Abraham Lincoln is an easy target for people like Gates who choose to judge him by 21st century standards. The fact is that his opinions were no worse, and in many ways far better, than his peers both North and South. Boiled down to the basics, Lincoln was wise enough to see that free blacks would not be welcomed by the average white person, that they would be met with racism and discrimination on a scale not imagined to date, and that carving out a life free from those conditions might not have been a bad thing. History has proven he was right in the acceptance area. Why couldn’t he have also been right in their ability to create their own society?
Yes because black people are so non racial. The Black Caucus, Eric Holder, Obamamnation, Ferguson, Detroit and thousands of other examples aside.