Douglass, Abraham Lincoln and emancipation. I would like to thank our great trustee and benefactor, Arnold Bernard schwartz, for his generosity and making this event and many of our programs possible. [applause] i would also like to recognize and thank one of our trustees who has joined us today, david blight. I want to 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. Welcome all members who have joined up today. [applause] recognize ao longstanding and very special friend of New York Historical , eric rudin who has joined us , this morning. Thank eric for all he and his family have done over a very long time at this institution. Thank you. This Mornings Program will last about an hour and a half and it will include a question and answer session. You should have received a note card and a pencil as you entered the auditorium this morning. 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 left on theo my 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 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. 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 finch. 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 involved inthose the promulgation of freedom has changed the way we think about the 1860s and 1870s. Stage, 157 years and 11 days ago, Abraham Lincoln signed perhaps the most consequential executive order in president ial American History. History, and American History. 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 refusedry 1, 1863, he 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. With dualshower you 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 at 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 believe 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 let 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] you 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. 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. A one ever called douglass plea be in 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 community ofthe 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. But his own owner. Then by anr overseer. But he knew slavery inside and out. He knew its mental humiliation, psychic traumas and physical traumas. But he also, as he said, had his baltimore dreams. Port onitime city, a 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 this book called the 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 indictment but most importantly, the introduction to it was a manual on oratory, how to position your body, your shoulders, your neck in your hands, had a how to modulate your voice. An aristotelian guide to oratory. I do not know that douglas 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 a red. 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 both 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 i 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 , reputation. National reputation. 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. Douglass . Ich 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 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 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 shows a carriage 1864 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. Again, the name being raised in these consequential debates. Move to 1860 we 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 the 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. Whereot plenty of votes Garrett Smith lived and he got elected to congress. Lincoln 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 and fries enfranchisement resolution went down 41. David a lot of people voted for lincoln that voted not to illuminate 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 1860, you can have the Printing Press and everything. 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. 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 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. [