I have a book that is full of actual speeches and quotes by Lincoln during his term and run for senate. He was very much against slavery and the push to spread it in the new territories was real and constant. He knew that it would eventually destroy the union, and he also said things to mollify the weaker and Democratic souls in order to get his way...the good way, done. This author really doesn’t know what he writes.
And whether slavery would have eventually been gone is probably true, however, the larger it grew at the time, the more people it enslaved. It was not just apartheid that died with much bloodshed too, it was far worse. It very well could have split the nation into two, with the slave part eventually becoming free, but then we probably would have had two separate and weaker nations.
Have we no interest in the free Territories of the United States — that they should be kept open for the homes of free white people? As our Northern States are growing more and more in wealth and population, we are continually in want of an outlet, through which it may pass out to enrich our country. In this we have an interest — a deep and abiding interest. There is another thing, and that is the mature knowledge we have — the greatest interest of all. It is the doctrine, that the people are to be driven from the maxims of our free Government, that despises the spirit which for eighty years has celebrated the anniversary of our national independence.
We are a great empire. We are eighty years old. We stand at once the wonder and admiration of the whole world, and we must enquire what it is that has given us much prosperity, and we shall understand that to give up that one thing, would be to give up all future prosperity.
Speech at Kalamazoo, Michigan, August 27, 1856