done to prevent this from happening again? >> we can get out of vietnam. >> everywhere we left, if the enemy was not there will be got there, they were when we left. they seemed to be growing them, planting seeds. wherever we went we bred the enemy. they came out of nowhere. it was almost as if we were not there there would be none. >> what do you think a war crime is? >> i consider a war crime reading over there. just the idea of being there. >> turning these people into a bomb creator. they shot these people. these people did not say a word. i guess you would say it was senseless. but it seemed like everybody was doing the right thing. everybody else was shooting so might as well have target practice. everything seemed to be like we were doing it right. nobody said nothing about it. >> federal think this is some isolated circumstance. it is happen many times before and many times after. >> next sunday, we look back 50

years june 6, 1968. was democratt hubert humphrey over republican richard nixon. the 1968 presidential election sunday, march 25 at 8:30 a.m. eastern here on american history three.-span a, collegeon q and professor tom cronin talks about his book imagining a great republic in the idea of america. i think a reading of american classics is bubbling and empowering.

harper lee andd all these people are saying we want to be something special, a city that cares and loves one another and understands that politics is indispensable to bringing about project -- progress. >> american history tv, david white , director for the center of slavery, resistance and evolution presented talk about frederick douglass at 200. he discusses his life and work as annapolis next, public speaker and writer, as well as how we think about him now.

the american historical society marked this event. people in theew history of this great country who have left that mark. he is without a doubt one of the most important men in american history and his legacy continues today. born into slavery, frederick douglass papers away for generations of americans who fought for justice and inequality, but he did it peacefully. his writings are as relevant today as they were in the 19th century. bicentennialthe who is with us tonight to discuss the achievements and legacy of his life. he is a teacher and public historian. the -- rector of

he organizes conferences, andures and the book prize many outreach programs regarding the history of slavery. he is currently writing a biography that will be published later this year. bonding myoks freedom, speaks for the nigro and the civil rights era. he is the author of a slave no more. of raceso the author and reunion, the civil war memories published in 2001. it received a towards including the abraham lincoln prize, and

frederick douglass price. he has a degree from the university of wisconsin. he is also taught at harvard and north central college in illinois. he was elected as a member of in 2002.ty served on the board of advisors for abraham lincoln and is involving conferences to commemorate events. he has received honor it doctorate degrees in orangeburg, new york. -- 009, it is great honor to welcome david. [applause] >> thank you, mark.

thank you all for coming out tonight on an ugly day in baltimore. got to going, but we down and knock around and that was fun. i got to spend time with the archivist. ie governor and all the rest, hear you. it is about time. it is more than a good thing. they are gorumor that douglas by even begun. -- be gone. those of us who work on him often feel that way when we wake up from nightmares. i do teacher institutes in the summer and i did one last summer on the life and writings of douglas.

by the end of the week, everyone on the seminar has this t-shirt which you can all get. there are even caps, douglas 2020. my students but one of my favorite quotes on the back. my pen, my voice, my vote. i am going to say several things tonight about this new biography. this is the cover. i brought a bunch of these postcards. my publisher gave me, i think 2000 of them, and i have to get rid of them. pick one up. you can order online already, apparently. you will not get it until september, that is if i get the

final edits done. i have to get home so i can get the editing done. i want to begin with two passages. this is going to seem like church for a moment. my apologies. one of the arguments i will be making tonight is that the bible, and particularly the old testament was extremely important to frederick douglass. i want a begin with two brief passages that he not only read but came to embody. the first is from jeremiah in the first chapter. "behold, i have put my words in your mouth to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow. to build and to plant." note the dichotomies in their.

to destroy and to rebuild is at the heart of douglas' ideas. the story of the consequences of the civil war. douglass was a serious student of the hebrew prophets. there is this line in genesis. almost everybody knows the story , it is in genesis 8, where it says, "and the dove came into him in the evening and in her mouth was in all of leaf plucked off. noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth." that is in the middle of the famous story of noah's ark. i am going to begin with a story that happened here in baltimore, where douglass employed that noah's ark story. i want to begin with the background.

i will get him to baltimore, it will just take a few minutes. i'm not pandering to you because we are in baltimore, this is simply one of my favorite frederick douglass stories. i found a couple of incredibly cool things as a historian about this. the election of 1864, those of you who know american history, and that is most of the people here, will remember that that is lincoln's reelection. there was no foregone conclusion that lincoln would win in 1864. the war was in stalemate that summer, a terrible stalemate in virginia and in georgia in particular.

and in mobile bay, where great naval battle will be fought. it began in the previous winter, that election season in the midst of civil war. no republic has -- had ever held a general election amidst a civil war. how do you do that? no blueprints. where do you look that up in the constitution? it began when the senate passed the 13th amendment abolishing slavery. both houses. the senate passed it, but the houston not. there was no way to get a two thirds majority in the house. the 13th amendment we know was passed one year later, in january of 1865, was actually

brought to congress the previous year. it was the republican's brand, an amendment to end slavery became the brand on the republican party, and rightly so. they chose that. oh my god, now they had to run a presidential election campaign branded as the party of abolition. that spring and summer, and then into the fall, the democratic party, and the parties have reversed a lot in terms of ideology, i do not need to explain that, do i? it has been most of the century since the party of the democratic party, white supremacist to this court, ran a campaign not just against lincoln, but against emancipation, and against war-weariness. war wariness was absolutely big in the north. there is a remarkable exhibit on maryland and the civil war which does not shy away from the horror of war and the problem of death.

that summer, and i will leave a lot out here, lincoln himself at times believed he would not be reelected, or there was not a good likelihood of him being elected. and for the second time, he met with frederick douglass at the white house. their second meeting occurs in august 1864. the first meeting occurred here earlier -- occurred a year earlier. the first time they went douglass stood in line at the white house and asked to meet the president. the second time, it was at lincoln's invitation, because he wanted to talk to frederick douglas, the most famous and most important voice or spokesman for african-americans, black americans.

he wanted to talk to douglas about this emancipation problem, and he floated a trial balloon on douglas. he asked douglas, looking eye to eye in lincoln's white house office, eye to eye, and lincoln asked douglas if he would be interested in setting up a scheme, a plan, to final slaves out of the upper south, as many as possible before election day, under the auspices of the army. douglass would have to be the head of it and the recruiter of all these other agents, and the scheme was that douglass would recruit a couple of dozen agents to make this happen with the help of the army.

lincoln's apparent idea was to get as many slaves behind our lines and as legally free, before george mcclellan wins this election in the fall and democrats take over on a piece platform, -- ap's platform -- a peace platform, or a negotiated peace with the confederates. in effect, lincoln looked douglas in the eye and asked him to be a legal john brown. frankly, there is some evidence of this, it is not hard fact that i think douglass was just stunned. sure, he said, yes. i didn't have a clue how this was supposed to happen. of course, he was saved from having to make it. he did go home to rochester, new york. he contacted all sorts of abolitionists, writing telegrams and lining people up to get involved in the scheme.

and there were a lot of northern abolitionists that had been serving for more than a year as recruiters of black soldiers are in -- black soldiers. they had experience with some of this. but the plan was abandoned, as many of you know, because of battlefield events that changed the course of this election, particularly the fall of atlanta in the first week of september. sheridan's conquest up the shenandoah valley, and the late august fall of mobile bay to admiral farragut. these were huge turning point in the civil war. when you get into the parlor game, most important turning point of the civil war, which we fall's left argue, it has become my favorite. [laughter] maybe next year i will go back to saying it was antietam. it anyway, he was saved from that plant. and now, the election campaign,

douglas wanted -- douglass wanted to campaign for lincoln. but the republican party, tainted with this brand of emancipation, begins to back away. this happens in politics, we all know this. republicans begin to shy away from saying they are the party of abolition, because the democrats are kelly rigged them -- democrats are pillorying them with the most white supremacist campaign in history, until the next one. which was 1868, which was worse. they called abraham lincoln abraham africanus the first. they called him the miscegenation or in chief. the very word of miscegenation, or race mexico, was invented in november of 1864 by "the new york world," that the republican party was running a miscegenation campaign, that its

ultimate goal was race mixing. and they put out cartoons, they put out lithographs of miscegenation balls being held in northern cities. so you have got to -- you have got a scared republic. even we make seward, lincoln's secretary of state, publicly backed away from abolition and said, that may just be a matter of what the courts decide. that's always a resort for some politicians. the courts will decide, whatever that means. and the courts, of course in america in the middle of the civil war, where the most discredited institution in the government because of the dread scott case -- the dred scott case. they wouldn't let douglass campaign for lincoln. they didn't want him on the stump. they would come after the war.

douglass would stump for every republican candidate from ulysses grant, to the end of his life. the republicans managed to nearly went. now, before he do that, just briefly, douglass -- douglass was the keynote speaker at a major convention in syracuse in the fall of 1864. 150 delegates from most of the states, including some southern states. this is the old tradition of the black convention and they hadn't had one something like nine years. douglass gave a stunner of a speech at the convention. he told them everything was at

stake in this election, everything, he said. not just their freedom, but the survival of the nation, the survival of an american civilization. it was a nexus to enter moment, douglas said, and his audience believed him. and by the way, at that convention, henry highland garnet and john mercer langston and this incredible generation, some of them douglass' generation but most of them younger and rivals of douglass, they had all kinds of ceremony. upon the stage at the convention they brought out the battle flag of a black regiment that fought at port hudson, and they sang "the battle hymn of the republic." it was written two years earlier. they sang "john brown's body." they sang hymns. imagine, and they are praying that lincoln and the republicans might win, because if they don't all bets are off. on election night in rochester, i found one credible newspaper clipping about this in a scrapbook collection i will tell you about in a minute, and the scrapbook collection is the reason i did this biography. otherwise it wouldn't write a biography of douglass, but anyway i found this report.

it was in a rochester paper by a man who said he had been a poll worker on the night of the election. 1864, november 8. and he remembered he was the one who put, he wrote this like 18 years after the work, i was the one who put frederick douglass' ballot into the box. and he walked into the center of town late that evening to go to the telegraph office with the election returns. and he said, they were walking into the center of town and for drunken, white socks came into the middle of the street and challenged douglass with the n-word over and over. and the guy said douglass put up his fists and said, let's have added -- let's have at it. douglas was a fighter.

you don't need to read the narrative to know he has put with his fists before. according to this eyewitness account, the drunken white thugs scurried off into a dark alley. and then he quotes douglass as saying, i suppose the boys were just upset, they didn't like the results of the election. i don't know what douglass said that night, the eyewitness is probably making of dialogue he had with douglass, but what an anecdote. anyway, sorry. but the following sunday, five days later, douglass did what he had done so many times in rochester. he went to speak at spring street ame church, a black church in rochester. douglas had a sort of regular gig there on sunday afternoons

for years. he would do a whole series of lectures, like six series on a topic. he went to spring street on the sunday right after the election, a packed church, a mostly black audience, and he began his speech with the story of noah's ark. he recited some of genesis, and he told the story of noah who at one point freda dove from the arc and the dove -- freed a dove from the arc and the ark returned with an olive branch. and he freed the dove again, and they dove didn't come back. and noah removed the tarp from the ark, and he could see land. and douglas reinterpreted that to the reelection of lincoln. douglas went to the oldest

rebirth metaphor in western culture. the survival of noah's ark. one week later, the 16th of november, douglas came back to baltimore -- douglass came back to baltimore for the first time ever since he escaped in 1838. he had never been back -- well, actually he had taken a trained through your to get to washington, but he had never gotten off. on november 1, maryland historians know this, maryland held a referendum to vote whether to be a free state. and they voted narrowly, i have the numbers here, it's amazing. 30,174 to 29,799. that the number all mayor landrieu spot to know. 60,000 votes were cast. the yes vote one to make maryland a free state. maryland was a very divided place, and it wrote a free-state constitution.

douglass decided, i am going back to baltimore, maryland is a free state. and he came back to baltimore with, in effect, a kind of popper rossi intel for us -- top a kind of paparazzi in tow. and he went to druit hill -- dryuid hill, at the first ame church, he took the pulpit. when he arrived at the door he is met by a woman named eliza mitchell. eliza was his sister. she was two years older, born a slave like him. she had lived a all of her life in talbot county, eastern shore. eliza had seven or eight children. she had named one of them for douglass, the last name. we are told she remained largely illiterate but she knew a lot about her famous brother. and she came, what is it, 60 miles from talbot county, how far is it?

75 miles, thank you. my friends who are the force of frederick douglass, and eastern talbert county -- eastern talbot county.

and it is not clear whether he knew her by they embraced -- knew her but they embraced. press reports say he walked arm in arm with eliza to the pulpit, and the pulpit was surrounded by american flags, and he gave a speech, again begin with noah's ark. but there's a variation on it this time, and these audience, everybody knew the book of genesis. he told the story of noah

sending the dive out in the dove comes back and noah sends out the dove again and it doesn't come back and douglas says, the fact that i am standing here today is the equivalent of the dove. i am the dove. the oldest rebirth metaphor in western culture, and he put himself right in the middle of it. and it worked. sometimes if we put ourselves in the middle of a biblical metaphor, you are not going to get away with it, right? [laughter] always a bad idea comparing yourselves to god's work or something. that's what he did. anyway, we got to baltimore. in his speech for the dedication of the national african american museum of history and culture, the dedication was september 20 4, 2016.

douglass was not there. [laughter] but president barack obama was and he delivered a remarkable speech, what he called a "clear eyed view of a tragic and triumphant history of african-americans." he spoke of history that is central to the larger american story and one that is both contradictory and extraordinary. he likened the african-american experience to the deaths of shakespeare and scripture. he said the embrace of truth as best we know it is where real patriotism lies. missing obama? don't answer that.

missing major pivots of the country's past, obama wrapped his central theme, this contradictory and extraordinary history, he wrapped his central theme in a remarkable sentence about the epic of the civil war. we button on our union blues, said obama, to join the fight for our freedom. we have railed against injustice for decade upon decade, a lifetime of struggle and progress and and light and meant that we see etched in frederick douglass' mikey, leaning days. -- mighty, lionine gaze. we can get that gaze up here. here it is. the gaze in some photos coming can quite see the eyes although this is a favorite photo, for a

lot of people. it is january 1863, after the emancipation proclamation. douglass is sitting on a books, the widow nor the book is. it could be the bible, it can't be "life and times" yet because he hadn't written yet. but that is a stunner. he is a little older, the white hair comes in, the lionine gaze. everybody probably a knows by now that douglass was the most photographed american of the 19 century. he got to lay out that gaze a lot of times. 162 or 163 photos of douglass exist, and according to the authors of "picturing frederick douglass" it's an amazing book, and they found a lot of new photos.

he just barely surpassed george armstrong custer as the most-photographed american. aren't you glad? between is third, maybe grant -- mark twain's third and maybe grant is fourth. i wanted the old douglas, actually, on the cover of my book and i sent mike publisher -- i sent my publisher three examples. i have just come to the door the old douglas. this is the younger douglas. that is the photo used, or at

least the lithograph of it, in the narrative, his first autobiography. and then there is this, from 1857 or 1858. it was any kansas city museum, the nelson atkins museum, and it was found there. it had never been displayed. and my god, amazing. that is a good place to stop, anyway. the lionine gaze. how americans react to douglas''

gaze, since it is in posters everywhere, and how we gaze back at it, or reengage douglass legacies, in some ways informs how we use our past and who we are. douglass's life emerges from the full scope of the 19th century. he is representative of the worst and best of the american spirit. douglass constantly probed the ironies of all those american contradictions, over slavery and race. few americans used shakespeare and the bible, to go back to obama's line, to comprehend his story and that of his people as much as douglass. and there may be no better example of an american radical patriot, then the slave who

became a lyrical profit on the ideas of freedom and natural rights and human equality. obama may have been channeling in some ways, douglass in the dedication speech, knowingly or not. so do many of us today. you don't need me to recite, not here, where douglass came from, in the eastern shore of course. 20 years as a slave, about nine years as a fugitive slave, and from the 1840's to the 1890's he became not only the abolitionist and the editor, but in order of almost unparalleled statue and the author of three autobiographies that are classics of the genre. that alone is a pretty good accomplishment. as a public man he began his abolitionist career two decades before america would divide and

fight a civil war over slavery, that he openly welcomed, the war, that is. douglass was born in a, sorry, water -- backwater of the slave's society of the south. just as steamboats appeared in sleeves and on american rivers, but before the telegraph, the railroad and the rotary press changed human mobility and consciousness, and changed his life, especially that railroad and that press. he died after the emergence of electric lights, the telephone, and the invention of the phonograph. it is frankly amazing that he never got recorded, that we know of,. it might appear, someday. it might be sitting in this building and hasn't been found in a box.

who knows? there is an amazing letter in his library of congress papers. in the last year of his life, the fall of 1894, he goes to dinner in washington at the home of a man named mr. anderson. i couldn't figure out who mr. henderson was, that he goes on to write a thank you letter to mr. anderson which is amazing, because mr. anderson had a photograph -- had a phonograph and played it for douglas. and he played the voice of the reverend weirs, whom douglas knew, and he goes back and writes a letter and calls the phonographic neda mine -- calls the photograph a divine creation. he says it is possible that human voice can live or ever. and when you read that he is talking about himself. he has been an oratory for 53

years, but he didn't get recorded. why didn't somebody recorded? 11 much guarantee, by the way. he was fascinated with steamships and so on -- and it can never be measured, although i started to do this and i quit. he may also have been, along with mark twain, the most widely traveled american public figure of the 19th century, in sheer miles. does that matter? no, probably not. who cares, except number freaks? by the 1890's, in sheer miles and countless number of speeches, he had few rivals that s as a lecturer in the golden age of oratory. and it is likely more americans saw frederick douglass speak than any other public figure of his times. it is impossible to figure the list out. i don't know, with all these digital humanities centers appearing in universities now, somebody is going to count this at some point and probably give

us a list. he struggled with the pleasures and perils of fame as much as anyone else in his century as well, with the possible exception of ulysses s. grant and pt barnum. grant had a terrible problem with fame. the oratory and writer lived to see and interpret, this or tour, douglass, black emancipation, to work for women's rights long before they were achieved, to realize the civil rights

tragedies and triumphs of reconstruction, and to witness america's economic and territorial expansion in the gilded age, and he favored american expansion. he lived to the age of lynching and jim crow laws, when america collapsed into retreat from the very victories that he had helped to win. he played a pivotal role in america's second founding, out of the civil war, and he very much wished to see himself as a founder and a defender of the second american republic. and i was so pleased to see that on the statute of very much wished to see himself as a founder and a douglass that they have now unveiled at the university of maryland, one of the inscriptions on it is, a founder of the second american republic. i almost cheered when i saw that. douglas was many things, and it

is a set of paradoxes and opposites that make his story attractive to biographers, and i think too many people, readers, one hopes as well as a lot of constituencies, and i mean that politically. there is this old saying about abraham lincoln, that i think david donald point in a 1955 essay. and the line is simply, getting right with lincoln, choosing lincoln and using lincoln for your cause, getting on the side of lincoln. what would lincoln have done? what would lincoln think? we do that now with douglass, to some degree. he was a radical figure and a proponent of classic, 19th century political liberalism. at different times he hated and loved his country. he was a ferocious critic of the united states and all of its hypocrisy, but also, after emancipation he became a government bureaucrat, a diplomat and a voice of territorial expansion, especially through the caribbean. in other words, american empire. he strongly believed in self-reliance and he demanded an activist, interventionist

government at all levels to free slaves, to feed the confederacy and to protect black citizens against terror and discrimination. douglass was a serious constitutional thinker, and few americans have ever analyzed race as both a concept and a reality with more leniency than this mostly self-taught genius. he was a radical editor, writer and activist, but also a hard-earned pragmatist who had to learn, i can get the best deal possible. douglas was jim crowed more times than he could count but loved the declaration of independence, the natural rights tradition, and especially the reinvented u.s. constitution fashioned in reconstruction. all those things were true, it just depends on when you look. he fought against mob violence, but he believed in certain kinds of revolutionary violence. that one kind of depends on whether it is the john brown story. in his own career, he heroically tried to forge a livelihood with

his voice and his 10, pen, but fundamentally was not a self-made man, an image he counted through a speech and through which modern american hnnn conservatives have adopted him. he believed women were legal and not -- women were equal and ought to have fundamental rights, but he conducted his own life as a patriarch in a difficult marriage and an often-dysfunctional, large extended family. context and timing are off and everything. and james baldwin put it in 1948, casting sentiment at celebration to the side, baldwin said, frederick douglass was first of all a man, honest within the limitations of his

character and his time, quite frequently misguided, sometimes pompous, gifted but not always a hero, and no say that all. you have to love james baldwin but you read that and think, ouch. but baldwin's unabashed bluntness is a good place for a biographer to begin to make judgments from a source. but so are the interpretations of, for example, a very different kind of writer, the former neoconservative turned neoliberal journalist and political theorist michael wind, in a widely read book from 1995. wind rejected, this was the 90's, he rejected both a leftist multiculturalism and a conservative self-help individualism, and he called for a new american nationalism that he termed multiracial, mixed-race transamerica.

and he decided douglass was the model. multiracial, mixed-race transamerica. and he says frederick douglass was the greater -- the greatest american of all-time. indeed, the old fugitive slave has become, and the early 21st century, a malleable figure adopted by all elements of the political spectrum, the least of which by current republicans who have claimed douglass,, at times i think quite a historically, as the rhone by elevating a single

feature of his thought which was black self-reliance. and he staunchly argued, make no bones about it, black self-reliance. but they have done this at the expense of a long-term, enduring radicalism and douglass' life rate at least some of them do. and i remember vividly at the unveiling ceremony for the statue of douglass at the u.s. capitol in 2013, so chosen by the district of columbia because every state and now the district gets to monuments -- gets two monuments. that is when jefferson davis is there. another matter. congressional republicans at these huge ceremonys -- when they unveil a statute at the capital, the congress is there. pelosi, joe biden, they all spoke, they had an eight minute cap-prepared speech. but the fun part, i found it fun, was that it was an entirely partisan event.

the republicans talked about what a great republican frederick douglass was. and many members of the house were wearing this giant button that said frederick douglass was a republican, or maybe it was is, i don't know. i do remember. but they were proud, wearing these things, high-fiving old freddy d. and then the democrats got up in their argument was, douglass was always in favor of home rule for the district of columbia. an absolutely, he was. there is plenty of evidence that

he favored home rule and statehood for the district. so, weirdly on the surface at least, they are both right, but anyway, getting right with douglass. the book i have written tries to do what i suppose any good biographer does, to try to find all these complexities in his life, but never to sidestep his eccentric radical voice -- his ecssential, radical voice. douglas was a hero, there's no question. he is a national figure in ireland, scotland, britain and maybe some other nations.

careful where i say that about scotland. his narrative is read all of the world, he has appeared in countless miracles -- countless murals, lots of works of contemporary fiction with douglas says a -- with douglass as a cameo character or a main character. i especially love the way he gets used in "half of a yellow sun" by a nigerian writer. if you haven't read that book, douglass is kind of a star in a strange way. i will leave it there, but you can as me later if you want me to ask planet. he has appeared in paintings, and there is one in annapolis which i have not seen yet. poetry, every african-american poet of the 20th century had to write his or her douglass home. the sheer complexity of his thought and life is what makes him an icon, held in some degree of commonality. he was brilliant, courageous, and possessed a truly uncommon endurance of racism as he also delivered one ferocious critique of it after another.

he wrote so many words that will last forever. his literary genius ranks with many of america's greatest writers of the 19th century, and many literary historians and critics have been arguing that now for 20 years or more. but he was also vain, at times arrogant, always hypersensitive to slights. he did not take well to rivals who challenged his position as greatest spokesman of his race, although he also mentored many other young black writers and leaders. he liked being on a pedestal, and he did not intend to get knocked off. douglass was thoroughly and beautifully human. above all, douglass is remembered most for telling his personal story, a slave who will his own freedom, mastered the

masters language, sought to the core the meeting of slavery for individuals and for the whole nation, and then captured the multiple meanings of freedom as an idea and reality of mind and of body, as perhaps no one else in america ever has. now, this book i have done comes out of a lifetime of working on douglass but i truly had put douglass out of my life terminally, -- out of my life permanently, until later nine years ago. and i counted my private collection of douglass material, and the reason i did this book was that collection. i want to mention it just briefly. i went to savannah, georgia to give another talk on the douglas narrative to high school

teachers. and my host there was from the georgia historical society, said there is a local gentleman here who is a collector and would like to go to lunch. i said fine. at that lunch i met walter evans, and amazing man. he took me to his house. he owns one of those beautiful, four-story brownstones on jones street in savannah. walter is an african-american, a retired surgeon who grew up in segregated savanna, came north for education and went to the michigan medical school, practiced as a surgeon in detroit for over 30 years. we have a lot in common because we are both tigers fans, but walter started collecting both manuscripts, african-american manuscripts, rare books in the 1970's.

and he has one of the finest collections of african american art in private hands anywhere in the world. he is the executor of jacob lawrence's estate. but he took me over to his house that day and on his dining room table he got out his douglass collection. and it was one of those moments when i actually, i think i cursed, because it was like, i don't want to do a douglass biography. i don't want to do a douglass biography. but someone is going to have to. and almost nobody had worked with walter's collection. a few people at scene of a no one had really done anything with yet, not a lot of people. i walter's dining room table, i spent many, many, many weeks. actually, linda, his wife's dining room table. she put the coffee on, they

would tell me to come before 8:00 and stay as long as you want. it is the greatest research archive i have ever worked in, because the round you on the walls of walter's house, are about five duncanson''s, the famous black landscape painter. and there are statues, and that such should not be in his house. we have made him an unbelievable offer at the bunny hill library at yale and he think it is worth more. [laughter] but it ain't over, until it is over. anyway, encountering that collection, i will just say one more word about it. at the heart of it him although there are a lot of letters and family documents and a couple of the narratives by his children, are 10 or so large family scrapbooks that were kept by douglass' son over the last third of douglass life. his daughter, rosanna, had a little hand in it. but what that collection makes possible is seeing into the last

third of douglass life. he lives until 1895 -- 30 years after the war, 30 years after emancipation. he is always lecturing, he makes money, he is a republican, all of that. we sometimes just don't bother much with the older douglass, will of the younger douglass, the heroic douglass, the man who gave his narrative and shook the world. the elder douglass was a man who was falling out of touch. no he wasn't. but i find the older douglass completely fascinating and i hope my book will be the most thorough of that last third of douglass' life than anyone has ever written. i am going to name six themes, really questions, or problems, really, that i faced as a biographer, and the main themes that any douglas biographer has to face. the first, douglass is a man

aboard, a creature of boards. we know him because of his words . words were the only form of protest, the only persuasion, the only weapon, the only form of real power he ever had. and he came by, by a variety of means, it is not entirely a mystery, how douglass developed his amazing facility with language. in one way, the book i have written, i actually wanted to call it this but the editor scotched this idea. i wanted to call it "douglas, biography of a voice." the editor said no, too literary. a second -- the first one is, it is about words. that is both a joy and a problem , because you can use to much of his workd. ssecond, the autobiography. because they are in the wake of the subject you are writing

about is always in the way, hiding lots of things you can't see. you want to grab your subject by the lapels and say, mr. douglass, please tell us more

about what you said to your two sons when you recruited into the army -- when you recruited them into the army. mr. douglas, what did you really think of lincoln? i have a list that goes on forever and i have this imaginary seminar sunday with douglass, and we are going to change him to the chair, bad metaphor, but he can't get out. but what happens is, as soon as you get douglass sitting down, he slithers out of the room. he is gone. that's not going to be in the out of biography.

there are three of them, 1200 pages in all. never trust anybody who writes 1200 pages of autobiography about themselves. he is trying to manipulate you, of course he is. all great on a biographer's do that. do you ever have to use them? i have one quick thought on autobiography. anyone who works on douglass or a figure who wrote so much men wore -- so much memoir, you have to read the memo. some argue that autobiography is a complete fiction, some say it is a form of history, some say it is life writing. there are many books about writing memoirs. one of my favorites is by a woman named mary karr. she is a pretty wild and crazy writer, her voice is extraordinary. she was a woman who was institutionalized with mental problems, drinking and drugs, she has had many lives within her life, just like douglass did. she wrote this book called "the art of memoir." and she has an argument that at first goes opening against you -- goes against every thing you've read

about memoir. but she says the best memoirs are those with the most truth. memoirs by definition are really telling all the truth, the can't. but she goes on and actually has her own favorite list, and she includes douglass. she is nothing they are the whole truth, but more in the way of truth. there is a difference between accuracy and truth, and she says this. most memoirs are driven to their projects for their own deeply felt, psychological reasons. that's not surprising. and she says, as yet it's said, mad ireland hurt me into poetry. so most of us, this is karr, have been hurt. that is a memoir.

i read that in said bingo. douglas is hurt, as a -- douglass is hurt, as a memoir. and his scar, and frankly the rage in his mind, heart and soul, they are always there. he was lucky he was so good with words, he could expend that rage with language, and not some other way. the third thing is a book i have already demonstrated, douglass' grounding in the bible. he started hearing about the bible and reading about the bible while he was a slave, even on the eastern shore at those camp meetings. and then father lawson and two white preachers in baltimore, he names the churches and preachers that influenced him.

at least three different churches baltimore that he went to, maybe more. and then we got to new bedford, within the first year he is in new bedford, the local ame church had him reaching. this kid was good. only 20 years old, but take the pulpit, kid. and he did. he rooted his own story, and especially that of african-americans, and the oldest and most powerful stories of the hebrew prophets. it is all over his writing. in america, the people had turned from or never embraced their creeds or their god.

the american jerusalem, its temples and its corporate system of slavery had to be destroyed. the nation had to face exile and distinction and -- exile and extinction and bloody revolution. this is a story at the heart of the old testament. and only then could the people and the nation experience renewal, and a possible new history. douglass was a living profit of an american destruction -- a living prophet of an american destruction and redemption. prophets were his guides, they gave him his stories, his resolve, and his ancient wisdom. in order to deliver his ferocious critique of slavery and his country before emancipation, and his strained but hopeful critique, or hopeful there live, of its future after emancipation. it is easy to call douglass a

prophet, to call something prophetic. in my book i show how he deserves the lofty title. he fits this description about the greatest prophets. in "the profits" from 1955, the author says this, the prophet is human, yet he employs notes one octave too high for our ears. he defies understanding. he is neither is singing saint nor a moralizing poet, but in a salter of the mind. often his words begin to burn were conscious ends. douglass, his words begin to burn where consciousscience ends.

in my book i attempt at least to demonstrate how douglas came by his king james cadences, and have used the biblical story to break down and rebuild, as jeremiah recollected. and in douglass' case, he is breaking down and rebuilding america itself. he succeeded and failed, as did the profits of old -- as did the prophets of old.

the fourth problem is the story of his postwar life, the last third of his life, how douglass took these crooked paths from being the radical outsider and abolitionist, through time and events, to become a political insider. it's a great story and we have seen it happen again and again through history, especially for african-american leaders. during the greatest pivot of american history, during the civil war, this man of language reaped great change to transform from a radical evolutionist into a republican party functionary. not an easy thing to do. these changes are historical, inextricably linked to events in time, not merely a matter of his moral growth or decline. and they provide a model for many other leaders, again, through time ever since. the outsider-to-insider story especially animates the second

half of his life, and it became one of douglass' most challenging psychic elements. it had an ethical cost, at times. he repeatedly faced the question of how uncompromising radicalism could mix with a learned pragmatism to try to affect real power, with how to condemn the princes and their law, but also influence and eventually joined them. how do you square covenant with politics? it is the eternal dilemma of something called democracy. the fifth problem, in the book i have written, anyway, is the turbulencet problems of the public and private in douglass' life. i tried to balance between these two registers of any persons story, the public man and the

private life. and everything is fair game. throughout, i try to balance family with the famous man. in douglass' case, he married twice, first to anna murray douglas, a black woman born free in maryland, probably only three miles from where he was born, who remained largely illiterate for the rest of her life, but absolutely the center of his home and made his home through many dislocations and 44 years. and the second wife, helen pitts douglas, a highly educated white woman 20 years his junior, and a remarkably compatible companion by all accounts, during the last decade of his life. douglass sustained very important friendship relationships with two white european women, julia griffiths

from england and julia ossining from germany, both of whom became important influences of differing kinds in his life. but most important, and we can come back to that, most importantly, douglas and anna had -- douglass and anna had five children, four of whom lived to adulthood. his namesake died at 11 years old. they produced 21 grandchildren for the douglass'. during the last quarter or so of this famous man's life, this entire extended family, which included fictional can and a variety of proteges and hangers on, been it became financially

and emotionally dependent on the leader of a clan. douglass' extended family is not a happy family and there is no family photograph. douglass sustained exhausting lecture tours that were life-threatening, three months during the winter. you go in the winter because the farmers farm in the summer and they are willing to go in january. he did these lecture tours in great part to support his extended family and the big house on the hill, cedar hill in washington dc, near the centers of gilded age power that he could only partially penetrate through his appointment, marshal of the district, recorder of

it's also very modern. there were many anecdotes about that i could use, but i'm not. he experienced at least two, maybe three genuine emotional breakdowns in his life. both can only be explained by the treacherous character of this private-public divide. you are dealing with a multifaceted intellectual. a thinker. a mind. an editor, writer in numerous john rose, memoir, short form editorials. extended speeches. one work of fiction. he wrote and spoke millions of words. his trove of commentary contains

brilliant storytelling, sermons, stump speeches, and assaults on the mind that are his legacy. it's the essential reason we even talk about him. in the last 40 years, douglas has been treated in our own time more and more as a political philosopher, constitutional and legal analyst, a proponent of a natural rights tradition, a self-conscious voice of and aout the nature of memory, religious and theological thinker, journalist, and the list could go on. today, douglass is taught and examined in law schools, in history, art, english, philosophy departments, high schools, graduate schools, community reading groups, and in the book i've done, i try at all

times and it's never simple to balance has best i can the narrative of his life with analyses of his mind. to give his ideas the central place in his unforgettable story. but it is douglass' story, i think, why you're here. it gives and instructs. what are the ideas? there is no greater waste in america's terrible transformation from slavery to freedom than douglass. all who wish to escape from imprisonment of outward or inward captivity, they do well to feel the pulses of his life and read the words of his voice. and then go act in the world. go act. in the final lines of his second autobiography, some ways his greatest work in most revealing work, published in 1855 as the politics of the slavery crisis was embroiling the nation. douglass wrote the last lines of that great book. he wrote he would never forget his own humble origins, nor cease while heaven lends the

ability to use my voice, my pen and my vote to advocate the great and primary work of the universal and unconditional emancipation of my entire race." as we look at douglass' gaze in our own time as we read him and teach him, we may recognize such a universal work still continues. we have to do it with our pens, our voices and our votes.

thank you. [applause] >> that was brilliant. thank you, dr. white. we have a couple of questions here and i think we can go through these. >> i have to cover my book back up here. >> one of the questions -- why did douglass write not one but three autobiographies? >> yeah, that is always a little bit of a puzzle. the first one he writes to tell the world who he is. thank you. one button changes the world. and to make some money. in 1845, he is still a fugitive slave. he has been out on the circuit

for almost four years as a lecturer. he has really proven he can do this abolitionist itinerary. each took the anti-slavery circuit by storm, but what he had been doing on the circuit is essentially telling his own story most of the time. we don't have a lot of text of those early speeches. he is telling all the stories in the narrative. he sat down in the winter of 1844-1845 and he put those stories into a narrative form, a book. he published his first -- he had his first published essay in a magazine in the fall of 1844. he has a letter to the editor that says, oh, if i could write for a book. the first one was revealing himself, telling the world who he is.

he did not just good england because he was afraid of being captured. he had already exposed himself over and over. he could not keep it in print. it sold 30,000 copies in the first four or five years. that is a bestseller today. trust me. but my bondage and my freedom 10 years later, a whole different reason. i will be very brief. bondage and freedom is his coming out as a political abolitionist. he has transformed in 10 years between the first autobiography and the second into a political abolitionist. he is no longer in the garrisonian camp. bondage and freedom is among other things a political analysis of the slavery crisis in america.

and, it is douglass' coming out as he navigated using certain kinds of violence. is a much more lyrical douglass. he has really mastered prose. he wants to show it off and he dearly needs the money. don't make any mistake. bondage and freedom sold about 18,000 copies in the first year or two. that is remarkable. he took his sons on the road with him after he published bondage and it would work the crowds. it was a family affair. teenage boys trying to sell you a book of the guy speaking. pretty good idea. life and times later on, douglass never stopped telling his story. it is the weapon he had. by the time he writes the first -- he wrote two editions. in the sense he wrote four autobiographies. 1881-1882, he is now beyond his federal service.

beyond that is he still recorded? yeah, he is still recorded. bondage and freedom ended in 1855. he has stories about john brown, lincoln, the war, reconstruction, everything up to the 1880's. he sits down again 10 years later and brings it up to date. in the third autobiography, it is the old man summing up, settling scores, telling you how famous he is. and, it did not sell very well. it is still an amazing book. that each has its own context in reason why he wrote it. life and times was a commercial failure. even though there are a zillion copies floating around today. >> what did douglass think of a plan to return blacks africa? >> by and large he hated the colonization plan. african-americans being

transported back to africa or off to the caribbean somewhere or central america. that does not mean at times he did not -- particularly black leaders, and again context is terribly important. douglass hated the basic ideology of colonization. to him it was black people are not americans. they cannot have a future here. he saw it as essentially proslavery. he saw essentially as a denial of the birthright of the african-american. again, in certain context like in the wake of the dred scott case, just remember what the case said. it said let people have no right that white people ought to acknowledge and will never be citizens.

never, when the supreme court speaks it is supposed to mean never. in the three years, almost four years between dred scott and fort sumter there were numerous schemes led by black leaders. there was a plan led by james redpath to take black folk to haiti, or parts of haiti. douglass had problems in his own family on this one. two of his sons got interested in leaving the country. had no hope. they actually applied for this federal scheme to relocate people to the island off haiti called illa bosch. he had a problem at home on this one. his twentysomething sons. i ain't staying. until the emancipation

proclamation came. overnight they are ready to enlist in the union army. he even booked passage in april of 1861 to go have a look at haiti with his daughter. and,'s passage to haiti was like the week after the firing on fort sumter. there is this wonderful short piece in the newspaper, trip to haiti canceled. by and large, douglass hated the ideological thrust in the values of most colonization schemes

because that's a cause in ferocious debates with some people because at the heart of it he believed in this idea that america could never truly be biracial. he did not accept that. >> in your book to be published soon, you write as mr. douglass as statement and diplomat? >> a good deal. especially when it comes to haiti. i devote an entire chapter on his experience as the u.s. minister to haiti. he was appointed by president harrison as the u.s. ambassador to haiti. he served almost two years. not the best experience of his life. not -- one of the more misguided experiences perhaps. he was serving two masters. one was his principles and soul,

and the other was the united states government. he got caught in between. his problem begin with himself. he was a proponent of u.s. expansion into the caribbean. i learned a lot about this from when my undergraduate students. two of them have done dissertations on the square -- on this where in the wake of the civil war a lot of former abolitionist -- douglass was not alone -- in the wake of emancipation in the civil war, the transformation of america, they decided the new america, abolitionists america ought to take itself abroad. ought to take antislavery to other parts of the world. especially to poor, desperate places like santo domingo and haiti. the u.s. would create stations

for the new navy in these places. he became a proponent of a kind of american imperialism, although it was not called that. it was this kind of abolitionist expansion. he found haiti was a very messy, complicated place. he did a lot of reading and research, but he did not speak french. he took ebenezer basset with him, of fascinating friends went in the u.s. -- douglass was the third black american to be u.s. minister to haiti. he had a bunch of firsts but that was not one. he took basset within it was fluent in french.

he and his wife, they got caught in a coup d'etat at one point. practically had to flee for their lives. he was a good diplomat, but not his best track. it muffled his voice in many ways, although once he quit he was free to speak about it. he was still a loyal republican but he was not loyal to the people he had a fight within the u.s. state department, mainly the secretary of state. what came out of it was the nation of haiti respected douglass so much that made him their representative at the chicago world's fair, the columbian exposition. douglass became the representative of the nation of haiti to the world's columbian exposition. i have a whole section of that in the book. douglass held out, appeared every day for six months at the haitian pavilion as like exhibit a. people would come to gawk at him. he said that.

people locking your everyday just look at me. he felt a little bit like a zoo animal. he gave one of the most amazing speeches of his life at the chicago exposition on behalf of haiti and about american lynching. >> had frederick douglass not existed, who would have taken his place? is there historically a second place assigned to anyone? >> that is one of those quasi-counterfactual questions. a fully counterfactual -- anyway. rivals, rivals, rivals. at one point, willie brown wanted the mantle. martin delaney. they worked together at his newspaper. his biggest rivals after the war

was the next generation of black american male leaders who were college-educated. and they were. richard greener went to harvard. a whole slew of them. these guys were highly educated. they were all at least 20 years younger than douglass. they had all grown up kind of looking at douglass as a great man of the race, but what happens to the great man? the younger generation wants to knock him off. they want tenure. something. he had bitter rivalries. actually, i will give you two candidates. they were not really rivals. the first was james smith, arguably douglass' most

important black male friend he had. smith wrote the introduction to my bondage and freedom, the first-ever biography written on douglass. it is terrific, still to this day. it's about 20 pages. james smith was the most highly educated african-american of the 19th century. three degrees from the university of glasgow. it again -- he began a physician, doctor in broadway, new york city. became an amazing writer. sometimes understood nims and douglas -- under pseudonyms in douglass' newspaper. douglass was evident smith was not an smith was everything douglass wasn't. he had a incredible formal education. douglass was a fugitive slave genius that could give speeches so much better than smith. smith only lived until 1865 and died of heart failure, but they were extremely close allies. they tended to agree on all these strategic issues on abolitionism.

the second candidate i will give you as a second most important african-american of the 19th century, although he left the country for 20 years, alexander crumell. he went to the university of cambridge. a phd from cambridge and theology. went to africa for a while as a missionary. spent 20 years in africa or britain. came back after the war and became a kind of conservative theologian. but somebody douglass had enormous respect for even though they disagreed often.

they were on the same platform sometimes. they lived near each other in washington. he was not as well-known as douglass, that has an intellectual he should be. they shared a platform once at harpers ferry. they had a standoff. the subject was the 20th anniversary of emancipation, for the end of the war. 1883 or 1885. checkmate. he was giving this speech. crumell was incredibly elegant. this was one of the first black colleges. crumell is telling the next generation of young blacks stop dwelling on the past. but the past behind you. your life is in the future. put slavery out of your narrative. there is a press report that said douglass was sitting in the

front row and "most vociferously objected." they had quite a go over the question of how much do you look back. what about memory? they still have enormous respect for each other. a kind of alter ego. highly educated cambridge graduate. douglass, graduate of talbot county. i would give those as two candidates, although john mercer langston thought he was. langston and douglas were not only rivals, they got in court against each other a number of times. bad, ugly stuff. >> final question. did douglass develop his own plans for reconstruction? >> no. there is not a unique frederick douglass plan for reconstruction but he was a staunch proponent

of what became known as radical reconstruction. activist interventionist use of federal power in the states. the 14th amendment says in section one -- excuse me, the first civil rights act in 1866 and the 14th amendment confirms, he believed in black suffrage, universal blackmail suffrage, and yes, he would have preferred women have the right to vote at the same time. he has a terrible, ugly falling out with susan anthony and elizabeth cady stanton over the right to vote for women over the 15th amendment. douglass wanted a reconstruction that was an occupation of the south. his reconstruction was essentially this game of

thaddeus stevens to a great extent. charles sumner. the little things they might have disagreed on, he wanted the three constitutional amendments. he wanted them to be more radical, but he took what they could get. both are compromises of a sort as you probably know. he wanted enforcement. he wanted these rights but he wanted them protected. he used to say famously, and this is what -- i'm sorry if this offends anyone. there was a new book out called "self-made man." sponsored by the cato institute. they love to seize on his speeches. "what the knee grow needs most -- negro is for you to leave him alone." then he would say, "get him fair play and protect him." give him his rights, let him have a farm, property, and leave him alone. but protect him.

it was the protection that fell apart in the terror of reconstruction violence. douglass was not a very effective or modern economic thinker. he did not believe in property redistribution. he did not much believe in land redistribution. he wasn't an aggressive radical economic thinker at all. he believed most solutions were political. he was not a 20th-century man. you can't make him a marxist, even if it is your life -- if you put your life into it, you can't make him a marxist. not even close. he is the opposite. when it came to reconstruction he wanted a remade, redesigned american south. he wanted most black people to stay on the land, which was controversial.