![]() “He’s the subtext of almost anything,” he says, “whether we like it or not. In conversation, he duly concedes that the work of any historian is now coloured by the trials of the Trumpian age. Blight has already given his take: to the Washington Post on “the dangers of presidential ignorance” for the Guardian on Trump as “the gift that keeps on giving”. ![]() In February last year, marking Black History Month, Trump said: “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.”Īs with anything the billionaire tweets or blurts, ballyhoo and controversy followed. He laughs again when I mention Donald Trump. It’s easy to imagine his subject saying as he does: “There are times I wonder, ‘Did I already say that to this audience? No, I said that yesterday.’”īlight laughs. He.Now he’s riding the rails, speaking from town to town. He suppressed the international slave trade and tried to persuade the border states to emancipate. He asked Congress to pass a law that defined confiscated slaves as contraband and thus free individuals. "Although Lincoln's pace toward abolition was too slow for Frederick Douglass, his anti-slavery plan was discernable as early as 1861-62. I believe I have no lawful right to do so. ![]() ![]() Lincoln's position in his First Inaugural Address on March 4, 1861, however, was pro-union and not specifically anti-slavery: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. Lincoln gained national attention in 1858 for his position that the federal government had the right to regulate slavery in federal territorial lands. In the words of Henry Louis Gates, "We can do Lincoln no greater service than to walk that path with him, and we can do him no greater disservice than to whitewash it, seeking to give ourselves an odd form of comfort by pretending that he was even one whit less complicated than he actually was.'" When evaluating Lincoln's moral growth in all its complexity, we must view that growth in relation to Frederick Douglass's moral appeals to him. Lincoln's positions against slavery and for equality grew as his understanding of these issues grew. Meanwhile, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas falsely insinuated that the two men were intimate friends, co-conspirators against slavery, and in favor of racial mixing. Their third and final meeting was as friends, at the reception after Lincoln's second inauguration, on March 4, 1865, just six weeks before Lincoln's assassination.īefore the Emancipation Proclamation and before these two great men met, their relationship was a remote one: Lincoln campaigned for office or made presidential policy statements while Douglass at times critiqued both with biting rhetoric. At their second meeting a year later, on August 25, 1864, Lincoln asked Douglass to undertake covert efforts to free slaves if Lincoln lost reelection. ![]() Yet, they developed parallel and complementary goals and strategies to end slavery, to enable Black men to serve in the Union army, and to protect Black servicemen's rights and lives. In reality, Douglass and Lincoln met only three times, with the first meeting on August 10, 1863, more than 28 months into the Civil War and eight months after the Emancipation Proclamation. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass was Lincoln's outspoken critic until the Emancipation Proclamation, but then understood that Lincoln's efforts were calculated and prudent within the political and social context of the times.Īnother pitfall would be to assume that these two men were friends in common cause all along. Pitfalls can occur, however, if we do not delve deeper into specific actions, primary sources, and rhetoric, such as our "revisionist" tendency to condemn Lincoln as "not really freeing any slaves" with the Emancipation Proclamation. There are traditional approaches by which students can learn about the issues of slavery and Black troops in the Civil War or the personages of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. ![]()
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