“I should be false to all the purposes and principles of my life,” he said, “if I did not marry this noble lady who has done me the honor to consent to be my wife. I am a free man.” He stood up, balancing his cane in his hands. He regarded his distraught friend with something like pity. “I am free even of making appearances just to impress. Would it not be ridiculous if, after having denounced from the housetops all those who discriminate because of the accident of skin color, I myself should practice the same folly?” They said nothing about their plans to anyone, not even to Douglass’ children, but were married three days later in the minister’s home. Then Douglass drove his bride across the Potomac River and out to Anacostia. Within the next few days every paper in the country carried accounts of this marriage. Most of what they said was untrue. They were almost unanimous in condemnation. When Grover Cleveland was elected President, white and black alike sat back complacently, jubilantly waiting for the Democratic President to “kick out” the Recorder of Deeds. Douglass himself did not expect anything else. His adherence to the Republican party was well known. He was a “staunch Republican” who had made no secret of his abhorrence of a Democratic administration. With his wife he paid his formal respects at the inauguration reception, but they did not linger in the parlors. He was surprised when, upon returning home a few evenings later, he was handed a large engraved card inviting Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Douglass to the Executive Mansion. “He was a robust, manly man,” Douglass said of Cleveland, “one who had the courage to act upon his convictions.... He never failed, while I held office under him, to invite myself and wife to his grand receptions, and we never failed to attend them. Surrounded by distinguished men and women from all parts of the country and by diplomatic representatives from all parts of the world, and under the gaze of late slaveholders, there was nothing in the bearing of Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland toward Mrs. Douglass and myself less cordial and courteous than that extended to the other ladies and gentlemen present.”[31] Within the course of the next two years Washington and the country recovered some equanimity so far as Douglass was concerned. But it is doubtful if anybody forgot. Now Douglass decided on the fulfillment of a long-cherished desire. They sailed for Europe. “Don’t come back until you’ve really seen the world,” Ingersoll urged them. “Take plenty of time. You’ll be richly repaid.”