letter to Miss E.V. Brown,⁵Emma V. Brown (c. 1843-1902), born Emmeline Victoria Brown in Georgetown, D.C., was an educator. Her parents were John Mifflin Brown, a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Emmeline Brown, a dressmaker. She attended Miss Myrtilla Miner’s School for Colored Girls and distinguished herself as an outstanding student. When Miner was forced to take a leave of absence because of illness, Brown assisted her replacement, Emily Howland, and even ran the school in 1858 when Howland took a leave of absence. Brown enrolled in Oberlin College in February 1860 to continue her education and refine her teaching skills. In June 1861, ongoing health issues, which included severe headaches and insomnia, forced her to leave college early. Her health improved when she returned to Washington, D.C., and in 1862 she opened her own small school and dedicated herself to the education of newly freed slaves. In March 1864, she was offered a teaching position at the newly established black school in Ebenezer Church on Capitol Hill, where she remained until 1869, when her health once again deteriorated. After serving as a clerk in Washington’s Pension Office, teaching in Charleston, South Carolina, and working in Jackson, Mississippi, she returned to Wash- ington, D.C., and became principal of the John F. Cook School. In 1872 she was then named principal of the new Sumner School. She married Henry P. Montgomery, a former slave from Mississippi, in 1879. As a married woman, she could no longer work as a teacher, and she became a corresponding secretary for the Manassas Industrial School in Virginia. Faulkner, , 32; Sterling, , 190-96, 202; , 3:667-68. the corresponding secretary of the Washington Freedman’s Association. She is better able than I to give you direct
information as to what the society has done, is doing, and proposes to do.
When the question of organizing these Freedman’s Associations was first
raised I opposed such organizations, chiefly on the ground that they would
tend to keep alive the hurtful idea that the negro cannot take care of him-
self. And, even now, I insist that these societies ought not to be necessary,
and would not, if the Government and people of the country would only
be just in their dealings with them. These newly-freed people are victim-
ized on every hand.⁶Slavery was abolished in Washington, D.C., in April 1862. Although Congress also repealed the city’s black codes at this time, life remained difficult for freed slaves. During the war, the black population in the nation’s capital soared as fugitive slaves sought refuge in the city. By April 1863, an estimated 10,000 fugitives were in the district, and by the time of Lee’s surrender, the black population had tripled. Although the government and the freedmen’s aid societies attempted to help these freed slaves in officially sponsored camps, many of them were forced to live in shanties, built in alleys that lacked proper facilities for cooking and the disposal of sewage. During this period, despite aid from relief societies, the majority of the free blacks in Washington faced unemployment, poverty, and overcrowding. Robert Harrison, (New York, 2011), 8, 14, 21, 28, 48, 62; Foner, l, 201; Melvin R. Williams, “A Blueprint for Change: The Black Community in Washington, D.C., 1860-1870,” 71/72:371 (1971/1972). Their strong men have been literally swept into the
army, and the weak ones left to endure untold suffering. Heretofore our
Government has hardly paid them money enough to buy the shoes they
march in. Had we justice, we should not need generosity.

“You have said some sharp things in the of the conduct of the
Washington Government, but none too sharp.⁷Probably an unidentified article in the London , a Unitarian weekly newspaper in which Carpenter published regularly. The more you can say of
the swindle by which our Government claims the respect of mankind for
abolishing slavery—at the same time that it is practically re-establishing
that hateful system in Louisiana, under General Banks⁸In January 1863, the Union general Nathaniel P. Banks issued an order regulating black labor in Louisiana. He believed that it would unburden the army from having to care for freed slaves, help restore the state’s economy, and gain support for Reconstruction. His order required blacks to sign a yearly contract with planters for either 5 percent of the profit of the year’s crop or a wage of $3 per month. In turn, the employer was required to provide food and shelter. Once the contract was signed, blacks were prohibited from leaving the plantations unless granted permission by their employers. Furthermore, freedmen who were uncooperative were threatened with arrests and terms of unpaid
labor. Radical Republicans especially criticized Banks for implementing this plan, claiming it resembled slavery too closely. Joseph G. Dawson III, (Baton Rouge, La, 1982). 14; Foner, , 47-50, 54-56.—the better. I
have not readily consented to the claims set up in the name of anti-slavery
for our Government, but I have tried to believe all for the best. My pa-
tience and faith are not very strong now. The treatment of our poor black
soldiers—the refusal to pay them anything like equal compensation,
though it was promised them when they enlisted; the refusal to insist upon
the exchange of coloured prisoners, and to retaliate upon rebel prisoners
when coloured prisoners have been slaughtered in cold blood, although
the President has repeatedly promised thus to protect the lives of his co-
loured soldiers,⁹On 30 July 1863, Lincoln issued an executive order that guaranteed protection for every soldier regardless of color and promised retaliation for the unlawful killing of black soldiers or prisoners of war. Although Douglass and others praised this order, the Lincoln administration never executed a Confederate soldier or placed any of them at hard labor. After the massacre of three hundred black soldiers by rebel forces at Fort Pillow on 12 April 1864, Lincoln gave a speech in Baltimore. He briefly spoke on his resolve to use black soldiers and addressed the question whether his administration was doing its duty to protect them: “Having determined to use the negro as a soldier, there is no way but to give him all the protection giving to any soldier . . . It is a mistake to suppose the government is indifferent to this matter, or is not doing the best it can in regard to it.” He nonetheless remained unwilling to sanction retribution for black soldiers massacred by rebel forces. Abraham Lincoln, “Order of Retaliation, 30 July 1863,” in , ed. Don E,. Fehrenbacher (New York, 1989), 484-85; idem, “Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Maryland, 18 April 1864,” 589-91; McPherson,, 204-05, 215.
have worn my patience quite threadbare. The President
has virtually laid down this as the rule of his statesmen: Do evil by choice,
right from necessity.¹⁰This statement is Douglass’s characterization of Lincoln’s philosophy toward blacks, both in the war and in his proposed plan for Reconstruction. During most of 1864, Douglass criticized the president for not doing enough for blacks serving in the army or those still in slavery. He argued that Lincoln’s desire for leniency and quick readmission to the Union for the rebellious Southern states would interfere with guaranteeing the rights of blacks. His statement written to this English correspondent is the culmination of Douglass’s frustration with Lincoln and represents one of the harshest criticisms he ever made about the president. William C. Harris, (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), 27; Paul Kendrick and Stephen Kendrick, (New York, 2008), 192; Blight, , 182. You will see that he does not sign the bill adopted
by Congress restricting the organization of State Governments only to
those States where there is a loyal majority.¹¹The Wade-Davis bill was a congressional effort to implement a Reconstruction plan before the end of hostilities. Sponsored by the Republicans Henry Winter Davis and Benjamin Wade, this bill, more radical than Lincoln’s proposed Ten Percent Plan, asserted that the restoration of the Union should be executed by Congress rather than the president. The bill supported the “state suicide” theory of Reconstruction, stipulating that 50 percent of eligible voters in a state—measured by those who legally voted in the 1860 presidential election—were required to swear a loyalty oath before a state government could be reestablished. Furthermore, no one who had participated in or supported
the rebellion could vote for delegates to the constitutional convention, and no high-ranking members of the Confederate military or government could vote or hold office under the new state constitution. The bill emancipated all slaves in the Confederacy, and although it did not include black suffrage, it contained guarantees that free blacks would have equality before the law of the Reconstructed Southern governments. The bill passed both houses of Congress on 2 July 1864, but Lincoln pocket vetoed it. His refusal to sign the bill stemmed mainly from his opposition to the clause that emancipated slaves in the Confederacy. He believed such an act would be unconstitutional if made by Congress. Lincoln’s unwillingness to undermine his Reconstruction efforts in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee as well as state-level emancipation movements in border states contributed to his decision to veto the bill. James Oakes, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics (New York, 2007), 148; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 2 vols. (Baltimore, 2008), 2:659-60; McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 245-46; Foner, The Fiery Trial, 301-02.
His plan is to organize such
Governments wherever there is one-tenth of the people loyal!¹²Lincoln introduced his Ten Percent Plan in the Proclamation of General Amnesty and Reconstruction in December 1863. This plan derived from the idea that the rebellion was one of individuals rather than states. Lincoln called for a pardon for most Confederates, excluding high civil and military officials, those who resigned positions in the Union to support the Confederacy, and anyone who had abused Union prisoners of war. When 10 percent of a state’s eligible voters, measured by those who voted in the 1860 presidential election, swore a loyalty oath to the Union, those men would be able to organize a new state government. Lincoln’s plan stipulated that these new state governments had to uphold any acts the executive or Congress made in regard to slavery. Also, states would be required to provide education for the freed slaves, but the president left the question of civil and political rights of blacks for each state to determine. Lincoln issued his Ten Percent Plan as part of the war effort to weaken the Confederacy, secure emancipation, and piece the Union back together as peacefully as possible. Oakes, The Radical and the Republican, 221; McPherson, The Struggle for Equality, 239, 240-41, 245; Foner, The Fiery Trial, 271-72, 302.—an entire
contradiction of the constitutional idea of Republican Government. I see
no purpose on the part of Lincoln and his friends to extend the elective
franchise to the coloured people of the South, but the contrary. This is
extremely dishonourable. No rebuke of it can be too stinging from your
side of the water. The negro is deemed good enough to fight for the Gov-
ernment, but not good enough to vote or enjoy the right to vote in the
Government. We invest with the elective franchise those who with broad