“When the Hebrews were emancipated they were told to take spoil from the Egyptians. When the serfs of Russia were emancipated, they were given three acres of ground upon which they could live and make a living. But not so when our slaves were emancipated. They were sent away empty-handed, without money, without friends, and without a foot of land to stand upon. Old and young, sick and well were turned loose to the open sky, naked to their enemies.” Fifteen years later Douglass was to say this to a tense audience, their large eyes, so bright that “freedom morning,” veiled again with pain. If only Lincoln had been spared! How many times in the months and years had they harked back to that towering figure and asked, “_Why?_” * * * * * It is true that Lincoln’s freeing of the slaves was a war measure, but with the enactment of that measure the President steered the Ship of State into uncharted waters. To whom could he turn for counsel? Not to a Cabinet dolefully prophesying disaster; not to a Secretary of War who had considered the occupation of Sumter by United States soldiers a deadly insult to the Southern states; not to a General who vacillated, delayed, quarreled and called his own men “a confused mob, entirely demoralized.” Lincoln sent for Frederick Douglass. It was proof of how far and how fast he was traveling. He had no precedent. Everything the President read or heard in his day treated all colored peoples as less than human. He was born and nurtured in the church which said fervent prayers of thanks that slavers “tore the savage from the wilds of Africa and brought him to Christianity.” The unquestioned inferiority of a black man was in the very air that Lincoln breathed. And yet he turned to Douglass. He did not receive the dark man in the office of the Executive Mansion, but out on the back porch. There were times when the tinted walls, drapes and heavy rugs of the imposing house stifled this “common man” from the West. At such times he chose the porch, with its vista of green. “Sit down, Mr. Douglass,” he said, motioning to a wide, easy chair. “I want to talk to you.” Mainly he wished to confer that afternoon about the best means, outside the Army, to induce slaves in the rebel states to come within Federal lines. “I fear that a peace might be forced upon me which would leave the former slaves in a kind of bondage worse even than that they have known.” Then he added, his voice heavy with disappointment, “They are not coming to us as rapidly and in as large numbers as I had hoped.” Douglass replied that probably many obstacles were being placed in their path.