The Black Man’s Debt to Abraham Lincoln: An Address Delivered in Washington, D.C., on February 12, 1888
THE BLACK MAN’S DEBT TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN:
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN WASHINGTON, D.C.,
ON 12 FEBRUARY 1888
(Washington, 1888), 14-18.
Other texts in Washington , 13 February 1888; Speech File, reel 12, frame 178, reel 16,
frames 245-51, FD Papers, DLC.
On 12 February 1888 the Republican National League, at its hall located
on Fourteenth Street, near Thomas Circle in Washington, D.C., celebrated
the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. The exercises began at 2 P.M.
with William W. Danenhower, vice president of the league, officiating.
Danenhower introduced the league’s chaplain, the Reverend John P. Newman,
who offered an invocation. A quartet of league members then performed
several hymns. U.S. Senator Shelby M. Cullom of Illinois gave the first
speech of the evening followed by orations from Douglass, Simon Wolf, a
lawyer in the District of Columbia, and Patrick O’Farrell, another local
attorney. After Farrell’s speech, the meeting joined in a short prayer and then
adjourned. The following day, the Washington declared
Douglass’s speech “a most eloquent address." Washington ,
13 February 1888; Washington , 13 February 1888.
I could almost wish to be excused from offering a single remark after the
able, eloquent, and comprehensive, and, I might say, faithful, address to
which we have just listened. It would, perhaps, have been much better that
the meeting should disperse after hearing what we have heard. And yet I am
not sure but there is a sort of propriety in my coming to you and saying a
few words, at least, in respect to the great and the good man of whom we
have heard so much and of whom nothing new can be said.
I think it may be safely affirmed that the moral and mental greatness of
no character which has come upon the stage in our day and generation, and
in modern times, which has been more generally conceded, or more firmly
established, than that great and good man whose birth we have assembled
to-day to celebrate. A great cloud of witnesses, which no man can number,
composed of all classes and conditions of men, at home and abroad,
everywhere, have recognized Abraham Lincoln as one of the greatest and
best men ever produced by this country, if not ever produced by the world at
large.
I, and those I represent in part, may well enough wish to share with you
in your admiration of his character and in the perpetuation of his great
memory. You may extol him as a statesman and a patriot: we may, and will,
extol him as a man and a philanthropist. You may honor his memory in that
he saved your country when the light of its hope was going out, or seemed
to be going out, in darkness, certainly in blood; we will cherish his memory
in that he struck the galling fetters from four millions of the class to which
we belong. You may honor him for the hope, aye, for the possibility, of a
united country; we will honor him because he raised us from the depths,
from the condition of chattelhood to the possibility, the grand possibility of
American citizenship. It was once said by Lamartine,1Alphonse Marie de Lamartine. one of the most
brilliant of all modern French writers, that “William Wilberforce went up
to heaven with a million of broken fetters in his arms, as evidence of a life
well spent.” Four times more than this can we say of Abraham Lincoln. He
went up before his Maker with four millions of broken fetters in his arms as
evidence of a life well spent. Glorious man! He was a man so broad in his
sympathy, so noble in his character, so just in his action, so free from
narrow prejudice; he touched the world so completely at all sides that all
classes, conditions, all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people could hail
him as a countryman, a clansman, a kinsman, a brother beloved, a benefactor.
I knew Abraham Lincoln personally. To have known him as I knew
him, I regard as one of the grandest privileges experienced by me during a
considerable lifetime. I knew him. I would not part with that peep into that
noble soul for all the wealth, as Clay once said, that could be bestowed
upon the most successful conqueror. It was a new revelation to me, my
meeting with that great and good man. I saw him at a time of profound
interest; a time when the fate of this Republic appeared to tremble in the
balance. Men’s hearts were failing them for fear of what was coming upon
the land. I came down here from the North—I was not born in the North
(Laughter)—but I went North on a mission some fifty years ago. It was not
healthy for me to come down here for some twenty-five years after I went
North. I came to him early in the year 1863, after the Emancipation
Proclamation, of course. and I saw him to great advantage.
It was my first visit to Washington. First things are very important; and
this was my first visit to Washington—the first time that I ever looked up
and saw the Goddess of American Liberty on the lofty dome of yonder
Capitol.2“Freedom,” the bronze statue atop the Capitol dome, is portrayed as a woman clothed in a palla and heavy mantle while holding a sheathed sword in one hand and a wreath and shield in the other. Designed in Rome by the American sculptor Thomas Crawford, the plaster model for the statue was shipped to the United States after Crawford's death in 1857. Cast in Maryland and hoisted into place on 2 December 1863, “Freedom” weighed almost fifteen thousand pounds and stood nineteen and a half feet tall. On Capitol Hill, thirty-five guns saluted the event, answered by volleys from the twelve forts ringing the city. H. Paul Caemmerer, (Washington, D.C., 1939), 221, 224. My eyes saw something then that thrilled me, for I saw it in the
light of the liberty proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln. I saw it in the light of
those stars [pointing to the American flag], and it filled me with hope and
expectation. It was my first entrance, too, into the White House. No man
who has never felt the yoke of American bondage on his neck; no one who
has not felt the fetter on his heel can imagine and enter into the tumult of
feeling with which I entered the White House. It was a great day for me, a
very great day, to enter the Executive Mansion and to approach the President
of the United States. I was a little disturbed and a great deal agitated,
but there was no real cause for trepidation or for alarm. I was going to see a
great man—a great man. It is always easier to see a great man than to see a
little one. I have noticed that the higher we go up in the gradations of
humanity and moral greatness the further we get from prejudices, from
narrowness, from everything like pettiness. I found myself without excuse
for being alarmed, for being disturbed; for I was in the presence of a great
man. Mr. Lincoln was reading when I entered, and I hesitated to approach
him until he raised his eyes from the paper he held in his hand. His face and
features struck me. They bore the marks of care and toil and solemn
responsibility. I think I never saw a face that had so much of the real, I was
going to say, saintliness, combined with so much resolution, as I saw in
that deeply-ridged forehead of Abraham Lincoln. I went up towards him,
and as I came near him I began to tell him who I was and what I had been
doing, and in his peculiar voice he stopped me. Said he, “I know who you
are, Mr. Douglass, and I know what you have been doing; Mr. Seward3William H. Seward. has
told me all about you.” This put me at ease; but I had something to say to
him. It was not mere courtesy. My mission to him was in regard to the
enlistment and the treatment of colored troops. I had assisted in raising two
regiments in the State of Massachusetts, and l was then engaged in the
same work in the State of Pennsylvania, and I said to him, “I have come,
Mr. Lincoln, to say to you three things, and only three things, and one of
them is that I may be able to say to the colored soldiers at the North that they
will be paid the same wages as the white soldiers.
“Secondly: when they perform brave and honorable deeds in the service
of the country, on the battle-field, that you will promote them.
“Thirdly: when they are taken as prisoners and are killed, as the threat
has been given that they shall be killed, that we shall retaliate.” Those were
the three things. I never shall forget how quietly and sympathetically Mr.
Lincoln listened to what I had to say. I saw, when I came to the last
proposition, the first he received with a smile of approval, the second also,
but when it came to the third, that of retaliation, I got a peep into that good
man’s heart. There came over his face an expression of sadness, deep
sadness, and he began to reply to the several propositions that I had made to
him. He told me, “Mr. Douglass, you know that it was with great difficulty
that I could get the colored soldiers, or get colored men, into the army at
all. You know the prejudices existing against them; you know the doubt
that was felt in regard to their ability as soldiers, and it was necessary at the
first that we should make some discrimination in regard to them; they were
on trial.” And he argued the point as he only could argue. I never heard a
man that could make a statement which should be in itself an overwhelming
argument, as Abraham Lincoln could. He argued the question fully,
and I was made to see that it was something, whether with wages or without
wages, money or without money, it was a grand triumph to get a blue coat
on the back of a negro, and the eagle on his button, and the musket on his
shoulder. I agreed with him. But he said, “Nevertheless, though we cannot
offer them at present the same pay as we pay the white soldiers, that will be
done, Mr. Douglass, and you may say to your people that they will
eventually be paid,” as they were eventually paid, “dollar for dollar, equal
with other soldiers.”
On the other point of promotion, he was equally willing, but on retaliation
he asked, “Where will it stop?” I could see that there was a vista of
blood opening to him from which his tender heart shrank. He said, “If I
could get hold of the men that murdered your troops, murdered our prisoners
of war, I would execute them, but I cannot take men that may not
have had anything to do with this murdering of our soldiers and execute
them. No, Mr. Douglass, I don’t see where it would stop; besides, I
understand they are beginning to treat our colored soldiers as prisoners of
war.”
But this was not all that I saw of Mr. Lincoln. After all perhaps I am
taking up too much time (cries of go on; go on). I saw a good deal more of
him during the war, and even down to his inauguration, his second inauguration.
There, too, I think I caught a glimpse of the soul of this great man, a
remarkable glimpse, a deep insight into his mind and his heart. I mean at
his second inauguration. I felt at that time there was the spirit of murder
here in the District of Columbia (I am glad it is not here now), and I
watched his carriage when he was on his way down to the Capitol to be
inaugurated, and to deliver his inaugural address. (I had had the pleasure of
putting the gown on Chief-Justice Chase,4Salmon P. Chase. who was to administer the oath
on that occasion.) I got very near to Mr. Lincoln, for he did not hesitate,
you know, to ask me to come even to his table, and ask me to eat with him,
and ask me to the Soldiers’ Home, dear man! Well, I say, I kept near to the
carriage on his way to the Capitol. Pennsylvania avenue was not what it is
now. Shepherd5An allusion to the program of public works carried out in Washington, D.C., in the 1870s under the supervision of Alexander R. Shepherd. had not been along on the avenue. (It was then a sheep
without a Shepherd.) I kept close to the carriage nearly up to the hub in
mud, for I was afraid every step we took that something would happen to
that good and glorious man. Well, when we got to the east portico of the
Capitol, there I saw Mr. Lincoln in his true light. He had been abused. Oh,
good men are apt to be abused. Men had been denouncing him on the right
hand and on the left. Some of them blamed him very much that he hadn’t
brought the war to a close; another blamed him for not making the war an
abolition war, and others blamed him for making it an abolition war, so he
was blamed on all sides, and he answered them all in one sentence, and
such a sentence I never heard from the lips of any man in his position
before. He said: “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 up by two hundred years of bondage shall have been
wasted, and each drop of blood drawn by the lash shall have been paid for
one drawn by the sword, we must still say, as was said three thousand years
ago, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."6Douglass makes numerous minor errors in quoting a portion of Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address of 4 March 1865. Basler, , 8: 333. Those
words rang out over that throng, and they went over the country as never
words went before, and they silenced all murmurs. They came down on the
land like the summer’s thunder shower on the parched ground, and a new
life began.
But, my friends, I must not talk longer. I could talk all day about
Abraham Lincoln.
Some people have said hard things about Mrs. Lincoln. For my part I
take no stock in them. I loved Mrs. Lincoln. I loved her because Abraham
Lincoln loved her. That was enough for me. And, besides, I don’t take any
stock in the stories of those who thought she was not in sympathy with him
in his anti-slavery views. She was in sympathy with him. She used to say,
when we abolitionists were very impatient with Mr. Lincoln, because he
did not move fast enough, “Oh, yes, father is slow.” Those words state
what existed there.7Douglass had unswervingly defended the widow of Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln, from charges that she had opposed the emancipation of the slaves. Since the assassination in 1865, Mary Lincoln had endured a number of personal hardships, including the death of her son Thomas in 1871, an insanity trial, and confinement in an asylum in 1875-76, and constant press speculation regarding her wartime loyalty, financial extravagance, and late husband's devotion. Ruth Painter Randall, (Boston, 1953), 388-90, 397-400, 412-14, 424-25, 430-35; Ishbel Ross, (New York, 1973), 303-22, 412-16, 424-25, 429-34. And when Mrs. Lincoln was leaving the White House,
for Illinois, she said to her dressmaker, who was near by when she was
gathering up her things to go away: “Here is Mr. Lincoln’s favorite cane
(this is the identical cane that I now hold in my hand), and I know of no man
who will value it more than Frederick Douglass.” And she caused it to be
sent to me at Rochester, N.Y., where I then lived; and I am the owner of this
cane, you may depend on that; and I mean to hold it and keep [it] in sacred
remembrance of Abraham Lincoln, who once leaned upon it.8Mary Todd Lincoln gave away four of her husband's canes following his assassination. These canes went to Douglass, Charles Sumner, Henry Highland Garnet, and William Slade, a messenger for Lincoln at the White House, Ross, , 247; Randall, , 364.