The mistaken attribution of a cool debate that never happened

Recently saw this tweet about Wren Williams introducing a bill on education that suggested one of the appropriate sources of history should be the famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

This got my wheels turning. Would this debate, had it happened, been good? The second thing was – could we develop a pedagogy of rhetoric around placing historical figures in debate against one another?

The second question is easy: Yes we could because it’s been done before. The Romans regularly assigned suasoriae to their students, speeches where they imagine they are offering some sort of arguments to a historical figure in a situation where that figure has to make a famous choice. So we could construct this, offering the idea instead of “what would you say,” perhaps, “What could this figure say? What was available to this person to craft arguments about this issue?”

The first is more difficult to answer. I’m not sure what they would have debated about.

One of the things I did for this piece was go look at two pieces of oratory from these two men who do not have a shortage of oratory out there to examine. I chose the speech Lincoln gave at the Charleston Debate (one of the actual Lincoln/Douglas debates) and Frederick Douglass’s speech on the Freeman’s Monument in Washington, which was constructed to honor Lincoln after his death. Both seem relevant: Lincoln is speaking to his view of equality and civil rights whereas Douglass is also speaking to that view, albeit in terms of historical judgement on Lincoln. Both men are answering the question: Who gets civil rights?

I think that this leads us to a pretty good idea of a motion – essential for a debate (the Commission on Presidential Debates and all television journalists miss this) as the motion indicates what each person should be working toward as a goal in the course of the debate.

Perhaps something like “Equality is an eventual, not immediate, goal for black Americans.” This might suit both speakers well as they do seem to be constructing positions around a topic like that, with Lincoln saying freedom is much more vital and the question of equality is one that doesn’t seem relevant, whereas Douglass is appreciative of Lincoln’s efforts but warns us to not think of him as the great emancipator or someone who was as radical as we assume.

Lincoln at the Charleston, Illinois debate addressed the constant claims of the Douglas (the actual Stephen Douglas) campaign that he wanted full equality between black and white people. In response, Lincoln said:

While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. [Great Laughter.] While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]-that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.

Lincoln then re-articulated the difference between him and Senator Douglas by pointing out that inequality does not mean subhuman.

 I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied every thing. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.] My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes.

Thinking about Lincoln’s political situation at the time, and what he was up against, we have to consider the political expediency of these comments to refocus the debate – and the election – on the issues that Lincoln thought he could win. That being said, it’s pretty repulsive to give a pass to such comments under the banner of “equality” or “freedom.” The point is a good one if you are interested in eliminating slavery; it falls short of the expressed, if not “intended” ideas in the Declaration of Independence.

Frederick Douglass was well aware of this side of Lincoln, and speaking at the dedication of a memorial statue to President Lincoln years later, was much more eloquent and sharp with his “counter-argument” to Lincoln at Charleston.

Douglass is very very careful to articulate a very narrow range of feelings toward Lincoln at this dedication ceremony for the President. He has to really thread the needle in order to critique a dead man at a ceremony honoring his accomplishments.

The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart. It has crowned and made glorious the high places of all civilized nations with the grandest and most enduring works of art, designed to illustrate the characters and perpetuate the memories of great public men. It is the sentiment which from year to year adorns with fragrant and beautiful flowers the graves of our loyal, brave, and patriotic soldiers who fell in defense of the Union and liberty. It is the sentiment of gratitude and appreciation, which often, in the presence of many who hear me, has filled yonder heights of Arlington with the eloquence of eulogy and the sublime enthusiasm of poetry and song; a sentiment which can never die while the Republic lives.

Douglass is setting up at first what he and the audience have in common, a belief and love for the Republic that is timeless and virtuous. The contrast of flowers and graves is a nice image of sacrifice and remembrance, and he makes sure to indicate that the communal view of the country and feeling is not something that can be diminished.

Then he brings it in more specific to Lincoln:

Fellow-citizens, in what we have said and done today, and in what we may say and do hereafter, we disclaim everything like arrogance and assumption. We claim for ourselves no superior devotion to the character, history, and memory of the illustrious name whose monument we have here dedicated today. We fully comprehend the relation of Abraham Lincoln both to ourselves and to the white people of the United States. Truth is proper and beautiful at all times and in all places, and it is never more proper and beautiful in any case than when speaking of a great public man whose example is likely to be commended for honor and imitation long after his departure to the solemn shades, the silent continents of eternity. It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit, even here in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man.

Douglass establishes the arena of appropriate praise for Lincoln once again saying what he deserves to be honored for and what the limits of that honor are. He’s a white man with the limitations and habits that come with it, and cannot fully be praised by black Americans as there is this fundamental difference limiting how much he can be revered. It’s very clever to distinguish that this isn’t an attempt to one-up Lincoln or not give him what is due, but to let the truth of his life and attitudes show us exactly what measure of praise is due – and this is a beautiful thing!

Douglass then continues into the issues he has with a universal praise of Lincoln:

He was preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the states where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation. He was ready to execute all the supposed guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor of the slave system anywhere inside the slave states. He was willing to pursue, recapture, and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty master were already in arms against the Government. The race to which we belong were not the special objects of his consideration. Knowing this, I concede to you, my white fellow-citizens, a pre-eminence in this worship at once full and supreme. First, midst, and last, you and yours were the objects of his deepest affection and his most earnest solicitude.

The catalog of events, stances, and policies is not used to say that Lincoln does not deserve admiration and praise, but who should praise him and where his focus really was. There is little room or space here for black Americans to praise him as his legacy is one against their freedom through his loyalty to the Constitution.

Douglass then suggests the appropriate relationship of black Americans to Lincoln through metaphor:

You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best only his step-children; children by adoption, children by forces of circumstances and necessity. To you it especially belongs to sound his praises, to preserve and perpetuate his memory, to multiply his statues, to hang his pictures high upon your walls, and commend his example, for to you he was a great and glorious friend and benefactor. Instead of supplanting you at his altar, we would exhort you to build high his monuments; let them be of the most costly material, of the most cunning workmanship; let their forms be symmetrical, beautiful, and perfect, let their bases be upon solid rocks, and their summits lean against the unchanging blue, overhanging sky, and let them endure forever! But while in the abundance of your wealth, and in the fullness of your just and patriotic devotion, you do all this, we entreat you to despise not the humble offering we this day unveil to view; for while Abraham Lincoln saved for you a country, he delivered us from a bondage, according to Jefferson, one hour of which was worse than ages of the oppression your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose.

The step-children cannot admire the “father” the same way the children can, and he encourages this admiration. The admiration of black Americans can exist for Lincoln under the idea that he freed them from slavery, an oppression worse than the one that inspired the American revolution. What white Americans celebrate when they praise Lincoln is the preservation of a nation that was built on slavery. Douglass wants us to remember this when we speak highly of him, build statutes and honor him, and other such civic acts.

Why should he be admired? He was able to deliver black Americans from slavery because he understood the appropriate order of operations:

I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible.

Douglass has established a pretty complex argument here: Lincoln is not someone that black Americans can completely and fully admire because of his nature and choices, however they can praise Lincoln for making the choice he made about emancipation in the way he did it – otherwise there would be no possibility for the support of freedom.

Douglass’s point in the “Debate” is that political exigency always makes a person fall short of need, even when it is meant to meet great need. The danger is a lowering of the bar for future emancipatory action in the name of justice. Lincoln’s policy, in the “debate” that I am constructing here, is one where we put national intrests first or the country cannot act in any beneficial way toward issues of justice and freedom. Douglass is conceding that – but also pointing out that the amount of work and engagement that must be done is actually much larger and more complex than one powerful white man taking an action that benefits what white Americans want, and happens to grant a great freedom to black Americans.

This post is already too long, but I hope that it communicates how interesting it is to put historical figures like this in debate-like environments. I feel a full rendering of this would be something tough to do – very long, very complicated. Maybe I’ll write another piece on this if you like this one!