In his post #745 Kalamata argues that in contrast to sincere abolitionists like... Jefferson Davis, Lincoln supported slavery when it suited him politically, only opposed it when political winds blew that direction.
Kalamata: "Lincoln barely mentioned slavery before 1854, and the few times he did it was politically-timed to promote Whig economic agenda.
The amoral Whig party was split over slavery, but strictly for political reasons:"
Lincoln himself said otherwise:
- "I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any abolitionist." AL Chicago speech -1858"
- "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong... I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel."
AL to Hodges 1864
- "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."
AL to Speed, 1855
- "I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free states, due to the Union of the states, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may seem) to let the slavery of the other states alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear, that we should never knowingly lend ourselves directly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death---to find new places for it to live in, when it can no longer exist in the old."
AL to Durley, 1845
- Whig Congressman Lincoln supported the 1846 Wilmot Proviso, banning slavery from new territories.
- Whig Congressman Lincoln wrote & introduced a bill in 1847 to abolish slavery in Washington, DC.
- In 1849 Lincoln left Congress and returned to private law practice, but was drawn back to Republican politics by the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska act, expanding slavery into territories.
- [The pro-slavery Kansas-Nebraska Act had] "declared indifference, but as I must think, a covert real zeal for the spread of slavery.
I cannot but hate it.
I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself.
I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world..."
AL Peoria Speech -1854
The truth is, Lincoln opposed slavery all his life, and as a practical politician, all that politics would allow.
Kalamata: "Slavery was just another political tool for Lincoln and the Whigs."
The Whig party died in 1856 because it did not consistently oppose slavery.
In 1854, the Republican party grew from an alliance of anti-slavery Whigs and free-soil Democrats.
Lincoln joined the Republicans in 1856.
Kalamata quoting HL Donald, 1996: "In Washington government officials could not agree on how to deal with the increasingly serious crisis.
The President, along with many other conservatives, favored calling a national convention to amend the Constitution so as to redress Southern grievances."
That president was not Lincoln, it was Democrat James Buchanan.
Kalamata quoting Magnus, 2017, on Corwin: "Lincoln actively lobbied behind the scenes to drum up support for the amendment after he arrived in Washington in late February.
A young Henry Adams, who was clerking for his congressman father and Corwin Amendment co-sponsor Charles Francis Adams, affirms this as well, noting that the amendment's adoption by the narrowest of two-thirds majorities came only because of 'some careful manipulation, as well as the direct influence of the new President.' "
Here's the truth: the entire argument that "Lincoln supported Corwin" is based on hearsay testimony from Lt. Col. Peter Venkman, who reported hearing from a whistleblower what Adam Schiff claimed was the President's conversation with... somebody... who? Doesn't matter, the Republican President is guilty of whatever Democrats claim. </sarcasm>
Kalamata quoting Garrison, 1993, on Lincoln's pre-emancipation plan: "abolition by individual states, with compensation to owners, and colonization of black "Americans" with their own consent, at any place or places without the United States."
Note the key words: "with their own consent".
Kalamata quoting Lind, 2005: "Most of the white American opponents of slavery in his time, like Lincoln, had no intention of creating a color-blind, multiracial society in the United States.
Among Lincoln's contemporaries, only a minority of white abolitionists and Radical Republicans... "
Lincoln was a practical politician who hated slavery and took every opportunity to oppose it, culminating in the 13th Amendment.
And Lincoln's support for the 15th Amendment (black suffrage) is what triggered John Wilkes Booth to murder him. ![]()
>>Kalamata wrrite: "Lincoln barely mentioned slavery before 1854, and the few times he did it was politically-timed to promote Whig economic agenda. The amoral Whig party was split over slavery, but strictly for political reasons . . . [see long quote by David Donald in
#745] . . . Slavery was just another political tool for Lincoln and the Whigs."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "Lincoln himself said otherwise: "I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any abolitionist." AL Chicago speech -1858"
This is Lincoln the same year:
"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
[Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858, in Roy P. Basler, "The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln Vol 3." Rutgers University Press, 1953, pp.145-146]
How is that different from slavery? And why is that statement being marginalized, even whitewashed? Let's ask this fellow:
"Lincoln said repeatedly in private and public, in Springfield and in the White House, that he was a White supremacist and that he wanted to deny Blacks equal rights because of their race and deport them to a tropical clime with people of their own color and kind. How do you hide such a man, and how do you make him a symbol of twentieth-century community? More importantly, and more dangerously, why would you want to make such a man a symbol of integration and the American Dream?"
"The answer, in part, is that Lincoln is theology, not historiology. He is a faith, he is a church, he is a religion, and he has his own priests and acolytes, most of whom have a vested interest in "the great emancipator" and who are passionately opposed to anybody telling the truth about him."
"Not only is Lincoln a church, he is also an industry. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men and women earn their living feeding the Lincoln machine, turning out the Lincoln slogans, hailing the proclamation that never was."
"Over and above this, the mythological Lincoln is a defining structure in the identity system of most Americans, who are hooked on Lincoln, as on a drug, and who need periodic fixes to reaffirm their sense of reality. Adlai Stevenson said once that "a man in public life can find no surer guide than Lincoln". It is a condemnation of the American educational system that an intelligent man like Stevenson could make such an uninformed statement. What did Stevenson hope to learn from Lincoln? How to deny Blacks equal rights, or how to ship them to Africa?"
"For all these reasons, and for others as well, Lincoln transcends the rules of logic and evidence, even in the academy. Barbara Burns Petrick said in the New York Times on February 9, 1986, that Lincoln is such a god that the rules of evidence do not apply to him. She might have added that things have reached such a pass that it is considered permissible to lie and to hide evidence in order to protect the Republic. "It might be said of Lincoln," Petrick said, "what Voltaire said of God: If there had been no Lincoln, it would have been necessary to invent him." It is no accident that Petrick compared Lincoln to God and that she failed to note that the evidence she and others cite indicate that there was no Lincoln or at least no great emancipator and that it was necessary to invent him."
"The fascinating question here is not how people have managed to hide Lincoln, but how they have managed to hide him while writing thousands of books about him. Whatever the answer, they never stop talking about Abraham Lincoln in America, and they never stop hiding him. And with rare exceptions, you can't believe what any major Lincoln scholar tells you about Abraham Lincoln and race."
[Lerone, Bennett Jr., "Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's white dream." Johnson Publishing Company, 2000, pp.113-115]
I'm glad I am not a "Lincoln scholar." However, after reading something that controversial, it is always good to get a second opinion:
"The fullest manifestation of this revisionism was the article "Was Abe Lincoln a White Supremacist?" which Lerone Bennett, previously the author of two major works on African American history, published in Ebony in February 1968. His answer to the question was an emphatic "yes." Black veneration for Lincoln as a friend of African Americans and a champion of their rights had been a huge mistake, he concluded."
"For the next thirty years Bennett continued his investigation of Lincoln and race, and the result is a very long book that is meant to be the definitive treatment of the subject. Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream, published in 2000, is an angry and bitter assessment of what Bennett considered a great misunderstanding of Lincoln's character and motivations. The book gathers all or most of the racist or racially insensitive comments that Lincoln made that are in the historical record and takes them at face value, as statements of principle rather than of political expediency. Bennett presents a strong case for the contention that Lincoln shared some of the prejudiced beliefs about blacks that were prevalent among white Americans in the mid-nineteenth century. Some other historians have used the same evidence to reach a similar conclusion, at least about the pre-presidential years."
"What is most original and provocative about Bennett's account is his contention that Lincoln was not really opposed to slavery as an institution but rather defended and protected it until circumstances forced him to act against it. "Based on his record and the words of his own mouth," Bennett concludes, "we can say that the 'great emancipator' was one of the major supporters of slavery in the United States for at least fifty-four of his fifty-six years." Congress, he contends, attempted to free the slaves of disloyal masters through the Confiscation Act of 1862 but was stymied because of Lincoln's failure to enforce it. The Emancipation Proclamation was therefore a backward step, designed by Lincoln to preserve as much of slavery as possible. The preliminary proclamation of September 1862 in effect suspended the operation of the Confiscation Act, and the final one freed fewer slaves than were already entitled to liberty under the congressional legislation. Emancipating only those in areas still in a state of rebellion did not immediately free a single slave, whereas vigorously enforcing the Confiscation Act could have freed all except those whose masters had remained loyal to the Union. Lincoln's hesitant, vacillating, and limited emancipation policy was driven, Bennett contends, by the exigencies and circumstances of the war and by political pressure from the Radicals; it did not represent antislavery conviction. If Lincoln could have saved the Union without abolishing slavery, he would have happily done so. The title of the book expresses Bennett's thesis concisely: Lincoln was "forced into glory." One factor forcing his hand, which Bennett acknowledges but might have emphasized more than he does, was the mass desertion of blacks from Southern plantations. By crossing into Union lines, they made themselves available for service to the Northern cause. Some historians have argued that slaves did more to free themselves by voting against slavery with their feet than Lincoln did by proclaiming emancipation."
"The book's subtitle suggests a second main theme— Lincoln's dream of an all-white America. Bennett pays great attention to Lincoln's long-standing and persistent advocacy of the colonization of freed blacks outside of the United States. Despite verbal assurances that colonization would be voluntary, it would, Bennett believes, have inevitably involved coercion and would have amounted to a form of "ethnic cleansing." Sometimes Lincoln used the term "deportation" instead of "colonization." It was one thing to encourage individuals to emigrate voluntarily; it was quite another to promote and facilitate the departure of an entire racial or ethnic group. As for the assertion of Lincoln apologists that promoting colonization was a ploy to make emancipation more palatable to white supremacist Americans by alleviating their fears of the social consequences of freeing millions of blacks, Bennett counters what he calls this "fork-tongued argument" by contending that the propaganda for colonization exacerbated racial prejudice rather than mitigating it."
"Although most white historians who have reviewed or taken notice of Forced into Glory have criticized it rather severely as a tendentious and polemical work, they have found few factual errors in it and have acknowledged the validity of parts of the argument. Even James McPherson, in his generally unfavorable review in the New York Times, conceded that "this book must be taken seriously. Bennett gets some things right. Lincoln did share the racial prejudices of his time and place. He did support the idea of colonizing blacks abroad." Clearly the most debatable aspect of Bennett's thesis is not that Lincoln was a white supremacist (at least up to 1863), but rather that [Lincoln] never really opposed slavery in principle or tried to work against it."
[George M. Frederickson, "Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race." 2008, pp.18-22]
Bennett's words may sound like some form of heresy to many of you; but his words are not too far from those of Frederick Douglass:
"It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit, even here in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man."
"He was pre-eminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the States where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation. He was ready to execute all the supposed constitutional guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor of the slave system anywhere inside the slave States. He was willing to pursue, recapture, and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty master were already in arms against the Government. The race to which we belong were not the special objects of his consideration. Knowing this, I concede to you, my white fellow-citizens, a pre-eminence in this worship at once full and supreme. First, midst, and last, you and yours were the objects of his deepest affection and his most earnest solicitude. You are the children of Abraham Lincoln."
[Douglass, Frederick, "Oration by Frederick Douglass: unveiling of the Freedman's monument in memory of Abraham Lincoln." Pathway Press, 1940, pp.12-13]
Sometimes you have to confront history, rather than hide from it.
Mr. Kalamata