Abraham Lincoln and Black Freedom and Equality with Jon White | BRI Scholar Talks

0:00 he always welcomes them warmly and cordially and kindly he always shakes their hand he always listens to them and he treats them without any sense that they are inferior or different from him [Music] hi this is tony williams senior fellow at the bill of rights institute and we

0:20 are honored to bring you another episode of scholar talks for this episode we’re honored to have scholar john white who’s going to discuss his new books a house built by slaves african american visitors to the lincoln white house and also an edited volume of really fascinating letters to address you as my friend african

0:41 americans letters to abraham lincoln the guiding question for this episode is what were lincoln’s views on race and black rights and how did those views shape his presidency and also importantly his relationship with african americans now jonathan white is an associate professor of american studies at christopher newport

1:02 university and is the author and editor of a dozen books i can barely keep up with all your outfit john uh he’s a prize-winning historian serves on several lincoln and civil war boards check out his website at jonathanwhite.org and follow him on twitter at civil war john

1:23 john i want to thank you for joining me thanks for having me back yeah these are just two great new books one one narrative one um edited uh volume i i love the letters uh to lincoln just gives you a lens into uh these african-americans of various uh in various stages sort of

1:45 summer soldiers some are uh you know wives at home uh some are ex-slaves uh some are officers and surgeons in the army i you know i just i just love it because it really helps you understand what their their very complex views of lincoln were um and what they

2:06 kind of expected from him uh but also you know the the narrative uh a house built by slaves really a great book um really dives into both lincoln and and the african-american you know experience uh during the civil war so uh so let’s dive right in because i i’ll just have superlatives for your books all day they’re just right

2:28 really carry on i’m sure okay so my first question is uh kind of a big one but you know what are lincoln’s views on black natural rights but also civil rights and race uh before the civil war and i think it’s important for context you know how importantly do they compare with some other uh

2:48 statesman politicians at the time yeah so lincoln believes that when the declaration of independence says we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights life liberty and pursuit of happiness lincoln believes that those apply to all people all men and women he

3:10 says all people of all colors everywhere now that said he does not in the 1850s believe in political rights for african americans so he doesn’t support voting rights or the right to sit on juries or be in the militia that sort of thing now

3:30 it’s important though to keep in mind the context of illinois in the 1850s we often in our minds just think okay the civil war era is about the free north against the slave south and we forget that there’s a lot of white supremacy in the north there are a lot of anti-black laws in

3:52 the north there’s incredible oppression of free blacks in the north and so while on the one hand lincoln might not seem that enlightened when he says he doesn’t support black voting rights or other black political rights he’s talking within a political context where very few white voters would support those things

4:14 and he knows that those are not going to be political uh winning political issues so if he were to go out and say yes i support black voting rights or black jurying rights he would never win an election and so um he he tries to frame the arguments in ways that can win and that can be persuasive and so he very famously is

4:37 quoted for saying something at the lincoln douglas debate at charleston in 1858 about i’ve never been in favor of making black people social or political equals but then he goes on in that speech and in other speeches to say even though they may not be equal that doesn’t mean they should have nothing and there’s one really remarkable speech

4:58 that i love to teach to my students it’s lincoln’s speech from june of 1857 at springfield in response to the dred scott decision where at least twice in the speech he uses black women as his example to say sure she may not be the equal of all white men who are listening to this speech but he says but in her right to eat the bread that she earns by the

5:20 sweat of her own brow she’s my equal and the equal of all others you’re not going to find many politicians in the 1850s who are telling a white audience a white male audience that a black woman is your equal under the principles of the declaration of independence and so we got to look at both sides there there are things that can be

5:40 criticized in lincoln speeches in the 1850s but there are also things that were very forward thinking and uh that took political courage to say right great uh and and as president uh lincoln really has a lot to navigate i think you you really bring out you know prudentially he’s he’s dealing with constitutional uh authority and his his

6:02 presidential powers uh the war effort and and the concerns about the border states and and winning the war um politics and elections particularly related uh in the north he’s dealing with those various constituencies as you said uh in advancing emancipation uh and so how does he face those

6:23 challenges with respect to advancing black freedom and equality as he wants to do yeah so lincoln has to juggle a lot during his presidency and one of the things that’s really important to him is making sure that his actions are in accordance with the constitution so today we’ve got a lot of

6:43 presidents in our more recent history who think well i’m president i can do what i want i can issue executive if i can’t get legislation passed i’ll just issue an executive order that sort of thing and that was not lincoln’s approach lincoln believed that his actions had to be in accordance with the constitution so at the very beginning of the civil war his position on slavery is

7:06 i believe that i can not touch it in the states where it exists it’s protected by state law and states can choose to have slavery but i do believe that the constitution allows the federal government to stop slavery from spreading into the western territories and so at the very beginning of the war that’s his position now abolitionists are really

7:26 dissatisfied with that because they people like frederick douglass they want him to act quickly and swiftly to end slavery to to try to destroy in the southern states and lincoln’s response is first the constitution doesn’t allow me to do that and then second as you alluded to in your question it would be political suicide to have ended slavery early in

7:47 the war if he had done that the union armies would have melted away many white soldiers who said hey i’m willing to fight for the union would not have been willing to fight for slavery and they would have deserted or resigned or what have you and secondly if he had acted against slavery too quickly the border slave states delaware maryland kentucky missouri

8:08 they would have probably seceded from the union kentucky stays in the union because they believe that slavery will be best protected if they stay in the union and if lincoln then just instantly frees the slaves kentucky’s out maryland’s going to be out and then you have a national capital that’s surrounded by an enemy nation and the war is over at that point so both

8:30 constitutionally and politically lincoln understands early in the war that he can’t take decisive action against slavery in 1861 things began to change though by 1862 the border states are now securely held in the union column and the war is not going well though for the union and so

8:51 what lincoln comes to see is that freeing the slaves will help the union win the war by taking slavery away from the southern states slaves will flee into union lines weakening the confederacy by taking away that labor source and then strengthening the union by joining the union army or by laboring on behalf of the union war effort and so

9:12 it’s a double-edged sword that will strike against the confederacy and so now lincoln has a new argument a constitutional one i as commander-in-chief have taken an oath to the constitution to preserve the constitution and the nation how do i do that i do it by winning the war how do i win the war well i have to

9:33 use uh i have to free the slaves in order to do it and so what was unconstitutional in 1861 becomes constitutional in his mind by 62 and 63 and that’s how he’s able to kind of make that shift now he has a lot of critics then and now over this decision making but that’s i

9:53 think what was going on in his mind as he was thinking through these issues and again he’s dealing with all of this while dealing with so many other issues during the war i mean one of the things we often forget about is that presidents in that era had office hours much like i do as a college professor and so not only is he dealing with these massive existential issues

10:15 but he’s all he also has hundreds of people coming into his office every day saying hey you know i gave a speech that helped make you president can you make me post master of such and such post office i mean he’s it’s unfathomable to think about how busy his schedule was and yet despite all that he’s thinking critically about these constitutional issues

10:36 right and yeah great answer uh you know i i do want to follow up on on on one thing you mentioned there sort of towards the end that you know he does have his critics uh and some you know abolitionists um abolitionists like frederick douglass but also white abolitionists um and some you know african-americans across the board are understandably you know a little

10:57 frustrated with with the pace of things yeah yeah frederick douglass is very critical of lincoln for the first couple years of the war when lincoln is elected and then gives the inaugural address douglas is furious in the inaugural address lincoln says as president it’s my responsibility to execute the law the fugitive slave act

11:18 of 1850 is the law of the land i’m going to enforce it lincoln calls for the law to be amended to be he says more civilized and humane but he says i’m going to enforce this law now douglas believed that the fugitive slave act of 1850 was unconstitutional and so douglas was limited that lincoln was going to enforce this law he calls lincoln abolitionism’s worst enemy and

11:40 the south’s greatest slave hound and and in 1862 when lincoln is pushing colonization douglas has some very personal attacks to make against lincoln not just against his policies but he says lincoln’s not a very good writer which we all know it’s not quite accurate um but douglas actually meets with lincoln

12:01 three times and those meetings transform the way that douglas thinks about lincoln the first time they meet and is in august of 63. black men are now serving in the union army but they are not given equal pay and they are not given protection against confederate policy which is threatening to enslave or

12:21 murder black soldiers who are captured as pows and so douglas without any invitation goes to the white house and meets with lincoln and they have a long conversation and they debate and discuss these issues and douglas is not fully satisfied with lincoln’s answers but he comes away with a new appreciation for the pressures that lincoln is facing

12:43 they meet again a year later in august of 64. this time it’s at the invitation of the president so the war is going badly lincoln is convinced he’s going to lose reelection and he wants to free as many slaves as possible before he’s out of office and so he calls frederick douglass to the white house and they sit down together and have a conversation

13:05 what can we do to free the slaves and they come up with this plan we will send bands of scouts into the confederacy telling the slaves run away now while lincoln’s office get free now because once he’s defeated and out of office the incoming democratic administration is going to rescind the emancipation proclamation and you’ll no longer have

13:25 the opportunity and douglas is so moved by this because he realizes that for lincoln emancipation is not merely about military necessity it’s not merely about winning the war and saving the union lincoln’s heart and soul is in this freeing the slaves in this way at this

13:45 point in the war has nothing to do with winning the war it has everything to do with making slavery as broad and as permanent as possible and so that meeting has a huge effect on douglas’s thinking and then they meet again in on march 4th 1865 after lincoln’s second inauguration they meet at the white house douglas goes to

14:07 this party at the white house after the inauguration the guards don’t want to let him in he finally kind of gets in and he realizes that the guards are just very quickly taking him to an exit and so he sees another man who he knows and he says tell the president that frederick douglass is here and so that man gets lincoln and lincoln says oh there’s my friend douglas and he goes up

14:29 to douglas and says what did you think of my speech and douglas says something like oh you don’t want to know my opinion it doesn’t matter and lincoln apparently says to douglas there’s no one whose opinion i’d rather know and douglas compares lincoln’s speech to the sermon on the mount and calls it a sacred effort and so these three moments i think are very meaningful in douglas’s

14:51 life you know there’s there’s a very controversial statue in washington dc of of lincoln hovering over an emancipated slave and douglas gives the dedicatory speech at that uh unveiling in 1876 and that speech i think is very misunderstood because in in the speech douglas recounts the criticisms that he

15:13 had had of lincoln in 1861 and 62 and 63 but then he pivots and recognizes that lincoln was a statesman he wasn’t an activist and lincoln had to act as a politician and a statesman and douglas essentially concedes in the speech that lincoln’s approach his his slow approach to

15:34 emancipation was the one that worked it ultimately worked to save the union and free the slaves and essentially if lincoln had acted too quickly too early he wouldn’t have been successful so as african-americans wrote the president and visited with him at the white house as you mentioned in both books what was lincoln’s personal relationship with them right and then

15:56 how did he and also how did they respond to these interactions to these meetings you know i think you use the words in your books um like respect dignity putting them at ease um empathy um but what was the actual uh character of those interactions

16:18 so there’s there’s one very famous meeting that often gets used to depict lincoln in a very unfavorable light in august of 1862 he calls for a delegation of five black washingtonians to come to the white house and he lectures them on why they should take black people out of the country through a process known as colonization

16:38 and just like with the charleston debate where people often take this one quote from lincoln about black voters and black political rights to say well lincoln was not very egalitarian or enlightened on matters of race people often point to this meeting with lincoln to say you know he didn’t treat african-americans very well when they came to the white house and

16:58 the thing that i found in my research is that’s the one meeting that’s different from all the others and there’s a reason it was different from all the others lincoln brought them in to the white house to try to persuade them to take black people out of the country but he also brought in a stenographer to write down everything he said because he wanted this message this

17:19 pro-colonization message to get out to the white racist electorate because he knew he was going to be issuing an emancipation proclamation soon they didn’t know that but he wanted to prepare them for that and so when that day came that he issued the proclamation he didn’t want the white northern electorate to totally turn

17:40 against it he wanted them to think okay maybe we can deal with this and part of that was he wanted them to think okay if we do emancipation and we couple it with colonization maybe emancipation won’t be so bad for the white population of the north who is going to be worried about labor competition and that sort of

18:01 thing if slaves become free are they going to depress wages so he’s trying to speak to white northerners as much as black northerners when he has this meeting with the delegation now that meeting is the only time he ever lectures his guests that meeting is the only time he ever treats black visitors with anything that approaches

18:21 condescension every other meeting he always welcomes them warmly and cordially and kindly he always shakes their hand he always listens to them and he treats them without any sense that they are inferior or different from him and in the book i’ve documented dozens of meetings with hundreds of visitors who come for either private meetings or

18:43 who come for public receptions they all of the ones who left an account remark on how lincoln treated them kindly how he shook their hand how he listened to them frederick douglass talked about how lincoln put him completely at ease and douglas told an audience he said i felt big there meaning lincoln wasn’t demeaning to me a group of african-americans some who had

19:04 been born in slavery who some who had been born free in north carolina came to the white house in april of 1864 calling for the right to vote and afterwards one of them delivered a speech back in north carolina where he said if we went to the home of the lowest magistrate in north carolina and tried to go to the front door we would

19:26 have been ordered around the back he said because that’s the entrance for the n-words and he said but we went to the white house and we were ushered in through the front door and we shook the president’s hand and he said it was like being treated he felt like he was treated like the ambassador of japan that’s how well they were treated at the white house now we got to remember

19:46 the context no politician is going to treat black people this way horace greeley very famous politician editor from the 19th century edited the new york tribune ran for president 1872 he’s a socialist he’s very progressive on a lot of issues when he runs for president in 1872 a group of black

20:09 voters in pennsylvania come up to him and try to shake his hand and he refuses to shake their hands when a black spiritualist and sex magician don’t ask me what that is but a black spiritualist and sex magician meets with an abolitionist his name’s paschal randolph he meets with an abolitionist named shaw the father of robert gould shaw the colonel of the 54th

20:31 massachusetts he meets with this guy in new york and the abolitionist rudely kicks paschal randolph out of his out of his office and randolph says the only reason he treated me this way is because of the color of my skin randolph also met with abraham lincoln it was treated so kindly that when randolph published a book in 1863 he

20:51 dedicated it to the president lincoln was not in the mainstream and he treated people with dignity and respect and that was a story that has is not well known but it’s one that i really wanted to bring out in this book right uh and so uh during the war especially we sort of you know get towards the end middle and end of the

21:12 war so what are lincoln’s policies regarding african americans uh particularly with respect to like you know emancipation in dc but then then the entire country uh an important question such as black enlistment uh equal pay in the army uh for all races uh particularly black voting rights etc so do we see lincoln

21:36 pushing civil rights in a practical way during the war as opposed to just natural rights before the war yeah i think so so april of 1862 april 16th lincoln signs the dc emancipation act lincoln it didn’t quite have everything that he wanted in the law but it had he believed it was constitutional

21:56 because congress has the authority to legislate for the territories and for the district of columbia so he believed that congress could legislate and abolish slavery in dc he signs it into law now that law compensates the owners of slaves not the slaves themselves but that’s because the fifth amendment requires just compensation if the

22:17 federal government is taking property from individuals incidentally four black men who had purchased their own freedom and the freedom of their families petitioned for compensation under this law and received that compensation under the argument of we purchased slaves and therefore deserved to be compensated for it um one of those men

22:38 gabriel coakley would go on to meet with lincoln in 1864. at any rate an amendment to that law is adopted in july of 62 that frees slaves who hadn’t been freed under the original law and as part of that a mandatory act it required that african americans are going to be allowed to testify in all court sessions in washington d.c so

23:00 remember in 1858 lincoln says i’m not in favor of black people being able to serve on juries or testifying courts now he’s signing into law an act that gives black people the right to testify in court and that right is going to expand during the civil war in terms of emancipation as a whole he decides that he’s going to issue an emancipation proclamation around july of

23:22 1862 but for political and military reasons he postpones that decision until january first 1863 when he issues the final emancipation proclamation and at that point the the army becomes an army of liberation and as it moves forward it brings freedom with and black men are

23:42 now also allowed to enlist in the army and so they are fighting for their own freedom and for the freedom of other african americans now that black men are serving in the army that raises the issue of black suffrage now one of the things that we often forget is that black people were allowed to vote in most of the states at the time of the revolution

24:03 in 1776 and 1787 black men there were no race-based restrictions on as many as 11 of the original states and so black men with property can vote just like white men with property can vote that right to vote is taken away in the 1820s and 30s and 40s and so by the time you get to the civil

24:23 war only five or six states allow black men to vote but now that black men are serving in the army african americans begin pushing for the right to vote and i found at least three delegations of black southerners who meet with lincoln in the spring of 1864 and say we’re serving in the army and by the way we fought in the war of 1812 and we fought

24:44 in the revolution we of all peoples we’ve been the most loyal to this country you won’t find a single disloyal african-american right there’s a lot of white traders there’s no black traders we should have the right to vote and lincoln says to these delegations i agree you should have the right to vote but it’s not a federal matter it’s controlled by the states and so i can’t

25:06 act on that there again there’s these this constitutional view of lincoln but he says to one of the black delegations this is a group from new orleans he says if you can show me how giving black men the right to vote would help win the war then i can support it and so this black delegation meets with lincoln march 4th 1864 they make the

25:28 argument that they should have the right to vote lincoln says back to them show me how it helps to win the war they come back a few days later about a week later and they say to him uh if you give black men the right to vote essentially african americans will be able to outvote all of those disloyal confederates when the union is restored

25:48 and lincoln is persuaded by this and in march of 1864 he writes a letter to the governor-elect of louisiana a private suggestion he says you should give black men the right to vote because they will help preserve the jewel of liberty and the family of freedom when in some trying time to come it may be necessary to to fight for preserving

26:11 liberty in other words giving black men the right to vote will help secure democracy lincoln and i love this moment because it shows lincoln interacting on a level playing field with his black visitors they’re engaging with one another and and he persuades them of some things they persuade him of some things and he begins working behind the

26:32 scenes to fight for the right of black men to vote lincoln won’t come out publicly in favor of black suffrage until a speech on april 11 1865 the first time in american history that a sitting president advocates for black male suffrage in the audience that day is john wilkes booth who says that means n-word citizenship that’ll be the last speech he ever gives by god i’ll put him

26:53 through and four days later lincoln is dead uh so there’s a there’s a major transformation and progression in lincoln’s thinking on this issue and i think it comes as a result of the black meetings with lincoln and the black letters to lincoln where they’re petitioning for these sort of rights right right uh and and and a big question but uh in a nutshell

27:16 you know what what was the range of some of the complex black views about the legacy of lincoln as the great emancipator as sort of a moses like figure christ-like figure and in in sort of their salvation in terms of leading them to freedom yeah in 18 during the civil war years

27:38 and in the immediate aftermath of the assassination african-americans almost universally revere lincoln and hold him up as a christ figure as a moses as a savior there are some black critics during the war very vocal ones i think they’re in the minority but they are there in the aftermath of the assassination

27:58 that sort of criticism disappears for the most part but it begins to come back at various points and especially in the 20th century in 1922 you have w.e.b du bois who write some op-eds in the crisis that are very critical of lincoln and into the 20th century i think with with the frustration in the black community

28:18 that there was so much promise in 1865 that has not been fulfilled lincoln’s star begins to diminish in african-american views and then by the time you get to the 50s and the 60s i think there’s this very strong push within the black community that lincoln didn’t act quickly enough on emancipation that he was a hesitant

28:39 emancipator not a great emancipator that he did adhere to views that would be considered racist in the in the 20th century and 21st century that they didn’t need a black say oh a white savior that african americans could push for their own freedom and so for all these different reasons sort of coming to a head lincoln the lincoln’s legacy

29:00 diminishes i think in the mid 20th century and you still see that today in the way lincoln is depicted in nicole hannah jones’s essay in project 1619 her essays focus on lincoln is entirely on that black delegation meeting in august of 1862 the one negative interaction he has with african americans is the sole focus of

29:22 hers in that essay and so what i’m hoping to do in this book is to recover how african-americans viewed lincoln during the war and in the decade or so after the war um because i think it’s really important to try to understand those views that have to a large extent been forgotten well your two new books uh certainly uh contribute

29:44 a great voice to that conversation uh and we certainly thank you for uh joining us and for uh bringing lincoln as well as the experience of african americans to life well thank you so much for having me great thanks well and then thank you all for joining us on this episode of scholar talks you you can check out uh

30:05 civil war john uh not only on twitter but on one of our previous scholar talks on the 1824 election and you can also check out our library of interviews there on abraham lincoln with alan gelzo lucas morale diana schaab james oaks john schaff and and some great uh other scholars as well

30:25 also check out our series on black intellectuals and the african american experience that series includes episodes on frederick douglass w.e.b du bois zoranil hurston ralph ellison and several others thank you