Ebenezer D. Bassett (1833-1908)

July 02, 2008 
/ Contributed By: Christopher Teal

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Ebenezer D. Bassett

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Ebenezer D. Bassett was appointed U.S. Minister Resident to Haiti in 1869, making him the first African American diplomat.  For eight years, the educator, abolitionist, and Black rights activist oversaw bilateral relations through bloody civil warfare and coups d’état on the island of Hispaniola.  Bassett served with distinction, courage, and integrity in one of the most crucial, but difficult postings of his time.

Born in Connecticut on October 16, 1833, Ebenezer D. Bassett was the second child of Eben Tobias and Susan Gregory.  In a rarity during the mid-1800s, Bassett attended college, becoming the first Black student to integrate the Connecticut Normal School in 1853.  He then taught in New Haven, befriending the legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass.  Later, he became the principal of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s Institute for Colored Youth (ICY).

During the Civil War, Bassett became one of the city’s leading voices into the cause behind that conflict, the liberation of four million Black slaves and helped recruit African American soldiers for the Union Army.  In nominating Bassett to become Minister Resident to Haiti, President Ulysses S. Grant made him one of the highest ranking Black members of the United States government.

During his tenure the American Minister Resident also dealt with cases of citizen commercial claims, diplomatic immunity for his consular and commercial agents, hurricanes, fires, and numerous tropical diseases.

The case that posed the greatest challenge to him, however, was Haitian political refugee General Pierre Boisrond Canal.  The general was among the band of young leaders who had successfully ousted the former President Sylvan Salnave from power in 1869.  By the time of the subsequent Michel Domingue regime in the mid 1870s Canal had retired to his home outside the capital.  Domingue, the new Haitian President, however, brutally hunted down any perceived threat to his power including Canal.

General Canal came to Bassett and requested political asylum.  A standoff resulted, with Bassett’s home surrounded by over a thousand of Domingue’s soldiers.  Finally, after five-month siege of his residence, Bassett negotiated Canal’s safe release for exile in Jamaica.

Upon the end of the Grant Administration in 1877, Bassett submitted his resignation as was customary with a change of hands in government.  When he returned to the United States, he spent an additional ten years as the Consul General for Haiti in New York City, New York. Prior to this death on November 13, 1908, he returned to live in Philadelphia, where his daughter Charlotte also taught at the ICY.  Bassett was 75 at the time of his death.

Ebenezer D. Bassett was a role model not simply for his symbolic importance as the first African American diplomat.  His concern for human rights, his heroism, and courage in the face of pressure from Haitians, as well as his own capital, place him in the annals of great American diplomats.

About the Author

Author Profile

Christopher Teal is the GW Visiting State Department Public Diplomacy Fellow for the 2022-2024 academic years. With the State Department since 1999, Chris is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service.

Previously he was the director of the State Department’s Career Development and Assignments Mid-Level Division, heading up a 35-member team in charge of global diplomatic assignments for Mid-Level Foreign Service Officers, some 9,000 officials in total.

He also served a faculty assignment at the Inter-American Defense College at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. There he taught graduate classes to senior-level Latin American officials on diplomacy, civil/military relations, human rights, peace keeping, and media/security policy.

Prior to that, Chris was awarded the Una Chapman Cox Fellowship, where he directed, wrote, and produced a documentary on the first African American diplomat, Ebenezer D. Bassett. The film, A Diplomat of Consequence, tells the story of this groundbreaking diplomat 150 years after his appointment.

Overseas assignments include Consul General at the U.S. Consulate in Nogales, Mexico, and public affairs positions in Sri Lanka; Mexico; Peru; and the Dominican Republic. At the State Department, he also held public affairs positions in the European Bureau and at the Foreign Press Center.

Before joining the Foreign Service, Chris worked with award-winning journalist Juan Williams on their biography Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary about the former U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Published In 1998, The New York Times listed it among its most notable nonfiction works of the year. Chris also wrote a biography about Ebenezer Bassett, entitled Hero of Hispaniola, published in 2008.

Chris has a B.A. from the University of Arkansas and an M.A. from George Washington University’s Columbian College, where he graduated in 1997.

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Teal, C. (2008, July 02). Ebenezer D. Bassett (1833-1908). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/bassett-ebenezer-d-1833-1908/

Source of the Author's Information:

Christopher Teal, Hero of Hispaniola: America’s First Black Diplomat,
Ebenezer D. Bassett (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2008).

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