Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) and other black leaders met with President Andrew Johnson in the White House on February 7, 1866, in an effort to persuade Johnson that his approach to restoration was causing untold damage to the freedmen in the South and to the hopes for national reconciliation on the basis of freedom. Douglass and the others in this meeting pressed Johnson to support a union of poor whites and freedmen into a “party . . . among the poor.” This new party, they hoped, would be able to win elections under the restored Southern constitutions and govern it toward protection for freedmen and the dismantling of the Southern slave-based oligarchy. This coalition would require that the vote be extended to freedmen. In response, Johnson expressed great skepticism about such a prospect and about extending the vote to freedmen. He was loath to require that states extend the vote to blacks. Black civil rights, Johnson held, came at the expense of poor southern whites and the latter were the true victims of the late war. “The Negro will vote with the late master, whom he does not hate,” Johnson predicted, “rather than with the non-slaveholding white, whom he does hate.”
After President Johnson made clear that he would not be argued out of this opinion, the delegation thanked Johnson for the audience and departed. Afterwards, Douglass wrote the following open letter for publication in the newspapers.