he was worse in private. A former slave owner, he rebuffed and insulted a black delegation headed by Frederick Douglass. Johnson told the delegation that it was poor whites, not blacks, who were the real victims of slavery in the South. After the delegates left, he told his private secretary: “Those damned sons of bitches thought they had me in a trap. I know that damned Douglass; he’s just like any nigger, & he would sooner cut a white man’s throat than not.”
