The President and the Freedom Fighter

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The New York Times bestselling author of George Washington’s Secret Six and Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates turns to two other heroes of the nation: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. In The President and the Freedom Fighter,Brian Kilmeade tells the little-known story of how two American heroes moved from strong disagreement to friendshipand in the process changed the entire course of history. Abraham Lincoln was Whiteborn impoverished on a frontier farm. Frederick Douglass was Blacka child of slavery who had risked his life escaping to freedom in the North. Neither man had a formal educationand neither had had an easy path to influence. No one would have expected them to become friendsΓÇöor to transform the country. But Lincoln and Douglass believed in their nationΓÇÖs greatness. They were determined to make the grand democratic experiment live up to its ideals. LincolnΓÇÖs problem: he knew it was time for slavery to gobut how fast could the country change without being torn apart? And would it be possible to get rid of slavery while keeping AmericaΓÇÖs Constitution intact? Douglass said nothat the Constitution was irredeemably corrupted by slaveryΓÇöand he wanted Lincoln to move quickly. Sharing little more than the conviction that slavery was wrongthe two menΓÇÖs paths eventually converged. Over the course of the Civil WartheyΓÇÖd endure bloodthirsty mobsfeverish conspiraciesdevastating losses on the battlefieldand a growing firestorm of unrest that would culminate on the fields of Gettysburg. As he did in George Washington’s Secret SixKilmeade has transformed this nearly forgotten slice of history into a dramatic story that will keep you turning the pages to find out how these two heroesthrough their principles and patiencenot only changed each otherbut made America truly free for all.