Douglass×Lincoln

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Frederick Douglass sits down with Abraham Lincoln for THE TRIAL. The subject — On the line between what they meant and what their words enabled.
2. 00:11
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   Mr. Lincoln, I want to begin with something that has troubled me since the day you were murdered. Your words at Gettysburg—government of the people, by the people, for the people—are carved into stone now. But I remember when those words were spoken, four million souls in bondage were not yet people in the eyes of your law.
3. 00:31
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   That's true, Frederick. And I won't dodge it with a story, though I'm tempted. The truth is I meant those words to grow. I wrote for the moment I was in, yes, but also for the moments I hoped would come after.
4. 00:44
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   Hoped. That word does considerable work, doesn't it? Because what came after includes men who quoted your reverence for the Union to justify leaving my people in peonage, who used your caution about social equality to build Jim Crow with your name on their lips.
5. 01:00
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   I've heard that. Heard them twist me into a moderate who never meant full equality. That galls me, Frederick, it truly does. But I have to ask—did I write those words, or did I leave gaps a man could drive a wagon through?
6. 01:13
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   You left gaps. I will grant you this—some were strategic. You could not have brought the border states along if you had preached abolition from your inauguration. I understand the craft of politics; I learned it watching you. But strategy and truth are not always friends.
7. 01:33
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   No, they're often at each other's throats. You know, I told Horace Greeley the war was about Union, not slavery. Told him if I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. I meant that when I wrote it.
8. 01:45
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   I read that letter. It made me want to spit. You know what it told me? That my humanity was negotiable. That freedom was a tactic, not a principle.
9. 01:55
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   And you had every right to feel that way. Every right. But Frederick, you also knew—because you're no fool—that I couldn't have issued the Proclamation a day earlier than I did and had it mean a damn thing.
10. 02:06
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    True. And yet here is my question: When you wrote that the negro might not be your equal in moral or intellectual endowment, when you said those words in Charleston—did you believe them? Or were you simply saying what a crowd in southern Illinois needed to hear?
11. 02:23
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I was saying what they needed to hear. But I'd be lying if I told you I was certain they were false. I'd met few colored men then, Frederick. Few. My world was narrow.
12. 02:33
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    At least you admit it. Most men dress their ignorance in philosophy and call it wisdom. But here is the cost of your uncertainty, spoken aloud for all to hear: generations of men cited Lincoln's doubts about negro equality as proof that even the Great Emancipator knew we were lesser.
13. 02:51
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I know. And I grew, Frederick. By the time I met you, by the time I saw colored troops fight—my God, how they fought—I had changed. My last speech, I called for limited suffrage for the colored man. Not enough, I grant you, but movement.
14. 03:06
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Limited suffrage. You would extend the vote to the very intelligent among us, and to those who had served in the military. As if intelligence could be measured by white men's standards, as if freedom were something to be earned by the very people who built this country without wages.
15. 03:21
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I hear you. But would you rather I had said nothing? That I had left office with no word on the franchise at all?
16. 03:28
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    No. I would rather you had said what you came to believe, if indeed you came to believe it: that every man, regardless of color, possesses the natural right to govern himself. Did you believe that, in the end?
17. 03:41
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I was moving toward it. Whether I'd have gotten all the way there, I don't know. I was still a politician, Frederick. Still counting votes in my head even when I was trying to do right.
18. 03:51
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    And that is precisely the problem. You were the one man in America who might have said the full thing, paid the price, and dragged the country forward by moral force. Instead you calculated. You hedged. You left room for interpretation.
19. 04:07
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I did. But Frederick, let me ask you this—your own speeches, your own writings—didn't you sometimes adjust the flame depending on the audience? You could thunder to the abolitionists and speak more carefully to a mixed crowd.
20. 04:18
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    I never once said that slavery might be acceptable. I never once suggested that my people were less than fully human. I modulated tone, yes. But I did not negotiate principle.
21. 04:31
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's fair. That's more than fair. But you also had the luxury of not being the man who could split the Union with a single sentence. I'm not asking for credit, mind you. I'm asking—is it possible I did what could be done?
22. 04:43
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Possible. But insufficient. And here is what haunts me, Mr. Lincoln: when the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction, when federal troops withdrew and left my people to the mercy of our former masters, the men who engineered that betrayal quoted your love of Union, your calls for reconciliation, your charity for all.
23. 05:07
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    With malice toward none. I said that. I meant it. But malice toward none does not mean justice for none. It was never meant to excuse abandonment.
24. 05:16
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    And yet it did. Your words were large enough to shelter cowards. They took your charity and made it an excuse for indifference. Tell me—when you wrote 'with malice toward none,' did you imagine it would be used to justify leaving black children in peonage?
25. 05:35
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    No. God, no. I imagined we'd bind the wounds and then—well, I didn't live to see what came next, did I? Maybe that's convenient for me. Maybe I get to be the martyr who never had to finish the job.
26. 05:47
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    You do get that convenience, yes. I had to live another thirty years and watch the promise of emancipation curdle into something bitter. I had to give speeches where I reminded people that you had called us brave, that you had shaken my hand in the White House, because by 1890 it seemed half the country had forgotten.
27. 06:05
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    What would you have had me say differently? And I mean that truly, Frederick. If you could put words in my mouth at Gettysburg, at the Second Inaugural—what words?
28. 06:15
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    At Gettysburg? I would have had you say that this nation was conceived in the proposition that all men are created equal, and that means black men too. Not implied. Not to be inferred by future scholars. Declared.
29. 06:28
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I thought it was clear. I truly did. I thought 'all men' was plain enough.
30. 06:33
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    It was not clear to the men who wrote Black Codes. It was not clear to the Supreme Court that said separate but equal was constitutional. It was not clear, Mr. Lincoln, because you did not make it so.
31. 06:47
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Then I failed. Is that what you need to hear? I failed to say the full thing, and men exploited the gap. I own that.
32. 06:54
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    I do need to hear it, yes. Not because I take pleasure in your admission, but because the gap between what you meant and what your words enabled is where my people have been living for a hundred years.
33. 07:07
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And what about your words, Frederick? You wrote that the Constitution, properly interpreted, is an anti-slavery document. But it took a war and three amendments to make that interpretation stick. Were your words enough?
34. 07:20
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    No. They were not. But I was not the President. I was a fugitive slave with a newspaper and a voice. You held the power of armies and the ear of a nation. We are not the same.
35. 07:32
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    We're not. But we both believed words could change the world. And we were right—they did. Just not always in the direction we intended.
36. 07:40
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    That is the rub, isn't it? The Emancipation Proclamation freed my people in law. But the law is a cold thing without the will to enforce it. And you did not live to provide that will.
37. 07:54
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    No, I didn't. And I wonder, sometimes, if I'd have had the will even if I'd lived. I was tired, Frederick. Bone tired. I might have compromised again, might have let the South back in too easy.
38. 08:07
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    That honesty is worth something. Not enough, but something. Because at least it does not pretend that good intentions clean the ledger.
39. 08:16
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    They don't. But here's what I believe—and maybe it's self-serving—but I believe we wrote the best we could with what we knew and what we had. And that the men who came after betrayed the work, not just inherited ambiguity.
40. 08:28
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Both are true. Your ambiguity gave them room to betray. That is my point. And it is why I am still angry with you, even as I honor what you did. Even as I remember that you died for it.
41. 08:41
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I'll take your anger, Frederick. It's cleaner than false praise. But tell me—do you think we'd have gotten emancipation at all if I'd said the full thing from the start? Or would I have lost the border states, lost the war, and left your people in bondage permanent?
42. 08:54
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    I do not know. And that uncertainty is what keeps me from complete condemnation. But it does not keep me from grief at what might have been, had you been bolder sooner.
43. 09:04
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Fair. More than fair. And if there's accounting to be done, I suppose I'm here to answer for it. For the gaps. For the words that weren't strong enough. For leaving you to fight battles I should have ended.
44. 09:16
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Yes. You are here to answer. And the question is simple: do the words you gave us—Union, Freedom, Equality—do they bear the weight of what came after? Or did you leave us a house with too many doors, and no way to lock them against enemies?
45. 09:34
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I think I left a house unfinished. The frame was strong. But the doors, the windows—they needed better craft than I gave them. And now we're both ghosts, watching people argue over what we meant.
46. 09:46
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Yes. And the verdict is still out, Mr. Lincoln. Not just on you—on both of us. On whether we built something that could last, or just something that could be quoted by whoever wanted to use us.
47. 09:59
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Then let's let them vote on it. Let's see if the people we tried to serve think we got the words right—or close enough to matter.