Frederick Douglass's Influence on the War Strategy of Abraham Lincoln

[Pragmatic]

by
Dr. Edward C. Smith

Frederick Douglass's Influence on the War Strategy of Arbraham Lincoln by Dr. Edward C. Smith


#1

Professor Smith teaches at The American University and is a
Civil War and Afro-American Heritage Lecturer for The
Smithsonian Institution and the Historical Society of
Washington, D.C. He is also an Associate Editor of The
Lincoln Review. This lecture was delivered at St. John's
College, Annapolis, in February, 1992.(used with permission)

#2

The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852 ignited a
firestorm of abolitionist fervor that quickly spread
throughout the North. The novel achieved its objective (of
exposing the dark side of tile South) by pulling at the
heart strings (of the many Americans who knew virtually
nothing about plantation life and could not began to imagine
the reality of the daily sufferings of millions of slaves.

Two years later in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed.
Its principle architect was U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas
of Illinois. The act had the immediate effect of replacing
the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which though admitting
Missouri into the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free
state, excluded slavery from the vast northern regions of
the Louisiana Purchase Territory. Now, with the passing of
this act, a new formula for dealing with slavery came into
being. Through the principle of "popular sovereignty" the
people of each territory could choose to be either a free or
a slave society. Until citizens of the regions voted on the
issue, masters were free to take their slaves into most
western territories. As a consequence of this new policy, a
northern zone, presumed to be forever free, had become
vulnerable to pro-slavery expansion.

From the beginning, most northern politicians saw the
Kansas-Nebraska Act as a southern conspiracy to expect the
South's powerful presence in the nation's capitol. After
all Washington, D.C., was a proud and distinctly southern
city. Lest we forget the Mason-Dixon Line separates
Maryland from Pennsylvania. During the 1850s Southerners
were the most influential leaders in both houses of
Congress. Also, the South dominated the White House; before
the Civil War, nine of the nation's presidents were
southerners, seven of them from the state of Virginia.
Additionally, the South's special interests were well
represented and protected in the judicial rulings of the
southern dominated Supreme Court.

The issues surrounding the Kansas-Nebraska Act gave birth to
the all-northern Republican party, which was committed to
preventing the spread of slavery into the western
territories.

One of its earliest members was Abraham
Lincoln, who eventually became the head of the new parry in
Illinois. Through his extensive readings of the writings of
the founding fathers, Lincoln had convinced himself that
although many of our nation's earliest leaders greatly
benefited from the culture of ..."enlightened leisure" that slavery provided, they nonetheless disliked the institution
and were working toward its ..."gradual extinction".


He saw evidence of this in the presence of the many free blacks
living throughout the South who had achieved their freedom
though the benign will of their "...magnanimous masters".

In addition, he was deeply impressed by the fact that the
nation's capitol, founded in 1791, was co-designed by a
brilliant free black inventor and surveyor from Maryland
named Benjamin Banneker.

Even though his law practice was thriving and he had earned the reputation of being a "lawyer's Lawyer," the crises of the 1850s greatly disturbed.

Lincoln and he felt compelled to stake his political
position so that there would be no doubt about where he
stood on certain significant matters. Regarding the
question of slavery, he became an "uncompromising anti-extensionist".


#3

During the 1960s it became fashionable among many civil
rights and "black power" activists (and their white allies)
to besmirch Lincoln's reputation as "The Great Emancipator."


"They" argued that Lincoln freed the slaves only as a consequence of military necessity and that their liberation was not rooted in his respect for their inherent humanity.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I recently discovered a speech he gave in Peoria Illinois, shortly
after joining the Republican party. In it he engaged the
southern sympathizers in his audience through a rhetorical
dialogue without faulting them for the origin or the
continuation of slavery as an intrinsic institution
protected by both state and federal law.
But he did appeal
to their sense of decency, believing that, like him, they
too felt that there was humanity in the Negro.

He asked those gathered.


..." Do you deny this? Then why thirty-four years ago did you
join the North in branding the African slave trade as an act
of piracy punishable by death? You have amongst you a
sneaking individual, of the class of native tyrants, known
as the 'SLAVEDEALER' He watches your necessities, and crawls
up to buy your slave, at a speculating price. If you cannot
help it, you sell to him: but if you can help it, you drive
him from your door. You despise him utterly. You do not
recognize him as a friend, or even as an honest man. Your
children must not play with his; they may rollick freely
with the little Negroes, but not with the "slavedealer's"
children. If you are obliged to deal with him, you try to
get through the job without so much as touching him. It is
common with you to join hands with the men you meet; but
with the "slavedealer" you avoid the ceremony-instinctively
shrinking from the snaky contact."

He continues:

Now why is this? Is it not because your human sympathy tells you that the poor Negro has some natural right to himself, that those who deny it, and make mere merchandise of him, deserve kickings, contempt and death?

He concludes his remarks in a "very dramatic manner".


..."Fellow countrymen, Americans south, as well as north let us
turn slavery from its claim of "moral right" back upon its
existing legal right... and there let it rest in peace.

Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it,
the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. Let
north and south--let all Americans--let all lovers of
liberty everywhere--join the great and good work. If we do
this, we shall not only have saved the Union but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy
of the saving."

Lincoln discovered quickly that his appeals fell upon deaf
ears. Most southerners who chose to speak out on the issue believed Negro bondage was sanctioned by the Bible and an
expression of God's divine will. They contended, even
though they saw free, hard-working, articulate, and
law-abiding Negroes around them all the time, that somehow
blacks were basically subhuman and belonged in chains as
naturally as horses in stables and cows in pens.

In 1857 the pro-southern Supreme Court (presided over by
Chief Jutice Roger B. Taney, a slave-owning aristocrat from
Maryland) handed down the infamous Dred Scott decision. The
Court decreed that Negroes were inferior people who were not
and never had been United States citizens and that the
Constitution and Declaration of Independence were
exclusively "white-only" charters that were never intended
to apply to them. More importantly as far as Lincoln was
concerned, the Courts ruling clearly meant that neither
Congress nor a territorial government could outlaw slavery
in the national lands, because to do so would violate
southern property rights as guaranteed by the Fifth
Amendment. Republicans understood that the net effect of
the ruling was to legalize slavery in all federal
territories from Canada to Mexico.


#4


In 1858, Lincoln and many of his fellow Republicans began to
see a treacherous conspiracy at work in America--a plot on
the part of southern leaders and their northern Democratic
allies to reverse the whole course of modern history, to
halt the progress of human liberty as other reactionary
forces in the world were attempting to do, namely in Russia
and certain areas of western Europe.

For Lincoln, the Union had reached a crucible.

If the future of a free American was to be saved so as to serve as a noble symbol to the world, it was imperative that he and his party marshal the
necessary resources to stay the hand of the conspirators; at all costs slavery must not be allowed to expand onto the
frontier.


Only four years after becoming a Republican, Abraham Lincoln
challenges Stephen A. Douglas for his senate seat. He now
has a forum whereby he can fiercely articulate his
anti-slavery sentiments. He tells his audiences how much he
hates the peculiar institution: "It is a vast moral evil
because it violates America's 'central idea' . . . the
idea of equality and the right to rise."

Yet Lincoln, ever the pragmatic realist, clearly understood that no matter how evil slavery was, it could not be abolished in those states where it already existed.

There were seven Lincoln-Douglas debates and they all
focused on One subject, slavery. Douglas countered
Lincoln's posture by labeling him a 'black Republican and a
member of a mob of radical abolitionists who were determined
to impose their will upon the South. Additionally, Douglas,
more so than Lincoln, understood the depth of anti-black
feeling in Illinois and he masterfully played to these white
racial fears. He warned his audiences, "Do you want Negroes
to flood into our state and spread the prairies with black
settlements, and eat, sleep, and marry white people? If you
do, then vote for Mr. Lincoln and the black Republicans.'"
Then he would frequently add, "But I am against Negro
citizenship, I want citizenship for whites only. I believe
that this government was made by the white man, for the
benefit of the white man, to be administered by the white
man. I do not question Mr. Lincoln's conscientious belief that the Negro was made his equal and hence his brother, but for my own part, I do not regard the Negro as my equal, and
positively deny that he is my brother or any kin to me
whatever."

Lincoln lost decisively to Douglas. His views on slavery
were well beyond what the great majority of his fellow
Illinoisans could tolerate. He even lost his "home base"
constituencies of Springfield and Sangamon County.

In the year following the Great Debates, fire-eating
abolitionist John Brown, with a small contingent of loyal
supporters, attacked the federal arsenal Harper Ferry,
Virginia in an attempt to launch a full-scale slave
rebellion that would quickly spread throughout the state and
into the lower south. The raid was quickly repulsed and
Union soldier, under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee,
captured Brown, who was later tried and hanged for treason.


For most southerners, John Brown's behavior was all they
needed to convince themselves that the northern
abolitionists, supported by the all-northern Republican
party, wanted only to drown the South in a river of blood.
Of course, Lincoln and his colleagues rushed to deny these
hysterical accusations and argued that executing Brown was
just conduct by the state because his actions were a clear
violation of the law.

It is clear that Abraham Lincoln never covered the
presidency. He correctly saw the job for what it was then, " purely administrative in nature".


The president had clerks and subordinates to supervise, but he had no
"peers" with whom to discuss and debate the great issues facing the
nation.

Lincoln wanted to be a United States senator, to be
a part of a forum where the country's greatest orators
wrestled against each other as in the days of "republican
Rome".

But his loss to Douglas made him available to pursue
the path to the White House and so he was nominated by his
party to be its standard-bearer in the 1860 presidential
election, with the mandate to campaign on a "free-soil,
free-labor" platform. The time had come to see if those
advanced social views of his that were soundly rejected in
Illinois by those who knew him well, would be accepted by
those in other states who knew him not at all.

Lincoln was an energetic and imaginative campaigner.
Whatever he spoke he took firm stands that slavery was an
evil and must be contained in the South and yet he
constantly reminded audiences that neither he nor his party
would interfere with southern slavery; after all, they were
restrained by law.


The federal government had no constitutional authority (at least in peacetime) to tamper with a state-sanctioned institution, particularly one as volatile as slavery.


#5


Most source in 1860 did not trust Lincoln to his word. In
him they saw John Brown reincarnate and began to brace
themselves for the inevitable invasion that many thought
would be forthcoming if "the black-hearted abolitionist
fanatic," as he was known throughout the South, were chosen
to become the nation's sixteenth president.

Lincoln's election on November 6, 1860, sent southern
leaders spiraling; their worst fears had come to fruition.
Secessionist fire-eaters, who were a "militant minority",rapidly rose to positions of prominence.

Men, like Robert Toombs, Howell Cobb, Robert Barnwell Rhett, and William Lowndes Yancey were eagerly sought after for guidance. "What
should the South do?" the people asked. The fire-eaters'
answer came in one word: secede, secede, secede!"

On December 20,1860,South Carolina took the initiative and
soon other southern states would follow her lead into
secession. While still living in Springfield, Illinois, as
president-elect, Lincoln was outraged by this behavior. He
could not understand why southerners were so incensed by his
election. He had promised them in speech after speech that
they had absolutely no reason for fearing him and his
administration, that he would not disturb slavery; in fact he promised them that he would protect the institution, as long as It remained where it was and did not expand elsewhere.


In his inaugural address of March 4,1861, Lincoln presented
himself to his southern adversaries as a man, of moderation,
not a "...radical revolutionary".

He reminded them that he "approved the original Thirteenth Amendment, recently passed by Congress (but left unratified by the states because of the dismemberment of the Union), which explicitly granted slavery in the southern states". He endorsed the amendment, not because he liked it (which he did not), but because he
felt it to be wholly consistent with Republican party
ideology with regard to the containment of slavery in the
South. He concluded his speech with the following words:

I am loth to close. 'We are not enemies, but friends. We
must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it
must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of
memory, Stretching from every battlefield, and patriotic
grave, to every living heart and heartstone, all over this
broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when
again touched, as surely they will be by the better angels
of our nature.


The president was counting on southern unionists to rise to
the ramparts and rebuff southern secessionists and return
the rebellious states to their rightful places in the Union.
His faith was sorely misplaced, moderation was a distinct
minority point of view in the South. On the eve of war
radicalism reigned supreme.

South Carolina, the first state to secede, seized the
opportunity to draw first fire as well. Its attack on the
Union garrison at Fort Sumter on April 12 brought upon the
nation the contest of arms that, in spite of the petulant
bravado of both sides, no reasonable man or woman in either
the North or the South had wanted. Now the president felt
duty-bound to raise an army of 75,000 soldiers for ninety
days of service to repress this ..."reckless rebellion".

To accomplish this task he needed a leader of unassailable
reputation, a commander universally respected for his
courage, honor, loyalty, and commitment. Lincoln needed
Lee. Had Lee not shown his courage and honor during the
Mexican War, had he not shown his loyalty and commitment to
the Union in capturing John Brown, preventing his rebellion
from spreading? Clearly, Lee was the best man for the job
and he lived just across the Potomac River on his 1100-acre
estate at Arlington.

In reaction to Lincoln's call to arms, an ordinance of
session was introduced into the Virginia Convention on April
16. The following day Lee received a letter to report to
the office of General Winfred Scott. However, Colonel Lee
was the first to appear at the home of Francis P. Blair
(now the Blair House), whose son, Montgomery Blair, was the
attorney for Dred Scott during the litigation of his famous
case and was a key presidents confidant. Lee, a decorated
hero of the Mexican War and former superintendent of the U.
S. Military Academy at West Point, was, in addition, an
imposing knight-like scion of the celebrated Lee dynasty.
His father, Henry "Lighthorse Harry" Lee, was one of General
George Washington's principal subordinates during the
Revolutionary War. Lee's wife, the former Mary Custis, was
President Washington's Step-great-granddaughter, and two of Lee's ancestors were signers of the Declaration of
Independence. Thus everything in Robert E. Lee's long and
illustrious military career-amounting to nearly thirty-five
years of honorable serve-had prepared him for the assumption
of such authority.

#6


On April 18, Francis Blair-authorized by President Lincoln
to do so-offered Colonel Lee the command of the new army
that was being raised to crush the rebellion. Without
hesitation, he responded to Blair: "Though opposed to
session and deprecating war, I could take no part in an
invasion of the southern states." Upon leaving Blair, Lee
went to see his mentor, General Winfred Scott, a fellow
Virginian. Lee shared with the general the essence of his
discussion with Blair, and Scott replied: "Lee, you have
made the greatest mistake of your life, but I feared it
would be so." It is interesting that throughout the former
Confederate states, both during the war's immediate
aftermath and through today, Lee continues to be lionized as
"the South's favorite son," when in fact his loyalty was to
Virginia, first and foremost. Indeed for the duration of
the war, he commanded only two battles outside of Virginia,
one at Antietam, the other at Gettysburg, and both were
pivotal defeats for the Confederacy.

On April 19, Lee learned that Virginia had voted to secede
from the union, but it had not yet decided to join the
Confederacy. The following day, Colonel Lee went through
the wrenching experience of writing and submitting his
letter of resignation on to General Scott on April 24.

Virginia, Consummated the act of secession by entering into a
military alliance with the Confederacy which ultimately led
to the state's formal incorporation into the Confederate
States of America. This occurred exactly one month later,
on May 24, when Virginia voters ratified the Ordinance of
Session.

Like the American Revolutionary War, the Civil War was a war
of ,session. The eleven Confederate states declared their
independence from the federal union in a manner similar to
the revolt of the thirteen colonies against the authority of
England. Thus our victorious and beloved "Stars and Stripes" is as much a rebel flag as that of the defeated "Stan and Bars" of the lost cause of the Confederacy.

Interestingly, there are many other connections that link
the colonial rebellion to the confederate rebellion.


President Jefferson Davis was named in honor of President
Thomas Jefferson. The Confederacy's Vice President was
Alexander Hamilton Stevens, named in honor of Alexander
Hamilton, principal co-author of the Federalist Papers.

One of the South's leading generals, Joseph E. Johnston, was
the grand-nephew of Patrick Henry. The Confederate
Ambassador to England was James Mason, the grandson of
Virginia statesman George Mason, and for a while the
Confederacy's secretary of war was George Randolph, the
grandson of Thomas Jefferson. Accompanying Lee at
Appomattox Courthouse was Lt. Colonel Charles Marshall, the
grandson of U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John
Marshall, who served in that office from 1801 to 1835, and
who was also a colonel in the Continental Army during the
Revolutionary War. There are many other Intimate familial
and philosophical associations that bind the two wars
together.

In securing the services of Lee and the secession of
Virginia the Confederate rebellion attained a much needed
"legitimacy," heretofore denied it. After all, four of the
nation's first five presidents were Slave owning Virginians:
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe.

Soon the Confederate capital was moved from Montgomery, Alabama, to
Richmond, Virginia and, because of its strategic location,
during the four years of war sixty percent of all the
battles were fought on the blood-soaked soil of Virginia.

But Lincoln hardly had the time to bemoan the losses of Lee
and Virginia. He now had to concentrate his attention on
doing what, for him, was the most unpleasant thing
imaginable, to wage war against one's fellow citizens.

At the time of his loss of Lee, Lincoln could not forsee
that he would soon be gaining the loyal service of a
different kind of "soldier," a warrior who graduated from
the "academy" of adversity and who, like the president had
taught himself how to read and write with such eloquence
that all who knew him stood in awe of his talents and
tenacity.

This man was none other than "Frederick Douglass".

The slave, who had become the leading black author and orator of his time. His personal demeanor and towering accomplishments were living proof of the absolute absurdity of the idea of racial inferiority.

The first major battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Bull
Run, occurred on July 21, 1861, and was fought in Manassas,
Virginia. The battle was a decisive Confederate victory. It
served notice to the North that a long and costly war was
ahead. It also raised from obscurity a little-known
Virginia Military Institute instructor who would become a
legend in his own lifetime, General Thomas "Stonewall"
Jackson. The general acquired his nickname because of his
performance in the battle and although Jackson would die
during the midpoint of the war, in May, 1863, from wounds
accidentally inflected by his own men, he would become the
South's second most celebrated soldier, Lee being
unquestionably the first.


#7


The following month, Frederick Douglass wrote an editorial entitled "Fighting Rebels With Only One Hand," which appeared in his own periodical, Douglass' Monthly. In the
article he chided the Union government for its absurd "white
man's war only" posture:

.."What upon earth is the matter with the American government
and people? Do they really covert the world's ridicule as
well as their own social and political ruin? What are they
thinking about, or don't they condescend to think at all.
So, indeed, it would seem from their blindness in dealing
with the tremendous issue now upon them.

He continued:

"Our President, governors, generals are calling, with almost
frantic Vehemence, for men; "men! men! men! send us men!"
they scream, or the cause of the Union is gone; . . . and
yet these very officers, representing the people and
government, steadily and persistently refuse to receive the
very class of men which have a deeper interest in the defeat
and humiliation of the rebels, than all others ... Why does
the government reject the Negro? Is he not a man? Can he
not wield a sword, fire a gun, march and countermarch, and
obey orders like any other?

He concluded his comments with the following remark:

"If persons so humble as we can be allowed to speak to the
President of the United States, we should ask him if this
dark and terrible hour of the nation's extremity is a time
for consulting a mere vulgar and unnatural prejudice. We
would tell him that this is no time to fight with one hand,
when both are needed; that this is no time to fight only
with your white hand, and allow your black hand to remain
tied. When the government continues to refuse the aid of
colored men, thus alienating them from the national cause,
and giving the rebels the advantage of them it will not
deserve better fortunes than it has thus far experienced".

On April 16, 1862, Congress abolished slavery in Washington,
D. C. It was a great source of embarrassment, particularly
for strident abolitionists, that for the first full year of
the war, the nation's capitol was a slave-holding community.


Frederick Douglass seized the moment and constantly pressed the president to throw the full weight of his authority
behind the idea that the war must be expanded beyond
Lincoln's limitations. Douglass frequently grew frustrated
by the presidents cautiousness and in his annual Fourth of
July Speech of 1862 he railed against Mr. Lincoln for
refusing to take the bold step of saying the principal war
aim was not to reunite the Union but to "...destroy slavery". In
that address he said:

Jefferson Davis is a powerful man, but Jefferson Davis has
no such power to blast the hope and break down the strong
heart of the nation, as that Possessed in exercised by
Abraham Lincoln. We have a right to hold Abraham Lincoln
sternly responsible for any disaster or failure attending to
the suppression of this rebellion.

Lincoln was quick to react to Douglass's vituperation
because he Personally felt exactly the same passion but,
unlike Douglass, he was an elected politician who was
restrained by rules of law and the fear of losing his
moderate constituency of supporters if he appeared to be the
captive of the fire-eater abolitionist element of his party.


Nonetheless, on July 22, 1862, he presented to his cabinet a
"secret" draft of a Proclamation of Emancipation.

Secretary of State Seward advised the president to wait for
a major battlefield victory before announcing his intention
to ..."end slavery". This was very wise advice indeed, because of in late August 1862, the Confederates decisively defeated the Union Army at the Second Battle of Bull Run, paving the way for the South's first counter-invasion of the North, which would culminate at Sharpsburg, Maryland, at the Battle
of Antietam.

The Davis Cabinet, and most members of his military high
command, Knew that the South's spirited resistance to north
assault could last only for so long, absent of foreign
assistance. Both England and France, less dependent on
southern cotton than the South thought, were being
aggressively courted by the Confederacy to come to its aid.
And in London and Paris the Union's Ambassador was trying to
dissuade such intervention. Interestingly, the Union
Ambassador to Great Britain was Charles Francis Adams, son
of President John Quincy Adams. And, as stated earlier, his
counterpart representing the interests of the Confederacy
was Ambassador James Mason, grandson of the pre-eminent
Virginia statesman, George Mason.

The South was convinced that a decisive Confederate victory
in Maryland, so near Washington, D. C., would not only
bring the state (with its many southern sympathizes) into
Confederacy, but would also cam the much-desired European
recognition as well. Thus, on the morning of September 17,
1862, the Battle of Antietam began. At dusk the day end
with the final firing of shot and then and is recorded as
the single bloodiest day in all of American history. Nearly
30,000 soldiers fell. Many of the survivors were so badly
wounded that they died only a few days later.


#8


Technically speaking, the Battle of Antietam ended in a
draw. Lee was able to retreat successfully across the
Potomac with his army intact, and his adversary, George B.
McClellan, chose not to follow in pursuit. Had he done so,
most students of the battle believe that Lee's army would
have been caught and crushed and perhaps the war ended right
then and there. As it was, Lee and his men would live on to
fight for nearly three more long and bitter years.

As we have seen President Lincoln was an astute politician,
perhaps the finest this nation has ever produced. He saw
the Battle of Antietam not as a 'draw' but as a Union
victory. And now he had the battlefield victory that Seward
said he needed in order to ..."free the slaves".


Five days after Antietam, Lincoln refined his Preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation and on September 22 he announced that it was
designed to enter into effect on January 1, 1863. It soon
became obvious that the Preliminary Proclamation contributed
to a Republican party disaster at the polls in the fall
elections of 1862. Democrats in the North were deeply
disturbed by Lincoln's harsh war measures, especially his
use of "unwarranted" martial law and military arrests and
trials. However, black emancipation meant much more to them
as an issue; it was simply too much for them to absorb and
thus they campaigned tirelessly against the president and
his party. They employed "Negro-phobia" without limit and
frightened war-weary northerners with the notion that their
region of the country would become saturated with black
refugees once the war was over. As a consequence of this
racially inflamed campaigning, the North's five most
populous states--all of which had voted for Lincoln in
1860--now returned Democratic majorities to Capitol Hill.
Although the Republican party retained control of Congress,
the future looked bad for the upcoming presidential election
in 1864.

Most Republicans, including the president himself,
acknowledged That the Proclamation was a significant factor
in the massive Republican defeats. But Lincoln told a
delegation from his home state Of Kentucky that he would
rather die than retract a single word in his Proclamation.
Mr. Lincoln had greatly pleased his ..."principal black ally".


In a speech, Frederick Douglass said: "From a genuine
abolition view, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and
indifferent, but measuring him by the sentiment of his
country--a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to
consult--he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined."


Now the two men were as one and would proceed to fight the
war together to its brutal and bitter end. On New Year's
Day, 1863, the president officially signed the final
Emancipation Proclamation in the White House. He informed
everyone in attendance that he was completely confident in
what he was doing. "If my name ever goes into history," he
said, "let it be for this act."

Clearly, Frederick Douglass had won his private "war" (which
he had been waging from the beginning) against Lincoln's
vacillations and trepidations and now he would employ all
..."the resources at his command to help the president win the war against the south".

The CivilWar can be divided into distinct halves. The first
half, from April 12, 1861, until December 31, 1862, was the
"reunification of the Union"; from January 1, 1863, through
April 9, 1865, was the "crusade against slavery." Frederick
Douglass, more so than any other American white or black,
made the second half happen and it was during that period that the war was finally won.

Douglass, now set about traveling the country raising units of black soldiers to be trained to fight in the Union Amy. Sumner and other
abolitionists had joined in urging Lincoln to see the
military reasons (to overcome the staggering Union manpower
losses) and the morale reasons (to permit blacks to fight
for their own freedom) for using black troops.

Douglass, helped to raise the 54th Massachusetts Regiment,
the "first black Union unit". Two of his sons served in the regiment, which was commanded by "Colonel Robert Gould Shaw", the son of a wealthy and politically well-connected
abolitionist from Boston.

The 54th Massachusetts distinguished itself in the Battle of Fort Wagner on July 18, 1863, which saw the deaths of half the regiment
including its courageous young commander.


The movie "Glory" does an excellent job in memorializing this event in the year, on May 1, 1863, the Confederate Congress declared that black men bearing Union arms and wearing Union uniforms, if captured, would be subject to the law of the state where
they were caught and treated as "insurrectionary slaves/contraband" (*The millitary still uses this disparaging defintion for illegal items) and would be punished by death. The same punishment would also apply to white officers of black units since they would be found guilty for inciting "insurrectionary rebellion."


Frederick Douglass was loud in his denunciation of this
latest expression on of slaveholding barbarism and President
Lincoln wanted to counter the Confederate move because he
knew how difficult it would be for Douglass to recruit more
black soldiers if it appeared that they would not be
protected by the Union government. So, on July 30, 1863,
Lincoln signed an order requiring that "for every soldier of
the United States killed in violation of the law of war, a
rebel soldier shall be executed."


#9


The year 1863 represented a turing point in the war on all
fronts. The twin Union victories at Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania, and Vicksburg, Mississippi were devastating
losses from which southern forces never Fully recovered. The
following year on March 12, 1864, saw the ascendancy of
General Ulysses S. Grant to the position of commander in
chief of the Union Army in the field. Grant was no military
romantic-to him war was hell. Grant's rise to leadership
meant that whatever remained of chivalry would soon be
replaced by a policy of "victory by any means necessary."
Grant inaugurated a war of attrition. He frequently said,
"Our side has more bodies than their side has bullets; my
arithmetic says we will." With this type of mentality, the
list of casualties continued to grow at even higher rates.
Most northerners were losing their morale and their will to
win at any Cost. "Was it worth it?" many asked. Some
responded, "No, not at all." As a consequence, a northern
"Peace Party" was formed to challenge Lincoln in the 1864
presidential election. The Peace Party's leader and
presidential candidate was Lincoln's disgruntled former
field commander, General McClellan.

The president, always a moody man, was easily prone to slip
into deep depression and paralytic melancholy. He
considered it a very good possibility that he would lose his
bid for re-election. If so, what then would happen to his
one single personal and professional triumph, the
Emancipation Proclamation? Would his successor remove it?
Would the war terminate with the Union permanently torn
asunder? These grave matters prolonged the president's
agony and despair.

Fortunately for Lincoln, Grant was a "fighting" general.
Military pomp and pageantry was wasteful to him, war was an
ugly business that had to be done quickly and completely,
leaving the enemy no opportunity to recover. In May, 1864,
Grant began his assault upon Richmond with the Battle of the
Virginia Wilderness and the Battle of Cold Harbor fought in
early June. By mid-June he was attacking the formidably
fortified city of Petersburg, Virginia, the "shield" of the
Confederate capitol. Lee was a brilliant defensive
commander, but he was desperate. He knew Grant would not
retreat but would continue, regardless of his manpower
losses, to press on and on until final victory was secured.
Lee communicated his concerns to President Davis, Attempting
to prepare his commander in chief for the inevitable.

During the Spring of 1865, no major battles were fought. The
whole South was reeling from military defeats, desertion,
disease, and the impending since of doom. The hundreds of
thousands of homeless and dispossessed choked the roadways
trying to find food, safety, and shelter amidst the scorched
ruins of their own communities.

Question:

1. Where was the United States getting there funding from during this "war campaign" against the "filthy rich, white-cotton southerns"?
   
2. How was the "South" losing with "more money" and "more manpower

"?

Militarily, the Union's final focus was on the capture of Richmond; politically, the Lincoln administration was beginning to develop policies for
dealing the ravaged and defeated South during the post-war
period of Union military occupation and political and social
reconstruction.

Grant's siege upon Petersburg, lasting for nearly a year,
came to an end on April 2 when the South's last citadel
finally fell. The following day, Richmond capitulated.
Partly as a testament to Frederick Douglass's influence with
the Lincoln administration (and because of their own
stalwart sacrifices and service) black soldiers secured from
their white officers the special privilege of being the
first Union troops to enter the captured Confederate
capital. The specific unit that led the entrance was the
Fifth Massachusetts Calvary commanded by Colonel Charles
Francis Adams, who was a boyhood friend of Robert Gould Shaw
and a member of the famous Adams family that had produced
two presidents of the United States. In all, nearly 200,000 blacks served in the Union Army and approximately 40,000
were killed in battle.

In only two years of fighting, twenty-eight black warriors won the nation's most covered military tribute, the Congressional Medal of Honor, and many other black soldiers were awarded other combat decorations.

On April 9, 1865, certainly the most significant moment in
all of American history, General Lee surrendered his troops
to General Grant. Fortunately for the country, Lee and
Grant-who had great respect for each other-were officers and
gentlemen of the highest order. They intuitively knew that
at Appomattox Courthouse they were truly functioning as the
nation in small and thus they hoped that their fellow
countrymen would follow their examples. The war of five
Aprils had come to a costly end. Approximately 700,000
Americans had died in only four years. The North celebrated
in wild jubilation while the South wept and reflected upon
the the finality of its failure to become an independent
nation.

On April 14, while attending a performance of Our American
Cousin at Washington's Ford's Theatre, the president was
shot by an accomplished Shakespearean actor named John
Wilkes Booth, who saw in the role of Cassius from
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Hours before he murdered the
president, he said to his fellow conspirators the famous
line enunciated by Cassius after Caesar is slain:


#10

..."How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over,
In states unborn and accents yet unknown".

In his perverted line of logic, Booth saw himself as a loyal
southern patriot who had saved the nation from a tyrant. How
could the man be a tyrant who ended his second Inaugural
Address (delivered only a few weeks before his
assassination) with the soothing words, "Let three be malice
none, charity for all"?

Frederick Douglass would live for thirty years beyond
Lincoln's Death. During that time he held several important
positions in the federal government and in his retirement he
was frequently invited to speak on his special relationship
with Lincoln and his role in leading the Union to victory.


Douglass took pride in saying that although he argued with
and occasionally attacked the president, he never once
considered abandoning him or his social agenda, even when Mr. Lincoln would articulate the idea, odious to most blacks, of returning them to Africa, feeling that their removal was the only real solution to resolving racial
animosity. Of corse Douglass would have none of this.

He reminded Lincoln in stern language that this was "our country too. We've worked it, we love it, and we fought and
died in the tens of thousands to save it."

On April 14, 1876, the eleventh anniversary of the
president's Assassination, a stature of Abraham Lincoln was
unveiled in Lincoln Park in the nation's capital. The
memorial's founder was Charlotte Scott, a former slave from
Virginia who had donated five dollars from her first
earnings as a free citizen to erect a monument to The Great
Emancipator.


The fitting featured speaker at the ceremony,
who lived only a few blocks from the Lincoln Park, was
Frederick Douglass.

In attendance were president Grant, members of both houses of Congress, Supreme Court justices, and representatives from the diplomatic corps.

As usual Douglass gave a stirring speech, recounting his association
with the former president. It was a magnificent and
masterly tribute. Later that evening, he mentioned to his
daughter, Rosetta, that that day was the most important in
his life. To be chosen to unveil the statue honoring the
man who brought freedom to black people and victory to the
Union was an honor Douglass felt he would never equal.

Frederick Douglass died in 1895 at the age of seventy-eight.


The following year the *(1896) U. S. Supreme Court, in its Plessy
v. Ferguson ruling, upheld the "Jim Crow," separate but
equal laws that had become commonplace throughout the
de-militarized, post-reconstruction South. Had Douglass
lived another year he would have been deeply pained by the
decision but proud of Justice John Harlan's eloquent
dissent:

There is no caste here. Our Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens... the
law regards man as man. and takes no account of his
surroundings or his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.

This controversial ruling would not be reversed until 1954,
the centennial year of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, when the
Court deeded in Brown v. the Board of Education, Topeka,
Kansas, that segregation in public schools was
unconstitutional.

The Brown decision sired the "second" civil war, better
known as the Civil Rights Movement, which would complete the
task that the first Civil War had begun. The Frederick
Douglass of the second civil war was Martin Luther King, a
man of vision and valor, who often likened himself to his
heroic forerunner. The golden moment of the Civil Rights
Movement came when King gave his celebrated "I Have A Dream"
speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963,
marking the hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation
Proclamation. Thus, the work of Frederick Douglass had
begun a century before was slowly coming to fruition.

END

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_citizenship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pater_familias

peace be upon you