90 THE FREEDMEN’S SAVINGS BANK 
About four months before this splendid institution was 
compelled to close its doors in the starved and deluded 
faces of its depositors, and while I was assured by its 
President and by its Actuary of its sound condition, I was 
solicited by some of its trustees to use my name in the 
board as a candidate for its presidency. So, I waked up 
one morning to find myself seated in a comfortable arm 
chair, with gold spectacles on my nose, and to hear myself 
addressed as President of the Freedmen’s Bank. I could 
not help reflecting on the contrast between Frederick the 
slave boy, running about at Col. Lloyd’s with only a tow 
linen shirt to cover him, and Frederick—President of a 
bank counting its assets by millions. I had heard of golden 
dreams, but such dreams had no comparison with this 
reality. And yet this seeming reality was scarcely more 
substantial than a dream. My term of service on this 
golden height covered only the brief space of three months, 
and these three months were divided into two parts, during 
the first part of which I was quietly employed in an effort 
to find out the real condition of the bank and its numerous 
branches. This was no easy task. On paper, and from the 
representations of its management, its assets amounted 
to three millions of dollars, and its liabilities were about 
equal to its assets. With such showing I was encouraged 
in the belief that by curtailing the expenses, and doing 
away with the non-paying branches, which policy the 
trustees had now adopted, we could be carried safely 
through the financial distress then upon the country. 
So confident was I of this, that in order to meet what 
was said to be a temporary emergency, I was induced to 
loan the bank ten thousand dollars of my money, to be 
held by it until it could realize on a part of its abundant 
securities. This money, though it was repaid, was not done 
so as promptly as, under the rer circumstances, I 
thought it should be, and these circumstances increased 
my fears lest the chasm was not so easily bridged as the 
actuary of the institution had assured me it could be. 
The more I observed and learned the more my confidence 
diminished. I found that those trustees who wished to 
issue cards and publish addresses professing the utmost 
confidence in the bank, had themselves not one dollar 
5