When Douglass Met Lincoln - NYTimes.com On Aug. 1, 1863, Frederick Douglass wrote a letter in his newspaper announcing his refusal to continue recruiting black troops for the Union Army. "When I plead for recruits, I want to do it with all my heart," he wrote in Douglass" Monthly. "I cannot do that now," he said, because "colored men have much overrated the enlightenment, justice and generosity of our rulers in Washington." Among other things, he said, black soldiers were not being paid as much as whites and were being sent on menial or dangerous missions without adequate support. Even worse, Confederate forces that captured black soldiers often either executed them or sold them into slavery. Douglass addressed his letter to George Stearns, a Massachusetts industrialist and army major responsible for a national recruiting network for black troops. Stearns was a member of the "Secret Six" abolitionists who had supported John Brown, and he almost certainly shared Douglass's frustration with the administration's apparent reluctance to ensure that the Union's black troops be accorded the same protections and pay that its white soldiers enjoyed. Given the slow rate at which news spread in those days, neither man could have known that the Army's Adjutant General's Office had just ordered that "for every soldier of the United States killed in violation of the laws of war, a rebel soldier shall be executed; and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into slavery, a rebel soldier shall be placed at hard labor on the public works." Rather than lose the recruiting services of one of the nation's most visible black leaders, Stearns urged Douglass to visit Washington and share his views with the president. And so, on Aug. 10, Douglass went to the White House, accompanied by Samuel C. Pomeroy, the Radical Republican senator from Kansas. First they stopped at the War Department to meet with Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Like most people, Douglass found Stanton "cold and business-like," but nonetheless sympathetic. Over the course of a half-hour meeting, Stanton offered his assurance that he favored equal treatment for the United States Colored Troops, particularly regarding the inflammatory issue of equal pay, and that he had put forth legislation, rejected by Congress, to remedy the inequity. Stanton also offered Douglass a military commission so that he might assist Gen. Lorenzo Thomas in his efforts to recruit blacks in Mississippi. Nothing came of this offer; some historians suspect that Lincoln killed the idea. After the visit with Stanton, Douglass and Pomeroy took the short walk east to the White House. As he noted in his autobiography 30 years later, Douglass had misgivings about the meeting. "The distance then between the black man and the white American citizen was immeasurable," he wrote. I could not know what kind of a reception would be accorded me. His misgivings were not without good reason, for he was a persistent, often outspoken critic of the president. In April 1861, for instance, Douglass had labeled Lincoln's inaugural address "a weak and inappropriate utterance" that announced "complete loyalty to slavery in the slave States" and denied "all feeling against slavery." And in September 1862, when writing about the president's August 1862 meeting with black clergyman from Chicago, during which Lincoln had aggressively promoted colonization, Douglass wrote that the president "seems to have an ever increasing passion for making himself appear silly and ridiculous." Upon arriving at the White House, Douglass found "the stairway was crowded with applicants ... and as I was the only dark spot among them, I expected to have to wait at least half a day." But within two minutes he was ushered into the president's office, where he found Lincoln seated "in a low armchair with his feet extended on the floor, surrounded by a large number of documents and several busy secretaries." Lincoln immediately put his visitor at ease. "I know who you are, Mr. Douglass; Mr. Seward has told me all about you," the president said. Sit down. I am glad to see you. When Lincoln asked Douglass to "state what I regarded as the ... most disheartening feature in our present political and military situation," the black abolitionist responded, "It would be the tardy, hesitating, vacillating policy of the President of the United States." As Douglass recalled the exchange, Lincoln allowed that he might seem slow, but that he could not be accused of vacillation. I think it cannot be shown that when I have once taken a position, I have ever retreated from it. Douglass later recalled that he regarded this "as the most significant point in what he said during our interview." Lincoln's responses to what Douglass identified as his primary concerns - the inequitable pay for black soldiers, the need for retaliation against Confederate policies toward black troops and the need for policies guaranteeing promotion for meritorious service by black troops - cannot have been immediately reassuring to the abolitionist. Lincoln began with the claim that "the employment of colored troops ... could not have been successfully adopted at the beginning of the war." Although the wisdom of enlisting colored troops was still untested and was a "serious offense" to popular prejudice, the president argued, colored troops "had larger motives for being soldiers than white men" and "ought to be willing to enter the service upon any condition." The fact that they received lower pay was a "necessary concession to smooth the way" and one that would ultimately be corrected. Lincoln also defended the pace at which he had moved to ensure black troops equal protection: "the country needed talking up to that point," the president contended, but he was confident "that the preparatory work had now been done." Remember, he reminded Douglass, "that Milliken's Bend, Port Hudson and Fort Wagner are recent events; and that these were necessary to prepare the way for this very proclamation [the Order of Retaliation] of mine," referring to battles in which black soldiers had participated. Finally, Lincoln answered the third of Douglass's concerns with a masterful evasion, saying simply that "he would sign any commission to colored soldiers whom his Secretary of War should commend to him." The impact of the meeting between Lincoln and Douglass was largely personal. Douglass was "not entirely satisfied with his views," but "was so well satisfied with the man ... that I determined to go on with the recruiting." And the audience with the president had provided further proof of his status as a leading voice in the black and white antislavery community. Four months later, when relating his experience to the delegates at the American Antislavery Society in Philadelphia, he exclaimed, "I tell you I felt big there!" But the meeting had little immediate impact on the most vexing issue that Douglass had raised: unequal pay. White Union privates received $13 per month, $3 of which was to pay for uniforms. When Stanton ordered Gen. Rufus Saxton to organize the first 5,000 black volunteers at Port Royal, S.C., in the spring of 1863, he authorized a rate of pay equal to that received by white troops. Then he made a mistake. When the Bureau for Colored Troops was established a month later, Stanton asked the War Department's solicitor, William Whiting, to review the question of the pay rate for black troops. Whiting ruled that the only legislation in effect, the 1862 Militia Act, clearly stated that "persons of African descent, who under this law shall be employed, shall receive ten dollars per month and one ration, three dollars of which monthly pay may be in clothing" (http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/milact.htm). The primary justification for the pay differential was that black troops were initially to serve as garrison, not front-line, troops. Just as important, many Union leaders argued that pay equity would inflame the prejudices of white troops. As The New York World editorialized, "To claim that the indolent, servile negro is the equal in courage, enterprise and fire of the foremost race in all the world is a libel upon the name of an American citizen. ... It is unjust in every way to the white soldier to put him on a level with the black." The strategy of paying black troops less pleased no one: the whites it was meant to appease saw it for the sop it was, while both the black troops and their white supporters resented it. Gov. John Andrew of Massachusetts thundered: "For fear the uniform may dignify the enfranchised slave, or make the black man seem like a free citizen, the government means to disgrace and degrade him, so that he may always be in his own eyes, and in the eyes of all men, "only a nigger."" When Andrew sought to make up the difference in pay for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts regiments from state funds, a regimental spokesman condemned the offer for advertising "us to the world as holding out for money and not from principle - that we sink our manhood in consideration of a few more dollars." As captured in the film "Glory," the Massachusetts regiments refused time and again to muster to receive pay. Either Stanton or Lincoln might well have reversed or disregarded the opinion of the War Department's solicitor in the spring of 1863; they surely showed no reluctance to override other, more well-established policies. But they chose instead to leave the issue of rectifying the pay inequity in the hands of Congress. Not until June 15, 1864 did legislation equalize pay and make it retroactive to January 1. It also enabled black troops to collect back pay for 1862 and 1863, but hedged the entitlement with qualifications that spawned a whole new round of controversies not resolved until the war's end. Sources: David Blight, "Frederick Douglass" Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee"; Dudley Taylor Cornish, "The Sable Arm: Black Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865"; Luis F. Emilio, "A Brave Black Regiment: The History of the 54th Massachusetts, 1863-1865"; Philip S. Foner, ed., with adaptation by Yuval Taylor, "Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings"; Joseph T. Glatthaar, "Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance between Black Soldiers and White Officers"; James M. McPherson, "The Negro's Civil War: How American Blacks Felt and Acted during the War for the Union and "The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction"; James Oakes, "The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics"; Brooks D. Simpson, ed., "The Civil War: The Third Year Told by Those who Lived It"; and Noah Andre Trudeau, "Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862-1865." Rick Beard is an independent historian and exhibition curator, and co-author of the forthcoming National Park Service publication "Slavery in the United States: A Brief Narrative History."