right here on the chattahoochee river, built by local people coming together for whatever reason, completing a project for a greater goal. >> all weekend american history tv is featuring the city of -- you're watching american history tv on c-span3. although they met on a handful of occasions, they never publicly argued their views on slavery, the work, or racial politics. two actors take on the roles of lincoln and douglas during this

imagined debate, and harold holzer moderates. the metropolitan museum of art posted this event. [applause] holzer: in their entire eventful lives, be met only three times maybe for at most. and when they finally did, they spent their time together locked in political combat. one was a proud radical, and avenue -- an advocate for racial justice who ran out of patience with the status quo.

the other was an ingenious master of the arts of compromise, exquisite political timing, leading when necessary from behind. one would save the union and slowly cure its major defect slavery. the other would free all slaves immediately, even if it meant destroying slavery and the union together. they expressed their views with uncommon eloquence, two of the most famous or hr's in an age that prized oratory. they developed a mutual respect, and ultimately, genuine mutual admiration. two great men, who is furious dissidents and pursuit of what ended up as common goals made both of them greater. abraham lincoln and frederick douglass. as these code arrests show, they not only had compelling platforms but unforgettable faces. no one who met either one ever forgot meeting them, or how they expressed themselves publicly

and privately. tonight, by using the very words lincoln and douglas wrote and spoke to one another about each other and to the public, and by deploying the portraits for which they sat around the time of many of their major meetings and or rations, it is possible to see and hear them confronting each other again over their shared aspirations and differences. the result, we would like to think, is an authentic lincoln-doug debatelass. save for a few conjunctions, each and every word you hear was actually written or spoken by these protagonists themselves. tonight, we will hear them

again, just as raiders and audiences did in the 19th century. beginning with their first attempts at autobiography. lincoln: i was born february 12 18 oh nine. my parents were born in virginia of undistinguished families. second families, i should say. my mother died in my 10th year. my father grew up literally without education. we reached our new home about the time the state of indiana came into the union. it was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. there, i grew up. there were some schools, so-called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond reading, writing, and ciphering to the role of three. a straggler supposed to understand latin happen to sojourn in the neighborhood, he

was looked upon as a wizard. there was nothing to incite ambition for education. of course, when i come -- came of age, i did not know much. somehow, i could read, write and cipher to the rule of three. but that was all. i have not been to school since. the little advance i now have was picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity. i was raised to farm work, which i continued till i was 22. douglass: i was born in maryland. i have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen my authentic record containing it. by far the larger part of slaves know as little of their ages as horses know if there's. and it is the wish of most masters to keep their slaves ignorant.

my mother was harriet bailey. colored and quite dark. my father was a white man. it is a common custom in the part of maryland to pull children from their mothers at a very early age. my mother and i were separated when i was an infant. and i never saw her more than four or five times in my life. my first master was a cruel man, hardened by a laro -- a long life. he seems to take pleasure in whipping a slave. i suffered little from anything else other than hunger and cold, but my feet had been so cracked with the frost that the pen with which i am writing may be laid in the gashes. my next mistress, mrs. a bang, -- mrs. auld, taught me the alphabet. she assisted in teaching me how to spell words.

her husband forbade her from instructing me, saying, he should know nothing but then to obey his master. if you teach them to read, there will be no keeping him. from that moment, i understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. i set out with high hope and a fixed purpose, to learn how to read. lincoln: i am naturally antislavery. if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. i cannot remember when i did not so think and feel. i hold that, if the almighty had ever made a set of men that should do all the eating and none of the work, he would have made them with mal does only and no hands. if he had never made another class that he intended to do all

of the work and none of the eating, he would have made them without mouths, and with all hands. whenever i hear anyone arguing for slavery, i feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. holzer: by 1834, lincoln's 25 established on his own in a little town in illinois. a grocery clerk aspiring to elective office, secure in his natural right to rise. not so frederick douglass. that year, around 16 years of age, he is still a slave and the victim of repeated whippings by a brutal new owner. one day, he decides he must resist or be killed. he bravely fights back.

he is never punished again. freedom from abuse is not enough to quench his thirst for liberty. soon, he he is hired out to yet another owner as a field hand. william freeland. you couldn't invent such a name. he recognizes something special, nothing to liberate him, but enough to allow douglass to go to school, where he is soon teaching 40 other us -- enslaved people. he is working in a maryland shipyard, but required to turn his wages over to his owner. he meets a free woman of color named anna marie and get engaged. when his master orders him back home for punishment for attending a revival meeting, douglass believes he will be sold. he resolves to take anna and escape. in 1838, he leaves baltimore by train, then switches to a steamboat, reaches the free city

of philadelphia, then heads to new york. finally, he reaches the abolitionist hotbed of new bedford, massachusetts, where free african-americans and antislavery whites keep slave catchers from rounding up fugitives. he never forgets those first anxious days of freedom in the northeast. at around the same time, a rising illinois politician lincoln delivers his first major speech in his new home town of springfield, illinois. to condemn the horrors that have been fallen white and black lovers of freedom in the northwest. douglass: freedom. it was the highest excitement i experienced. i felt like one who had escaped a den of lions. the state of mind, however, soon subsided and i was again seized with a feeling of insecurity and loneliness.

i was yet liable to be taken back and subjected to all the tortures of slavery. this was enough to dampen the ardor of my enthusiasm. the motto i adopted was this: trust no man. to understand, imagine yourself a fugitive slave in a strange land. a land given up to be the hunting ground of slaveholders. whose inhabitants are legalized kidnappers, where he is without home or friend, without money or credit, wanting shelter, and no one to give it. wanting bread, and no money to buy it. in the midst of plenty, yet suffering terrible hunger. in the midst of houses, yet having no home. among fellow man, yet feeling as yet in the midst of wild beasts. these were the hardships of the whip scarred fugitive slave. lincoln: accounts of outrages

formed the everyday news of the times. they have pervaded the country from new england to louisiana, from mississippi, they commenced by hanging white gamblers. next, negroes. suspected of conspiring to raise an insurrection, were cut up and hanged. white men supposed to be leading with the negroes. and finally, strangers from neighboring states going about their own business. until dead men were seen dangling from the bows of trees on every roadside and in numbers sufficient to rival the native spanish moss as drapery of the forest. in st. louis, a man was dragged to the suburbs of the city changed to a tree, and actually burned to death. and all, within a single hour from the time he had been a free man attending to his own

business and at peace with the world. such are the effect of mob law. such are the scenes becoming more frequent in this land, so lately famed for love of law and order. let reverence for the laws be breathed i every man, and let it become the political religion of the nation. for the next -- >> holzer: for the next 15 years, they take different paths to leadership. lincoln's opposition to the mexican-american war, a conflict he believed to be instigated by a desire to acquire new slave territory for the south, cuts

short his career there after a single term. but not before lincoln takes to the house floor to condemn the glorification of war, and those seeking to expand slavery as a bounty. not long afterwards, as you will hear, douglass returns from his first tour of england, an international sensation, to address the antislavery society with his own breathtaking speech that declares his newfound radicalism. first, lincoln. lincoln: for the purpose of obtaining the very best evidence as to whether texas had actually carried her revolution to the place where the hostilities of the present war commenced, let a man fully, fairly, and candidly, with facts and not arguments let him remember that he sits where washington sat, and so remembering, that he should answer is washington would answer. if he cannot, or will not do this, if on any pretense or no

pretense, he shall refuse or omit it, then i shall be fully convinced of what i more than suspect already, that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong, that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of abel, is crying to heaven against him. that, originally having some strong motive, he is trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory that attractive rainbow that rises and showers -- rises in showers of blood, that charms to destroy. douglass: i have no love for america as such. i have no patriotism. i have no country. the institutions of this country do not recognize me as a man. the only thing that lee -- leads me to this land is my family and

the painful consciousness that here, there are millions of my aloe creatures groaning beneath the iron rod of the worst despots his him that could be devised. even in pandemonium, this and this only attaches me to this land and brings me here to plead with you and with this country at large, for this employment of my oppressed countrymen and to overthrow the system of slavery that is crushing them to the earth. holzer: in 1854, congress passes the kansas-nebraska act, which overturns the missouri compromise that has confined to slavery to the south. the new bill makes it possible for white settlers in the new western territories to vote on whether or not to allow slavery. lincoln: i was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the missouri compromise aroused me again.

holzer: out of office for six years, lincoln is ready for his comeback. he returns to the political stage with a series of powerful antislavery speeches. after one of them, on october 27, 1854, he walks down a chicago street with two fellow republicans, discussing their new cause, when they pass a photo gallery. lincoln's friend talks him into posing. this image is the result. obviously, his bowtie suggests he was not ready for his close-up. he holds an antislavery newspaper to the camera, as if to endorse the principles of this new party. just days before, he had been in. , illinois, where he provided words that almost animal this picture. -- animates this picture. lincoln: this indifference and zeal for the spread of slavery i hate it.

because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. i hated it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world, enables the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites. causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves, into an open war with a very fundamental principles of civil liberty. the doctrine of self-government is right. absolutely, and internally right. but, it has no just application as here attempted. when the white man governs himself, that is self-government. but, when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government. that is despotism. if the negro is a man, my

ancient faith teaches me that all men are created equal, and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another. holzer: douglas expresses similar outrage over the new law, and an equal determination to immortalize himself before the cameras. in a speech in chicago, just two weeks after lincoln's address in pr you, he has to justify his mere right to voice his opinion. douglass: it is said with much of brightness by the advocates of the nebraska bill that we are, if the people of a territory can be trusted to make laws for white men, they may be safely left to make laws for the black man.

i brand it as a mean, wicked and that appeal to popular prejudice. against a people holy defenseless -- whol defenseless. ly right of every man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is the foundation of law, therefore, how brash and shameless is that impetus. to deprive them of the right to the pursuit of happiness screams itself hoarse to the words of popular sovereignty. holzer: they have still never met. but they are beginning to sound alike. on the inevitability of a national collision. lincoln: it is, i think, settled, that liberty and slavery cannot live in the united states in peaceful relations.

douglass: a house divided against itself cannot stand. this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. douglass: it is well settled that one or the other of these must go to the wall. the south must either give up slavery, or the north must give up liberty. the two interests are hostile and are irreconcilable. the just demands of liberty are inconsistent with the overgrown exact shins of the slave power. lincoln: i do not expect the union to be dissolved. i do not expect the house to fall. but i do expect it to cease to be divided. it will become all one thing or all the other. either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it in place with the belief that it is, in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward until it shall become a like lawful in all states, old as

well as new, north as well as south. have we know tendency to the lack of conviction? holzer: is lincoln now reading and getting ideas from douglas is monthly newspaper published in rochester? maybe. maybe not. but arriving here in new york in 1860 to speak at cooper union, posing once again for a photograph before he does, this time to commemorate a speech that some say makes him president, lincoln again seems somehow to intuit and paraphrase what douglas is saying. lincoln: slavery is a system of brute force. it shields itself behind might rather than right. douglass: either let us be slandered by our duty by false

accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. let us have faith that right makes might. and in that, let us to the end there to do our duty as we understand it. holzer: as the 1860 election approaches, there positions have evolved. lincoln, senior in june, will tolerate no slavery expansion. but eval is he will not interfere were slavery already exists. douglass is prepared to embrace the idea of working within the system to bring about slavery possible to make extinction -- slavery's ultimate extinction. douglass: i would act for the

abolition of slavery through the government, not over its ruins. if slaveholders have the government for the last 50 years, let the antislavery men rule the nation for the next 50 years. if the south has made the constitution bench to the purposes of slavery, let the north now make that instrument bench to the cause of freedom and justice. let the freemen of the north who have the power in their own hands, result to blot out forever a foul and haggard crime, which is the blight and mildew, the curse and disgrace of the united states. holzer: lincoln wins the presidency. on march 4, 1861, he takes the oath of office holding up the knowledge -- the olive branch of peace and compromise. although seven southern states have seceded from the union, douglass regards the oration is

a step backwards in the fight against sit -- slavery. lincoln: my countrymen, sleep call really and well on this subject. nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. such of you are now dissatisfied, still have the old constitution, unimpaired, and on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it. while the new administration will have no immediate power if it would, to change either. one section of the country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the

other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. this is the only substantial dispute. why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? is there any better? or, equal hope in the world? in your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is a momentous issue of civil war. the government will not assail you. you can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. you have no boats registered in heaven to destroy the government, while i had -- charlotte the most solemn one, to preserve, protect, and defend. we are not enemies. but friends.

we must not be enemies. though passion may have strained, it must not great our bonds of affection. the mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the cornice of the union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. douglass: it was weak and uncalled for four lincoln to bring his address by prostrating himself before the foul and withering curse of slavery. the location was one for honest rebuke, not for apologies. the slaveholders should have been told that the barbarous

system of robbery is contrary to the spirit of the age, and to the principles of liberty which the federal government was founded, and that they should be ashamed to ever be pressing that scandalous crime into notice. some thought we had in mr. lincoln the nerve and decision of all of her cromwell. the result shows that we have a continuation of pearson's and buchanan's. the president been the -- bends to the needs of slavery is relative -- as readily as his predecessors. lincoln is indebted to the south of both law and gospel. with such declarations before them, coming from our first antislavery president, the

abolitionists must know what to expect during the next four years. holzer: by independence day, the confederacy attacked fort sumter. troops are amassing for the first battle in virginia. lincoln tells congress he is determined to fight rebellion to the end, but he never mentions slavery as its root cause, or freedom as its inevitable result. again, douglas is livid. douglass: people's contest. on the side -- >> lincoln: this is a people's contest. the government class leading object is to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuits for all, to afford all and unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. our popular government has often been called an experiment. it is now for us to demonstrate

to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress the rebellion. at balance are the rightful and successful settlers of bullets and when fairly decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets. such to be a great lesson of peace. teaching men that, when they cannot take by election, neither can they take it by a war. douglass: the people are against slavery. all they want is a leader with power and authority. and they are ready to follow where he leads. they are yet checked by supposed constitutional objections and practical difficulties.

president lincoln only has to avoid the difficulties of law and practice, and they will have the support of the great heart of america and the blessings of those ready to perish. holzer: as the union loses battle after battle, frederick douglass employers lincoln -- employers -- implores lincoln to strike a blow against slavery. lincoln indeed drafts and emancipation proclamation. he even proposes it to his cabinet in july 1862. they convince him to defer it until a union victory occurs, so the order will not be interpreted as an act of desperation. so, lincoln tables it. he then begins issuing statements designed to a chair -- a sure white america that if he acts, it will be out of necessity, not humanitarian sympathy.

he is that fearful about white public opposition. especially with elections approaching. douglass at first tolerates this campaign of disinformation, but not for long. ultimately, lincoln's words enrage him again. lincoln: my paramount object is to save the union. it is not to save or destroy slavery. if i can save the union without freeing any slaves, i would do it. if i could save it by freeing all the slaves, i would do it. and, if i could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, i would also do that. i have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty. and i intend no modification of my often expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free. douglass: it is true the

president lays down his propositions with many qualifications, some of which are unnecessary, unjust, and wholly unwise. there are also spots on the sun. a blind men could see were the president's heart is. i read the spaces as well as the lines of his message. lincoln: what good would and emancipation proclamation do, as we are now situated? i do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see, must necessarily be inoperative, like the pope's bowl against the comet. douglass: he was inaugurated as an antislavery representative. yet, the actions of the president have been calculated and a marked and decided way to shield and protect slavery from the very blows which its horrible crimes have loudly and

persistently inspired. he was scornfully rejected. he has scornfully rejected the policy of arming slaves. he has refused to proclaim, as he had the constitutional and moral right to proclaim, complete emancipation to all the slaves of rebels. to my mind, the policy is simply and solely to reconstruct the union on the old and corrupting basis of compromise. by which slavery shall retain all the power that it ever had. lincoln: your race suffered the greatest wrong inflicted on any people. but, given when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on any a quality with the white race. on this broad continent, not a single man of your race has made the wall of a single man of hours. it is better for us both therefore, to be separated. douglass: the president seems to be possessed of a passion for making himself seem ridiculous.

his argument is that the difference between the white and black races renders it impossible for them to live together in the same country without detriment to both. colonization, he holds to be the duty and interest of the colored people. he does not require any great amount of skill to point out the fallacy and expose the unfairness of this assumption. by this time, every man who has a brain in his head, even mr. lincoln himself, must know that in many places, distinct races live easily together in the enjoyment of civil rights. yes -- yet, he says to the colored people, i don't like you. you must clear out of the country. slavery has caused this war, not slaves. lincoln: a proclamation, january 1 1863, all persons held as slaves within any state or

designated part of a state, the people whereof should then be in rebellion against the united states shall be then thenceforward, and forever free. signed, abraham lincoln, september 22, 1862. douglass: we shout for joy that we live to record this righteous decree. free, forever. long enslaved millions, whose cries have the next the skies, suffer only a few more days and sorrow. the hour of your deliverance draws nine. people take no step backwards. his word has drawn out over the country and the world, giving gladness to the friends of freedom and progress. he will stand by them and carry

them out to the latter. mr. lincoln will not budge an inch. lincoln: we cannot escape history. we of this congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. the fiery trial through which we pass will light us a down in our honor or dishonor to the latest generation. in giving freedom to the slaves, we assure freedom to the free, honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. we shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth. the way it is played, peaceful generous, just, a way which it followed, the world will forever applaud, and god must forever bless.

douglass: it's a effect will be great and increasing. its changes, it changes the character of the war and gives it an important principle as an object. instead of a national pride and interest. it recognizes and declares the real nature of the contest and places the north on the side of justice, and civilization, and the rebels on the side of robbery and barbarism. lincoln: upon this act, believed to be an act of justice were rented by the constitution, upon military necessity, i invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of almighty god in witness whereof, i have set my hand to this final emancipation proclamation. abraham lincoln, january 1 1863. douglass: this is ace -- scarcely a day for pros.

it is a day for poetry and song, a new song. perhaps it is not a proclamation of liberty throughout the land unto the inhabitants thereof, as we had hoped it would be. it is one marked with reservations and discriminations. but it is a vast and glorious step in the right direction. men of color, two arms. words are now useful only as a stimulant to blows. now, or never. liberty won by white men would lose half its luster. rather, even to die free than to live a slave. holzer: the recruitment of black troops begins, i as does the first military draft.

new york responds with bloody riots in which african-americans are the victims. around the same time, black soldiers died bravely in and of assault on a confederate stronghold in charleston known battery wagner, in which frederick douglas's son fights in the ranks and is one of the few to survive. still, black troops are paid less than whites, and while white soldiers earn bonuses to buy uniforms, black recruits must pay out of their meager paychecks for theirs. on august 10, 1863, frederick douglass finally pays his first visit to any american president to protest. he vividly remembers this confrontation with the literally larger-than-life lincoln, who he found sitting in his chair

waiting period douglass: he drew his feet in upon my approach, into the different parts of the room to which they had strayed, and he began to rise, and continued to rise, until he looked down upon me, then extended his hand and gave me a welcome. i began with some hesitation, to tell who i was, but he stopped me in a sharp, cordial voice. lincoln: you need not tell me who you are. i know you are, mr. douglass. douglass: he invited me to sit beside him. i stated to him the object of my call. mr. lincoln, i am recruiting colored troops. i have assisted fitting two

regiments in massachusetts and i am at work in the same way in pennsylvania. i have come to say this to you sir. if you wish to make the service accessible, you must do four things. first, you must give colored soldiers the same pay that you give white soldiers. second, you must compel confederate states to treat can -- colored soldiers when taken prisoner. third, when any colored soldier performs exploits in the field you must enable me to say to those i recruit that they will be promoted for such service precisely as white men are. fourth, in case any colored soldiers are murdered in cold blood, you should retaliate in kind. to this little speech, mr. lincoln listened with earnest attention and apparent sympathy. lincoln: i told douglass about the opposition to employing negroes as soldiers, of the

prejudice against his race and the advantage to colored people that would result in their being employed by soldiers in defense of their country. as to pay, we had to make some concession to prejudice. there were threats, that if we made soldiers of them at all white men would not enlist would not fight the side them. -- fight beside them. it was not believed that a negro would make a good soldier, as would a white man. hence, it was thought he should not have the same pay as a white man. but i assure you, mr. douglass but in the end, they shall have the same pay as white soldiers. douglass: i met mr. lincoln several times after that.

i was invited by him to take tea with him at the soldiers home. his summer residence. on another occasion, while i spoke to him in the white house, the governor of connecticut sent in his card. i was amused by the way mr. lincoln told his message. lincoln: tell governor buckingham to wait. i want to have a talk with my friend, douglass. douglass: he used those words. i said, i mr. lincoln, i will retire. but he said, lincoln: no, you shall not. i want governor buckingham to wait. douglass: and he did wait. for a half hour. i was impressed with mr. lincoln's freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race. he was the first great man i had talked with in the united states, freely, who in one single instance reminded me of the difference of -- difference between himself and myself is the difference of color. i thought, that is all the more

remarkable, because he came from a state where there were black laws. i account partially for his kindness, because of the similarity with which i had fought my way up. we both started at the lowest rung of the ladder. holzer: a few months after the two men meet, a few months after he sat for this photo, the president heads to a small town in pennsylvania where a fierce battle in july, the biggest in the history of the continent had been fought and won. at gettysburg, where we see him in the distance on the speaker's platform a few hours from immortality, he finally does provide the poetry for which douglass yearned after reading the emancipation proclamation. the date is november 19, 1863.

lincoln: fourscore score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. now, we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. we are met on a great battlefield of that war. we have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. but, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate.

we cannot hallow this ground. the brave men living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. the world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. it is, for us, a living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here has thus far so nobly advanced. it is rather, for us to be here, dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that, from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause, for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under god, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. douglass: thousands of negroes are being enrolled in the service of the federal government. they freely run -- rally around the flag of the union and take all the risks involved in this war. they do it not for the money for thus far, they pay -- their pay is less than that of white men. they go into this war to a firm or manhood -- affirm their manhood, to strike for liberty and country. if any class of man can claim

the honor of fighting for principle, not for fashion but for ideas, not for brutal malice, the colored soldier can make that claim preeminently for he strikes for freedom. lincoln: there are those were dissatisfied with me, who say, he will not fight to free negroes. some of them seem to be filled -- willing to fight for you. why should they do anything for us it we will do nothing for them? if they stick their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise of freedom, and the promise being made, it must be kept. the signs look better. peace does not appear as distant as it did. i hope it will come soon. and then, there will be some black men who camera member that, with -- with silent tongue, clenched teeth, and

poised bayonet, they helped mankind to this great consummation, while, i fear, there will be some white ones unable to forget that, with malignant heart and deceitful speech, they strove to hinder it. holzer: by september 1864, lincoln believes he will lose his second campaign. the north is tired of military failure and wholesale slaughter. lincoln prepares to turn the government over to the democrats, aware that they will likely cancel the emancipation proclamation on their first day in office. but first, he summons douglass back to the white house and asks him to undertake a mission, to bring freedom to as many slaves as possible while they can.

lincoln wins a second term, but not before douglass submits able plan to sit -- spread the world emancipation. douglass: since the interview a few days ago, i have conversed with several trustworthy and patriotic colored men concerning your suggestion that something should be specially done to inform slaves in the rebel states of the true state of affairs. we have discussed how best to warn them as to what will be their probable condition should peace be concluded while they remain within the rebel lines. and, more especially, to urge upon them the necessity of making their escape. i therefore submit the ways and means by wish -- which such people should be wrested from the enemy and brought our lines. the plan he asked me to compose was evidence conclusive on mr. lincoln's part that the

proclamation so far, at least as he was concerned, was not offered merely as a necessity. lincoln: the election was a necessity. we cannot have free government without elections. if the rebellion could force us to forgo or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to already have conquered and ruined us. holzer: on march 4, 1865, a visibly exhausted abraham lincoln makes his way to the capital to take the oath of office for the second time, and to deliver the address that many, including lincoln himself, judged his best speech ever. it is overcast as the president waits his turn on the east portico for the ceremony to begin. but, as he concludes, the sun

breaks out. an omen that sends an electric thrill through the vast, and for the first time, fully integrated crowd. douglass: i was present at the inauguration. i felt there was murder in the air. i kept close to his carriage on the way to the capitol. i felt that i may see him fall that day. it was a big presentment -- a vague resentment. i felt in the atmosphere. i got it in -- i got in front of the east portico and witnessed him being sworn in, then i heard his address. it was very short. the confederate cause was on its last legs. but he answered all the objections to his prolonging the war in one sentence. it was a remarkable sentence. lincoln: fondly do we hope fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. if god wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by

the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be summed, and until every drop of blood drawn in the last should be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3000 years ago, so still it must be said. the judgments of the lord are true and righteous altogether. with malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as god is us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a

just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. douglass: for the first time in my life, and i suppose the first time in any colored bands life i attended the reception of president lincoln on the evening of the inauguration. as i approached the door, i was forbidden to enter. i bolted right past them. on the inside, i was taken charge of by two other policeman who conducted me out the window on a plank. oh, i said. this will not do, gentlemen. tell mr. lincoln that frederick douglass is at the door. in less than half a minute, i was invited into the east room. i could not have been more than 10 feet away from him when mr. lincoln saw me. his countenance lit up and he

said, in a voice that was heard all around, lincoln: clear comes my friend douglass. i saw you in the crowd today listening to my address. there is no man whose opinion i value more than yours. what did you think of my speech? douglass: mr. lincoln, i cannot stop here to talk to you. there are thousands waiting to shake your hand. lincoln: what did you think of it? douglass: mr. lincoln, it was a sacred effort. lincoln: i'm glad you liked it. douglass: and that was the last time i saw him. holzer: six weeks later, lincoln fell victim to an assassin. an assassin who had been in the capital on his audit -- inauguration day and was restrained by a policeman.

11 years later, on the anniversary of the murder, douglas rose to deliver the principal address of the unveiling of the statue of lincoln as emancipator. while the sculpture of the leader lifting a kneeling slave seems clinically incorrect by modern standards, it was in fact commissioned and entirely funded by free people of color. douglass has enjoyed a decade to think about lincoln the man, the president, and the liberator, he once regarded as slow, but sure. and this is what he says to the white crowd that day. douglass: the race to which we belong, we are not the special object of his consideration. i concede to you, my white fellow citizens, that you and yours were the objects of his deepest affection. you are the children of abraham lincoln. we are, at best, only his

stepchildren, children by adoption, children by forces of circumstance and necessity. he was preeminently the white man's president. but, while abraham lincoln saved for you a country, he delivered us from bondage. one hour of which was worse than ages of the impression your fathers rose in a rebellion to oppose. we saw him, measured him, and estimated him, and in view of that divinity, which shapes our soul, refute them how we will, we came to the conclusion that the hour and the men of our redemption had met in the person of abraham lincoln. under his wise and benevolent rule, we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood.

he could receive counsel to a child and give counsel to a sage. the simple approach -- approached him with ease, and learned approached him with deference. holzer: two lincoln, the entire struggle for the union and black freedom have been conducted for one reason. to extend and preserve the american promise of equal opportunity. so he had made abundantly clear in his final speech to union veterans, just before his death. especially after damper -- desperate confederates began recruiting slaves into their depleted armies. lincoln: having in my life heard many arguments, or strings of words and to pass for arguments, intended to show that the negro ought to be a slave, if he shall now really fight to keep himself

a slave, it will be a far better argument why he should remain a slave than any i have ever heard before. i have always thought that all men should be free. whenever i hear anyone arguing for slavery, i feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. i suppose you are all going home to your family and friends. the service you have done in this great struggle, i present you sincere thanks from myself and the country. this is not merely for today but for all time to come, that we should perpetuate for our children's children, this great and free government. i happen temporarily to occupy this big white house.

i am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here. as my father's child has. the nation is worth fighting for. to secure such an inestimable jewel. [applause]