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| 1877 | Douglass is appointed U.S. marshal of the District of Columbia by President Hayes. | ||
| 1878 | Purchases Cedar Hill, in Anacostia, Washington, D.C. The twenty-room house sits on nine acres of land. He later expands the estate by buying fifteen acres of adjoining land. | ||
| 1881 | Publishes his third and final autobiography, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. |
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| President Garfield appoints one of his own friends to the post U.S. Marshall and makes Douglass recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia, then a high-paying job. | |||
| 1882 | August 4 Douglass's wife of forty-four years, Anna Murray Douglass, dies after suffering a stroke. Douglass goes into a depression. | ||
| 1883 | The U.S. Supreme Court rules the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. | ||
| 1884 | January 24 Douglass marries Helen Pitts, a white woman who had been his secretary when he was recorder of deeds. The interracial marriage causes controversy among the Douglasses' friends, family, and the public. | ||
| 1886-87 | Tours Europe and Africa with wife. | ||
| 1889 | July 1 Appointed U.S. minister resident and consul general, Republic of Haiti, and chargé d'affaires, Santo Domingo. Arrives in Haiti in October. | ||
| 1890 | The U.S. government instructs Douglass to ask permission for the U.S. Navy to use the Haitian port town of Môle St. Nicholas as a refueling station. | ||
| 1891 | In April Haiti rejects the Navy's proposal as too intrusive. The U.S. press reports that Douglass is too sympathetic to Haitian interests. Douglass resigns as minister to Haiti in July. | ||
| 1892-93 | Douglass is commissioner in charge of the Haitian exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. | ||
| 1895 | February 20 Speaks at a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. Dies suddenly that evening of heart failure while describing the meeting to his wife. | ||
