send a lot of e-mails and you build friends and build connections. i'm pleased we have a team of people who believe in freedom in america, a great country who had a steady road toward freedom over the years and it's a wonderful time to celebrate when there is an african-american president in the white house a country who has gained a lot since the time this parade took place in 1865. >> do you know how the colored trooped reacted 150 years ago when day couldn't be in the parade? >> their leader wanted to be involved. the white man who was their leader asked general grant if they could be involved. they were in the battle of richmond and battle of wilmington. the 41st was there at the final three-hour battle and wanted to

march. three days before the march he is saying we want to march and grant says no. i know they wanted to march. i think if they would have been allowed to march america would have seen them marching down pennsylvania avenue at a special time in the wake of the death of president lincoln at a time when the country was forming its opinion of a new nation. they took them out and gave the impression that our men didn't do anything worthy of note. we wanted to correct that wrong. it took years of suffering to correct that wrong. i'm pleased to do that today. may we continue to prosper in this great country. >> the 150th anniversary of the civil war is over. how do people like yourself and historians and the public move forward now? >> well you know, i feel like the young people who were standing at a place called camp barker four or six blocks from

here waiting on president abraham lincoln to see them in 1862. brady makes a photograph of them behind is slavery. ahead is freedom. they don't know what is ahead but they do know what is behind them. i feel like that today. the future is bright for this country and for the people who love it and work hard to make it what it is today. i'm proud to be a part of that. ♪ ♪

♪ glory glory hallelujah ♪ ♪ glory glory hallelujah ♪ ♪ glory glory hallelujah ♪ ♪ his truth is marching on ♪ ♪ [ applause ] up next, a debate inspired by the writings and correspondence of

abraham lincoln and abolitionist frederick douglass. although the two men met on a handful of occasions, they never publicly debated. two actors take on the roles of lincoln and douglass during this imagined debate. the metropolitan museum of art hosted this hour-long event. [ applause ] in their entire eventful lives they met face to face only three times, maybe four at most. and when they finally did, they spent their time together locked in political combat. one was a proud and brilliant

radical, an aggressive advocate for racial justice who had ran out of patience with the status quo. the other was an ingenious gradualist master of the arts of compromise exquisite political timing, leading when necessary from behind. one would save the union and slow liqueur its major birth 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 orators in an age that prized great oratory. they developed a cautious 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 early photographs show, they not only had compelling platforms but unforgettable faces. no one who met either one ever forgot being in their presence or how they expressed themselves publicly and privately. tonight, by using the very words lincoln and douglass 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 many of their major meetings and orations occurred, it is almost 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-douglass debate. 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 readers and audiences did in the 19th century beginning with their first attempts at auto biology. >> i was born february 12, 1809. 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 absolutely nothing to incite ambition for education. of course, when i 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 farmwork which i continued till i was 22. 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 of theirs. and it is the wish of most masters to keep their slaves thus 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 from which i ran away to part 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 long life of slave holding. he would at times seem to take great 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. sophia auld commenced to teach me the abcs. after i learned this, she assisted in teaching me words of three or four letters. her husband forbade her from instructing me, saying, he should know nothing but to obey his master. if you teach a nigger how to read, there would 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. 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 >> made -- none of the work, he would have made them with all mouths 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. by 1834, lincoln's 25, and finely established on his own in the little town of new salem, illinois. a grocery clerk aspiring to elective office, secure in his natural right to rise. not so, 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. douglass is never punished again. but freedom from abuse is not enough to quench his thirst for liberty. at least he is soon hired out to yet another owner as a fieldhand. william freeland. you couldn't invent such a name. recognizes something special. not enough to liberate him, of course, but at least enough to allow douglass to start a school where he is soon teaching 40 other enslaved people how to read. within years he is now working in a maryland shipyard but required to turn all of his wages over to his owner. he meets a free woman of color named anna murray and gets engaged. when his master orders him back home for punishment for attending a revival meeting, douglass believes he will be

sold south. and he resolves to take anna and escape. on september 3, 1838, he leaves baltimore by train, then switches to a steam boat, reaches the free city of philadelphia, then heads off to new york. finally, he reaches the abolitionist hotbed of new bedford, massachusetts, where free african-americans and anti-slavery whites work together to 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 befallen white and black lovers of freedom in the northwest. freedom. >> it was a moment of the highest excitement i ever

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 great insecurity and loneliness. i was yet liable to be taken back and subjected to all the tortures of slavery. this in itself was enough to damp the harder 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. . >> accounts of outrages committed by mobs 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 caught up and hanged. then white men supposed to be in league 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 of the country as a drapery of the forest. in st. louis a mullato man was

seized in the streets, dragged to the suburbs of the city, chained 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 15 years douglass and lincoln take different paths to leadership. lincoln heads to congress in 1848 but his opposition to the mexican-american war a conflict he believes was instigated by a

desire to acquire new slave territory for the south, cuts short his career there after only 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 now an international sensation to address the anti-slavery society with his own breathtaking speech that declares his new-found radicalism. first, lincoln. >> now, sir, for the purpose of obtaining the very best evidence as to whether texas had actually carried her revolution to the place where the present hot tillties of the present war commenced let a man answer fully, fairy and candidly. let him answer with facts and not arguments.

let him remember that he sits where washington sat, and so remembering, let him answer as 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 of blood that serpent's eye that charms to destroy. >> 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 links me to this land is my family and the painful consciousness that here there are millions of my fellow creatures groaning beneath the iron rod of the worst despotism 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 the disenthrowment of my oppressed countrymen and to overthrow the system of slavery that is curbing them to the earth. in 1854, congress passes the kansas-nebraska act, which overturns the missouri compromise that at least has confined 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.

i was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the missouri compromise aroused me ago. >> out of office for six years lincoln is now ready for his back. he returns to the political stage with a series of powerful anti-slavery 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 wasn't ready for his close up. he holds an antislavery newspaper to the camera, as if to endorse the principles of his new party. just days before, he had been in peoria, illinois, where he provided words that almost

animate this picture. >> this declared indifference but i must think covert real zeal for the spread of livery i cannot but hate. 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, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty. the doctrine of self-government is right. absolutely and eternally 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. >> douglass expresses very similar outrage over the new law that season and in equal determination to immortalize himself before the cameras. in a speech in chicago, just two weeks after lincoln's address in peoria he has to justify his mere right to voice his opinion. >> it is said with much adroitness by the advocates of the nebraska bill that we are unnecessarily slit us to for the

rights of the rights of the negroes. 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 bitter appeal to a popular prejudice against a people wholly defenseless. the right of each man to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the base bey sis of all social and political right and therefore how brash fronted and shameless is that impew dense. the pursuit of happiness screams itself hoarse to the words of popular sovereignty. >> they have still never met but they are beginning to sound astoundingly alike. on the inevitability of a national collision. >> it is, i think pretty well settled that the liberty and slavery cannot dwell in the

united states in peaceful relations. >> a house divided against itself cannot stand. i believe this government cannot endure endure permanently half slave and half free. >> it is pretty well settled to all 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 exactions of the slave pous. >> 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 and place it where the

public mind shall not rest 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? >> is lincoln now reading and getting ideas from douglass's monthly that the newspaper the celebrated abolitionist is publishing 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 douglass is saying.

>> slavery is a system of brute force. it shields itself behind might rather than right. it must be met with its own weapons. >> either let us be slandered from 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 faith, let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it. >> as the 1860 presidential election approaches, their positions have evolved. lincoln, seen here in june will tolerate no slavery expansion but vows he will not interfere with slavery where it already exists. douglass photographed around the same time is prepared to embrace the idea of working within the

system to bring about slavery's ultimate extinction but as quickly as possible. >> my position now is one of reform. not of revolution. 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 bend to the purposes of slavery, let the north now make that instrument bend to the cause of freedom and justice. let the free men of the north who have the power in their own hands resolve to blot out forever the foul an haggard crime which is the blight and the mildew, the curse and the disgrace of the united states. >> lincoln wins the presidency. on march 4, 1861, he takes the oath of office holding up the

olive branch of peace and compromise even though seven slave-holding southern states have already seceded from the union. douglass as you will hear, regards the oration as a giant step backwards in the fight against slavery. >> my countrymen, one and all, sleep calmly 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 oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while i shall have the most solemn one to preserve protect, and defend it.

i am loathe to close. we are not enemies. but friends. we must not be enemies. though passion may have strained, it must not break 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 chorus of the union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. >> it was weak, uncalled for and useless for mr. lincoln to begin

his inaugural address to process strait himself before the foul and witdserring 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 be ever lastingly pressing that scandalous crime into notice. some thought we had in mr. lincoln the nerve and decision of oliver cromwell. but the result shows that we merely have a continuation of the pierces and buchanans and the republican president bends the needs to slavery as readily as any of 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. >> by independence day, the confederacy attacked fort sumpter in charlton and troops are massing for their 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. and again, douglass is livid. >> this is essentially a people's contest. on the side of the union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an 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 a rebellion. at balance are the rightful and successful settlers of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets. such to be a great lesson of peace. teaching men that what they cannot take by election, neither can they take it by a war. >> the people at heart are against slavery. none other than wolves hearts can be otherwise. 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

by practical difficulties. president lincoln only has to devise the mode of avoiding those difficulties of law and practice and they will have the joyous support of the great heart of america and the blessings of those ready to perish. >> as the union loses battle after battle, douglass emploers lincoln to widen military opportunity, disrupt the enemy home front and precement the european recognition of the confederacy by striking a transformative blow against slavery. unknown to douglass, lincoln does indeed draft an 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. and then begins issuing

statements designed to ensure white america that if he does act, it will be out of military necessity, not humanitarian sympathy. he is that fearful about white public opposition. especially with off-year elections approaching. douglass at first tolerates this campaign of disinformation, but not for long. ultimately, lincoln's words enrage him again. >> my paramount object in this struggle is to save the union. and is it not either to save or destroy slavery. if i can save the union without freeing any slaves, i would do it. and 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 oft expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free. >> it is true that the president lays down his propositions with many qualifications, some of which to my thinking are unnecessary, unjust, and wholly unwise. there are also spots on the sun. a blind man can see where the president's heart is. i read the spaces as well as the lines of his message. >> what good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do especially 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 bull against the comet. >> he was elected and inaugurated as the anti-slavery representative of the republican party. and yet the actions of president lincoln have been calculated in

a marked and decided way to shield and protect slavery from the very blows which its horrible crimes have loud i and persistently inspired. he was scornfully rejected. he has scornfully rejected the policy of arming the slaves. he has steadily 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. >> your race are suffering in my judgment the greatest wrong inflicted on any people. but even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on any equality with the white race. on this broad continent, not a single man of your race has made the wall of a single man of ours. it is better for us both,

therefore, to be separated. >> the president seems to be possessed of an ever-increasing passion for making himself appear silly and ridiculous, if not worse. 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. it does not require any great amount of skill to point out the fallacy and expose the unfairness of this assumption for 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 peacefully together in the enjoyment of civil rights. 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.

>> a proclamation in the first day of january in the year of our lord 1863, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people wrof shall then be in rebellion of the united states shall be then thenceforward and forever free. signed, abraham lincoln, september 22, 1862. >> we shout for joy that we live to record this righteous decree. free, forever. oh, long enslaved millions whose cries have so vexed the air and the sky suffer on a few more days in sorrow. the hour of your deliverance draws nigh. no abraham lincoln will take no step backwards.

his word has gone 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. -- letter. mr. lincoln will not budge an inch. >> 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 slave, 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 is plain, peaceful

generous, just a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud and god must forever bless. >> its effect will be great and increase. 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. >> opinion -- upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice warranted by the constitution, upon military necessity, i invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of almighty god in witness wrof i

have set my hand to this final emancipation proclamation. abraham lincoln, january 1st, 1863. >> this is scarily a day for prose. is it 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 to arms. words are now useful only as they stimulate blows. now, or never. liberty won by white men would lose half its luster. better even to die free than to live slaves. >> and so the recruitment of black troops begins as does the

first military draft for all. new york responds with bloody draft riots in which african-americans are the principle victims. around the same time as those riots, black soldiers die bravely in an salt on a confederate stronghold known as battery wagner. 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 call on the white house. his first visit ever 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. >> on my approach, he slowly drew his feet in from the different parts of the room into 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 him who i was, but he soon stopped me in a sharp cordial voice. >> you need not tell me who you are, mr. douglass. i know who you are. >> then he invited me to take a seat beside him. seeing that he was busy, i stated to him the object of my call at once. mr. lincoln, i am recruiting colored troops.

i have assisted fitting two regiments in massachusetts and i am now at work in the same way in pennsylvania. i have come to say this to you, sir. if you wish to make this branch of the service successful you must do four things. first, you must give colored soldiers the same pay that you give white soldiers. second, you must compel the confederate states to treat colored soldiers when taken prisoners as prisoners of war. third, when any colored soldier performs brave herrer to use exploits in the field, you must enable me to say to those that 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 with very apparent

sympathy. >> i told douglass about the opposition generally to employ negroes as soldiers at all of the prejudice against his race, and of the advantage to colored people that would result from their being employed as soldiers in defense of their country. now 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 beside them. besides, it was not believed that a knee crownegro could make a good soldier, as good a soldier as a white man and hence it was thought he should not have the same pay as a white man. but i assure you, mr. douglass, that in the end, they

shall have the same pay as white soldiers. >> i met mr. lincoln several times after that interview. i was invited by him to take tea with him at the soldiers home. his summer residence. on another occasion, while i was talking 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. >>. >> tell governor bucking ham to wait. i want to have a long talk with my friend douglass. >> he used those words. i said mr. lincoln, i will retire. but he said -- >> oh, no, no, no you shall not. i want governor bucking ham to wait. >> and he did wait for at least a half hour. in all my interviewed with mr. lincoln i was impressed with his entire 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 of the difference between himself and myself of a difference of color. and i thought that was all the more remarkable because he came from a state where there were no -- there were black laws. i account partially for his kindness to me because of the similarity with which i had fought my way up. we both started at the lowest rung of the ladder. >> a few months after lincoln and douglass first meet a few days after he sits 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. and here at gettysburg where we see him on the distance in 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. >> four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought fords on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.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 have 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. >> thousands of negros are now being enrolled in the service of the federal government. they freely and joy ousley rally around the flag of the union and take all of the risks involved in this war. they do it not for the money for thus far their pay is less than that of white men. they go into this war to a firm

their manhood to strike for liberty and country. if any class of man in this war can claim the honor of fighting for principle, not for passion for ideas, not for brutal malice, the colored soldier can make that claim preeminently for he strikes for freedom. >> there are those who were dissatisfied with me. you say you will not fight to free negroes. some of them seem willing to fight for you. why should they do anything for us it we will do nothing for them? if they stake 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 can remember that with silent tongue and clenched teeth and steady eye and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great congress make while i fear, there will be some white ones unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful speech, they have strove to hinder it. >> by september 1864, lincoln comes to the conclusion that he will lose his campaign for a second term. 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 ultimately wins a second term but not before douglass submits a bold plan to spread the word of emancipation. >> 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 which such persons may

be wrested from the enemy and brought within 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 the proclamation so part at least as far as he was concerned was not offered merely as a necessity. >> the election was a necessity but we cannot have free government without elections and if the rebellion can force us to forego the national election it may claim that it had already conquered and ruined us. >> on march 4th 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 that the president waits on the eastport

gal for the ceremony to begin but as he concludes his speech, the sun breaks out, an omen that sends an electric thrill through the vast and integrated crowd. >> i was president at the inauguration. i felt there was murder in the air. and i kept close to his carriage on the way to the capital for i felt that i might see him fall that day. it was a vague presentment. i could feel it in the atmosphere. i got right in front of the east portical of the capitol and witnessed his swearing in. and then he delivered his wonderful address. it was very short. the confederate cause was on its last legs but he answered all of the objections to his prolonging the war in one sentence. it was a remarkable sentence. >> fondly do we hope, fervently

do we pray that this mighty scurage of war would speed away. yet, if god wills that it will continue until all of the wealth piled by the bondsmen 250 years of unrequitted toil should be sunk and until every drop of blood shall be drawn with the sword as was said 3,000 years ago. so still it must be said the judgments of the lord are true and righteous altogether. with malice toward none with charity for all, with firmness in the right as god gives us to see the right let us strive on 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. >> for the first time in my life -- and i suppose the first time in any colored man's life -- i attended the reception of president lincoln on the night of the inauguration. i was seized by two policemen and forbid to answer. i bolted right past them. on the inside, i was taken charge of by two other policemen who conducted me out the window on a plank. oh i said, this will not do gentlemen. just say to mr. lincoln that fred 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 ten feet away from him when mr. lincoln saw me. his count nans lighted up and said in a voice that was heard all around -- >> here comes my friend douglass! douglass! i saw you in the crowd today listening to my inaugural address. there is no man whose opinion i value more than yours. what did you think of my speech? >> mr. lincoln, i cannot stop here to talk to you. there are thousands waiting to shake your hand. >> what did you think of it? >> mr. lincoln it was a sacred effort. >> i'm glad you liked it. >> and that was the last time that i saw him. >> six weeks later just as douglass feared on inauguration day, lincoln falls victim to an

assassin, an assassin who had, in fact, been in the capitol on inauguration day and was restrained by a policeman. then, 11 years later on the anniversary of the murder, douglass rose to deliver the unveiling of statue of lincoln as emancipate for. and while the sculpture seems politically incorrect by modern standards, it was in fact commissioned and entirely funded by free people of color. douglass has enjoyed now more than a decade to think about lincoln, the man the president and the liberate for he once regarded as slow but sure. and this is what he says to the white crowd that day. >> the race to which we belong were not the special objects 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 step children children by adoption, children by forces of circumstances and necessity. he was pre-eminently 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 the ages of oppression your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose. we saw him, measured him and estimated him. and in view of that did i vin tea, which shapes our soul rough you them how we will. we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had somehow met in person of abraham lincoln under

his wise and ben nef sent rule, we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of manhood. he could receive counsel from a child and give counsel to a sage. the simple approach, the simple approached him with ease and a learned approached him with deference. >> to lincoln the entire struggle, both for the union and black freedom had been conducted for one reason. to extend and preserve the american promise of equal opportunity. so he had made abundantly clear in his final speeches to union veterans just before his death, specially after desperate confederates opposed recruiting slaves into their depleting armies. >> having in my life heard many arguments or strings of words

meant 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 the slave than any i have ever heard before. i've 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 your friends. for the service you have done in this great struggle i present you sincere thanks for myself and the country. it 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 ]

>> take another? >> sure. [ applause ] >> one more. tonight at 10:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv an nbc special report, "communist saigon," reporting on the south vietnam capture by north vietnam forces. a detailed report at the end of the vietnam war. a report from 1975, communist saigon, on american history tv on c-span 3. >> you're watching american history tv. 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span 3. follow us on twitter @c-span history for information on the latest history news. may 8th marked the 70