Frederick Douglass -- Douglass and Lincoln

 

… The deep lines on Lincoln’s face impressed Douglass immediately, but he also noticed that the President’s eyes brightened with interest when the name of Frederick Douglass was called.  Lincoln rose, shock hands cordially.

 

“I know who you are, Mr. Douglass,” he smiled, restraining Douglass’s modest attempt to introduce himself.  “Sit down.  I am glad to see you.”

 

Douglass expanded.  Here was a man he could love, honor and trust without reservation, an honest man.  “I was assisting to raise colored troops,” he began quietly.

 

Abraham Lincoln nodded.

 

Douglass continued.  In Massachusetts he had been very successful in getting men to enlist.  Now, working in Pennsylvania, he was finding it harder.  The men felt that the government was not dealing fairly.

 

Lincoln interrupted.  Could Douglass be more specific?

 

He could.  Three particulars might be mentioned.  …

 

Lincoln listened silently with troubled eyes.  When Douglass had stated his case as fully as he could, the President replied slowly.  Douglass should not forget, he said, that the use of colored troops at all was a great gain, so great in fact that it could not have happened at the beginning of the war.  The differential in pay was frankly a concession  to popular prejudice and should not be allowed to obscure the fact that Negroes had much to gain from this war.

 

As to retaliation, that was an even harder problem.  If he could get his hands on a Confederate soldier who had been guilty of mistreating a Negro prisoner, the matter would be simple, but the idea of retaliating against innocent Confederate prisoners was revolting.  However, he thought the rebels would themselves drop such barbarous warfare.  In fact, he had already received word that colored soldiers were already being treated as prisoners of war.

 

On the third point Lincoln’s comment was short and emphatic.  He would sign any commission to a colored soldier his Secretary of War would present (Bontemps 235-236).

 

Douglass saw “one remark” of Lincoln’s “of much significance.”  He said he had frequently been charged with tardiness, hesitation and the like, especially in regard to the retaliatory proclamation, but had he sooner issued that proclamation such was the state of public popular prejudice that an outcry would have been raised against the measure.  “It would,” Lincoln told Douglass, “be said, ‘Ah!  We thought it would come to this: White men are to be killed for negroes.’”  Lincoln went on to deny that he was guilty of “vacillation” and implied that what Douglass was seeing was steady, if perhaps slow, progress, rather than any indecision on his part.  Douglass came away convinced that once Lincoln had taken a position favorable to the black cause, he could be counted on to hold to it.

 

And he came away elated.  Abraham Lincoln … had charmed his black visitor totally.  Douglass felt at ease in his presence, with no sense of inferiority.  This call on the president of the United States, in the Executive Mansion itself, was a crowning achievement for the boy who had once sneaked into Wye House (McFeely 229-230).

 

Douglass returned to Rochester to close his newspaper.  In its final issue, August 1863, he declared his reasons.  Financial backing was not one of them, even though the circulation of the newspaper had never been large, and funding it had always been difficult.  With the rise of other periodicals that supported the aspirations of black people, his Monthly was no longer a necessity.  At the end of his article, he announced, “I am going South to assist Adjutant General Thomas in the organization of colored troops” (Bontemps 240).

 

He received instructions, dated August 13, to report to General Thomas at Vicksburg, Mississippi.  Missing was any mention that he had been given a commission by the War Department.  In his responding letter, Douglass pointed out that fact.  He received, eventually, a letter that discussed his pay, his subsistence, and his means of transportation to Vicksburg.  Again, a commission, which Douglass believed he had been promised, was not mentioned.  Embarrassed and angry, Douglass set about booking lectures for the forthcoming winter months.  If they thought they had him, especially after he had announced in print he would work for them, they were mistaken!  He blamed Secretary Stanton for the betrayal, not the President.  More likely it had been the President, deciding again to go slowly against the grain of popular opinion.  Not until the war was almost won did Lincoln commission a black man; Martin Delany was made a major in February 1865.

 

Because politics did not intrude.  Abraham Lincoln did, as a friend, help Douglass with a personal matter.  The illness, a “long complaint,”of Douglass’s son Charles had persisted.  Through the intercession of the governor of Massachusetts, Charles had been transferred to another Massachusetts regiment, and, because of his condition, he had not been with his company during the bloody Wilderness Campaign and Battle of Cold Harbor.  He was seriously ill, stationed at Point Lookout, when Douglass, in August 1864, wrote the President that “I have a very great favor to ask.  It is … that you will cause my son Charles R. Douglass … to be discharged.”  Upon the letter, Lincoln wrote, “Let this boy be discharged.  A. Lincoln.”  Two weeks later Charles was a civilian, at a time when General Grant’s offensive against Robert E. Lee had cost a tremendous loss of life and Lincoln’s reelection in November was doubtful at best (McFeely 2300.

 

 

Works cited:

 

Bontempts, Arna, Free at Last, the Life of Frederick Douglass, New York, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1971.  Print

 

McFeely, William S.  Frederick Douglass.  New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1991.  Print.