Name:
Class:
Abolishing Slavery: The Efforts of Frederick
      Douglass and Abraham Lincoln
By Mike Kubic
    2017
The American Civil War (1861-1865) was fought within the United States between the Union and the
Confederacy. While there were several causes for the conflict between the North and South, the South’s
desire to maintain slavery was a major point of disagreement. Frederick Douglass, who was born a slave
and became an abolitionist, often discussed abolishing slavery with President Abraham Lincoln. This
informational text further discusses the relationship between Douglass and Lincoln, and their efforts to
abolish slavery. As you read, take notes on Douglass’ and Lincoln’s perspectives on the abolition of slavery.
[1]
For the Union soldiers and civilians during the
American Civil War, the majestic Battle Hymn of
the Republic spoke of assurance that, in
President Abraham Lincoln’s immortal words, “a
new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to
the proposition that all men are created equal,
can endure.”
But for America’s nearly four million oppressed
and exploited Black people, the song’s solemn
vow that “The Truth is Marching on!” had, above
all, an intensely personal meaning: it promised
them freedom from slavery. It was their good
fortune that for one of them, an outstanding
leader named Frederick Douglass, the truth was
marching too slowly, and he made it his life’s
mission to make it move faster.
Born as a slave on a Maryland plantation, he
shared the suffering and indignities of his millions of peers: he did not know who was his father (but
believed that it was his white master); and he rarely saw his mother because she worked on a distant
farm, and died young.
"Frederick Douglass appealing to President Lincoln and his cabinet
to enlist Negroes mural" by William Edouard Scott is in the public
domain.
But he was exceptionally bright; his grandmother, who raised him, taught him the alphabet; and he
learned how to read. Douglass fell in love with — and mastered — the English language. He was
strong, decisive, and at the age of 17, while working in a Baltimore shipyard, he decided to escape his
bondage to one of the free states in the North.
[5]
He borrowed a sailor’s uniform and a freed Black seaman’s papers, and with $17 in his savings he took
a train, a steamboat and a ferry all the way to New York. He felt, he wrote in his memoir, “like one who
had escaped a den of hungry lions.”
1

In the next four years, according to Benjamin Quarles, one of Douglass’ biographers, a young Douglass
1“took whatever jobs that came his way, sawing wood, digging cellars, shoveling coal, blowing bellows,
2and stevedoring,” but he also began attending and increasingly speaking up at meetings of
abolitionists — whites and blacks who were opposed to slavery.
In August, 1841, Douglass gave a speech for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society that was so
eloquent and stirring that he was hired on the spot as the group’s lecturer and spokesman. He was
now addressing large audiences, and he gained prominence by boldly speaking up on such sensitive
issues as the church leaders’ timidity on slavery, demanding its abolition in the federal District of
3Columbia, and protesting the annexation of Texas as a slave state.
By 1860, when Lincoln was elected president, Douglass was recognized at home and abroad as an
important American leader. He had written the first of his three memoirs that became bestsellers in
America and in Europe; spent 21 months giving speeches and lecturing about slavery in England,
Ireland and Scotland; and launched a newspaper where for 15 years he published his views.
It added to his stature that he frequently supported issues of importance to white liberals, such as the
4temperance movement and the rights of women. Although still not a citizen, his growing prestige gave
him resonance in politics, where he eventually joined the-then liberal Republican Party, and put his
faith in Abraham Lincoln.
The Douglass-Lincoln Relationship
[10]
Even before the Southern states seceded from the Union, Douglass opened a dialogue with the
president-elect by urging him in his newspaper, the Douglass Monthly, to “enlist Negroes,” freed and
slave, into a 75,000-strong “liberating army,” and send it to the South to free the slaves.
This was not an idea that Lincoln was likely to favor: he was known to oppose slavery as the cause that
5was tearing apart the Union, but he wanted to destroy the institution piecemeal, and without a war.
Speaking in 1858 at Ottawa, Lincoln expressed hope that the involuntary servitude will wither away as
“the opponents of slavery arrest the further spread of it” to the new states in the West. Regarding the
freed slaves and other American blacks, Lincoln favored their removal to a colony in Africa.
For Douglass, this amounted to a proslavery policy. In his newspaper, he bluntly accused Lincoln of
“admitting the right to hold men as slaves” and after Lincoln’s election predicted that “Whoever lives
through the next four years will see [him] and his Administration attacked more bitterly for their pro-
slavery truckling, than for doing any anti-slavery work.”
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
a device constructed to provide a strong blast of air
Stevedoring is the loading and unloading of cargo at the docks.
the incorporation of a territory within the domain of a state
a social movement against the consumption of alcoholic beverages
one piece at a time; gradually
2

This was Douglass’ opening salvo against the president’s agenda, which at first was to preserve the
Union and the Constitution, and silence any mention of the divisive issue of slavery. Thus on August 30,
1861, Lincoln cancelled General John C. Fremont’s order to free some slaves in Missouri. “I think there
is great danger,” Lincoln wrote the general, “…that liberating slaves of traitorous owners will alarm our
Southern Union friends, and turn them against us…”
[15]
6
And in May 1862, after General David Hunter issued an order to emancipate all slaves in the South
Military Region, Lincoln emphatically announced that “I, Abraham Lincoln… proclaim and declare, that
the government of the United States, had no knowledge, information, or belief, of an intention on the
part of General Hunter to issue such a proclamation…and that the supposed proclamation… in
                                 7question… is altogether void.”
Douglass, who was travelling throughout the free states urging young black men to sign up for an anti-
slavery militia, was furious. He repeatedly criticized Lincoln for downplaying the slavery issue, and
urged him to “turn the war into a crusade to rid the land once and for all of the hated institution.”
Eventually, his arguments began to make headway.
As the “events during the first half of 1862 pushed moderates toward the radical position,” wrote James
McPherson in his Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, Lincoln — while still maintaining that his
main goal was to save the Union — began coming closer to Douglass’ positions.
In August 1861, he signed the first Confiscation Act, stipulating that all slaves who had fought for the
Confederacy could be confiscated from their owners and freed. Next March, he prohibited the Union
Army or Navy from returning fugitive slaves to their owners. And in April, he signed a bill abolishing
slavery in the District of Columbia.
The next month, Lincoln struck a major blow against slavery by in effect revoking the Fugitive Act, a law
under which the Northern states were obligated to return fugitive slaves to their Southern owners. His
policy ultimately freed all slaves who crossed the Northern lines.
[20]
And in the summer of 1862 — while complaining that he was under “heavier and heavier” pressure —
                                                            8Lincoln raised the subject of emancipation with his Cabinet. His mind was already made up, but on
the advice of Secretary of State William Seward, Lincoln decided to wait with any announcement until
the Union Army won a significant victory.
The delay triggered a bitter outcry from Douglass who was already incensed by what Lincoln had told
a small group of black leaders on August 14, 1862. While briefing his guests on his plan to emancipate
the slaves, the president also blamed the blacks for the war, and made no secret of his wish to expel
them to a colony. “But for your race among us there could not be war,” Lincoln said, “although many
men engaged on either side [of it] do not care for you one way or the other.”
9
6.
7.
8.
9.
a spirited attack
of no legal force or effect
(in the US) a body of advisers to the president, composed of the heads of the executive departments of the
government
Incensed (ajdective): enraged
3

Douglass was hurt and infuriated, and he rudely attacked Lincoln in an article titled “The President and
His Speeches.” “The President”, he wrote in the Douglass Monthly, “… seems to possess an ever-
increasing passion for making himself appear silly and ridiculous, if nothing worse.” Lincoln’s
statements were not only “illogical and unfair,” he added, but also showed his racism.
In another issue, the monthly charged that Lincoln “says to the colored people: ‘I don’t like you, you
must clear out of the country,” and accused him of not being able “to muster courage and honesty
enough to obey and execute… his antislavery testimonies.”
Douglass’ frustration with Lincoln subsided after the Union Army’s victory at Antietam on September
22, 1862 which led to the Emancipation Proclamation that, from January 1, 1863, gave freedom to all
slaves in the Confederacy. Douglass was so delighted he wrote a friend that he wished “one could
strike December from the calendar” so that the Proclamation would to go into effect sooner.
[25]
Lincoln also changed his mind about black soldiers — in May 1863, the Union Army established a
Bureau of Colored Troops to manage black enlistment — and the two men’s relationship changed
dramatically. Douglass visited the White House three times, and each time was received with utmost
respect by Lincoln.
“I at once felt myself in the presence of an honest man,” Douglass later wrote about their first meeting,
“one whom I could love, honor, and trust without reserve or doubt.” During their second meeting,
Lincoln left a political ally in the waiting room while talking with Douglass: “Tell Governor [of Rhode
Island, William] Buckingham to wait,” Lincoln instructed his secretary, “for I want to have a long talk
with my friend Frederick Douglass.”
Following his second Inaugural Address, Lincoln asked Douglass what he thought of it. In his memoir,
Douglass quoted the president as saying, “there is no man in the country whose opinion I value more
than yours.” No other black leader received similar treatment until 1901, when President Teddy
Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington for dinner in the White House.
When Lincoln died, he left Douglass his most favorite walking staff as a sign of his profound
appreciation. Douglass showed his own fondness for Lincoln by hanging his portrait in his home in
Washington D.C. And on the 11th anniversary of the president’s death, Douglass delivered an
emotional tribute to Lincoln’s leadership in which he indirectly apologized for his own criticism of the
slow progress to the Emancipation Proclamation.
“Had [Lincoln] put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably
driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion
impossible,” Douglass said, adding:
[30]
“Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his
country… he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined. Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of
his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro… in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery.”
4

Text-Dependent Questions
Directions: For the following questions, choose the best answer or respond in complete sentences.
1.
PART A: Which of the following identifies the central idea of the text?
A.
B.
C.
D.
[RI.2]
Despite their different approaches and opinions on slavery, both Lincoln and
Douglass contributed to abolishing it.
Though Lincoln played a significant role in abolishing slavery, Douglass was
primarily responsible for this outcome.
Douglass and Lincoln’s primary objective during the Civil War was to abolish
slavery, at whatever cost.
Lincoln found Douglass’s approach to abolishing slavery to be too radical and
often had to intervene to maintain peace.
[RI.1]
2.
PART B: Which section from the text best supports the answer to Part A?
A.
B.
C.
D.
“He had written the first of his three memoirs that became bestsellers in
America and in Europe; spent 21 months giving speeches and lecturing about
slavery in England, Ireland and Scotland; and launched a newspaper where for
15 years he published his views.” (Paragraph 8)
“For Douglass, this amounted to a proslavery policy. In his newspaper, he bluntly
accused Lincoln of ‘admitting the right to hold men as slaves’” (Paragraph 13)
“He repeatedly criticized Lincoln for downplaying the slavery issue, and urged
him to ‘turn the war into a crusade to rid the land once and for all of the hated
institution.’ Eventually, his arguments began to make headway.” (Paragraph 16)
“In August 1861, he signed the first Confiscation Act, stipulating that all slaves
who had fought for the Confederacy could be confiscated from their owners and
freed.” (Paragraph 18)
[RI.4]
3.
PART A: What is the meaning of “stature” in paragraph 9?
A.
B.
C.
D.
appeal
importance
accomplishment
movement
4.
PART B: Which quote from the text best supports the answer to Part A?
A.
B.
C.
D.
“protesting the annexation of Texas as a slave state.” (Paragraph 7)
“and launched a newspaper where for 15 years he published his views.”
(Paragraph 8)
“his growing prestige gave him resonance in politics” (Paragraph 9)
“Douglass opened a dialogue with the president-elect” (Paragraph 10)
[RI.1]
5

5.
PART A: How did Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass differ in their approaches
to abolishing slavery?
A.
B.
C.
D.
[RI.3]
While Douglass wanted to abolish slavery immediately, Lincoln was initially more
concerned with its impact on the status of the Union.
Lincoln’s use of violence to abolish slavery conflicted with Douglass’ peaceful
approach to creating social change.
Lincoln wanted to free slaves to weaken the Confederacy, while Douglass was
more concerned with the morality of slavery.
Lincoln was hesitant to create conflict by abolishing slavery, while Douglass’ only
concern was bankrupting the South.
[RI.1]
6.
PART B: Which detail from the text best supports the answer to Part A?
A.
B.
C.
D.
“he was known to oppose slavery as the cause that was tearing apart the Union,
but he wanted to destroy the institution piecemeal, and without a war.”
(Paragraph 11)
“Regarding the freed slaves and other American blacks, Lincoln favored their
removal to a colony in Africa.” (Paragraph 12)
“He repeatedly criticized Lincoln for downplaying the slavery issue, and urged
him to ‘turn the war into a crusade to rid the land once and for all of the hated
institution.’” (Paragraph 16)
“The next month, Lincoln struck a major blow against slavery by in effect
revoking the Fugitive Act, a law under which the Northern states were obligated
to return fugitive slaves to their Southern owners.” (Paragraph 19)

6

Famous Speeches: Frederick Douglass' "The Hypocrisy of American Slavery"

Editor's Note: Frederick Douglass was born in Maryland in 1818, the son of a slave woman and her white master. He became widely known after writing his autobiography in 1845, where he described his escape from slavery. In 1852, he was invited to speak at a July Fourth ceremony in Rochester, New York. Instead of celebrating America's independence though, he raged against the injustice of slavery in the United States.
Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why have I been asked to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, granted to us? And am I being asked to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and praise and show loyal gratitude for the blessings that come to us from your independence?
Would to God, both for your sake and ours, that the answer was yes. Then my task would be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who is so stubborn and dead to the claims of gratitude that he would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who is so boring and selfish that he would not cry hallelujah on a nation's anniversary, after the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, a mute man would speak, or a lame man "leap like a deer."
But such is not the state of the case, I say with a sad sense of the enormous gap between us. I am not included in this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the infinite distance between us. The blessings in which you rejoice are not enjoyed by everyone. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence left to you by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, but I must mourn. To drag a man in shackles into the grand, illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, is inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, you are not the first. Let me warn you, that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation (Babylon) whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the Almighty, burying that nation in ruin.
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions. Their chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today made even harder to bear by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!"
To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, would be treason and would accuse me before God and the world.
My subject, then, fellow citizens, is "American Slavery." I shall speak this day from the slave's point of view. Standing here, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.

Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the claims of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. I am standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion. I will, in the name of humanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which is shackled, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are ignored and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to emphatically denounce everything that upholds slavery, the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate. I will not excuse." I will use the severest language I can command. Yet I shall not say one word that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice or who is not at heart a slave-holder, shall not admit to be right and just.
But some of my audience shall say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother Abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. If you would argue more and attack less, if you would persuade more and criticize less, your cause would then be much more likely to succeed. But what is the point of the anti-slavery creed you would have me argue? About what exactly do the people of this country need to be enlightened? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already, and nobody doubts it. The slave- holders themselves acknowledge it in their laws and acknowledge it when they punish disobedience by the slave. There are 72 crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death, while only two of these crimes will subject a white man to the same punishment.
What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern laws forbid, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and write. When you can point to any such laws about the beasts of the field, then I may agree to argue over the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the birds of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man!
For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and calculating, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men. We dig gold in California, capture the whale in the Pacific, feed sheep and cattle on the hillside, live, move, act, think, plan, live in families as husbands, wives, and children. And above all, we worship the Christian God, and look hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave. Yet we are called upon to prove that we are men?
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Americans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and debate, as if it were such a difficult matter and hard to understand? How should I look today in the presence of Americans to argue that men have a natural right to freedom? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous, and insult your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
What! Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to separate their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system marked with blood is wrong? No, I will not. I have better uses for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine, that God did not establish it, that our ministers and priests are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought that which is inhuman cannot be divine, and who can reason on such a statement? They that can, may. I cannot. The time for such argument is past.
At a time like this what's needed is scorching irony, not convincing argument. Oh, had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern accusations. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be stirred up; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the behavior of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer that it is a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your liberty that you boast about is an unholy freedom; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy. They are merely a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than the United States at this very hour.
Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and dictatorships of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse. When you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
Quiz
7. Which of the following answer choices BEST supports the idea that some people disapprove of the
efforts to end slavery?
(A) And am I being asked to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and
praise and show loyal gratitude for the blessings that come to us from your independence?
(B) But some of my audience shall say it is just in this circumstance that you and
your brother Abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind.
(C) Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful
owner of his own body? You have already declared it.
(D) At a time like this what's needed is scorching irony, not convincing argument.
Oh, had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern accusations.
8. Read the following excerpt.
This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, but I must mourn. To drag a man in shackles into the grand, illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, is inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.
What inference can be made from the excerpt?
(A) Celebrating freedom is absurd in a country with slavery.
(B) Celebrating freedom for all will be possible once slavery is ended.
(C) The Fourth of July is an important national holiday for most people.
(D) The Fourth of July acknowledges the admirable ideals of the U.S.

9. Which of the following statements BEST expresses the speaker's central idea?
(A) Slavery is wrong, and he is grateful that the audience is working hard to bring it
to an end.
(B) Everyone already knows slavery is wrong, but only a small number of people
want to keep slaves.
(C) Everyone already knows slavery is wrong, however, they allow it to continue
without protest.
(D) Slavery is wrong, but thankfully most people recognize that it contradicts
America's ideals.
10. Which sentence BEST summarizes the speaker's central idea about his country?
(A) Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why have I been asked to
speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence?
(B) Let me warn you, that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation (Babylon)
whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the Almighty, burying that nation in ruin.
(C) Yet I shall not say one word that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by
prejudice or who is not at heart a slave-holder, shall not admit to be right and just.
(D) There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody
than the United States at this very hour.

Essay Prompt: 
Directions: Close your laptops and take out one sheet of paper to answer the following essay prompt: 
Discuss how Douglass uses rhetoric to advance the purpose of his speech. Cite relevant evidence to support your answer.