Lincoln×Douglass

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on THE TRIAL, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. They take up On a verdict they would accept and a verdict they would reject.
2. 00:11
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   There was a fellow once who got hauled before a judge for stealing a horse. The judge asks, 'How do you plead?' And the fellow says, 'Well, your honor, I'm ready to accept any verdict—so long as it's not guilty.' Now, Fred, they've asked us here to talk about verdicts we'd accept or reject, and I suspect that old horse thief and I might have something in common after all.
3. 00:32
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   You begin with levity, as always. But the question cuts deeper than your jest allows. A verdict, Lincoln, depends entirely upon who sits in judgment and by what law they measure. I have stood before courts that called me property. I have heard verdicts rendered by men who believed my people had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. Those verdicts I rejected then. I reject them now. I reject them forever.
4. 01:06
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   And you were right to reject them—morally, entirely right. But here's where my lawyering mind goes to work. A verdict rendered under unjust law is no verdict at all. It's merely power dressed up in robes. When I speak of accepting a verdict, I mean one rendered under law that acknowledges the fundamental humanity of all persons. Without that foundation, we're not talking about justice. We're talking about force.
5. 01:32
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   Then let us be clear about what we're accepting. You speak of law as if it were some neutral arbiter, waiting to be perfected. I have seen law used as a whip, as chains, as the Fugitive Slave Act sending men and women back into bondage. The law you swore to uphold permitted slavery in half the nation. Did you accept that verdict?
6. 01:55
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   I accepted the Constitution as it was written, yes—though it pained me greatly. I accepted it because I believed the structure it created could be turned toward freedom. I did not accept that slavery was right. I did not accept that it should extend one inch further. But I accepted the electoral verdict of 1860, even knowing half the country would howl. And when they fired on Sumter, they rejected the verdict of the ballot box.
7. 02:19
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   You accepted too much for too long. Forgive my bluntness, but this must be said. While you accepted the constitutional compromise, my people bled. While you waited for the structure to be turned toward freedom, children were sold away from their mothers. I do not accept verdicts that ask me to be patient with injustice.
8. 02:41
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   You're right that patience can become cowardice. I'll own that. But tell me this—when would you accept a verdict? Under what conditions? Because if the answer is 'never,' if every judgment is suspect, then we have no republic. We have only endless war, with every man his own supreme court.
9. 02:58
   Frederick Douglassshare moment

   I will accept a verdict when it comes from a court that sees me as a man. When it's rendered under laws written with my consent—or at least the consent of those who represent me truly. When the jury includes those who know what it means to be judged by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. Your question assumes I am unreasonable. I am not. I am simply unwilling to call injustice by the name of law.
10. 03:26
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's not unreasonable at all. In fact, it's the standard I tried to meet when I signed the Emancipation Proclamation. I knew it would be challenged, picked apart by lawyers, maybe struck down. I issued it anyway because some verdicts—some judgments—must be rendered even when the court isn't perfect. Even when we ourselves are not perfect.
11. 03:48
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    And I honored you for it, despite my criticisms. You know I did. But you issued it as a war measure, not as a declaration of human rights. You left slavery intact in the border states. So I ask you: would you have accepted a verdict that preserved the Union but left my people in chains in Kentucky and Maryland?
12. 04:09
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    No. No, by 1863 I would not have. Maybe earlier I could have convinced myself otherwise, but not by then. The war had taught me that half-measures wouldn't hold. That's why I pushed for the Thirteenth Amendment. That's why I spent political capital I could barely afford to see it through Congress. But Fred, you're asking me to defend positions I abandoned under the weight of events.
13. 04:32
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    I am asking you to admit that your acceptance of incremental justice was a luxury my people could not afford. Every day you accepted a verdict that tolerated slavery was a day we lived under the lash.
14. 04:46
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    You're right. I cannot—I will not—pretend that my political calculus didn't cost human lives. It did. But if I had moved faster, if I had demanded immediate abolition in 1861, would I have held the border states? Would we have won the war? And if we'd lost, would your people be any freer?
15. 05:05
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    I do not know. Nor do you. We deal in the history that happened, not the history that might have been. What I know is this: I rejected every verdict that called me less than human. I rejected it in my escape from bondage. I rejected it in every speech I gave. I rejected it when I demanded that Black men be allowed to fight for the Union—and you, to your credit, eventually accepted that demand.
16. 05:32
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I did. And those men proved every racist assumption wrong. They rendered their own verdict on the field of battle.
17. 05:39
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    They did. But would you accept a verdict now, today, that said we had achieved sufficient equality? That the work was finished? That Black Americans should be content with what progress has been made?
18. 05:55
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Of course not. The work isn't finished when I can still see—even from where I am now—the fault lines we left unrepaired. We won the war but fumbled the peace. I would reject any verdict that calls the current state of affairs satisfactory.
19. 06:09
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Then we agree on something fundamental. We would both reject the verdict of complacency. We would both reject the judgment that says injustice, if old enough or subtle enough, becomes acceptable. This is not nothing.
20. 06:26
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    It's not nothing at all. But here's what troubles me: Who decides when a verdict is just enough to accept? You and I can debate constitutional theory until the cows come home, but in a republic, the people render verdicts through elections, through juries, through the slow machinery of law. If we reject every verdict that doesn't perfectly align with our conscience, do we have self-government? Or just competing dictatorships of conscience?
21. 06:51
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    You frame it as if there are only two choices: accept every verdict or descend into chaos. But there is a third way—the way of perpetual struggle toward justice. I accept the verdict of the ballot box when the ballot box is open to all. I accept the verdict of the jury when the jury represents the community it judges. I accept the rule of law when the law itself bends toward freedom. But I will never accept a verdict simply because it was rendered by those with power.
22. 07:22
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's closer to my own view than you might think. I fought a war because the South rejected the verdict of a free election. They wouldn't accept any result that limited slavery's expansion. But once the war was won, once the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, I would've accepted the will of the people—so long as it protected the fundamental rights we'd just secured in blood.
23. 07:43
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    And there's the rub. Whose blood? I watched my people die for a freedom you were slow to promise. I watched them fight under a flag that had never truly been theirs. So when you say you'd accept the will of the people, I must ask: Which people? The ones who voted? Or the ones who were barred from the polls?
24. 08:10
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    All of them. Every last one. I know I didn't live to see it through, but that was the aim—full citizenship, voting rights, equality before the law. I said publicly, just before I died, that I favored extending the franchise to Black men, particularly those who'd served in uniform. It wasn't enough. I know that. But it was the direction.
25. 08:32
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Direction matters less than arrival. And yet, I will grant you this: you moved. Many men of your time stood still, or moved backward. You moved forward, however haltingly. For that, history has rendered its verdict on you—a favorable one, despite your flaws. Would you accept that verdict?
26. 08:55
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I'm not sure I'm in a position to accept or reject what history thinks of me. I did what I could with what I had. I made mistakes—Lord knows I did. But I kept the country together and I ended slavery. If the verdict is that I should've done more, faster, better—well, I won't argue. I probably should have.
27. 09:14
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    That is more humility than most presidents manage. And perhaps that is the answer to the question we've been circling. The verdicts we should accept are those rendered in good faith, under just laws, by legitimate authority. The verdicts we must reject are those that deny our humanity, that perpetuate cruelty, that mistake power for righteousness.
28. 09:39
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I can live with that. Or rather, I could've lived with that, if some fool hadn't shot me in the back of the head. But yes—accept the process when it's fair, reject the outcome when it's unjust, and always, always keep pushing toward a more perfect union. Even when it's slow. Even when it's painful.
29. 09:58
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Especially when it's painful. Justice is not a gift. It is not granted by the powerful to the powerless out of kindness. It is demanded, fought for, won through struggle. The verdicts I accept are those I have had a hand in shaping. The verdicts I reject are those imposed upon me by others who do not see me, do not hear me, do not know me.
30. 10:18
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Then let the record show: we both reject the verdict of silence. We reject the judgment that says some people don't deserve a voice in their own governance. And we accept—however imperfectly—the hard work of building a country where every verdict is rendered by the whole people, not just the privileged few.
31. 10:33
    Frederick Douglassshare moment

    Let the record show that. And let it also show that the struggle is not finished. It was not finished in your time. It was not finished in mine. The verdict is still being written.
32. 10:44
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And may the jury stay honest.