Near the end of his life, Douglass said "my special mission in the world . . . was the emancipation and enfranchisement of the Negro. Mine was a great cause."18Douglass's greatness lies in accomplishing two of his three great missions—the end of slavery and the arming of his people in the fight for their own emancipation. An even more impressive greatness may be seen in his third mission, which he did not achieve in his lifetime but worked and yearned for—full citizenship and simple equality. He hands on to us, for however long it takes, this last mission. The Civil War, in fact, will not be over until it is accomplished. During the centennial of the Civil War, John F. Kennedy said that the agitator was part of the legend of America. He wrote: "As a successful fighter for freedom a century ago, he [Douglass] can give inspiration to people all around the world who are still struggling to secure their full human rights. That struggle must go on until those rights are everywhere secured. By advancing that cause through law, democratic methods and peaceful action, we in America can give an example of the freedom which Frederick Douglass symbolizes."19
Douglass's mission still has not been fully realized. In an 1862 speech, Douglass told the country that Americans cannot escape from each other, as much as we might try. We only damage each other when we succumb to the seduction of believing our destinies are not intertwined, inextricably. We have to acknowledge and engage each other to create equality. It was through excruciating sacrifice that we must learn "lessons of wisdom, power, and goodness," because "Over the bleeding back of the American bondman we shall learn mercy." Douglass summarized his country's situation: "My friends, the destiny of the colored American, however this mighty war shall terminate, is the destiny of America."20
Appendix: Aftermath—The Douglass Family
In the optimism at the close of the Civil War and the frustration in years afterward, the Douglass family reflected much of what black America would experience. The war itself was an anxious and dangerous time for them, with two sons laying their lives on the line, but it could also be seen as their most triumphant years, or at least ones they emerged from with hard-won grounds for optimism. Their father had helped achieve a goal once deemed impossible, the boys had done their duty bravely, and they and Rosetta were starting new families.
Times would not always remain this encouraging. Rosetta's choice of a husband would set the stage for so much of her misfortune. Nathan Sprague failed at every pursuit he tried, putting them into such deep debt in Rochester that they were forced to sell beloved belongings. She watched as her piano was dragged away in the pouring rain. With options exhausted in Rochester, they followed Douglass to Washington. One afternoon when Douglass went to Salmon Chase's daughter's house to play croquet, he found his son-in-law working as their stableman. To make matters worse, Nathan would later cheat Kate Chase on a horse. Tragedy would overshadow embarrassment when the Douglass family lost their second Annie to illness, this time Rosetta's dearly loved daughter at age twenty-eight. And it was not until 2003 that a volunteer archivist in Rochester, Jean Czerkas, discovered Rosetta's own long-obscured grave.1
As for his sons, Douglass biographers have unduly emphasized their lack of achievement; this may be rooted in unfair comparisons to a truly exceptional man who happened to be their father. Douglass had made incredible advances in society, but few around him could achieve similar triumphs. Lewis, Charles, and Frederick Jr. were attempting to compete in an era when the United States, North and South, was building new and more subtle racial barriers. For instance, Lewis spent time in Rochester trying repeatedly to join the Typographical Union so he could find work in the printing industry but was rejected because of his skin color. Douglass had employed countless young white men to help him print his newspaper but watched a depressed son return home day after day when he was turned away from jobs. Though Lewis, Charles, and Frederick Jr. never received college degrees and often relied financially on their father as they shifted from various pursuits in the years following the war, they all eventually found respectable positions, primarily government related, to sustain them and their families through the rest of their days.
The American social upheaval at the close of the war prompted Lewis to explore the Talbot County region where in childhood his father had been in bondage. Lewis met relatives he might have grown up knowing had slavery not severed these contacts. Though separated by education and life experiences, Lewis was trying to reconstruct a family.
When Douglass's sister Eliza saw Lewis, she recognized him as her nephew immediately. She introduced him around town and to the black community of St. Michaels, and they treated him like royalty. He heard stories of his father's youth, scars he earned, remarkably daring feats that were still legendary in these parts. His letters to Douglass were filled with names of people who wanted to convey their regards to a long-lost friend.
Frederick Bailey had attempted to teach people to read the Bible here, but had nearly been killed by angry white residents who broke up the school. Thirty years later, Lewis revived his father's work in the St. Michaels neighborhood. Some of the men that Douglass had tried to teach, now in their fifties, showed up, hoping to finally learn how to read. Thirty young offspring of the generation Douglass had known learned to read from Lewis.2
The Eastern Shore was a microcosm of what was happening around the nation—the human reconnections that were possible but also, sadly, what could go wrong. It remained dangerous territory; as Lewis learned, "The white people will do any thing they can to keep the blacks from buying land." Many of the men earned their money through harvesting oysters, and those who had enough saved to purchase land were thwarted.
Douglass knew quickly what was beginning all over the nation. By December of 1865, Douglass was already feeling that the war had ended too soon—too much of the Confederate spirit had persisted, and was threatening black people in the South.3Rosine Draz wrote to him in August, "I understand you when you say you cannot yet rejoice and I clearly see with you that until the colored people get the franchise they cannot be said to be free." Douglass told another friend, "The negro needs justice more than pity." This meant his quest went on; as he expressed it, "My mission, for the present is, to ask for equal citizenship for the negro—in the State: and equal admission into the state schools. Of course till we get this, we shall be a crippled people."4
Emancipation Proclamation by F. G. Renesch, Chicago, 1919
Though Frederick Douglass may have never again captured the rhetorical power of the abolitionist era in his life, he would recover his voice as a much-needed advocate of civil rights. He ended his days as an agitator with speeches on black lynching as strong and stirring as any he had ever given, as if recapturing his old verve and profound anger at his country's wayward ways.
Still, at the end of his long and eventful life, he admitted to friends that to the world he was still nothing more than a witness to servitude: "It is too late now to do much to improve my relation to the public. I shall never get beyond Frederick Douglass the self-educated fugitive slave."5 Long before W. E. B. Du Bois's searing self-assessment that to live as a black man in America was to exist as a "double soul," as "two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder,"6Douglass lived this persona to the hilt—half white and half black, half freed man and half trapped in a representative symbol of the iniquity of slavery, half devoted family man and half free agent in his sexual relationships, half an American and half a man attracted to the ideal of a Pan-Atlantic black world transcending national borders and boundaries.
Douglass would serve as U.S. marshal and later Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, and Minister Resident and Consul General to Haiti. He was president of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, though it was in fatal trouble when he inherited it and he could do nothing to save it. The final years of his life were spent in a beautiful Anacostia home where he could look over the capital. In Douglass's voluminous writings, his
marriage to Anna is a cipher and his role as father to his five children is largely passed over with the exception of his sons' service in the war. As could be expected, his close relationships with white women supporters and admirers over forty years is hidden away. Never abandoning Anna in forty-four years of marriage, despite extreme emotional distance and tension as well as extended periods of separation, Douglass offered her continued respect and an odd kind of devotion, contentiously caring for her, their bedrooms across the hall from one another. When Anna died in 1882, Douglass's friend of thirty years, Ottilie Assing, thought they would finally be together. Instead, he married another white woman two years later, his dedicated, loyal, and younger secretary Helen Pitts, with whom he would travel the world. Assing later took her own life. The family schisms that his bold freedom created only became clear after his marriage to Helen, when his children rose up in what appears to have been long-repressed resentments.
Douglass would die five years before the twentieth century began.
Acknowledgments
In researching this book, we embarked on a trip to several important Lincoln museums and libraries that culminated in poring over the voluminous Frederick Douglass Papers Project in Indianapolis, Indiana. At every step of our pilgrimage, one truth presented itself: The figure of Frederick Douglass is growing increasingly linked in popular culture with that of Lincoln. At our first stop, Fort Wayne's Abraham Lincoln Museum, the story of Douglass as a young slave introduces the section on slavery, and later in the exhibition a wax figure of the adult Douglass stiffly stands next to Lincoln in the slide-show theater, spotlit out of darkness, to illuminate the Emancipation Proclamation.
Dramatic presentations were heightened in the newly opened Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library in Springfield, Illinois, which is an innovative, high-tech rendering of the Lincoln story. Wax figures at the entrance include Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, Generals McClellan and Grant drinking tea, and Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass (partnered although the two did not much like one another). In publicity photos marking the day of the museum's opening, Douglass looms over the president's shoulder. Douglass also appears in the Emancipation Proclamation section as part of a large cacophonic throng of holographic heads giving advice to the president, and in the next room a projected shadow figure of Douglass further lectures a distressed Lincoln.
It felt as though we were part of Steve Almond's recent short story "Lincoln, Arisen" (found in his The Evil B. B. Chow and Other Stories, Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2005), in which the black abolitionist becomes increasingly part of a troubled Lincoln's dreams. From fairly historically accurate depictions of their meetings, Almond presents the president's night visions growing increasingly disturbed to the point when, like Huck and Jim, Abe and Fred Douglass are floating on a flatboat on the great river to New Orleans, free of all constraints:
"You will understand," Lincoln says. "You are the one man among all of them who must, by needs, understand." He stares at Douglass and Douglass stares back. Each man can hear the other's breath. They are so close they might embrace. Instead, Lincoln takes up his long pole and pushes off from the bank. Douglass stands on the shore, watching, until the figure is but a gangly figment, dead to duty, dead to memoranda, dead to the human struggle and to the wickedness of blood . . .
Douglass researcher Mark Emerson gave us his time and knowledge at the Frederick Douglass Papers Project at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). We thank him for that invaluable contribution to our book. The continued publication of the Collected Writings of Frederick Douglass, an epic historical editing saga begun at Yale and continuing today at IUPUI under the leadership of John R. McKivigan, will serve to make the voice of this great figure more central to our self-understanding as a nation as the years go by. This monumental publishing effort is increasing awareness of the significance of the relationship of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, itself a remarkable shift in how we view the twisting and tormented saga of race in American life. Previous generations gave little importance to Douglass's role in the Civil War, much less his ongoing battle with Lincoln over the mission of the war, and this book is our addition to the work of previous historians who were part of and contributed to that great shift. Douglass and Lincoln, while telling a story long obscured, draws on the groundbreaking work of historians such as David Blight, James McPherson, Eric Foner, Benjamin Quarles, Maria Diedrich, and, most especially, Philip Foner.
A special mention, and sincere thanks, go to our friend Donald Yaco-vone, research manager of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University and an editor of the magisterial Black Abolitionists'Papers project. Donald generously read the manuscript and offered wise insight into this era and the often enigmatic characters of Lincoln and Douglass.
The longer odyssey that was the creation of this book began, as always, with the work of our remarkable agent Flip Brophy. Jacqueline Johnson, our editor, adroitly shaped, shortened, and sculpted the manuscript. Recognition and appreciation also goes to Roberta Scheer for her perceptive and careful editing of the manuscript. George Gibson of Walker & Company was a marvelous guide on our path, full of insight, vision and, most of all, faith in this story. They all deserve great thanks, and we appreciate the unique contributions of each to the realization of this book.
Much of the book was written at the Boston Athenaeum, where Michael Murray generously provided access to dozens of valuable research materials. Gracious help and inventive thinking was offered by Kathryn Harris, director of library services at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum; we also offer thanks to Jan Perrone of the microfilm division there for access to Illinois newspapers. Cathy Ingram, curator of the Frederick Douglass Historic Site of the National Park Service, helped find important images for the book, and we could not have proceeded on the pictorial front without essential and timely assistance from Cindy VanHorn at the library of the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Thanks as well go to the First Church of Boston, the George Washington Williams House, Young People for the American Way, and Kid Power DC. Tiffany Cruz Gonzales and Donald Peters braved a record snowstorm in a show of support. David Reno offered enthusiastic interest along the way. Maytal Selzer was a loving part of this project every step of the way and is simply sunshine on a cloudy day. We thank Liz, Anna, and Elizabeth Kendrick for editing, moral support, and walks on the Boston Common that mean more than we can express. Finally, those taken too soon, during the writing of this book—Ardyce Hogan, Imette St. Guillen, and Carl Anderson.
Notes
ABBREVIATIONS FOR FREQUENTLY CITED TITLES AND COLLECTIONS
AL Abraham Lincoln
ALP Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
CW Roy Basler, ed., Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953)
DM Douglass Monthly
FD Frederick Douglass
FDA Frederick Douglass, Autobiographies: Narrative of the Life, My Bondage and My Freedom, Life and Times (1845, 1855, 1893; rpr. New York: Library of America, 1994)
FDP John W. Blassingame and John McKivigan, eds., The Frederick Douglass Papers, 5 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979) FDS Philip Foner and Yuval Taylor, eds., Frederick Douglass, Selected Speeches and Writings (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999)
LLA Library of America, Lincoln: Speeches and Letters (New York: Library of America Press, 1989), two vols.
LC Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress
PROLOGUE: THE MISSION
1.Illinois State Journal, 4/4/66.
2. Springfield Register, 4/4/66.
3. Douglass as quoted in Illinois State Journal, 4/4/66.
4. LLA, vol. 2, 585.
5. Illinois State Journal, 4/4/66.
6. LLA, vol. 2, 699.
7. Philip Foner, ed., The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (New York: International, 1950), vol. 3, 197.
8. FDS, intro, xiii-xiv.
9. James Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986), 279.
10. FDS, 559.
11. Ibid., 560.
12. Foner, ed., Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, vol. 5, 541.
13. FDS, 435.
14. Ibid., 511.
15. Foner, ed., Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, vol. 3, 424.
16. FDS, 619.
17. LC, vol. 4, 434.
18. John Winthrop, "The Model of Christian Charity," in Alden T. Vaughan, ed., The Puritan Tradition in America, 1620-1720 (revised) (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1972), 146.
19. Edward McNall Burns, The American Idea of Mission (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1957), 7.
20. CW, 5:53.
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