The New Cabinet
Christian Recorder: March 15, 1877
I have not lost faith in President Hayes yet, but I am certainly much disappointed at his cabinet selection. I was not only gratified but elated at the news, of his intention to place a southern Conservative or Democrat in his cabinet. I felt it was due the South. But as an equilibration of the measure, I felt sure he would offset it by calling a colored man to the cabinet also. To this end, several of us urged the name of Prof. J.M. Langston, LL.D., as he was well known to the president in person, and known to the country as a scholar and an able politician. But it seems that both him and all the able colored men of the South, upon whom depended the president’s election have been overlooked; white men have been called around him, who worked and voted against him. The president will find he has made a great mistake before he has done with this matter. He may contemplate giving a colored man the position of Assistant Secretary in some of the Departments, but unless he does, there will be fearful dissatisfaction.
There is a rumor going the rounds that Hon. Frederick Douglass is to be offered the Marshallship of the District of Columbia as a panacea to the negro. Certainly the President would not dare insult out race with such subterfuge. Think of the great Douglass transformed into a bailiff. Bah! Mr. Douglass would no more accept it, than would the Emperor of Russia. I am not however, charging the President, but as a man who knows the feeling of the colored people of this country a thousand times better than he ever will, I would like to tell him he is on the verge of making an irremediable mistake.
H.M.T.
