Lincoln, Abraham (1809–1865) and African Americans

In 1863, after his first meeting with Abraham Lincoln, the African American activist Frederick Douglass described the president as “the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color.” Years later, at the 1876 dedication of an emancipation monument in Washington, DC, Douglass spoke of Lincoln as “a white man” who “shared the prejudices common to his countrymen toward the colored race.” He continued, “[White men] are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best only his stepchildren; children by adoption, children by forces of circumstances and necessity.” Still, even in this speech, which is often cited by those who tar Lincoln with racism, Douglass was using a nineteenth‐century rhetorical device. The second half of the speech praised Lincoln as the liberator of enslaved people. Later, in 1883, Douglass again referred to Lincoln as “the greatest statesman that ever presided over the destinies of this Republic.” He was “the one man of all the millions of our countrymen to whom we are more indebted … than to any other.” Douglass's conflicting descriptions of Lincoln provide a succinct summation of African Americans' changing relationship with Lincoln, but Lincoln's views of African Americans also evolved and changed over the course of his political career.