It must be remembered that by adoption Douglass was New England and Upper New York. Puritan individualism with all its good and bad qualities had sunk deep. He had himself fought for Irish cottiers and British labor, but could not at this time envision black and white workers uniting against a common enemy in the United States. After a series of what he called “bewildering circumstances,” he purchased the paper and turned it over to Lewis and Frederic, his two printer sons. After a few years they discontinued its publication. The “misadventure” cost him from nine to ten thousand dollars. Meanwhile, in another world--a world of international intrigue and power politics that took little account of Frederick Douglass--events were shaping themselves “according to plan.” United States expansionists waited until President Grant took office and renewed their efforts to strengthen our hand in the Caribbeans. The islands of the Caribbean Sea were heavy with potential wealth. Fortunes lay in the rich, black soil; cheap labor was there in the poor, black peoples who had been brought from Africa to work the islands. The key was Santo Domingo--the old Saint Domingue at which Spain, France and Great Britain had clutched desperately. Since Columbus first landed there December 6, 1492, the history of the island had been written in blood. On one side had been born the second republic in the Western Hemisphere, called Haiti. When U. S. Grant became President of the United States, Haiti had stood for sixty-six years--in spite of the fact that it was looked upon as an anomaly among nations. On the other side of the island was the weaker Santo Domingo. After declaring its independence in 1845, it had been annexed by Spain while the Civil War was keeping the United States busy. When this happened, the “Black Republic” of Haiti sought with more zeal than power to take the place of the United States as defender against aggression by a European power. Santo Domingo did manage to wrench herself from Spain in 1865, but she was far from secure. The need for military bases and coaling stations in the Caribbean was obvious to a President skilled in military tactics. Admirals and generals of many nations had looked with longing eyes on Haiti’s Môle St. Nicolas, finest harbor in the Western world. But the Haitians were in a position to hold their harbor, and meanwhile Santo Domingo’s Samoná Bay was not bad. So President Grant offered the “protection” of the powerful United States to a “weak and defenseless people, torn and rent by internal feuds and unable to maintain order at home or command respect abroad.” But the ever-watchful Charles Sumner rose in the Senate, and for six hours his voice resounded through the chamber like the wrath of God. He set off a series of repercussions against this annexation which reverberated across the country.