The Black Man's President: Abraham Lincoln, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Equality

by Michael Burlingame

Overview

Frederick Douglass called the martyred president "emphatically the black man's president” as well as “the first who rose above the prejudice of his times and country.” This narrative history of Lincoln’s personal interchange with Black people over the course his career reveals a side of the sixteenth president that, until now, has not been fully explored or understood.

In a little-noted eulogy delivered shortly after Lincoln's assassination, Frederick Douglass called the martyred president "emphatically the black man's president," the "first to show any respect for their rights as men.” To justify that description, Douglass pointed not just to Lincoln's official acts and utterances, like the Emancipation Proclamation or the Second Inaugural Address, but also to the president’s own personal experiences with Black people. Referring to one of his White House visits, Douglass said: "In daring to invite a Negro to an audience at the White House, Mr. Lincoln was saying to the country: I am President of the black people as well as the white, and I mean to respect their rights and feelings as men and as citizens.”

But Lincoln’s description as “emphatically the black man’s president” rests on more than his relationship with Douglass or on his official words and deeds. Lincoln interacted with many other African Americans during his presidency His unfailing cordiality to them, his willingness to meet with them in the White House, to honor their requests, to invite them to consult on public policy, to treat them with respect whether they were kitchen servants or leaders of the Black community, to invite them to attend receptions, to sing and pray with them in their neighborhoods—all those manifestations of an egalitarian spirit fully justified the tributes paid to him by Frederick Douglass and other African Americans like Sojourner Truth, who said: "I never was treated by any one with more kindness and cordiality than were shown to me by that great and good man, Abraham Lincoln.”

Historian David S. Reynolds observed recently that only by examining Lincoln’s “personal interchange with Black people do we see the complete falsity of the charges of innate racism that some have leveled against him over the years.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643138138
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	11/02/2021
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	387,001
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Michael Burlingame holds the Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois Springfield. He is the author or editor of several books about Lincoln, including An American Marriage; Lincoln Observed; The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln; and the two-volume critical masterpiece Abraham Lincoln: A Life. Michael lives in Springfield, Illinois.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

1 "Extensive Interaction with African Americans in Springfield": The Illinois Years 1

2 "Blinded by No Prejudices Against Race or Color": Lincoln and African Americans on the White House Staff 25

3 "Expressing a Hearty Wish for the Welfare of the Colored Race": Initial Meetings with African American Leaders 44

4 "A Sop to Conservatives": Meeting with Leaders of Washington's African American Community 57

5 "Abraham Lincoln Takes No Backward Step": Frederick Douglass and Other African American Callers in 1863 109

6 "To Keep the Jewel of Liberty Within the Family of Freedom": African American Callers in 1864, including Frederick Douglass Again 129

7 "A Practical Assertion of Negro Citizenship for which Few Were Prepared": White House Receptions, 1864-1865, including Frederick Douglass (Again) 160

8 1865: Annus Mirabilis for African Americans 181

9 Emphatically the Black Man's President or Preeminently the White Man's President? 193

Appendix Evaluation of Evidence Cited to Illustrate Lincoln's Purported Racism 201

Acknowledgments 233

Endnotes 235

Index 299

Editorial Reviews

10/18/2021

Historian Burlingame (Abraham Lincoln: A Life) defends Abraham Lincoln against charges of racism in this provocative and extensively documented account. Marshaling a wealth of primary sources, Burlingame argues that Lincoln, while at times a pragmatic politician who paid “lip service” to notions of white supremacy, was at heart a racial egalitarian. He documents Lincoln’s friendly relations with Blacks in Illinois and Washington, D.C., and notes that Lincoln’s “unfailing cordiality to African Americans in general” was witnessed and written about countless times in a “Negrophobic” country. According to Burlingame, Lincoln’s support for resettling free Blacks in Liberia was “rather lukewarm” and only taken up “to provide a refuge for Black pessimists who feared that they would never attain full citizenship status in the U.S.” Evidence of Lincoln’s commitment to racial equality is also found in his endorsement of voting rights for “very intelligent” Blacks and those who served in the Union Army. Burlingame’s assertion that Lincoln would have eventually called for the enfranchisement of all Black men is mere conjecture, however, and he cherry-picks Frederick Douglass’s praise for Lincoln while dismissing his criticisms as hyperbolic. Still, this is a resolute and well-researched vindication of Lincoln’s progressive credentials. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"Readers watch Lincoln—galvanized by his experiences with oppressed African Americans—fight to free Blacks from slavery, to open opportunities for them to serve in the Union army, and—most daringly—to give them the vote in the postwar republic. An engrossing portrait of a great statesman’s valiant struggle to give African Americans rights long denied."

Booklist (starred)

In Burlingame Lincoln has a worthy advocate, judicious, informed and temperate, and open-minded readers will find his book well worth the reading.

Illinois Times - James Krohe Jr.

"The result is a picture of Lincoln from all sides, in a style that is relentless but not daunting."

Bloomberg News

"If you aspire to ‘Ultimate Lincoln Knowledge’ this is a must-read."

The Chicago Tribune

"A magisterial enterprise."

The New York Times

"These monumental volumes deserve a wide readership."

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The Black Man’s President is a seminal achievement. It takes its place among the most essential Lincoln books ever written.

For the People: The Newsletter of the Abraham Lincoln Association - Edward Steers

Praise for Michael Burlingame’s Abraham Lincoln: A Life:

From the Publisher

"Burlingame is a towering figure in Lincoln scholarship, and students of the sixteenth president have been waiting for this book for years. For all his learning, Burlingame may know more about Lincoln and his era than anyone in the world, his take on his subject is fresh, and he doesn't gloss over Lincoln's less appealing attributes. Abraham Lincoln: A Life comes as close to being the definitive biography as anything the world has seen in decades."

TIME

2021-08-31
A look at Lincoln’s extensive affiliations with Black leaders, from his law practice to the White House, as key indications of his egalitarian thoughts and feelings.

Historian Burlingame, the chair in Lincoln studies at the University of Illinois, moves beyond Lincoln’s well-examined speeches and writings on African Americans to examine the personal relations he developed with Black leaders such as Frederick Douglass over time. “As a racial egalitarian,” writes the author, “Lincoln condemned the doctrine of White superiority.” Burlingame, whose last book explored the Lincolns’ marriage, sets out to chronicle examples through Lincoln’s defense of Blacks in his law practice and his welcoming of Black visitors to the White House as well as his deep repugnance of others’ expressions of White supremacy, including those by his own wife. He was a defender of the working people and the downtrodden, despite the color of their skin, and Black citizens in Springfield appreciated his personal touch. Studying details of Lincoln’s law practice and voting record, Burlingame surmises that he probably opposed the racist Black Code of Illinois. While he initially endorsed the Black colonization movement (to Liberia or Central America), mainly because he did not think White voters would endorse emancipation, later he was more muted in response to Black objections to the movement. Lincoln’s treatment of his Black staff—e.g., William H. Johnson, a servant who accompanied the family from Springfield to Washington, D.C., in 1861—is legendary, and Lincoln went out of his way to invite Douglass, his fiercest critic, to the White House and include Black guests at his inauguration (to the consternation of his wife). Burlingame addresses Lincoln’s use of the N-word and delight in minstrel shows as indicative of him being a man of his time rather than indicating a racist worldview, as other critics have maintained.

A moderate defense of Lincoln’s racial views that should invite further debate about the subject.

Kirkus Reviews