how will we celebrate the Lincoln bicentennial?

Isn't it good
Rosemary Woods

people change, statues don't

One year later, President Lincoln invited Frederick Douglass back to the White House. On August 19, 1864 Douglass and Lincoln were together again. The President was facing re-election soon and told Douglass he did not expect to win. If he lost, there would be a new President. With this in mind, Lincoln wanted Douglass to help with a special mission. Secretly, a revolution was afoot. Since the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln hoped for a mass exodus of enslaved individuals out of the states in rebellion. This had not happened on the scale he hoped. Now, Lincoln asked Douglass to lead a network of folks into the rebellious states to help every last soul possible escape enslavement. In language that must have reminded Douglass of his conversations years before with John Brown, the President of the United States was tasking him to help save thousands of lives, if not more. Douglass was asked to help destroy what remained of slavery. As a biographer observed, “Over night, Frederick Douglass went from frustrated outsider and fierce critic to special presidential advisor and organizer of a radical military mission.” After their meeting, Lincoln won re-election and this mission was unnecessary, but “for those hours at least the former slave from the Tuckahoe and the Indiana dirt farmer’s son were making a revolution together.” Though it never happened, it was now clear to Frederick Douglass that President Lincoln realized what was at heart of this war: the millions enslaved.