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During this time, Douglass would start his own anti-slavery newspaper called "The North Star". Along with this new editorial responsibility, Douglass would no longer leave it to the "good advice" of his "more learned" Abolitionist friends, but would take the responsibility upon himself to seek out and come to know whether such assertions by the Abolitionists on the nature of the Republic were true.
"My new circumstances compelled me to re-think the whole subject, and to study with some care not only the just and proper rules of legal interpretation, but the origin, design, nature, rights, powers, and duties of civil governments, and also the relations which human beings sustain to it. By such a course of thought and reading I was conducted to the conclusion that the Constitution of the United States - inaugurated to 'form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty' - could not well have been designed at the same time to maintain and perpetuate a system of rapine and murder like slavery, especially as not one word can be found in the Constitution to authorize such a belief"the Constitution of our country is our warrant for the abolition of slavery in every state of the Union"being convinced of the fact, my duty upon this point in the further conduct of my paper [The North Star] was plain."
Abraham Lincoln would be elected as the President of the United States on March 4th, 1861. To which Douglass stated of the occasion:
On Meeting Lincoln"It was Mr. Lincoln who told the American people at this crisis that the 'Union could not long endure half slave and half free; that they must be all one or the other, and that the public mind could find no resting place but in the belief in the ultimate extinction of slavery.' These were not the words of an abolitionist - branded a fanatic, and carried away by an enthusiastic devotion to the Negro - but the calm cool, deliberate utterance of a statesman, comprehensive enough to take in the welfare of the whole country"In a few simple words he had embodied the thought of the loyal nation, and indicated the character fit to lead and guide the country amid perils present and to come."
"I still believed, and spoke as I believed, all over the North, that the mission of the war was the liberation of the slave, as well as the salvation of the Union""
- Frederick Douglass
With this newly discovered orientation, Douglass not only put the preservation of the Union as something necessary and expedient but, most importantly, something that could not be sacrificed in striving for the Abolitionist cause.
Douglass would be one of the first to encourage the recruitment, through his paper "The North Star", of black soldiers to join the Union's war against the Confederate South. The thought was that by these men joining the war, they would prove their mettle in the cause for emancipation.
These were hard days, since black soldiers were not given equal treatment nor protection in the Union army. They also risked, if captured by the South, being enslaved, a sentence in Douglass' words "worse than death". Douglass had been assured that equal treatment would eventually occur, but it was too slow moving in his eyes and he refused to continue recruiting black soldiers into the Union army.
It was at this point that Douglass was invited to meet with President Lincoln to discuss his concerns over the matter.
Douglass describes his first meeting with Lincoln: "I was never more quickly or more completely put at ease in the presence of a great man than in that of Abraham Lincoln"Long lines of care were already deeply written on Mr. Lincoln's brow, and his strong face, full of earnestness, lighted up as soon as my name was mentioned"I at once felt myself in the presence of an honest man - one whom I could love, honor, and trust without reserve or doubt."
One of the points of concern Douglass discussed with the President, was on the unfair treatment of black soldiers as POWs and suggested that the North should retaliate and commit the same treatment on their Southern POWs to dissuade this unequal treatment, to which Lincoln responded, "Retaliation was a terrible remedy, and one which it was very difficult to apply - that, if once begun, there was no telling where it would end - that if he could get hold of the Confederate soldiers who had been guilty of treating colored soldiers as felons he could easily retaliate, but the thought of hanging men for a crime perpetrated by others was revolting to his feelings"Though I was not entirely satisfied with his views, I was so well satisfied with the man and with the educating tendency of the conflict I determined to go on with the recruiting."
Douglass reflects on his decision:
"It was a great thing to achieve American independence when we numbered three millions, but it was a greater thing to save this country from dismemberment and ruin when it numbered thirty millions. He alone of all our presidents was to have the opportunity to destroy slavery, and to lift into manhood millions of his countrymen hitherto held as chattels and numbered with the beasts of the field."
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