IMPORTANT.... From Howard Dean

[NNadir]

119. Where would Frederick Douglass have fit on this spectrum? In general, I agree with Dr. Dean but...

...even as a person who has no tolerance with say, Michael Moore and Molly Ivins (in 2000), and even worse, Susan Sarandon in 2016, all three having been total assholes with respect to their times, I do believe that some things are non-negotiable.

In Frederick Douglass's case, he supported Abraham Lincoln in 1860, but agitated against Lincoln's policies as President (with respect to Slavery) up until 1863.

Douglass and Lincoln ultimately became friends, but only after Lincoln changed, not because Douglass changed.

Douglass said of Lincoln, "“Lincoln is the first white man I ever spent an hour with who did not remind me I was a Negro.”

Speaking of Lincoln after his death, Douglass said...

I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.

Frederick Douglass one one member of the triumvirate who saved the United States from itself, Lincoln in the political sphere, U.S. Grant in the military sphere, and Douglass in the all important moral sphere.

I think our modern Democrats could learn from that great American of the past, Douglass.

More on Douglass's relationship with Lincoln is here: Lincoln comtemporary, Frederick Douglass