Douglass×Lincoln

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on THE TRIAL: Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, on On a decision history scrutinizes — and how they would defend it now.
2. 00:10
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   Mr. Lincoln, I sat in that audience in 1862, in the summer, when you told a delegation of colored men that we were the cause of the war. That our very presence on this soil was the problem. Do you remember what you said?
3. 00:25
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   I do. I told them—and I believed it then—that but for your race among us there would be no war. I also told them I thought it better for both races to be separated.
4. 00:36
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   You proposed colonization. Shipping us to Liberia, to Central America, anywhere but the country we built with our hands and watered with our blood. And this was eighteen months into the war. Eighteen months of slaughter, and still you would not strike at slavery.
5. 00:53
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   I had sworn an oath to preserve the Constitution, Mr. Douglass. Not to remake it according to my private wishes. The border states—Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland—they were hanging by a thread. You lose Kentucky, you lose the war. You lose the war, you lose everything, including any chance at emancipation.
6. 01:11
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   And so four million souls remained in chains while you calculated. While you weighed. While you measured political advantage against human agony.
7. 01:19
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Yes. That's exactly what I did. Because I was President of a country tearing itself apart, not a prophet in the wilderness. You had the luxury of moral clarity, Frederick. I had to count votes in Congress and soldiers in the field.
8. 01:31
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   Luxury? I was born a slave. I was whipped until my back was a map of scars. I taught myself to read by candlelight and trickery. Don't speak to me of luxury.
9. 01:42
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   That's not what I meant, and you know it. I meant that you could speak the pure truth without having to execute it. I had to make the truth walk. And sometimes the truth has to wait for the ground to be ready.
10. 01:53
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    The ground was ready when Fort Sumter was fired upon. Every slave in the South was ready to rise. Every abolitionist in the North was ready to march. But you called it a war for the Union, not for freedom.
11. 02:08
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Because that's what it had to be to win. You think I enjoyed writing to Horace Greeley that if I could save the Union without freeing a single slave, I would do it? That letter haunts me. But it was true. My paramount object was to save the Union.
12. 02:24
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    And in saving the Union without naming slavery as the enemy, you allowed thousands of my brothers to die as contraband, as property, not as men fighting for their own liberation.
13. 02:35
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I allowed them to come into Union lines when their masters fled. I allowed them to work, to earn wages, to taste something like freedom before any law permitted it. Was it enough? No. Was it what the moment permitted? Yes.
14. 02:48
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    The moment permitted more than you gave. General Frémont in Missouri, General Hunter in South Carolina—they declared emancipation in their territories. And you revoked their orders. You silenced the very men who saw clearly what the war was about.
15. 03:08
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    They were generals, not legislators. They had no authority to make law. And their proclamations would have driven the border states straight into Jefferson Davis's arms. Then where would your emancipation be?
16. 03:19
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    You speak of the border states as if they were more important than justice itself.
17. 03:24
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    They were more important than a justice that couldn't be enforced. You want to know the truth? The hard truth? In the summer of 1862, we were losing. Second Manassas was a disaster. Kentucky was wavering. I needed something to change the character of the war. That's when I decided.
18. 03:41
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Decided what, exactly?
19. 03:43
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That I would issue the Emancipation Proclamation. But I couldn't do it from a position of weakness. Seward told me to wait for a victory, or it would look like our last shriek on the retreat. So I waited. For Antietam. For something that could be called a victory, even if it was a draw soaked in blood.
20. 04:00
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    And when you issued it, it freed not a single slave in territory you controlled. Only in rebel states, where you had no power to enforce it.
21. 04:09
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    It freed them in the only way I had constitutional authority to do so—as a war measure, under my powers as Commander in Chief. I couldn't touch slavery in loyal states without their consent or a constitutional amendment. You know this.
22. 04:23
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    I know that you had the moral authority to do more. To speak more boldly. To say that this nation could not endure half-slave and half-free, and mean it without qualification.
23. 04:33
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I said that in 1858. And it nearly cost me any chance at the presidency because people thought I was too radical. Do you see the bind? Speak too soon, and you lose the power to act. Wait too long, and history says you were timid.
24. 04:47
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    History should say you were timid. Because you were. When the moment called for thunder, you gave us law. When it called for righteousness, you gave us calculation.
25. 04:58
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And when it called for a result that would last, I gave the Thirteenth Amendment. Not a military order that could be revoked by the next president. Not an executive action subject to court challenge. A change to the Constitution itself. That's what I gave you.
26. 05:13
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    You gave us? We took it. We fought for it. Two hundred thousand colored soldiers put on the uniform you initially denied them and bled for it. Don't tell me you gave us our freedom.
27. 05:24
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    You're right. That was poorly said. You won your freedom. But I did put the power of the presidency behind it, once I could see the way forward.
28. 05:31
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Once you could see the political advantage.
29. 05:33
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Once I could see the political possibility. There's a difference. I'm not ashamed of being a politician, Frederick. Politics is how things get done in a democracy. Moral witness is essential, and you provided it. But someone has to count the votes.
30. 05:47
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    And what of the votes you never counted? The freedmen who had no franchise? The women who had no voice? You counted the votes of white men and called it democracy.
31. 05:57
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I did. Because that was the democracy I inherited. You want to know what I regret most? That I didn't live to see Reconstruction through. That I didn't push harder for suffrage for the freedmen while I had the chance.
32. 06:10
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    You said in your last public address that you supported suffrage for the very intelligent and for those who served in the military. The very intelligent. As if we needed to audition for citizenship.
33. 06:24
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I was trying to move the country one step at a time. Would you have preferred I demanded full suffrage and gotten nothing?
34. 06:30
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    I would have preferred you demanded full suffrage and fought for it. Made the case. Spent your political capital. You were re-elected by a landslide in 1864. You had the moral authority of victory and the political capital of mandate. You could have asked for anything.
35. 06:47
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I asked for the Thirteenth Amendment. I spent every bit of political capital I had getting it through a lame-duck Congress. I traded patronage jobs, made promises, called in favors. It passed by two votes. Two.
36. 07:00
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    And I honor that. I do. But the question before us today is not whether you did something. It's whether you did enough, soon enough, boldly enough.
37. 07:13
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And my answer is: I did what was possible. Not what was ideal. Not what was morally perfect. What was possible.
38. 07:20
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Then we disagree on what was possible. Because I believe that leaders shape possibility. They don't simply submit to it.
39. 07:29
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I shaped it. From preserving a Union that protected slavery to ending slavery by constitutional amendment in four years. Show me another democratic nation that moved faster.
40. 07:38
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Show me another democratic nation built on such hypocrisy. We were always behind, Mr. Lincoln. Britain ended slavery in its colonies in 1833. We were thirty years late to decency.
41. 07:52
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Britain paid slaveowners twenty million pounds and called it justice. We fought a war that killed 600,000 men. We paid in blood. Don't tell me we took the easy path.
42. 08:03
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    You paid in blood because you waited until there was no other option. That's not virtue. That's tragedy.
43. 08:09
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Yes. It is tragedy. And I carry it. Every name, every battlefield, every letter to a mother who lost her son. I carry it all. But I don't apologize for the calculation that made emancipation permanent instead of symbolic.
44. 08:23
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Then let me ask you plainly: If you could return to that summer of 1862, knowing what you know now, would you act sooner?
45. 08:31
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    If I acted sooner and lost the border states, and lost the war, and slavery continued for another generation, would you thank me for my moral purity?
46. 08:40
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    You're answering a question with a question.
47. 08:43
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Because your question assumes a clean choice that didn't exist. I made the best judgment I could with the information and constraints I had. Would I have preferred a different set of constraints? Of course. But I didn't have that luxury either.
48. 08:57
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    And I would prefer we stop calling the conditions of leadership a luxury when they involve human beings in bondage. Words matter, Mr. Lincoln. You taught me that.
49. 09:05
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    You're right. I apologize. Let me say it clearly: I wish I could have moved faster. I wish I could have freed every slave on day one. But I couldn't see a path to do that and win the war. And losing the war meant losing everything.
50. 09:17
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Then we return to where we began. You prioritized preservation over justice. Union over equality. White sentiment over Black suffering.
51. 09:27
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I prioritized the possible over the impossible. And in doing so, I made emancipation real. Imperfect, delayed, incomplete—but real. That's my defense.
52. 09:37
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    And mine is that you were a man of your time, limited by its prejudices, cautious beyond necessity, brilliant in execution but timid in vision. You ended slavery. For that, history honors you. But you did not love justice enough to risk everything for it. For that, history should scrutinize you.
53. 10:00
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I accept that scrutiny. I only ask that those who judge remember that I risked everything I had—including my life, as it turned out—for a Union that became more just than the one I inherited. Not just enough. But more.
54. 10:14
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    More is not the same as enough. But it is more than nothing. And perhaps that is the most honest thing either of us can say.