“Frederick Douglass, so recently hopeful, was unhappy. The speech was “little better than our worst fears,” Douglass remarked. That the president continued to express respect for slavery where it existed was crushing; by pledging to enforce the Fugitive Slave Acts, Douglass said, Lincoln had portrayed himself as “an excellent slave hound.” Douglass had been considering immigrating to Haiti, and he saw nothing in Lincoln’s inaugural address to change his mind – in fact, quite the opposite.”
