The Black Man’s President Abraham Lincoln, African Americans, & the Pursuit of Racial Equality

By Michael Burlingame

Pegasus Books, Ltd., 2021 313 pages; $29.95

A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House

By Jonathan W. White

Rowman & Littlefield, 2022 251 pages; $26.00

Reviewed by Henry Cohen

On Aug. 14, 1862, Abraham Lincoln became the first U.S. president to invite a group of African Americans to the White House for an interview. Then he proceeded to lecture his guests—five men who “were all well-educated members of Washington’s black elite,” as Jonathan W. White describes them in A House Built by Slaves—telling them that African Americans were to blame for the Civil War, and that it would be better for both Black and white people if the former would agree to colonization in Africa or Central America.

Yet Michael Burlingame, in The Black Man’s President, writes that “Lincoln felt a degree of compassion and empathy for Black Americans unusual for his time and place.” White adds that, apart from this instance, “Lincoln warmly welcomed black visitors into his home and office” in the White House, in ways that “would have been simply unthinkable to most mid-nineteenth-century white people.” So, what happened on Aug. 14? Let’s first look more closely at what Lincoln said to his five guests. Here are three excerpts from early in his remarks:

I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated….

Your race are suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people…. [N]ot a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours….

See our present condition—the country engaged in war!—our white men cutting one another’s throats…. But for your race among us there could not be war…. I repeat, without the institution of Slavery and the colored race as a basis, the war could not have an existence. It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated….

Michael Burlingame quotes all three of these excerpts and reads them in a favorable light. He does not comment on the first, but he calls the second “remarkably empathetic.” As to the third, he writes, "Lincoln was stating an obvious truth: the Civil War was caused by the South's desire to maintain slavery and White supremacy at all costs. If no African Americans had been in the country, no fierce devotion to White supremacy would exist and hence no war would have occurred.”

This statement is literally true, but Burlingame does not consider that it suggests that Black people were the cause of the war. Moreover, the first excerpt above would be difficult to read in the benign way that Burlingame reads the third. Perhaps “ours suffer from your presence” in the first excerpt could be read as stating the obvious truth that, without Black people, there would be no slavery and hence no war. The difficulty with that interpretation, however, is that Lincoln seems to equate the suffering of the two races (although he does say that Black people suffer “very greatly” and does not use those words to describe white people’s suffering) and also to make the blame for that suffering reciprocal.

Lincoln also fails to note that white people cause Black people’s suffering (by enslaving them and otherwise mistreating them and discriminating against them), whereas Black people do not cause white people’s suffering; white people cause their own suffering by killing one another. Although white people would not suffer in a war if there were no Black people in the country, Black people are not causing their suffering.

In fact, Black people are in the country only because white people kidnapped them or their forebears from Africa.

Finally, in the first excerpt Lincoln says that Black people should emigrate because “we suffer on each side.” Why should Black people take white people’s suffering into account in deciding whether to emigrate?

Jonathan White seems more neutral than Burlingame in his reporting of this incident. Although White has as high a regard for Lincoln as does Burlingame, he does not downplay the egregiousness of Lincoln’s remarks to the five Black men. He acknowledges, “Few moments in Lincoln’s presidency appear as regrettable as this one…. Lincoln’s words were terribly condescending.” Yet, he adds, “[T]he tone of Lincoln’s lecture to the black delegation should not skew how we understand his other interactions with African Americans. This meeting was unlike any other. Never again did he lecture a black guest. The infamous meeting of August 1862, in short, is the exception that proves the rule.”

So why was this meeting so different? Why did Lincoln behave so out of character, condescendingly lecturing instead of listening to his African American guests? The key is that, in White’s words, “Lincoln had a stenographer in the room for this … meeting so that his remarks would quickly appear in newspapers throughout the nation.” Although Lincoln’s immediate audience was his five guests, his true audience was the racist white people of the nation, which means just about all white people. Lincoln had to establish his bona fides as someone unsympathetic to Black people. Why? Because he was about to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

On July 22, 1862, Lincoln had read the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet; it provided that, on Jan. 1, 1863, “all persons held as slaves within any state” then “in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Secretary of State William Seward advised Lincoln to delay issuing it until after a Union victory so that it would not appear a sign of weakness. That victory came with the Battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, and Lincoln issued the proclamation five days later. Lincoln’s meeting with the African Americans occurred after he had decided to issue the proclamation and while he was waiting for a propitious time to do so.

Lincoln knew that, whereas many white people were willing to fight a war to preserve the Union, fewer were willing to fight to end slavery. To retain public support for the war, he had to make clear that he was issuing the proclamation as a military necessity to help preserve the Union, not to free the slaves. He also had to deal with white people’s fears of freed slaves’ moving to their communities and competing with them for jobs.

That’s probably why he pushed for voluntary colonization, saying, in effect, we’ll free them, but we’ll also be rid of them. In June 1862, writes Burlington, a congressman predicted that alarm about emancipation “would spread to every man of my constituents … if the public mind was not lulled and put to sleep with the word ‘colonization.’ I say the word, not the thing; for no practicable and adequate scheme for it has ever been presented or devised. The word is sung to us as a sort of ‘lullaby.’” In addition, Burlingame and White both quote the Black abolitionist Henry McNeal Turner as writing, in September 1862, a few days after Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, “Mr. Lincoln is not half such a stickler for colored expatriation as he has been pronounced,” and his colonization proposal was a “strategetic [sic] move upon his part in contemplation of this emancipatory proclamation just delivered.”

Furthermore, white support for colonization was not necessarily racist. Burlingame speculates that Lincoln

believed Negrophobia was so deeply ingrained that at least some African Americans might reasonably agree with Black abolitionist John Russwurm … who considered it a “waste of words to talk of every enjoying citizenship in this country; it is utterly impossible in the nature of things; all, therefore, who pant for this, must cast their eyes elsewhere.”

Burlingame also quotes a historian who concluded that Lincoln’s plans for colonization “were the product of a genuine regard for humanity.”

Lincoln’s need to appease white racists also explains why, on Aug. 22, having decided to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, he published his famous open letter to Horace Greeley, writing, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” Lincoln was being disingenuous, for he had already decided upon the third option.

Other Matters

These two books, which are both excellent and highly readable, deal, of course, with matters besides Lincoln’s Aug. 22, 1862, meeting with his five Black guests. Ostensibly, Burlingame’s book covers more territory than White’s, because Burlingame’s addresses Lincoln’s interactions with African American people generally, whereas White’s is about African American visitors to the White House. But White doesn’t merely discuss one visit after another, which might become tedious. Rather, he provides much background, and, like Burlingame, creates a flowing narrative.

Burlingame begins with Lincoln’s interactions with African Americans in Springfield, Ill., before he became president.

The Black Springfielder closest to Lincoln was William Florville (also spelled Fleurville). Affectionately referred to as “Billy the Barber,” … [h]is shop became a popular social center where Lincoln not only received shaves and haircuts but also spent time swapping stories with the humorous Florville and other customers.

Burlingame moves on to Lincoln’s relationships with African Americans on the White House staff. Lincoln was said by an acquaintance to be “blinded by no prejudices against race or color.” A Black waiter at the White House remembered Lincoln as “kind to everybody,” and the daughter of the head butler at the White House reported that the president “never treated [the employees] as servants, but was always polite and requested service, rather than demand it of them.”

Burlingame also discusses Lincoln’s meeting with leaders of Washington’s African American community, receptions at the White House at which Black people were welcome, Lincoln’s allowing Black religious groups to hold picnics on the White House lawn, his support for giving Black people the vote in various states, such as Louisiana and Arkansas, and much more. All these actions were unprecedented and horrified many white people. Throughout the book, Burlingame emphasizes Lincoln’s racial egalitarianism, quoting scholars such as African

American historian Benjamin Quarles, who wrote that Lincoln was “without bigotry of any kind,” and Roy P. Basler, who said that Lincoln’s personal relations with African Americans “were almost models of democratic correctness and friendly courtesy.”

Burlingame makes a persuasive case for Lincoln’s egalitarian attitude and courtesy to African Americans. The problem, however, is that he seems to be making a case rather than, like White, letting the facts speak for themselves. Burlingame relegates to an appendix his “Evaluation of Evidence Cited to Illustrate Lincoln’s Purported Racism,” and his evaluation explains all the evidence away. Burlingame’s conclusions may be wholly justified, yet his bias in favor of Lincoln comes through. Note the “purported” in the title of the appendix.

In the appendix, Burlingame focuses on two examples of Lincoln’s purported racism: his racist remarks during his debates with Stephen A. Douglas in the 1858 U.S. Senate campaign in Illinois, and his occasional use of racist language. As for the debates, Douglas was a virulent racist who baited Lincoln by claiming that Lincoln sought equal rights for Black people and favored racial intermarriage. Burlingame quotes historian George Frederickson that it “is clear that no one who did not pay at least lip service to white supremacy could get elected to a statewide office in Illinois.” Moreover, Lincoln was more concerned with the greater evil of the enslavement of 4 million people in the South than with the lack of civil rights for the much smaller number of free African Americans. Therefore, Lincoln would concede to Douglas that Black people should not have equal rights, but argue against the

counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone. In some respects she is certainly not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands ... she is my equal, and the equal of all others.

Lincoln chose his words carefully, so as never really to support Douglas’s racism. He said that Black women were not his equal in some respects, but what respects were those? Well, Lincoln said, “Certainly the negro is not our equal in color.” What, if anything, does that mean? Burlingame finds it is “probably a satirical concession designed to make White supremacists look ridiculous.”

As for Lincoln’s use of racist language, Burlingame writes:

In responding to Douglas’s unvarnished race baiting, Lincoln occasionally employed the N-word, for he “generally used” racial epithets “to satirize his opponents,” according to James Oakes. Elizabeth Brown Pryor agreed, noting that Lincoln uttered the N-word “when he wanted to mock those who used the term without irony….”

White’s and Burlingame’s books overlap considerably, and much in the preceding paragraphs citing Burlingame could have cited White without being substantially different. But White delves into other matters as well.

Being about African Americans’ visits to the Lincoln White House, White’s book naturally discusses Frederick Douglass’s three famous visits, but we also learn of Lincoln’s meetings with lesser-known people. On Jan. 2, 1864, for example, the Washington Daily Chronicle reported, “Yesterday four colored men, of genteel exterior and with the manners of gentlemen, joined in the throng that crowded the Executive mansion and were presented to the President of the United States.” The paper added, “Years ago had any colored man presented himself at the White House at the President’s levee … he would in all probability have been roughly handled for his impudence.” The Daily Chronicle “rejoice[d]” in this, but a Maine paper complained, “What a hideous travestie this is—what an abject and shameful truckling to the shocking and unnatural doctrine of negro equality … forbidden by the decrees of the Almighty.”

The next month, in February 1864, White relates, “two black Army surgeons— Alexander Thomas Augusta and Anderson R. Abbott—also decided to enter the White House, uninvited, for a public reception.” After detailing how Augusta and Abbott got to be Army surgeons (and officers), White describes how Lincoln graciously shook their hands, to the consternation of some onlookers. The Detroit Free Press reported, “The ladies were very much disgusted with the social equality thus attempted.”

Some of Lincoln’s African American visitors came to the White House on more serious business. “In January 1864,” writes White, “two Creole citizens of New Orleans—E. Arnold Bertonneau and Jean Baptiste Roudanez—drafted a lengthy petition addressed to Lincoln and Congress, urging them to enfranchise ‘all the citizens of Louisiana of African descent, born free before the rebellion.’” They met with Lincoln in March, and he said that Black suffrage was “not a military question,” and, as president, he “did nothing in matters of this kind upon moral grounds, but solely upon political necessities.” In other words, giving Black men the vote would not, like the Emancipation Proclamation, help win the war. One of the men, with Lincoln’s assistance, drafted a new petition, arguing that Black men should be enfranchised to help secure loyal Union majorities in Louisiana elections. Lincoln then wrote to the governor of Louisiana, Michael Hahn, suggesting that he extend the franchise to “some of the colored people … for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks.” These were essentially the same words Lincoln uttered a year later, which induced John Wilkes Booth to murder him.

After Lincoln’s murder, Black Americans, White writes, “felt the keenest sense of loss…. Reflecting on this moment many years later, a black Union Army veteran wrote, ‘Our faith was almost staggered, that faith which had sustained us in so many battles, was now staggering under a blow which was severer than any battles, the death of our Immortal leader.’” Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles saw “several hundred colored people, mostly women and children, weeping and wailing their loss” outside the White House on the day Lincoln died. Some ex-slaves worried that they would become slaves again.

On April 14, 1876, at the unveiling of the Freedmen’s Memorial, paid for by Black people, in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C., Frederick Douglass spoke. White writes:

Douglass alluded to Lincoln’s infamous colonization meeting with the black delegation in August 1862, reminding his audience of “when he strangely told us that we were the cause of the war,” and “when he still more strangely told us that we were to leave the land in which we were born.” Yet, Douglass continued, “we are compelled to admit that this