Justice Long Delayed

[David Lockmiller]

(06-24-2023 12:10 AM)Steve Wrote:  Douglass wasn't issued a commission, therefore he didn't go. What part of that is too difficult to understand? Why do you seem to want to blame Douglass for the War Department's missteps?

Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote in Team of Rivals, pages 551-53:

Douglas laid before the president the discriminatory measures that were frustrating his recruiting efforts. "Mr. Lincoln listened with earnest attention and with very apparent sympathy," he recalled. "Upon my ceasing to speak [he] proceeded with an earnestness and fluency of which I had not suspected him." Lincoln first recognized the indisputable justice of the demand for equal pay. When Congress passed the bill for black soldiers, he explained, it "seemed a necessary concession to smooth the way to their employment at all as soldiers, "but he promised that "in the end they shall have the same pay as white soldiers." As for the absence of black officers, Lincoln assured Douglass that "he would sign any commission to colored soldiers whom his Secretary of War should commend to him."

Later that same day, Douglass met with Stanton.

"[O]nce Douglass began to outline much the same issues he had addressed with the president, "contempt and suspicion and brusqueness had all disappeared from his face," and Stanton, too, promised "that justice would ultimately be done." Indeed, Stanton had already implored Congress to remove the discriminatory wage and bounty provisions, which it would eventually do. Impressed by Douglass, Stanton promised to make him an assistant adjutant general assigned to Lorenzo Thomas, then charged with recruiting black soldiers in the Mississippi Valley. The War Department followed up with an offer of a $100-a-month salary plus subsistence and transportation, but the commission was not included. Douglass declined: "I knew too much of camp life and the value of shoulder straps in the army to go into the service without some visible mark of my rank."

One must contrast this written statement by Doris Kearns Goodwin with the statement made by Frederick Douglass in his Chapter IX contribution to the book Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (Collected and edited by Allen Thorndike Rice, Editor of the North American Review) quoting President Lincoln somewhat as follows:

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 negro could make a good soldier, as good as soldier as a white man, and hence it was thought that he should not have the same pay as white man. But, said he,

"I assure you, Mr. Douglass, that in the end they shall have the same pay as white soldiers."

[Please note at this point, on page 188, that Frederick Douglass makes no reference at all to colored soldiers being commissioned as officers on the recommendation of Secretary Stanton and the signature approval thereof by President Lincoln.]

However, page 189 states:

"Before leaving Mr. Lincoln, Senator Pomeroy said: 'Mr. President, Mr. Stanton is going to make Douglass Adjutant-General to General Thomas, and is going to send him down the Mississippi to recruit.'

Mr. Lincoln said in answer to this: 'I will sign any commission that Mr. Stanton will give Mr. Douglass.'

At this point we parted."

[Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? Was not the initial offer by Secretary Stanton made AFTER the meeting of Frederick Douglass with President Lincoln earlier that same day?]

Steve, I will let you judge for yourself just how honest Frederick Douglass was. I have my own opinion on the subject.