The Children of LincolnHow white advocates of emancipation abandoned African American causes in the dark days of Reconstruction, told through the stories of four Minnesotans White people, Frederick Douglass said in a speech in 1876, were the children of Lincoln, while black people were at best his stepchildren. Emancipation became the law of the land, and white champions of African Americans in the state were suddenly turning to other causes, regardless of the worsening