The Bridge: The Life And Rise Of Barack Obama Part 22

"Obama winning the Presidency breaks a historical rhythm, but it does not mean everything," Smith said. "His minister did not lie when he said that the controlling power in this country was rich white men. Rich white men were responsible for slavery. They are responsible for unbreakable levels of poverty for African-Americans. Look at this bailout today, which is all about us bailing out rich white men. And there are thousands of children from this city who have gone missing from New Orleans. Who will speak for them? Obama?

"Obama is the recipient of something, but he did not stand in the Senate after he was elected and say that there is a significant absence absence in this chamber, that he was the only African-American and this is wrong. He is no Martin Luther King, he is no Fannie Lou Hamer"--who helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, in 1964. "He is a man who can be accommodated by America, but he is not my hero, because a politician, by nature, has to surrender. Where the problems that afflict African-Americans are concerned, Obama can't go for broke. And the white people--good, decent white people--who vote for him just can't understand. They don't have to walk through the same misery as our children do." in this chamber, that he was the only African-American and this is wrong. He is no Martin Luther King, he is no Fannie Lou Hamer"--who helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, in 1964. "He is a man who can be accommodated by America, but he is not my hero, because a politician, by nature, has to surrender. Where the problems that afflict African-Americans are concerned, Obama can't go for broke. And the white people--good, decent white people--who vote for him just can't understand. They don't have to walk through the same misery as our children do."

Smith was angry but, as an activist contemplating a mainstream leader, not misguided. It was inevitable that euphoria would fade. And what would remain is a litany of disasters: cresting worldwide recession, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a rickety, unjust health-care system, melting polar ice caps, nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and South Asia--to say nothing of the crisis that comes from out of nowhere. In 2008, the new President was going to inherit a web of crises, almost too many to imagine.

Colin Powell said that, after a prolonged period in which American prestige abroad has dwindled, Obama would enjoy a "honeymoon period," especially abroad, which would give him an opportunity to "move forward on a number of foreign-policy fronts.

"That is also something that will perish or diminish over time, as he faces problems and crises," Powell continued. "If the excitement of the first black President is great, it'll diminish if he doesn't do something about the economy, or the economy worsens, or if we suddenly find ourselves in a crisis.... The next President will be challenged, and how the President responds to that challenge will be more important than what his race happens to be at that moment. But, for the initial period of an Obama Presidency, there will be an excitement, an electricity around the world that he can use."

As Election Day neared, the world of John McCain and his circle became increasingly bitter. The Obama campaign The Obama campaign, which had forgone its promise to limit spending and instead refused public monies in order to accept unlimited donations, was outspending McCain by an estimated five hundred million dollars. With the economy continuing to shrivel and McCain seeming more and more unnerved by the crisis, moderates gravitated to Obama in swing states like Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, and Colorado. Odds of an Obama victory were gaining fast. McCain could not help but see Obama as someone absurdly fortunate, a man possessed of such self-a.s.surance, even hauteur, that he seemed to be "trying to get the country to prove something to him and not vice-versa," as Salter put it. "For Obama, if the country showed the good sense to elect him, it will have shown itself worthy of the promise it once had because I represent the fulfillment of that promise. The insinuation was that if you don't have the guts to change or become better, then you vote for John McCain. A vote for John McCain was not to show the proper courage; he's old, doesn't know how to use a computer."

Privately, McCain's aides knew that they had done themselves enormous injury by nominating Sarah Palin. She had proved herself so wildly undereducated in the affairs of the country and the world, so willing to say or do anything as long as she attracted attention, that it made McCain look weak and, worse, cynical. Like Rudy Giuliani, she disgraced herself by mocking Obama for working for the poor as a community organizer. It is unclear that another Vice-Presidential nominee would have helped McCain avoid losing--not in the midst of an economic free-fall with a weak, unpopular Republican President in the White House--but she did help him lose ingloriously. She behaved erratically, heedlessly, and McCain did nothing to stop her. By giving himself over to her rhetoric, by failing to put an end to the sort of smears she reveled in, McCain had forfeited some part of what he valued most in himself--his sense of honor.

Mark Salter and other McCain lieutenants felt that they had never been given a chance, that they were victims of a "meta-narrative" pushed by the press, especially by reporters old enough to have a memory of the civil-rights movement. In their frustrated view, these reporters attached themselves to the Obama campaign as an act of personal mission. "A lot of them, like me, never served in the military," Salter said. "Civil rights was a great struggle, and now they could all do their bit."

Salter felt that he and McCain's other princ.i.p.al aides had never been able to set aside their differences and get it together to present him as an equally compelling candidate, a man who had lost his way when he was young and then found it through public service and military sacrifice, someone who was so committed to his country and his fellow soldiers that he refused repeated offers from the North Vietnamese to be released before his comrades. "We could have done a better job for a guy who was good to us," Salter said.

For everyone involved in the campaign, it would forever be impossible to recapture the sense of what it was like to be in the midst of the prolonged battle. Salter's sense of injury, which reflected McCain's, was profound. "The truth is, all that will be remembered of the campaign is that America's original sin was finally expunged," Salter said. "That's all. In history, that's all. The real McCain will be lost to history. He's got years ahead of him, but he is lost to history. The narrative is the narrative, completely untrue and unfair, but he is the old guy who ran a derogatory campaign and can't remember how many houses he had."

Barack Obama won the election with fifty-three per cent of the popular vote to McCain's forty-six per cent. He won by more than nine and a half million votes and took three hundred and sixty-five electoral votes of a total five hundred and thirty-eight. Turnout was the highest since 1968. African-American turnout rose a full two per cent and was crucial to Obama in winning unlikely states like North Carolina and Virginia. Obama won every region of the country by double digits except the South, where McCain led by nine points. Nationally, Obama did not win the white vote--McCain won it fifty-five per cent to forty-three--but the country was becoming increasingly diverse and non-white. One of the breakthroughs of the election was to reinforce the demographic and psychological reality that the United States was, in the twenty-first century, a different place. won the election with fifty-three per cent of the popular vote to McCain's forty-six per cent. He won by more than nine and a half million votes and took three hundred and sixty-five electoral votes of a total five hundred and thirty-eight. Turnout was the highest since 1968. African-American turnout rose a full two per cent and was crucial to Obama in winning unlikely states like North Carolina and Virginia. Obama won every region of the country by double digits except the South, where McCain led by nine points. Nationally, Obama did not win the white vote--McCain won it fifty-five per cent to forty-three--but the country was becoming increasingly diverse and non-white. One of the breakthroughs of the election was to reinforce the demographic and psychological reality that the United States was, in the twenty-first century, a different place.

For weeks before the voting, commentators and voters wondered if Obama's poll numbers would collapse in the voting booth, if white voters would privately turn against him in significant numbers. In other words, they worried about the "Bradley effect," which holds that many white voters who tell pollsters that they would vote for a black candidate--like Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley--do otherwise when they are actually in the voting booth. This happened repeatedly in the nineteen-eighties and earlier, but the Obama campaign had taken heart from more recent campaigns, like Harold Ford's Senate race in Tennessee, where voters seemed unaffected by the old trend. It turned out, in fact, that many white voters, acting on economic issues, were completely prepared to turn to Obama. Most famously, in Fishtown, Pennsylvania, a depressed white suburb of Philadelphia, some openly racist voters told a pollster that they were undecided. Suddenly, there was talk of a "Fishtown effect" that would replace the Bradley effect. As David Bositis, an expert on racial voting patterns, put it, the Bradley effect was a force when "Santa Claus powered his sleigh with coal. It's no longer germane to American society." There was even talk of a "Palmer effect" or a "Huxtable effect"--a nod to the normalizing influence on whites of pop-culture African-Americans like President David Palmer, the black President on "24," or Bill Cosby's sitcom about an appealing African-American family that was, in its time, the most popular program on the air.

On Election Night, there were street celebrations all over the country: in Harlem and on the South Side, on college campuses and in town squares. There were celebrations in world capitals and around a makes.h.i.+ft video screen in Obama's ancestral village, in western Kenya.

The weather in Chicago was sunny and cool. Gold and russet leaves skittered with the wind along the streets in Hyde Park. While Obama waited out the results at his house on South Greenwood Avenue, and, later, at a hotel suite downtown, the whole city seemed alive to the coming party. By nightfall, along Michigan Avenue, huge crowds headed in one direction--toward Grant Park. The votes were not in, but there was no reason to believe that Obama could lose. People were singing, listening to street musicians, buying up stacks of Obama "chum": T-s.h.i.+rts, b.u.t.tons, posters. Jay-Z and Nas and other hip-hop performers who had supported Obama and written lyrics about him played from speakers all along the avenue.

The crowd in Grant Park was vast--a hundred and twenty-five thousand people, all of them happy in the cool night. A blue stage was a.s.sembled with a long row of American flags set behind the speaker's lectern. All night, as the votes came in, I could think of only a few comparable days or nights in my life as a reporter: running along the streets of East Berlin, in 1989, as the first anti-Communist demonstrations broke out; not long after, sitting in the Magic Lantern Theater, in Prague, when Vaclav Havel and Alexander Dubcek toasted the resignation of the ruling Politburo and the end of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia; the late August evening along the Moscow River in 1991 when the K.G.B.-led coup collapsed and Mikhail Gorbachev was returned from captivity on the Black Sea. There were fireworks, too, that night in Moscow, singing, the waving of flags by people who had been wary of waving one. In Berlin, Prague, and Moscow, there was a sense of historical emanc.i.p.ation and grand promises, of a country being returned to its people. In Chicago, the history was not the same. A regime had not fallen. The color line had not been erased or even transcended, but a historical bridge had been crossed.

At one point, after Obama's victory had been announced, the crowd in Grant Park recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Derrick Z. Jackson Derrick Z. Jackson, an African-American and a veteran reporter for the Boston Globe Globe, wrote, "I have never heard such a multicultural throng recite the pledge with such determined enunciation, expelling it from the heart in a treble soaring to the skies and a ba.s.s drumming through the soil to vibrate my feet. The treble and ba.s.s met in my spine, where 'liberty and justice for all' evoked neither clank of chains nor cackle of cruelty, but a warm tickle of Jeffersonian slave-owning irony: Justice cannot sleep forever."

"The a.n.a.logy I have for this is when Jackie Robinson broke into the majors," the journalist and civil-rights lawyer Roger Wilkins said. "From the time Branch Rickey signed him, I was just consumed. I couldn't think of anything else. What I discovered as I got older is what a real change Jackie made in people's att.i.tudes--partly because he was a superb player, but also because he was an extraordinary man, who had the guts to hold his pa.s.sion in. I had conversations for years with people who told me they had changed within. I think Barack Obama has the brains, the drive, the discipline, the toughness, and the cool to make a success of his Presidency, despite the mess he is being handed by the people who were there before. I've already seen white people responding to him during the campaign. My neighbor in our building is a widow born and raised on the Eastern Sh.o.r.e of Maryland, which was very racist. She had an Obama sticker on her door. So I asked her, 'Ann, why are you doing this, so deeply engaged.' She looked at me and said, 'Because I want to feel good about my country.' There are a lot of white people who haven't thought about this a lot or never had somebody teach them about race and here is this guy, Obama, and he doesn't have to make big racial speeches every day. All he has to do is be a good President. These are still hideous numbers about poverty and prisons and education in America--grotesque disparities. He can't wave a magic wand and make it all go away. These things are deep in our national D.N.A."

After the Electoral College count tipped past 270, the decisive number, the Obamas--Barack, Mich.e.l.le, Malia, and Sasha--walked out on the Grant Park stage. What broke out is what can best be described as well-mannered pandemonium: crying, flag-waving, the embracing of friends and strangers. In his concession speech, McCain paid gracious tribute to the moment. The cameras captured Jesse Jackson standing alone, tears streaming down his face. The cynical interpretation was that they were crocodile tears, fakery, tears of regret that he wasn't the one on the stage. When I had the chance later to ask Jackson about the moment, he said that he had been thinking that night of Emmett Till, of Rosa Parks, of Martin Luther King at the Lincoln Memorial, the march in Selma. "And in my own head I saw the funerals," he said. "I wish Dr. King and Malcolm could have been there for, like, just thirty seconds, just to see what they got killed about. That's when I began to well up and cried. Think about the martyrs: Fannie Lou Hamer, if she could have just been there for just a minute." He thought of a trip to Europe where people were telling him that Obama could never win. "It was all converged in my consciousness, both the journey to get there and the joy of the moment. I was in awe. I could see Dr. King putting on his shoes in Selma, getting ready to march, and Jim Farmer, and John Lewis--all of them. These were the people who made this day happen."

When the cheering finally quieted down, Obama gave a brisk and moving speech, one of thanks, unification, and promise. And, as he had so many times before, he called on a personal story to embody the sense of the moment, the emotions in the air. Earlier in the campaign it had been Ashley Baia, a young volunteer in South Carolina. Now it was Ann Nixon Cooper, who, at the age of a hundred and six, had just voted for him in Atlanta. Cooper was the grandmother of Lawrence Bobo, a sociologist at Harvard and one of the most prominent African-American academics in the country. Bobo's scholarly work centered on the complexities and changes in racial att.i.tudes among whites and blacks. The Obama campaign had called Bobo's grandmother and said that he might mention her in the speech--campaign aides had seen her interviewed on CNN--but the family had no idea that the President-elect would take her life to show the pa.s.sage from suffering to suffrage and then the moment of his ascension: She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons--because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin. And tonight I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America--the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes, we can. just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons--because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin. And tonight I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America--the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes, we can.At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes, we can.When there was despair in the Dust Bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, and a new sense of common purpose. Yes, we can.When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes, we can.She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes, we can.A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after a hundred and six years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.Yes, we can.

On a night of triumph, Obama's tone was not triumphal, it was not ringing; his tone was grave. Having cast himself in Selma twenty months earlier as one who stood on the "shoulders of giants," as the leader of the Joshua generation, he hardly had to mention race. It was the thing always present, the thing so rarely named. He had simultaneously celebrated ident.i.ty and eased it into the background. Ann Nixon Cooper was an emblem not only of her race, but of her nation.

"Change has come to America," Obama declared, and, in a park best remembered until now as the place where, forty summers ago, police did outrageous battle with antiwar protesters, everyone knew that change had come, and that--how long? too too long--it was about d.a.m.ned time. long--it was about d.a.m.ned time.

Chapter Seventeen.

To the White House Two centuries before Barack Obama ran for President, slaves built the White House. They quarried stone in Virginia, made nails and baked bricks in Georgetown. West Africans by heritage, they had no last names or carried the names of their masters. before Barack Obama ran for President, slaves built the White House. They quarried stone in Virginia, made nails and baked bricks in Georgetown. West Africans by heritage, they had no last names or carried the names of their masters. The records tell us The records tell us that they went by "Tom," "Peter," "Ben," "Harry," "Daniel," and so on. that they went by "Tom," "Peter," "Ben," "Harry," "Daniel," and so on. Three slaves at the White House Three slaves at the White House construction site were on loan from its architect, an Irishman from Charleston named James Hoban. One of his slaves was designated "Negro Peter." Hoban designed the President's mansion to look like Leinster House, in Dublin, but there are echoes, too, of a Southern plantation house. Sometimes, the slaves were given the equivalent of a dollar a day, but nearly all of their wages were pa.s.sed along to their owners. Working alongside free blacks and white European laborers, the slaves helped build Was.h.i.+ngton along the designs of Pierre-Charles L'Enfant and the architects of Europe. They built the Capitol dome. They cleared the woods and dug up the stumps near the Potomac. They drained swamps. And, not far from the building site of the White House, auctioneers from the Virginia-based firm of Franklin & Armfield sold new slaves. Cash changed hands as frightened young blacks, held in pens, shackled, dressed in rags, stared out at their new masters. Soon they would be boarded on steams.h.i.+ps and sent to Natchez, Charleston, Mobile, and New Orleans. construction site were on loan from its architect, an Irishman from Charleston named James Hoban. One of his slaves was designated "Negro Peter." Hoban designed the President's mansion to look like Leinster House, in Dublin, but there are echoes, too, of a Southern plantation house. Sometimes, the slaves were given the equivalent of a dollar a day, but nearly all of their wages were pa.s.sed along to their owners. Working alongside free blacks and white European laborers, the slaves helped build Was.h.i.+ngton along the designs of Pierre-Charles L'Enfant and the architects of Europe. They built the Capitol dome. They cleared the woods and dug up the stumps near the Potomac. They drained swamps. And, not far from the building site of the White House, auctioneers from the Virginia-based firm of Franklin & Armfield sold new slaves. Cash changed hands as frightened young blacks, held in pens, shackled, dressed in rags, stared out at their new masters. Soon they would be boarded on steams.h.i.+ps and sent to Natchez, Charleston, Mobile, and New Orleans.

There were many reasons that the founding generation finally voted to move the capital south to Was.h.i.+ngton. One was the requirements of construction, another the politics of slavery in the North. "Can one imagine "Can one imagine a succession of twelve slaveholder presidents if the capital had remained in Philadelphia?" Garry Wills writes in his study of Jefferson, a succession of twelve slaveholder presidents if the capital had remained in Philadelphia?" Garry Wills writes in his study of Jefferson, Negro President Negro President. "The southerners got what they wanted, a seat of government where slavery would be taken for granted, where it would not need perpetual apology, excuse, or palliation, where the most honored men in the nation were not to be criticized because they practiced and defended and gave privilege to the holding of slaves."

At the end of the eighteenth century, hundreds of slaves were working on federal buildings in the new capital. "To the Southern-born "To the Southern-born, the district now presented the rea.s.suringly familiar panorama of a plantation work site," the historian Fergus M. Bordewich writes, "with white overseers directing black workmen grubbing stumps, hauling timber, dragging sledges, digging foundations, toting baskets of stone, bushels of lime, and kegs of nails, chiseling stone, stirring mortar, and tending brick kilns. Wherever buildings were under construction, including the Capitol and the President's House, teams of enslaved sawyers in broad-brimmed hats could be seen sweating at their work in the sawpits beneath cascades of sawdust, slicing logs into boards, with the rhythmic, angled, back-breaking strokes of a six-foot blade."

Construction had begun on the White House in 1792, and, by 1798, around ninety black men were working at the site and on the Capitol. On a given day On a given day, about five or six slaves were out sick, laid up in a makes.h.i.+ft clinic. The commissioners employed one Dr. May to care for them. They spent fifty cents a day on treatment.

Twelve Presidents owned slaves, eight of them while in office. John and Abigail Adams, the first inhabitants of the White House, were, by the standards of the day, abolitionists, and, at the White House, they kept only two servants, a white farm couple. Their idealism was rewarded by the many guests who mocked their food, their housekeeping, and their hospitality. Thomas Jefferson brought to the White House members of his considerable household staff, including a few slaves. James and Dolley Madison brought more. The most famous of Madison's slaves was his "body servant," Paul Jennings, who was born on Madison's estate, in Montpelier, Virginia. Jennings's father was an English trader, his mother a slave. At the White House, Jennings was in constant contact with the President and became the executive mansion's first tell-all memoirist, leaving behind a short ma.n.u.script t.i.tled "A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison." He was a young man when he served Madison and saw the British attack the White House. Jennings recalled Dolley Jennings recalled Dolley Madison grabbing what valuables she could and stuffing them in her reticule before fleeing the White House; he recalled the "rabble" that raided the mansion soon afterward and "stole lots of silver and whatever they could lay their hands on." Although Jennings was, like jewelry or a horse, Madison's property, a commodity, he wrote with tender and forgiving affection for the President. "Mr. Madison, I think, was one of the best men that ever lived," he wrote, and went on: Madison grabbing what valuables she could and stuffing them in her reticule before fleeing the White House; he recalled the "rabble" that raided the mansion soon afterward and "stole lots of silver and whatever they could lay their hands on." Although Jennings was, like jewelry or a horse, Madison's property, a commodity, he wrote with tender and forgiving affection for the President. "Mr. Madison, I think, was one of the best men that ever lived," he wrote, and went on: I never saw him in a pa.s.sion, and never knew him to strike a slave, although he had over one hundred; neither would he allow an overseer to do it. Whenever any slaves were reported as stealing or "cutting up" badly, he would send for them and admonish them privately, and never mortify them before others. They generally served him very faithfully....He often told the story, that one day riding home from court with old Tom Barbour (father of Governor Barbour), they met a colored man who took off his hat. Mr. M. raised his, to the surprise of old Tom; to whom Mr. M. replied, "I never allow a Negro to excel me in politeness."

Jennings was a loyal servant, who stayed with Madison in his retirement, deteriorating health, and, finally, his death. As in so many slave ma.n.u.scripts, the narrator a.s.serts his own selfhood, his dignity, through the power of loyalty and his sympathy for the "family" that owns him: I was always with Mr. Madison till he died, and shaved him every other day for sixteen years. For six months before his death, he was unable to walk, and spent most of his time reclined on a couch; but his mind was bright, and with his numerous visitors he talked with as much animation and strength of voice as I ever heard him in his best days. I was present when he died. That morning Sukey brought him his breakfast, as usual. He could not swallow. His niece, Mrs. Willis, said, "What is the matter, Uncle James?" "Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear." till he died, and shaved him every other day for sixteen years. For six months before his death, he was unable to walk, and spent most of his time reclined on a couch; but his mind was bright, and with his numerous visitors he talked with as much animation and strength of voice as I ever heard him in his best days. I was present when he died. That morning Sukey brought him his breakfast, as usual. He could not swallow. His niece, Mrs. Willis, said, "What is the matter, Uncle James?" "Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear."His head instantly dropped, and he ceased breathing as quietly as the snuff of a candle goes out. He was about eighty-four years old, and was followed to the grave by an immense procession of white and colored people.

Jennings died in 1874, when he was seventy-five. In his lifetime, he took part in an abolitionist plot to free slaves on a Was.h.i.+ngton schooner, worked for Daniel Webster (from whom he bought his freedom), and, toward the end of his life, served in the Department of the Interior.

Nearly all of the hundreds of slaves who followed Jennings in service at the White House worked in livery and died in anonymity. They wrote no memoirs and left barely a trace in the archives. Andrew Jackson brought his slaves to Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., from his estate in Tennessee but little is known about the "body servant" who shared his bedroom in the White House. We do know that James Polk We do know that James Polk bought slaves even while President, paying, on July 20, 1846, a total of $1,436 for "Hartwell & his wife & her child nine years old." In the eighteen-fifties, slaves were eliminated from the White House staff not because of any doubts about the morality of chattel slavery, but, rather, because James Buchanan thought that white British servants would better preserve his daily privacy. bought slaves even while President, paying, on July 20, 1846, a total of $1,436 for "Hartwell & his wife & her child nine years old." In the eighteen-fifties, slaves were eliminated from the White House staff not because of any doubts about the morality of chattel slavery, but, rather, because James Buchanan thought that white British servants would better preserve his daily privacy.

Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln had no slaves in the White House. Their servants were either from their household in Illinois or white Europeans inherited from the previous Administration. They did, however, employ a black dressmaker, a had no slaves in the White House. Their servants were either from their household in Illinois or white Europeans inherited from the previous Administration. They did, however, employ a black dressmaker, a modiste modiste, named Lizzy--Elizabeth Keckley--who was born a slave in Dinwiddie Courthouse, Virginia, near Petersburg. No black man or woman, not even Paul Jennings, ever knew such intimacy with a First Family, and what is most remarkable about Keckley is that she left behind a memoir called Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House, which, in its way, stands with the slave narratives and memoirs that make up the core of early African-American literature. Like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs, and other slaves who gained their freedom and became the authors of narratives of their lives, Keckley wrote to a.s.sert her literacy, her history, her status as a thinking, feeling being. She was not as profound a memoirist as Harriet Jacobs, or Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton, or W. E. B. DuBois, but her view of the world was unlike any other. Her testimony came from the living quarters of the White House, from within the confidence and embrace of the Lincoln family.

Keckley's mother was a slave named Agnes. Her father was her mother's master, an Army colonel named Armistead Burwell. Elizabeth learned her father's ident.i.ty many years later when her mother was on her deathbed. As a child of four, she started working in the Burwell household. Keckley called slavery Keckley called slavery a "cruel custom" by which "I was robbed of my dearest right" and yet, much like Jennings before her, she displayed an understanding of the predicament of the slave master that, to us, seems shockingly sympathetic. She expresses an empathy for her owners--owners who did not hesitate to torture her--simply because they, too, had been born into the social and economic system of slavery. a "cruel custom" by which "I was robbed of my dearest right" and yet, much like Jennings before her, she displayed an understanding of the predicament of the slave master that, to us, seems shockingly sympathetic. She expresses an empathy for her owners--owners who did not hesitate to torture her--simply because they, too, had been born into the social and economic system of slavery.

Considering the cruelties Keckley endured, her equanimity seems beyond the capacities of a saint. When she was living in Hillsboro, North Carolina, where Burwell was in charge of a Presbyterian church, a Mr. Bingham ran the school and often visited the parsonage. One day, without evident reason Bingham demanded that she lower her dress to receive a whipping. Keckley relates that she feared most for her sense of modesty. She was, she tells us She was, she tells us, eighteen "and fully developed." Bingham binds her hands, tears her dress, and picks up a rawhide, "the instrument of torture": I can feel the torture now--the terrible, excruciating agony of those moments. I did not scream; I was too proud to let my tormentor know what I was suffering.

Even in this unnervingly balanced narrative--a narrative without the hint of rebellion or abolitionist fervor--there is no doubting the extent of the slave master's depravity. Some slaves, Keckley reports, preferred to die rather than suffer any longer. When her uncle When her uncle makes an absent-minded mistake on the farm, losing a pair of plow lines, he so fears the result, the thras.h.i.+ng and humiliation that will surely be his, that he hangs himself from a willow tree "rather than meet the displeasure of his master." makes an absent-minded mistake on the farm, losing a pair of plow lines, he so fears the result, the thras.h.i.+ng and humiliation that will surely be his, that he hangs himself from a willow tree "rather than meet the displeasure of his master."

The dominion of the slave master was limitless. The slave enjoyed no private realm, no right of family or s.e.xual protection. For four years, Keckley worked in North Carolina for a man named Alexander Kirkland, who raped her at his whim. The resulting pregnancy The resulting pregnancy "brought me suffering and deep mortification" and the unbearable thought that she was bearing a son who could not possibly escape the fate of his mother and every other slave. "brought me suffering and deep mortification" and the unbearable thought that she was bearing a son who could not possibly escape the fate of his mother and every other slave.

Keckley understood well the outrageous hypocrisy of her masters, "who preached the love of Heaven, who glorified the precepts and examples of Christ, who expounded the Holy Scriptures Sabbath after Sabbath from the pulpit," and yet treated her with no more regard than a dog. And still, like Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton in his memoirs a half-century later, Keckley writes of slavery as a "school" in which she learned her humanity. the outrageous hypocrisy of her masters, "who preached the love of Heaven, who glorified the precepts and examples of Christ, who expounded the Holy Scriptures Sabbath after Sabbath from the pulpit," and yet treated her with no more regard than a dog. And still, like Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton in his memoirs a half-century later, Keckley writes of slavery as a "school" in which she learned her humanity.

Eventually, she made her way to St. Louis and, by 1855, had bought her freedom. She married but refused She married but refused to have any more children--"I could not bear the thought of ... adding one single recruit to the millions bound to hopeless servitude." to have any more children--"I could not bear the thought of ... adding one single recruit to the millions bound to hopeless servitude." Instead, she developed her skills Instead, she developed her skills as a seamstress and moved on to Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., where she developed a business as a dressmaker; she came to work for the wives of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis and admitted to a "great desire to work for the ladies of the White House." as a seamstress and moved on to Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., where she developed a business as a dressmaker; she came to work for the wives of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis and admitted to a "great desire to work for the ladies of the White House."

On the day of Lincoln's first inauguration, Keckley was summoned to Willard's Hotel for a private interview with Mary Lincoln. Mrs. Lincoln had spilled coffee Mrs. Lincoln had spilled coffee on the dress she was going to wear that evening after the swearing-in ceremonies; the stain, Keckley realized, had "rendered it necessary that she should have a new one for the occasion." Keckley set to work on a dress for the new First Lady. While she worked, the Lincolns talked amiably. on the dress she was going to wear that evening after the swearing-in ceremonies; the stain, Keckley realized, had "rendered it necessary that she should have a new one for the occasion." Keckley set to work on a dress for the new First Lady. While she worked, the Lincolns talked amiably.

"You seem to be in a poetical mood to-night," said his wife. in a poetical mood to-night," said his wife.

"Yes, mother, these are poetical times" was his pleasant reply. "I declare, you look charming in that dress. Mrs. Keckley has met with great success."

Then, Keckley recalls, "Mrs. Lincoln took the President's arm, and with smiling face led the train below. I was surprised at her grace and composure. I had heard so much, in current and malicious report, of her low life, of her ignorance and vulgarity, that I expected to see her embarra.s.sed on this occasion. Report, I soon saw, was wrong. No queen, accustomed to the usages of royalty all her life, could have comported herself with more calmness and dignity than did the wife of the President."

The Lincolns allowed Lizzy a remarkable intimacy with the household. She seems to have been in the living quarters much more frequently than dressmaking would have required. "I consider you my best living friend," Mrs. Lincoln later wrote to her. On the evening On the evening of a White House reception, she was in Mrs. Lincoln's bedroom attending to her hair and dress ("White satin, trimmed with black lace") while eleven-year-old Willie lay ill. His parents were terribly worried and considered canceling the reception, but the doctor told them that there was no immediate cause for alarm. The Lincolns went downstairs, and Keckley, sitting in the sickroom with Willie, could hear the "rich notes" of the Marine Band in the apartments below--the "subdued murmurs, like the wild, faint sobbing of far-off spirits." Mrs. Lincoln came upstairs several times to check on Willie. The boy's fever grew worse through the night. Days later, his condition became grave, and then he died. of a White House reception, she was in Mrs. Lincoln's bedroom attending to her hair and dress ("White satin, trimmed with black lace") while eleven-year-old Willie lay ill. His parents were terribly worried and considered canceling the reception, but the doctor told them that there was no immediate cause for alarm. The Lincolns went downstairs, and Keckley, sitting in the sickroom with Willie, could hear the "rich notes" of the Marine Band in the apartments below--the "subdued murmurs, like the wild, faint sobbing of far-off spirits." Mrs. Lincoln came upstairs several times to check on Willie. The boy's fever grew worse through the night. Days later, his condition became grave, and then he died. Almost immediately Almost immediately, the Lincolns summoned Keckley to the White House to deal with the gruesome and heartbreaking details: "I a.s.sisted in was.h.i.+ng him and dressing him, and then laid him on the bed, when Mr. Lincoln came in. I never saw a man so bowed down with grief. He came to the bed, lifted the cover from the face of his child, gazed at it long and earnestly, murmuring, 'My poor boy, he was too good for this earth. G.o.d has called him home.'"

Keckley describes Lincoln sobbing as he spoke, his head buried in his hands, his tall frame "convulsed with emotion." She watches, crying. "His grief unnerved him, and made him a weak, pa.s.sive child. I did not dream that his rugged nature could be so moved. I shall never forget those solemn moments--genius and greatness weeping over love's idol lost." sobbing as he spoke, his head buried in his hands, his tall frame "convulsed with emotion." She watches, crying. "His grief unnerved him, and made him a weak, pa.s.sive child. I did not dream that his rugged nature could be so moved. I shall never forget those solemn moments--genius and greatness weeping over love's idol lost."

Mrs. Lincoln was even more overcome than her husband. And in a scene of gothic strangeness And in a scene of gothic strangeness, Keckley recalls how, "in one of her paroxysms of grief, the President kindly bent over his wife, took her by the arm and gently led her to the window. With a stately, solemn gesture, he pointed to the lunatic asylum.

"Mother, do you see that large white building on the hill yonder? Try and control your grief, or it will drive you mad and we may have to send you there."

Elizabeth had a kind of access to the private lives of the Lincolns denied to many of his aides and friends. There is no end to the disturbing proximity of their relations.h.i.+p--the closeness between master and servant, the contradictory moral universe that allowed even the greatest leader in his nation's history to consider repatriating blacks to Africa, considering them the physical and mental inferior of the white man, and yet trust a woman born a slave as an intimate and a witness.

When Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre and died, on April 15, 1865, Keckley was summoned to the White House. First, she was taken First, she was taken to a darkened room where Mrs. Lincoln was "tossing uneasily about upon a bed" and then to the Guest's Room where the President lay in state: "When I crossed the threshold of the room, I could not help recalling the day on which I had seen little Willie lying in his coffin where the body of his father now lay." Cabinet members were there. Dignitaries milled around. to a darkened room where Mrs. Lincoln was "tossing uneasily about upon a bed" and then to the Guest's Room where the President lay in state: "When I crossed the threshold of the room, I could not help recalling the day on which I had seen little Willie lying in his coffin where the body of his father now lay." Cabinet members were there. Dignitaries milled around. "They made room for me "They made room for me, and, approaching the body, I lifted the white cloth from the white face of the man that I had wors.h.i.+pped as an idol--looked upon as a demi-G.o.d."

After paying her respects to Lincoln, she returned to her charge, to carry out the duties that she knew were expected of her: "I shall never forget the scene--the wails of a broken heart, the unearthly shrieks, the terrible convulsions, the wild, tempestuous outbursts of grief from the soul. I bathed Mrs. Lincoln's head with cold water, and soothed the terrible tornado as best I could." to Lincoln, she returned to her charge, to carry out the duties that she knew were expected of her: "I shall never forget the scene--the wails of a broken heart, the unearthly shrieks, the terrible convulsions, the wild, tempestuous outbursts of grief from the soul. I bathed Mrs. Lincoln's head with cold water, and soothed the terrible tornado as best I could."

The tragedy of Elizabeth Keckley was that a serious person--a woman who not only served the First Lady, but ran a successful business, created a freed-people's relief society in Was.h.i.+ngton, and even played a small role in bringing both Frederick Dougla.s.s and Sojourner Truth to the White House for conversations with President Lincoln--was met with such vicious mockery when, in 1868, she published her memoir.

Just the year before, Mrs. Lincoln, living in a modest Chicago hotel and desperate for money, had arranged to meet Keckley in New York to ask her to help sell her old gowns and jewelry. Disdained by many whites as an imperious provincial, Mrs. Lincoln could rely on her as on no one else. But after the book appeared But after the book appeared, Elizabeth Keckley was branded a "traitorous eavesdropper" in the press. A burlesque was produced ent.i.tled "'Behind the Seams,' by a n.i.g.g.e.r Woman who took in work from Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Davis." She had violated the codes of her era and threw a sense of fear into the slave-owning and servant-possessing cla.s.ses. "Where will it end?" "Where will it end?" one reviewer said. "What family of eminence that employs a negro is safe from such desecration?" Mrs. Lincoln denounced the book and "the coloured historian." She cut off the seamstress she had once called her "best and kindest friend." one reviewer said. "What family of eminence that employs a negro is safe from such desecration?" Mrs. Lincoln denounced the book and "the coloured historian." She cut off the seamstress she had once called her "best and kindest friend."

In a letter to the New York Citizen Citizen, Elizabeth Keckley asked if she was being denounced because "my skin is dark?" Was she not free to speak and write as a free woman? Toward the end of her life, she worked at Wilber-force University in Ohio, heading its Domestic Science Department. She died, in 1907, at the age of eighty-nine in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. She was a resident of the National Home for Dest.i.tute Colored Women and Children.

If Elizabeth Keckley was the most intimate African-American observer of the Lincoln White House, Frederick Dougla.s.s was surely its most important black visitor. Dougla.s.s had few illusions about Lincoln, realizing that the President had committed the North to civil war with the Confederacy to bring the South back into the Union with slavery in place. It was only as the war progressed that Lincoln came to see the untenable nature of fighting a slave power without attacking slavery itself. Lincoln came from Illinois, where racist feeling was strong and intact, and, as a political creature, he could not easily ignore the ingrained power of that prejudice. He needed to retain the loyalty of the border states of Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, and Kentucky, all of which were crucial to military strategy against the Confederacy and opposed any anti-slavery rhetoric from Was.h.i.+ngton. was the most intimate African-American observer of the Lincoln White House, Frederick Dougla.s.s was surely its most important black visitor. Dougla.s.s had few illusions about Lincoln, realizing that the President had committed the North to civil war with the Confederacy to bring the South back into the Union with slavery in place. It was only as the war progressed that Lincoln came to see the untenable nature of fighting a slave power without attacking slavery itself. Lincoln came from Illinois, where racist feeling was strong and intact, and, as a political creature, he could not easily ignore the ingrained power of that prejudice. He needed to retain the loyalty of the border states of Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, and Kentucky, all of which were crucial to military strategy against the Confederacy and opposed any anti-slavery rhetoric from Was.h.i.+ngton.

Dougla.s.s, like so many other Americans, black and white, tried to make sense of the contradictory nature of Lincoln's statements and actions when it came to slavery and the history of black men and women in America. "To become President "To become President," Richard Hofstadter writes in The American Political Tradition The American Political Tradition, "Lincoln had to talk more radically on occasion than he actually felt; to be an effective President he was compelled to act more conservatively than he wanted." Lincoln had to cope with the extremes of violent racists, both in the North and the South, and the abolitionist tendency among a small, liberal intelligentsia. As a calculating politician, he could not act the revolutionary; he could not outpace the abolitionists. If Lincoln grew If Lincoln grew, the abolitionist Wendell Phillips said, "it was because we have watered him." For Lincoln, the Union came first. As he wrote to Horace Greeley As he wrote to Horace Greeley, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it." It was only late in 1862 that Lincoln determined that military necessity demanded that he put forward a proclamation of emanc.i.p.ation. But he neither denounced slavery as a moral travesty nor liberated the slaves in states loyal to the Union. The Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation was the cagiest of historical acts. The resulting doc.u.ment The resulting doc.u.ment, Hofstadter notes, "had all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading."

Even in August, 1863, nearly a year after Emanc.i.p.ation, Dougla.s.s remained deeply distrustful of Lincoln, calling him a "genuine representative of American prejudice"--and with reason. In the early summer, there were draft riots in New York. White protesters, many of them of Irish ancestry, were furious that they were made to fight for the rights of "n.i.g.g.e.rs," as they invariably put it, and hundreds of men rampaged through the city, torching black-owned houses and charities and lynching blacks from city lampposts. It took four days for Union troops to quell the rioting. In the end, there were a hundred dead and hundreds more injured. To Dougla.s.s's dismay, Lincoln so feared any further insurrection from whites angry at conscription that he refused to declare martial law or even prosecute the rioters. Nor could Dougla.s.s countenance Lincoln's earlier support for separation of the races. The President had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to colonize American blacks abroad. He signed a contract with a firm called the Chiriqui Improvement Company to repatriate five hundred freed slaves to Panama. He urged them to move abroad and work in the coal mines. "Your race are suffering "Your race are suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people," he told a group of blacks from the District at a White House reception. "But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race."

Lincoln's plan to send former slaves to Central America stalled--blacks were not interested in going, and the countries involved showed no sign of wanting them--but it was plain to Dougla.s.s that the President, despite his signature on the Emanc.i.p.ation doc.u.ments and his evident moral probity, did not consider the Negro equal in his capacities to the white man.

Dougla.s.s had been working to recruit black soldiers for Union regiments. For him, there was no greater immediate cause and no greater sign of equal rights. The rolls of the Ma.s.sachusetts Fifty-fourth Volunteers, the first black regiment from a free state, were filled thanks largely to his efforts. And yet black soldiers in the Union Army were paid a pittance, half, at best, what their white counterparts received, and, if captured by Confederate forces, they were routinely tortured, imprisoned, or made to work as slaves--all with barely a word of protest from the Lincoln White House.

Dougla.s.s, who was now forty-five years old and, in the abolitionist ranks, a comrade of William Lloyd Garrison, had come to Was.h.i.+ngton to appeal to the President. How he would reach him he did not know. He traveled for several days on sleeper trains from his home in Rochester, New York, alighting, filthy with soot, at the B&O Station on New Jersey Avenue, near the Capitol. It was August 10, 1863, a shatteringly hot morning. Was.h.i.+ngton had long been a city of slaves and slave auctions, but now the capital was home to eleven thousand freedmen. They were a marked, even dominant, presence in the city that summer, many of them walking the streets dirty, poorly dressed, jobless, as a large proportion of the moneyed white population and much of the government had fled the city to the countryside to avoid Was.h.i.+ngton's swampy heat and the many diseases--diphtheria, typhoid, and measles--that had become so common there.

Dougla.s.s had no appointment at the White House. His only hope of gaining access lay in a letter of introduction from a wealthy Boston abolitionist named George Stearns, a connection to an anti-slavery senator from Kansas named Samuel Pomeroy, and the national renown he had won for his anti-slavery speeches and editorials and for the first of three autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Dougla.s.s, an American Slave Narrative of the Life of Frederick Dougla.s.s, an American Slave.

In middle age, Dougla.s.s had a distinctive physical presence: he was smartly dressed, confident in his bearing, and wore his hair in a graying nimbus. As one of his biographers As one of his biographers, John Stauffer, writes, above Dougla.s.s's right eye "a streak of white shot out from his scalp, tincturing the symmetry until it diffused into gray at the back of his head."

Was.h.i.+ngton in the mid-nineteenth century was not the capital of an imperial power; it was small and sleepy; its habits of appointment were extraordinarily casual. Dougla.s.s set off on foot for the highest American offices. Accompanied by Senator Pomeroy, he called on the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, at the War Department, where his pet.i.tion for higher pay and better treatment of black soldiers met with unclear results. In Dougla.s.s's mind, Stanton was full of disdain for him. His glance, Dougla.s.s His glance, Dougla.s.s recalled, said, "Well, what do you want? I have no time to waste upon you or anybody else, and I shall waste none. Speak quick, or I shall leave you." And yet by the end of the session, Stanton had offered Dougla.s.s a job as an "a.s.sistant adjutant" to the Army to help recruit troops in the South. As Dougla.s.s went from one government office to the next that morning, from the War Department to the Department of the Interior, his persistence and his eloquence gained him an ever-longer roster of signatures on his "letter of safe pa.s.sage." recalled, said, "Well, what do you want? I have no time to waste upon you or anybody else, and I shall waste none. Speak quick, or I shall leave you." And yet by the end of the session, Stanton had offered Dougla.s.s a job as an "a.s.sistant adjutant" to the Army to help recruit troops in the South. As Dougla.s.s went from one government office to the next that morning, from the War Department to the Department of the Interior, his persistence and his eloquence gained him an ever-longer roster of signatures on his "letter of safe pa.s.sage."

With his letter in hand, Dougla.s.s walked with Pomeroy to the White House. The two men expected to have to wait many hours, even days, to see the President, and yet, just moments after Dougla.s.s's calling card was relayed to the inner offices of the White House, an a.s.sistant came to bring him to Lincoln. This flash of credibility and access did not come without incidental insult. As Dougla.s.s went up the stairs As Dougla.s.s went up the stairs, he heard someone mutter, "Yes, d.a.m.n it, I knew they would let the n.i.g.g.e.r through."

Writing many years later in his third and final autobiography, in his third and final autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Dougla.s.s Life and Times of Frederick Dougla.s.s, Dougla.s.s brushed past the accustomed libel--the sort he had been hearing all his life--and concentrated on the astonis.h.i.+ng encounter he was about to experience: "I was an ex-slave, identified with a despised race, and yet I was to meet the most exalted person in this great republic." Dougla.s.s encountered a shambling, homely man, six feet four in height, surrounded by scurrying aides and piles of doc.u.ments: Long lines of care were already deeply written on Mr. Lincoln's brow, and his strong face, full of earnestness, lighted up as soon as my name was mentioned. As I approached and was introduced to him he arose and extended his hand, and bade me welcome. I at once felt myself in the presence of an honest man--one whom I could love, honor, and trust without reserve or doubt. Proceeding to tell him who I was and what I was doing, he promptly, but kindly, stopped me, saying, "I know who you are, Mr. Dougla.s.s; Mr. Seward has told me all about you. Sit down. I am glad to see you." were already deeply written on Mr. Lincoln's brow, and his strong face, full of earnestness, lighted up as soon as my name was mentioned. As I approached and was introduced to him he arose and extended his hand, and bade me welcome. I at once felt myself in the presence of an honest man--one whom I could love, honor, and trust without reserve or doubt. Proceeding to tell him who I was and what I was doing, he promptly, but kindly, stopped me, saying, "I know who you are, Mr. Dougla.s.s; Mr. Seward has told me all about you. Sit down. I am glad to see you."

Dougla.s.s laid out his list of complaints about the unequal payment and treatment of black Union recruits. Lincoln listened intently and, to Dougla.s.s's satisfaction, with sincere concentration. There was none of Stanton's disdain or impatience. ("I was never in any way reminded of my humble origin, or my unpopular color.") Dougla.s.s was impressed by Lincoln's evident ease, his naturalness with a black man, something that was not always the case even with the white abolitionists of Dougla.s.s's acquaintance. Lincoln hardly satisfied Lincoln hardly satisfied Dougla.s.s's political demands, however, insisting that the mere enlistment of black men into the Union Army "was a serious offense to popular prejudice." Lincoln said that black men "ought to be willing to enter the service upon any condition" and accept lower pay and inferior treatment as a "necessary concession." Lincoln, Dougla.s.s discovered, was foremost a politician, careful not to get ahead of his white majority in his treatment of a race that he himself still regarded as inferior. Dougla.s.s soon conceded to himself that the radicals, the abolitionists, still had a role to play after Emanc.i.p.ation. He could not rely on even a relatively enlightened President to blaze the trail of political equality. Dougla.s.s's political demands, however, insisting that the mere enlistment of black men into the Union Army "was a serious offense to popular prejudice." Lincoln said that black men "ought to be willing to enter the service upon any condition" and accept lower pay and inferior treatment as a "necessary concession." Lincoln, Dougla.s.s discovered, was foremost a politician, careful not to get ahead of his white majority in his treatment of a race that he himself still regarded as inferior. Dougla.s.s soon conceded to himself that the radicals, the abolitionists, still had a role to play after Emanc.i.p.ation. He could not rely on even a relatively enlightened President to blaze the trail of political equality.

Finally, at the end of the meeting, Dougla.s.s told Lincoln that Secretary Stanton had offered him the task of recruiting freed blacks in the South. Lincoln took from him the pa.s.s admitting him into the executive mansion and wrote, "I concur. A. Lincoln. Aug. 10, 1863."

Dougla.s.s left Was.h.i.+ngton for home "in the full belief that the true course to the black man's freedom and citizens.h.i.+p was over the battlefield, and that my business was to get every black man I could into the Union armies." Two of Dougla.s.s's sons were already fighting with Union regiments. The father would help add to the contingent. for home "in the full belief that the true course to the black man's freedom and citizens.h.i.+p was over the battlefield, and that my business was to get every black man I could into the Union armies." Two of Dougla.s.s's sons were already fighting with Union regiments. The father would help add to the contingent.

Dougla.s.s waited at home for his official papers of commission. Week followed week. The papers did not arrive. It was never clear if he had been forgotten in the fog of the capital's bureaucracy or if he had been deliberately seduced, mollified, and then ignored. It seemed of little consequence to him at the time that the most important aspect of his meeting with Abraham Lincoln was the very fact that it had occurred--a black man had entered the White House to pet.i.tion and counsel the President of the United States.

In the decades that followed, such meetings took place only occasionally. As late as four decades after As late as four decades after Lincoln's a.s.sa.s.sination, Grover Cleveland quashed any rumors that he had met with a Negro at the White House, proudly declaring, "It just so happens that I have never in my official position, either when sleeping or waking, alive or dead, on my head or on my heels, dined, lunched, or supped, or invited to a wedding reception, any colored man, woman, or child." Lincoln's a.s.sa.s.sination, Grover Cleveland quashed any rumors that he had met with a Negro at the White House, proudly declaring, "It just so happens that I have never in my official position, either when sleeping or waking, alive or dead, on my head or on my heels, dined, lunched, or supped, or invited to a wedding reception, any colored man, woman, or child." And in 1904 And in 1904, after Theodore Roosevelt had met at the White House with Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton, Senator Benjamin Tillman, of South Carolina, remarked, "Now that Roosevelt has eaten with that n.i.g.g.e.r Was.h.i.+ngton, we shall have to kill a thousand n.i.g.g.e.rs to get them back to their places."

In the days before Barack Obama was inaugurated before Barack Obama was inaugurated, he received a series of intelligence briefings about a potential terrorist plot to take place on the day of the ceremonies in Was.h.i.+ngton. More than a million people were expected to gather on the Mall. Bush Administration officials and intelligence a.n.a.lysts, working in consultation with Obama's national security team, reviewed a series of top secret reports that Somali extremists were planning to cross the Canadian border and detonate explosives in the crowd while the nation watched. During a gathering in the Situation Room that included Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, and Robert Gates, Hillary Clinton, Obama's designated Secretary of State, said, "Is the Secret Service going to whisk him off the podium so the American people see their incoming President disappear in the middle of the inaugural address? I don't think so." Obama decided to go forward with the ceremony, but it was determined that Robert Gates, who was remaining as Secretary of Defense, would stay away from the ceremony. If the absolute worst happened, a catastrophe on the steps of the Capitol, Gates would be in line to a.s.sume the Presidency.

As Obama emerged into the noonday light on January 20, 2009, to receive the oath of office, his mood was somber. "You know, the actual moment of being sworn in and speaking to the crowd is one that can't be separated from all the stuff that had gone on the days before," he told me later. "So, us traveling from Pennsylvania on a train and seeing the crowds, and then the wonderful concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and the service activities that Mich.e.l.le and I did in the days prior to the inauguration--all that, I think, spoke to a sense of hopefulness and possibility that was expressed on inauguration day, which was very powerful to me. I have to tell you that you feel a little disembodied from it. Never during that week did I somehow feel that this was a celebration of me and my accomplishments. I felt very much that it was a celebration of America and how far we had traveled. And that people were reaffirming our capacity to overcome all the old wounds and old divisions, but also new wounds and new divisions. And in that sense, you know, I was along for the ride. And it was a wonderful spirit. It's interesting, though, that when I hear stories from people who partic.i.p.ated in it, in some ways their experiences were more powerful, because they talked about getting on the trains very early in the mornings, and it's packed, and it's festive, and they're people from all different walks of life. Having that lens to see the inauguration would have been special."

Despite everything going on in his mind at the moment he walked through the door, Obama said he was not anxious or frightened. "I wasn't scared," he said. "I think at that point I had a pretty firm grasp on what the moment required.... There is no doubt that betwe