From Safire, William (1997), Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History,
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY. pgs 585-591 (ISBN-0-393-04005-4)
Fredrick Douglass Cuts Through The Lincoln Myth To Consider The Man
"He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and
his truth was based upon this knowledge."
When police tried to prevent former slave Fredrick Douglass from attending
the inaugural reception in 1865, President Lincoln went to the door and
said, "Here comes my friend Douglass." Later, Douglass was to observe,
"In all my interviews with Mr. Lincoln I was impressed with his entire
freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race."
The tall, articulate Douglass was the leading black abolitionist
for the generation preceding the Civil War. A fugitive slave himself,
he used his lecture fees to aid others; he raised money for John Brown,
though he opposed that fiery abolitionist's Harper Ferry raid; during the
war, he recruited Negroes for the Union Army. The leading spokesman
for what later became known as the black community often had to repress
his emotions and bite his tongue, although - in a passage once quoted by
Clarence Thomas - he cried, "Oh! Had I the ability and could I reach
the nation's ear, I would today put out a fiery stream of biting ridicule.
. . and stern reproach. . . We need the storm, the whirlwind and
the earthquake."
In 1876, Douglass was asked to speak at the dedication
of the Freedmen's Monument in Washington, D.C., in a ceremony attended
by President U.S. Grant and all the capital's notables. The sculptor
had expressed a familiar theme: the Great Emancipator standing over a kneeling
black, who was gazing at him in gratitude. Douglass chose not
to give the usual Lincoln encomium, to join the line of those creating
the Lincoln myth. He gave an assessment that shocked the Republicans
present, who were trying to forget their 1860 priority of union over abolition;
speaking to the whites present as you and the blacks as we,
he dared point out that Lincoln was not "either our man or our model. .
. He was preeminently the white man's president. . . " Douglass's
speech reads well today; he was one of the lone observers in a century
that followed who saw Lincoln without tears -- as a man and politician,
not as a martyred saint.
William Safire
. . . Fellow citizens, in what we have said and done today, and in
what we may say and do hereafter, we disclaim everything like arrogance
and assumption. We claim for ourselves no superior devotion to the
character, history, and memory of the illustrious name whose monument we
have here dedicated today. We fully comprehend the relation of Abraham
Lincoln both to ourselves and to the white people of the United States.
Truth is proper and beautiful at all times and in all places, and it is
never more proper and beautiful in any case than when speaking of a great
public man whose example is likely to be commended for honor and imitation
long after his departure to the solemn shades, the silent continents of
eternity. It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit, even here
in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, Abraham
Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our
model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought,
and in his prejudices, he was a white man.
He was preeminently the white man's president, entirely
devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at
any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone,
and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the
welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education
and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the
presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the
extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy
had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests
of his own race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the
states where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other
president to draw the sword of the nation. He was ready to execute
all the supposed guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor
of the slave system anywhere inside the slave states. He was willing
to pursue, recapture, and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and
to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty master were already
in arms against the government. The race to which we belong were
not the special objects of his consideration. Knowing this, I concede
to you, my white fellow citizens, a preeminence in this worship at once
full and supreme. First, midst, and last, you and yours were the
objects of his deepest affection and his most earnest solicitude.
You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best only his
stepchildren - children by adoption, children by force of circumstances
and necessity. To you it especially belongs to sound his praises,
to preserve and perpetuate his memory, to multiply his statues, to hang
his pictures high upon your walls, and commend his example, for to you
he was a great and glorious friend and benefactor. Instead of supplanting
you at this altar, we would exhort you to build high his monuments; let
them be of the most costly material, of the most cunning workmanship; let
their forms be symmetrical, beautiful, and perfect; let their bases be
upon solid rocks, and their summits lean against the unchanging blue, overhanging
sky, and let them endure forever! But while in the abundance of your
wealth, and in the fullness of your just and patriotic devotion, you do
all this, we entreat you to despise not the humble offering we this day
unveil to view; for while Abraham Lincoln saved for you a country, he delivered
us from a bondage, according to Jefferson, one hour of which was worse
than ages of the oppression your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose.
Fellow citizens, ours is no newborn zeal and devotion
- merely a thing of this moment. The name of Abraham Lincoln was
near and dear to our hearts in the darkest and most perilous hours of the
Republic. We were no more ashamed of him when shrouded in clouds
of darkness, of doubt, and defeat than when we saw him crowned with victory,
honor, and glory. Our faith in him was often taxed and strained to
the uttermost, but it never failed. When he tarried long in the mountain;
when he strangely told us that we were the cause of the war; when he still
more strangely told us to leave the land in which we were born; when he
refused to employ our arms in defense of the Union; when, after accepting
our services as colored soldiers, he refused to retaliate our murder and
torture as colored prisoners; when he told us he would save the Union if
he could with slavery; when he revoked the Proclamation of Emancipation
of General Fremont; when he refused to remove the popular commander of
the Army of the Potomac, in the days of its inaction and defeat, who was
more zealous in his efforts to protect slavery than to suppress rebellion;
when we saw all this, and more, we were at times grieved, stunned, and
greatly bewildered; but our hearts believed while they ached and bled.
Nor was this, even at that time, a blind and unreasoning superstition.
Despite the mist and haze that surrounded him; despite the tumult, the
hurry, and confusion of the hour, we were able to take a comprehensive
view of Abraham Lincoln, and to make reasonable allowance for the circumstances
of his position. . .
Though he loved Caesar less than Rome, though the Union
was more to him than our freedom or 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; under his wise and beneficent rule, and
by measures approved and vigorously pressed by him, we saw that the handwriting
of ages, in the form of prejudice and proscription, was rapidly fading
away from the face of our whole country; under his rule, and in due time,
about as soon after all as the country could tolerate the strange spectacle,
we saw our brave sons and brothers laying off the rags of bondage, and
being clothed all over in the blue uniforms of the soldiers of the United
States; under his rule we saw two hundred thousand of our dark and dusky
people responding to the call of Abraham Lincoln, and with muskets on their
shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their high footsteps to
liberty and union under the national flag; under his rule we saw the independence
of the black republic of Hati, the special object of slaveholding aversion
and horror, fully recognized, and her minister, a colored gentleman, duly
received here in the city of Washington; under his rule we saw the internal
slave trade, which so long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery
abolished in the District of Columbia; under his rule we saw for the first
time the law enforced against the foreign slave trade, and the first slave
trader hanged like any other pirate or murderer; under his rule, assisted
by the greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration, we saw the Confederate
States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves, and slaves forever,
battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds; under his rule, and
in the fullness of time, we saw Abraham Lincoln, after giving the slaveholders
three months' grace in which to save their hateful slave system, penning
the immortal paper, which, though special in its language, was general
in its principles and effect, making slavery forever impossible in the
United States. Though we waited long, we saw all this and more. .
.
I have said that President Lincoln was a white man and
shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race.
Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled
to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down
as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American
people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely
through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things:
first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and second, to
free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the
other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation
of his loyal fellow countrymen. Without this primary and condition
to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless.
Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union,
he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American
people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from
the genuine abolition ground, 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.
Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white
fellow countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that
in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery. The man who
could say, "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge
of war shall soon pass away, yet if God wills it continue till all the
wealth piled by two hundred years of bondage shall have been wasted, and
each drop of blood drawn by the lash shall have been paid for by one drawn
by the sword, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether,"
gives all needed proof of his feeling on the subject of slavery.
He was willing, while the South was loyal, that it should have its pound
of flesh, because he thought that it was so nominated in the bond; but
farther than this no earthly power could make him go.
Fellow citizens, whatever else in this world may be partial,
unjust, and uncertain, time, time! is impartial, just, and certain in its
action. In the realm of mind, as well as in the realm of matter,
it is a great worker, and often works wonders. The honest and comprehensive
statesman, clearly discerning the needs of his country, and earnestly endeavoring
to do this whole duty, though covered and blistered with reproaches, may
safely leave his course to the silent judgment of time. Few great
public men have ever been the victims of fiercer denunciation than Abraham
Lincoln was during his administration. He was often wounded in the
house of his friends. Reproaches came thick and fast upon him from
within and from without, and from opposite quarters. He was assailed
by abolitionists; he was assailed by slaveholders; he was assailed by the
men who were for peace at any price; he was assailed by those who were
for a more vigorous prosecution of the war; he was assailed for not making
the war an abolition war; and he was most bitterly assailed for making
the war an abolition war.
But now behold the change: the judgment of the present
hour, that taking him for all in all, measuring the tremendous magnitude
of the work before him, considering the necessary means to ends, and surveying
the end from the beginning, infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into
the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln. . .
Upon his inauguration as president of the United States,
an office, even where assumed under the most favorable conditions, fitted
to tax and strain the largest abilities, Abraham Lincoln was met by a tremendous
crisis. He was called upon not merely to administer the government
but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.
A formidable rebellion rose in his path before him; the
Union was already practically dissolved; his country was torn and rent
asunder at the center. Hostile armies were already organized against
the Republic, armed with the munitions of war which the Republic had provided
for its own defense. The tremendous question for him to decide was
whether his country should survive the crisis and flourish, or be dismembered
and perish. His predecessor in office had already decided the question
in favor of national dismemberment, by denying to it the right of self-defense
and self-preservation - a right which belongs to the meanest insect.
Happily for the country, happily for you and for me, the
judgment of James Buchanan, the patrician, was not the judgment of Abraham
Lincoln, the plebeian. He brought his strong common sense, sharpened
in the school of adversity, to bear upon the question. He did not
hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter; but at once resolved that
at whatever peril, at whatever cost, the union of the states should be
preserved. A patriot himself, his faith was strong and unwavering
in the patriotism of his countrymen. Timid men said before Mr. Lincoln's
inauguration, that we had seen the last president of the United States.
A voice in influential quarters said, "Let the Union slide." Some
said that a Union maintained by the sword was worthless. Others said
a rebellion of eight million cannot be suppressed; but in the midst of
all this tumult and timidity, and against all this, Abraham Lincoln was
clear in his duty, and had an oath in heaven. He calmly and bravely
heard the voice of doubt and fear all around him; but he had an oath in
heaven, and there was not power enough on the earth to make this honest
boatman, backwoodsman, and broad-handed splitter of rails evade or violate
that sacred oath. he had not been schooled in the ethics of slavery;
his plain life had favored his love of truth. He had not been taught
that treason and perjury were the proof of honor and honesty. His
moral training was against his saying one thing when he meant another.
The trust which Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising
and grand, but it was also enlightened and well founded. He knew
the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was
based upon this knowledge. . .
Fellow citizens, I end, as I began, with congratulations.
We have done a good work for our race today. In doing honor to the
memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to
ourselves and those who come after us; we have been fastening ourselves
to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending
ourselves from a blighting scandal. When now it shall be said that
the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or
benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and
it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we
may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory
of Abraham Lincoln.
