[Walt] That is easy to do.
[Walt] President Lincoln wasn't a race pimp.
[Walt} "I confess that I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes and unwarranted toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet. In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border. It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no such interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union."
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Just the thought of how miserable this all made Abe feel brought tears to my eyes.
Why, I do declare, the very thought of Old Abe biting his lip brought visions of Clinton to mind. And then I heard Barbra Streisand singing in the background. Could it be? Could it be? Could this just be a Clinton-like bullcrap story?
Let us read the rebuttal of Lerone Bennett, Jr., to this Lincoln legerdemain.
What about ... the famous letter Lincoln wrote in 1855 recalling his anguish at the sight of shackled slaves during a steamboat trip in 1841? "You may remember, as I well do," he wrote to his intimate friend Joshua Speed fourteen years after the event, "that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border" (CW 2:320). This is strong testimony, indicating what seems to be repugnance over "a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable."
But:
In a letter Lincoln wrote to Speed's sister Mary immediately after the event he expressed neither repugnance nor anguish. On the contrary, he invoked the usual racist argument about happy slaves, saying that "nothing of interest happened during the passage" except "vexatious" delays. Almost as an afterthought, he wrote in the next sentence: "By the way, a fine example was presented on board the boat for contemplating the effect of condition [his emphasis] upon human happiness. A gentleman [sic] had purchased twelve Negroes in different parts of Kentucky and was taking them to a farm in the South. They were chained six and six together .... In this condition they were being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of them from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and unrelenting than any other were; and yet amid all these distressing circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and apparantly [sic] happy creatures on board .... How true it is that 'God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,' or in other words, the He renders the worst of human conditions tolerable, while He permits the best, to be nothing better than tolerable. To return to the narrative ..." (CW I:259-60).
Here, to borrow Lincoln's language, is a fine example for contemplating the effect of racial conditioning on perception. And one should note, before passing on quickly, Lincoln's revealing slip in referring to the slavedriver as a gentleman. As we have indicated, and as we shall see repeatedly in the following pages, Lincoln never got over the poor White reflex of genuflecting mentally to "gentlemen" who separated mothers and fathers from children and deposited them in the deep South where the lash of the gentleman and his overseer was heard all day and all night long. Notice also the direction of Lincoln's concern. He was moved to speculate on the moral condition of the slaves; he was not moved to speculate on the moral condition of gentlemen who bought and sold men, women, and children.
Forced Into Glory, Lerone Bennett, Jr., p.255-7
But in 1848, as a congressman, he wrote legislation that would have barred slavery from the District of Columbia.
Consider this text from the AOL ACW forum:
"It is useful when thinking about Abraham Lincoln's attitudes toward slavery and Blacks to remember that Lincoln was a Southerner born in a slave state to parents born and raised in slave states. His family shared some of their culture's bias toward individual Blacks, but opposed the institution of slavery. This background and the early move of the family to a free state shaped Lincoln's attitudes early in his adult life. Now consider several facts about Lincoln's political career:
1. While Lincoln was building political strength in local Illinois politics, he opposed the war with Mexico as inexpedient for several reasons, including that it was waged to increase the power of slave states in the institutions of Federal government.
2. During Lincoln's first term as U.S. congressman from Illinois in the late 1840's, he continued to criticize the Mexican war and worked out a bill (never introduced) calling for a referendum in the District of Columbia designed to free the slaves in that Federal enclave and compensate their owners.
3. His reentry into national politics in 1854 was clearly for the purpose of opposing the expansion of slavery into the territories under the provisions of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He had his heart and soul involved with the idea of gradual emancipation to bring the fullest meaning to the words of Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal.
4. From 1854 to his nomination for the presidency in 1860, as James McPherson noted in his DRAWN WITH THE SWORD, "the dominant, unifying theme of Lincoln's career was opposition to the expansion of slavery as a vital first step toward placing it in the course of ultimate extinction." In those years he gave approximately 175 political speeches. McPherson notes that the "central message of these speeches showed Lincoln to be a "one-issue" man - the issue being slavery." Thus, Lincoln's nomination to the presidency was based on a principled opposition to slavery on moral grounds, and that position was clear to voters both in the South and the North.
5. In his early speeches and actions as president-elect and president, he was clear in his opinion that he had no legal authority to interfere with slavery in the slave states. However, he was persistent and consistent in his efforts to encourage and aid voluntary emancipation in the loyal Border States, territories and the District of Columbia. These efforts predated his publication of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
In summary, I think one can safely say that Lincoln was clearly a gradual abolitionist from the beginning of his political career.
[end]
Walt
ROTF.