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The ceremony was "wonderfully quiet, earnest, and solemn," Douglass noted. There was a "leaden stillness about the crowd" as Lincoln delivered his address, and Douglass thought it sounded "more like a sermon than a state paper." After the ceremony he went to the reception at the White House. As he was about to enter, two policemen rudely yanked him away and told him no persons of color were allowed to enter. Douglass said there must be some mistake, for no such order could have come from the President. The police refused to yield, until Douglass sent word to Lincoln that he was being detained at the door. Douglass found him in the elegant East Room, standing "like a mountain pine in his grand simplicity and homely beauty."
"Here comes my friend," Lincoln said, and took Douglass by the hand. "I am glad to see you. I saw you in the crowd today, listening to my inaugural address." He asked Douglass how he liked it, adding, "There is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours."
"Mr. Lincoln, that was a sacred effort," Douglass replied.
A month later, when news reached Douglass at his home in Rochester, N.Y, that Lincoln had been assassinated, he was overcome with grief. Later that day, he gave a short impromptu speech. "Though Abraham Lincoln dies, the Republic lives," he said, adding that the martyred President had "made us kin," uniting blacks and whites. He elaborated on Lincoln's legacy 11 years later, at the unveiling of the Freedmen's Monument in Washington, offering a tender verdict from the perspective of someone who had been converted. If you judge him from the point of view of a pure abolitionist, Douglass said, "Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent." But, he went on, "measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined."
Slavery Up Close
On the eve of the Civil War, 4 million people were held in bondage, fueling the South’s economy but cleaving the nation
TOTALS, 1860
THE U.S.
Number of slaves
3,953,731 Slaves (12.7% of pop.)
Families owning slaves
7.6% Owned slaves
STATES THAT FORMED THE CONFEDERACY
Number of slaves
3,525,110 Slaves (38.7% of pop.)
Families owning Slaves
30.8% Owned slaves
MISSOURI
Number of slaves: 114,931
Percent of population: (9.7%)
NebraskaTerritory - 15 slaves
KansasTerritory - 2 slaves
In the counties that became West Virginia in 1863, only 5.7% of families owned slaves
KENTUCKY 225,483 (19.5%)
DELAWARE 1,798 (1.6%)
NEW JERSEY 18 slaves
D.C. 3,185 (4.2%)
MARYLAND 87,189 (12.7%)
Largest number of free blacks: 25,680 in Baltimore, Md.
>> States that seceded to form the Confederacy
ARKANSAS 111,115 (25.5%)
TENNESSEE 275,719 (24.8%)
VIRGINIA 490,865 (30.7%)
NORTH CAROLINA 331,059 (33.4%)
SOUTH CAROLINA 402,406 (57.2%)
Of the 15 people in the U.S. who owned more than 500 slaves, 8 were in South Carolina
Largest slave population: 37,290 - Charleston County, S.C.