FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO “A FRIEND IN ENGLAND”

Boston[, Mass.,] U.S. 7 March 1862.
“I am very much cheered this morning by the anti-slavery signs of the
times. For the last six weeks clouds and darkness have seemed to over-
hang the immediate future of our cause. The policy of the Government
at Washington seemed to aim at repressing all anti slavery sentiment at
the North, and so to manage the war as that slavery should receive no
detriment. This policy is distinctly abandoned in a message just read be-
fore Congress from the President, calling upon Congress to co-operate
with any of the Slave States in measures for gradual emancipation.¹In late 1861 and early 1862, President Lincoln proposed a plan for the compensated emancipation of slaves in Kentucky, Delaware, Missouri, and Maryland. The federal government would order the freeing of slaves and compensate each slave owner monetarily. This plan, the first suggestion of emancipation by the Lincoln administration, was met with opposition from two sides. Slave owners in the border states did not want to release their slaves, and Northern abolitionists argued that slaves should be freed immediately and without compensation. Delaware was the first state to reject the compensated emancipation plan, though it was put in operation in the District of Columbia and other federal territories. Boston , 18 July 1862; Fladeland, “Compensated Emancipation,” 169-86. The President has presented the subject in the mildest possible terms, but all
the more on that account do I trust to the radical character of his views
concerning the necessity for putting away our great American abomination. I consider that we have fairly reached the turning point of the moral
struggle involved in this terrible war. If, as I believe, the stern rebukes
which have reached us from your side of the sea—though, in some in-
stances, only based upon a partial view of the facts—have contributed to
this result, we ought to thank you for the chastisement, however grievous.

"I am here (Boston),”²In early February 1862, Frederick Douglass delivered a lecture, “The Black Man’s Future in the Southern States,” at the Tremont Temple in Boston for the Emancipation League. It was the first of three speeches he gave for the league, the other two coming on 12 and 19 February. ., 17 January 1862. in the service of a new association for the abolition of slavery, sprung up out of the demands of the hour, called the
Emancipation League.³Boston’s Emancipation League was formed in November 1861 to promote abolition as a war aim. Several of the founders, such as Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison, were alarmed at the Lincoln administration’s recalcitrance on the issue of slavery and wanted to change public sentiment in favor of emancipation. The league began a lecture series that included speakers such as Frederick Douglass and Orestes Brownson. The league added a call for enlisting black Union soldiers in 1862 and 1863. It frequently criticized the Lincoln’ administration for failing to win the war quickly and criticized Union generals who were not fervent in their support for black troops while pushing for changes in military strategy. ., 17 January 1862; New York , 26 May 1863; Phillip S. Foner ed., (Chicago, 1999), 474; McPherson, , 80. Its object is to act directly upon congress by the
arguments supplied by the war in favour of the entire abolition of slavery. The men most deeply interested in the association⁴Though Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison were prominent among the founders of the Emancipation League, less well-known abolitionists led the organization. George Keely Radcliffe was elected the league’s first president, and Michael C. Teel and Oliver J. Gerrish were elected vice presidents. Radcliffe published Charles Sumner’s speech in favor of emancipation and circulated it among Union soldiers from Massachusetts in 1861. , 10 November, 27 December 1861; Foner, , 474; McPherson, , 80. are those who did most to effect the exclusion of slavery from Kansas. They are mostly of the republican party; but more in earnest for the abolition of slavery than the great body of that organisation. They are sending me to certain large
towns in this State, to rouse the people to the work of making this war an
abolition war. Oh! [F]or the bondman’s release. I want more than I can ex-
press to live to see it. I may not live to see slavery abolished in all the Slave
States, but I do hope to see it abolished in my native State of Maryland; for
if slavery is abolished in the district of Columbia,⁵Because of the division of powers between the state and national governments under the U.S. Constitution, the federal government in 1862 could not force emancipation on loyal slave states such as Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware. Most Northern Republicans and abolitionists, however, believed that the national government could undertake emancipation in federal territories with an act of Congress. With Republican majorities, the Senate and House approved a bill on 16 April 1862, emancipating all slaves in the District of Columbia. Despite abolitionist criticism, this bill contained a clause providing monetary compensation for slave owners in the federal territory. The bill was passed over the opposition of nearly every Democratic senator and congressman. Lib., 25 April 1862; McPherson, , 97; idem, (New
York, 1988), 506. as it now seems likely
to be, it cannot continue long in Maryland.”

PLf: London Inquirer, 29 March 1862.