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The Emancipation Proclamation"Since William the Silent, who was the soul of the mighty war for religious liberty against Spain and the Spanish Inquisition, no leader of men has been loved and trusted in such generous measures as was Abraham Lincoln."
- Frederick Douglass
Heading into the third year of the sanguinary Civil War, January 1st 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Douglass states of the occasion: "the formal and solemn announcement was made that thereafter the government would be found on the side of emancipation"It must be the end of all compromises with slavery - a declaration that thereafter the war was to be conducted on a new principle, with a new aim."
It was at this point that Lincoln received criticism for extending the war unnecessarily. The South was ready to make certain concessions and the North was eager to end the war. By Lincoln announcing the Emancipation Proclamation, it was thought by many to be a reckless provocation making any possibility of peace fruitless.
On this subject, Douglass would meet with Lincoln for the last time, before he would be assassinated.
"The main subject on which he wished to confer with me was as to the means most desirable to be employed outside the army to induce the slaves in the rebel states to come within the deferral lines. The increasing opposition to the war, in the North, and the mad cry against it, because it was being made an abolition war, alarmed Mr. Lincoln, and made him apprehensive that a peace might be forced upon him which would leave still in slavery all who had not come within our lines. What he wanted was to make his proclamation as effective as possible in the event of such a peace"He said he was being accused of protracting the war beyond its legitimate object and failing to make peace when he might have done so to advantage. He was afraid of what might come of all these complaints, but was persuaded that no solid and lasting peace could come short of absolute submission on the part of the rebels [the South]"He saw the danger of premature peace"I was the more impressed by this benevolent consideration because he before said, in answer to the peace clamor, that his object was to save the Union, and to do so with or without slavery. What he said on this day showed a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had ever seen before in anything spoken or written by him. I listened with the deepest interest and profoundest satisfaction, and, at his suggestion, agreed to undertake the organizing of a band of scouts, composed of colored men, whose business should be somewhat after the original plan of John Brown, to go into the rebel states, beyond the lines of our armies, and to carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries.
"I refer to this conversation because I think that, on Mr. Lincoln's part, it is evidence conclusive that the proclamation, so far at least as he was concerned, was not effected merely as a [political] 'necessity'."
President Lincoln would be selected to continue a second term and was inaugurated on March 4th, 1865. About one month after the official end of the Civil War. Lincoln would be assassinated just a mere 41 days after his second inauguration.
Douglass writes, "His first inauguration arrested the fall of the Republic, and the second was to restore it to enduring foundations." The fact that Lincoln's leadership was savagely cut short was a tragedy for all who understood that the true foundation of the Republic was built upon the principle "liberty for all".
In that sad moment, when the country heard of the death of their leader who was to bring them closer to this goal, Douglass states,
"We shared in common a terrible calamity, and this 'touch of nature made us' more than countrymen, it made us 'kin'."
Reflections on the PastIt is an utmost testament to the grace and nobility of Frederick Douglass' character that as soon as the law and spirit of slavery had been broken, he made a point to no longer harbour hate and resentment for the past wrongs committed upon himself. He recognised that humanity was indeed inherently good and would ultimately strive towards goodness if left to its natural tendency" that to punish the children of those who committed crimes before them would destroy any good that ever existed in the world.
Douglass recounts:
"If any reader of this part of my life shall see in it the evidence of a want of manly resentment for wrongs inflicted by slavery upon myself and race, and by the ancestors of"[those who once owned slaves], so it must be. No man can be stronger than nature, one touch of which, we are told, makes all the world akin. I esteem myself a good, persistent hater of injustice and oppression, but my resentment ceases when they cease, and I have no heart to visit upon children the sins of their father."
I will end here with an account of Douglass when he revisits the place where he was born a "slave" and sees his former "master" Captain Auld upon his request on his deathbed, over 25 years after Douglass had escaped to the North:
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