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 Frederick Douglass. Autograph Quotation Signed, 1866. 1 page. 4.75” x 4.25”
Inventory# 21439.02 $4,500
Complete Transcript:
I can love even an Enemy if sure that [?] he loves a loyal soldier.
Fred. Douglass 1866
Historical Background:
Frederick Douglass remained critical of Abraham Lincoln during the first two years of the Civil War because it was a war to restore the Union. Slavery, he said often in speeches and writings in 1861, was “the stomach of this rebellion … Strike here, cut off the connection between the fighting master and the working slave, and you at once put an end to this rebellion.” Lincoln’s decision to proceed with an Emancipation Proclamation and to allow the enlistment of African-American soldiers changed Douglass’s views and allegiance. He sprang to support Lincoln in 1863, and encouraged free blacks in the North to join newly forming regiments.
Of course, there remained strong currents of opposition in the North to these new war aims and radical policies. There were violent draft riots in New York City, and the Democratic Party remained a potent force, threatening Lincoln’s reelection prospects in 1864 and opposing Radical Reconstruction after the war. Douglass seems to be saying in this quote that he could “love” a political enemy (i.e., a Democrat) so long as they supported the troops in wartime and beyond, a sentiment that echoes to the present.
In the politically charged year of 1866, Congress passed two bills over President Andrew Johnson’s veto. One bill extended the authority and provided increased financial support to the Freedmen’s Bureau, created in 1865 to provide medical, educational, and financial assistance for the millions of impoverished southern Blacks. Congress also passed the Civil Rights Bill, which gave extended full citizenship rights to anyone born in the United States, and the 14th Amendment, designed to ensure that citizenship rights were constitutionally guaranteed (it would be ratified in 1868). Douglass attended a convention in Philadelphia in the 1866, as a delegate from New York, which passed resolutions calling for black suffrage.
Frederick Douglass (1817[?]-1895) was an orator, journalist, abolitionist, and distinguished African-American leader. Born a slave in Tuckahoe, Maryland, named Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, he assumed the name Douglass after his escape from slavery in 1838. In 1841, Douglass successfully addressed a Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society convention and was employed as its agent. He wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845 to document his experiences and sufferings, and to silence those who contended that a man of his abilities could not have been a slave. Douglass soon became a noted anti-slavery orator and supporter of women’s rights, lecturing in both the United States and England. He attended the Seneca Falls Convention on women’s rights and signed its Declaration of Sentiments. Douglass edited his own newspaper, The North Star, for several years. During the Civil War, he was instrumental in pushing anti-slavery measures, in advocating for African-American combat units, and in raising troops. He fought for passage of the Thirteenth (Abolition), Fourteenth (Equal Protection) and Fifteenth (Voting Rights) Amendments, through testimony to Congress, reports to the President and regular appearances on the lecture circuit. Douglass was the first African American to serve in important federal posts, including the positions of assistant secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission, Marshal of the District of Columbia, Recorder of Deeds for Washington D.C., and Minister to Haiti.
Historical References:
Oakes, James. The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics. New York, 2007, p. 161.
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