he draws a pleasing contrast between some of his earlier experiences in travelling, and the terms of cordial intimacy upon which, as the representative of a nation which a few years before had denied him a passport, he was now received in the company of able and distinguished gentlemen.

On his return to the United States Douglass received from President Grant an appointment as member of the legislative council, or upper house of the legislature, of the District of Columbia, where he served for a short time, until other engagements demanded his resignation, [one of] his son[s] being appointed to fill out his term.  To this appointment Douglass owed the title of “Honorable,” subsequently applied to him.

In 1872 Douglass presided over and addressed a convention of colored men at New Orleans, and urged them to support President Grant for renomination.  He was elected a presidential elector for New York, and on the meeting of the electoral college in Albany, after Grant’s triumphant re-election, received a further mark of confidence and esteem in the appointment at the hands of his fellow-electors to carry the sealed vote to Washington.  Douglass sought no personal reward for his services in this campaign, but to his influence was due the appointment of several of his friends to higher positions than had ever theretofore been held in this country by colored men.

When R. B. Hayes was nominated for President, Douglass again took the stump, and received as a reward the honorable and lucrative office of Marshal of the United States for the District of Columbia.  This appointment was not agreeable to the white people of the District, whose sympathies were largely pro-slavery; and an effort was made to have its confirmation defeated in the Senate.  The appointment was confirmed, however; and Douglass served his term of four years, in spite of numerous efforts to bring about his removal.

In 1879 the hard conditions under which the negroes in the South were compelled to live led to a movement to promote an exodus of the colored people to the North and West, in the search for better opportunities.  The white people of the South, alarmed at the prospect of losing their labor, were glad to welcome Douglass when he went among them to oppose this movement, which he at that time considered detrimental to the true interests of the colored population.