Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Presidency Lincoln Douglass Emancipation 20240711

I would also like to recognize and thank one of our trustees who has joined us today, david blight. One of our panelists. Opportunity tois say how proud we are to count david among our trustees at New York Historical. I want to recognize laura washington and mercedes franklin, who are cochairs of our Frederick Douglass counsel. Of course, welcome all members who have joined up today. Who have joined up today. [applause] and i want to recognize a if not, my colleagues are going up and down the aisles with notecards and pencils. The notecards will be collected later on in the program. There will be a book signing following the program this morning. The book signing will take place right outside these central doors in the smith gallery. Copies of the books are available for purchase at our ny History Museum store, which is located to my left on the 77th street side. We are really, truly delighted to welcome our guest speakers. David blight, professor of American History and director of the center for the study of slavery resistance and the abolition at yale university. He is the author or editor of a dozen books, including annotated editions of douglasss first two autobiographies. His most recent book on the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. As well as the bancroft prize. In 2001, he was awarded the Frederick Douglass book prize. Edna green medford specializes in 19th century africanAmerican History, the jacksonian era, civil war and reconstruction. She is a member of several advisory boards, among them the study for African American life in history, the lincoln forum, the Abraham Lincoln association, the Abraham Lincoln institute, the ulysses s. Grant association and the Scholars Advisory Group of president lincolns cottage. Dr. Medford is the author and editor of several books. Harold holzer, our moderator this morning is Jonathan Simpson director of the Public Policy institute and hunter college. He previously served as chairman of the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial foundation and cochair at the lincoln bicentennial commission, appointed by president bill clinton. He is the author of numerous books. His most recent, monument man, the life and art of Daniel Chester french. He served as chief historian through 2009 and 2010 in new york. His honors include the National Humanities medal, presented to him in 2008 by president george w. Bush. Now as i yield the floor to our speakers, i ask as always that anything that makes noise, like a cell phone is switched off. And now please join me in welcoming our speakers this morning. Thank you. [applause] harold thank you. It is wonderful to be at the historical society, particularly for the bill clinton lecture. It is an honor to be one of the participants in that annual event, and it is a pleasure to welcome my friends edna and david. There work on slavery and freedom and those involved in the promulgation of freedom has changed the way we think about the 1860s and 1870s. So, to set the stage, 157 years and 11 days ago, Abraham Lincoln signed perhaps the most consequential executive order in president ial history and American History. The emancipation proclamation. A milestone to be sure. A great achievement to be sure. Lincoln realized as he said, if my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act. As we later learned, that is why on january 1, 1863, he refused to sign the first document set before him for his approval because it contained what we would later call a typo in the boilerplate language of the bottom. He insisted that it be reengrossed. That was the word for fancy writing professional calligraphers did in those days. He delayed further, while people and churches around the north waited anxiously, wondering what was going on, why has the midnight hour not yielded freedom . He got the document, pen in hand, he put his pen down. His hand numbed by hours of new years day handshaking at a series of receptions downstairs in the public rooms of the white house. While secretary of state seward, his son and lincolns staff wondered if this meant he was changing his mind. He finally acknowledged it was because his hand was so paralyzed that he was afraid he would sign it shakily. He said, i want people to look at this document in 100 years and see a firm handwriting and see that he did not hesitate. As it happened the document is so faded that no one can really tell, the official document. Today we want to talk about that moment and things that led up to it and things that occurred afterwards with one of the great characters who played a role that edna and david have helped us recognize, particularly with davids magisterial autobiography. That is frederick douglas. I want to shower you with dual images of extraordinary people. Here they are in the 1840s. People have a tendency to think of lincoln as a bearded statesman. Frederick douglass as an old man. He was not always an old man and lincoln did not always have a beard. I want to start with the origins. Douglass once said that lincoln never treated him as an inferior and he believed that even though he came from a slave state, it was because they both rose from humble origins and worked hard. Douglass called lincoln the king of american selfmade men. Tell us about the different origins and how you think may have contributed to the relationship that they ultimately developed. Edna we can start with slavery. Douglass was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of maryland. Did not know his mother very well. His mother died when he was about six or seven years old and he lived with his grandmother even before that. By the time he learned his mother was dead, she had been dead for some time. He had not had the opportunity to establish a relationship with her the way of parent and child would. His earliest years, up until he was 20, those years were shaped by his experiences under slavery. As slavery went, douglass was better off than the average enslaved person for a few years. He had the opportunity to experience freedom in baltimore, in a setting that was different from a plantation setting. He had the opportunity to learn, read and write during that period, so he had very humble beginnings. David, i will leave it to you to talk about his humble beginnings. David keep going. This is good. Well, first of all, louise, thank you. All the magnificent staff had New York Historical and all you crazy people who came up this early on a saturday. It is always an honor to be on anything with edna. We go back many years ago, many. Sitting on the front lawn of cedar hill. Chairs for cspan or somebody. And harold do you know how daunting it is to sit across from harold with that stack of note cards . [laughter] he always had 112 note cards. Harold most of them are blank. I just use them to intimidate you. [laughter] david that is vicious. Harold knows everything about lincoln. Even the things he even knows facts that do not exist about lincoln. [laughter] sorry. They do both have humble origins. That is actually one of the interesting ways to think about their later evolving relationship. Some of the Mutual Respect that they did have, even from the very first meeting is due to that. Douglass later called lincoln and the friedman memorial speech the plebeian. Thats an interesting choice of word. No one ever called douglass a plebeian. Slavent need to a call a a plebeian. Edna nailed it. Douglass youth is privileged to a degree because he went to baltimore. He spent nine of his 20 years as a slave in baltimore. Without baltimore, he would have never escaped without that. That experience in an urban Slave Society was actually dominated by the community of baltimore. There were 17,000 free blacks in baltimore in 1838 when he escaped. There are about 3000 slaves. He mingles and he learns from them. He attends church. He gets involved in a debating society. As a slave teenager. He meets anna murray, his first wife, who was free. Worked as a domestic in a white persons home. On the other hand he also experienced just about every kind of savagery that slavery could work upon people. From the daily humiliations to physical, brutal treatment. He was not beaten himself, so far as we can tell, until he was a teenager. By his own owner and then by an overseer. A few other times. But he knew slavery inside and out. He knew its mental humiliation, its psychic traumas and physical traumas. But he also, as he said, had his baltimore dreams. That maritime city, a port on the ocean. One of the greatest ports in america at the time. And it was his place where he gained literacy. Again and again gained literacy, which was his most prized possessions. One other quick thing about their youths, both of them. Lincoln, we know about about lincolns reading from various works. What he read is a very young man, as a kid. Among the books lincoln cherished this book called the was colombian orator. The School Reader that douglas discovered among his white playmates when he was 11 and begged, bartered and finally got his own copy when he was 12 years old. An amazing book published first in 1797, which was a huge it was a collection of oratory over the ages, from antiquity and the enlightenment but most importantly, the introduction to it was a manual on oratory, how to position your body, your shoulders, your neck in your hands, how to modulate your voice. An aristotelian guide to oratory. I do not know that douglass ever read aristotle. He read caleb binghams colombian order. So did lincoln. That book was among the cherished books when he was a teenager. 20, 21. So it is interesting. They both had read that and used that, and other kinds of moralistic literature they may have early on read. There are other things that we could say. Harold we will skip to when we get closer to the ultimate moment. My next set of images shows lincoln and douglass in the 1850s. Speaking of parallel oratory, i found using edna and david as my guides, it is easy to find these wonderful parallels. Lincoln says in 1858, a house divided against itself cannot stand. Douglass said liberty and slavery cannot exist in the United States with peaceful relation. I do not know if lincoln knew about douglass at this point. Probably. He will in the debates. Douglass says it is pretty settled that one or the other of these, freedom or slavery, must go to the wall. The south must give up slavery or the north must give up liberty. Lincoln said it would become all one thing or the other, meeting the country. Meaning the opponents of slavery will arrest further spread of it or its advocates will push it forward until it becomes a like. And then in the lincolndouglas debates, stephen douglas, the sitting democratic senator who is running for a third term and ill advised of the allowed lincoln to challenge him for debates, gave lincoln a national reputation. Stephen douglas, who by scholarly conjecture dropped the second s in his name because he did not want it to be like Frederick Douglasss. It has never been proven but it is an interesting story. David douglass would have loved to claim that. Harold which douglass . David frederick. Harold douglass becomes a subject in these debates. Lets talk about that. Edna they are debating throughout seven cities in illinois. Cities where they had not done joint speeches before. They are trying to win over the crowd, so they are giving their perspective on slavery. Its connection and development of the country, and where the country is going. So Douglas Stephen a. , someone who was prosouth, if not proslavery. Very much antiblack. Whenever he was throughout illinois he made a point, consistently, to say things that would get his audience to come to his side by saying negative things about black people. To talk about douglass in relation to an alleged relationship with lincoln the two had not met at the time. But to suggest that they were friends, he brought those things up to get the audience to see lincoln as someone who was problack. We think of illinois because it was an ostensibly free state. We assumed that there was a kind of if not a tolerance of black people there was not. You have a lot of people in Southern Illinois especially coming from the south and even people coming from the north are not necessarily problack. So he was very effective in invoking the name of Frederick Douglass whenever he talked about lincoln being a black republican or someone supportive of the rights of africanamericans. Of course lincoln countered by saying that he was not interested in promoting the rights of africanamericans. He just believed that they were entitled to whatever they had earned through their labor. David there is a reason they called the southern half of illinois little egypt. And sometimes central alabama. At one point during the debates in illinois, douglas came up with the story of, i saw lincoln riding around in a carriage with Fred Douglass. He always called him fred. Douglass hated being called fred in public. He would make up these stories. Lincoln rides around carriages with Fred Douglass. That is all you had to say. It was a wedge issue. Harold in 1864, during lincolns Second Campaign jumping ahead but on this subject. David you told us not to jump ahead. Harold that is because you made a point. One of the antilincolns cartoons of 1864 shows a heaven forbid, a carriage with a white driver, driving a black couple. This is like the height of humiliation for white supremacists. He said Fred Douglass was in the carriage. Douglas says that in one of the debates. And he always said fred. Again, the name being raised in these consequential debates. We move to 1860. Here is a great pairing, almost confronting each other. David that is a debate we would have liked to have had. Harold could douglass vote . Do we know who he voted for . David yes. He could vote. He owned 250 worth of property in new york state. A white man did not. A black man did. Douglass campaigned ferociously to eliminate that law and it lost. On a referendum. Yes, he could vote. The truth is, we are not sure because in the 1850s, douglass rode a roller coaster in terms of the Republican Party. In president ial election years he tended to support the republicans, whoever the candidate was. In off years, he would hide in the radical abolition party. They got three or four votes here or there. They got plenty of votes where Garrett Smith lived and he got elected to congress. Douglass had a tendency of not knowing what to do with his vote, with his support. My guess is he probably voted for lincoln in 1860 with both eyes open. Harold the referendum that took place that same year that lincoln won in new york with 50 or so of the vote. Two other candidates really competed, breckenridge and douglass. The black enfranchisement resolution went down 41. David a lot of people voted for lincoln that voted not to human that property requirement eight not to eliminate that property requirement for black voters. Harold lets talk about both men, i think douglass more seriously and consequentially. Both were newspaper publishers, even during the campaign of 1860. Lincoln secretly owned a german language newspaper published out of springfield. Did you know that . Go back and look at lincoln and the power of the press. David i was busy. Harold you were busy with this. Lincoln rescued it. David a german language newspaper . Was it a good investment . Harold it depends on his goals. I will do a quick rundown. You guys can talk about douglasss monthly. Lincoln learns that a publisher has relocated to springfield to restart his german language paper in the state capital, except he is in hock up to his ears. The creditors seized the Printing Press. Lincoln learns about it. It will cost 500 to get it out. Lincoln goes to the state committee and says, you should really do this. He will be a republican paper. They say, this guy is no good. He is a bit of a charlatan. Lincoln gives him the 500. Writes out a contract and says, keep this paper going until december 1860. Guess what that means, the election period. My only requirement is you say nothing against the principles of the state republican or National Republican platform. If you comply in december 1860, you can have the Printing Press and everything. For 14 months, lincolns friends who can read german, lincoln takes german lessons but hes a cut up in the class. They ask him to leave the class. [laughter] david that was my next question. Did he read german . Harold he did not. The only word that he knew was schnider. Someone came to the class and said i am schnider. He says that means tailor. He knew that. The paper was constantly being observed in springfield and later credited with giving lincoln a big german immigrant boost in the election of 1860 in illinois. After the election, lincoln may made the publisher consult to vienna. That is 1500 a year. A private secretary earned that. One more anecdote. He asked the state legislature to buy up all the back copies of the paper so that the publisher could have a little bit of a stipend to buy strudel in vienna. [laughter] david probably wine in vienna. Harold the paper dies. We have this contract. One is in springfield and one is in the john hay library. Lincoln was his own lawyer. That is really a side story, to say the least. By the way, because they bought up all the back copies, not one copy of the paper exist. They are all gone. Somewhere i know in illinois there has got to be a copy. In case any of you have relatives, have them have a look. It would be a valuable relic. Lets talk about douglasss series of newspapers that had such consequence. Edna he has three before the war is over. David three different names. Edna the first one is the northstar. The paper is very important. People read in those days, believe it or not given it was very important that it was a way to get word out to the public. He had significant support from white readers. They were supporting him quite well. His editorials, if you look at the papers now, they are absolutely extraordinary. You know exactly what is happening at any given moment in the history of the country, especially during the early war years. I love to look at those primary sources, whenever i am writing about douglass, i use his exact words as much as possible. He was an exceptional writer. Those newspapers chronicle what is happening. They are a representation of what douglass is feeling at the time. I do not know that lincoln is actually reading anything that douglass is writing, but there are people who know lincoln who reading and are letting him know who douglass is and what he is saying. Any influence he has ever lincoln, im not sure. He is certainly having influence over the rest of the population. David i agree. A mainstream even at an advanced republican mainstream in illinois cannot admit that he reads abolitionist papers when they are published by people of color or whites. David that newspaper was douglass lifeblood. It was his reason to be. He said that many different ways, many different types. Many different ways and maybe different times, the first 12 years and then monthly the last four years of its existence. 16 years he put out this paper. He founded that paper in 1847 with money donated to him by his british abolitionist friends. That is how he bought his first Printing Press. That is how he hired a printer. The first one was used and fell apart that paper would not have survived without the assiduous editorial work of his english friend and her fundraising to keep it alive. Just as edna says, in that paper, douglass mastered about every genre of writing with millions of words. 1200 pages of autobiography. Thousands of speeches. By the way, every major douglass speech exists in the text. He wrote them first. He was not just a preacher who could blowout the lights at the top of his head. He could do that if he wanted, but the short form political editorial is where he really found a declarative voice. Not just that 19thcentury oratorical voice. From the late 1840s through the 1850s, you can monitor the entire american political crisis over slavery from a radical abolitionist perspective through douglasss paper. Name your moment, whether it is the fugitive slave act, dred scott, on and on. There is one or more editorial. Harold so, we did this become douglass monthly . David 1859, or 1860. He converts probably due to cost reasons or labor. He was trying to do this every week. By the way, it is a family production. His three sons, he taught them. Harold but he names it for himself at a certain point, which is probably good marketing. David also vanity. Frederick douglass paper, Frederick Douglass monthly. This guy is nothing if not vain. Look at him. Harold is the story true that tourists, especially those not terribly far from rochester, one of the sidetrips was to go to rochester to check out if a man of color could actually be running a newspaper . Is that apocryphal . David i dont doubt that it happened. There were gawkers around douglass, especially after the war. He had a horrible problem with what wed call celebrity and they called fame, being so recognizable. Etc. , etc. I dont know of any particular example of that. There were plenty of fugitive slaves who ended up on his doorstep and said, is this where Frederick Douglass lives . Is this his Printing Office . Harold correct me if i am wrong, but the kind of first confrontation, douglasss reaction to lincolns first inaugural. These are circa 1861 photographs. For lincoln, shortly after he gives an inaugural that has been widely quoted. Barack obama quoted it in his victory speech in 2008. Douglass does not like that first inaugural. Tell everybody why. David go ahead. Edna ok. David i like doing mop up. This is good. [laughter] edna by the time lincoln is inaugurated, seven states have already seceded from the union. The nation is in crisis. Lincoln has to come in and try to heal things very quickly. He thinks he will be able to make a dent in this address. He takes a very conciliatory approach. He is telling the south, trying to reassure them that he has no intention to touch slavery at all. He is not legally able to do so. He has no inclination to do so. That is the first thing he is saying. He is talking about i think the thing that really bothered douglass the most was the whole issue of the fugitive slave act. He is hoping you have seven secededhat have from the union. They no longer consider themselves part of the union. So lincoln is saying, we are not going to interfere with your domestic institutions. By the way, if you want to continue recovering your runaways, we will enforce that law, as long as it is not going to impinge on the rights of free black people. We know that there were times when free blacks were caught up in the fugitive slave act and they are sent into slavery. When they had never been enslaved. I think that is what douglass is most concerned about, here is the president who has the opportunity to do something about slavery because you have these seven states that are supposedly out of the union. Lincoln is not willing to do anything at that point. It is a matter of opportunity that douglass thinks lincoln does not avail himself of. Harold let me read a little bit from douglasss monthly. Some thought we thought we had the nerve and decision of oliver cromwell, but we merely have a continuation of the pierces and buchanans, and that the republican president bends the need to slavery as readily as his infamous predecessors. Too tough . David no. Not at that moment. At least to douglass. Harold as lincoln comes to baltimore, he says he knows what a fugitive slave feels like on the underground railroad. David stories about him hiding, yeah. Douglass thought that was pretty cool. Lincoln had to hide like a fugitive. Actually, back in rochester, douglass did go out and see lincoln at the whistle stop, when he was passing through rochester on the way to washington and commented on the historic weight of that. His first inaugural, to douglass, was way too much olive branch and not enough sword. He basically hated that speech. There is a context here. This is obviously april of 1861. The secession winter has been a horrible time for everybody. Terrible fear. Where is this going . Nobody knows. Harold and it is four months. David it goes on for months. Douglass believes not without good reason that the republicans will probably engineer some compromise with the south. There were all kinds of compromise measures in the air. He was not part of any Republican Network at that point. He is not inside of any network of communication. He has no contact in lincolns circle. He does not know what lincoln is going to do. He expects a compromise. The first inaugural to him by the way, obama used the first inaugural for quite obvious reasons. It was lincoln the healer. Healer, healer, healer, that he needed at that point. In 1861, douglass wanted allout war against slavery. Make no mistake. Harold the war of secession grows. The war begins and the abolitionists are impatient with lincoln because he is not using the powers he had to create, if nothing else, an interruption of the domestic workforce in the confederacy and potential additions to the ranks of the u. S. Army. There is another moment of combat and conflict when lincoln rejects early military initiatives toward emancipation. We have general fremont and general hunter, and you quote douglass as saying lincoln had humbled and crippled fremont in the presence of his enemies. How does douglass advocate for action as we move toward d. C. Emancipation in 1862 and the pressure is building . You go first this time. David that is pressure. He wants a war against slavery, he wants a sanctioned war against slavery and therefore the south. The firing of fremont in fall of 1861, he hated it. Whatever fremont really was, he seemed to be an abolitionist general who was issuing emancipation proclamations of his own. Douglass thought that is pretty good in missouri. At that point, the policy what bothered douglass the most in 1861 and 1862 is the policy, the stated policy of the federal government, to return fugitive slaves. They called it technically denial of asylum. If a fugitive slave entered union lines, they were supposed to be returned, if possible, to the owner if the owner was loyal to the union. How in the world some line captain was to determine if some slaveholder was loyal to the union or not, god knows. At one point in the fall of 1861, douglass called lincoln the most powerful slave catcher in america. That is where this rhetorical relationship begins. It is not pretty. Harold edna, you write that in this period, lincolns approach to slavery was an assortment of floating ideas and incoherent policies. Explain edna did i say that . Thats quite good. Harold it is good. We all like having our stuff read back to us. Edna i think what is happening during that time is lincoln is trying to find a way to get the union back together. I do believe in the early years the early months, the union the preservation of the union is driving everything. The preservation of the union drives everything throughout the war. He is struggling to find the best approach to get to that end. So he does make some missteps, or at least he moves a little bit more slowly than he needed to. He is almost an obstructionist at times. Congress is doing certain things. Lincoln is not always supporting that as fully as he could. With the first and second confiscation act, there is not a lot happening that i see that is really moving the country toward getting this job done of doing something about slavery. Because he is really not interested at that point in doing something about slavery. He is interested in making sure that the union does not selfdestruct. I dont know if we can blame him for that tact. Perhaps if he had moved more swiftly, emancipation would not have occurred when it did. There might have been some kind of compromise with the south, the confederacy. We dont know. But certainly he was very cautious and he did or did not do some things that could cause us to question him now. Harold do you think some of the self presentation as kind of a reluctant warrior is all calculated toward the 1862 congressional and gubernatorial elections . It will be the first Congressional Elections ever held during a rebellion. Everything he does it will be hard to lose the senate because all the democrats all the prodemocratic states in the south have left the senate. But i think a lot this is motivated by his political concerns. He will be helpless. Antislavery will be unsuccessful unless he maintains his majorities. That is my spin. Edna that may be part of it, but i think he has not gotten there yet. I dont think he really is interested until the summer of 1862 in doing something about slavery. He is interested at that time. He does understand the confederacy has an advantage in the enslaved labor force. Then he moves. Once he does decide to move, i believe he recognized how important that decision was. I would like to think that the shaking hand came not just because he was shaking hands because it was new years day, but because it dawned on him at that moment how momentous that was. It does not necessarily mean he was changing his mind. It did mean that he recognized how extraordinary that particular moment was. David our two foes have vastly different job descriptions. Douglass cant even know yet how lincolns antislavery bones may have been stirring in him. He cant know that. He does not know that. Even if he had the inkling, he has no idea whether to trust it. His job is to try, rhetorically, with the only power he has, his voice and his pen, to move this war towards an armageddon that destroys slavery. And it is not happening. Except finally in the spring of 1862, lincolns article of war, lincolns suggestion to congress, then his actual signing of the second confiscation act. That was held in advance for a while. What do you trust . Then there is the war. If the union keeps losing battles, bets are off. Think about it for a moment. It is a terrible set of strains for douglass. He lives in rochester, new york. He is on the road speaking constantly all over the north. In these years he is not getting paid for these lectures much at all. Hes got a huge family at home. He is trying to shape policy with his voice. Really, the policymakers are not listening. He just does not know whether he can trust these republicans and he still doesnt know until september 22. Even then he is not sure. Harold to advance the story a bit, summer of 1862, as we know now but douglass did not know, lincoln decided by july he was going to issue this executive order. He reads it to his cabinet on july 22, 1862. The cabinet, even the abolitionists, say, my goodness, you cant do this. You will lose the election. There is a better way to do it. Seward says it will be seen as a last shriek on the retreat, so lincoln tables it. David lee is invading the north. Harold he is about to invade the north. So, for two months, there was a document being worked on by lincoln, being edited. Douglass may know that toward the end when i think the story gets out a bit, in Early September after labor day. But, for the next two months, lincoln makes some extraordinary Public Relations decisions that we now look back at with some four and douglass looked at with horror at the time. He writes his famous letter to horace greeley, the editor of the new york tribune, saying, my paramount object is to save the union. What i do about slavery or what i forbear about slavery i do to save the union, emphasizing in public what edna is saying. Then, in august, around the same time, probably the cruelest and most illadvised of lincolns Public Relations. Why is he doing this . I think he is doing it because he has an election coming up, he is petrified he will lose the white voting public opinion. He knows he will issue this order. He is scared, even in august. He hosts a group of free africanamericans at the white house. One of the great good newsbad news stories in American History. A group of free africanamericans had never been welcomed to the white house before. As the meeting begins, lincoln emerges with an Associated Press stenographer by his side and proceeds to lecture his visitors and say, basically, you are the reason we have a war. Your presence in society it is better for us both to be separated. He has a colonization plan, a Central America plan. There is always africa. Dont say anything now, go back to your homes and your churches, let me know what you think. Douglass writes one of the toughest editorial attacks lincoln has ever endured. Every man who has a brain in his head, even mr. Lincoln, must know that in many places, distinct races live peaceably together in the enjoyment of civil rights. Yet he says to the colored people, i dont like you. You must clear out of the country. It is not slaves causing the war. It is slavery. David i brought a note card. He also said he likened lincolns logic to, a horse thief pleading that the existence of the horse is the apology for his theft, or a highway man contending that the money in the travelers pocket is the sole cause of the robbery. [laughter] thats a pretty good metaphor. Harold lincoln used the same metaphor at cooper union, about a highwayman. I wonder if douglass gave him a little extra tweak. David douglass had read lincoln. It was lincolns worst racial moment, as you just said. I am glad you laid that out. We didnt have to. But is it for public consumption . Is it real . That is always the question. The colonization thing was real. Edna he may have invited them there and the stenographer there to make sure the American People recognized what was about to come. But that does not mean that he did not believe what he was saying. I suspect he did. Because we know that after this period, colonization does occur. People do go to cow island. How ironic. Harold and the federal Government Funds the first edna exactly. It was just about preparing americans for emancipation, and there was no colonization, then i could see it, but i think it is a twoprong thing. He is preparing america for what he is about to do but he is also preparing africanamericans for what he calls voluntary deportation. David one quick thing on the side to add. It is the colonization issue here, which means removal from the country, that drove douglass nuts. Nothing animated his anger like that issue. Especially when Montgomery Blair and lincolns cabinet was designated to try to recruit douglass to be in effect the colonization czar for the federal government. One of the most biting, angry letters douglass ever wrote was a long letter to Montgomery Blair, telling him where he could put the offer to be the colonization czar, but to , freedom may meant be possible because of this war and secession and you are just going to remove it . No. Our birthright might actually come true and youre going to deny it. That is where douglass did not care what lincoln thought. He was reacting to the reality. Edna we do know that there were black men and women who believed their fortune lay somewhere outside. David even douglasss own sons and daughter. Edna but they did not call that colonization. They called that immigration. There were immigrant societies headed by black people. They did not see it as being forced out. In those instances they said, no one is telling us we should leave. We are deciding that we want to leave. So its very different. Harold one of the problems with having a monthly newspaper, by the time he issues his condemnation, the emancipation comes out, the preliminary proclamation. Douglass at first is exuberant, then he thinks about it and decides it kindled no enthusiasm. Hes especially upset that there is 100 days notice between the preliminary and the final. Lincoln extends one more olive branch of status quo antebellum. If you put down your arms, we join the union. Whether or not he thought it was possible. Then i will reverse this edict. I will not sign it. Douglass says it made freedom future and conditional, not present and absolute. Lincoln is moving like a slave under the lash. Edna keep in mind, that preliminary proclamation has a clause in it about colonization. The final one does not. Douglass could not have been very pleased. David it had money allocated for colonization in the preliminary. Douglass has gone back and forth on this, and why not . It is a fraud moment for an africanamerican leader. Where do you go, would you support . Do you keep the pressure on . Douglass begins publicly saying that he does not think lincoln would move back. How does he get convinced . He not yet met him . David i think that is a rhetorical position at that point. He has an obligation of hope. This was always douglass approach. He felt a response ability of hope. This preliminary proclamation was extraordinary. He needs to say that. And then he probably put his head on the pillow at night, thinking, i hope it is true. That is my feeling. Harold so january 1 comes, the hand trembles for many reasons. Signature is affixed. Reach out for joy, the state has finally come this day has finally come. Then comes the reckoning. I like to say that there are two documents at this moment. Both of them in the New York Historical society. The copy of the emancipation proclamation, which was not a bestseller in its day. I wish there were more five dollar copies around, but they did not sell out in philadelphia. Douglass becomes the recruitment ceo. Finally, and he gives up his newspaper, right . David later that year. Harold black recruitment begins in march of 1863. Africanamerican recruits have not paid the same rate as white soldiers. They have to pay for their own uniforms whereas white soldiers have a bonus for buying their own uniforms. It is not exactly the most equitable situation. Douglass comes to washington and there is the first meeting. This is a 20th century mural by an africanamerican artist named William Edward scott. It is really all we have. It is wonderful. It is a monumental meeting. Douglass is escorted past a of people. Im sure they are all white, to see on the stairway Abraham Lincoln. You hear muttering of the nword because a person of color is going ahead of the white people. David always the humiliation before the recognition. Harold he comes into the office and there is lincoln. He is introduced. He says, i know who you are, mr. Douglas. And what happens next . It has to be one of the great scenes that no dramatist has tried to recreate. David there is a screenwriter working on it right now, i hope. Harold what happens at the meeting . Edna we need to put it in context. Douglass is still seething from the fact that he never got his commission to serve and include these black soldiers, but he continues to work on behalf of these soldiers. He is telling lincoln, these people are putting their lives on the line and they are getting seven dollars a month instead of the 13 that white men are getting. Lincolns response is, we are doing the best we can. Pretty much, you are lucky that we are allowing black men to serve because there are so many people in the country who dont want that. Much, feel lucky that we are allowing black men to serve. There are so many people in the country who dont like them. He was right, lots of americans did not want black people serving. Lincoln tells him, be patient, they will eventually get the same pay. For right now, there is not much we can do about it. David that is the first time douglass set foot in washington, d. C. , for one thing. He went all of his own, had no invitation. He got in line. 1863. Ugust, he got in line to protest discrimination. Harold the africanamerican troops, including his own son. David his son has already been shipped to new york city to convalesce from a horrible wound to the groin, and almost died. It is not an easy meeting. Douglass came away basically saying, like diplomats say, we had a Good Exchange of ideas, which means they did not agree. But i do think he was awed by lincoln. He said publicly, i felt big there. A kid would say that. But lincoln, according to douglas, was not condescending, did not just hurry him out of the office. Though it was not a long meeting. But it was respectful. Lincoln did say, basically, you ought to be grateful. Harold he said, he was the first great man i talked with in the u. S. Freely who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself. The difference in color. That is a remarkable thing to say. David it was also rhetorically useful. Harold he wrote it later. David he did, but anyway, he walked away from there, he had just met the president. This is 1863, the war is in a horrible situation. It is postvicksburg, postgettysburg with your victories for the union, but it is still in a horrible state and no one knows where this is going. Harold it is only halfway. David yes. There is such a big context. To go back to the emancipation proclamation, it authorizes the recruiting of black soldiers. There are reasons douglass and others would support this. It did not call for colonization. It basically ordered the recruitment of black soldiers. Douglas, after the proclamation, goes back to rochester and did what he always did, he went to his desk and wrote a new speech. Douglass is one of those people who did not know what he thought until he went to his desk to write it down. He ripped a speech called the in the negro in the army. He is on the road only three weeks after the proclamation, giving that speech all across the north. In that speech, he says, this proclamation frees all of us. It frees confederate soldiers, it frees slaveholders, the white union soldiers, black people, Abraham Lincoln, it frees all of us. He is saying, this potentially frees the country from its history. It is a brilliant, brave statement about a proclamation that is still very new and no one knows quite where this is going. And then the men of color to arms, it is fascinating when you put those two up together because the proclamation is meant to be kind of boring, even though it is terribly important. The men of color to arms is that radical manifesto. Harold i wanted to see the headlines. The actual document is rousing. David it is a war propaganda document. Edna that is the point, fight for your freedom. He is not so terribly interested in recruiting black men to save the union. He understands, once black men don the union blue and shoulder a gun, they have the right to ask for full citizenship. He is already looking beyond just the end of slavery. Harold but he is a great recruiting agent. He says freedom without will not be worth what freedom will be worth if we fight. Before i turn to audience questions, i just want to talk about the last two meetings. They are important. They are postemancipation. But lincoln is afraid he is going to lose the 1864 election, a period when he is really down, making his cabinet sign documents about cooperating with the democratic eventual winner, george mcclellan, when he is telling the editor of the New York Times to go ahead and negotiate with Jefferson Davis if you can find him. He also develops a backup plan about enforcing emancipation. Lets briefly talk about that. David they are all great photos. You might think douglas is just inperrturbed will turbable, if thats a word. When he meets lincoln the second time, august of 1854, lincoln rightfully believes there is a good chance he is not going to get reelected. The war weariness. Stalemate in virginia. Harold it is only a week from sherman taking over. David that makes all the difference. 60,000 casualties in the summer of 1865 alone. 1864, sorry. The north is sick of the war. Calls douglass to the white house, looks him in the eye, and asks him to be the chief agent of a scheme to funnel as many slaves as possible out of the upper south before election day. Harold inauguration day. David i thought it was before november. Anyway, i may lose this election, so help me with this scheme that will damage slavery as much as possible, get as many folk ful get as many black some Legal Definition of freedom before mcclellan and the democrats engineer negotiated peace or whatever they are going to do. Reverse emancipation. Imagine this. I dont know exactly what douglass thought, of course, but i know his reaction was Something Like, sure. And he did ask, how am i supposed to do this . All lincoln had was, the War Department will help you. He goes back to rochester, only about 10 days, and he starts firing off letters to agents, friends, we are going to do this, i think. Then comes the fall of atlanta, may be the biggest turning point in the war in terms of morale. Farragut had just taken mobile bay and the Largest Naval battle of the war. Harold he writes a plan, a long plan to lincoln about these plans. He is going to hire uniformed africanamerican bounty hunters. David he has been asked to enact john browns socalled subterranean passageway from slavery by lincoln. Edna isnt there another reason for this meeting as well . Douglass is really criticizing lincoln during this period, so is lincoln not sort of bringing him in to give him something to do other than criticize him . [laughter] he is saying, i may lose this thing. He is telling douglass to just shut up, get on with the business you are interested in, but stop criticizing me so much. Harold i think it is a moment where lincoln imagines himself a liberator and wants to execute the documents and see as many people liberated as possible. Edna he can do both. Harold what is the legal status of free people going to be after a democrat becomes president , i dont think we can calculate. David we should just add that that Election Campaign by the democrats was the most racist in American History until the next one. [laughter] 1968 was really worse. The democrats practiced classic wedge politics. They painted the republicans as the party of emancipation. They were now. They had to kind of dance away from it. Douglass dearly wanted to go campaign for lincoln and they would not let him. They would not let that greatest of black spokesmen on the stump. Harold this museum has an incredible collection of documents and images that relate to the racist campaign in new york. David they called Lincoln Abraham africanus i. Implying that he was black, of course. They did not question his birth certificate, though. [laughter] so far as i know. Maybe they did. Harold try and find it, by the way. Final meeting, march 4 of 1865, i dont know if this is exactly 1865. Douglass was photographed more often than lincoln. For lincoln, this is february 5. Inauguration day, douglass is in an integrated crowd. Lots of troops in the crowd. Douglass was there. Lincoln gives his speech. We remember it as the malice toward none speech. Douglass remembers it as the speech where lincoln said, if every drop of blood drawn with a lash has to be repaid. Is the greatest sentence ever. Then they come to the white house for the post inaugural reception. I hope the anonymous screenplay writer is including this scene. David his name is kevin wilmont. He is working as we speak. Harold ok. You should be here, not working. David no, he needs to be working. [laughter] Harold Douglass is not exactly welcomed in the white house. What happens . Edna he is trying to get in, and he is in the company of a woman. David it is a woman from philadelphia named oh, god. Ahead, ill look it up. Edna dorsey or Something Like that. David it is. You got it. Edna he wants to get in. The guards are not allowing him to come in. He gets the message to lincoln that he is outside. Someone comes to the door and recognizes him. He sends a message to lincoln that he wants to enter. Lincoln tells them to let him in. He meets lincoln, lincoln greets him very cordially. Harold he cuts the line one more time. Lincoln is at the head of a receiving line. Lincoln talks to him outside the line of procession. David he had to walk over a plank to get in the side door. Edna they were trying to usher him out. Lincoln does ask him, what did he think of the address . Douglass says it was a sacred effort, i believe, and he is sincere about what he feels. And rightly so. Everybody talks about the gettysburg address. It is that second inaugural address that is truly extraordinary. Harold the one moment i would like to go back to, before douglass issues that compliment for the ages, lincoln is on the receiving line and he sees douglass being ushered in by dubious guards and others, and he says, to an allwhite crowd, there is my friend, douglass. Douglass, there is no ones opinion i respect more than yours. Enough about you, what did you think about my speech . But still. [laughter] but still, i think that is a remarkable moment. David we do have another witness of what he said. It is not just douglasss telling. Yeah, it is. I suppose it is right in the east room where that happens. It is. Again, it shows us these men started at very different places. But by this time, they were now basically speaking from the same script. They did not start with the same script at all. But by now, they are talking about emancipation as the regeneration of a new United States. A new nation, a new constitution. They are basically on the same script. If lincoln lives, who knows where this script goes. We will never know. Harold was douglass, as the spielberg movie suggests, in the gallery of the house of representatives when they voted on the 13th amendment . David no, his son was. Thats implying its his son. It was his son charles who writes a letter to his father. Its an incredible letter. Father, this was your day. I wish you had been here. Harold was douglass also kept in the background of that campaign . David he was not inside the Republican Party machinations at all. 13th amendment was easy to support. 14th and 15th, not as easy. Harold right, but in the 13th, has thethe campaign 186061 congressional compromise involving a lot of lame ducks. And 16th again involved lame ducks, but a lot of them were democrats leaving office. David easy to vote. Easy to vote your conscience when you are a lameduck. Harold especially if there is a federal job on the other end. Edna in terms of douglasss perspective on the 13th amendment, it seems that when garrison is attempting to abandon the Abolitionist Movement antislavery societies, douglass is saying that even with the passage of the 13th amendment, we dont have full citizenship. So the struggle continues. It seems that by the time the 13th amendment was being ratified, douglass was out there pushing for full citizenship. He constantly said slavery and its highly audible g constantly said slavery and its ideology would always come back. Slavery never died honestly. He means it died in war, not because we voted on it. Harold i think we have about 15 minutes for some of these good questions. Let me start with this. As he became a more prominent speaker, did Frederick Douglass ever worry about being returned to the south under the fugitive slave law . David yes. For nine years, he was a fugitive slave. And his friends worried about it maybe more than he did. Edna and leaves the country at one point because he has been implicated. David he does not come back from england until his british friends purchase his freedom and deliver the papers. Harold what about after he leaves john brown . David it is more dangerous than because he can be arrested and hanged as an accomplice to john browns raid, which he was. Harold both douglass and lincoln were fervent readers of robert burns. Can you tell us what made burns attractive to each of them . David douglass was a fanatic of robert burns. He loved the english romantic poets. I think he loved the language, for one thing. Douglass was a lover of language. But he probably loved the romance of it. Unfortunately, Julia Griffiths named one of the poems she read to him late at night when he was ill. She should not have named that poem because now we know what it says. He loved romantic poetry. English romantics. I think he also was attracted to burns as this poor boy symbol of democracy in the british lore, lore. Ottish it is a good thing burns never took that job he was offered on a slave plantation in jamaica. It would have ruined the whole thing. Harold did douglass believe the confederacy was capable of being reintegrated into the union as fervently as lincoln did . Thats a good reconstruction question. Edna hardly. Douglass understood that even though the confederacy had lost, there would be a struggle. As long as you allowed the same people who took their states into secession, if you allowed them to stay in power, it would be difficult to bring them back in without expecting problems. He certainly recognized there would be problems for africanamericans, and he was right. Lincoln recognized there could be some problems, and he was willing to step in to make sure things did not get too bad. But douglass really understood what it meant. Had lived under them, and he certainly was way ahead of lincoln in terms of recognizing what the problems would be. David douglass wanted healing but never without the justice to go with it. He once called the confederacy he said the confederacy preferred to be a large part of nothing that a small part of something. He never trusted slaveholders, even after slavery ended. Harold im going to ask a question based on an image. In 1865, Frederick Douglass in a eulogy said that Abraham Lincoln was the black mans president , at the unveiling of this now politically incorrect statue in washington, funded entirely by free people of color, by the way. It is by a white sculptor. At the dedication, Frederick Douglass said that lincoln was the white mans president , that africanamericans were his stepchildren. He also said raise high his monuments. It is an interesting evolution. What do you think it accounts for, and where was douglass in questioning lincoln . This is the 11th anniversary of the lincoln assassination. Edna a lot of water had run under that bridge between those dates. I think that douglass really was optimistic in 1865 that things will change. By the time he is doing that speech at the dedication, he recognizes it is going to be much tougher than that because black people have lost ground. There is the passage of the 13th amendment, and the 14th and 15th, but by this period, their rights are being eroded. I think what is going on in that speech is not really about lincoln as much as it is reminding the white men present prominent people in the country david the whole government was there. Edna reminding them that a promise was made in issuing the emancipation proclamation. Because that is the way black people saw it. It was a promise of much more than just freedom. So douglass is saying, this man that you hold up in great regard has given us this promise. It is your responsibility to make sure it occurs. Harold and what prescience . This is the year that reconstruction will end. David in the nation is about to have a centennial celebration in philadelphia. This is april 1876. Douglass is the orator of the day. Grant pulls the cord and unveils this statue. That speech was all about reconstruction. It is a warning to grant, to congress, to the supreme court, which are all in front of him, that they are losing reconstruction. It is the second greatest speech of douglasss life. Fourth of july speech is number one. But this speech is a brilliant piece of rhetoric. It is really two speeches. In the first part, he says, my white, fellow americans, you are Abraham Lincolns children and i and my people are stepchildren. He repeats the stepchildren will times as a reframe. But then there is a pause, and he says, but, under his rule, and in due time, emancipation came as Abraham Lincoln designed itand probably the only way could have. The first speech, he is saying, it was against us. The second half, he is saying, you know, that freedom had to come the way he brought it. Both are true. It is a deadly honest speech. He could have done the throwaway, lincoln was a great man, United States, but he did not. I looked in vain to find out what grants response to that speech was. I could not find anything in his papers. Grant may have taken a nap or something. [laughter] harold it is remarkable that he said not a word that day. David i know. We have time for one more question from the audience. That i will go back to our final standoff. Did lincoln and douglasss religious beliefs play a significant role in shaping their views on slavery and abolition . David yes, in both cases. They are both serious readers and serious users of biblical story and metaphor. It is one of the central themes of my book on douglass. Douglass was so steeped in the old testament, in particular. The whole bible, but particularly the old testament. Douglasss faith is less my concern, his actual faith. It is not easy to know. But his use of biblical stories, symbols, metaphors, and especially the hebrew prophets, is all over his rhetoric. He saw america he is hardly alone in this. He saw america as a place with some kind of destiny and some kind of trajectory of history somehow designed by the divine. It is never easy to exactly see it, but it was there. He quoted isaiah more times then you could almost imagine. It gave him his apocalyptic sense of history, the expectation of an armageddon of some kind. He believes the temple in jerusalem, meaning in this case the United States, had to be destroyed in order to be reinvented. He knew what story to put this in. He just wanted it to happen that way. In douglasss case, there is no question that his religion mattered all over his worldview, all over his rhetoric. Lincoln, look at the second inaugural. Harold and the house divided. He quotes scripture throughout his presidency and becomes more of a religious fatalist as the war goes on, and i think is increasingly unwilling to accept sole responsibility for the carnage. It suddenly becomes gods war. I will end with three quick quotes, if i may. One is from Frederick Douglass. I think david has already paraphrased it. From 1876, though the union was more to him than our freedom and our future, under his wise and beneficent rule, we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood. And then lincoln, in december of 1862, between the preliminary and final emancipation, in a state of the Union Message in which he talked about colonization, he still said, in giving freedom to the slave, we give freedom to the free, honorable alike in what we give and what we deserve. We will mainly lose the last, best hope of earth. My final quote is of edna. It is something we have not discussed in full detail, as we have discussed two great men. But edna reminds us, in her book about lincoln and the emancipation, lincolns decree promised freedom. Africanamericans defined what that meant. This has been a wonderful discussion. Thank you. [applause] we want to thank david blight, edna greene medfor, harold holzer, for another great program. Thank you for coming. Edna, we know you travel here, we thank you so much. Every time we ask you, you do say yes. Thank you. Thank you all for coming. If you want to learn more, find out more, please go into our museum store, where our author books will be on sale. They will be signing the books, and you can talk to the more out in the smith gallery. Thank you for coming on this warm saturday morning. Thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] American History tv is on social media. Follow us on cspan history. Tvsweek, American History reel america provides archival has Health Officials prepared to roll out a vaccine for coronavirus we take you back in time with five archival films about disease. First up, from man against 1932, microbe. Metropolitan Life Insurance it is a company film sketches that 300 years of research in Public Health and dramatizes discoveries by notable scientists. A special report on polio. June, 1955,s, from broadcast by the radio and Television Networks in cooperation with the u. S. Public Health Service hoped to dispel fears about the safety of the new salk vaccine. After children had received a 200,000 defective vaccine manufactured by cutter laboratories. In 25 minutes, produced by the Communicable Disease center of the u. S. Public Health Service, babies and breadwinners a documentation of the 1961 polio vaccination campaign. It shows the effort to immunize every citizen living in columbus, georgia. After that, in 50 minutes, miracle in tonga this film tells , the story of a group of cdc doctors who traveled to the island nation of tonga to immunize the population against smallpox, using a new jet injection gun. Finally, in 65 minutes, we complete our look at vaccines and disease prevention with flags and politics, the story of the United States Public Health politics, plagues and the story of the United States Public Health service. This marks the bicentennial of the service founded in 1798