Only Liars Ignore Frederick Douglass

“He was preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country.”

Fredrick Douglass

The quote comes from the middle of a speech Douglass gave in Washington DC in 1876. The occasion was the dedication of the Emancipation Memorial. It is the kind of thing that gets ignored by the activist historians. Henry Louis Gates, JR. references it in his book Lincoln on Race & Slavery. The statement was made more than a decade after the end of hostilities and near the end of Reconstruction. This was not an emotional outburst during the war, but an assessment with ample time for reflection.

Considering the quote in the context of the beatification of Lincoln, it is easy to see how easily manipulated most of our fellow citizens are, including so called conservatives.

He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race.

Douglass goes on to say that Lincoln “was ready to execute all the supposed guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor of the slave system anywhere inside the slave states. He was willing to pursue, recapture, and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty master were already in arms against the Government.”

Frederick Douglass could think and say what he wanted in 1876, but this kind of thinking in 2023 will get you labeled a racist, ahistorical, kook. Never mind that most people believe the Civil War was fought to end slavery. Ridiculous if you give Douglass an ounce of credibility.