Program Information

Abraham Lincoln did not always hold the views about freedom and equality he championed during the Civil War years. There is evidence he was pushed in that direction by an ex-slave.

A Moment in Time is a brief, exciting and compelling journey into the past. Created to excite and enlighten the public about the past, its relevance to the present and its impact on the future, A Moment In Time is a captivating historical narrative that is currently broadcast worldwide.

Transcript

Lead: Abraham Lincoln did not always hold the views about freedom and equality he championed during the Civil War years. There is evidence he was pushed in that direction by an ex-slave.

Intro: A Moment In Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: When most people hear the names Lincoln and Douglas they immediately associate the Civil War president with Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, with whom Lincoln debated in the years before the Civil War. But there was another Douglass in Lincoln's life.

Frederick Douglass was an ex-slave, born in Maryland, and a constitutional abolitionist who may have contributed significantly to the evolution of Abraham Lincoln's ideas and policies concerning slavery and emancipation. Lincoln began the decade of the 1850s with views that were fairly typical of white men of his day. Eulogizing Henry Clay in 1852, Lincoln called the Declaration of Independence, "the white man's charter of freedom." By 1858, during his famous debates with Senator Douglas, he criticized the Little Giant as restricting the Declaration's call for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to only rich men or white men.

By the Gettysburg Address in 1863, Lincoln's views closely paralleled those of Frederick Douglass that, in fact, the Constitution knows all the human inhabitants of this country as "the people." Lincoln echoed Douglass' sentiments when he called the war a conflict to fulfill the Founder's "proposition that all men are created equal." Shortly after Gettysburg, Lincoln and Douglass met for the first time. In their conversation, Licoln asserted his full agreement with Douglass’ position.

The producer of A Moment In Time is Steve Clark. At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

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