“Why?”
“These people are not Africans. They know nothing about Africa—whatever roots they had have been destroyed. We were born here, in America.”
The President sighed.
“I realize our responsibility, Douglass. We cannot set back the clock. We brought your people here, we made them work for us. We owe them for all these years of labor. But the fact remains that they are alien and apart. Can they ever fit into the life of this country?”
Douglass spoke very gently.
“This is the only land we know, Mr. Lincoln. We have tilled its fields, we have cleared its forests, we have built roads and bridges. This is our home. We are alien and apart only because we have been forced apart.” Then he began to tell the President of Negroes who had been living and working in free states. He told of artisans and skilled craftsmen, of bakers, shoemakers and clockmakers; he told about schoolteachers, doctors, Negroes who, after being educated in Europe, had chosen to return.
Mr. Lincoln listened with growing amazement. Perhaps he thought to himself, If only all of them were like this man Douglass! But being the simple, honest soul he was, it is certain another thought came after, Few men are like this Douglass!
They sat together through the long summer afternoon, and worked out a plan. Other callers were turned away. “The President can see no one,” they were told.
They decided that Douglass would organize a band of colored scouts who would go into the South, beyond the Union Army lines, and bring the slaves together as free workers.
“They will be paid something. I can’t say what.”