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By Root 1848 0

negro.” Nothing, he added, “has tended so much to these results as the display of manhood in negro soldiers.” Racism, of course, still ran deep, as evidenced most dramatically by the New York City draft riots of July 1863, when black residents were “literally hunted down like wild beasts” and forced to take refuge in Central Park or New Jersey. But two months later, a Washington newspaper wrote of “the dissolving prejudices against the colored man,” attributing this development to the service of black soldiers. The widely publicized exploits of black troops helped to shatter long-standing images of docile or barbaric slaves. Even in New York, the presentation of colors to a black regiment a year after the riots drew a large, appreciative crowd to Union Square.17

Partly because of the value he placed on the contribution of black soldiers, Lincoln’s own racial views seemed to change. There were other reasons as well. Frederick Douglass left his meeting with Lincoln impressed, he later wrote, with the president’s “entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race,” his willingness to engage in discussion without ever “remind[ing] me of the…difference in color.” Lincoln may have recognized in Douglass a self-made man like himself; according to John Eaton, who supervised freedmen’s affairs for General Grant, the president remarked that considering his origins, Douglass was “one of the most meritorious men in America.”18

Douglass was only one of many accomplished African-Americans who met with Lincoln during the war, the first such encounters of Lincoln’s life. Before the war he had had almost no contact with prominent blacks. In November and December 1860, the hundreds of well-wishers, politicians, and office-seekers who visited him in Springfield after his election did not include a single black person. But Lincoln opened the White House to black guests as no president had before. In 1862, as we have seen, he discussed emancipation in the District of Columbia with Bishop Daniel E. Payne of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and colonization with Alexander Crummell (not to mention the black delegation he urged to leave the country). Subsequently, in addition to Douglass, Lincoln received the black abolitionists Sojourner Truth and Martin R. Delany (whom he called “this most extraordinary and intelligent black man”); black diplomats from Haiti and Liberia; a delegation of five African-Americans from North Carolina presenting a petition for the right to vote; a number of groups of black clergymen; five leaders of the African Civilization Society; and two emissaries from the free black community of New Orleans. In 1864 he allowed blacks onto the White House grounds to take part in marking a national day of “humiliation and prayer.” He had daily contact with Elizabeth Keckley, his wife’s seamstress and confidante and an educated former slave who headed the Contraband Relief Association that assisted needy blacks in Washington.19

Lincoln’s encounters with talented, politically active black men and women seemed to soften the prejudices with which he had grown up. To be sure, he never became a full-fledged racial egalitarian. In private, he continued to use words like “nigger” and “darky” and tell racially inflected stories. But not infrequently his humor used irony to undercut racism. One of his stories related how a Democratic orator in prewar Illinois had warned his audience that Republicans would extend political rights to blacks. Lincoln mimicked the speaker who related what would transpire: “Here comes forward a white man…. I will vote for [Stephen A.] Douglas. Next comes up a sleek pampered negro. Well Sambo, who do you vote for? I vote for Massa Lincoln…. What do you think of that?” Whereupon, Lincoln continued, a farmer shouted from the audience, “I think the darky showed a damd sight of more sense than the white man.” Another instance of employing humor to express impatience with overt expressions of racism came in Lincoln’s response to a telegram from Pennsylvania that bluntly stated, “Equal Rights &