Post #1675071
2026-02-24 20:45 UTC
@oberstenzian Well, Douglass didn’t confuse access with agreement. He left Lincoln dissatisfied more than once. But he understood that refusing to engage wouldn’t free anyone. The question for him was whether pressure could move power and whether Black soldiers would be armed and recognized. He chose leverage over non-participation.
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@Deglassco@mastodon.social 2026-02-24 20:45
@oberstenzian Historian James McPherson makes this explicit in The Negro’s Civil War, where he shows that Black Americans saw military service as political action..,as proof of fitness for citizenship and an irreversible blow to the slave system. Douglass understood that dynamic. He pressed Lincoln not because he mistook him for a moral savior, but because he recognized that federal power once moved, could become an instrument of Black self-assertion.