The President and the Freedom Fighter by Brian Kilmeade

Author:Brian Kilmeade [Kilmeade, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

PROPOSAL NOT ACCEPTED

Though Frederick Douglass knew nothing about Lincoln’s July 22 meeting, he had plenty to say about a small, invitation-only gathering at the White House on August 14, 1862. Of the five Black guests, none was a well-known abolitionist or a man of national stature; four had been enslaved and not all could read and write. Even so, the meeting was unprecedented. No president had ever summoned a “Deputation of Negroes,” as Lincoln called it, to talk about a matter of national interest.

Though he did not utter the word, emancipation was the great weight that burdened Lincoln’s thoughts. If he were to free the enslaved, would his war strategy collapse like a house of cards? He understood that, as one senator told his brethren in the Capitol, “There is a very great aversion . . . [to] having free negroes come among us.”20 Northern citizens who feared that freedmen would take their jobs and marry their daughters might reject such a change. Could emancipation lead to another secession? The departure of even one border state might just tip the balance in favor of the Confederacy.

After he shook hands with his Black guests, Lincoln began to talk about the relocation of people of African descent to other countries. This wasn’t going to be an exchange of ideas about colonization—“I do not propose to discuss this,” he told his guests—but he wished to present a plan. And he wanted their cooperation.

As he rarely did, Lincoln talked at and down to his guests. “You and we are different races. . . . Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason why we should be separated. . . .

“The institution of Slavery,” he continued, has “evil effects on the white race. See our present condition—the country engaged in war!—our white men cutting one another’s throats. . . . But for your race among us there would not be war.”

Lincoln offered a proposal. He wanted a vanguard of African American volunteers, prominent men and their families, to pack up and leave. He hoped their departure would launch an exodus. “I want you to let me know whether this can be done.” It would be, he concluded, “for the good of mankind.”

His words were met by a stunned silence.

As the men rose to leave, one of them, a minister, promised to “hold a consultation and in a short time give an answer” to Lincoln’s proposal.

“Take your full time,” Lincoln replied, “no hurry at all.”21

The audience ended, but a reporter from the New-York Tribune in attendance produced a full transcript of the meeting, and as Lincoln had hoped, many newspapers published in full what he had said. His words were a message intended to mollify a very much larger audience of White men.

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