Lincoln and Douglass - in the words of others
|
- 2012 - The Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association - James L. Huston
- "A famous incident confirmed that the Second Inaugural represented a different version of history than the ones given by other Anglo-American orators. After the address, Lincoln asked black abolitionist Frederick Douglass for his opinion, and Douglass responded by calling it “a sacred effort.” Of course Douglass exulted in the president’s speech; for the first time, the matter of racial slavery had been moved to center stage in the evolution of the American republic."[40]
- 2009 - NPR Interview with John Stauffer, Professor of History - Harvard University
- www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100694897
- 2009 - "Lincoln and Douglass - Hope, Ambivalence, and Change"- James Oliver Horton
- www.nysarchivestrust.org/apt/magazine/archivesmag_winter09_horton.shtml
- 2008 - "Giants - Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln" - John Stauffer
- books.google.com/books?id=B0zkgCdoIm0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=giants+-+parallel+lives+of+Frederick+Douglass&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjo1auAipLOAhUH0mMKHSc5ASUQ6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=giants%20-%20parallel%20lives%20of%20Frederick%20Douglass&f=false
- 2007 - The Radical and the Republican - James Oakes
- "...by the mid-1850's Lincoln the lifelong politician was rapidly becoming one the nation's leading proponents of anti-slavery politics. Meanwhile, Frederick Douglass, the lifelong abolitionist, had a few years earlier become a convert to antislavery politics. The politician and the abolitionist were converging, and with good reason...."
- "Lincoln sharpened his message and urged his fellow Republicans not to become distracted by secondary issues but to stand by the "great principle" that united the party: "Slavery is a moral, political, and social wrong, and ought to be treated as a wrong."
- books.google.com/books?id=rK0ThVhgcbAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=James+Oakes&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjwm4CQgJLOAhUgS2MKHUHPBfoQ6AEIMDAD#v=onepage&q=James%20Oakes&f=false
- 2007 - Abraham Lincoln and the Triumph of an Antislavery Nationalism - Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association
- Graham Alexander Peck
- "Yet antislavery nationalism also helped propel the nation to war. Republicans had gambled by organizing a party on antislavery principles. The idea of a nation dedicated to freedom, and pledged against slavery, challenged the South as sharply as Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act had challenged the North."
- 1997 - The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America - Mark E. Neely, Jr.
- "Lincoln summoned Frederick Douglass to the White House and told him that the slaves were not coming over as rapidly and as numerously as he had hoped. Douglass responded that slaveholders knew how to keep such things from their slaves and that probably very few knew of the Emancipation Proclamation.
- Neely says Douglass was right and that Lincoln proposed a daring remedy to the problem. It was even revolutionary, Neely declares. It was a scheme that Douglass identified as "somewhat after the original plan of John Brown" (p. 118). Most of the slaves who had already come over to the Union line had been living near the front lines. They were not from the interior. Douglass was to send scouts to conduct squads of slaves safely within the loyal lines. According to the author, Lincoln figured he was going to lose the 1864 election, and he thus initiated a scheme to get as many slaves to freedom as he could before McClellan and the Democrats got into power. Douglass fully understood the importance of this Lincoln-Douglass venture. After the fall of Atlanta in September 1864, Lincoln and Douglass shelved their unnecessary scheme. Northern public opinion regarding Lincoln's handling of the war effort had changed, as election returns confirmed. Neely declares that "the consequent promise of reelection more or less guaranteed freedom to the slaves without such risky measures"quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0018.204/--last-best-hope-of-earth-abraham-lincoln-and-the-promise?rgn=main;view=text;q1=Lincoln%20and%20Douglass;hi=1
|
Eric Foner discusses Lincoln's support for "free labor" in the North as a political platform for the policy of "emancipating slaves" in the South. Similar to Douglass, they both believed that men should own the fruits of their own labor. Slavery was opposed to this ideal.
|