[204]
Mr. Lincoln's cordial reception of Frederick Douglass, the distinguished anti-slavery orator, also once a slave, was widely made known through that gentleman's own account of it in one of his public lectures.
In August or September, 1864, Mr. Douglass again visited Washington.
The President heard of his being in the city, and greatly desiring a second conversation upon points on which he considered the opinion and advice of a man of Mr. Douglass's antecedents valuable, he sent his carriage to the boarding-house where he was staying, with a request that Mr. D. would “come up and take a cup of tea” with him. The invitation was accepted; and probably never before, in our history, was the executive carriage employed to convey such a guest to the White House. Mr. Douglass subsequently remarked that “Mr. Lincoln was one of the few white men he ever passed an hour with, who failed to remind him in some way, before the interview terminated, that he was a ‘negro.’
”
A memorial, on a certain occasion, was presented to the President from the children and young people of Concord, Mass., petitioning for the freedom of all slave children.
In reply, he wrote the following:--
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