Richard Wightman Fox

Five years after publication, Lincoln's Body needs an update, which I have just added to the book's website at richardwfox.com (click on UPDATE beneath the book's cover). It concerns the "Emancipation" monument in Washington DC-- specifically, what Frederick Douglass, who delivered a majestic speech dedicating the sculpture in 1876, himself thought of the paired statues, one of them a standing Lincoln, the other a kneeling slave. I discuss the monument and the speech on pages 164-167 of Lincoln's Body.

Congratulations to historian Scott Sandage for uncovering, one month ago, a Douglass letter published in a small newspaper five days after his speech that finally reveals his mixed opinion: he liked it, but mostly he disliked it. That's what historians live for: new discoveries that open up the past.

My update includes a copy of the document and an account of how I got wind (thanks to historian David Blight) of Sandage's find, and how I modified my treatment of Douglass in light of it.