Lincoln and Douglass

In “Douglass, Not Lincoln, Bolsters GOP” (Opinion, Dec. 31), Gregory Stephens says a number of things highly laudatory of Frederick Douglass, all of them deserved. He also says a number of things disparaging Abraham Lincoln, none of them deserved.

He quotes Douglass, at the unveiling of the Freedmen’s Monument in 1876, saying that Lincoln “was preeminently the white man’s president, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men.” Yet Douglass, in the whole speech, recognizes that the political course Lincoln pursued was, in fact, in the best interests of black men and that he could not have succeeded by any other course. Lincoln was elected president by white men, and he could not have been elected had he not been seen as devoted to their interests. Nor did Douglass, any more than Lincoln, believe in government without the consent of the governed.

Here is the characteristic theme of all Lincoln’s speeches in his rise to power: “ . . . let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man--this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position--discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.” Let the reader decide whether this qualifies as the “cornerstone of a politics of inclusion.”

HARRY V. JAFFA

Professor Emeritus

Claremont McKenna College