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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.
But Lincoln's aim was the preservation of the Union. He feared that if he freed the slaves and ordered black soldiers to kill whites, he would alienate northern conservatives and lose the border slave states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. And if the border states were lost, he believed, all was lost. Douglass had no sympathy for this reasoning. The slaveholders of the border states, he said, "have been the mill-stone about the neck of the Government, and their so-called loyalty" prevented the Union from using all its resources. He knew that 4 million slaves, plus another half million free blacks, amounted to about 20% of the North's population and represented a potent source of power.
Lincoln refused to tap into this source of power, and Douglass became increasingly frustrated with him. By arming only white men, the Union fought the rebels with one hand, he complained. "They fought with their soft white hand, while they kept their black iron hand chained and helpless behind them." Douglass's frustration turned to contempt in August 1862, after Lincoln met with a delegation of African Americans and urged them to emigrate to Central America. "You and we are different races," Lincoln told his black audience. "We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races ... Your race are suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people. But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoy." The very presence of blacks in the country, he added, was the cause of the war, even though men on both sides "do not care for you one way or the other." He concluded, "It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated."
Douglass was outraged when he heard about the meeting. In Central and South America, he noted, "distinct races live peaceably together in the enjoyment of equal rights" without civil wars. And he sneered at the notion that blacks were the cause of the war. A horse thief did not apologize for his theft by blaming the horse. "No, Mr. President, it is not the innocent horse that makes the horse thief ... but the cruel and brutal cupidity of those who wish to possess horses, money and Negroes by means of theft, robbery and rebellion." He called Lincoln "a genuine representative of American prejudice" who was more concerned about the border states than about any "principle of justice and humanity."