Douglass provided for his family, but making money had never been his chief concern. Anna had always stretched dollars. The babies were all little together, so Anna could not go out and work. But while they were little, she often brought work home, sometimes without her husband’s knowledge. During the years when runaway slaves hid in their attic, Anna was always there at any hour of the day or night with food, clean clothing, warm blankets; and it was Anna who kept her husband’s shirts carefully laundered, his bag neatly packed. No one knew better than Douglass how Anna carried the countless, minute burdens of the days and nights. He loved her and depended upon her. But, like Anna Brown, she was the wife of a man who belonged to history. So now, though she would have preferred to relax under the big shade tree he had planted years before, enjoy the cool spaciousness of the home which they had made very comfortable, gossip a bit with her neighbors and relish the many friendly contacts she had made in Rochester, she nodded her head. “If Washington is the place for you, of course we’ll go.” And she smiled at her husband, who was growing more handsome and more famous every day. Douglass was in his prime. He cut an imposing figure. He knew it and was glad. For he regarded himself as ambassador of all the freedmen in America. He was always on guard--his speech, his manners, his appearance. Now that he could, he dressed meticulously, stopped off at New York on his way to Washington and ordered several suits, saw to it that he was well supplied with stiff white shirts. He intended that when he walked down Pennsylvania Avenue, across Lafayette Square, or through the Capital grounds, men would ask, “Who is he? What embassy is he from?” Sooner or later they would learn that he was “Frederick Douglass, ex-slave!” Yes, he was proud. And this same naïve pride almost tripped him. Since the paper needed him at once, it was decided Douglass would go on ahead, find a house, and later they would move their things and Anna would follow him. He plunged into his work and almost immediately into difficulties. The _New Era_ was not his own paper. It was the national organ of the Colored National Labor Union, and Douglass soon found he was not in step with the union leaders. The only one he knew personally was George Downing of Rhode Island. Even Downing seemed to have developed strange, new ideas. James H. Morris was an astute and courageous reconstruction leader of North Carolina who saw politics and labor in clear alliance. “What the South needs is a thorough reconstruction of its classes,” he argued, “and that’s a long way from being a sharp division of white and black.” “With the ballot the Negro has full citizenship. He can make his way.” Douglass did not grasp the significance of organized labor. “The unions have been shutting out the black man’s labor all these years.” “White workers had to learn.”