Abraham Lincoln: A Legacy of Freedom - US Department of State

The future African-American
leader Booker T. Washington was
about seven years old when the
Emancipation Proclamation was
read on his plantation. As he recalled
in his 1901 memoir Up From Slavery:
As the great day grew nearer,
there was more singing in the slave
quarters than usual. It was bolder,
had more ring, and lasted later
into the night. Most of the verses
of the plantation songs had some
reference to freedom. … Some
man who seemed to be a stranger
(a U.S. officer, I presume) made a
little speech and then read a rather
long paper — the Emancipation
Proclamation, I think. After the
reading we were told that we were all
free, and could go when and where
we pleased. My mother, who was
standing by my side, leaned over and
kissed her children, while tears of joy
ran down her cheeks. She explained
to us what it all meant, that this
was the day for which she had been
so long praying, but fearing that she
would never live to see.
On the political front, Lincoln
continued to defend emancipation on
military grounds. “No human power
can subdue this rebellion without
using the Emancipation lever as I
have done,” he wrote.
If they [African Americans] stake
their lives for us they must be
prompted by the strongest motive.
… And the promise being made,
must be kept. … Why should they
give their lives for us with full notice
of our purpose to betray them? ... I
should be damned in time and in
eternity for so doing. The world shall
know that I will keep my faith to
friends and enemies, come what will.
More than a decade after Lincoln’s
death, Frederick Douglass tried to
explain Lincoln’s relation to the cause
of emancipation. Compared to the
abolitionists, “Lincoln seemed tardy,
cold, dull, and indifferent,” he wrote.
But “measure him by the sentiment
of his country, a sentiment he was
bound as a statesman to consult,”
and Lincoln “was swift, zealous,
radical, and determined.” Perhaps no
statesman could accomplish more.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A LEGACY OF FREEDOM 51