"I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free."
I'll choose Frederick Douglass' account over yours. At least he was there.
That is a great distortion. I did in fact leave out the vast bulk of his speech, and I did not happen to leave out the last line in particular. It was no more significant to my point than the vast bulk of the other stuff that was left out.
I presumed that if you wanted to read his speech, you could look it up as well as I, and read it to your heart's content.
I'll choose Frederick Douglass' account over yours. At least he was there.
I don't see the relevance of your stated desire to believe Frederick Douglass's apologetic for Lincoln. Lincoln's actions speak plainly enough if you had the objectivity to see them as they are.
Lincoln didn't invade the south for the purpose of stopping slavery. He invaded the south to stop it from advancing it's own economic interests to the detriment of the powerful men of Industry backing him as President.
He was the beginning of the "Crony Capitalism" that runs Washington now. The corruption he ushered in just came into view under the Grant administration rather than his own.