President Lincoln
White House, Washington, D.C. Thursday,
August 14, 1862.
Thinking it would be impolite,
ex-President Roberts tried not to screw up his face whenever he sipped his
coffee. The towering figure of President Abraham Lincoln stood with his back to
him, looking out of the White House window, as if half-expecting to be invaded
by Confederate troops coming across the lawn. They had been in conversation.
Joseph Jenkins Roberts could see that his great hands were clasped behind his
back. President Lincoln spoke, “It is my oft-expressed personal wish that all
men everywhere could be free. However, as the duly elected President of the
United States of America, my first duty is to my nation, now very much
embroiled in the vagaries and degradation of a civil war.”
“Mr President, sir, it is almost common
knowledge that you will soon issue an emancipation proclamation.”
President Lincoln now turned and faced
ex-President Roberts. “Go on,” he said.
“As a member of the Committee of Free
Black Men I would like to endorse any such intentions on your part towards
emancipating the Black Man. Moreover, the Republic of Liberia would welcome all
the negroes you should wish to send us, should they wish to come.”
Abraham Lincoln sat down again. He brought
his cup to his lips. Roberts noted that the cup looked small in his hand.
“It is in our Declaration of Independence,
put there by Thomas Jefferson, that ‘all men are created equal.’ Yet, there are
many thousands of men held in slavery in our nation, simply because of the
color of their skin. I find this to be morally repugnant. The Creator created
us equal, but the white man esteemed the black man, not to mention the Indian,
less than equal, indeed far less than equal.”
“Mister President, as you may well know,
President Thomas Jefferson was a patron of the American Colonization Society
which founded Liberia. He would weep were he to see that the nation he
established with the other founding fathers had so descended into civil war.”
“We fight to preserve the Union. All
thirty-four of them must remain as the United States. Therefore, those eleven
Southern States, the Confederacy, must not be allowed to secede. It would leave
the Union as tattered as a battlefield flag, indeed the stars would fall from
the sky and the stripes would be blown away with the wind. Joseph, it would
mean that the freedom George Washington and our Founding Fathers fought for in
the War of Independence would become as manna at midday. Vanished! E Pluribus
Unum. The war is about restoring the
Union. It is about keeping all of the stars on our glorious flag.”
“Where, then, does the emancipation of the
slaves come in?” said J.J. Roberts as he politely sipped his cup.
“Joseph, like Gideon’s lamps within the
pitchers, it is a question of timing for maximum effect. We must blow the
trumpet of emancipation to win over the public, whilst we break the pitchers to
illuminate to the watching world the evils of slavery. No other country will
support or be seen to support slave states. Timing, Joseph, timing! More
coffee?”
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