His assassination transformed him from a simple political leader to be mourned into a dedicated and heroic martyr.[xxvi] Lincoln accomplished what no other president had to overcome. Abraham Lincoln pieced together a nation on the verge of being torn apart by the major issue of slavery with the help of African-American leaders and abolitionists pushing the president to express his true views and create the Proclamation of emancipation. A distraught Frederick Douglass said that Lincoln "displayed a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had ever seen before in anything spoken or written by him." »[xxvii] Abraham Lincoln's ideals were before his time and would permanently identify him at the time of liberation, living as an icon of black freedom in African-American celebrations and as an American hero in this same