The President called his Cabinet together for April 14, then sent a wire off to William Lloyd Garrison asking him to go to Fort Sumter for the raising of the Stars and Stripes there. Garrison joyfully obeyed. With him were Henry Ward Beecher and George Thompson, antislavery men who could now rejoice.
The flag was raised, and singing filled the air; the waters were covered with flowers, and the guns fired their triumphant salute. They were on the steamer headed farther south when, at Beaufort, they were handed a telegram.
Abraham Lincoln was dead!
“I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.”
Chapter Sixteen
Moving forward
The American Anti-Slavery Society disbanded and its agents were withdrawn from the fields. The last number of the Liberator came out.
“The object for which the liberator was commenced thirty-five years ago having been gloriously consummated—” wrote the white-haired editor. He could now close his office. The slaves were free—his job was finished. Garrison sailed for England and the Continent.
Frederick Douglass, dragging himself through the weeks, hardly heeded what was being done. He caught some words of Wendell Phillips’ passionate plea: the Thirteenth Amendment had not yet become law; even after ratification it had to be carried out. But he had taken no part in the discussions. His occupation was gone and his salary—the Anti-Slavery Society had paid him about five hundred dollars a year—cut off. Lewis came home. Frederic was working with the Freedman’s Bureau in Mississippi. Douglass made sporadic attempts to think of how he would earn a living. The newspaper hung heavy on his hands. An idea occurred to him. With the few thousand dollars Anna had saved from the sales of his book, My Bondage and My Freedom, he had best buy a farm, settle down and earn an honest living by tilling the soil.
But nothing seemed of any real importance.