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.
From his autobiography, Douglass reflects on Abraham Lincoln's strategic approach to the Civil War and the abolition of slavery.
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It was perhaps better for the country and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from the beginning.
True it is that this faith was many times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed.
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.