Word: slave
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...public letter he sent to Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the New York Tribune, an antislavery paper: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave 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...
...common. They were the two pre-eminent self-made men of their era. Lincoln was born dirt poor, had less than a year of formal schooling and became one of the nation's greatest Presidents. Douglass spent the first 20 years of his life as a slave, had no formal schooling--in fact, his masters forbade him to read or write--and became one of the nation's greatest writers and activists. Though nine years younger, Douglass overshadowed Lincoln as a public figure during the 15 years before the Civil War. He published two best-selling autobiographies before...
Lincoln and Douglass also shared many common interests. They loved music and literature and educated themselves (Douglass on the sly while a slave) by reading the same books: Aesop's Fables, the Bible, Shakespeare and especially The Columbian Orator, a popular anthology of speeches for boys. They were athletic, strong and tall: Douglass was about 6 ft., Lincoln 6 ft. 4 in., when the average height for men was 5 ft. 7 in. They refrained from alcohol and tobacco at a time when many politicians "squirted their tobacco juice upon the carpet" and drank on the job. They were ambitious...
...answer is that Lincoln recognized early on that he needed the ex-slave to help him destroy the Confederacy and preserve the Union. And so at a time when most whites would not let a black man cross their threshold, the President met Douglass three times at the White House and found a startling way to enlist him in his cause. What was in it for Douglass, who at the midpoint of the Civil War came to believe that Lincoln was a racist who argued that blacks and whites should be kept apart? Douglass came to realize that Lincoln...
When the Civil War broke out in April 1861, however, they had very different strategies for winning it. Douglass repeatedly urged Lincoln to free the slaves and recruit black soldiers. Douglass wanted to prevent the Confederacy from using slaves to grow the food that fed its army. "The negro is the stomach of the rebellion," he wrote. "Every slave who escapes from the Rebel States is a loss to the Rebellion and a gain to the Loyal Cause." He also understood that the quickest way for blacks to gain equal rights was to become Union soldiers...