Stanton did not follow where he was going with this. In what respect did Douglass mean?
Douglass went on to explain the reason he was saying this to the man ultimately responsible for all black soldiers was because there would be ambitious, brave soldiers, but there would also be base, cowardly fellows. Douglass implored the secretary to treat them all simply as men, and as normal men who reacted and responded to the same things that affected white soldiers. Why would they enlist if the government would not pay them fairly? Why would they perform well if there was no chance of their advancement in the ranks? In this, they were no different than others.15
Stanton's manner changed as he seemed to understand the kind of man he was dealing with. Comprehending Douglass's intelligence, his formerly skeptical and curt manner seemed to melt a bit. Stanton sincerely explained how difficult a position the administration was in when it came to supporting the simple idea—and then reality—of black soldiers. No one had to explain to Douglass the extent and depth of the prejudice that his young men faced. In addition, Stanton offered, the administration was dealing with the laws as Congress had passed them. He felt Congress had yet to codify that black men were no longer entitled simply to the benefits of a laborer. His personal wish was that black troops could soon obtain equal treatment.16
Then Stanton stated a startling proposition. Would Douglass go south as an assistant adjutant to Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas to recruit and organize black troops in the Mississippi valley?17
Douglass was taken aback. He explained that he was already working for Stearns's recruiting in the North (not mentioning the fact that he had actually resigned a week and a half ago). That led Stanton to Douglass's second surprise. Stanton said he and Steams had already discussed the idea, and that Steams was behind it. Douglass reported to Steams a few days later that Stanton was "imperative in his manner," telling Douglass that he would send him the commission and travel instructions immediately. Stanton asked how long Douglass needed to get ready. Douglass estimated that he needed two weeks to prepare. That was fine with Stanton, who agreed to send the papers to Rochester. Their meeting had lasted thirty minutes. Stanton concluded without the pleasantries he so detested.18
Douglass readily understood the importance of what was being asked of him, and the sacrifice he would need to make to go South. There was a clear limit to the number of potential free black soldiers, but the vast Mississippi delta could become the Union army's mother lode, providing a torrent of men freed from slavery who sought military service as a way into freedom. Lorenzo Thomas and Douglass came from vastly different backgrounds. Although Thomas had spent the last forty years, his entire adult life, in the military, he had not spent them in the field but in War Department offices, meticulously managing regulations and rules.
Stanton found General Thomas useless, suspecting the bottle had helped him through all these years of pedantry. He had been looking for a way to get rid of Thomas, so when a project far away from Washington that needed superior organizational skills arose, he knew just the man for the job. Stanton gave Thomas twenty-four hours to pack up and head west. Yet Thomas took on the project with more passion than anyone ever dreamed the elderly paper-pusher possessed. He spoke with sincere passion to prejudiced white officers whom he wanted to lead the freedmen, as well as to the "contrabands" flooding into Union lines. Many thousands were now living in makeshift camps where the conditions were appalling. Without proper food, clothes, or shelter, with vermin eating away at their bodies, the dead were piled into carts for mass burial. Thomas quickly visited these hellish places, appalled and ready to change these people's dire prospects. He was no Douglass, but his efforts were relentless and soon began yielding great gains in enlistment. Lincoln commented that Thomas seemed to be the perfect instrument for a task he wanted done vigorously. Thomas pressed himself so hard that sickness and exhaustion nearly killed him in the searing Mississippi sun.19
Frederick Douglass
The job Douglass accepted would be a dangerous one. Lieutenant Eben White was engaged in a similar endeavor while strolling around a Maryland plantation. When the farm's patriarch and his son discovered what White was doing there, they ran into their field with a shotgun and blasted the Union officer in the chest. Standing above his dead body, they shot him twice more and bashed in his head with the butt of their gun. Equally horrifying was the fate of Lieutenant Oscar Orillion, who was leading twenty black soldiers on a recruiting mission in Louisiana. The unit was captured by a Confederate cavalry force, and they were later found hung, their bodies cut to pieces. These killings sent a clear message about how the Confederacy felt about recruiting their slaves to carry a gun.20
The areas that Stanton intended Douglass to recruit in were along the Mississippi River, where entire social structures were being turned on their head and the Civil War was rapidly revolutionizing American life. The people who fled slavery to find Union lines—their sacrifices and risks—remain a largely untold story, yet was as vital to the course of the war as any battle. Archy Caughn was one of these men who ran toward federal troops in Tennessee. A furious owner named Bartlet Ciles recovered the captured and petrified Caughn. Ciles tied Caughn's hands, took him to nearby woods, removed his left ear with a sharp knife, and then castrated him. Sometimes even reaching a northern force did not mean safety. A Union officer named Thomas Ewing Jr. remembered a group of three black men, a woman, and a young girl, and boy who had escaped slavery. They followed behind the regiment that was sheltering them, but fell too far back during one particularly arduous march. When someone rode back to check on them, he found only lifeless bodies murdered by rebel guerrillas.21
It was not just those who trekked to the perilous lines around the Union army that suffered, but also those they left behind. Patsey Leach was a slave in Scott County, Kentucky, when her husband Julius ran away to join the passing Union army. For Julius's decision, their owner Warren Wiley whipped her continuously and mercilessly. While she bore his punishment, her husband was outfitted in the Union blue and placed in a regiment. Julius's unit passed the Wiley estate three weeks later. Three weeks was all it took in this new world for a master to see his slave empowered as a soldier. Wiley watched Patsey as she proudly saw her husband march by. Only a week later, Julius was killed in battle. When Wiley heard of his former slave's fate, he took Julius's inconsolable widow into their kitchen and tied her hands. He ripped off all of Patsey's clothes and bent her naked body over so he could whip her to within an inch of life. Wiley told her this was what she deserved for letting her husband kill white people.22
This was an abolition war, and it was being fought in ways that West Point generals could have hardly dreamed of.
Anyone could stroll across the White House lawn and pass through the imposing columns of the vast portico where people of all classes lingered. The front foyer fed into a long, beautifully carpeted hallway where a bronze screen separated the public White House from the family sphere. Upon his arrival, Douglass waited like all other supplicants for the president's time in a reception room painted elegantly in dark blues, decorated with blue furniture laced with silver satin, broadly framed mirrors, a fireplace festooned in marble, and a velvety blue carpet. The room was crowded, which was not unusual. It was often filled with everyone from senators seeking counsel to scalawags looking for jobs.23
The president rose hours before facing the onslaught of people— guests, diplomats, office seekers, generals, and common soldiers. His staff thought him mad for exposing himself to so many people on a daily basis, but Lincoln insisted. He called the exercise "taking a public opinion bath." Lincoln usually wrote for two hours before a moderate breakfast of an egg and coffee at nine. In this peace before the storm, he could answer letters and muse on subjects that confounded him. Then it was time to open himself to the multitudes. The visitors sent business cards in to him and a servant would return to the reception room and read out the name of the party Lincoln would see.24
Douglass pres
sed his way through the crowd and handed his card to one of Lincoln's attendants. He looked about him at a room of only white faces staring at him with puzzlement. Douglass tried to ignore their gazes and retreated into his thoughts at how he might be received. He expected to wait for most of the rest of the day, though he had heard of people waiting here every day for a week. Douglass also pondered the possibility that Lincoln would not invite him in at all. He remembered bitterly how the delegation of black men who had visited Lincoln in 1862 received only callous comments and then embarrassment, as Lincoln blamed them for the war. Douglass wondered whether Lincoln would turn him away, tell him to leave these questions to others. He thought about how, under the Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court still did not consider him to be a citizen of this country, yet here he stood. It could have been a glorious feeling but was not. It felt like a terrible responsibility to bear, and he wished he could leave and have someone else take his position along with this duty.25
"Mr. Douglass!"
The voice of Lincoln's messenger cut through the room. Douglass was being invited in. He could hardly believe it. It was only about two minutes ago that he had handed over his card. Now he pushed the self-doubt to the back of his mind and elbowed his way forward. Someone mocked, "Yes damn it, I knew they would let the nigger through." The jealous crowd laughed around him. Douglass would joke that his heckler was probably a Peace Democrat.26
Douglass caught Lincoln at a time when he should have been feeling somewhat relieved about the war. The previous month should have been the best of the war, with Grant ending the siege of Vicksburg and the Army of the Potomac defeating General Lee during three furious days in the quiet Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. But Lincoln was far from cheerful, because there was another way to view the events of July. General George Meade had fought a victorious defensive battle at Gettysburg, then let the defeated army limp back across the Potomac. When Lincoln discovered that an opportunity to finally destroy Lee's maimed army had slipped away, he sadly resolved that the war would go on. The draft riots in New York reflected surging popular sentiment that a compromise should end this war. The Confederacy could certainly bide its time for thirteen months until an election would end his presidency and the war effort. With General Lee's men now recovering in Virginia, had the best and last chance to win the war just slipped away?
Having to work through an August like this did not help his mood. It would have been far more pleasant to be with Mary and his sons Robert and Tad, who were staying in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Lincoln kept them updated on what they were missing in Washington. Two days before Douglass visited Lincoln, the president complained about the stifling heat and described his distress over Tad's favorite goat being missing. Lincoln played detective in recounting that the "Nanny Goat" was last seen chewing on his young son's bed. The gardener had also complained of the animal's effect on the White House lawn. The affectionate goat's whereabouts were unknown. 27
The president's office was adjacent to the reception room. It was a small and simple square-shaped office. Surprisingly few secretaries were there to assist the president, as they scurried around their leader. One of the two doorways led to the office of John Nicolay, one of these secretaries, while the other opened into the hallway where the servant holding the business cards sat. The only decorations were documents and military maps strewn extensively around him, his toil. They were in such disarray that Douglass thought perhaps Lincoln was in the midst of some kind of reorganization project. A muddle of papers obscured an oak table's cloth covering. Against the south wall, a desk with pigeonholes for papers stood. There were two unadorned sofas and an assortment of chairs scattered throughout the room. A poor, discolored picture of Andrew Jackson—no friend to Douglass's people—hung above a fireplace. Nothing in here denoted ceremonial regality. Two windows allowed Lincoln and his visitor to look out at the Potomac with the mansions of Arlington, Virginia, beyond. In peaceful days, Robert E. Lee had lived just beyond that river.28
His name was announced to Lincoln as he walked through the door. The president's face brightened when he heard the name. He was sitting rather informally in a low armchair between the two windows with his expansive legs seeming to reach into different parts of the room. Douglass hesitated until Lincoln's eyes lifted from the paper he was examining. As Lincoln stood up, it seemed to Douglass like a rather extensive process, as the man's long, lean frame kept rising and rising until finally Douglass was looking up at the president. There was never any spring in Lincoln's step, never landing or departing on his heels, but keeping them parallel to the ground. A body that looked like it needed oiling just went up and down again. Lincoln's chest was too narrow for the long, bony arms that hung down. While Douglass's build was mighty, Lincoln's thinness seemed out of proportion. Lincoln was eight years older and aging faster than Douglass, his health reflecting the anxieties that plagued his mind. He was down to 180 pounds, which, at six foot four inches, meant "the great emancipator" looked nearly emaciated.29
The president looked overworked and tired. Quickly examining the long lines of care sketched deeply in Lincoln's features, Douglass saw a patient man whose suffering was thinly veiled. A joke Lincoln identified with concerned two hunters meeting and one telling the other that he had vowed to shoot any man he ever met uglier than him. The other hunter scanned him and exclaimed, "If I am any worse looking than you are, for Gods sake shoot me and git me out of the way!" And when political rivals had called Lincoln two-faced, he wryly asked why he would have chosen to wear the face he did. Yes, Douglass thought, Lincoln was homely, but in a very human sense. These eyes, he reflected, evoked the tenderness of a mother, while his pronounced nose, cheekbones and ears suggested the fortitude of a frontier father.30
Douglass was tense at first, but Lincoln's warm smile and the open extension of his great hand put Douglass at ease. Douglass started to tell the president who he was, but Lincoln blandly interjected, "Mr. Douglass, you need not tell me who you are. I know who you are. Mr. Seward has told me all about you." Secretary of State William Seward had first subscribed to Douglass's paper more than a decade ago. They had corresponded during the years that Douglass had published in the then-senator's state.31
Lincoln offered Douglass a place beside him. As Douglass sat down, the waves of misgiving he had felt minutes before disappeared. He wrote later of an immediate sense that he was in the presence of an honest man doing his best to save a nation. Douglass wanted to keep his opening words short and began by telling Lincoln how recruiting black men for service had started fruitfully. Now it was becoming unachievable because black men did not trust Douglass's words on the government's treatment of them. Douglass would cleverly frame the discrimination issues as harming Lincoln's interests in attracting soldiers. He stated, "Mr. President, I have been recruiting colored troops, and if you want me to succeed I must be able to assure them . . . " Lincoln asked Douglass to be more specific.32
Douglass began feeling freer to reveal his opinions, seeing that Lincoln was ready to listen. He stated the three issues he hoped to bring to Lincoln's attention. In Douglass's opinion, black men "while in the service shall have pay equal to that of white soldiers." Douglass almost expected Lincoln to interrupt, but Lincoln did not. He continued, "secondly, that when they shall perform acts of bravery in battle, which would secure promotion to white soldiers, the like promotion shall be accorded colored soldiers." Douglass thanked Lincoln for his recent order to protect the troops. Yet it was not enough just to issue this warning. Douglass was asking for something more, sternly uttering, "If the threat of Jefferson Davis is carried out, you, President Lincoln, will retaliate in kind."33
Douglass finished laying out his protests and Lincoln contemplated them before speaking. Lincoln, still silent, looked troubled. He was a careful thinker who preferred to consider a point in his own mind before he articulated it. Douglass was surprised by the way the president didn't hide that his own mind was working its way through these v
exing issues. Douglass equated this with openness to new ideas.34
Lincoln finally replied, "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 against them; they were on trial."
It was not an ideal answer, but Douglass knew it was a candid one. Lincoln reminded Douglass of the larger picture. Black men being able to fight in the war was a great gain for the entire race. It was against serious risks of popular opinion that Lincoln had allowed this to go ahead. Some were angered that black men had equal uniforms and others bemoaned that blacks no longer just held pickaxes and shovels. Lincoln honestly felt that men should be enlisting under any conditions considering the exceptional nature of this opportunity. He still viewed it as an experiment that could succeed or fail. Be that as it may, the pay discrepancy was a concession to those that opposed their presence in the military. Lincoln impressed Douglass with how candidly he was speaking. The president felt that they would end up with equal pay before the end of the war. He finished, "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 . . . dollar for dollar, equal with other soldiers."
Going on, Lincoln related that he found the protection issue to be thornier. Douglass glimpsed how hard it was for a tender man to preside over a bloodbath, as he saw pain in Lincoln's eyes and voice. Lincoln simply asked, "Where will it stop?" Lincoln had issued the order but trembled at the thought of a cycle of endless retribution killings between the two governments. He confessed, "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."
Douglass and Lincoln Page 20