3. Douglass’s 1881 account is ambiguous on this point and has created some confusion. It reads as though Douglass was still hoping for Lincoln to order retaliation, when in fact the order had been issued ten days earlier. Lincoln in turn appeared to be questioning a policy he had already adopted. Douglass did not mention this in his two earlier accounts of the meeting. The simplest explanation is that twenty years later Douglass simply misremembered the details. On the other hand, it would not have been out of character for Lincoln to decry the necessity of a retaliation policy that he thought he had to adopt but was still reluctant to enforce. If so, Douglass’s autobiographical account was not so much mistaken as unclear. In any case, Douglass recalled being impressed by Lincoln’s resistance to retaliation. In it Douglass “saw the tender heart of the man rather than the stern warrior…and, while I could not agree with him, I could but respect his humane spirit.” Douglass, Life and Times, pp. 347–49.