Washington had experienced a shock three weeks before, when Confederate general Jubal Early and a force of under twenty thousand snuck away from the action in Virginia to head toward the Union capital. Maneuvering all the way to Silver Spring, Maryland, the rebels were close but never really threatened the city. It was another discouraging factor in the North's doldrums. At Fort Stevens, Lincoln became the only sitting U.S. president to come under enemy fire, as sniper bullets killed a man near Lincoln when he stood to observe the action.
Things had hardly been ideal when Douglass made his first visit, but the optimism that the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg had produced then had now vanished. Confederate leadership, facing their own dire prospects, knew the key to their independence might well lie in a Lincoln defeat in November. If the year continued at this rate of attrition, it was virtually assured the president would not be reelected.
Every aspect about Douglass and Lincoln's second meeting must be considered relative to the fact that Lincoln and much of the nation believed there would be a new president in a few months, and that the war might end in compromise. Lincoln remarked that summer, "You think I don't know I am going to be beaten, but I do and unless some great change takes place, badly beaten." Thurlow Weed, the ultimate political insider, told Lincoln "his re-election was an impossibity [sic]"' He felt, "The People are wild for Peace." New York Times editor Henry Raymond informed Lincoln, "The tide is strongly against us," and Lincoln would at this point even lose his home state. He recommended that Lincoln start negotiating with the Confederate government now, lest the next administration garner terms less favorable to their aims.17
No president had served a second term since Andrew Jackson in 1832, more than thirty years before. Regardless of Lincoln's situation, the nation was not accustomed to the idea of a president being in office more than four years, and there was a widespread sense that if any administration needed retirement, this was the one.
It was all the more gut-wrenchingly fitting that if Lincoln followed this trend, the man who would be replacing him was the recalcitrant general who had cost Lincoln so much valuable time. A week before, New York City, never a Lincoln stronghold, had witnessed a massive rally in support of George McClellan's candidacy. As many as hundred thousand people in Union Square celebrated with speakers, music, fireworks, cannon, and anti-Lincoln cheers. Without a dramatic change in the war itself, it would be McClellan facing Jefferson Davis next March.
One of the biggest stories of the summer also came from that city. It was a seventy-two-page pamphlet, available for twenty-five cents, entitled Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the White Man and the Negro. Seemingly written from the perspective of an overzealous abolitionist, it was actually the scheme of two New York Democrat newspapermen. The document advocated racial mixing, attesting, "All that is needed to make us the finest race on earth is to engraft upon our stock the negro element which providence has placed by our side on this continent." They linked this concept to the current war, asserting that the government was nobly fighting this war for racial amalgamation. The last piece of the rancid political ploy was that the paper then reported how much support this document enjoyed from Republicans and abolitionists. The Democrats struggled to shift the focus of the election to exploit racial feelings. If nothing else, they were riling their base.18
While his party tried to cope with racial demagoguery, Lincoln was showing his own signs of progress on racial matters. There were indications that he had abandoned his old belief in colonization; in relief, his secretary John Hay wrote in his diary on the first day of July, "I am glad the President has sloughed off that idea of colonization." Lincoln wrote to Governor Andrew of his hope that Massachusetts could "afford a permanent home within her borders, for all, or even a large number of colored persons who will come to her."19
Lincoln was also asking Edwin Stanton for more statistics on the increasing tide of black troops and how many had come straight from enslavement. Stanton reported there were 71,976 at the time, 58,433 who were estimated to have come directly out of bondage. Lincoln told Josiah B. Grinnell, an Iowa congressman, "When you give the Negro these rights, when you put a gun in his hands, it prophesies something more." Lincoln was reflecting changes that other white people were going through around the country, prompted by the performance of black troops. Military commanders made their opinions clear. In west Tennessee, Colonel Frank A. Kendrick reported on commanding these soldiers, "The majority of the men were for the first time under fire, but their conduct did not disappoint my most sanguine anticipation, as, after the first few rounds, they received and returned the enemy's fire with the steadiness and deliberation of veterans." Assessments like this meant, as Samuel Denison in New Orleans wrote to Secretary of the Treasury Chase, that "the whole army, from colonels down, is thoroughly abolitionized. They have seen the negros drill and fight, and they want to give them a chance and put down slavery. I have not seen a soldier who has not this feeling."20
Earlier in the summer Lincoln had allowed black Washingtonians to use the White House grounds for an after-church outdoor lunch and fundraiser. It was a simple gesture, but a first for an American president.21By calling Douglass to the White House to advise him, Lincoln achieved another milestone in American history. On Thursday, August 18, he received a note informing him that Douglass was expected on a train getting into Washington at eleven o'clock in the morning. They would meet the following day.22
Also on Thursday, Leonard Swett, a particularly close Illinois friend, and Lincoln met to discuss the election at this juncture, after his Baltimore renomination. Swett expressed in a letter to his wife that "Lincoln's election is beyond any possible hope. It is probably clean gone now." Swett added that Lincoln should withdraw his name for the good of the party.23
But if Lincoln was going to be defeated, he had a radical notion of a task Frederick Douglass might do before the election.
That evening Douglass gave a speech at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. The church was packed from the pews to the gallery and a reporter guessed that the audience in the traditionally black church was about a third white. Douglass kept them waiting with a late arrival, but after an introduction from Reverend Henry Garnet, he spoke without either a prepared address or any notes. He thrilled the audience with his praise of the black soldiers. While celebrating them, he struck a different note with regard to Lincoln, declaring that he would not decide whether to vote for him until he knew if a more radical abolitionist candidate was entering the race. If slavery was to be killed, Douglass said that he did not expect to be "invited to the President's table," but hoped just to be treated as a citizen. It was an interesting comment because the next day he would be at the president's residence.24
Douglass sat waiting to be called in to see the president. Sitting near Douglass, anticipating their own visit with Lincoln, were two Wisconsin men, Alexander Randall, a former governor and diplomat to the Vatican, and Joseph Mills, a judge on the fifth judicial district.25
The room was dark as Mills caught sight of Douglass, silently reading in the corner of the room. They were fascinated by the black man waiting there. Mills recorded that this man "possessed a remarkable physiognomy," another way of saying they were mildly shocked to see a black waiting to meet with the president. Douglass so riveted Mills that he stood up to get a better look. As he stared unabashedly, Douglass felt the glare of this stranger's fixed gaze. Douglass swiftly lifted his focus from his book and forcefully met Mills's stare. Mills was taken aback by the power of one glance from Douglass. Caught off guard, he quipped, "Are you the president?" He pretended he had mistaken Douglass for Abraham Lincoln.
Douglass would be the subject of no man's ridicule. His response typified the manner in which Douglass carried himself through his entire life. With immeasurable dignity he answered, "I am Frederick Douglass."26
Douglass got in to see the president before the Wisconsin men did. The Lincoln he found shocke
d him. Lincoln had been a serious man before, but now he was in an "alarmed condition." To Douglass, "The dimmed light in his eye, and the deep lines in his strong American face, told plainly the story of the heavy burden of care that weighed upon his spirit." Douglass later remarked that he felt as if it would have been easier to dance at a funeral than to make a joke in front of the burdened Lincoln he met with. Of course, there was, famously, a more jovial and storytelling side to Lincoln, but they did not have a chance to know each other intimately enough for that. As Douglass concluded, "it was never my lot to find him in such a mood."27
Abraham Lincoln, 1864. Photograph by Anthony Berger at Brady's Studio.
Lincoln had always impressed his contemporaries as being a man with an intensely melancholy aspect in the best of times, but now a flood of events burdened his frayed spirits. Francis Carpenter, an artist who knew Lincoln's face well, said that summer that "his care-worn, troubled appearance was enough to bring tears of sympathy into the eyes of his most bitter opponents." The black wells under his eyes were marked and heavy. That Lincoln's emotional suffering intersected with a physical deterioration was evident to anyone who sat down with him. In December, another man who had known Lincoln before the war was stunned to find a Lincoln who "looked like death," with "pale, haggard features, furrowed with wrinkles, his sunken eyes."28
Lincoln also was encountering a man whose sadness was deep and enduring. At the end of May, Rosine Draz wrote to Douglass of his "poor crushed heart." She worried when he was hesitant to "speak of its grief even to your own friends." A month later, she wrote to him, "at last you will sink under the heavy burdens you are perpetually bearing." The war was a crushing burden for both Lincoln and Douglass, yet neither was about to lay their burden down, so they got down to business.29
Douglass wrote that at the time, "Everybody was thinking and dreaming of peace." The Daily National Lntelligencer that morning prominently featured an article entitled "How to Make Peace" that referred to peace missions. This would be the first matter of their meeting, for the issue of peace negotiations had been plaguing Lincoln all summer. Horace Greeley, who had been using the pages of his widely read paper to urge negotiations with the South, implored Lincoln to send representatives to Niagara Falls in order to meet with a group of men Greeley believed represented the Confederate government. Lincoln correctly suspected these men were not interested in brokering a peace, but just in damaging Lincoln's reelection prospects by fostering peace sentiments. While Greeley waited on the Canadian-American border for Lincoln's representative, he instead received a letter from Lincoln that clearly stated, "Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and which comes by and with an authority that can control the armies now at war against the United States will be received and considered."30
Lincoln's letter may have rendered Greeley's plan a fiasco, but Lincoln was soon the one in trouble when his letter became public. Earlier in the war, Lincoln had promised to save the Union. This letter made emancipation sound like a new prerequisite for peace. The Cincinnati Enquirer interpreted the letter as saying every boy who died "will lose his life not for the Union, the Stars and Stripes, but for the negro." Many Americans were not willing to pay that cost for slavery as a condition for peace. Public opinion against Lincoln continued to plummet as the perception of emancipation as a war aim gained force.31
Frustrated with Lincoln's letter to Greeley, Charles Robinson, editor of the Green Bay Advocate, wrote a letter that he wanted personally delivered to Lincoln. The Wisconsin men whom Douglass had encountered minutes before he entered Lincoln's office had given this letter to the president three days before. It was a significant situation for Lincoln, because Robinson was a Democrat who had faithfully supported the war effort over the last four years but was now at his breaking point. With the election three months away, there were thousands like Robinson around the country—and if Lincoln lost him, the same would probably hold true of them. Robinson told Lincoln that he was used to "taking some hard knocks with some of my party" because he had defended Lincoln, even upholding "the freeing of the negroes as sound war policy." However, he found Lincoln's statement to be thoroughly disturbing. He believed, "This puts the whole war question on a new basis, and takes us War Democrats clear off our feet, leaving us no ground to stand upon." The point of his letter was to ask Lincoln to "suggest some interpretation of it" that would allow him and like-minded people to continue to support Lincoln. Otherwise, Lincoln was in even worse political trouble.32
The day after receiving the note, August 17, Lincoln drafted a reply but held it to give it more consideration. Before he discussed it with Mills and Randall, or even handed over the letter, Lincoln decided to discuss it with Frederick Douglass.
Lincoln was attempting to walk a fine line of pacifying anti-emancipation moderate voters without losing his abolitionist support. Almost no one's words carried more weight with this bloc around the country than Douglass's, so Lincoln was in effect testing whether he could retain his support while bringing the Robinsons of the world back into his camp.
From the start of the meeting, Lincoln seemed to Douglass deeply troubled by the attitude of Greeley and all his former supporters now calling for peace. Lincoln explained to Douglass that he was "accused of protracting the war beyond its legitimate object and of failing to make peace." What impressed Douglass in these first few minutes was how Lincoln seemed to have learned the hard lesson Douglass had been pressing all over the country from the very start of war: The Union should never accept peace under these circumstances. Lincoln asserted to Douglass "the danger of premature peace." Thus, he assured his guest of how little credence he put in "futile conferences with unauthorized persons, at Niagara Falls, or elsewhere." Douglass felt an immense relief.33
Lincoln still had the problem of convincing the American people to let him continue this conflict. He said that the country thought he was driving an abolition war (the very phrase Douglass championed) instead of still trying to save the Union. It looked like he might not be able to accomplish either, but he had drafted a letter that he believed could help. Lincoln then handed Douglass the letter he had been working on to respond to Robinson.
The paper Douglass held in his hands began with an equivocation, "To me it seems plain that saying re-union and abandonment of slavery would be considered, if offered, is not saying that nothing else or less would be considered, if offered." This set the tone for a letter trying to appease those against abolition without saying he was ready to abandon emancipation. Lincoln quoted what he had written to Greeley two years before, a passage that still made Douglass shudder: "What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union." Lincoln confirmed that he had written that sincerely, and that he had later authorized black soldiers because it greatly benefited the Union.
He also quoted himself in this provisional letter claiming that the pledge of freedom motivated black men to fight, "And the promise, being made, must be kept." If he was to forsake that oath, Lincoln asked his critics, "As matter of morals, could such treachery by any possibility, escape the curses of Heaven, or of any good man?" On a more practical level, discarding emancipation would mean, as Douglass well knew, "All recruiting of colored men would instantly cease, and all colored men now in our service, would instantly desert us. And rightfully too. Why should they give their lives for us, with full notice of our purpose to betray them?"
Lincoln was arguing to Robinson that he could not end the war without negro freedom because it would cost thousands of soldiers he could not replace. In fact, the election of any president who did not support emancipation would certainly lose the war even before they began negotiating for peace—because the Union army badly needed these black soldiers. Lincoln added lines that are quite revealing of his typical cast of mind, in his deep-set belief in reason and order: "It is not a question of sentiment or taste, but one of physical force, whic
h may be measured, and estimated as horsepower, and steam power, are measured and estimated."
Lincoln's letter also finished with a phrase disconcerting to Douglass: "If Jefferson Davis wishes, for himself, or for the benefit of his friends at the North, to know what I would do if he were to offer peace and re-union, saying nothing about slavery, let him try me."34
Douglass had mere seconds to collect his thoughts, as the president asked him a crucial, but simple question: "Shall I send forth this letter?"35
Douglass sorted through his feelings. He did not mind the idea that Lincoln "stood ready to listen to any such propositions," in that it painted Lincoln as never standing in the way of peace. Lincoln had not taken back what he said in the Greeley letter, but his passivity bothered Douglass. Lincoln was saying that he could not take back emancipation even if he wished to. Douglass badly wanted a moral declaration from Lincoln on why they must all fight to end slavery, not a disingenuous pronouncement of Lincoln's power-lessness in the larger war equation.
Considering the message at the heart of the letter, Lincoln may have been expecting Douglass to like it more than he did. But Douglass saw something dangerous to the Union in the first and last line, as well as in the implicit message of issuing this at all. When he asked whether he should make it public, Douglass retorted, "Certainly not."
Explaining his answer, he contended that, "It could be given a broader meaning than you intend to convey—it would be taken as a complete surrender of your antislavery policy—and do you serious damage." Douglass thought that the previous letter had been clear in its stipulations for peace— and that by issuing this document, especially with the first and last lines seeming to be open to new peace conditions, he was in effect repudiating the earlier, stronger statement.
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