Frederick Douglass summarized the black point of view that the Civil War was begun ‘in the interests of slavery on both sides. The South was fighting to take slavery out of the Union and the North was fighting to keep it in the Union; the South fighting to get it beyond the limits of the US Constitution and the North fighting for the old guarantees – both despising the Negro, both insulting the Negro.’ The limitations of Lincoln’s argument that ‘slavery is immoral’ were well known to the blacks. As Lincoln refused to advocate repeal of the fugitive slave law, Wendell Phillips went so far as to call him ‘the Slave Hound of Illinois.’ H. Ford Douglass, an Illinois Negro leader, recalled that Lincoln once refused to sign a legislative petition asking for repeal of the state law barring Negro testimony in cases involving whites. If blacks dared to send their children to Illinois schools, the Negro leader charged, ‘Abraham Lincoln would kick them out, in the name of Republicanism and anti-slavery!’ What Lincoln and the blacks knew was that he was the lesser evil and blacks had no better place to turn.
