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To: BroJoeK; DiogenesLamp
woodpusher: "January 10, 1849. [Lincoln's] draft was entitled, "A bill for an act to abolish slavery in the district of Columbia, by the consent of the free white people of said District, and with compensation to owners.""

And so yet again our typical Lost Cause Liar, woodpusher, here argues that since Lincoln was not a modern "woke" Leftist 1619er, therefore Lincoln was not "anti-slavery" enough.

But the truth remains that young Lincoln, like our Founders, was anti-slavery, wanted it abolished peacefully, lawfully, and did what he could to make that happen, in 1849, in Washington, DC.

Lincoln's anti-slavery opinions were, indeed, less radical than those of fellow Republicans like John Fremont, so Lincoln was considered a "moderate" on slavery, but that didn't matter to Southern Democrat Fire Eaters who thought any Republican anti-slavery opinions as plenty grounds enough to justify secession from the United States.

Seek treatment for your mental disorder.

Roy P. Basler was executive secretary and editor-in-chief of the Abraham Lincoln Association from 1947 to 1952. He joined the staff of the Library of Congress in 1952 and later chief of the manuscript division, holding the library's chair in American history. Basler's definitive collection of Lincoln's writings (The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln) was published in 1953 and a supplement was released in 1974. It has been described as "the principal source" and "the most invaluable work of all" for Lincoln studies.

Despite this pedigree, it appears you must add Mr. Basler to your ever-growing demented list of Lost Causers.

Roy P. Basler, The Lincoln Legend, (1935) pp. 211-13

On August 22, 1862, Lincoln wrote a letter in reply to Greeley’s ‘Prayer of Twenty Million' which, among other things, had complained of the policy of the Administra­tion in upholding slavery. In this letter Lincoln defined his purpose as follows:

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the National authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be ‘the Union as it was.’ If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves,T would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

At the time Lincoln wrote this letter he had already determined that it must be by ‘freeing some and leaving others alone.’ On September 22, 1862, he called a Cabinet meeting at which he gave notice of his resolve to issue the proclamation immediately in preliminary form. The story of that meeting has been told in an earlier chapter. The reception accorded the proclamation was possibly not what Lincoln had expected. Many Abolitionists were dis­appointed at the restricted area in which the proclamation was effective. Many thought the move a piece of chicane, for, it was contended, the only places over which the United States maintained any authority were not included. The proslavery element was outraged. Yet this was the act which was to become ‘the central act of Lincoln’s Ad­ministration.’

In no less than half a dozen places Lincoln’s letters re­iterate the position which he took from the beginning; namely, that the proclamation was merely a war measure. What he did for the negro race, he did only because it benefited the cause of the Union.

Now, before the legend is considered in relation to this one act, it may be well to ask finally what Lincoln really considered to be his duty in regard to slavery, aside from the question of preserving the Union. It is futile to con­template what might have been, but there is at least nothing on which to base any supposition that if there had been no secession Lincoln would have done more than con­tribute his support to any attempts to prevent the spread of slavery and to any attempts to procure gradual eman­cipation with compensation. The latter was the most radical view taken by Lincoln, even under the stress of war, until he saw that it would not be acceptable to the only slaveholding States in the Union. What he finally did was far-reaching in effect, and he was anxious that legislation should be passed which would make the free­dom conveyed by his war measure more than a temporary matter. His support of the bill for the abolition of slavery by a constitutional amendment was strong and open. His chagrin at its first failure in June, 1864, was great. When the passage of the amendment was effected by Congress after Lincoln’s election in 1864, he looked forward with satisfaction to the certainty of a Union without slavery.

Lincoln had enunciated his belief in regard to the evil of slavery in a passage long since famous: ‘A house di­vided against itself cannot stand. I believe this govern­ment cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.’

With this belief as a key, Lincoln’s policy becomes clear. From beginning to end, his purpose was to pre­serve the Union. The final abolition of slavery by con­stitutional amendment, Lincoln urged because it was his belief that the only hope of the Union was in the abolition of slavery.

How strange are the twists of reputation: Lincoln is ‘the World Emancipator,’ and yet his Emancipation Proclamation and, indeed, all that he did for the freedom of the slaves was done, not for them, but for the preserva­tion of the Union. Alexander Stephens said that the Union with Lincoln, rose in sentiment ‘to the sublimity of a re­ligious mysticism.’ Perhaps it did.

At page 216:

It is impracticable to enumerate, much more to discuss, the many works which misinterpret Lincoln as the anti-slavery prophet. There are three epics and many short poems, short stories, and novels. The usual plan is to present Lincoln's early life as a period of preparation for the one divine event. The myth of the New Orleans slave market is utilized along with other fictitious incidents in which young Lincoln is either assisting slaves to escape from their masters or is chastising in righteous wrath the upstart Southern gentleman who has come to recapture the slaves. … In the anti-slavery epics Lincoln's chief supporters in governing the country are, of course, the Abolitionjists. One poet enumerates the 'great, godlike minds' who aided Lincoln as Sumner, Beecher, Fremnt, Philips, Lovejoy, and Garrison. It would be hard to find a group who were Unionists and yet helped him less.

114 posted on 10/05/2021 7:02:21 AM PDT by woodpusher
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To: woodpusher; BroJoeK
Seek treatment for your mental disorder.

We joke about this, but I have come to realize that this business of people believing things against all evidence and common sense has become an all too common form of "mass hysteria."

We are now seeing it every day with mask mandates, vaccines, Critical Race Theory, January 6 "insurrection", trans-gender "women", and a whole host of other issues.

When I was younger, my friends and I used to discuss how it was the Germans, an otherwise rational people, went full Nazi. How did the mass hysteria get so bad that everyone accepted the Nazi ideas as valid?

When I look around at modern America, i'm seeing the same phenomena at work here and it is truly frightening. People are all too willing to believe insane things, and will deny any evidence which shows them otherwise.

We are living in an "Emperor's New Clothes" society and people have lost the ability to think rationally. They simply accept what the leading voices in society tell them without resorting to any critical thinking of their own.

And this business of what people believe about the civil war is another example of this same effect at work.

117 posted on 10/05/2021 8:03:45 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to<i> no other sovereignty.")
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