(9azzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzi of 11)
In contradiction to books, articles, essays, research papers and academy links in the previous two messages regarding Abraham Lincoln, we must get to the heart of the matter horses mouth of someone who knew the happenings of those times, Republican Fredrick Douglass.In April 1861, Douglass labeled Lincoln’s first inaugural address as “a weak and inappropriate utterance” that announced “complete loyalty to slavery in the slave States” and denied “all feeling against slavery.” And in September 1862, when writing about the president’s August 1862 meeting with black clergyman from Chicago, during which Lincoln had aggressively promoted colonization [shipping all blacks to Central America and/or Africa]...
In late 1862, When Lincoln asked Douglass to “state what I [Douglass] regarded as the … most disheartening feature in our present political and military situation,” the black abolitionist responded, “It would be the tardy, hesitating, vacillating policy of the President of the United States.” As Douglass recalled the exchange, Lincoln allowed that he might seem slow, but that he could not be accused of vacillation. “I think
it cannot be shown that when I have once taken a position, I have ever retreated from it.” Douglass later recalled that he regarded this “as the most significant point in what he said during our interview.” [Lincoln was telling the truth that he was not for abolishing slavery and would never do so unless it served another higher imperative.]“In politics Mr. Lincoln told the truth when he said he had ‘always hated slavery as much as any Abolitionist’ but I do not know that he deserved a great deal of credit for that for his hatred of oppression & wrong in all its forms was constitutional – he could not help it,” wrote Attorney Samuel C. Parks, a longtime friend of Abraham Lincoln.
Contemporary Robert H. Browne recalled Abraham Lincoln telling him in 1854: “The slavery question often bothered me as far back as 1836-40. I was troubled and grieved over it; but the after the annexation of Texas I gave it up, believing as I now do, that God will settle it, and settle it right, and that he will, in some inscrutable way, restrict the spread of so great an evil; but for the present it is our duty to wait.”
In 1865, Frederick Douglass eulogized Lincoln as “emphatically the black man’s president,” but in 1876 at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial, Frederick Douglass said, “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. [this contradicts what Robert H. Browne said about Lincoln, and reminds us that those in the North spoke a good game by acted out a different game. Lincoln and Northerners were not against slavery, only the extension of slavery. This position had nothing to do with doing the right thing, but everything to do with their power struggle with the South for control of the United States.] 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 forces 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 his 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.”
“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.”
Parts of this speech also referenced in the December 1980 article, A Black Citizen’s Appraisal Of The President.
Clearly Frederick Douglass' speech was carefully tempered because he was speaking in front of a bunch of mob mentality white folks. Douglass, like Booker T. Washington, knew how to say what black people needed to hear and what white people wanted to hear, compared to Lincoln who said what black people wanted to hear and did what white people needed to be done, especially what the elite whites wanted and needed even if at the expense of many other whites who were and are intended to forever be on the short end of equality and the drone worker bees stealing and wasting milk and honey from all lands, humans and other creations of nature.
Further information: abraham lincoln views on equality
