"[S]cholars Lucas E. Morel and Jonathan W. White assemble Frederick Douglass's most meaningful statements about Abraham Lincoln. Readers will encounter the great abolitionist's sharp criticism of Lincoln's wartime presidency, as well as how three personal interactions between them produced lasting mutual admiration. In a dozen newly discovered letters and speeches, Douglass offers astonishing perspectives of Lincoln and the Civil War that are published here for the first time. After Lincoln's assassination--as political violence and Jim Crow gutted the rights of black Americans --Douglass grew in his appreciation for Lincoln's statesmanship and praised him as a model for postwar America. His candid assessments of the Great Emancipator and savior of the Union speak to enduring questions about equality, democracy, and citizenship"--Page 4 of cover