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 his speech at the dedication of the Freedmen's Memorial Monument to Abraham Lincoln, Douglass critiques Lincoln's early policies regarding the rights of African Americans.
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More from Frederick Douglass
We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.
His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not soon to be allayed.
We could not but believe that there existed at the South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert itself at last.
It was in the air, and men breathed it and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its presence.