How so? It's based upon an authentic citation of Lincoln's speeches themselves.
Further, I don't believe it could even reasonably approach the bias contained in most yankee presentations of Lincoln's views, which tend to reprint what suits their agenda and ignore what does not.
But any fair reading of Lincoln?s words on slavery show that he also opposed it on moral, religious and philosophical grounds as well.
I've long conceded that Lincoln had some sort of underlying moral opposition to slavery so I don't see what your purpose is. As far as I am concerned the debate over his moral position is one over the degree it influenced him, when, and where.
After all, was not the nation physically destroyed by the war to a degree never before and never since seen? Did not Lincoln trample upon the Constitution's plain meaning in order wage that same war?
The reality is that the largest economic expansion in the history of the world occurred in the 30 years after the war.
...which could have been larger had the nation not destroyed a huge chunk of its economy and workforce by war.
It is true that much of the south did not enjoy as many fruits from that expansion as did the rest of the nation. But that was the fault of the south itself for attempting to resurrect their pre-Civil War economic and class systems
Nonsense. The main fault itself lies squarely with the fact that a vibrant southern economy was thoroughly decimated by the physical destruction of the war itself. What you suggest is at most a distant secondary factor, if anything at all.
As to ?trampling upon the Constitution? that is your opinion.
Fair enough, though I contend it is a thoroughly evidenced one with several clear cases of constitutional abuse that are documentable.
I apologize to you if you have not done that, but you know other Lincoln bashers constantly do
It's entirely possible, but I am no more in control of their actions than they are of mine. I?m not sure what quotes from McPherson you have in mind, but I would caution that there is and was a significant difference between ?abolitionism? and Abolitionists.
The quote is a passage where he directly references the abolitionist movement in what he describes as its militant faction - obviously the John Browns, Spooners, and Garrisons. He uses Lincoln and abolitionism interchangably as if they were one in the same. Here's the quote:
"What explained the growing Northern hostility to slavery? Since 1831 the militant phase of the abolitionist movement had crusaded against bondage as unchristian, immoral, and a violation of the republican principle of equality on which the nation had been founded. The fact that this land of liberty had become the world's largest slaveholding nation seemed a shameful anomaly to an increasing number of Northerners. "The monstrous injustice of slavery," said Lincoln in 1854, "deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world - enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites." Slavery degraded not only the slaves, argued Northerners opposed to its expansion, by demeaning the dignity of labor and dragging down the wages of all workers; it also degraded free people who owned no slaves. If slavery goes into the territories, declared abolitionists, "the free labor of all the states will not.... If the free labor of the states goes there, the slave labor of the southern states will not, and in a few years the country will teem with an active and energetic population." - McPherson, article on the causes of the war, history channel website
The "vibrant" southern economy you speak of was built on slavery. Slave property accounted for over 60% of the privately held wealth of the region and that 'wealth' was destroyed with a stroke of a pen. The actual "physical destruction" is not what kept the south poor after the war. Yes, several cities were badly damaged as was some of south’s limited railroads and industrial facilities. But they were rebuilt in relatively short order. But neither was the source of pre-war wealth in the region. Plantations were the source of wealth and aside from burning down the "big house" there was little critical infrastructure to destroy. The south stayed poor after the war because they insisted on maintaining pre-Civil War social and political institutions that were not compatible with a free labor market economy. They did not encourage education, technology, wage labor or enterprise. With a very few exceptions in the post-war era, the south did not produce people like Edison, Carnegie, Westinghouse, Mellon, Rockefeller, Ford or the thousands of other creative industrious young men who rose from humble beginnings to shape a nation and bring general prosperity to the north. The class system of the south did not encourage such men. Some "southrons" point to those facts with pride, but there was a heavy economic cost to pay for preserving that "culture".
As I mentioned to you in a note, I agree that this was Lincoln's motive in taking up the cudgels against slavery. Donald's biography of Lincoln (Lincoln, 1999) adds further evidences from correspondence of Lincoln's motivation, but this quote is expository.
The success of abolition, and its war, was sustained by a Party. The business of finding out which motives for the abolition of slavery and the waging of that war were preponderant and effectual in the coalition of interests and reasons belongs to the historian. Unfortunately, McPherson offers us the aspect instead of a polemicist.
It's too bad the Census of 1860 couldn't have run an excimiating poll on the subjects of slavery, secession, and maintenance of the Union with its "long form" of the day. Then we should know a lot better what we are talking about when we start ascribing motives to large, kaleidoscopic masses of politically active people.