Frederick Douglass

Portrait of abolitionist, writer, and orator Frederick Douglass.

Invited by President Lincoln to the White House in August 1864, Douglass discussed with Lincoln the growing impatience Northerners were having with the progress of the war, which had bogged down that summer.

During the meeting, President Lincoln expressed particular concern that a Democratic victory in the fall would spell the end of emancipation. Douglass wrote of the meeting, "What he said on this day showed a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had even seen before in anything spoken or written by him."