On January 14, 1862, Frederick Douglass stood before an audience in Philadelphia’s National Hall to speak about the ongoing Civil War. His purpose in doing so was to urge the American public to come to a broader support for the war effort. In particular, he called for a vigorous pursuit of war efforts, which had been stalled since the previous fall. Douglass wanted the Lincoln administration to expand its declared opposition to the expansion of slavery into a program for the destruction of slavery itself. In particular, he was frustrated by the fact that President Lincoln had demanded that General John C. Frémont, commander of Union forces in Missouri, retract an emancipation statement that he had made freeing the enslaved in Missouri in rebellion against the United States.